This scattering of the French relieved lord Wellington from a serious embarrassment. The constant difficulty of land transport, had prevented him from bringing up the clothing of the army, and he was now obliged to send the regiments to those points on the Mondego, the Douro, and the Tagus, where the clothing had arrived by boats; hence the march to the Alemtejo was necessarily long and unmilitary, and would have been too dangerous to attempt, if Marmont had kept his troops together on the Tormes, with advanced posts pushed towards Ciudad Rodrigo. The weather was now however extremely favourable to the allies, and the new Portuguese commissariat supplied the troops on this march well, and without any of those exactions and oppressions which had always before marked the movements of the native troops; nevertheless the scarcity was so great, that rations of cassava root were served to the Portuguese instead of bread. The talents of lord Wellington always rose with his difficulties, but the want of specie crippled every operation. A movement into Spain, such as that now intended against Andalusia, could not be effected without magazines when there was no harvest on the ground, except by paying ready money; because it was certain that the Spaniards, however favourably disposed, would never diminish their own secret resources for mere promises of payment. The English general and Mr. Stuart, therefore, endeavoured to get British bank notes accepted as cash, by the great merchants of Lisbon and Oporto; and lord Wellington reflecting that, from the enormous sums spent in Portugal, many persons must needs have secret hoards which they would be glad to invest if they could do it safely, asked for English exchequer-bills to negotiate in the same manner; intending to pay the interest punctually and faithfully however inconvenient it might prove at the moment. This plan could not be adopted with Portuguese paper, because the finances were faithlessly managed by the regency; but some futile arguments against the proposition were advanced by lord Liverpool, and money became so scarce, that we shall find, even in the midst of victory, the war was more than once like to stop altogether from absolute inability to proceed. [Sidenote: 1812. March.] On the 5th of March, the army being well on the way to the Alemtejo, lord Wellington who had maintained his head-quarters on the Coa to the last moment, that the enemy might not be awakened to his real designs, gave up Ciudad Rodrigo to Castaños. He also in person, and on the spot, explained to Vives, the governor, the plan and intention of the new works; he supplied him with money to complete them; furnished him with six weeks provision remaining from the field stores of the British troops, and gave him the reserved stores at St. Joa de Pesqueira on the Douro, from whence Carlos d’España undertook to transport them to the fortress.