The French also had double and direct communications across the Gredos mountains. On their first line they restored a Roman road leading from Horcajada, on the Upper Tormes, by the Puerto de Pico to Monbeltran, and from thence to Talavera. To ease their second line they finished a road, begun the year before by Marmont, leading from Avila, by the convent of Guisando and Escalona to Toledo. But these communications though direct, were in winter so difficult, that general Laval crossing the mountains from Avila was forced to harness forty horses to a carriage; moreover Wellington having the interior and shorter lines, was in a more menacing position for offence, and a more easy position for defence; wherefore, though he had ordered all boats to be destroyed at Almaraz, Arzobispo, and other points where the great roads came down to the Tagus, the French, as anxious to prevent him from passing that river, as he was to prevent them, sent parties to destroy what had been overlooked. Each feared that the other would move, and yet neither wished to continue the campagin, Wellington, because his troops wanted rest, more than one-third being in the hospitals! the French because they could not feed their men and had to refix their general base of operations, broken up and deranged as it was by the Guerillas. The English general was however most at his ease. He knew that the best French officers thought it useless to continue the contest in Spain, unless the British army was first mastered, Soult’s intercepted letters showed him how that general desired to fix the war in Portugal, and there was now a most powerful force on the frontier of that kingdom. But on the other hand Badajos, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Almeida blocked the principal entrances, and though the two former were very ill provided by the Spaniards, they were in little danger because the last campaign had deprived the French of all their ordnance, arsenals, and magazines, in Andalusia, Almaraz, Madrid, Salamanca, and Valladolid; and it was nearly impossible for them to make any impression upon Portugal, until new establishments were formed. Wherefore Wellington did not fear to spread his troops in good and tranquil quarters, to receive reinforcements, restore their equipments, and recover their health and strength.