[197] Wellesley to Burrard, August 8 (_Well. Disp._, iv. 53).
Wellesley had at first intended to take on with him the whole of Bernardino Freire’s army. He had visited the Portuguese commander at Montemor Velho on the seventh, and had issued to his ally a supply of 5,000 muskets. Freire was anxious to persuade him to give up the coast route, and to throw himself into the interior on the side of Santarem. But the cogent reasons which compelled him to prefer the road which allowed him to keep in touch with the fleet, made him refuse to listen to this plan, and he invited the Portuguese general to transfer himself on to the same line. Freire so far submitted as to move to Leiria, where he met the British army on August 10. But here the two commanders came to hard words and parted. Freire, a self-willed and shifty man, was determined not to act in unison with Wellesley. Whether he wished to preserve his independent command, or whether he feared (as Napier hints) to oppose his raw levies to the French, even when supported by 13,000 British bayonets[198], he now showed himself utterly impracticable. He began by laying hands on all the stores of food in Leiria, though they had been promised to Wellesley. Then he made the absurd and impudent statement that he could only co-operate with his allies if Wellesley would undertake to provide rations for his 6,000 men. This proposal was all the more astounding because he had just been trying to persuade his colleague to move into the inland, by the statement that resources of every kind abounded in Estremadura, and that the whole British army could easily live upon the country-side! Wellesley’s men had now been subsisting for ten days on biscuit landed by the fleet, and it was ludicrous that he should be asked to take upon his shoulders the whole burden of feeding the Portuguese in their own country. Accordingly he utterly rejected the proposal, but he insisted that Freire should lend him some cavalry and light troops, and these he promised to maintain. The bulk of the Portuguese, therefore, remained behind at Leiria, their general being left free to take up, if he should choose, his favourite plan of marching on Santarem. But 260 horsemen--the skeletons of three old cavalry regiments--a battalion of Cazadores, and three weak line-regiments were placed at Wellesley’s disposition: they amounted to about 2,300 men[199], according to the Portuguese official figures, but the British commander repeatedly states that he saw no more than 260 horse and 1,600 infantry[200]; so it is probable that the regiments were somewhat under the estimate given by Freire. They were commanded by Colonel Trant, a British officer in the Portuguese service[201].