CAMPAIGN IN PORTUGAL.
When Lord Wellington moved his troops from the banks of the Guadiana, he placed them in quarters along the valley of the Mondego. His head-quarters in January were at Viseu; General Hill being left with 10,000 men, half British and half Portuguese, at Abrantes, in order to watch Badajoz and protect Lisbon; while Marshal Beresford was stationed at Thomar. In the meantime the French armies had fully established themselves in Spain. Cadiz indeed defied the proud enemy, and the highest junta retired to the island of Leon, while the wild Sierra Morena carried on a guerilla warfare against the French; but there was no real army to oppose them, and the country might therefore be considered for the time being as conquered. Lord Wellington foresaw that the conquest of this country would lead to the invasion of Portugal; and he turned his whole attention to the defence of that country. And what the English general foresaw soon came to pass. The peace with Austria had enabled Napoleon to send large re-enforcements from Germany into Spain, audit was rumoured that he himself was coming. By the beginning of the month of April, Ney, Kellermann, and Loison, with about 60,000 men, were in Old Castile and Leon, threatening the Portuguese frontier in that direction: as a preliminary step they had captured Astorga, and had made preparations for the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. General Meigner was also at this time on the borders of Spanish Estramadura, menacing the frontier of Portugal on that side. Subsequently, as Napoleon was now engaged with his bride of Austria, he sent Massena to take the command of the forces in Old Castile and Leon, which now assumed the name of “The army of Portugal,” thereby declaring its destination. Massena arrived at Valladolid about the middle of May; and he not only assumed the command over the forces of Ney, Kellermann, and Loison, but also over those of Junot and Drouet, which had recently crossed the Pyrenees from German. In the whole, Massena had a force of 80,000 men under arms for the field; but the corps of Drouet, about 18,000 strong, and the forces of Régnier in Estramadura did not immediately join him in his expedition into Portugal. As it was, however, Massena had a force of about 62,000 men when he first put himself in motion against Lord Wellington. Against these Wellington could only bring about 24,000 British troops, and from 28,000 to 30,000 Portuguese regulars; a part of which he was compelled to leave south of the Tagus, in order to guard against any sudden movement of Soult’s army of Andalusia. Moreover, Lord Wellington could only confidently rely on the British forces, as the Portuguese soldiers, whether regulars or militia men, were as yet untried. On the other hand, Massena’s soldiers were skilled in the dreadful art of war, and flushed with recent success; so that the odds against Wellington were alarmingly great. The campaign commenced in earnest early in June, when Massena invested Ciudad Rodrigo, which was defended by a Spanish garrison, but which was almost within sight of the British advanced posts on the Azava. The Spaniards made a brave defence; but on the 10th of July Massena made himself master of the place by capitulation. Lord Wellington was taunted by the French, by the Spaniards, and by many of his own officers, for suffering the siege to proceed without making an attempt to relieve the place. His lordship, however, knew his business better than to take any false step by a rash movement: his object and paramount duty was to defend Portugal, and above all Lisbon. He had, in fact, pledged himself to do this; and hence, while the French were taking Ciudad Rodrigo, he calmly retained, his position on the Coa, having his light division advanced a little beyond that river. Subsequent events justified Wellington’s line of policy. After the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo, Ney went thundering on till he came in contact with the light division, which was commanded by General Crawford; and though he succeeded in causing the English general to retreat, it cost him 1000 men in killed and wounded. Massena now crossed the frontiers of Portugal; but although he had boasted he would drive Lord Wellington out of that country in three months; he passed nearly one month on the line of the Coa in total inactivity. In the meantime General Régnier quitted Estramadura, crossed the Tagus, and established himself at Coria and Plasencia, while General Hill, making a corresponding movement, took post at Atalaya, from whence he could either join Wellington, or could be again thrown in front of Régnier. At length, on the 15th of August, the French broke ground before Almeida, which was captured on the 27th of the same month, Lord Wellington had brought his army nearer, in order to strike a blow if the enemy should afford an opportunity; but Massena let three weeks pass after the reduction of Almeida before he moved forward; and then, as the rainy season