Now as long as we have forty thousand men at Lisbon, the French must always keep rather more in a compact body to watch us, which means that they must collect fifty or sixty thousand men together instead of leaving them dispersed to hold the country down; which means in its turn that so long as I remain in their front, there must be Spaniards unsubdued and ready to do mischief to their outlying posts and scattered detachments in their rear. Very well. But what if the French assemble a very large force, and try to overwhelm me once for all? They cannot take a very large force by any one route, because they live on the country and the country will not support them; but if they bring sixty thousand against my forty thousand, I can stop them. Twenty-five miles north of Lisbon is ground that can be made so strong that even Portuguese Militia could hold it, under good leadership, especially with my army to back them. Moreover the Portuguese have an ancient law that provides for the desertion of all villages, the driving off of all cattle, and the removal of all grain--in fact the laying waste of their country--before an invader. If then the French advance against me in Portugal, I shall retire before them to my fortified lines, leaving the country a waste behind me. If they attack me, all the better. I shall beat them. If they sit down in front of me, I have no objection. I shall have all the resources of the world behind me at Lisbon, while they will only have a devastated wilderness behind them. They may wait for a time, but they will have to send their troops further and further afield to scrape together food, and the peasants will cut the throats of all stragglers. Sickness will increase among their soldiers for want of proper nourishment; their numbers will fall lower and lower and lower; and at last sheer starvation will compel them to retreat.