The victorious British troops followed the enemy far down the hillside, till they came under the fire of Reynier’s artillery, and were warned to retire to their former position. They thus missed the last episode of Reynier’s attack, which occurred along the hillside just to the left of the point at which their collision with Merle’s battalions had taken place. The Commander of the 2nd Corps, seeing his right column rolling down the slope, while the 31st was melting away, and gradually giving ground under the fire of the Anglo-Portuguese troops at the Pass of San Antonio, hurried to Foy’s brigade and started it up the hill to the right of the 31st. Foy had been told to support that regiment, but had taken Reynier’s orders to mean that he was to follow up its advance when it began to make headway. His Corps-Commander cantered up to him shouting angrily, ‘Why don’t you start on the climb? You could get the troops forward if you choose, but you don’t choose.’ Whereupon Foy rode to the leading regiment of his brigade, the 17th Léger, put himself at its head, and began to ascend the heights, his other regiment, the 70th, following in échelon on his left rear. At this moment Merle’s division was still visible, falling back in great disorder some way to the right, and pursued by Wallace—a discouraging sight for the seven battalions that were about to repeat its experiment. Foy chose as his objective the first and lowest hilltop to the French right of the pass of San Antonio, and took his string of columns, the right always leading, up towards it at such pace as was possible over the long heather, and among the occasional patches of stones. The troops which were in front of them here were those sections of Picton’s division which were neither far away on the English left with Wallace and Lightburne, nor actively engaged on the road against the 31st Léger, viz. the right wing of the British 45th under Colonel Meade, and the Portuguese 8th of the Line which had just been aiding in the repulse of Merle. These were soon afterwards joined by one battalion of the 9th Portuguese from Champlemond’s brigade, and the unattached battalion of Thomar militia, which Picton sent up the hill. Yet this was still far too small a force to resist Foy’s seven battalions, unless speedily supported.
But support in sufficient quantity was forthcoming. General Leith had received orders from Wellington to close in to Picton’s right if he saw no hostile troops in his own front. As it was clear that Reynier had kept no reserves or flanking detachments to the south of the high-road, it was possible for the 5th Division to move at once[430]. While the fog was still hanging thickly along the crests of the Serra, Leith ordered a general move of his brigades to the left, while Hill detached troops from the southern end of the position to occupy the heights which the 5th Division was evacuating. This general move to the left was carried out along the rough but serviceable country-road which passes along the rear of the plateau, out of sight of the French. At the moment when Foy’s attack was beginning, Leith had just reached the Pass of San Antonio, with Spry’s Portuguese brigade at the head of his column, then the two battalions of the Lusitanian legion, and lastly, Barnes’s British brigade. One of Dickson’s Portuguese batteries was also with him. He dropped the guns at the pass to aid Arentschildt’s battery, whose fire was beginning to slacken from want of ammunition, and left Spry in their rear and the Legionary battalions on the country-road hard by, while he brought up Barnes’s brigade to the front, and reported his arrival to Picton. The latter said, it appears, that he was strong enough at the Pass, but would be obliged if Leith would attend to the attack which was being made at this moment on the height to its immediate left[431]. This movement of Foy’s was now becoming dangerous: forcing his way to the summit under a destructive fire, he had met on the edge of the plateau the three Portuguese battalions and the wing of the British 45th, and had driven them back—the Thomar militia broke and fled down the rear declivity of the heights, and the 8th Portuguese, though they did not fly, gave way and fell back in disorder. Just at this moment Leith, with Barnes’s three battalions, came up along the communication-road at the back of the plateau. ‘A heavy fire of musketry,’ writes Leith, ‘was being kept up upon the heights, the smoke of which prevented a clear view of the state of things. But when the rock forming the high part of the Serra became visible, the enemy appeared to be in full possession of it, and a French officer was in the act of cheering, with his hat off, while a continued fire was being kept up from thence, and along the whole face of the slope of the Serra, in a diagonal direction towards its bottom, by the enemy ascending rapidly in successive columns, formed for an attack upon a mass of men belonging to the left battalion of the 8th and the 9th Portuguese, who, having been severely pressed, had given way, and were rapidly retiring in complete confusion and disorder. The enemy had dispersed or driven off everything opposed to him—was in possession of the rocky eminence of the Serra.’ A few of his tirailleurs were even on the upper edge of the rear slope.
Leith, realizing that there was still time to save the position—for only the head of the French column had crowned the rocky knoll,—deployed his leading battalion, the 9th, across the summit of the plateau, while sending on his second, the 38th, to get between the enemy and the reverse slope of the position. This last move turned out to be fruitless, for the rear face of the knoll is so steep and so thickly covered with large boulders[432], that the 38th was unable to climb it, and came back to fall in on the right of the 9th. But before it could get back, the senior regiment had done its work. Leith had led it diagonally across the plateau, so as to place it along the flank of the leading battalions of Foy’s column, of which the first was now ensconced on the summit of the heights, while the others were struggling up to join it. The 9th opened with a volley at 100 yards, and then advanced firing, receiving hardly any return from the enemy, who seemed entirely disconcerted by the appearance of a new force parallel with its flank. At twenty yards from the French, the 9th lowered its bayonets and prepared to charge, Leith riding at its head waving his plumed hat. Then the enemy gave way. ‘My heroic column,’ writes Foy, ‘much diminished during the ascent, reached the summit of the plateau, which was covered with hostile troops. Those on our left made a flank movement and smashed us up by their battalion volleys; meanwhile those on our front, covered by some rocks, were murdering us with impunity. The head of my column fell back to its right, despite my efforts; I could not get them to deploy, disorder set in, and the 17th and 70th raced down-hill in headlong flight. The enemy pursued us half-way to the foot of the heights, till he pulled up on coming under effective fire from our artillery[433].’
