Junot had received prompt information of the landing of the British in Mondego Bay; on the very day after it had commenced he was able to send orders to Loison to abandon his post in front of Badajoz and to march at once to join the main army. Meanwhile Delaborde was sent out from Lisbon on August 6 to observe and, if possible, contain Wellesley, till Junot should have concentrated his whole field-army and be ready to fight. He was told to expect Loison from the direction of Thomar and Santarem, and to join him as soon as was possible. For his rather hazardous task he was given no more than five battalions of infantry and a single regiment of chasseurs à cheval, with five guns[202]—not much more than 5,000 men.
Delaborde at first thought of making a stand, and compelling Wellesley to show his force, at Batalha near Alcobaça, where John I had beaten the Spaniards, four and a half centuries ago, at the decisive battle of Aljubarotta. But, after examining the position, he found it so much surrounded by woods, and so destitute of good points of view, that he feared to be enveloped if he committed himself to a fight. Accordingly he drew back to Roliça, leaving only a rearguard at Obidos to observe the approach of the British. At the same time he detached six companies of the 4th Swiss to garrison Peniche, thus reducing his available force to 4,350 men.
Wellesley, meanwhile, knowing himself to be close to the enemy, advanced steadily but with caution. He left behind his tents and other weighty baggage at Leiria, and moved forward with a lightly equipped army to Alcobaça on the fourteenth, to Caldas on the fifteenth. On that day the first shot of the campaign was fired: four companies of the fifth battalion of the 60th and of the second battalion of the 95th Rifles discovered the French outposts at Brilos in front of Obidos, drove them in, and pursuing furiously for three miles, came on the battalion which formed Delaborde’s rearguard. This corps turned upon them, checked them with the loss of two[203] officers and twenty-seven men killed and wounded, and only retired when General Spencer led up a brigade to save the riflemen.
Next morning the French were discovered to have fallen back no further than Roliça, where Delaborde had found the position that he had sought in vain at Batalha. The road from Caldas and Obidos towards Torres Vedras and Lisbon passes for some miles over a sandy plain enclosed on either flank by bold hills. The southern limit of the basin is a cross-ridge, which connects the other two: in front of it lies Roliça, on the side-slope of an isolated eminence which overlooks the whole plain: a mile further south the road passes over the cross-ridge by a sort of gorge or defile, on the right hand of which is the village of Columbeira, while to its left rear lies that of Zambugeira. Though Delaborde had drawn up his men on the hill of Roliça down in the plain, it was not this advanced position that he intended to hold, but the higher and steeper line of the cross-ridge, on either side of the defile above Columbeira. Here he had a short front, only three-quarters of a mile in length, scarped by precipitous slopes, and covered by thickets and brushwood, which served to mask the strength (or rather the weakness) of his division.
Discovering Delaborde drawn up on the isolated hill of Roliça, where both his flanks could easily be turned, the British commander resolved to endeavour to envelop and surround him. He waited on the sixteenth till the rear of the army had come up, and marched at dawn on the seventeenth with his whole force—13,000 British and 2,000 Portuguese, drawn up in a crescent-shaped formation with the centre refused and the wings thrown far forward. On the right Colonel Trant, with three battalions of Portuguese infantry and fifty horse of the same nation, moved along the foot of the western range of heights, to turn the Roliça position by a wide circular movement. On the left General Ferguson, with his own brigade, that of Bowes, and six guns, struck over the hills to get round the eastern flank of the French. In the centre the remainder of the army—four brigades of British infantry, 400 cavalry, half English and half Portuguese, with the battalion of Cazadores and twelve guns, advanced on a broad front in two lines, forming a most magnificent spectacle: ‘they came on slowly but in beautiful order, dressing at intervals to correct the gaps caused by the inequalities of ground, and all converging on the hill of Roliça[204].’ Hill’s brigade formed the right, Fane’s the left, Nightingale’s the centre, while Catlin Crawfurd’s two battalions and the Cazadores acted as the reserve.
Delaborde had warned his men to be ready for a sudden rush to the rear the minute that the enveloping movement should grow dangerous. Waiting till the last possible moment, when Fane’s riflemen were already engaged with his tirailleurs, and Trant and Ferguson were showing on the flanks, he suddenly gave the order for retreat. His men hurried back, easily eluding the snare, and took post on the wooded heights above Columbeira a mile to the rear. Wellesley had to rearrange his troops for an attack on the second position, and half the morning had been wasted to no effect. He resolved, however, to repeat his original manœuvre. Trant and the Portuguese once more made a long sweep to the right: Ferguson’s column mounted the foot-hills of the Sierra de Baragueda and commenced a toilsome detour to the left[205]. In the centre two batteries formed up near a windmill on the northern slope of Roliça hill and began to bombard the French position, while Fane’s brigade to the left on the main road, and Hill’s and Nightingale’s to the right deployed for the attack.
