The Park fared even worse; when nearing Sotojal, on the 20th, it was unexpectedly beset by Colonel Trant, who had come down from Moimenta with a brigade of his militia and two squadrons of Portuguese regular cavalry. The Park was escorted by one company of grenadiers, who marched at its head, and a battalion of the Irish Legion, who were far to the rear, while Montbrun’s immense cavalry column was quite out of sight. Trant had a great opportunity, for the long file of vehicles and guns, caught in a narrow road, was almost helpless. But he failed to do all that was in his power; his cavalry charged the company at the head of the column and was repulsed. He then filed his battalions along the hillside, opened fire on the horses and men of the train, and, descending into their midst, captured and destroyed some caissons and took some eighty prisoners. But when the escort-battalion came hurrying up from the rear, his levies were stricken with panic and hastily retired, though they were strong enough to have held off the five hundred Irish, and to have smashed or rolled over the precipices the greater part of the guns and waggons. Montbrun’s cavalry did not get up till all was over, and would have been perfectly useless on the precipitous road, even if they had arrived earlier. If Trant’s foray had been properly carried out, Masséna might have lost his reserve artillery and most of his provisions—a disaster which might have forced him to turn back to Almeida. He deserved such a punishment for having marched his all-important train on the extreme flank of his army, with an insufficient escort[402].
Though Junot’s infantry divisions reached the deserted walls of Vizeu on Sept. 19th and there met the corps of Ney, the divisional artillery did not arrive till next day, while the reserve artillery, the trains and the heavy cavalry were struggling in upon the 21st and 22nd by detachments. For Montbrun had halted the great convoy after Trant’s attack, and parked it, fearing that the Portuguese might come back in greater numbers and give more trouble. When he started it again, on the 21st, he took care to give it better marching arrangements, and to attach cavalry escorts to each section. But this caused much delay, and meanwhile the 8th Corps waited at Vizeu ‘marking time’ and unable to move. Even the 6th Corps remained there two days, waiting while its gun-carriages and cannons were being repaired; for the Fornos-Vizeu road, though infinitely less rough than that which the 8th Corps and the park had followed, was still bad enough to shake many vehicles to pieces. The Intendant-General reported that nineteen caissons carrying 2,900 rations of biscuit belonging to the 6th Corps broke down and had to be burnt; the food was distributed among the regiments as they passed, with much consequent waste[403]. All that Ney could do between the 18th of September, when he reached Vizeu, and the 21st, was to push forward an advanced guard to Tondella, fifteen miles down the Vizeu-Coimbra road, with an infantry division in support at Fail. Meanwhile the 2nd Corps, following in the wake of the 6th, had also made its way to Vizeu. The bulk of Reynier’s force took the Fornos-Mangualde-Lagiosa route, as Ney’s had done. But an advanced guard of all arms descended the great chaussée south of the river as far as Taboa, driving in the pickets of the English cavalry, and then crossed the Mondego at the bridge of Taboa, and fell into the rear of the rest of the corps beyond Mangualde. This apparently was intended to keep Wellington uncertain, as long as possible, as to whether part of the French army was not intending, after all, to follow the chaussée and present itself before the position on the Alva[404]. But it was executed by so small a force that the British general was not for an hour deceived[405]. He was at this moment in a cheerful frame of mind; Masséna had made a mistake in choosing his route, and was merely wasting time when time was most precious. ‘There are certainly many bad roads in Portugal,’ he wrote, ‘but the enemy has taken decidedly the worst in the whole kingdom’[406]; and again, ‘I imagine that Marshal Masséna has been misinformed, and has experienced more difficulty in making his movement than he expected. He has certainly selected one of the worst roads in Portugal for his march[407].’ Owing to the necessary delays of the enemy Wellington was now in a position as strong as that on the Alva; his head quarters were at the convent of Bussaco, his divisions, including Leith and Hill, so placed that they could be concentrated on the Serra de Alcoba, right across the Vizeu-Coimbra road, long before the French could descend from Vizeu. ‘We have an excellent position here, in which I am strongly tempted to give battle[408],’ he wrote on the evening of the 21st, foreseeing six days ahead the probability of the engagement which was to make Bussaco famous. There was a road by which his position might be turned, but it was doubtful whether the enemy would discover it, and ‘I do not yet give up hopes of discovering a remedy for that misfortune[409].’
Masséna, meanwhile, was chafing at his self-imposed delays, and writing querulous letters from Vizeu to Berthier. ‘The grand park and the baggage,’ he wrote on the 22nd, ‘are still in the rear, and will only get up to-morrow. It is impossible to find worse roads than these; they bristle with rocks; the guns and train have suffered severely, and I must wait for them. I must leave them two days at Vizeu when they come in, to rest themselves, while I resume my march on Coimbra, where (as I am informed) I shall find the Anglo-Portuguese concentrated. Sir, all our marches are across a desert; not a soul to be seen anywhere; everything is abandoned. The English push their barbarity to the point of shooting the wretched inhabitant who tries to remain in his village; the women, the children, the aged, have all decamped. We cannot find a guide anywhere. The soldiers discover a few potatoes and other vegetables; they are satisfied, and burn for the moment when they shall meet the enemy.’ The plan of devastation was already beginning to work; Masséna had exhausted seven of the thirteen days’ provisions which his army carried, and it was not with the potatoes gleaned in the fields of Vizeu, or the ripe grapes of its vineyards, that he could refill the empty store-waggons. He must push on for Coimbra as fast as possible; this, no doubt, was why he made up his mind to march on that place, not by descending from Vizeu to Aveiro and entering the coast plain, but by taking the direct road by Santa Comba Dao, Mortagoa, and Bussaco. Even Lopez’s faulty map shows the ridge of Bussaco as a serious physical feature, but the Marshal does not seem to have reflected for a moment that Wellington might choose to defend it. The orders drawn up on September 24th for the march on Coimbra presuppose an unobstructed progress[410]. Having met no active resistance as yet from the Anglo-Portuguese army, Masséna wrongly took it for granted that he might count on the prolongation of this good fortune.
