(5) Leith’s troops, so far from being ‘only passing the Mondego’ on the afternoon of the 25th, had passed it on the 23rd [Journal of Leith Hay, aide-de-camp of Leith, i. 228]. On the night of the 22nd-23rd Wellington wrote to Hill, ‘Leith’s, Picton’s, and Cole’s divisions are now on the Serra de Busaco’ [Dispatches, vi. 462]. Hill was not ‘behind the Alva,’ but massed at the fords of Peña Cova, only four miles from the battlefield. He crossed at dawn on the 26th, but could have been in action within two hours of the first shot, if the attack had been made on the 25th.
(6) Wellington, including Hill’s division, had therefore 40,000 men, not 25,000. But the latter number would have sufficed, for Ney and Reynier had only their advanced guards up, and in the hour and a half before dusk could not have brought up their whole corps by the bad and narrow roads from behind. The Diary of the 6th Corps mentions that only the vanguard division (Loison) bivouacked in front of the heights. The rearguard was as far back as Barril that night.
(7) The exact moment of the arrival of the British 1st Division may be gauged from the fact that it passed Luzo, the village behind Bussaco, at 8 a.m. on the 26th—Diary of Stothert (3rd Foot Guards), p. 188. There is only two miles from Luzo to the position taken up by the 1st Division.
SECTION XXI: CHAPTER II
THE BATTLE OF BUSSACO (SEPTEMBER 27, 1810)
It remains that we should describe the ground which Wellington had chosen on the 21st, and on which he fought with such splendid success upon the 27th. The ridge which takes its name from the convent of Bussaco is one of the best-marked positions in the whole Iberian Peninsula. A single continuous line of heights covered with heather and furze, with the dull-red and dull-grey granite cropping up here and there through the soil, extends from the Mondego on the right—where it ends precipitously—to the main chain of the Serra de Alcoba on the left. The ridge is very irregular in its altitude: the two loftiest sections are one at a distance of two miles from the Mondego, and the other to the immediate right of the convent enclosure, where the original obelisk commemorating the battle was set up[414]. Between these two culminating summits the ridge sinks down, and is at its lowest where the country-road from San Antonio de Cantaro to Palheiros passes over it. There are three other points where it is crossed by lines of communication; two lie far to the east, not far from the Mondego, where bad paths from San Paulo to Palmazes and from Carvalhal to Casal exist. The third and most important is in its left centre, where (close to the convent) the chaussée from Celorico to Coimbra, the main artery of the local road-system, passes the watershed. It does so at a place which is by no means the least lofty point of the ridge; but the line was obvious to the road-making engineer, because a spur (the only one of any importance in the heights) here runs gradually down from the Serra into the lower ground. To lead the chaussée up the side of this spur, past the village of Moura, and so to the crest of the ridge on gentle slopes, was clearly better than to make it charge the main range, even at a less lofty point. The convent lies just to the right of the spot where the chaussée passes the sky-line, a few hundred yards off the road. It was a simple, low quadrangle, with a small chapel in its midst, standing in a fine wood of pine and oak, surrounded by a ten-foot wall. The wood is sprinkled with hermitages, picturesque little buildings hewn in the rock, where those of the monks who chose practised the anchorite’s life. The outer wall of the wood and the tops of its trees are just visible on the sky-line of the main ridge: the convent is not, being well down the reverse-slope. The point where the convent wood tops the heights is the only section of them where trees are seen on the summit: the rest of the line is bare heath, with occasional outbreaks of rock, falling in slopes of greater or lesser steepness towards the broken wooded foot-hills, where the French lay. On part of the left-centre there is ground which it is no exaggeration to describe as precipitous, to the front of the highest piece of the ridge, below the old obelisk. The effect of the whole line of heights is not dissimilar to, though on a smaller scale than, the Malvern Hills. The highest point on the Serra is about 1,200 feet above sea-level—but much less, of course, above the upland below.
The position of Bussaco is fully nine miles long[415] from end to end, from the steep hill above the Mondego to Cole’s western flank: this was a vast front for an army of 50,000 men to cover, according to the ideas of 1810. There were absolute gaps in the line at more than one place, especially above Carvalho, where about a mile separated Leith’s left from his central brigade. The defence of such a position could only be risked because of two facts: one was that every movement of the enemy on the lower ground before the ridge could be accurately made out from above: he could not concentrate in front of any section of the heights without being seen. His only chance of doing so would have been to take advantage of the night; but even if he had drawn up for the attack before dawn—a thing almost impossible in the broken, ravine-cut, wooded bottoms—he could not have moved till full daylight, because the face of the position presents so many irregularities, such as small gullies and miniature precipices, that columns climbing in the dark must undoubtedly have got lost and broken up on the wild hillside. Moreover, there was a thick cordon of British pickets pushed forward almost to the foot of the ridge, which would have given warning by their fire and their preliminary resistance, if any advance had been attempted in the grey dawn.
