In saying an inferior force, I advert to the state of the Portuguese army and to Badajos; for lord Wellington, having saved Coimbra, and seen that the French would not accept a general battle, except on very advantageous terms, had detached a brigade of cavalry, some guns, and a division of native infantry, from Condeixa, to the Alemtejo. He had, therefore, actually less than twenty-five thousand men in hand, during the subsequent operations. In the night of the 13th, also, he received intelligence that Badajos had surrendered, and, feeling all the importance of this event, detached the fourth division likewise to the Alemtejo, for he designed that Beresford should immediately retake the lost fortress: but, as the road of Espinhal was the shortest line to the Tagus, general Cole, as we have seen, moved into it by Panella, thus threatening Massena’s flank and rear at the same moment that he gained a march towards his ultimate destination. Meanwhile, Trant and Wilson, with the militia, moving up the right bank of the Mondego, parallel to the enemy’s line of retreat, forbad his foragers to pass that river, and were at hand either to interfere between him and Oporto, or to act against his flank and rear. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. II. Section 9.] [Sidenote: Ibid.] Such were the dispositions of the English general; but the military horizon was still clouded. Intelligence came from the north that Bessieres, after providing for his government, had been able to draw together, at Zamora, above seven thousand men, and menaced an invasion of Gallicia; and, although Mahi had an army of sixteen thousand men, lord Wellington anticipated no resistance. In the south, affairs were even more gloomy. The battle of Barosa, the disputes which followed, and the conduct of Imas and Mendizabel, proved that, from Spain, no useful co-operation was ever to be expected. Mortier, also, had invested Campo Mayor, and it was hardly expected to hold out until Beresford arrived. The Spaniards, to whom it had been delivered, under an engagement of honour, entered into by Romana, to keep it against the enemy, had disloyally neglected and abandoned it at the very moment when Badajos fell, and two hundred Portuguese militia, thrown in at the moment, had to defend this fortress, which required a garrison of five thousand regulars. Nor was the enemy, immediately in the British front, the last to be considered.