CHAPTER VII.
General Pack, on the 22d, destroyed the bridges over the Criz, and fell back upon the light division; but, the 23d, the enemy re-established the communications, passed the river, and obliged the British horse to quit the plain, and take to the hills behind Mortagao. Three squadrons of light and one regiment of heavy cavalry were retained there by lord Wellington; but the rest he sent over the Sierra de Busaco to the low country about Milheada, whence he recalled Spencer, and at the same time caused the third and fourth divisions to take their ground on the position, the former at St. Antonio de Cantara, the latter at the convent. But the light division falling back only a league, encamped in a pine-wood, where happened one of those extraordinary panics that, in ancient times, were attributed to the influence of a hostile god. No enemy was near, no alarm was given, yet suddenly the troops, as if seized with a phrenzy, started from sleep, and dispersed in every direction; nor was there any possibility of allaying this strange terror, until some persons called out that the enemy’s cavalry were amongst them, when the soldiers mechanically run together in masses, and the illusion was instantly dissipated.
The 24th, the enemy appeared in force, and skirmished with the picquets in front of Montagao, when the light division, again retiring four miles, occupied strong ground, and, in the evening, some of the enemy’s cavalry approaching too close, were charged by a squadron of the fourteenth dragoons, and overthrown, with the loss of twenty or thirty men.
Early on the 25th, Crawfurd moved down from his post, and appeared somewhat disposed to renew the scene at the Coa; for the enemy’s cavalry were gathering in front, and the heads of three infantry columns were plainly descried on the table-land above Mortagao, coming on abreast, and with a most impetuous pace, while heavy clouds of dust, rising and loading the atmosphere for miles behind, showed that the whole French army had passed the Criz, and was in full march to attack. The cavalry skirmishers were already exchanging pistol-shots, when lord Wellington, suddenly arriving, ordered the division to retire, and, taking the personal direction, covered the retreat with the fifty-second and ninety-fifth, the cavalry, and Ross’s troop of horse-artillery. Nor was there a moment to lose: the enemy, with incredible rapidity, brought up both infantry and guns, and fell on so briskly, that all the skill of the general and the readiness of the excellent troops composing the rear guard, could scarcely prevent the division from being dangerously engaged. Howbeit, a series of rapid and beautiful movements, a sharp cannonade, and an hour’s march, brought everything back, in good order, to the great position; but, almost at the same moment, the opposite ridge was crowned by the masses of the sixth corps, and the French batteries opened as the English troops mounted the steep ascent on which the convent was situated. Meanwhile, Reynier, taking the left hand route, along which a Portuguese battalion had retired, arrived at St. Antonio de Cantara, in front of the third division, and before three o’clock, forty thousand French infantry were embattled on the two points, and the sharp musketry of the skirmishers arose from the dark-wooded chasms beneath.
Ney, whose military glance was magical, perceived in an instant that the position, a crested not a table mountain, could not hide any strong reserve, that it was scarcely half occupied, and that great part of the allied troops were moving from one place to another, with that sort of confusion which generally attends the first taking up of unknown ground. He desired to make an early and powerful attack; but the prince of Esling was at Montagao, ten miles in the rear, and an aide-de-camp, despatched to inform him of the state of affairs, after attending two hours for an audience, was (as I have been informed) told that everything must await Massena’s arrival. Thus a most favourable opportunity was lost; for the first division of the allies, although close at hand, was not upon the ridge; Leith’s troops, now called the fifth division, were in the act of passing the Mondego; Hill was still behind the Alva; scarcely twenty-five thousand men were actually in line, and there were great intervals between the divisions.
Appendix, [No. 5.]
Reynier coincided with Ney; and they wrote in concert to Massena, on the 26th, intimating their joint desire to attack. The prince of Esling, however, did not reach the field until twelve o’clock, bringing with him the eighth corps, with which, and the cavalry, he formed a reserve, connecting the sixth and second corps, and then sending out his skirmishers along the whole front, proceeded carefully to examine the position from left to right.
