CHAPTER I.
Having described the unhappy condition of Portugal and given a general view of the transactions in Spain, I shall now resume the narrative of Soult’s operations, thus following the main stream of action, for the other marshals were appointed to tranquillize the provinces already overrun by the emperor, or to war down the remnants of the Spanish armies; but the duke of Dalmatia’s task was to push onward in the course of conquest. Nor is it difficult to trace him through the remainder of a campaign in which traversing all the northern provinces, fighting in succession the armies of three different nations, and enduring every vicissitude of war, he left broad marks of his career and certain proofs that he was an able commander, and of a haughty resolution in adversity.
It has been observed, in a former part of this work, that the inhabitants of Coruña honourably maintained their town until the safety of the fleet which carried sir John Moore’s army from the Spanish shores was secure; but they were less faithful to their own cause. Coruña, although weak against a regular siege, might have defied irregular operations, and several weeks must have elapsed before sufficient battering train could have been brought up to that corner of the Peninsula. Yet, a short negotiation sufficed to put the French in possession of the place on the 19th of January, and the means of attacking Ferrol were immediately organized from the resources of Coruña.
The harbour of Ferrol contained eight sail of the line, and some smaller ships of war. The fortifications were regular, there was an abundance of artillery and ammunition and a garrison of seven or eight thousand men, composed of soldiers, sailors, citizens, and armed countrymen, but their chiefs were treacherous. After a commotion in which the admiral Obregon was arrested, his successor Melgarejo surrendered the 26th upon somewhat better terms than those granted to Coruña; and thus in ten days two regular fortresses were reduced, that with more resolution might have occupied thirty thousand men for several months.
S.
MSS.
While yet before Ferrol the duke of Dalmatia received the following despatch, prescribing the immediate invasion of Portugal:—
“Before his departure from this place, (Valladolid,) the emperor foreseeing the embarkation of the English army, drew up instructions for the ultimate operations of the duke of Elchingen and yourself. He orders that when the English army shall be embarked you will march upon Oporto with your four divisions, that is to say, the division of Merle, Mermet, Delaborde, and Heudelet, the dragoons of Lorge, and La Houssaye, and Franceschi’s light cavalry, with the exception of two regiments that his majesty desires you to turn over to the duke of Elchingen, in order to make up his cavalry to four regiments.”
“Your ‘corps d’armée,’ composed of seventeen regiments of infantry and ten regiments of cavalry, is destined for the expedition of Portugal, in combination with a movement the duke of Belluno is going to effect. General Loison, some engineers, staff and commissiarat officers, and thirteen Portuguese, all of whom belonged to the army formerly in Portugal, under the duke of Abrantes, have received instructions to join you immediately, and you can transmit your orders for them to Lugo. This is the 21st of January, and it is supposed you cannot be at Oporto before the 5th of February, or at Lisbon before the 16th. Thus, at that time, namely, when you shall be near Lisbon, the ‘corps d’armée’ of the duke of Belluno, composed of his own three divisions, of the division Leval, and of ten or twelve regiments of cavalry, forming a body of thirty thousand men, will be at Merida to make a strong diversion in favour of your movement, and in such a mode as that he can push the head of a column upon Lisbon, if you find any great obstacles to your entrance, which it is, however, presumed will not be the case.”
“General Lapisse’s division of infantry, which is at this moment in Salamanca, and general Maupetit’s brigade of cavalry, will, when you shall be at Oporto, receive the duke of Istria’s orders to march upon Ciudad Rodrigo and Abrantes, where this division will again be under the command of the duke of Belluno, who will send it instructions to join him at Merida, and I let you know this that you may be aware of the march of Lapisse, on your left flank, as far as Abrantes. Such are the last orders I am charged to give you in the name of the emperor; you will have to report to the king and to receive his orders for your ulterior operations. The emperor has unlimited confidence in your talents for the fine expedition that he has charged you with.”
ALEXANDER,
Prince of Neufchatel, &c.
