The former Council of Regency, nominated by the Prince Regent before his departure, was re-established at Lisbon, and at once began to quarrel with the "junta" of Oporto, but both bodies perceived how dependent they were on the English Government, and the Regency sent Domingos Antonio de Sousa Coutinho to London to ask that an English ambassador with full powers should be accredited to Lisbon, and that Sir Arthur Wellesley might be appointed to reorganize their army. In compliance with these requests the Right Honourable J. C. Villiers was sent as ambassador to Lisbon, and, as Sir Arthur Wellesley could not be spared, Major-General Beresford, who had learnt the Portuguese language, when governor of Madeira, was sent to command and discipline the Portuguese troops. Meanwhile, Portugal was again exposed to the attacks of the French; when Sir John Moore advanced to Salamanca, he had left very few English troops behind, and Napoleon ordered three French armies to invade the country by different routes. Of these armies only one actually entered Portugal, that from the north under the command of Marshal Soult. Parties of the Lusitanian Legion, under Sir Robert Wilson and Baron Eben, made a spirited resistance, and even the unorganized Portuguese levies, under General Antonio de Silveira, showed courage, if not discipline; but their efforts were in vain, and Soult occupied Oporto. Fortunately for the Portuguese, Soult, like Junot, was led away by the idea of becoming King of Portugal, and did not advance on Lisbon, while Lapisse and Victor did not support him by entering the Beira and the Alemtejo, as they had been ordered to do, and this delay gave time for Sir Arthur Wellesley to reach the Tagus with a powerful English army. On the 12th of May, 1809, he drove Soult out of Oporto, and into Gallicia; and after this success he invaded Spain, and defeated Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Victor at the battle of Talavera.
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.