For three months after the battle of Coruña, the Peninsular war, as regards the action of Great Britain, was all but suspended. Two days before that battle, a formal treaty of peace and alliance between Great Britain and the Spanish junta, which had withdrawn to Seville, was signed at London. Sir John Cradock was in command of the British troops at Lisbon, and took up a defensive position there, with reinforcements from Cadiz, awaiting the approach of Soult, who had captured Oporto by storm, and of Victor, who was in the valley of the Tagus. At the request of the Portuguese, Beresford had been sent out to organise and command their army. Early in 1809 the Spaniards were defeated with great slaughter at Ucles, Ciudad Real, and Medellin; Zaragoza was taken after another siege, and still more obstinate defence; and the national cause seemed more desperate than ever. On April 2, however, Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had returned home after the convention of Cintra, was appointed to the command-in-chief of our forces in the Peninsula. Before leaving England, he left with the ministers a memorandum on the conduct of the war which, viewed by the light of later events, must be accounted a masterpiece of foresight and sagacity. When it was laid before George III., his natural shrewdness at once discerned its true value, and he desired its author to be informed of the strong impression which it had produced on his mind. Wellesley, indeed, could not estimate beforehand the vast numerical superiority of the French while the rest of Europe was at peace, or the impotent vacillations of Spanish juntas, or the "mulish obstinacy" of Spanish generals, which so often wrecked his plans and spoiled his victories. Nor could he foresee the advantages which he would derive from the resources of guerilla warfare, the mutual jealousies of the French marshals, and the sudden recall of the best French troops for service in Germany and Russia. But his prescient and practical mind firmly grasped the dominant facts of the position--that Portugal, guarded by the ocean on the west and by mountain ranges on the east, was far more accessible to the British navy than to the French army; that, under British officers, its troops might be trained into an effective force; and that, with it as a basis, Great Britain might ultimately liberate the whole Peninsula. "I have always been of opinion," Wellesley said in this memorandum, "that Portugal might be defended, whatever might be the result of the contest in Spain; and that in the meantime the measures adopted for the defence of Portugal would be highly useful to the Spaniards in their contest with the French." On this simple principle all his detailed recommendations were founded, and he expressed a deliberate belief that, if 30,000 British troops were supported by an equal number of Portuguese regulars, and a reserve of militia was provided, "the French would not be able to overrun Portugal with less than 100,000 men".