[468] ‘Rather a new style of war, to place guns in a village and the troops protecting them a mile in the rear.’—Tomkinson, p. 51.
[469] Readers interested in cavalry work should read Beamish, i. 298-301, and Tomkinson, 52-3, who have admirable accounts of this rearguard fighting.
[470] For this reason the dismal picture of the situation drawn by Napier (iii. 38-9) must be considered exaggerated. The French main army was further off than he imagines; it had not passed Alcoentre. The cavalry could have done nothing against the heights, and Taupin’s brigade would have been crushed if it had endeavoured to enter the gap. But it never came within ten miles of the exposed point on the 10th and 11th, not having passed Alemquer. The Light Division diarists do not treat seriously the position which Napier paints in such gloomy colours. See Leach, p. 172, and Simmons, p. 111. The Light Division countermarched from Sobral to Arruda and reached their proper post long before midnight. There they picked up a detachment of 150 convalescents and recruits from Lisbon, who, had been waiting for them. Among these were Harry Smith and Simmons, who have accounts of the arrival of the division ‘after dark,’ and of its relief at finding large fires already lighted and provisions prepared by the draft.
[471] For Sousa’s arguments, see Soriano da Luz, iii. pp. 130-44. That author thinks the Principal’s arguments weighty, and sees no harm in the fact that he set them forth in public and private. Cf. Wellington, Dispatches, vi. 430.
[472] See Wellington to Charles Stuart, Sept. 9, and to Lord Liverpool, Sept. 13, 1810, Dispatches, vol. vi. pp. 420-30.
[473] See Soriano da Luz, iii. 90-9, for a list of them, and Wellington’s Dispatches, vi. 433, for the protest against the deportation; also ibid. 528-9.
[474] Dispatches, vi. p. 493.
[475] Dispatches, vi. 521. ‘When they have got mules and carriages, by injudicious seizure, they do not employ them, but the animals and people are kept starving and shivering, while we still want provisions.’
[476] Ibid., vi. p. 506.
[477] See Soriano da Luz, iii. p. 142. For text of it his Appendix, vii. 178-9. The answer was only written on Feb. 11, 1811, and only got to Wellington in April when the crisis was over.