If Soult’s energy in command was conspicuous on this occasion, his sagacity and judgement were not less remarkably displayed in what followed. Most generals would have moved by the direct route upon Guimaraens to Braga; but he, with a long reach of mind, calculated, from the slackness of pursuit after he passed Vallonga, that the bulk of the English army must be on the road to Braga, and would be there before him; or that, at best, he should be obliged to retreat fighting, and must sacrifice the guns and baggage of Loison’s and Lorge’s corps in the face of an enemy--a circumstance that might operate fatally on the spirit of his soldiers, and would certainly give opportunities to the malcontents; and already one of the generals (apparently Loison) was recommending a convention like Cintra. But, with a firmness worthy of the highest admiration, Soult destroyed all the guns and the greatest part of the baggage and ammunition of Loison’s and Lorge’s divisions; then, leaving the high road to Braga on his left, and once more taking to the mountain paths, he made for the heights of Carvalho d’Este, where he arrived late in the evening of the 14th, thus gaining a day’s march, in point of time. The morning of the 15th he drew up his troops in the position he had occupied just two months before at the battle of Braga; and this spectacle, where twenty thousand men were collected upon the theatre of a former victory, and disposed so as to produce the greatest effect, roused all the sinking pride of the French soldiers. It was a happy stroke of generalship, an inspiration of real genius! Soult now re-organised his army; taking the command of the rear-guard himself, and giving that of the advanced guard to general Loison. Noble, the French historian of this campaign, says “_the whole army was astonished_;” as if it was not a stroke of consummate policy that the rear, which was pursued by the British, should be under the general-in-chief, and that the front, which was to fight its way through the native forces, should have a commander whose very name called up all the revengeful passions of the Portuguese. _Maneta durst not surrender_; and the duke of Dalmatia dextrously forced those to act with most zeal who were least inclined to serve him: and, in sooth, such was his perilous situation, that all the resources of his mind and all the energy of his character were needed to save the army.