Although alarmed at the number of men demanded, a number which, from the recent loss sustained on the Walcheren expedition, they truly observed, would, in case of disaster, endanger the safety of England, the ministers assented to lord Wellington’s proposals, undertook to pay ten thousand additional Portuguese troops, and to advance money for the increased stipends to the officers; but thus pledging themselves to an annual subsidy of nearly one million, they with justice required that the Portuguese Regency, under pain of the subsidy being stopped, should keep all that part of the military establishment which remained under their own direction in a state of complete efficiency. Thus supported, lord Wellington proceeded with vigorous intelligence to meet the impending contest. His troops removed from the Guadiana, took healthy cantonments on the north-eastern frontier of Portugal, and he expected a reinforcement of five thousand infantry and a regiment of cavalry from England. Smaller detachments had already reached him, and the army when it commenced its march from the Guadiana was numerically thirty thousand strong; but those actually under arms scarcely amounted to twenty thousand; nine thousand were in hospital, and many in the ranks were still tottering from the effects of past illness. The 20th of January, the head-quarters, and the artillery parcs, were established at Viseu, in Upper Beira. The cavalry, was quartered, by single regiments, at Golegao, Punhete, Torres Novas, Celerico, and Santarem. General Hill, was left with five thousand British, and a like number of Portuguese at Abrantes, and the remainder of the infantry (one regiment, forming the garrison of Lisbon, excepted) was distributed along the valley of the Mondego.