The fact was that the enemy’s commander was in bed, and his staff breakfasting! The Duke of Dalmatia had sat up all night dictating dispatches, and making his arrangements for a leisurely flitting, for he intended to stay two days longer in Oporto, so as to cover the march of his other divisions towards Amarante and Villa Real. His desk-work finished, he went to bed at about nine o’clock[419], in full confidence that he was well protected by the river, and that Wellesley was probably engaged in the laborious task of bringing up boats to the mouth of the Douro, which would occupy him for at least twenty-four hours. The staff were taking their coffee, after a late déjeuner, when the hoof-beats of a furious rider startled them, and a moment later Brossard, the aide-de-camp of General Foy, burst into the Villa shouting that the English had got into the town. Led to the Marshal’s bedside, he hurriedly explained that Foy had just discovered the enemy passing by boats into the Seminary, and was massing his brigade for an attack upon them. The Marshal started up, sent his staff flying in all directions to warn the outlying troops, ordered all the remaining impedimenta to be sent off on the Vallongo road, and dispatched Brossard back to Foy to tell him to ‘push the English into the river.’ He was hardly dressed and on horseback, when the noise of a distant fusillade, followed by heavy artillery fire, gave the news that the attack on the Seminary had already begun.
It had been only at half-past ten that Foy, riding along the heights by the Chapel of Bom Fin, had been informed that there were boats on the river, filled with red-coated soldiery. It took him wellnigh three-quarters of an hour to bring up his nearest regiment, the 17th Léger, and only at 11.30 did the attack on the Seminary begin. The three battalions beset the northern and western sides of the Seminary, and made a vigorous attempt to break in, while some guns were hurried down to the river bank, just below the building, to fire upon the barges that were bringing up reinforcements.
Wellesley, from his eyrie on the Serra heights, had been watching for the long-expected outburst of the French. The moment that they came pressing forward, he gave orders for the eighteen guns in the convent garden to open upon them. The first shot fired, a round of shrapnel from the 5½-inch howitzer of Lane’s battery, burst just over the leading French gun on the further bank, as it was in the act of unlimbering, dismounted the piece, and by an extraordinary chance, killed or wounded every man and horse attached to it[420]. A moment later came the blast of the other seventeen guns, which swept the level ground to the west of the Seminary with awful effect. The French attack reeled back, and the survivors fled from the open ground into the houses of the suburb, leaving the disabled cannon behind them. Again and again they tried to creep forward, to flank the English stronghold, and to fire at the barges as they went and came, but on every occasion they were swept away by the hail of shrapnel. They could, therefore, only attack the Seminary on its northern front, where the buildings lay between them and the Serra height, and so screened them from the artillery. But in half an hour the 17th Léger was beaten off and terribly mauled; they had to cross an open space, the Prado do Bispo, in order to get near their adversaries, and the fire from the garden wall, the windows, and the flat roof of the edifice, swept them away before they could close.
Meanwhile the English suffered little: the only serious loss sustained was that of General Edward Paget, whose arm was shattered by a bullet. He was replaced in command by Hill, who (like him) had crossed in one of the earlier barges. The number of troops in the building was always growing larger, the Buffs were all across, and the 66th and 48th were beginning to follow.
After a short slackening in the engagement, General Delaborde came up, with the three battalions of the 70th of the line, to support his brigadier. This new force executed a far more sustained and desperate attack on the Seminary than had their predecessors. Hill in his letters home called it ‘the serious attack.’ But it had no better fortune than the last: a thousand English infantry, comfortably ensconced behind stone walls, and protected on their flanks by the storm of shot and shell from the opposite bank of the river, could not easily be moved. So well, indeed, were they covered, that in three hours’ fighting they only lost seventy-seven men[421], while the open ground outside was thickly strewn with the dead and wounded Frenchmen.