It was further intended, by Napoleon, that when Lisbon fell, marshal Victor should invade Andalusia, upon the same line as Dupont had moved the year before, and like him, also, he was to have been assisted by a division of the second corps, which was to cross the Guadiana and march on Seville. Meanwhile, the duke of Elchingen, whose corps, reinforced by two regiments of cavalry and the arrival of stragglers, amounted to near twenty thousand men, was to maintain Gallicia, confine the Asturians within their own frontier line, and keep open the communication with the second corps.
Thus, nominally, eighty thousand, and in reality sixty thousand men, were disposed for the conquest of Lisbon, and in such a manner that forty thousand would, after that had been accomplished, have poured down upon Seville and Cadiz, and at a time when neither Portugal nor Andalusia were capable of making any resistance. It remains to shew from what causes this mighty preparation failed.
Muster-rolls of the French army, MSS.
The gross numbers of the second corps amounted to forty-seven thousand, but general Bonnet’s division remained always at St. Ander, in observation of the eastern Asturian frontier; eight thousand were detached for the service of the general communications, and the remainder had, since the 9th of November, been fighting and marching incessantly among barren and snowy mountains; hence, stragglers were numerous, and twelve thousand men were in hospital. The force, actually under arms, did not exceed twenty-five thousand men, worn S.
Journal of Operations of the second corps, MSS. down with fatigue, barefooted, and without ammunition. They had outstripped their commissariat, the military chest was not come up, the draft animals were reduced in number, and extenuated by fatigue, the gun-carriages were shaken by continual usage, and the artillery parc was still in the rear; and as the sixth corps had not yet passed Lugo, two divisions of the second were required to hold Coruña and Ferrol. Literally to obey the emperor’s orders was consequently impossible, and Soult fixing his head-quarters at St. Jago di Compostella, proceeded to re-organize his army.
Ammunition was fabricated from the loose powder found in Coruña; shoes were obtained partly by requisition, partly from the Spanish magazines, filled as they were with stores supplied by England. The artillery was soon refitted, and, the greatest part of the stragglers being rallied, in six days, the marshal thought himself in a condition to obey his orders, and, although his troops were still suffering from fatigue and privation, he marched, on the 1st of February, with nineteen thousand infantry, four thousand cavalry, and fifty-eight pieces of artillery. But, before I narrate his operations, it is necessary to give some account of the state of Gallicia at this period, and to trace the movements of the marquis de Romana.
When the Spanish army, on the 2d of January, crossed the line of sir John Moore’s march, it was already in a state of disorganization. Romana, with the cavalry, plunged at once into the deep valleys of the Syl and the Minho; but the artillery and a part of his infantry were overtaken and cut up by Franceschi’s cavalry. The remainder wandered in bands from one place to another, or dispersed to seek food and shelter among the villages in the [Appendix, No. 6]. mountains. General Mendizabel, with a small body, halted in the Val des Orres, and, placing guards at the Puente de Bibey, a point of singular strength for defence, proposed to cover the approaches to Orense on that side; but Romana himself, after wandering for a time, collected two or three thousand men, and took post, on the 15th, at Toabado, a village about twenty miles from Lugo.
Marshal Ney, while following the route of the 2d corps to Lugo with the main body of his troops, detached some cavalry from Villa Franca to scour the valleys on his left, and ordered a division of infantry to march by the road of Orense and St. Jago to Coruña. General Marchand, who commanded it, overthrew and dispersed Mendizabel’s troops on the 17th, and, having halted some days at Orense, to patrole the neighbourhood for information and to establish an hospital, continued his march to St. Jago.
The defeat of Mendizabel and the subsequent movements of Marchand’s division completed the dispersion of Romana’s army; the greatest part throwing away their arms, returned to their homes, and he himself, with his cavalry, and the few infantry that would follow him, crossed the Minho, passed the mountains, and, descending into the valley of the Tamega, took refuge, on the 21st, at Oimbra, a place on the frontier of Portugal, and close to Monterey, where there was a small magazine, collected for the use of sir John Moore’s army.
In this obscure situation, unheeded by the French, he entered into communication with the Portuguese general, Sylveira, and, with sir John Cradock, demanding money and arms from the latter, and endeavouring to re-assemble a respectable body of troops. But Blake and other officers deserted him, and these events and the general want of patriotic spirit drew from Romana the following observation:—“I know not wherein the patriotism, so loudly vaunted, consists; any reverse, any mishap prostrates the minds of these people, and, thinking only of saving their own persons, they sacrifice their country and compromise their commander.”
