Twenty thousand men of all arms remained, and there were two modes of using them. 1º. In an open advance and battle. 2º. In a secret movement and surprise. To effect the last, the army might have assembled in the night upon the Azava, and filed over the single bridge of Ciudad Rodrigo, with a view of capturing the battering train, by a sally, or of bringing off the garrison. But, without dwelling on the fact that Massena’s information was so good that he knew, in two days after it occurred, the object of Romana’s visit, such a movement could scarcely have been made unobserved, even in the early part of the siege, and, certainly, not towards the end, when the enemy were on the Azava. An open battle a madman only would have ventured. The army, passing over a plain, in the face of nearly three times its own numbers, must have exposed its flanks to the enemy’s bridges on the Agueda, because the fortress was situated in the bottom of a deep bend of the river, and the French were on the convex side. What hope then for twenty thousand mixed soldiers cooped up between two rivers, when eight thousand cavalry and eighty guns should come pouring over the bridges on their flanks, and fifty thousand infantry followed to the attack? What would even a momentary success avail? Five thousand undisciplined men brought off from Ciudad Rodrigo, would have ill supplied the ten or twelve thousand good troops lost in the battle, and the temporary relief of the fortress would have been a poor compensation for the loss of Portugal. For what was the actual state of affairs in that country?--The militia deserting in crowds to the harvest, the Regency in full opposition to the general, the measures for laying waste the country not perfected, and the public mind desponding! The enemy would soon have united his whole force and advanced to retrieve his honour, and who was to have withstood him? Massena, sagacious and well understanding his business, only desired that the attempt should be made. He held back his troops, appeared careless, and in his proclamations taunted the English general, that he was afraid!--that the sails were flapping on the ships prepared to carry him away--that he was a man, who, insensible to military honour, permitted his ally’s towns to fall without risking a shot to save them, or to redeem his plighted word! But all this subtlety failed; lord Wellington was unmoved, and abided his own time. “If thou art a great general, Marius, come down and fight! If thou art a great general, Silo, make me come down and fight!”