But, however insecure and critical his post, it was likely to become more immediately endangered by the activity of the British, whose Government, far from being discouraged at the result of the preceding year, was employed in preparation for a hearty prosecution of the contest. At the moment the British army withdrew from Corunna, the troops left in the Peninsula, including a brigade under Brigadier-Gen. Cameron, (which had advanced to the north-east frontier of Portugal,) the 14th Light Dragoons, and the sick, convalescents, and stragglers of Sir J. Moore's army, did not consist of above 7,000 men, under the command of Sir J. Craddock, at Lisbon. The want of information was great, and the state of alarm so exaggerated, that the advance of the French on that capital was daily expected. The artillery and cavalry were embarked, and the forts of St. Julien and Bugio dismantled, to prevent their guns being turned upon the ships while withdrawing from the Tagus. The Portuguese felt the danger in which their country was placed, and the Regency called upon the people to rise _en masse_. They had little else than the populace to oppose the invader, as the same principle which had instigated the march of the Spanish corps under Romana to Denmark, had been acted upon with the only respectable part of the Portuguese army. These had been sent into France under the Marquis de Lorna, and suffered a harder fate than the Spanish troops, the greater part of whom, by aid of the English fleet, returned to fight their country's battles, while the miserable remnant of the Portuguese perished at Moscow, under the appellation of the "_Légion Portugaise_." The remaining regular troops were scarcely to be considered as organized, and those under Silveira, though actuated by the best spirit, were little better than the rest. One regiment of two battalions, called the Lusitanian legion, raised by Sir R. Wilson at Oporto, was an exception to the general inefficiency, it having made considerable progress in discipline and order. Sir Robert had proceeded with the first battalion to the frontier opposite Ciudad Rodrigo, while the other, under Baron Eben, had been engaged in the defence of the Tras os Montes, and in the entrenchments around Oporto.