This determination once taken, every thing was put in motion with the greatest energy. Major Dickson, an artillery officer whose talents were very conspicuous during the whole war, had, with unexpected rapidity, prepared a battering train of thirty twenty-four-pounders, four sixteen-pounders, and twelve eight and ten-inch howitzers made to serve as mortars by taking off the wheels and placing them on trucks. Six iron Portuguese ship-guns were forwarded from Salvatierra, making altogether fifty-two pieces, a considerable convoy of engineer’s stores had already arrived from Alcacer do Sal, and a company of British artillery marched from Lisbon to be mixed with the Portuguese, making a total of six hundred gunners. The regular engineer-officers present, were only twenty-one in number; but eleven volunteers from the line were joined as assistant-engineers, and a draft of three hundred intelligent men from the line, including twenty-five artificers of the staff corps, strengthened the force immediately under their command. Hamilton’s Portuguese division was already before the town, and on the 24th of May, at the close of evening, general Houston’s division, increased to five thousand men, by the addition of the seventeenth Portuguese regiment, and the Tavira and Lagos militia, invested San Christoval. The flying bridge was then laid down on the Guadiana, and on the 27th Picton’s division, arriving from Campo Mayor, crossed the river, by the ford above the town, and joined Hamilton, their united force being about ten thousand men. General Hill commanded the covering army which, including the Spaniards, was spread from Merida to Albuera. The cavalry was pushed forward in observation of Soult, and a few days after, intelligence having arrived that Drouet’s division was on the point of effecting a junction with that marshal, two regiments of cavalry and two brigades of infantry, which had been quartered at Coria, as posts of communication with Spencer, were called up to reinforce the covering army. While the allies were engaged at Albuera, Phillipon, the governor of Badajos, had levelled their trenches, repaired his own damages, and obtained a small supply of wine and vegetables from the people of Estremadura, who were still awed by the presence of Soult’s army; and within the place all was quiet, for the citizens did not now exceed five thousand souls. He had also mounted more guns, and when the place was invested, parties of the townsmen mixed with soldiers, were observed working to improve the defences; wherefore, as any retrenchments made in the castle, behind the intended points of attack, would have frustrated the besiegers’ object by prolonging the siege, lord Wellington had a large telescope placed in the tower of La Lyppe, near Elvas, by which the interior of the castle could be plainly looked into, and all preparations discovered.