Junot now found it necessary to assume personal command. Leaving Madrid with a garrison of 7000 soldiers, he gathered his available forces, including those of Loison and Laborde, and came up with the British at Vimiero on the 21st August. Wellesley’s strength was some 18,000 troops in all, and although Sir Harry Burrard was the senior officer, he did not exercise his authority until the battle was almost concluded. In infantry Sir Arthur had the advantage, but Junot, while having but 13,000 men for the task he had undertaken, was considerably better off in cavalry. One incident in particular relieves the sordid story of the fight. In a charge made by the 71st and 92nd British regiments a piper, who was wounded in the thigh, fell to the ground. He continued to blow his pibroch, declaring that “the lads should nae want music to their wark.” The day remained with the British, and had Wellesley been allowed to pursue the French, probably Lisbon would have fallen. It is said that when Wellesley heard Burrard’s order to abstain from following the enemy, he remarked to his staff: “There is nothing left for us, gentlemen, but to hunt red-legged partridges!” On the suggestion of Junot an armistice was agreed upon. This ended in the ill-considered Convention of Cintra, signed on the 30th August 1808, whereby Portugal was relieved of 25,000 French invaders. The troops were conveyed back to France by British ships. Junot was disgraced in the eyes of the Emperor and received no further command until the Russian campaign of 1812. His wife, when reviewing this campaign, says with justice, “Everything which was not a triumph he (Napoleon) regarded as a defeat.” As no clause was inserted in the Convention to the effect that the troops should not serve again, it is not difficult to understand why a popular outcry was raised in Great Britain against the three generals. It soon became evident that Wellesley did not merit the attacks made upon Dalrymple, Burrard, and himself in the Press and elsewhere. An inquiry into the affair was instituted by command of George III., and its finding was favourable to the decision of the signatories of the Convention, but only Wellesley saw active service again. The command in Portugal was given to Sir John Moore, and meantime Sir Arthur took his seat in the House of Commons and resumed his work as Irish Secretary, little thinking that in a few months he would return to the South as Commander-in-Chief. A caricature by Woodward, published in February 1809, very ably sums up British opinion of the affair. It can be understood by the following humorous lines, in imitation of “The House that Jack Built”:--