For these reasons he would not, he said, again co-operate with the Spaniards; yet, by taking post on the Portuguese frontier, he would hang upon the enemy’s flank, and thus, unless the latter came with very great forces, prevent him from crossing the Guadiana. This reasoning was conclusive; but, ere it reached lord Wellesley, the latter found that so far from his plans, relative to the supply, having been adopted, he could not even get an answer from the junta; and that miserable body, at one moment stupified with fear, at the next bursting with folly, now talked of the enemy’s being about to retire to the Pyrenees, or even to the interior of France: and assuming the right to dispose of the Portuguese army as well as of their own, importunately pressed for an immediate, combined, offensive operation, by the troops of the three nations, to harass the enemy in his retreat; but, at the same time, they ordered Eguia to withdraw from Deleytoza, behind the Guadiana. The 31st, Eguia reached La Serena; and Venegas having rallied his fugitives in the Morena, and being reinforced from the depôts in Andalusia, the two armies amounted to about fifty thousand men, of which eight or ten thousand were horse: for, as I have before observed, the Spanish cavalry seldom suffered much. But the tide of popular discontent was now setting full against the central government. The members of the ancient junta of Seville worked incessantly for their overthrow. Romana, Castaños, Cuesta, Albuquerque, all, and they were many, who had suffered dishonour at their hands, were against them; and the local junta of Estremadura insisted that Albuquerque should command in that province. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 17.]