[156] The above notes on the Castello Branco country and its roads are mostly derived from Eliot’s Defence of Portugal. Eliot has marched all over the region; see his pages 78-81.
[157] For the perilous adventure among these cuttings of a small French column which crossed the Estrada Nova, that which escorted Foy back to Santarem in Feb. 1811, see the autobiography of General Hulot, pp. 325-33. A considerable number of men and horses fell down these cuttings in a forced night-march, and in all several hundred men of Foy’s column perished, starved and storm-beaten on this inhospitable road. The survivors only got through by cutting a slippery foot-track along the precipices: nothing on wheels could have passed that way.
[158] In Foy’s interesting minute of his conversation with Napoleon about the invasion, on Nov. 23, 1810, when he had taken home Masséna’s dispatches: ‘Montrez-moi les deux routes de Ponte de Murcella et de Castello Branco,’ says the Emperor. Then after a pause: ‘Et l’Estrada Nova? Pourquoi Masséna n’a-t-il pas débouché par l’Estrada Nova?’—‘Sire, à cause d’Abrantès et du Zézère.’—‘Oui, Masséna a bien fait; maintenant il faut prendre Abrantès: Elvas ne nous servirait de rien.’ See Foy’s Mémoires, p. 111.
[159] There were some others thrown up on the extreme lower course of the Zezere, by Barca Nova and Punhete, to guard against a possible but unlikely use of the Castello Branco road by the enemy.
[160] Wellington to Hill (Disp., vi. p. 441), Sept. 15.
[161] Wellington to Chas. Stuart, Sept. 18.
[162] Nap. Corresp., xx. p. 117. Napoleon to Berthier.
[163] Ibid., p. 271.
[164] Napoleon to Masséna, July 29, 1810, Corresp., xx. p. 552.
[165] For his views just after Talavera see vol. ii. of this work, pages 609-10.