There are four lines of further advance open to an invader who has captured Almeida. The first, a march on Oporto via Pinhel and Lamego, may be mentioned only to be dismissed from consideration. It is of no use to an army which aims at Lisbon, and proposes to conquer Portugal by a blow at its heart. Masséna, whose directions were to drive the British into the sea in the shortest and most effective fashion, could not have contemplated such a secondary object as the capture of Oporto for a moment. There remain three other roads to be investigated.
(1) The road north of the river Mondego, by Celorico, Vizeu, Bussaco, and Coimbra. (2) The corresponding and parallel road south of the Mondego, from Celorico by Chamusca, Maceira and Ponte de Murcella to Coimbra. (3) The road which, striking south from Celorico, crosses the headwaters of the Zezere, by Belmonte and Fundão, and then, climbing the Serra de Moradal, descends to Castello Branco, and from thence reaches Abrantes by the Sobreira Formosa. It may be remarked, by the way, that nothing in all the geography of Portugal seems more astonishing than that there should not be a fourth alternative road, one down the long valley of the Zezere, which, running in a straight line from Belmonte to Abrantes, looks on the map as if it ought to be a main artery of communication, and seems to indicate the obvious road to Lisbon from Almeida, since a straight line drawn between these points would run along the river for some forty miles. But as a matter of fact there was neither a first nor a second-rate road down the Zezere: the only towns on its course, Covilhão and Belmonte, lie hard by its sources, and its central reaches were almost uninhabited. The only good line of communication running near it is a by-road or duplication of the third route mentioned above, called the Estrada Nova, which, leaving the upper Zezere at Belmonte, keeps high up the side of the Serra de Moradal, and rejoins the Castello Branco road at Sobreira Formosa. This route was much employed by Wellington in later years, as a military road from north to south, usable even when Castello Branco was threatened by the French. But in 1810 he had ordered it to be rendered impassable, and this had been done by making several long cuttings at points where the track passed along precipices, the whole roadway being blown or shovelled down into the gulf below[157]. The French were, of course, unaware of this, and Masséna is said by his confidant Foy to have taken the Estrada Nova into serious consideration, and to have decided against it because of the necessity for forcing the passage of the Zezere when the defiles were passed, and for laying siege to Abrantes[158]. A far more practical objection was its extreme wildness: it runs along an absolutely uninhabited mountain-side, and the neighbourhood is destitute not only of food but of water for great sections of its length. This Masséna ought to have known, if his Portuguese advisers had been competent. Apparently he was wholly unaware of its character, just as he was necessarily ignorant of the fact that his prescient adversary had blasted away huge sections of it, so that it was absolutely impassable for guns or wagons, as also that earthworks had been carefully constructed to cover the point where it debouches on to the Zezere.
The Castello Branco road, therefore, with this dependent by-road, the Estrada Nova, was practically left out of consideration by the Marshal. There remains the choice between the two northern routes, Celorico-Vizeu-Coimbra, and Celorico-Chamusca-Ponte de Murcella-Coimbra. Both traverse rough ground—but ground less rough than that to be found on some parts of the Castello Branco road. Along both there is an intermittent belt of cultivated land, and not unfrequent villages. Both are intersected by many good military positions, on which a defending army can offer battle to an invader with advantage. In especial, the northern road strikes and climbs the granite ridge of Bussaco with every disadvantage for the attacking side, and the southern road is contracted into a difficult defile at the passage of the Alva near Ponte de Murcella. On the whole, however, this last is the better line for advance:—the strongest testimonial to the fact is that Wellington expected Masséna to take it, and erected at the passage of the Alva almost[159] the only earthworks, save those of the lines of Torres Vedras, which he constructed in his preparations for the reception of the invader. When he first heard that the Marshal was moving forward from Almeida to Celorico, and was clearly aiming at the Mondego valley, he announced that he should endeavour to stop the invader on the Alva[160], not apparently thinking it at all probable that Masséna would move by Vizeu and the north bank of the Mondego. On realizing that this was really his adversary’s design, he observed with some exultation that, while there were certainly many bad roads in Portugal, the enemy had taken decidedly the worst of those open to him[161]; moreover, he had committed himself to attack the heights of Bussaco, the most formidable position in the whole of northern Portugal. How the French commander came to make this choice we shall discuss in its proper place. Suffice it to say that Wellington had not realized how bad was Masséna’s information, how worthless his maps, and—what is most surprising of all—how entirely destitute of local knowledge were the Portuguese traitors—Alorna, Pamplona, and the other renegade officers—whom the Emperor had sent as guides and advisers to the Marshal. And in truth, the unsuspected ignorance of Masséna and his advisers added an incalculable element of chance to the problem set before Wellington. He was obliged to make his plans on the hypothesis that the enemy would make the correct move: and not unfrequently the enemy, for reasons which the English general could not possibly foresee, made the wrong one.
The French invasion was bound to commence with a preliminary clearance of the outlying fortresses still in the hands of the Spaniards. These to some extent protected the Portuguese frontier in 1810, though they had been built with the express purpose, not of protecting, but of threatening it, and had never before been attacked by an enemy coming from the east. Only three of these fortresses were of any importance—Astorga, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Badajoz. The other strongholds of Spanish Estremadura, Alcantara (which had stood a siege in the War of the Spanish Succession), Albuquerque, Olivenza, were either not in a state of defence at all, or were hopelessly antiquated, and little suited to face modern artillery and modern siegecraft.
