When the place fell, Mortier marched against Campo Mayor, and Latour Maubourg seizing Albuquerque and Valencia d’Alcantara, made six hundred prisoners; but Soult, alarmed by the effects of the battle of Barosa, returned to Andalusia, having, in fifty days, mastered four fortresses and invested a fifth; having killed or dispersed ten thousand men, and having taken twenty thousand with a force which, at no time, exceeded the number of his prisoners: yet great and daring and successful as his operations had been, the principal object of his expedition was frustrated, for Massena was in retreat. Lord Wellington’s combinations had palsied the hand of the conqueror. While the siege of Badajos was proceeding, no change took place in the main positions of either army at Santarem. The English general, certain that the French, who were greatly reduced by sickness, must soon quit their ground if he could relieve Badajos, was only waiting for his reinforcements to send Beresford with fourteen thousand men against Soult; when the battle of the Gebora ruined this plan and changed his situation. The arrival of the reinforcements could not then enable him to detach a sufficient number of men to relieve Badajos, and it was no longer a question of starving Massena out, but of beating him, before Soult could take Badajos and the two armies be joined. In this difficulty, abandoning the design of raising the siege by a detachment, lord Wellington prepared to attack Massena’s army in front on the side of Tremes, while Beresford, crossing at Abrantes, fell upon the rear; he hoped thus to force back the French right and centre, and to cut off the left and to drive it into the Tagus. However, nothing could be attempted until the troops from England arrived, and day after day passed in vain expectation of their coming. Being embarked in January, they would have reached Lisbon before the end of that month, had sir Joseph Yorke, the admiral, charged to conduct the fleet, taken advantage of a favourable wind, which blew when the troops were first put on board; but he neglected this opportunity, contrary gales followed, and a voyage of ten days was thus prolonged for six weeks. [Sidenote: See Vol. II]