But all this was in the far future when the spring campaign of 1809 began. At that date, as we have already seen, the militia were as undisciplined, as ill-armed, and as useless as the mass of Ordenanza levies, with which they were confused.
A word must be added as to the theoretical organization of this last force. It dated back to the Middle Ages, and had been regularly used during the days of the enfranchisement of Portugal from the yoke of the Spanish Hapsburgs, in the seventeenth century. The ‘ordinance’ was a Royal decree summoning to arms all males between sixteen and sixty with the exception of ecclesiastics. In districts owning a feudal lord, that person was ex-officio declared chief-captain (capitão mor) of his fief, and charged with the summoning of his vassals to the field. Where manorial customs had disappeared, the senior magistrate of the town, village, or district had to take up the post of capitão mor, unless a substitute was named by the crown. It was the duty of this commander to call out all the able-bodied men of his region, to divide them into companies of 250 men, and to name a captain, ensign, sergeant, clerk (meirinho), and ten corporals for each of these bodies. Persons able to provide a horse were to serve apart, as cavalry, under separate commanders; but no one ever saw or heard of mounted Ordenanza troops during the Peninsular War; all the horses of the country did not suffice to provide chargers even for the twelve regiments of the regular army. The whole levy was supposed to be called out twice a year by the capitão mor, in order that it might be seen that every man was properly enrolled in a company. But as a matter of fact the Ordenanza had not been summoned out, save in 1762 and 1802, since the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. Nor had any care been taken to see that every householder possessed a weapon of some sort, as the law directed. When they mustered in 1809, the men with pikes outnumbered those with fowling-pieces or blunderbusses, and the men furnished with no more than scythes on poles, or goads, or such-like rustic weapons, were far more numerous than the pikemen.
The whole mass was perfectly useless; it was cruel to place it in the field and send it against regular troops. Tumultuous, undisciplined, unofficered, it was doomed to massacre whenever it allowed the enemy to approach. It would have been well to refrain from calling it out altogether, and to turn over the few serviceable arms which it possessed to the militia.
Note.—By far the best account of the Portuguese army and military system is to be found in Halliday’s Present state of Portugal and the Portuguese Army, an invaluable book of 1812. Something can be gleaned from Dumouriez’s Essay on the military topography of Portugal [1766]. A little information comes from Foy, but many of his statements in his vol. ii. are inaccurate. The Wellington and Beresford dispatches in the Record Office are, of course, full of information, but would be very unintelligible but for Halliday’s explanatory memoir, as they presuppose knowledge of the details of organization, but do not generally describe them. For the Lusitanian Legion, see Mayne’s monograph on that corps, and the dispatches of Sir Robert Wilson. I have inserted in [an appendix] a table of the reorganized army as it stood in the autumn of 1809.
Portuguese Infantry
a Private of the Lisbon Regiment and a man of the Algarve Ordenanza.
From a drawing of 1809.
Walker & Cockerell Ph. Sc.
SECTION XIII: CHAPTER IV
COMBATS ABOUT CHAVES AND BRAGA: CAPTURE OF OPORTO (MARCH 10-29, 1809)
When La Romana marched off to the east, and abandoned his Portuguese allies to their own resources, the duty of defending the frontier fell upon General Francisco Silveira, the military governor of the Tras-os-Montes. He had mobilized his forces at Chaves the moment that Soult’s departure from Orense became known, and had there gathered the whole levy of his province. The total amounted to two incomplete line regiments[266] four battalions of disorderly and ill-equipped militia[267], the skeletons of two cavalry regiments, with hardly 200 horses between them[268], and a mass of the local Ordenanza, armed with pikes, goads, scythes, and fowling-pieces. The whole mass may have numbered some 12,000 men, of whom not 6,000 possessed firearms of any kind[269]. Against them the French marshal was marching at the head of 22,000 veterans, who had already gained experience in the art of mountain-warfare from their recent campaign in Galicia. The result was not difficult to foresee. If the Portuguese dared to offer battle they would be scattered to the winds.