From these successes of the English general, it is necessary to turn to the condition of the Portuguese regency. After the departure of the Prince Regent, all the able men of the English party and the trained administrators had left Portugal for Brazil; the leaders of the radical party were either in disgrace, or had fled to France, and none were left to compose the regency save a set of intriguers, whose chief idea was to get as much money from England as possible, and convey it into their own pockets. The Portuguese people acted very differently; they were indignant at the outrageous conduct of the French soldiery, and were ready to sacrifice their lives for the national cause. This enthusiasm was reported to the English Government, which determined to take ten thousand Portuguese soldiers into English pay, and to send out a number of English regimental officers to discipline and command them. No better man than Beresford could have been selected as commander-in-chief of the Portuguese army. He proved himself in after-years, and especially at the battle of Albuera, to be but a poor general; but as an organizer his firmness, which almost amounted to severity, made him at once obeyed and feared. His chief assistants in this work were the English officers who had been sent to him, and a small body of Portuguese officers whom patriotism had forced into exile in preference to serving in the French Portuguese Legion, and at the head of these two classes were his Quartermaster-General, Major-General Benjamin D’Urban, an Englishman, and his Adjutant-General, Colonel Manoel de Brito Mousinho, a Portuguese. So hard did Beresford work during the winter of 1809, while Lord Wellington, as Sir Arthur Wellesley had been created, was in Spain, that in the spring of 1810, certain Portuguese regiments were brigaded with the English, and showed themselves worthy of the honour. They fought side by side with the English soldiers at the battle of Busaco, and the behaviour of the 8th Portuguese Infantry is one of the most disputed points in the history of that battle, every historian of the war stating that it behaved well, but all differing as to the time it came into action, and the effect of its bayonet charge. [Illustration: A FEMALE PEASANT FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF CALDAS DA RAINHA. (_From Kinsey’s “Portugal Illustrated,” 1829._)]