Portugal, as we have stated, having been rescued from the grasp of the French by the treaty of Cintra, and Sir John Moore having been ordered to advance into Spain, notification came that a fresh force from Britain, under the orders of Sir David Baird, would land at Corunna, to co-operate with him. Thus the troops on board the little fleet in Maciera Bay were ordered at once to cross the Tagus, traverse Portugal, and join him on the frontiers--a march of more than one hundred and twenty miles, in a land where the art of road-making had died out with the Romans. At this time the British forces in the Peninsula numbered forty-eight thousand three hundred and forty-one, bayonets and sabres. On the 15th of the next month the French in Spain, commanded by the Emperor in person made a grand total of three hundred and thirty-five thousand two hundred and twenty-three men, with upwards of sixty thousand horses; yet, with hearts that knew no fear, our soldiers marched to begin that struggle so perilous and unequal, but so glorious in the end! CHAPTER IX. PORTALEGRE. "You ask what's campaigning? As out the truth must, 'Tis a round of complaining, vexation, disgust, Night marches and day, in pursuit of our foes, Up hill or down dale, without prog or dry clothes; And to add to our pleasure in every shape, The French give us doses of round shot and grape." _Military Panorama_, vol. ii. On the evening of the 11th October, the armed guerillas who hovered on the wooded mountains which look down on the rough old winding Roman highway that leads from the dilapidated citadel of Crato to Portalegre, saw the glitter of arms in the yellow sunshine, the flashing of polished barrels and bright bayonets, and the waving of uncased colours, amid the clouds of rolling dust that betoken the march of troops; and ere long, the same picturesque gentry, in their mantles, sombreros, and sheepskin zamarras, might have heard the martial rattle of the British drum, and the shrill notes of the fife, together with wilder strain of the Scottish bagpipe, echoing between the green and fertile ranges of the sierra that there forms the northern boundary of Alentejo, and the sides of which are clothed in many places by groves of olive, laurel and orange trees; but from the latter the golden fruit had long since been gathered, ere it was quite ripe, to save it alike from the marauding soldiery of friend and foe. Covered with the dust of a march of twenty miles from the rustic village of Gaviao, they were our old friends of the 25th, the Highlanders, and Warriston's detachment, that were now approaching the head-quarters of the division to which they were to be attached.