The situation of the allies was now greatly changed. Hill’s corps, having crossed the Mondego, was posted athwart the road leading over the Sierra to Pena Cova; on his left Leith prolonged the line of defence, having the Lusitanian legion in reserve. Picton, with the third division, supported by Champlemond’s Portuguese brigade, was next to Leith, and Spencer, with the first division, occupied the highest part of the ridge, being between Picton and the convent. The fourth division closed the extreme left, covering a path leading to Milheada, where the cavalry held the flat country, one heavy regiment only being kept in reserve on the summit of the sierra. Pack’s brigade, forming an advanced guard to the first division, was posted half way down the descent, and the light division, supported by a German brigade, occupied a piece of ground jutting out nearly half a mile in front of and about two hundred feet lower than the convent, the space between being naturally scooped like the hollow of a wave before it breaks. Along the whole of the front skirmishers were thrown out on the mountain side, and about fifty pieces of artillery were disposed upon the salient points.
Ney was averse to attack after the delay which had taken place, but Massena resolved to attempt carrying the position. Reynier thought that he had only to deal with a rear-guard of the allies, and the prince, whether partaking of this error, or confident in the valour of his army, directed the second and sixth corps to fall on the next day, each to its own front, while the eighth corps, the cavalry, and the artillery remained in reserve. To facilitate the attack the light French troops, dropping by twos and threes into the lowest parts of the valley, endeavoured, in the evening, to steal up the wooded dells and hollows, and to establish themselves unseen close to the picquets of the light division. Some companies of rifle corps and caçadores checked this, but similar attempts made with more or less success at different points of the position, seeming to indicate a night attack, excited all the vigilance of the troops. Yet, were it otherwise, none but veterans, tired of war, could have slept, for the weather was calm and fine, and the dark mountain masses, rising on either side, were crowned with innumerable fires, around which more than a hundred thousand brave men were gathered.
BATTLE OF BUSACO.
Before day-break on the 27th, the French formed five columns of attack; three under Ney, opposite to the convent, and two under Reynier, at St. Antonio de Cantara, these points being about three miles asunder. Reynier’s troops had comparatively easier ground before them, and were in the midst of the picquets and skirmishers of the third division almost as soon as they could be perceived to be in movement. The allies resisted vigorously, and six guns played along the ascent with grape, but in less than half an hour the French were close upon the summit, so swiftly and with such astonishing power and resolution did they scale the mountain, overthrowing every thing that opposed their progress. The right of the third division was forced back; the eighth Portuguese regiment was broken to pieces, and the hostile masses gained the highest part of the crest, just between the third and the fifth divisions. The leading battalions immediately established themselves amongst the crowning rocks, and a confused mass wheeled to the right, intending to sweep the summit of the sierra, but at that moment lord Wellington caused two guns to open with grape upon their flank, while a heavy musketry was still poured into their front, and, in a little time, the forty-fifth and the eighty-eighth regiments charged so furiously that even fresh men could not have withstood them. The French, quite spent with their previous efforts, opened a straggling fire, and both parties, mingling together, went down the mountain side with a mighty clamour and confusion; the dead and dying strewing the way even to the bottom of the valley.
Meanwhile the French who first gained the summit had re-formed their ranks with the right resting upon a precipice overhanging the reverse side of the Sierra, and thus the position was in fact gained, if any reserve had been at hand, for the greatest part of the third division, British and Portuguese, were fully engaged, and a misty cloud capped the summit, so that the enemy, thus ensconced amongst the rocks, could not be seen, except by general Leith. That officer had put his first brigade in motion to his own left as soon as he perceived the vigorous impression made on the third division, and he was now coming on rapidly; yet he had two miles of rugged ground to pass in a narrow column before he could mingle in the fight. Keeping the royals in reserve, he directed the thirty-eighth to turn the right of the French; but the precipice prevented this; and meanwhile colonel Cameron, informed by a staff-officer of the critical state of affairs, formed the ninth regiment in line under a violent fire, and, without returning a single shot, ran in upon and drove the grenadiers from the rocks with irresistible bravery, plying them with a destructive musketry as long as they could be reached, and yet with excellent discipline refraining from pursuit, lest the crest of the position should be again lost, for the mountain was so rugged that it was impossible to judge clearly of the general state of the action. The victory was, however, secure. Hill’s corps edged in towards the scene of action; the second brigade of Leith joined the first, and a great mass of fresh troops was thus concentrated, while Reynier had neither reserves nor guns to restore the fight.