The people of Gallicia, poor, scattered, living hardly, and, like all mountaineers, very tenacious of the little property they possess, disregarded political events which did not immediately and visibly affect their interests, and were, with the exception of those of the sea-port towns, but slightly moved by the aggression of the French, as long as that aggression did not extend to their valleys; hence, at first, they treated the English and French armies alike.
Sir David Baird’s division, in its advance, paid for the necessary supplies, and it was regarded with jealousy and defrauded. Soult’s and Moore’s armies, passing like a whirlwind, were beheld with terror, and the people fled from both. The British and German troops that marched to Vigo were commanded without judgement, and licentious, and their stragglers were often murdered; their numbers were small, and the people showed their natural hatred of strangers without disguise. On several occasions the parties, sent to collect cars for the conveyance of the sick, had to sustain a skirmish before the object could be obtained, and five officers, misled by a treacherous guide, were scarcely saved from death by the interference of an old man, whose exertions, however, were not successful until one of the officers had been severely wounded in the head. On the other hand, general Marchand discovered so little symptoms of hostility, during his march to Orense, that he left his hospital at that town without a guard, and under the joint care of Spanish and French surgeons, and the duties of humanity were faithfully discharged by the former without hindrance from the people.
But this quiescence did not last long: the French generals were obliged to subsist their troops by requisitions extremely onerous to a people whose property chiefly consisted of cattle. The many abuses and excesses which always attend this mode of supplying an army soon created a spirit of hatred that Romana laboured incessantly to increase, and he was successful; for, although a bad general, he possessed intelligence and dexterity suited to the task of exciting a population. Moreover, the monks Romana’s Manifesto. and friars laboured to the same purpose; and, while Romana denounced death to those who refused to take arms, the clergy menaced eternal perdition; and all this was necessary, for the authority of the supreme junta was only acknowledged as a matter of necessity—not of liking.
Gallicia, although apparently calm, was, therefore, ripe for a general insurrection, at the moment when the duke of Dalmatia commenced his march from St. Jago di Compostella.
From that town several roads lead to the Minho, the principal one running by the coast line and crossing the Ulla, the Umia, the Vedra, and the Octaven, passes by Pontevedra and Redondela to Tuy, a dilapidated fortress, situated on the Spanish side of the Minho. The second, crossing the same rivers nearer to their sources, passes by the Monte de Tenteyros, and, entering the valley of the Avia, follows the course of that river to Ribidavia, a considerable town, situated at the confluence of the Avia with the Minho, and having a stone bridge over the former, and a barque ferry on the latter river. The third, turning the sources of the Avia, connects St. Jago with Orense, and from Orense another road passes along the right bank of the Minho, and connects the towns of Ribidavia, Salvatierra, and Tuy, ending at Guardia, a small fortress at the mouth of the Minho.
As the shortest route to Oporto, and the only one convenient for the artillery, was that leading by Redondela and Tuy, and from thence by the coast, the duke of Dalmatia formed the plan of passing the Minho between Salvatierra and Guardia.
S.
Journal of Operations, MSS.
On the 1st of February Franceschi, followed by the other divisions in succession, took the Pontevedra road. At Redondela he encountered and defeated a small body of insurgents, and captured four pieces of cannon; after which Vigo surrendered to one of his detachments, while he himself marched upon Tuy, and took possession of that town and Guardia. During these operations La Houssaye’s dragoons, quitting Mellid, had crossed the Monte de Tenteyro, passed through Ribidavia, and taken possession of Salvatierra, on the Minho; and general Soult, the marshal’s brother, who had assembled three thousand stragglers and convalescents, between Astorga and Carrion, received orders to enter Portugal by Puebla de Senabria, and thus join the main body.