had come on, Wellington moved his army to the valley of the Mondego, and fixed his headquarters at Gouvea. The French army commenced its march down this valley on the 15th of September, taking its route along the right bank of the river, in the direction of Coimbra, through Viseu. This was the very worst road Massena could have taken; and Wellington, perceiving his error, crossed the river and took up a strong position in front of Coimbra. On the 24th, his whole army, including the Portuguese, and the corps of Generals Hill and Leith, which he had called up for the purpose of assisting in the coming struggle, were collected upon the Serra de Busaco, a lofty mountain-ridge extending from the Mondego to the northward. From these heights, on the 26th, the French army was seen advancing. One of the spectators of the imposing sight says:—“Rising grounds were covered with troops, cannon, or equipages: the widely extended country seemed to contain a host moving forward, or gradually condensing into numerous masses, checked in their progress by the grand natural barrier on which we were placed, at the base of which it became necessary to pause. In imposing appearances, as to numerical strength, I have never seen anything comparable to that of the enemy’s army from Busaco: it was not alone an army encamped before us, but a multitude—cavalry, infantry, artillery, cars of the country, horses, tribes of mules with their attendants, suttlers, followers of every description, formed the moving scene upon which Lord Wellington and his army looked down.” By the evening of the 26th this army encamped in the plains below Busaco; and on the next morning, as the mist and the gray clouds rolled away, they made two desperate simultaneous attacks on the English, the one on the right and the other on the left of Wellington’s position. These attacks were vain: the enemy was repulsed, leaving 2000 killed upon the field of battle, and having from 3000 to 4000 wounded, and several hundreds taken prisoners. Both the British and the Portuguese alike fought valorously; the latter, according to Wellington’s own statement, proving themselves on this their first trial to be worthy of contending in the same ranks with the former. Thus checked in his career, on the 28th, the day after the battle, Massena moved a large body of infantry and cavalry from the left of his centre to the rear, and his cavalry was seen marching over the mountains by another road to Oporto Colonel Trant with his Portuguese division was ordered to occupy the pass of Boyalva to the north of Busaco, through which this cavalry must pass; but a Portuguese general had previously ordered this division to inarch elsewhere; and before this could be countermanded, the French descended into the plains that lie open to the sea-coast, and seized on the road leading from Oporto to Coimbra, in the rear of the British. Massena, however, had only made the march which Wellington foresaw he would make, and he now commenced a retreat towards Lisbon. Both the British and the Portuguese effected their retreat with ease and regularity. They were followed by the French, whose van caught sight of the chain of hills behind which lay the city of Lisbon on the 7th of October:
“But in the middle path a lion lay.”
Wellington by this time occupied the lines of Torres Vedras, the formation of which have conferred as much honour on him as any of the great victories which he achieved. A recent writer gives this outline sketch of these lines:—“The peninsula, or promontory, at whose south-eastern extremity Lisbon is situated, is crossed rather obliquely by two serras, or chains of mountains, which extend with various altitudes and various degrees of steepness, but with partial interruptions or openings, from the shore of the Atlantic to the right bank of the Tagus. These two serras run nearly parallel with each other, at a distance of from six to eight miles; the point of the line nearest to Lisbon being close to the Tagus, between Via Longa and Quintilla. Through the passes in these serras and the low ground bordering the Tagus four roads from the interior of the country led to the capital. The hand of nature had marked out these two lines of defence, and British science and engineering had been employed for a whole year in strengthening them, and in blocking up the openings which seemed the most accessible. Here redoubts were erected; here the whole face of a mountain was scarped and hewn into the appearance of the facet of some Titanic fortress; here the threads of mountain-rivulets—which would be something more than rivulets at the end of October and in November—were collected and brought together into one bed; and here rivers, tributaries of the great Tagus, were dammed up, or were provided with dams which could be used, and with flood-gates which could be shut, so as to inundate the country at the foot of the hills, on the approach of the invader. The line of defence was everywhere double, while in some parts there was a treble