Ney’s attack had as little success. From the abutment of the mountain upon which the light division was stationed, the lowest parts of the valley could be discerned. The ascent was steeper and more difficult than where Reynier had attacked, and Crawfurd, in a happy mood of command, had made masterly dispositions. The table-land between him and the convent was sufficiently scooped to conceal the forty-third and fifty-second regiments, drawn up in line; and a quarter of a mile behind them, but on higher ground and close to the convent, a brigade of German infantry appeared to be the only solid line of resistance on this part of the position. In front of the two British regiments, some rocks, overhanging the descent, furnished natural embrasures, in which the guns of the division were placed, and the whole face of the hill was planted with the skirmishers of the rifle corps and of the two Portuguese caçadores battalions.
While it was yet dark, a straggling musketry was heard in the deep hollows separating the armies; and when the light broke, the three divisions of the sixth corps were observed entering the woods below and throwing forward a profusion of skirmishers; soon afterwards Marchand’s division emerging from the hollow, took the main road, as if to turn the right of the light division, Loison’s made straight up the face of the mountain in front, and the third remained in reserve.
General Simon’s brigade, which led Loison’s attack, ascended with a wonderful alacrity, and though the light troops plied it unceasingly with musketry, and the artillery bullets swept through it from the first to the last section, its order was never disturbed, nor its speed in the least abated. Ross’s guns were worked with incredible quickness, yet their range was palpably contracted every round, and the enemy’s shot came singing up in a sharper key, until the skirmishers, breathless and begrimed with powder, rushed over the edge of the ascent, when the artillery suddenly drew back, and the victorious cries of the French were heard within a few yards of the summit. Crawfurd, who standing alone on one of the rocks, had been intently watching the progress of the attack, then turned, and in a quick shrill tone desired the two regiments in reserve to charge. The next moment a horrid shout startled the French column, and eighteen hundred British bayonets went sparkling over the brow of the hill. Yet so truly brave and hardy were the leaders of the enemy, that each man of the first section raised his musket, and two officers and ten soldiers fell before them. Not a Frenchman had missed his mark! They could do no more! The head of their column was violently overturned and driven upon the rear, both flanks were lapped over by the English wings, and three terrible discharges at five yards’ distance completed the route. In a few minutes a long trail of carcasses and broken arms indicated the line of retreat. The main body of the British stood fast; but several companies followed the pursuit down the mountain, until Ney moving forward his reserve, and opening his guns from the opposite height killed some men, and thus warned the rest to recover their own ground. The German brigade then spread over the hill, and the light division resumed its original position.
Loison shewed no disposition to renew the attack, but Marchand’s people, who had followed the main road, broke into several masses, gained a pine wood half-way up the mountain, and sent a cloud of their skirmishers against the highest part, at the very moment that Simon was defeated. Such however was the difficulty of ascending, that Pack alone held the enemy in check, and half a mile higher up, Spencer shewed a line of the royal guards which forbade any hope of success; and from the salient point of land occupied by the light division, Crawfurd’s artillery took the main body of the French in the wood, in flank. Ney, who was there in person, after sustaining this murderous fire for an hour, relinquished the attack. The desultory fighting of the light troops then ceased, and before two o’clock Crawfurd having assented to a momentary truce, parties of both armies were mixed amicably together searching for the wounded men.