The rainy season was now in full torrent, and every stream and river was overflowing its banks. The roads were deep, and the difficulty of procuring provisions was great. These things, and the delivering over to marshal Ney the administration of Ferrol and Coruña, where the Spanish government and Spanish garrisons were not only retained but paid by the French, delayed the rear of the army so long that it was not until the 15th or 16th that the whole of the divisions were assembled on the Minho, between Salvatierra, Guardia, and Redondela.
The Minho, from Melgaço to the mouth, forms the frontier of Portugal, the banks on both sides being guarded by a number of fortresses, originally of considerable strength, but at this time all in a dilapidated condition. The Spanish fort of Guardia fronted the Portuguese fort of Caminha; Tuy was opposed by Valença; and this last was garrisoned, and the works in somewhat a better condition than the rest; Lapella, Moncao, and Melgaço, completed the Portuguese line. But the best defence at this moment was the Minho itself, which, at all times a considerable river, was now a broad and raging flood, and the Portuguese ordenanzas and militia were in arms on the other side, and had removed all the boats.
Soult, after examining the banks with care, decided upon passing at Campo Saucos, a little village where the ground was flatter, more favourable, and so close to Caminha, that the army, once across, could easily seize that place, and, the same day reach Viana, on the Lima, from whence to Oporto was only three marches. To attract the attention of the Portuguese; La Houssaye, who was at Salvatierra, spread his dragoons along the Minho, and attempted to push small parties across that river, above Melgaço, but the bulk of the army was concentrated in the neighbourhood of Campo Saucos, and a detachment seized the small sea-port of Bayona, in the rear.
A division of infantry, and three hundred French marines released at Coruña, and attached to the second corps, were then employed to transport some large fishing boats and some heavy guns from the harbour and fort of Guardia overland to Campo Saucos. This was effected by the help of rollers over more than two miles of rugged and hilly ground. It was a work of infinite labour, and, from the 11th to the 15th, the troops toiled unceasingly; the craft was, however, at last, launched in a small lake at the confluence of the Tamuga river with the Minho.
The heavy guns being mounted in battery on the night of the 15th, three hundred soldiers were embarked, and the boats, manned by the marines, dropped silently down the Tamuga into the Minho, and endeavoured to reach the Portuguese side of the latter river during the darkness; but, whether from the violence of the flood, or want of skill in the men, the landing was not effected at day-break, and the ordenanza fell with great fury upon the first who got on shore: and now, the foremost being all slain, the others pulled back, and regained their own side with great difficulty. This action was infinitely creditable to the Portuguese, and it had a surprising influence on the issue of the campaign.
It was a gallant action, because it might reasonably have been expected that a tumultuous assemblage of half-armed peasants, collected on the instant, would have been dismayed at the sight of many boats filled with soldiers some pulling across, others landing under the protection of a heavy battery that thundered from the midst of a multitude of troops, clustering on the heights, and thronging to the edge of the opposite bank in eager expectation.
It was an event of leading importance, inasmuch as it baffled an attempt that, being successful, would have ensured the fall of Oporto by the 21st of February, which was precisely the period when general Mackenzie’s division being at Cadiz, sir John Cradock’s troops were reduced to almost nothing; when the English ministers only waited for an excuse to abandon Portugal; when the people of that country were in the very extremity of disorder; when the Portuguese army was a nullity; and when the regency was evidently preparing to receive the French with submission. It was the period, also, when Soult was expected to be at Lisbon, following the Emperor’s orders, and, consequently, Lapisse and Victor could not have avoided to fulfil their part of the plan for the subjugation of Portugal.
See [Plan 4].
The duke of Dalmatia’s situation was now, although not one of imminent danger, extremely embarrassing, and more than ordinary quickness and vigour were required to conduct the operations with success. Posted in a narrow, contracted position, he was hemmed in on the left by the Spanish insurgents, who had assembled immediately after La Houssaye passed Orense, and who, being possessed of a very rugged and difficult country, were, moreover, supported by the army of Romana, which was said to be at Orense and Ribidavia.
In the French general’s front was the Minho, broad, raging, and at the moment impassable, while heavy rains forbad the hope that its waters would decrease. To collect sufficient means for forcing a passage would have required sixteen days, and, long before that period, the subsistence for the army would have entirely failed, and the Portuguese, being alarmed, would have greatly augmented their forces on the opposite bank. There remained then only to retrace his steps to St. Jago, or break through the Spanish insurgents, and, ascending the Minho, to open a way into Portugal by some other route.
