A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 2, Jan.-Sep. 1809

by Charles Oman

Realizing this, the Duke of Dalmatia came to the conclusion that the only course open to him was to abandon everything that could not be carried on his men’s backs, and to make a desperate attempt to cross the Serra de Santa Catalina before the news of his straits had reached the enemy. He imagined that there must be some sort of a footpath from Baltar or Penafiel to Guimaraens: in a thickly peopled country like Northern Portugal, the hill-folk have short cuts of their own—the only difficulty for the stranger is to discover them. Hasty inquiries in the bivouac of the army produced a Navarese camp-follower, who said that he knew the localities and could point out a bad mule-track, which climbed the hillside above the Souza torrent, and came down into the valley of the Avé, not far south of Guimaraens[430]. It was the kind of path in which the army would meet every sort of difficulty, and where the head of the column might be stopped by a couple of hundred Ordenanza, if it should chance that the Portuguese peasantry were on the alert. But it seemed the only practicable way out of the situation, and the Marshal resolved to try it.

At daybreak the army was warned of its danger; and wasting no time on councils of war or elaborate orders, Soult sent round word that the troops were to abandon everything that could not be carried on the backs of men or horses, and to take to the hills. An immense mass of baggage and plunder had to be left on the banks of the Souza, including the whole of the heavy convoy which Mermet had escorted out of Oporto on the previous day. The Marshal even decided that the infantry should turn out of their knapsacks everything except food and cartridges, an order which those who had in their possession gold plate and other valuable plunder of small bulk took care to disobey. The cannon were destroyed by being placed mouth to mouth and discharged simultaneously in pairs. As much of the reserve ammunition for infantry as could be packed in convenient bundles was laden on the backs of the artillery horses. The rest, with all the powder wagons, was collected in a mass, ready to be fired when the army should have absconded. One curious circumstance, which displays better than anything else the hurry of the retreat, is worth mentioning. The military chest of the 2nd Corps was well filled—it is said to have contained nearly £50,000 in Portuguese silver. The Marshal ordered the paymaster-in-chief to serve out all that he could to the regimental paymasters. Only two of these officials could be found, and they were unable to carry off more than a fraction of the money. Soult then ordered the treasure-chests to be broken open, and sent word that the men, as they passed, might help themselves. But hardly a soldier took advantage of the offer: they looked at the bulky bags of cruzados novos, shook their heads, and hurried on. Those who were tempted at first were seen, later in the day, tossing the weighty pieces into the ravine of the Souza. Perceiving that there was no way of getting rid of the mass of silver, Soult at last ordered the fourgons containing it to be dragged alongside of the powder wagons. When the train was exploded, after the rearguard had passed, the money was scattered to the winds. For years after the peasants of Penafiel were picking up stray coins on the hillside[431].

As the French army was beginning its weary climb over the Serra de Santa Catalina a heavy drenching rain commenced to fall. It lasted for three days, and added much to the miseries of the retreat; but it was not without its advantages to the fugitive host, for it kept the Portuguese peasantry indoors, and it would seem that no one in the mountain villages got wind of the movement for many hours. It was not till the French had crossed the ridge and descended, late in the dusk, on to the village of Pombeiro in the valley of the Avé that they began to be molested by the Ordenanza. After a few shots had been fired the peasants were driven off. Next morning [May 14] Soult got into communication with Loison, who was still lying at Guimaraens with all his troops. On the same day Lorges’ dragoons and the garrison of Viana came in from the north, and the whole army, still over 20,000 strong, was reconcentrated. The first danger, that of destruction piecemeal, had been avoided. But Soult’s desperate move had only warded off the peril for the moment: he had still to fear that Wellesley and Beresford might close in upon him before he could get clear of the mountains.

It remains to be seen how the two British generals had employed the day during which the French were scaling the heights of the Serra de Santa Catalina. Wellesley had crossed in person to Oporto long ere the fighting was over, and had established his head quarters in Soult’s villa on the heights, where he and his staff thought themselves fortunate in finding ready for their consumption the excellent dinner which had been prepared for the Marshal. As long as daylight lasted the British infantry continued to be ferried over to the city, but they were not all across when night fell. The artillery, the train, and all the regimental baggage were still on the wrong side of the river, and as the great bridge was destroyed beyond hope of repair, all the impedimenta had to be brought over in boats and barges. It was mainly this fact that delayed Wellesley from making an early move on the thirteenth. He could not advance without his guns and his reserve ammunition, and did not receive them till the day was far spent and the natural hour for marching was past. There were other circumstances which hindered him from pressing on as he would have liked to do. The infantry were tired out: they had marched more than eighty miles during the last four days, and had fought hard at Grijon and Oporto. Human nature could do no more without a halt, and Wellesley was forced to grant it. Moreover, there was the question of food to be taken into consideration. The troops had outrun their supplies, and the provision wagons were still trailing up from Coimbra. In Oporto no stores of any importance were discovered, for Soult had stopped collecting more than he could carry, the moment that he made up his mind to retreat, and had been living from hand to mouth during the last few days of his sojourn in the city. The only thing that abounded was port wine, and from that the soldiers had to be kept away, or results disastrous to discipline would have followed[432].