Astorga lies so far to the north that it might have been neglected without much peril to the French scheme of invasion. But the Emperor had ordered that it should be reduced before the great enterprise began: it gave the Spanish army of Galicia a foothold in the plains of Leon, from which it might operate against Masséna’s rear, if he should pass it by. Its capture, too, was considered a matter of small difficulty, for it was but a mediaeval walled town, to which some hasty outworks had been added during the last year. It will be remembered that when Moore passed that way in January 1809, Astorga had been treated by both sides as an open town, and no attempt had been made to garrison or defend it. Since then La Romana had repaired its dilapidated enceinte, stockaded its suburbs, and armed it with guns brought from Ferrol. As late as January 11, 1810, Napoleon seems hardly aware of this fact: in a dispatch of that date he orders Loison to make his head quarters there, evidently under the impression that it is not held by the Spaniards, or at least that it is a place which they will evacuate at the first appearance of a serious attack[162]. It is only in March that he writes to Junot that Astorga must be besieged and taken, in order to occupy the attention of the Galicians and to thrust them back into their mountains[163].
Ciudad Rodrigo was a more serious business. It was a regular fortress, though only one of the second class; its prestige, as the only Spanish stronghold on the Portuguese frontier, was great. It commands the whole southern stretch of the plains of Leon, being the only place out of the control of an invader who is superior in cavalry, and therefore master of the defenceless Tierra de Campos. There was also a small Spanish army depending upon it, and clinging to the skirts of the Sierra de Gata. This was the division of Martin de la Carrera, which had been left behind when the greater part of Del Parque’s Army of the Left marched down into Estremadura in January 1810, in order to replace there the troops which had gone off to the defence of Cadiz. It was clear that Ciudad Rodrigo must be taken, and Martin de la Carrera brushed away or destroyed, before any serious attempt to invade Portugal was begun. If the Emperor thought that such a remote place as Astorga was worth his notice, it was obvious that he would regard Ciudad Rodrigo as absolutely indispensable to his designs. It was for its reduction that he gave Masséna the great battering train of fifty heavy guns, with 2,500 artillerymen and sappers, which was assigned to him, independent of the artillery of the three corps of the Army of Portugal.
Badajoz, far to the south, in Spanish Estremadura, stood to the defence of Southern Portugal exactly as Ciudad Rodrigo to the defence of Northern Portugal. It possessed also in Elvas a counterpart to Almeida. But Badajoz is immensely larger and stronger than Rodrigo, just as Elvas is infinitely more formidable than Almeida. The two fortresses on the frontier of Leon are small places crowning mere mounds set in a plain. Badajoz and Elvas have towering citadels set on rugged hills, and overlooking the whole country-side. They have also strong detached forts on dominant positions: the circuit of ground that must be taken up by an army that intends to besiege them is very large, and at Badajoz there is a first-class river, the Guadiana, which cuts in two the lines which the assailant must occupy. It may be added that based on Badajoz there was a whole Spanish army of 15,000 men, not a mere division of 3,000, like that which lurked in the mountains above Rodrigo. Noting the strength of Badajoz and Elvas, the Emperor had made up his mind that they should be observed and ‘contained’ by troops from the Army of Andalusia, but not attacked till Lisbon had been conquered and the English expelled from Portugal. ‘Les Anglais une fois battus et rembarqués, Badajoz et Elvas tombent d’eux-mêmes,’ he wrote in a holograph minute addressed to Masséna, just before the advance across the Portuguese frontier began[164]. It was only when the invasion had been brought to a standstill before the lines of Torres Vedras, that he came to the conclusion that pressure must be applied south of the Tagus, to distract Wellington, and that Soult, as a preliminary to an attack on the Alemtejo, must capture Badajoz and Elvas, and disperse the Spanish Army of Estremadura. The idea came to him tardily: thanks to Wellington’s careful starvation of the main French army, Masséna was forced to retreat into Leon when Soult had only recently captured Badajoz, and had not yet shown a man in front of Elvas. The scheme was hatched, like so many of Napoleon’s Spanish plans, about three months too late for effective realization. As late as November 1810 the orders to Soult are merely to demonstrate against Badajoz, and to hinder the departure of La Romana’s army for the lines of Torres Vedras, but not to besiege the Estremaduran fortress. Probably it was Foy’s information as to the existence and strength of the unsuspected lines of Torres Vedras, which reached him late in November, that made the Emperor realize the advisability of that secondary attack by the south bank of the Tagus which Wellington had foreseen and taken means to meet a full year before. Fortunately a capable general on the defensive always knows his own weak spots long before they are discovered by the enemy. By the time that Soult had at last captured Badajoz and the small dependent places—Olivenza, Albuquerque, Campo Mayor—Wellington had got rid of Masséna from the neighbourhood of Lisbon, and was preparing to chase him home across Northern Portugal. Within a few weeks of its surrender by the traitor Imaz, Badajoz was being besieged by a detachment of the British army, and Soult had his hands full, as he strove at once to hold down Andalusia and to relieve the beleaguered fortress.
SECTION XIX: CHAPTER II
WELLINGTON’S PREPARATIONS FOR DEFENCE