The attempt to pass the river had been baffled on the 15th of February; on the 16th the army was in full march towards Ribidavia, upon a new line of operations, and this promptitude of decision was supported by an equally prompt execution. La Houssaye, with his dragoons, quitted Salvatierra, and, keeping the edge of the Minho, was galled by the fire of the Portuguese from the opposite bank; but, before evening, he twice broke the insurgent bands, and, in revenge for some previous excesses of the peasantry, burnt the villages of Morentan and Cobreira. Meanwhile the main body of the army, passing the Tea river, at Salvatierra and Puente d’Arcos, marched, by successive divisions, along the main road from Tuy to Ribidavia.
Between Franquera and Canizar the route was cut by the streams of the Morenta and Noguera rivers; and, behind those torrents, eight hundred Gallicians, having barricadoed the bridges and repulsed the advanced parties of cavalry, stood upon their defence. The 17th, at daybreak, the leading brigade of Heudelet’s division forced the passage, and pursued the Spaniards briskly; but, when within a short distance of Ribidavia, the latter rallied upon eight or ten thousand insurgents, arrayed in order of battle, on a strong hill, covering the approaches to that town.
At this sight the advanced guard halted until the remainder of the division and a brigade of cavalry were come up, and then, under the personal direction of Soult, the French assailed, and drove the Gallicians, fighting, through the town and across the Avia. The loss of the vanquished was very considerable, and the bodies of twenty priests were found amongst the slain; but, either from fear or patriotism, every inhabitant had quitted Ribidavia.
The 18th one brigade of infantry scoured the valley of the Avia, and dispersed three or four thousand of the insurgents, who were disposed to make a second stand on that side. A second brigade, pushing on to Barbantes, seized a ferry-boat on the Minho, close to that place; they were joined, the same evening, by the infantry who had scoured the valley of the Avia the day before, and by Franceschi’s cavalry, and, on the 19th, they entered Orense in time to prevent the bridge over the Minho from being cut. La Houssaye’s dragoons then took post at Maside, and the same day the remainder of the horse and Laborde’s infantry were united at Ribidavia; but the artillery were still between Tuy and Salvatierra, under the protection of Merle’s and Mermet’s divisions. Thus, in three days, the duke of Dalmatia had, with an admirable celerity and vigour, extricated his army from a contracted unfavourable country, strangled a formidable insurrection in its birth, and at the same time opened a fresh line of communication with St. Jago, and an easy passage into Portugal.
The 20th a regiment being sent across the Minho, by the ferries of Barbantes and Ribidavia, defeated the insurgents of the left bank, advanced to the Arroyo river, and took post on the heights of Merea. The army, with the exception of the division guarding the guns, was the same day concentrated at Orense. But the utmost efforts of the artillery-officers had been baffled by the difficulties of the road between Tuy and Ribidavia; and this circumstance, together with the precarious state of the communications, the daily increasing sick-list, and the number of petty detachments necessary to protect the rear of the army, seemed to render the immediate invasion of Portugal hopeless.
To men of an ordinary stamp it would have been so; but the duke of Dalmatia, with a ready boldness, resolved to throw the greatest part of his artillery and the whole of his other incumbrances into Tuy, as a place of arms, and then relinquishing all communication with Gallicia, for the moment, to march in one mass directly upon Oporto; from whence, if successful, he proposed to re-open his communication with Tuy, by the line of the coast, and then, recovering his artillery and parcs, to re-establish a regular system of operations.
In pursuance of this resolution, sixteen of the lightest guns and six howitzers, together with a proportion of ammunition-waggons, were, with infinite labour and difficulty, transported to Ribidavia, but the remaining thirty-six pieces and a vast parc of carriages, carrying ammunition and hospital and S.
Journal of Operations MSS. commissariat stores, were put into Tuy. General La Martiniere was left there with an establishment of artillery and engineer officers, a garrison of five hundred men fit to carry arms, and nine hundred sick. All the stragglers, convalescents, and detachments, coming from St. Jago, and the military chest, which was still in the rear, guarded by six hundred infantry, were directed upon Tuy, and the gates being then shut, La Martiniere was abandoned to his own resources.
