Lord Wellington thinking that the ordenança on the left bank, of whom four hundred were armed with English muskets and furnished with three pieces of artillery, would be sufficient to repel plundering parties attempting to cross the Tagus, was unwilling to spare men from the Lines. He wanted numbers there and he also judged that the ordenança would, if once assisted by a regular force, leave the war to their allies. But Antonio Souza was continually urging the planting of ambuscades, and other like frivolities, upon the left bank of the Tagus; and as his opinions were spread abroad by his party, the governor of Setuval adopted the idea, and suddenly advanced with his garrison to Salvatierra on the river side. This ridiculous movement attracted the enemy’s attention, and lord Wellington fearing they would pass over a detachment, disperse the Portuguese troops, and seize Setuval before it could be succoured, peremptorily ordered the governor to return to that fortress. This retrograde movement caused the dispersion of the ordenança, and consternation reigned in the Alemtejo. The supply of grain coming from Spain was stopped, the chain of communications broken, and, the alarm spreading to Lisbon, there was no remedy but to send general Fane, with some guns and Portuguese cavalry, that could be ill spared from the Lines, to that side. Fane immediately destroyed all the boats he could find, hastened the removal of provisions, and patrolling the banks of the river as high as the mouth of the Zezere, kept a strict watch upon the enemy’s movements. Other embarrassments were however continually arising. The number of prisoners in Lisbon had accumulated so as to become a serious inconvenience; because, for some reason which does not appear, the English Admiralty would not permit them to be transported to England in ships of war, and other vessels could not be spared. About this time also admiral Berkeley, whose elaborate report the year before, stated that, although the enemy should seize the heights of Almada, he could not injure the fleet in the river, now admitted that he was in error; and the engineers were directed to construct secondary lines on that side. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. V. Section 7.] Another formidable evil, arising from the conduct of the Regency, was the state of the Portuguese army. The troops were so ill supplied that more than once they would have disbanded, had they not been relieved from the British magazines. Ten thousand soldiers of the line deserted between April and December, and the militia and ordenança abandoned their colours in far greater numbers; for, as no remonstrance could induce the Regency to put the laws in force against the delinquents, that which was at first the effect of want became a habit; so that even when regularly fed from the British stores within the Lines, the desertion was alarmingly great. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. V. Section 10.]