Towards evening, however, a French company having, with signal audacity, seized a village within half-musket shot of the light division, refused to retire; which so incensed Crawfurd that, turning twelve guns on the village, he overwhelmed it with bullets for half an hour. After paying the French captain this distinguished honour, the English general recovering his temper, sent a company of the forty-third down, which cleared the village in a few minutes. Meanwhile an affecting incident, contrasting strongly with the savage character of the preceding events, added to the interest of the day. A poor orphan Portuguese girl, about seventeen years of age, and very handsome, was seen coming down the mountain and driving an ass, loaded with all her property, through the midst of the French army. She had abandoned her dwelling in obedience to the proclamation, and now passed over the field of battle with a childish simplicity, totally unconscious of her perilous situation, and scarcely understanding which were the hostile and which the friendly troops, for no man on either side was so brutal as to molest her.
In this battle of Busaco, the French after astonishing efforts of valour, were repulsed, in the manner to be expected from the strength of the ground, and the goodness of the soldiers opposed to them; and their loss, although prodigiously exaggerated at the time, was great. General Graind’orge and about eight hundred men were slain, generals Foy and Merle wounded, Simon made prisoner, and the sum total may be estimated at four thousand five hundred men, while that of the allies did not exceed thirteen hundred. For on the one side musketry and artillery were brought into full activity, but the French sought to gain the day by resolution and audacity rather than by fire.
Vol. 3, Plate 7.
OPERATIONS on the MONDEGO,
1810.
Published by T. & W. Boone 1830.
After this Massena judged the position of Busaco impregnable, and to turn it by the Mondego impossible, as the allies could pass that river quicker than himself. But a peasant informed him of the road leading from Mortagao over the Caramula to Boyalva, and he resolved to turn lord Wellington’s left. To cover this movement the skirmishing was renewed with such vigour on the 28th, that a general battle was for some time expected. Yet an ostentatious display of men, the disappearance of baggage, and the throwing up of entrenchments on the hill covering the roads to Mortagao plainly indicated some other design. Howbeit, it was not until evening when the enemy’s masses in front being sensibly diminished, and his cavalry descried winding over the distant mountains, that the project became quite apparent. Hill then crossed the Mondego, and retired by Espinal upon Thomar, while the centre and left of the army defiled in the night by the other roads upon Milheada. In this manner Busaco was evacuated before the 29th, the guns followed the convent road, and the light division furnished the rear-guard until they passed Fornos, when the open country enabled the cavalry to relieve them.
Massena’s scouts reached Boyalva in the evening of the 28th, and it has been erroneously asserted, that Trant’s absence from Sardao alone enabled the French general to execute his design. Trant was however at Sardao, four miles from Boyalva before one o’clock on the 28th; but having, through a mistake of Baccellar’s, marched from Lamego, by the circuitous route of Oporto, instead of the direct road through San Pedro do Sul, he lost men from fatigue and desertion, and could bring only fifteen hundred militia into line; hence his absence or presence could have produced no effect whatever, even though he had, as lord Wellington intended, been at Boyalva itself.
Accordingly, the French cavalry, pushing between him and the British horse, on the 29th cut off one of his patroles, and the next morning drove him, with the loss of twenty men, behind the Vouga. When Massena’s main body had cleared the defiles of Boyalva, it marched upon Coimbra, and the allies, crossing the Mondego at that city, commenced the passage of the defiles leading upon Condexa and Pombal. The commissariat stores, which had been previously removed from Raiva de Pena Cova to Figueras, were embarked at Peniché; the light division and the cavalry remained on the right bank of the river; and Baccellar was directed to bring down all the militia of the northern provinces upon the Vouga.
