Besides these defences, there were twenty British ships of the line, and a hundred transports, ready to receive the army, if forced to retire. Unwilling to retreat, Massena sat down with his army here, hoping to draw Wellington to an open battle. But he preferred waiting for an attack upon his intrenchments, or to starve the enemy into a retreat. This he knew must soon be done. Wellington himself declares that Massena provisioned his sixty thousand men and twenty thousand horses, for two months, where he could not have maintained a single division of English soldiers. But his army was now reduced to starvation; and he, driven to the last extremity, saw that he must either commence his retreat at once, or his famine-stricken army would be too weak to march. Arranging his troops into a compact mass, he placed the rear guard under the command of Ney, and retired from the Torres Vedras. Wellington immediately commenced the pursuit; but, owing to the skilful arrangements of the French marshal, he found it impossible to attack him with success. Taking advantage of every favorable position, he would make a stand, and wait until the main body of the army had passed on, and then would himself fall back. Thus, for more than four months, did this retreat continue, until he arrived at the confines of Portugal, having lost more than one-third of his army. Many were the cruelties practised on this retreat. They have often been described, and form a dark spot on the English historian’s page. All war is necessarily cruel; and the desolation and barrenness that followed in the track of the French army, wasting the inhabitants by famine, were a powerful check on Wellington in his pursuit. The track of a retreating and starving army must always be covered with woe; and one might as well complain of the cruelty of a besieging force, because innocent women and children die by hunger.