While Beresford did not hesitate to remove or suspend officers he also moved quickly to praise those who had performed valiantly, even in defeat. Brigadier António Teixeira Rebelo, the Inspector of Artillery, was suspended on 8 April in order to establish better discipline. A few days later Ordens do Dia were published commending Brigadier António Marcelino da Vitória for his part in the defence of Porto and a pension directed for the only daughter of Captain António Pereira Vahia who had died for his country at Chaves.100
The struggle to equip the army was compounded by the difficulties faced in transporting supplies, whether of provisions or equipment. Captain Alexander Dickson, who was to play a significant role in the utilisation and direction of artillery in the war, arrived in Portugal on 2 April 1809, joining the Portuguese service as a lieutenant colonel. It became immediately apparent that the Portuguese army needed to tackle the problem of transporting guns and ammunition. His diary contains many entries reflecting these requirements from the moment of his arrival. Musket ammunition could only be carried in quantity on the backs of mules or in ox wains, both of which were hard to procure. Parties were sent out to secure these but there were still shortages and the decision was taken to transport as much as possible by water. The guns required horses, or in some cases mules, to draw them. Once again there was a shortage. Captain Cleves of the King’s German Legion artillery was sent to Tangiers to acquire horses, but the mission was not a success as the animals there were found not to be suitable. A better source for horses was Ireland and on 7 April 300 ‘excellent horses’ were landed and distributed to the brigades of guns, having been shod and fitted for harness on arrival. Provisions had to be brought to the army then and later in the war from Lisbon, a continual logistics challenge. Likewise, the army was frequently dependent on forage being brought to the front.101 This problem was by no means unique to the Portuguese army, with Cradock advising Beresford in mid April that the forward movement of his force had been held back by a lack of supplies, forage and straw.102
Within days of Beresford landing at Lisbon to take up his post as Commander in Chief of the Portuguese army, the British government had determined to send a further British army to Portugal. Towards the end of March, Wellesley was told privately that he was to command this army and it was announced officially on 2 April.103 A further 20,000 troops were to be sent to augment the force already there under Cradock, making a total of about 30,000 British soldiers. Wellesley had left the army in Portugal in late August 1808, citing an obligation to take up again his position as Chief Secretary for Ireland, his substitute having passed away while Wellesley was on active service. While factually this was the situation, there is little doubt that he wished to remove himself from an environment where he had been superseded in command and where he was concerned at the strategy being followed by Dalrymple.
However, absence from the Peninsula did not mean that Wellesley’s views were not sought and given on what should be undertaken there in the period between September 1808 and the spring of the following year. Prior to Vimeiro he had advocated that the British raise, organise and pay an army in Portugal to be made up of 30,000 Portuguese and 20,000 British troops, including 4,000–5,000 cavalry.104 A month later, in the wake of the Convention of Cintra, Wellesley, in the knowledge that the government intended to send a force of at least 10,000 to help the Spanish under Castaños, was suggesting a British force of 5,000 be kept in Lisbon and Elvas, while the remainder of the army then in Portugal (about 10,000) would be reinforced with a further 10,000 men from England. He was not sanguine about Spanish success and he envisaged that it might well be necessary for the British to evacuate the Peninsula ‘and that retreat must be the sea’. While the use of the Asturias was seen as a possibility which would secure any line of retreat, clearly Lisbon offered this option too.105
In a memorandum of 7 March 1809, Wellesley returned to the theme of British military involvement in Portugal, arguing now for a British force of 30,000 rather than the 20,000 advocated previously. At the same time he suggested the development of the Portuguese militia.106 Strategically, Wellesley saw the army in Portugal as linking with the Spanish armies in Galicia and Andalucía to create a barrier to French domination of the Peninsula and to provide a springboard for future advance. The decision to send Wellesley back to Portugal was taken at cabinet on 26 March and on the same day a decision was made to offer Cradock the command at Gibraltar.107 As soon as the formal announcement of his appointment to head the expedition to Portugal was made, Wellesley resigned as Chief Secretary for Ireland on 4 April and having embarked for Portugal on 16 April arrived in Lisbon on 22 April. Part of his army had arrived before him but regiments designated for his army at this time were continuing to disembark at Lisbon over the next few weeks.
Wellesley did not let the grass grow under his feet on arrival in Portugal. He assumed command of the British forces from Cradock (who soon sailed for Gibraltar), and made two significant staff appointments; placing Charles Stewart as Adjutant General and Colonel George Murray as Quartermaster General. He requested Beresford to come to Lisbon for what was in effect a council of war, in order to determine how best to move against Soult while simultaneously safeguarding Lisbon should Victor move against it with the 1st Corps then on the Spanish border.108
On 27 April they met in Lisbon (with Cradock still in attendance) and decided the strategy which was subsequently followed almost without deviation, namely to strike at Soult before he and Victor could effect any merger of their respective forces. This was a strategy which Beresford had suggested to Cradock on 28 March but which Cradock had rejected on the basis that it would put Lisbon at risk.109 Beresford was requested to move the Portuguese army from Tomar to Coimbra and simultaneously Wellesley ordered the English force to march there from Leiria where it was in the course of assembling.110 A containing force was left at Lisbon and an outer screen under Major General John Randoll MacKenzie pushed towards Abrantes to watch for any sign of Victor moving forward from the Spanish frontier, and if necessary to defend the line of the Zêzere. On 27 April, Wellesley was presented to the regency at the Palace of Inquisition in the Rossio and two days later, on 29 April, he was appointed Marshal-General of Portugal, assuming overall command of both armies. He made it clear to Beresford that he wished the latter to take the lead in all matters dealing with the Portuguese government. Their relationship over the remainder of the war was one of mutual support and was evidenced by a lack of friction.111
On 2 May, Wellesley and Beresford were at Coimbra and a review of the two armies was held there a few days later. Beresford felt he had made progress with the Portuguese regiments and Warre, while wishing they had had more time, felt they were coming along well under the instruction of the British officers.112 Wellesley and other British officers were not as impressed, the British commander observing to Beresford that his troops made a bad ‘ligne’ this morning at Review, the battalions very weak, none of them with more than 300 men, the body of them, particularly the 10th, very bad ‘and the officers worse than anything I have seen’.113 Beresford noted with regret that some battalions had paraded so weakly, observing that the English officers should have ‘brought them into some method’. He felt the march from Tomar might have been partly responsible but still felt they were a stout body of men capable of being made into soldiers. He used the occasion to plead for Wellesley to lend him more British officers as ‘in their own I have not the slightest dependence’.114
In a slightly more nuanced vein, Major the Hon. Charles Edward Cocks, later to become one of Wellesley’s favourite and most effective intelligence officers, observed: ‘The bridge over the Vouga in our front is occupied by the Portuguese. Their troops are superior to what I expected, at least in appearance, but I fear their officers are bad.’115 Nonetheless, Wellesley must have been sufficiently confident to brigade two Portuguese regiments (10th and 16th together with a detachment of 1st Portuguese Grenadiers) with English regiments, and the 16th was to show considerable promise at a brisk encounter with the French at Grijó during the advance on Porto.116 Wellesley was sufficiently impressed to tell Villiers, ‘they tell me that the Portuguese riflemen, the students I believe behaved remarkably well’ and referring separately to the 16th Portuguese regiment under Colonel Doyle ‘this last regiment behaved remarkably well’.117
Leaving a mixed Anglo-Portuguese force under Major General J.R. Mackenzie to cover Lisbon against any sudden move from Spain by Marshal Victor, Wellesley determined on a three-pronged attack on Marshal Soult’s