But, notwithstanding the proclamations and the urgent, and even menacing remonstrances of the English general, the Portuguese Regency had not wasted the country behind the Mondego. During the few days that the enemy was stopped at Busaco, only the richest inhabitants had quitted Coimbra; when the allied army retreated, that city was still populous; and when the approach of the enemy left no choice but to fly or to risk the punishment of death and infamy announced in the proclamation, so direful a scene of distress ensued that the most hardened of men could not behold it without emotion. Mothers, with children of all ages; the sick, the old, the bedridden, and even lunatics, went or were carried forth; the most part, with little hope and less help, to journey for days in company with contending armies. Fortunately for this unhappy multitude, the weather was fine, and the roads firm, or the greatest number must have perished in the most deplorable manner. And, notwithstanding all this misery, the object was not gained: the people fled, but the provisions were left, and the mills were but partially and imperfectly ruined.
On the 1st of October, the outposts were attacked, and driven from the hills bounding the plain of Coimbra to the north. The French, on entering this plain, suffered some loss from a cannonade, and the British cavalry were drawn up in line, but with no serious intention of fighting, and were soon after withdrawn across the Mondego, yet somewhat unskilfully; for the French following briskly, cut down some men even in the middle of the river, and were only prevented from forcing the passage by a strong skirmish, in which fifty or sixty men fell.
This scrambling affair obliged the light division to march hastily through the city, to gain the defiles of Condeixa, which commence at the end of the bridge; and all the inhabitants who had not before quitted the place rushed out, each with what could be caught up in the hand, and driving before them a number of animals loaded with sick people or children. At the entrance to the bridge, the press was so great that the troops halted for a few moments, just under the prison; the jailor had fled with the keys, the prisoners, crowding to the windows, were endeavouring to tear down the bars with their hands, and even with their teeth, and bellowing in the most frantic manner, while the bitter lamentations of the multitude increased, and the pistol-shots of the cavalry, engaged at the ford below, were distinctly heard.
Captain William Campbell, an officer of Crawfurd’s staff, burst the prison-doors, and released the wretched inmates, while the troops forced their way over the bridge; yet, at the other end, the up-hill road, passing between high rocks, was so crowded that no effort, even of the artillery, could make way. A troop of French dragoons crossed a ford, and hovering close upon the flank, increased the confusion; and a single regiment of foot would have sufficed to destroy the division, wedged in, as it was, in a hollow way, and totally incapable of advancing, retreating, or breaking out on either side. At last, some of the infantry opened a passage on the right flank, and, by great exertions, the road was cleared for the guns; but it was not until after dusk that the division reached Condeixa, although the distance was less than eight miles. Head-quarters were that night at Redinha, and the next day at Leiria.
Hitherto the marches had been easy, the weather fine, and provisions abundant; nevertheless, the usual disorders of a retreat had already commenced. In Coimbra, a quantity of harness and intrenching tools were scattered in the streets; at Leiria, the magazines were plundered by the troops and camp-followers; and, at Condeixa, a magazine of tents, shoes, spirits, and salt meat was destroyed, or abandoned to the enemy: and, while the streets were flowing, ancle deep, with rum, the light division and Pack’s Portuguese brigade, at the distance of a quarter of a mile, were obliged to slaughter their own bullocks, and received only half rations of liquor.
Lord Wellington arrested this growing disorder with a strong hand. Three men, taken in the fact at Leiria, were hanged on the spot; and some regiments, whose discipline was more tainted than others, were forbidden to enter a village. This vigorous exercise of command, aided by the fine weather and the enemy’s inactivity, restored order amongst the allies; while Massena’s conduct, the reverse of the English general’s, introduced the confusion of a retreat in the pursuing army. In Coimbra, the French general permitted waste; and, in a few days, resources were dissipated that, under good arrangements, would have supplied his troops for two months: and, during this licentious delay, the advantage gained by his dangerous flank march to Boyalva was lost.
OBSERVATIONS.
1º. “Attack vigorously, after having observed well where to strike.” This simple, but profound expression in Napoleon’s letter of service, forms the test by which the prince of Esling’s operations should be judged.
