General Stewart’s first measure, was to recover Matagorda. In the night of the 22d, a detachment consisting of fifty seamen and marines, twenty-five artillery-men, and sixty-seven of the ninety-fourth regiment, the whole under the command of captain M’Lean, pushed across the channel during a storm, and taking possession of the dismantled fort, before morning effected a solid lodgement, and although the French cannonaded the work with field-artillery all the next day, the garrison, supported by the fire of Puntales, was immoveable. The remainder of February passed without any event of importance, yet the people suffered from the want of provisions, especially fresh meat; and from the 7th to the 10th of March, a continued tempest, beating upon the coast, drove three Spanish and one Portuguese sail of the line, and a frigate and from thirty to forty merchantmen, on shore, between San Lucar and St. Mary’s. One ship of the line was taken, the others burnt and part of the crews brought off by boats from the fleet; but many men, and amongst others a part of the fourth English regiment fell into the hands of the enemy, together with an immense booty. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 3, Sect. 1.] Early in March, Mr. Henry Wellesley, minister plenipotentiary arrived, and on the 24th of that month, general Graham coming from England assumed the chief command of the British, and immediately caused an exact military survey of the Isla to be made. It then appeared, that the force hitherto assigned for its defence, was quite inadequate, and that to secure it against the utmost efforts of the enemy, twenty thousand soldiers, and a system of redoubts, and batteries, requiring the labour of four thousand men for three months, were absolutely necessary. Now, the Spaniards had only worked beyond the Santi Petri, and that without judgement; their batteries in the marsh were ill placed, their entrenchments on the tongue of land at the sea mouth of that channel, were of contemptible strength, and the Caraccas which they had armed with one hundred and fifty guns, being full of dry timber could be easily burned by carcasses. The interior defences of the Isla were quite neglected, and while they had abandoned the important posts of Matagorda, and the Troccadero, they had pushed their advanced batteries, to the junction of the Chiclana road with the Royal Causeway, in the marsh, that is to say, one mile and a half beyond the bridge of Zuazo, and consequently exposed, without support, to flank attacks both by water and land.