The effort made to secure Cadiz was an act of disinterested zeal on the part of sir John Cradock. The absence of his best troops exposed him to the most galling peevishness from the regency, and to the grossest insults from the populace. With his reduced force, he could not expect to hold even a contracted position at the extremity of the rock of Lisbon against the weakest army likely to invade Portugal; and, as there was neither a native force nor a government to be depended upon, there remained for him only the prospect of a forced and, consequently, disgraceful embarkation, and the undeserved obloquy that never fails to follow disaster. In this disagreeable situation, as Elvas and Almeida no longer contained British troops, the general’s attention was necessarily fixed upon Lisbon and Oporto. The violence of the gales rendered the latter a sealed port; but the hospitals and magazines of Almeida, and even of Salamanca, being evacuated upon Lamego, that town was crowded with fifteen hundred sick men, besides escorts, and the hourly accumulating stores. The river had overflowed its banks, the craft could not ply; and one large boat, attempting to descend, was overset, and eighty persons, soldiers and others, perished. General Cameron, hearing of this confusion, relinquished the idea of embarking his detachment at Oporto, and, re-crossing the Douro, made for Lisbon, where he arrived the beginning of February with about two thousand men; but they were worn down by fatigue, having marched eight hundred miles under continued rains. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 6, sect. 1.] [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 6, sect. 1.] Sir Robert Wilson sent his guns to Abrantes, by the road of Idanha Nova; but, partly from a spirit of adventure, partly from an erroneous idea that sir John Cradock wished him to defend the frontier, he remained with his infantry in the neighbourhood of Ciudad Rodrigo. His force had been increased by a Spanish detachment under don Carlos d’España, and by some volunteers; but it was still weak, and his operations were necessarily confined to a few trifling skirmishes: yet, like many others, his imagination so far outstripped his judgement that, when he had only felt the advanced post of a single division, he expressed his conviction that the French were going to abandon Spain altogether.