Thus the army of the south was, if the garrison of Badajos be excluded, reduced to forty-eight thousand French sabres and bayonets present with the eagles, and this at the very moment when its enemies were augmented by twenty-five thousand fresh men. Soult had indeed besides this force five thousand artillery-men and other attendant troops, and six thousand “_Escopeteros_” were capable of taking the field, while thirty thousand civic guards held his fortified posts. Nevertheless he was forced to reduce all the garrisons, and even the camp before the Isla to the lowest numbers, consistent with safety, ere he could bring twenty-four thousand French into the field for the succour of Badajos, and even then as we have seen, he was upon the point of losing Seville. These things prevented him from coming against the Alemtejo in March, when his presence with an army would have delayed the commencement of the siege until a battle had been fought: but he was the less fearful for the fortress because Marmont on the 22d of February and Foy on the 28th had announced, that if Badajos should be menaced, three divisions of the army of Portugal, then in the valley of the Tagus, would enter Estremadura; and these divisions uniting with Daricau’s and Drouet’s troops would have formed an army of thirty thousand men, and consequently would have sufficed to delay the operations of the allies. But Marmont, having subsequently received the emperor’s orders to move into Beira, passed the Gredos mountains instead of the Tagus river, and thus unintentionally deceived Soult; and whether his letters were intercepted, or carelessly delayed, it was not until the 8th of April, that the duke of Dalmatia was assured of his departure for Salamanca. On the other hand Lord Wellington’s operations were so rapidly pushed forward, that Soult cannot be censured for false calculations. No general could suspect that such an outwork as the Picurina, would be taken by storm without being first battered; still less that Badajos, with its lofty walls, its brave garrison, and its celebrated governor, would in like manner be carried before the counterscarp was blown in, and the fire of the defences ruined. In fine, no man accustomed to war could have divined the surpassing resolution and surpassing fortune also, of the British general and his troops; neither is it impertinent to observe here, that as the French never use iron ordnance in a siege, their calculations were necessarily formed upon the effect of brass artillery, which is comparatively weak and slow: with brass guns the breaches would have been made three days later.