2º. _To adopt Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo as the base of movements, and to operate in conjunction with Beresford, the duke del Parque, and Romana, by the line of Salamanca, while Cuesta and Venegas occupied the attention of the first and fourth corps on the Tagus._ The objections to this line were, that it separated the British troops from the most efficient and most numerous, and obliged them to act with the weakest and most irregular of the Spanish armies; that it abandoned Cuesta to the ruin which his headstrong humour would certainly provoke; and as the loss of Seville or of Lisbon would inevitably follow; the instructions of the English ministers, (which enjoined the defence of the latter city as paramount to every object, save the military possession of Cadiz,) would have been neglected. 3º. _To march upon Plasencia and Almaraz, form a junction with Cuesta, and advance against Madrid, while Venegas operated in the same view, by the line of La Mancha._ The obstacles in the way of this plan were--1º. That it exposed Cuesta to be defeated by Victor before the junction; and that, after the junction, the combinations would still be dependent upon the accuracy of Venegas’s movements. 2º. That sir Arthur Wellesley’s march, with reference to Soult’s corps, would be a flank march: an unsafe operation at all times, but, on this occasion, when the troops must move through the long and narrow valley of the Tagus, peculiarly dangerous. Nevertheless, this line was adopted, nor were the reasons in favour of it devoid of force. The number of French immediately protecting Madrid was estimated at fifty thousand; but confidential officers, sent to the head-quarters of Cuesta and Venegas, had ascertained that their strength was not overstated at thirty-eight thousand, for the first, and twenty-five thousand for the second, all well armed and equipped, and the last certainly the best and most efficient army that the Spaniards had yet brought into the field. Now the English force in Portugal amounted to thirty thousand men, exclusive of the sick, twenty-two thousand being under arms on the frontier, and eight thousand at Lisbon: here, then, was a mass of ninety thousand regular troops that could be brought to bear on fifty thousand; besides which there were sir Robert Wilson’s legion, about a thousand strong, and the Spanish _partidas_ of the Guadalupe and the Sierra de Bejar.