The second advantage of the Bussaco position is that on its left-centre and right-centre the ridge has a broad flat top, some 300 or 400 yards across, on which all arms can move laterally with ease to support any threatened point. It is so broad that Wellington even ventured to bring up a few squadrons of dragoons to the summit, rightly arguing that a cavalry charge would be of all things the most unexpected reception that an enemy who had breasted such a hillside could meet at the end of his climb. As a matter of fact, however, this section of the heights was never attacked by the French. The right of the position is not flat-topped like the centre, but has a narrow saddle-back, breaking into outcrops of rock at intervals: but though here prompt motion from right to left, or left to right, is not possible on the crest, there is a rough country-path, good for infantry and available even for guns, a few hundred yards down the reverse side of the slope. Along this troops could be moved with ease, entirely out of sight of the enemy. It proved useful for Leith’s division during the battle. Wellington calculated, therefore, with perfect correctness, that he could count on getting an adequate force of defenders to any portion of his long line before the enemy could establish himself on the summit. The extreme left, where Cole’s division lay, was the hardest part of his line to reinforce, for want of good lateral communication: it was also a good deal lower than Craufurd’s post; here, therefore, Wellington had placed the main mass of his reserves; the German Legion, and two Portuguese brigades were lying on his left-centre very close to the 4th Division, so that they would be available at short notice, though they would have a stiff climb if the French chose that section of the position as their objective, and it had to be strengthened in haste.
The distribution of the army remains to be described. On the extreme right, on the height of Nossa Senhora do Monte, just overhanging the Mondego, was a battalion of the Lusitanian Legion, with two guns. Next to them, on very high ground, lay Hill’s division, three British and two Portuguese brigades[416], with a battery on each flank. Then came a slight dip in the ridge, where the road from San Paulo to Palmazes crosses it: athwart this path lay Leith’s newly constituted 5th Division, consisting of three British and seven Portuguese battalions. The British brigade lay on the right, then came (after a long interval) two battalions of the Lusitanian Legion, the only troops guarding two miles of very rough ground. On Leith’s extreme left, towards Picton’s right, was Spry’s Portuguese brigade, and three unattached battalions (8th Line and Thomar militia). Beyond the 8th regiment, where the watershed sinks again, and is crossed by the road from San Antonio de Cantaro to Palheiros, Picton’s line began. On his right, across the road, was Arentschildt’s Portuguese battery, supported by the 74th British regiment, and Champlemond’s Portuguese brigade of three battalions. The 45th and 88th, the two remaining battalions of the brigade of Mackinnon, were placed to the left of the road, the former on the first spur to the north of it, the latter nearly a mile to the left. Lightburne’s brigade, and Thompson’s British battery were a short distance beyond the 88th. North of Picton’s position the ridge rises suddenly again to its loftiest section; along this almost impregnable ground, with its precipitous front, were ranged the three British brigades of Spencer’s 1st Division—the Guards on the right, Blantyre’s on the left, Pakenham’s in the centre, 5,000 bayonets dominating the whole country-side and the rest of the position. North of them again, where the ridge falls sharply along the back wall of the convent wood, was Pack’s Portuguese brigade, reaching almost to the high-road. Along the curve of the high-road itself, in column, was Coleman’s Portuguese brigade, and beside it A. Campbell’s Portuguese, with the German Legion beyond them on the Monte Novo ridge. Coleman, Campbell, and the Germans were the main reserve of the army, and were in second line, for, far to the front of them, on a lower slope, along a curve of the chaussée, lay Craufurd and the Light Division, looking down on the village of Sula almost at the bottom of the heights. Between Craufurd and his next neighbour to the right, Pack, was a curious feature of the field, a long narrow ravine, with steep grassy sides, terraced in some places into vineyards[417]. This cleft, between Sula on the left and Moura on the right, cuts deep up into the hillside, its head almost reaching the crest of the watershed below the convent. In order to circumvent this precipitous gully, the chaussée, after passing through the village of Moura, takes a semicircular curve to the right, and goes round the head of the cleft. For half a mile or more it overhangs the steep declivities on its right, while on its left at this point it is dominated by a pine wood on the upper slopes, so that it forms more or less of a defile. The gully is so narrow here that guns on Craufurd’s position had an easy range on the road, and enfiladed it most effectively. The battery attached to the Light Division—that of Ross—had been placed in a sort of natural redoubt, formed by a semicircle of boulders with gaps between; some of the guns bore on the village of Sula, on the lower slope below, others across the ravine, to the high-road. They were almost invisible, among the great stones, to an enemy coming up the hill or along the chaussée. Craufurd had got a battalion of his Caçadores (No. 3) in the village, low down the slope, with his other Portuguese battalion and the 95th Rifles strung out on the hillside above, to support the troops below them. His two strong Line battalions, the 43rd and 52nd, were lying far above, in the road, at the point where it has passed the head of the gully in its curve, with a little fir wood behind them and a small windmill in their front. The road being cut through the hillside here, they were screened as they stood, but had only to advance a few feet to reach the sky line, and to command the slope stretching upwards from the village of Sula.