Sir Howard Douglas observing the success of the enemy in cutting off the Partidas from the coast, and the advantage they derived from the water communication; considering also that, if lord Wellington should make any progress in the coming campaign, new lines of communication with the sea would be desirable, proposed, that a powerful squadron with a battalion of marines and a battery of artillery, should be secretly prepared for a littoral warfare on the Biscay coast. This suggestion was approved of, and sir Home Popham was sent from England, in May, with an armament, well provided with scaling-ladders, arms, clothing, and ammunition for the Partidas, and all means to effect sudden disembarkations. But the ministers were never able to see the war in its true point of view, they were always desponding, or elated, and sanguine, beyond what reason warranted in either case. Popham was ordered not only to infest the coast but, if possible, to seize some point, and hold it permanently as an entrance into Biscay, by which the French positions might be turned, if, as in 1808, they were forced to adopt the line of the Ebro! Now at this period three hundred thousand French soldiers were in the Peninsula, one hundred and twenty thousand were in the northern provinces, and, without reckoning the army of the centre which could also be turned in that direction, nearly fifty thousand were expressly appropriated to the protection of this very line of communication, on which a thousand marines were to be permanently established, in expectation of the enemy being driven over the Ebro by a campaign which was not yet commenced! While Marmont was in Beira, the activity of the seventh army, and of the Partidas, in the Montaña, was revived by the supplies which sir Howard Douglas, taking the opportunity of Bonet’s absence, had transmitted to them through the Asturian ports. The ferocity of the leaders was remarkable. Mina’s conduct was said to be very revolting; and on the 16th of April the curate Merino coming from the mountains of Espinosa, to the forests between Aranda de Duero, and Hontorica Valdearados, took several hundred prisoners, and hanged sixty of them, in retaliation for three members of the local junta, who had been put to death by the French; he executed the others also in the proportion of ten for each of his own soldiers who had been shot by the enemy. The ignorance and the excited passions of the Guerilla chiefs, may be pleaded in mitigation of their proceedings, but to the disgrace of England, these infamous executions by Merino were recorded with complacency, in the newspapers, and met with no public disapprobation.