Before moving on from Vizeu the organization of the French army was slightly modified. Junot’s corps contained a number of fourth battalions, belonging to regiments whose three senior battalions were serving in the 2nd Corps. The two corps had never met till both lay at Vizeu. Masséna then ordered the fourth battalions of the 36th, 47th, 70th of the Line, and the 2nd and 4th Léger to join their regiments in Reynier’s corps; this reduced the 8th Corps by 2,850 men; in return, however, Reynier was ordered to make over to Junot two regiments of old troops, the 15th and 86th of the line (each of three battalions) making in all 2,251 bayonets. Thus the two corps were somewhat equalized in quality, the 2nd receiving five battalions of recruits, while the 8th (in which there were too few veterans) got in return six battalions which had served in Spain since the commencement of the war. The net result was to make the 2nd Corps a little stronger (17,024 men) and the 8th Corps a little weaker (15,904 men)[411].
On September 21st the advance of the Army of Portugal was recommenced, though the train and heavy baggage was not yet prepared to start, and some of its rear detachments had not even reached Vizeu. But on that day the advanced guard of the 6th Corps advanced from Tondella, and found in front of it some light cavalry and two Portuguese regiments—the first hostile troops that the French had seen since the campaign began. The whole of the 2nd and 6th Corps followed behind, and bivouacked that night at Casal-de-Maria, Tondella, Sabugoça and other villages on the steep downward road from Vizeu to Coimbra. The 8th Corps still remained at Vizeu, guarding the belated reserve artillery and train. On the 22nd the 2nd Corps, passing the 6th, which had hitherto taken the lead, crossed the Criz and drove in the British outposts, who retired on Mortagoa. But Ney and the 6th Corps remained stationary, and the 8th did not even yet make a start. These delays seem extraordinary, but Masséna was still paying for his evil choice of roads; the infantry had to wait for the guns, and the guns could only creep forward as the sappers enlarged and improved the roads for them.
Wellington, meanwhile, was recasting his dispositions at his leisure. When Masséna’s march on Vizeu had become certain, the British Commander-in-Chief thought at first that the enemy would take the good chaussée Vizeu-Aveiro, so as to descend into the coast-plain and attack Coimbra from the easiest side. He therefore, on the 18th moved the 1st Division back from Ponte de Murcella to Coimbra, where it was joined by a new brigade from Lisbon, composed of the 1st battalions of the 7th and 79th, newly landed. A. Campbell’s and Coleman’s Portuguese also moved to the same point. The 3rd and 4th Divisions remained at Ponte de Murcella in the entrenched position, with the Light Division and Pack’s Portuguese in front of them at Venda do Porco and Sampayo.
But on the 20th, when Ney’s advanced guard began to come out from Vizeu on the Santa Comba Dao road, not on the Aveiro road, Wellington discovered that it was on the mountain of Bussaco, and not on the plain in front of Coimbra, that he would next meet the enemy. Accordingly Pack’s Portuguese and the Light Division forded the Mondego below Sampayo, as did the light cavalry, and a detaining force was thus thrown across the Vizeu-Coimbra road. The Portuguese brigade took post behind the Criz torrent, Craufurd’s men a little to the rear at Mortagoa. At the same time the 1st Division and the troops attached to it moved out from Coimbra to Mealhada on the Aveiro road, a point from which they could easily be called up to the Bussaco position, if no French columns were discovered coming down the Aveiro road, as now seemed probable. This day, Leith’s division, to Wellington’s intense satisfaction, arrived at San Miguel de Payares behind the Alva, and so joined the main body. Hill was reported to be a day’s march only to the rear, at Foz d’Aronce. Thus the whole of the Anglo-Portuguese regular forces between Douro and Tagus were neatly concentrated. At the same time Trant was told to bring the militia of Northern Beira down the Oporto-Coimbra road to Agueda and Sardão, and Baccelar was directed to support him with Wilson’s militia brigade, in case Masséna should have some subsidiary operation against Oporto in his mind.
On the 24th the first skirmish of the campaign took place; the 2nd Corps, advancing into the plain in front of Mortagoa, found Pack’s Portuguese facing them on the right, and Craufurd’s division on the left, with a screen of cavalry in front. They pushed in the horsemen upon the infantry, but halted when artillery opened upon them, and made no further advance. On this day the belated 8th Corps, with the reserve cavalry, at last started from Vizeu. Next morning Reynier pressed on in force with two heavy columns each formed by a division, and Craufurd was ordered by Wellington to retire, which he did with some reluctance by alternate échelons of brigades[412]. The 95th and 43rd had some sharp skirmishing with the French van, and made a stand by the village of Moura under the Bussaco heights, before retiring up the high-road, and taking position upon the crest of the great ridge[413], which they did at six o’clock in the evening.