The men in hospital at Ribidavia were now forwarded to Orense, and the marshal’s quarters were established at the latter town on the 24th; but many obstacles were yet to be vanquished before the army could commence the march into Portugal. The gun-carriages had been so shaken in the transit from Tuy to Ribidavia that three days were required to repair them. It was extremely difficult to obtain provisions, and numerous bands of the peasants were still in arms; nor were they quelled until combats had taken place at Gurzo, on the Monte Blanco, in the Val d’Ornes, and up the valley of Avia, by which the French wasted time, lost men, and expended ammunition that could not be replaced.
Marshal Soult endeavoured to soften the people’s feelings by kindness and soothing proclamations; [Appendix, No. 13]. and as he enforced a strict discipline among his troops, his humane and politic demeanour joined to the activity of his moveable columns, soon abated the fierceness of the peasantry. The inhabitants of Ribidavia returned to their houses; those of Orense had never been very violent, and now became even friendly, and lent assistance to procure provisions. It was not, however, an easy task to restrain the soldiers within the bounds of humanity: the frequent combats, the assassination and torturing of isolated men, and the privations endured, had so exasperated the French troops, that the utmost exertions of their general’s authority could not always control their revenge.
While the duke of Dalmatia was thus preparing for a formidable inroad, his adversaries were a prey to the most horrible anarchy. The bishop, always intent to increase his own power, had assembled little short of fifty thousand armed persons in Oporto; and he had also commenced a gigantic line of entrenchments on the hills to the northward of that city. This worse than useless labour so completely occupied all persons, that the defence of the strong country lying between the Duero and the Minho was totally neglected; and when the second corps appeared on the bank of the latter river, the northern provinces were struck with terror. Then it was that the people, for the first time, understood the extent of their danger; and that the bishop, aroused from his intrigues, became sensible that the French were more terrible enemies than the regency. Once impressed with this truth, he became clamorous for succour. He recalled sir Robert Wilson from the Agueda; he hurried on the labours of the entrenchments; and he earnestly pressed sir John Cradock for assistance, demanding arms, ammunition, and a reinforcement of British soldiers.
Sir Robert Wilson, as I have already related, disregarded his orders; and the British general [Appendix, No. 3], section 6. refused to furnish him with troops, but supplied him with arms, very ample stores of powder, and sent artillery and engineer officers to superintend the construction of the defensive works, and to aid in the arrangements for a reasonable system of operations. The people were, however, become too headstrong and licentious to be controlled, or even advised, and the soldiers being drawn into the vortex of insubordination, universal and hopeless confusion prevailed.
Don Bernadim Freire was the legal commander-in-chief of the Entre Minho e Douro, but all the [Appendix, No. 3], section 1. generals claimed an equal and independent authority each over his own force; and this was, perhaps, a matter of self-preservation, for general and traitor were, at that period, almost synonymous; and to obey the orders of a superior against the momentary wishes of the multitude was to incur instant death: nor were there wanting men who found it profitable to inflame the passions of the mob, and to direct their blind vengeance against innocent persons; for the prelate’s faction, although the most powerful, was not without opponents even in Oporto.
Such was the unhappy state of affairs when the undisciplined gallantry of the peasants, baffling the efforts of the French to cross the Minho at Campo Saucos, obliged Soult to march by Orense. A part of the regular troops were immediately sent forward to the Cavado river, where they were joined by the ordenanzas and the militia of the district, but all in a state of fearful insubordination; and there were not any arrangements made for the regular distribution of provisions, or of any one necessary supply.
Among the troops despatched from Oporto was the second battalion of the Lusitanian legion, nine hundred strong, well armed and well equipped; they were commanded by baron Eben, a native of Prussia, who, without any known services to recommend him, had suddenly attained the rank of major in the British service. This man, destined to act a conspicuous part in Portuguese tragedy, had been left by sir Robert Wilson in Oporto, when that officer marched to Almeida. Eben’s orders were to follow with the second battalion of the legion, when the men’s clothing and equipment should be completed; but he, retaining the troops, remained, to push his own fortune under the prelate’s auspices.
