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ad previously sent dispatches to Marshal Soult, commander of the Army of the South, urging him to send assistance to Masséna. The Emperor's orders were based on outdated intelligence and called for only a small force; by the time Soult received them the situation had changed considerably. Soult now knew a successful attack against Lisbon was beyond his means with the forces proposed—there were 30,000 Allied troops and six major fortresses between his army and the Portuguese capital—but he had received orders nonetheless and felt obliged to do something. He therefore gathered an army of 20,000 men, mainly from V Corps, and launched an expedition into Extremadura with the limited aim of capturing the fortress at Badajoz and hopefully drawing some of the Allied forces away from their impregnable positions in the Lines. Along with V Corps, this venture also pulled both infantry and cavalry from Marshal Victor's I Corps who were besieging Cádiz at the time. Soult ordered more of Victor's men to fill the gaps left by his use of V Corps; this was bitterly opposed by Victor since it severely weakened his own forces, leaving him with only 15,000 men besieging a city garrisoned by around 26,000 Allied troops. Following a successful campaign in Extremadura, on 27 January 1811 Soult began his investment of Badajoz. Almost immediately the Spanish Army of Extremadura arrived in the vicinity with some 15,000 troops under the command of Gen. Mendizabal. Soult's army, too small to surround Badajoz, was unable to prevent 3,000 of Mendizabal's men from reinforcing the fortress and the remainder occupying the heights of San Cristóbal. This posed a major threat to the French, so Soult moved at once to engage. In the ensuing Battle of the Gebora the French inflicted 1,000 casualties on the Spanish field army and took 4,000 prisoners, at a cost to themselves of only 400 casualties. The rem
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