Early in February, a column of six thousand French again scouring all the country beyond the Zezere, got much concealed food near Pedragoa; while other detachments arriving on the Mondego below Coimbra, even passed that river, and carried off four hundred oxen and two thousand sheep intended for the allies. These excursions gave rise to horrible excesses, which broke down the discipline of the French army, and were not always executed with impunity; the British cavalry at various times redeemed many cattle and brought in a considerable number of prisoners, amongst them an aide-de-camp of general Clausel’s. Meanwhile, Massena, organized a secret communication with Lisbon, through the Portuguese general Pamplona, who effected it by the help of the fidalgos in that capital: their agents, under the pretence of selling sugar to the inhabitants of Thomar and Torres Novas, passed by the road of Caldas and thence through the mountains of Pedragoa. Lord Wellington, on the other hand, was understood to have gained a French officer of rank, and it is certain that both generals had excellent information. In this manner hostilities were carried on, each commander impatiently waiting for reinforcements which should enable him to act offensively. How both were disappointed, and how other events hitherto unnoticed, bore upon the plans of each, must be the subject of another book. OBSERVATIONS. 1º. “_War is not a conjectural art._” Massena forgetting this, assumed that the allies would not make a stand in front of Lisbon, and that the militia would not venture to attack Coimbra, but the battle of Busaco and the capture of his hospitals evinced the soundness of the maxim. Again, he conjectured that the English would re-embark if pressed; the Lines put an end to his dream; yet once awake, he made war like a great man, proving more formidable with reduced means and in difficulties, than he had been when opportunity was rife and his numbers untouched. His stay at Santarem shews what thirty thousand additional men acting on the left bank of the Tagus could have done, had they arrived on the heights of Almada before admiral Berkeley’s error was discovered: the supply of provisions from Alemtejo and from Spain would then have been transferred from Lisbon to the French armies, and the fleet would have been driven from the Tagus; when, the misery of the inhabitants, the fears of the British cabinet, the machinations of the Patriarch, and the little chance of final success would probably have induced the British general to embark.