A campaign highly honourable to the British arms had ended, and the rival armies had taken up cantonments for the winter months, each covering an extensive range of country, for the better obtaining of forage and supplies. Active operations for a season were suspended, and officers whose private concerns or bad health required a temporary leave of absence, had asked and received permission to revisit Britain. The restoration of the works of Almeida, which the French had half destroyed, occupied the leisure time of the British and Portuguese artificers, while, for the ostensible purpose of arming that fortress, siege stores and a battering train were conveyed thither by water carriage--the Douro having been rendered navigable by the British engineers for an extended distance of forty miles. But the arming of Almeida was but a feint--the reduction of Ciudad Rodrigo was the real object of Lord Wellington, and with indefatigable zeal he applied himself to obtain the means. A waggon train was organised--six hundred carts, on an improved construction, were built; and while the French marshal, supposing that the weakness of Lord Wellington was a security against any act of aggression upon his part, detached Montbrun to Valencia, and Dorsenne to the Asturias and Montana, the British general was quietly preparing to strike a sudden and unexpected blow, and completed his necessary arrangements for investing Rodrigo the 6th of January. Considering the season of the year, and the nakedness of the country for many miles around the threatened fortress, the intended operation was bold to a degree. The horses had scarcely any forage, and the men were literally destitute of bread or shelter. The new year came in inclemently, rain fell in torrents, and though the investment was delayed two days, the brigade (Mackinnon’s) that marched from Aldea de Ponte, left nearly four hundred men behind, in a route of only four-and-twenty miles, numbers of whom perished on the line of march, or died subsequently from the fatigue they had endured.