Napoleon’s estimation of the weight of moral over physical force in war was here finely exemplified. Both the French armies were conscious of recent defeats, Busaco, Sabugal, Fuentes, and the horrid field of Albuera, were fresh in their memory; the fierce blood there spilled, still reeked in their nostrils, and if Cæsar after a partial check at Dyrracchiaum held it unsafe to fight a pitched battle with recently defeated soldiers, however experienced or brave, Soult may well be excused, seeing that he knew there were divisions on the Caya, as good in all points, and more experienced, than those he had fought with on the banks of the Albuera. The stern nature of the British soldier had been often before proved by him, and he could now draw no hope from the unskilfulness of the general. Lord Wellington’s resolution to accept battle on the banks of the Caya, was nevertheless, one of as unmixed greatness, as the crisis was one of unmixed danger to the cause he supported. For the Portuguese government, following up the system which I have already described, had reduced their troops to the lowest degree of misery, and the fortresses were, at times, only not abandoned to the enemy. The British government had taken the native troops into pay, but it had not undertaken to feed them; yet such was the suffering of those brave men that Wellington, after repeatedly refusing to assist them from the English stores, unable longer to endure the sight of their misfortunes, and to prevent them from disbanding, at last fed the six brigades, or three-fourths of the whole army, the English commissariat charging the expense to the subsidy. He hoped that the government would then supply the remnant, but they starved it likewise, and during the siege of Badajos these troops were of necessity thrown for subsistence upon the magazines of Elvas, which were thus exhausted; and what with desertion, famine, and sickness, that flourishing army which had mustered more than forty thousand good soldiers in line, at the time of Massena’s invasion, could now scarcely produce fourteen thousand for a battle on which the fate of their country depended. The British troops, although large reinforcements had come out, and more were arriving, had so many sick and wounded, that scarcely twenty-eight thousand sabres and bayonets were in the field. The enemy had therefore a superiority, of one-fourth in artillery and infantry, and the strength of his cavalry was double that of the British.