Wellesley had not intended to assault the Columbeira heights till the turning movements of Trant and Ferguson should be well developed. But, contrary to his intention, part of his centre pushed forward at once, and when it was engaged the other troops in the front line were sent up to its aid. The face of the hill was scarred by four ‘passes’ as Wellesley called them, or rather large ravines, up each of which some of the British troops tried to penetrate. On the extreme right the light companies of Hill’s brigade, supported by the first battalion of the 5th Regiment from the same brigade, delivered their attack up one gully. The second pass, just beyond the village of Columbeira, was assayed by the 29th from Nightingale’s brigade, with the 9th of Hill’s in support. The 82nd went towards the centre, while Fane’s two rifle battalions and the 45th tried the heights far to the left.
The 29th Regiment, urged on by the rash courage of its colonel, Lake, attacked some time before any other corps was engaged. It pushed up a narrow craggy pass, the bed of a dried-up mountain torrent, where in some places only two or three men abreast could keep their footing: the further that the battalion advanced, the more did the ravine recede into the centre of the enemy, and the 29th was soon being fired on from three sides. The right wing, which led, at last forced its way to the brow of the hill, and was able to deploy in a more or less imperfect way, and to commence its fire. In front of it were the few companies of the 4th Swiss, some of whom tried to surrender, calling out that they were friends, turning up their musket butts, and rushing in to shake hands with the British[206]. But before the 29th could fully recover its formation, it was fiercely charged from the rear: some of the French troops on the lower slopes of the position, finding themselves likely to be cut off, formed in a dense mass and rushed straight through the right wing of Colonel Lake’s regiment from behind, breaking it, killing its commander and capturing six officers and some thirty of its rank and file, whom they took back with them in triumph. The 29th reeled down the slope into a wood, where it reformed on its comparatively intact left wing, and then resumed the fight, aided by the 9th, its supporting regiment. About this moment the 5th and Fane’s rifles made other attacks on the two ends of the hostile line, but were at first checked. Delaborde and his brigadier, Brennier, had only four battalions on the ridge, as they had detached three companies of the 70th far to their right in the direction in which Ferguson was moving. But they held their ground very gallantly, waiting till the British skirmishers had begun to get a lodgement on the brow, and then charging each detachment as it tried to deploy, and forcing it down to the edge of the wood that covered the lower slopes. Three assaults were thus repulsed, but the British troops would not be denied—Wellesley wrote that he had never seen more gallant fighting than that of the 9th and the 29th[207]—and after each reverse formed up again and came on once more. After two hours of desperate struggles they made good their lodgement on the crest at several points: Ferguson’s troops (though they had lost their way and wasted much time) began to appear on the extreme left, and Delaborde then saw that it was time for him to go.
He retired by alternate battalions, two in turn holding back the disordered pursuers, while the other two doubled to the rear. His regiment of chasseurs à cheval also executed several partial charges against the British skirmishers, and lost its commander mortally wounded: the Portuguese cavalry refused to face them. In this way the French reached the pass behind Zambugeira, a mile to the rear, without any great loss. But in passing through this defile, they were forced to club together by the narrowness of the road, were roughly hustled by their pursuers, and lost three[208] of their guns and a few prisoners. The rest of the force escaped in some disorder to Cazal da Sprega, where Wellesley halted his men, seeing that it was now impossible to catch Delaborde’s main body. Two miles to the rear the French were rejoined by the three companies of the 70th Regiment which had been detached to the east. They then retreated to Montechique some fifteen miles from Lisbon, where they at last got news of Loison and Junot.
Delaborde had fought a most admirable rearguard action, holding on to the last moment, and escaping by his prompt manœuvres the very serious risk of being enveloped and captured by the forces of the English, who outnumbered him fourfold. But he had lost 600 men and three guns, while his assailants had only suffered to the extent of 474 killed, wounded, and prisoners[209], nearly half of whom were in the ranks of the 29th[210]. The French flattered themselves that they had somewhat shaken the morale of Wellesley’s men by their obstinate resistance: but this was far from being the case. The English had only put five and a half battalions[211] into the fighting line, and were proud of having turned the enemy out of such a position as that of Columbeira without engaging more than 4,600 men.