At this time the French army, in number about twenty-eight thousand, was concentrated, with the exception of Brennier’s division which remained near Ciudad Rodrigo, between Sabugal and the ridge of hills overlooking Penamacor. Marmont was inclined to fight, for he had heard of a convoy of provisions which lord Wellington had some days before sent by the way of Almeida to Ciudad, and intended to cut it off; but the convoy having reached Almeida was safe, and the French general’s own position was very critical. Almeida and the militia at Guarda were on his right flank, Ciudad Rodrigo was on his rear, and immediately behind him the Coa and the Agueda rivers were both swelled by heavy rains which fell from the 13th to the 19th, and the flood had broken the bridge near Caridad. There remained only the Puente de Villar on the Upper Agueda for retreat, and the roads leading to it were bad and narrow; the march from thence to Tamames was also circuitous and exposed to the attack of the allies, who could move on the chord through Ciudad Rodrigo. Marmont’s retreat must therefore have been effected through the pass of Perales upon Coria, and the English general conceiving good hopes of falling on him before he could cross the Coa, moved forward to Pedrogoa; but the rear of the army was not yet across the Tagus, and a sufficient body of troops for the attack could not be collected before the 21st. On that day, however, the Agueda having subsided, the French restored their bridge, the last of their divisions crossed it on the 24th, and Marmont thus terminated his operations without loss. After this he again spread his troops over the plains of Leon, where some of his smaller posts had indeed been harassed by Julian Sanchez, but where the Gallician army had done nothing. The Portuguese militia were immediately disbanded, and the English general made the greatest exertions to revictual Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, intending when that was effected to leave Picton with a corps upon the Agueda, and march himself against Andalusia, following his original design. The first division, which had only reached Castello Branco, returned to Castello de Vide, and as Foy’s division had meanwhile reoccupied Truxillo, Hill advanced to observe him, and the fifth Spanish army returned to Estremadura. But the difficulty of supplying the fortresses was very great. The incursion of Marmont had destroyed all the intermediate magazines, and dispersed the means of transport on the lines of communication; the Portuguese government would not remedy the inconvenience either there, or on the other frontier, and Elvas and Badajos were suffering from the same cause as Ciudad and Almeida.