These things rendered Joseph timid. Madrid, it was argued in his councils, was of more consequence than Lisbon. Soult might be already at the latter place; or, if not, he might extricate himself from his difficulties, for the capital of Spain must be covered. In pursuance of this reasoning, Sebastiani was forbidden any forward movement; and the duke of Belluno, whose army was daily wasting with the Guadiana fever, took a position at Torre-Mocha, a central point between Truxillo, Merida, and Alcantara. His cavalry posts watched all the passages over the Guadiana and the Tagus; and his communications with Madrid, between the Tietar and the Tagus, were protected by twelve hundred men, detached for that purpose by the king. But one timid measure in war generally produces another. The neighbourhood of the English force at Castel Branco increased the energy of the Spanish insurgents, who infested the valley of the Tagus, and communicated secretly with those of the Sierra de Guadalupe; hence, Victor, alarmed for his bridge at Almaraz, sent a division there the 22d of May; and, as from that period until the 10th of June, he remained quiet: his campaign, which had opened so brilliantly, was annulled. He had neither assisted Soult, nor crushed Cuesta, nor taken Badajos nor Seville; yet he had wasted and lost, by sickness, more men than would have sufficed to reduce both Lisbon and Seville. The Spaniards were daily recovering strength and confidence; and sir Arthur Wellesley, after defeating Soult, had full leisure to return to the Tagus, and to combine his future operations with the Spanish armies in the south. Information that Lapisse had forced the bridge of Alcantara reached the English general on the night of the 17th. That part of the army which was still behind Salamonde received immediate orders to retrace their steps to Oporto; and when the retreat of Soult by Orense was ascertained, the remainder of the troops, including three Portuguese brigades under Beresford, followed the same route. Colonel Trant was then appointed military governor of Oporto; and it was thought sufficient to leave Sylveira with some regular battalions and militia to defend the northern provinces; for Soult’s army was considered a crippled force, which could not for a long time appear again in the field; a conclusion drawn, as we shall see, from false data, and without due allowance being made for the energy of that chief. As the army proceeded southward, the contracted scope of Lapisse’s movements was ascertained. Colonel Mayne was directed again to take post at Alcantara; and a reinforcement of five thousand men having landed at Lisbon, the rapidity of the march slackened. Passing by easy journeys through Coimbra, Thomar, and Punhete, the troops reached Abrantes the 7th of June, and encamped on the left bank of the Tagus; but there was sickness and a great mortality in his ranks. [Sidenote: Sir A. Wellesley’s Correspondence, Parl. Papers, 1810.]