2º. The design of turning the strong ground behind Celerico, by the route of Viseu, required close and rapid movements; yet the French general did not quit Viseu, to march against Coimbra, until the tenth day after passing the Pinhel. This was not a “a vigorous attack.”
3º. Massena should have brought the allies to action in a forward position; and he might have done so either when Almeida fell, or before that event, because the complement of mules for the service of the army not being then full, the commissariat was dependent upon the country carts; and when the first retrograde movement took place from Alverca, the drivers fled with their animals, producing infinite confusion in the rear. The commissary-general Kennedy contrived, indeed, to procure fifteen hundred additional mules; but, intermediately, a brisk advance of the enemy would have forced the English general to fight, or retire more hastily than would have beseemed his reputation, or suited his political position.
4º. If the prince of Esling had not been misled by Alorna and Pamplona, and the more readily that the estates of the latter were situated about Coimbra, he would have judged that the line his adversary had studied for eight months, and now so carefully and jealously guarded, was more likely to afford advantages, than the circuitous route by Viseu, which was comparatively neglected. The French general, ill acquainted with the scene of action, but having the stronger and more moveable army, should have followed closely.
A rapid pursuit, through Celerico, would have brought the French army on to the Alva before Hill or even Leith could have joined lord Wellington. The latter must then have fought with half his own army, or he must have retreated to the Lines. If he offered battle, his position could be turned either by the right or left; on the left by the slopes of the Estrella, on the right by crossing the Mondego, for Busaco was too extensive to be occupied before Hill and Leith arrived. Now, the road by Viseu being the longest and least practicable, demanded great diligence to compensate for the difficulties of the way, and to gain Coimbra and force the allies to a battle before Hill arrived, were objects more readily to be attained by the left bank of the Mondego. The point where to strike was therefore not “well considered,” and it is clear that Massena did not rightly estimate the greatness of his enterprise.
5º. When the rocks of Busaco glittering with bayonets first rose on the prince of Esling’s view, two fresh questions were to be solved. Was he to attack or to turn that formidable post? Or, availing himself of his numerical strength and central situation, was he to keep the allies in check, seize Oporto, and neglect Lisbon until better combinations could be made? The last question has been already discussed; but, contrary to the general opinion, the attack upon Busaco appears to me faulty in the execution rather than in the conception; and the march by which that position was finally turned, a violation of the soundest principles of war. In a purely military view, the English general may be censured for not punishing his adversary’s rashness.
With respect to the attack, sixty-five thousand French veterans had no reason to believe that fifty thousand mixed and inexperienced troops, distributed on a mountain more than eight miles long, were impregnably posted. It would have been no overweening presumption in the French general to expect, that three corps well disposed, supported by a numerous artillery, and led on the first day, (as Ney desired,) might carry some part of the position, and it is an error, also, to suppose that guns could not have been used: the light division were constantly within range, and thirty pieces of artillery employed on that point would have wonderfully aided the attack by the sixth corps. But when a general in chief remains ten miles from a field of battle, gives his adversary two days to settle in a position, makes his attacks without connection, and without artillery, and brings forward no reserves, success is impossible even with the valiant soldiers Massena commanded.
6º. “An army should always be in condition to fight.”
“A general should never abandon one line of communication without establishing another.”
“Flank marches within reach of an enemy are rash and injudicious.”
These maxims of the greatest of all generals have been illustrated by many examples; Senef, Kollin, Rosbach, the valley of the Brenta, Salamanca, attest their value. Now, Massena violated all three, by his march to Boyalva, and some peculiar circumstances, or desperate crisis of affairs should be shewn, to warrant such a departure from general principles. Sir Joshua Reynolds, treating of another art says, “genius begins where rules end.” But here genius was dormant, and rules disregarded. Massena was not driven to a desperate game. The conquest of Oporto was open to him, or a march by Viseu upon the Vouga, which, though demanding time, was safe; while in that by Boyalva, he threw his whole army into a single and narrow defile, within ten miles of an enemy in position; and that also (as I have been informed by an officer of marshal Ney’s staff) with much disorder: the baggage and commissariat, the wounded and sick, the artillery, cavalry, and infantry, mixed together; discord raging amongst the generals, confusion amongst the soldiers, and in the night season when every difficulty is doubled. His “army was not, then, in a condition to fight.” He was making “a flank march within reach of an enemy in position,” and he was “abandoning his line of communication without having established another.”