The battle was now over on this side: Reynier had in reserve only one regiment, the 47th of the Line. His other twenty-two battalions had all been beaten to pieces; they had lost over 2,000 men, including more than half their superior officers: Merle commanding the 1st Division was wounded, his junior brigadier Graindorge was killed; Foy, commanding the first brigade of the other division, was wounded. Of the six colonels who had gone up the heights, those of the 31st Léger, 2nd Léger, 4th Léger, and 70th had been hit: of the twenty-three battalion commanders four were killed, seven wounded. Of 421 officers in all who went into action, 118—more than one in four—had been disabled. Of the 2,023 casualties, 350 men and fifteen officers were prisoners in the hands of the British. And these losses had been suffered without inflicting any corresponding loss upon the defenders of the position: Picton’s division had 427 killed and wounded; Leith’s 160. The only regiments appreciably diminished were the 45th, 88th, and Portuguese 8th—with 150, 134, and 113 casualties respectively. The only superior officers hit were the Portuguese brigadier Champlemond, and a major each in the 45th and 88th. Of the 3rd and 5th Divisions only six British and five Portuguese battalions had been engaged[434]—the superiority of force against them had been about two to one. Yet Reynier complained in his dispatch to Masséna of being crushed by ‘a triple superiority of numbers’! As a matter of fact, it was the position that beat him, not the imagined numbers of the allies. Wellington could risk much in taking up a long line, when he had a good road of communication along its rear, to shift troops from point to point, and when he could descry every movement of the enemy half an hour before it began to take effect.
The other half of the battle of Bussaco was an even shorter business than Reynier’s struggle with Picton and Leith, but no less bloody and decisive. Ney exactly obeyed Masséna’s orders to attack, with two divisions, the ground on each side of the Coimbra chaussée, when he should see the 2nd Corps lodged on the crest beside the pass of San Antonio de Cantaro. The many reproaches heaped upon him, by critics who have not read his orders, for attacking too late, and not at the same moment as Reynier, are groundless: he was told to go forward only when his colleague ‘sera maître des hauteurs.’ He moved precisely when the dispersing mists showed Merle’s great column massed on the edge of the plateau. Of his three divisions he had, again in exact obedience to orders, placed Loison on the right, Marchand on the left, while Mermet was in reserve, behind Moura. The two fighting divisions were completely separated by the deep and steep ravine of which we have had occasion to speak. The ground in front of them was very different: Marchand had to advance, by rather gentle slopes, along the chaussée, which curves up towards the convent of Bussaco. Loison had to go up a hillside of a very different sort, whose lower stretch, as far as the village of Sula, is gentle, and much cut up by woods and orchards, but whose upper half, beyond Sula, is extremely steep and absolutely destitute of cover. There was no road here, only a rough mule-track.
Loison started a few minutes before Marchand: he had his two brigades side by side, Simon’s (six battalions) on the right, Ferey’s (also six battalions) on the left. Both started from the low ground in front of Sula, each with a strong chain of tirailleurs covering an advance in serried battalion columns; the 26th regiment was the leading regiment in Simon’s, the 66th in Ferey’s brigade. On leaving the bottom, and advancing among the trees on the lower slope, both brigades found their tirailleurs at once checked by a very strong skirmishing line. Pack had spread out the whole of the 4th Caçadores on the hillside in front of his line battalions. Craufurd had thrown out the 95th—more than 700 rifles—and the 3rd Caçadores—600 rifles more—into the enclosures in front of Sula. The 43rd and 52nd, with the 1st Caçadores, were lying down in the hollow road at the head of the steep slope above that village, completely concealed from sight. Of formed troops, Loison could only see the 1st Division far above him on the left on the highest plateau of the Serra, and Cole far away to his right on the lower hillsides towards Paradas. In order to press in the obstinate light troops in front of him, Loison was compelled to push forward whole battalions from his fighting-line: by a strenuous use of these, the Caçadores and Rifles were evicted first from the lower slopes, then from the village of Sula. But when the latter had been captured, the French found themselves under a heavy fire of artillery: Ross’s guns on the knoll above, between their embrasures of rock, being carefully trained upon the exits of the village, while Cleeves’ German battery joined in from its position at the head of the ravine, and took Ferey in flank. It was impossible to halt in Sula, and Loison ordered his brigadiers to push forward the attack once more, taking Ross’s guns and the windmill near them as their objective. The slope was now much steeper, the British and Portuguese skirmishers had rallied once more above Sula, and Craufurd had sent down the 1st Caçadores to feed the fighting-line. It was only with a severe effort, and with much loss, that the French battalions won their way up the culminating slope. Simon’s front regiment, the 26th of the Line, stuck to the mule-path up the hill from Sula, in one dense and deep column, with the front of a company only, and a depth of three battalions. Ferey’s brigade, having no track to follow, seems to have moved in a somewhat less vicious formation along the slope further to the left, bordering on the northern edge of the funnel-like ravine which formed the boundary of Craufurd’s position. Both were in a very disordered condition, owing to the fierce conflict which they had waged with the screen of Rifles and Caçadores all up the hillside.
Lying in the hollow road parallel with the head of the ravine were the two Line regiments of the Light Division, the 43rd on the right, the 52nd on the left. They were very strong battalions, despite their losses at the Coa, the one having 800 the other 950 bayonets. In front of them, on the sky-line by the little windmill, to the right of Ross’s guns, Craufurd had been standing all through the earlier stages of the engagement, watching the gradual progress of the French up the hillside. He waited patiently till the enemy’s two columns, a few hundred yards apart, had reached the last steep of the hillside below him. His recoiling skirmishers were at last thrust in upon him—they passed, some to the flanks, some through the intervals between the battalions and the guns, and the front was clear.