Soult was now growing desperate: he ordered up from the city Reynaud’s brigade, which had hitherto guarded the quays in the neighbourhood of the broken bridge. His intention was to make one more attack on the Seminary, and if that failed to draw off in the direction of Vallongo and Amarante. This move made an end of his chances; he had forgotten to reckon with the Portuguese. The moment that the quays were left unguarded, hundreds of citizens poured out of their houses and ran down to the water’s edge, where they launched all the boats that had been drawn ashore, and took them over to the English bank. Richard Stewart’s brigade and the Guards who had been waiting under cover of the houses of Villa Nova, immediately began to embark, and in a few moments the passage had begun. The 29th was first formed up on the northern bank, and dashed up the main street into the city, meeting little or no opposition; the 1st Battalion of Detachments and the Guards’ brigade soon followed. In half an hour they had come upon the flank of the French force which was attacking the Seminary, and had taken in the rear and captured one of Soult’s reserve batteries, whose horses were shot down before they could escape along a narrow lane. As the British went pouring through Oporto the whole population, half mad with joy, stood cheering at the windows and on the roofs, waving their handkerchiefs and shouting Viva. The rabble poured down into the streets, and began to attack the French wounded, so that Sherbrooke had to detach a company to protect them from assassination[422].
When Soult found himself thus attacked in the flank, he saw that there was no more to be done, and bade the whole army retreat at full speed along the road to Vallongo and Baltar. They went off in a confused mass, the regiments all mingled together, and the artillery jammed in the midst of the column. Hill came out of the Seminary and joined in the pursuit, which was urged for three miles. ‘They made no fight,’ writes an eye-witness, ‘every man seemed running for his life, throwing away their knapsacks and arms, so that we had only the trouble of making many prisoners every instant, all begging for quarter and surrendering with great good humour[423].’
The French army might have been still further mauled, and indeed almost destroyed, if Wellesley’s detached force under Murray had been well handled by its commander. The two battalions of the German Legion, with their attendant squadrons of the 14th Light Dragoons, had crossed the Douro at the ferry of Barca d’ Avintas wholly unopposed. It was a slow business, but the detachment was over long ere Soult had abandoned his attack on the Seminary. Advancing cautiously along the river bank, Murray suddenly saw the whole French army come pouring past him in total disorder on the line of the Vallongo road. He might have made an attempt to throw himself across their path, or at least have fallen upon their flank and endeavoured to cut the column in two; but thinking them far too strong for his small force, and forgetting their demoralization, he halted and allowed them to go by. When all had passed, General Charles Stewart, who had been sent in search of Murray by the Commander-in-chief, came galloping up to the force, and took from it a squadron of the 14th[424], with which he made a dash at the enemy’s last troops. The French had now formed a sort of rearguard, but the dragoons rode into it without hesitation. The French generals were bringing up the rear, and trying to keep their men steady. Delaborde was unhorsed and for a moment was a prisoner, but escaped owing to his captor being killed. Foy received a sabre cut on the shoulder. The infantry broke, and nearly 300 of them were cut off and captured. But the dragoons also suffered heavily; of about 110 men who took part in the charge no less than thirty-five men were killed and wounded. Murray, who watched the whole skirmish from his position on a neighbouring hillside, gave no assistance to his cavalry, though the intervention of his two battalions would have led to the capture of the whole of Soult’s rearguard. It was to infantry of Sherbrooke’s division that the dragoons turned over their prisoners before rejoining their other squadron[425].
So ended the battle of Oporto, daring in its conception, splendidly successful in its execution, yet not so decisive as it might have been, had Murray but done his duty during the pursuit. The British loss was astoundingly small—only twenty-three killed, ninety-eight wounded, and two missing: among the dead there was not a single officer: the wounded included a general (Paget) and three majors. The casualties of the French were, as was natural, much greater: the attacks on the Seminary had cost them dear. They lost about 300 killed and wounded and nearly as many prisoners in the field, while more than 1,500 sick and wounded were captured in the hospitals of Oporto[426]. The trophies consisted of the six field-pieces taken during the fighting, a great number of baggage wagons, and fifty-two Portuguese guns, dismounted but fit for further service, which were found in the arsenal. Soult had destroyed, before retreating, the rest of the cannon which he had captured in the Portuguese lines on March 29.