range of batteries and redoubts. The first line, which was twenty-nine English miles in length, began at Alhendra on the Tagus, crossed the valley of Aruda, and passed along the skirts of Monte Agraca, where there was a large and strong redoubt. It then ran across the valley of Zibreira, skirted the deep ravine of Ruda, to the heights of Torres Vedras, and thence followed the course of the little river Zizandre to its mouth on the Atlantic. The second or inner line, at a distance varying from six to eight, and in some parts to ten miles, extended from Quintilla on the Tagus by Bucellas, Monte Chique, and Mafra, to the mouth of the little river St. Lourenço, on the sea-coast, a distance of about twenty-four miles. This was by far the stronger line of the two, both by nature and by art; and if the first line were forced by an enemy, the retreat of the army upon the second was secure at all times. Both these lines were secured by breast-works, abattis, and stone walls, with banquettes and scarps: not an opening nor interstice through which a mountain goat could pass but was blocked up or guarded. Down the hollows in which the roads ran were pointed the black muzzles of numerous guns, projecting from batteries which could maintain a fire in front, and a crossing fire from the flanks. And, to provide for every occurrence, to make sure of a safe and easy passage to our ships of war in the Tagus, there was in the rear of the second line a shorter, closer line, to protect the embarkation of our troops. This innermost line of all was strong enough to check even a brave enemy, had there been no other lines before it: it rested at one extremity on a tremendous redoubt, and at the other on the broad ditch and lofty walls of the castle of S. Julian. About one hundred redoubts or forts, containing altogether more than six hundred pieces of artillery, were scattered along these lines.”
Lord Wellington and the allied army entered within the foremost of these lines on the 8th of October. On arriving each division took up its assigned quarters, and the defences, which were strong enough before, were made still stronger. In the whole the troops which manned them amounted to about 130,000; of which 70,000 were regulars, and half of them British. Massena arrived in the plains below Torres Vedras on the 11th: he appears to have been taken by surprise at the sight of Wellington’s lines; and he employed several days in examining their nature, and in endeavouring to discover a spot through which he might force a passage. Some demonstrations were made in order to compel the British divisions to exhibit their force; and on the 14th there was some fighting between the town of Sobral and the lines, in which the French were defeated by the English bayonet. The war was now reduced to a species of blockade. The heart of Massena was smitten with despair at the sight of the scarped rocks, and the cannon on the eminences; and the object he had in view now was to support his army till re-enforcements should arrive. In the meantime re-enforceinents had arrived in Wellington’s camp from England and Gibraltar, so that he had a force numerically equal to that of the enemy. Massena’s situation soon, however, became desperate. In order to starve his opponents Lord Wellington brought down the Portuguese militia from the north, and persuaded Carlos d’Espaua to pass the Tagus with a considerable corps of Spaniards, to co-operate in cutting off all communication with the French rear and, as it were, enclosing the blockades. Massena was reduced to such straits for provisions that he was obliged to send movable columns to scour the country; and, on these columns the independent corps of Portuguese Spaniards sought revenge for desolated homes and slaughtered kindred: they were attacked and slain with as little mercy as they had shown to others. Losses by the sword, by sickness, and by privation, amounting to about 15,000 men since the battle of Busaco, at length induced Massena, on the 15th of November, to make a retrograde movement. He withdrew his army from the low wet grounds in front of Torres Vedras, and placed it in cantonments for the winter: the second, or Itegnier’s corps, being placed in and near Santarem; the eighth in Perns; the sixth corps further back, in Thomar; while his head-quarters were at Torres Novas. Before Massena could reach these safe positions, his soldiers were molested by the British light division and cavalry, who took some prisoners. Lord Wellington did not deem it prudent to attack them in these several positions, but leaving part of his army in the lines, he moved forward with the remainder; and having placed Hill’s division on the banks of the Tagus, he fixed his head-quarters at Cartaxo. Such were the positions of the belligerent forces during the winter. By his movements Lord Wellington had saved the capital of Portugal, and reduced the enemy to a state of inactivity. The sequel of Massena’s invasion of that country belongs to the history of the next year.