Meanwhile, the Lisbon populace, supposing that the English general designed to abandon them without necessity, were violently excited. The regency, either from fear or folly, made no effort to preserve tranquillity, and the people, feeling their own strength, proceeded from one excess to another, until it become evident that, in a forced embarkation, the British would have to fight their allies as well as their enemies. At this gloomy period when ten marches would have brought the French to Lisbon, when a stamp of Napoleon’s foot would have extinguished that spark of war which afterwards blazed over the Peninsula, sir John Moore made his daring movement upon Sahagun; and Portugal, gasping as in a mortal agony, was instantly relieved. CHAPTER II. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 2, sections 1 and 2.] It was the advanced guard of the fourth corps that had approached Merida with the intention of proceeding to Badajos, and the emperor was, as we have seen, preparing to follow: but, in the night of the 26th of December, an officer carrying the intelligence of Moore’s movement, reached Merida, and, next morning, the French fell back, and marching hastily to the Tagus, crossed it, and rejoined their main body, from which another powerful detachment was immediately directed upon Placentia. This retrograde movement obviated the immediate danger; and sir John Cradock endeavoured to pacify the people of Lisbon. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 3, section 5.] He ordered general Stewart’s brigade, strengthened by two German battalions, to halt at Santarem. He explained his own motives to the Portuguese, and urged the regency to a more frank and vigorous system than they had hitherto followed; for, like the Spanish juntas, they promised every thing, and performed nothing; neither would they, although consenting, verbally, to all the measures proposed, ever commit themselves by writing, having the despicable intention of afterwards disclaiming that which might prove disagreeable to the populace, or even to the French. Sir John Cradock, however, had no power beyond his own personal influence to enforce attention to his wishes. No successor to sir Charles Cotton had yet arrived, and Mr. Villiers seems to have wanted the decision and judgement required to meet such a momentous crisis.