With great reluctance, therefore, Wellesley resolved to halt for a day, only sending forward Murray and the German Legion, with a couple of squadrons, along the Baltar road. This brigade did not come up with Soult’s rearguard, though they found ample traces of his passage in the shape of murdered stragglers and abandoned plunder. No doubt the Commander-in-chief would have directed them to push on further, and have supported them with every battalion that could still march ten miles, if only he had been aware of the fact that Beresford had got possession of the bridge of Amarante, and that the enemy was therefore in a trap. But he was only in communication with his lieutenant by the circuitous route of Lamego and Mezamfrio, and the last news that he had received of the turning column led him to believe that it was still in the neighbourhood of Villa Real, and that Loison continued to hold the passage of the Tamega. Writing to Beresford on the night of the capture of Oporto, he desired him to make every effort to hold on to Villa Real, and to keep Soult in check till he himself could overtake him[433].

It was not till the afternoon of the thirteenth that Wellesley obtained information that put him on the right track. The intelligence officer with Murray’s column[434] sent him back word that heavy explosions had been heard at Penafiel, and that the smoke of large fires was visible along the hillside above it. This gave a strong hint of what was probably taking place in that direction, but it was not till five in the afternoon that full information came to hand. This was brought by the Portuguese secretary of General Quesnel, who had deserted his employer and ridden back to Oporto, to give the valuable news which would save him from being tried for treason for serving the enemy. He gave an accurate and detailed account of all that had happened to Soult’s column, and had seen it start off on the break-neck path to Guimaraens. Only about Loison was he uncertain—that officer, he said, was probably still at Amarante, holding back Silveira and Beresford[435].

On receipt of this important intelligence Wellesley sent orders to Murray to press on his small force of cavalry, and some mounted rifles (if he could secure horses or mules) as far as Penafiel, to verify the secretary’s information[436]. A later dispatch bade him press on to Amarante, if Loison was still there, in order to take that officer in the rear; but if he were gone, the Legionary brigade was to follow Soult over the hills towards Guimaraens and Braga, and endeavour to catch up his rearguard[437]. The orders arrived too late: Murray, on the morning of the fourteenth, learnt that Loison had long ago departed, and that Soult was far on his way. He followed the Marshal across the Serra de Santa Catalina, but never got near him, though he picked up many French stragglers, and saw the bodies of many more, who had been assassinated by the peasantry[438].

Meanwhile Beresford had acted with great decision, and with an intelligence which he did not always display. When, on the morning of the thirteenth, he found that the French had disappeared, and that Amarante (after having been thoroughly sacked)[439] had been abandoned to him, he did not waste time in a fruitless pursuit of Loison in the direction of Guimaraens, but resolved to endeavour to cut off the retreat of the whole French army towards the north. If they had absconded by way of Braga, the chase would fall to Wellesley’s share, but if they had taken the other road by Chaves, all would depend on his own movements. Accordingly he resolved to march at once on the last named town, without waiting for orders from the Commander-in-chief. Having hastily collected three days’ provisions, he moved off himself by the high-road up the valley of the Tamega, detaching Silveira and his division to strike across country, and occupy the defiles of Ruivaens and Salamonde on the Braga-Chaves road, where it would be possible to detain, if not to stop, the retreating columns of Soult if they should take this way [May 14]. While on his march Beresford received Wellesley’s letters, which prescribed to him exactly the line of conduct that he had already determined to pursue[440]. After three difficult marches in drenching rain, which turned every rivulet into an almost impassable torrent, and spoilt the inadequate provision of bread which had been served out to the men, the division reached Chaves about 12 p.m. on the night of the sixteenth-seventeenth. The men were absolutely exhausted; though the distance covered had not exceeded some fourteen or fifteen miles per day, yet the rain, the starvation, and the bad road had much thinned the ranks, and those who had kept up with the colours were dropping with fatigue. The slowness of the column’s advance was certainly not Beresford’s fault; he had allowed only a six hours’ halt each day on the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth, and had been pushing on as hard as was, humanly speaking, possible. Nevertheless he was too late: on the seventeenth, the all-important day of the campaign, he held Chaves, but his troops were too tired to start early or to march far. The bad weather which made the French retreat so miserable, had at least saved the flying army from its pursuers[441].

Soult meanwhile had gathered in Loison and Lorges, and his whole army was concentrated at Guimaraens on the morning of the fourteenth. From the point where he now lay, in the upper valley of the Avé, there are only two carriage roads, that to Amarante by which Loison had arrived, and that to Braga. There was a bare chance that if Wellesley had received his information late, and moved slowly, it might be possible to escape from him by the road to Braga. If, however, he had marched promptly from Oporto, he would be able to intercept the retreating army at that place. Soult refused to take this risk, and resolved instead to plunge once more into the mountains, and to cross the watershed between the Avé and the Cavado by a rugged hill-path, no better than that which had served him between Penafiel and Guimaraens. It was accordingly necessary to sacrifice all the guns, munitions, and baggage belonging to Loison and Lorges, just as those of Mermet and Delaborde had been destroyed on the banks of the Souza. The guns were burst, the ammunition exploded, the baggage piled in heaps and burned. After this second holocaust the army struck up a track by the Salto torrent, which ultimately brought them over the crest, and down upon the village of Lanhozo, eight miles from Braga, and just at the foot of the position which Eben had occupied during his unhappy battle on March 20. The weather had been abominable, and the rearguard had been forced to bivouac in misery on the hills, the darkness having come down upon them before the descent into the valley of the Cavado was completed.

Next morning Soult sent out Lahoussaye’s dragoons down the valley of the Cavado towards Braga, to see if that city was already in Wellesley’s hands or whether it was still possible to escape across his front and gain the high road to Galicia. As the Marshal had feared would be the case, they met British light cavalry pushing briskly up the road towards them; it was clear that the pursuers were already in Braga, and Soult at once ordered his columns to turn their faces to the north-east, and follow the road up the Cavado towards Salamonde and Ruivaens. The British were ere long visible in close pursuit.