Cradock, feeling the danger of this illusion, made it his first object to ascertain, and to transmit home, exact information of the real strength and efficiency of the native regular troops. They were nominally twenty thousand; but Miguel Percira Forjas, military secretary to the regency, and the ablest public man Portugal possessed, acknowledged that this force was a nullity, and that there were not more than ten thousand stand of serviceable arms in the kingdom, the greatest part of which were English. The troops themselves were undisciplined and unruly; and the militia and the “_ordenanza_,” or armed peasantry, animated rather by a spirit of outrage than of enthusiasm, evinced no disposition to submit to regulation, neither was there any branch of administration free from the grossest disorder. The Spanish dollar had a general acceptance in Portugal. The regency, under the pretence that a debased foreign coin would drive the Portuguese coin out of circulation, deprived the dollar of its current value. This regulation, true in principle, and applicable, as far as the Portuguese gold coin (which is of peculiar fineness) was concerned, had, however, a most injurious effect. The Spanish dollar was in reality finer than the Portuguese silver cruzado-nova, and would finally have maintained its value, notwithstanding this decree. But a slur being thus thrown upon it by the government, the money changers contrived to run its value down for the moment, a matter of infinite importance; for the English soldiers and sailors being all paid in these dollars, at four shillings and sixpence, which was the true value, were thus suddenly mulcted four-pence in each, by the artificial depreciation of the moment. The men attributed this to fraud in the shopkeepers; the retail trade of Lisbon was interrupted, and quarrels between the tradesmen and the soldiers took place hourly.