General Freire having reached the Cavado, with a small body of regular troops, was immediately joined by fourteen or fifteen thousand militia and ordenanzas. Fixing his head-quarters at Braga, he sent detachments to occupy the posts of Salamonde and Ruivaens in his front; and, unfortunately for himself, endeavoured to restrain his [Appendix, No. 3], section 6. troops from wasting their ammunition by wanton firing in the streets and on the roads. This exertion of command was heinously resented; for Freire, being willing to uphold the authority of the regency, had been for some time obnoxious to the bishop’s faction, and already he was pointed to as a suspected person; and the multitude were inimically disposed towards him.
Meanwhile, general Sylveira, assuming the command of the Tras os Montes, advanced to Chaves, and put himself in communication with the marquis of Romana, who, having remained tranquil at Oimbra and Monterey since the 21st of January, had been joined by his dispersed troops, and was again at the head of nine or ten thousand men. Sylveira’s force consisted of about two thousand regulars and as many militia, and his army was accompanied by many of the ordenanzas; but here, as elsewhere, the Portuguese were licentious, insubordinate, and disdainful of their general; and the national enmity between them and the Spaniards overcoming the sense of a common cause and [Appendix, No. 6], section 3. common danger, the latter were evilly entreated, both officers and men; and a deadly feud subsisted between the two armies.
The generals, however, agreed to act in concert, offensively and defensively; but neither of them were the least acquainted with the numbers, intention, or even the position of their antagonists: and it is a proof of Romana’s unfitness for command that he, having the whole population at his disposal, was yet ignorant of every thing relating to his enemy that it behoved him to know. The whole of the French force in Gallicia, at this period, was about forty-five thousand men, Romana estimated it at twenty-one thousand. The number under Soult was above twenty-four thousand, Romana supposed it to be twelve thousand; and among these he included general Marchand’s division of the sixth corps, which he always imagined to be a part of the duke of Dalmatia’s army.
The Spanish general was so elated at the spirit of the peasants about Ribidavia, that he anticipated nothing but victory. He knew that on the Arosa, an estuary, running up towards St. Jago de Compostella, the inhabitants of Villa Garcia had also risen, and, being joined by all the neighbouring districts, were preparing to attack Vigo and Tuy; and partly from his Spanish temperament, partly from his extreme ignorance of war, he was convinced that the French [Appendix, No. 6], section 3. only thought of making their escape out of Gallicia, and that even in that they would be disappointed. But to effect their destruction more certainly, he also, Cradock’s Correspondence, MSS. as we have seen, pestered sir John Cradock for succours in money and ammunition, and desired that, the insurgents on the Arosa might be assisted with a thousand British soldiers. Cradock anxious to support the cause, although he refused the troops, sent ammunition, and five thousand pounds in money; but, before it arrived, Romana was beaten and in flight.
The combined Spanish and Portuguese forces, amounting to sixteen thousand regulars and militia, besides ordenanzas, were posted in a straggling unconnected manner along the valley of the Tamega, and extended from Monterey, Verim, and Villaza, to near Chaves, a distance of more than fifteen miles. This was the first line of defence for Portugal.
Freire and Eben, with fourteen guns and twenty-five thousand men, were at Braga, in second line, their outposts being on the Cavado, and at the strong passes of Ruivaens and Venda Nova: but of these twenty-five thousand men, only six thousand were armed with muskets; and it is to be observed that the militia and troops of the line differed from the armed peasantry only in name, save that their faulty discipline and mutinous disposition rendered them less active and intelligent as skirmishers, without making them fitter for battle.
The bishop, with his disorderly and furious rabble, formed the third line, occupying the entrenchments that covered Oporto.
Such was the state of affairs, and such were the dispositions made to resist the duke of Dalmatia; but his army, although galled and wearied by continual toil, and when halting, disturbed and vexed by the multitude of insurrections, was, when in motion, of a power to overthrow and disperse these numerous bands, even as a great ship feeling the wind, breaks through and scatters the gun-boats that have gathered round her in the calm.