Note 277 — SECTION XIX: CHAPTER V
Reading edition
Picton summed up the situation in a letter to a friend [see Robinson’s Life of Picton, i. 273] very clearly: ‘If we attempt to relieve the place the French will drive us out of Portugal: while if they get possession of it, they will lose time, which is more important to them than Ciudad Rodrigo. But they have got to find this out.’