7º. Lord Wellington was within four hours march of either end of the defile, through which the French army was moving. He might have sent the first division and the cavalry (forming with Portuguese regular troops, and Trant’s militia, a mass of twelve or fourteen thousand men) to Sardao, to head the French in the defile; while the second, third, fourth, fifth, and light divisions, advancing by Martagao, assailed their rear. That he did not do so, is to be attributed to his political position. War is full of mischances, and the loss of a single brigade might have caused the English government to abandon the contest altogether. Nevertheless, his retreat was more critically dangerous than such an attack would have been, and in a military view the battle of Busaco should not have been fought: it was extraneous to his original plan, it was forced upon him by events, and was in fine a political battle.
8º. Massena’s march, being unopposed, was successful. The allied army could not cope with him in the open country between Busaco and the sea, where his cavalry would have had a fair field; hence lord Wellington, reverting to his original plan, retreated by the Coimbra and Espinhal roads. But the prince of Esling was at Avelans de Cima and Milheada on the 30th, the allied cavalry and the light division being still on the right bank of the Mondego, which was fordable in many places below Coimbra. Had the French general, directing his march through Tentugal, crossed at those fords, and pushed rapidly on to Leiria, by the route sir Arthur Wellesley followed, in 1808, against Junot, the communication with Lisbon would have been cut: terror and confusion would then have raged in the capital, the patriarch’s faction would have triumphed, and a dangerous battle must have been risked before the Lines could be reached.
9º. When the allies had gained Leiria, and secured their line of retreat, the fate of Portugal was still in the French general’s hands. If he had established a fresh base at Coimbra, employed the ninth corps to seize Oporto, secured his line of communication with that city and with Almeida by fortified posts, and afterwards, extending his position by the left, attacked Abrantes, and given his hand to a corps sent by Soult from the south; not only would the campaign have been so far a successful one, but in no other manner could he have so effectually frustrated his adversary’s political and military projects. Lord Wellington dreaded such a proceeding, and hailed the renewed advance of the French army, as the rising of a heavy cloud discovering a clear sky in the horizon beneath.
Appendix, [No. VII.] Sect. 2.
Even at Coimbra, the prince was unacquainted with the existence of the lines, and believed that, beyond Santarem, the country was open for the usage of all arms. It is strange that, when Junot, Loison, Foy, and many other officers, who had served in Portugal, were present, better information was not obtained; but every part of this campaign illustrated Massena’s character, as drawn by Napoleon:—“Brave, decided, and intrepid; dull in conversation, but in danger acquiring clearness and force of thought; ambitious, filled with self-love, neglectful of discipline, regardless of good administration, and, consequently, disliked by the troops; his dispositions for battle were bad, but his temper was pertinacious to the last degree, and he was never discouraged!”
10º. It appears that the French reached Coimbra at the moment when the fourteen days’ bread, carried by the soldiers, was exhausted, and it is worthy of consideration that French soldiers are accustomed to carry so much bread. Other nations, especially the English, would not husband it; yet it was a practice of the ancient Romans, and it ought to be the practice of all armies. It requires a long previous discipline and well-confirmed military habits; but, without it, men are only half efficient, especially for offensive warfare. The secret of making perfect soldiers is only to be found in national customs and institutions; men should come to the ranks fitted, by previous habits, for military service, instead of being stretched as it were upon the bed of Procrustes, by a discipline which has no resource but fear.