[176] e. g. in Delagrave, p. 201: ‘Deux colonnes des siens remontaient le Mondégo, le long des rives: celle qui avait débarqué à Figuieras avait pour but principal de couvrir Coïmbre.... L’autre, qui remontait la rive gauche, avait été détachée de l’armée ennemie avec ordre de déborder et d’attaquer la droite des Français.’ Belmas also speaks of this imaginary force.
[177] Marbot says that the officer arrived four hours after the evacuation of Condeixa, though that place is only five miles from Fonte Cuberta (Mémoires, ii. 443). Fririon makes a much graver accusation against Ney, viz. that he sent no messenger at all, and that the allied cavalry were discovered by an officer named Girbault on Masséna’s staff.
[178] For an account of this curious affair see Fririon, Noël (who was with Loison at the moment), Pelet, and Marbot. The latter (as always) gives the most picturesque and probably the least trustworthy account. He forgets to mention that Fonte Cuberta was occupied by Loison’s 4,500 infantry, and writes as if a squadron of hussars had retired before Masséna’s escort of 50 men. According to him the Marshal’s night-retreat was much disturbed by the misadventures of his mistress (Renique’s sister), whose horse repeatedly fell in the dark and rolled over her, to his intense anxiety. Masséna’s dispatch says only, ‘Le duc d’Elchingen abandonna la position de Condeixa plus tôt que je ne le croyais. Le poste de Fonte Cuberta était découvert, et l’artillerie qui s’y trouvait compromise. J’ai gagné avec elle la grande route par une marche de flanc, à portée de canon de la ligne ennemie, par un beau clair de lune.’
[179] ‘Le Maréchal Masséna crut voir dans ce mouvement opéré à son insu l’intention de le faire tomber, lui et son état-major, entre les mains de l’ennemi. Le Général Fririon chercha à lui faire entendre qu’il devait attribuer ce fait à un oubli plutôt qu’à un sentiment de malveillance. Mais il lui fut impossible de le persuader. “Cette conduite est inexcusable,” lui dit Masséna; “le mouvement rétrograde de ces deux divisions était exécuté clandestinement; c’est un acte que rien ne peut justifier.”’ (Fririon, pp. 150-1.)
[180] For all this see Soriano da Luz, iii. pp. 360-1.
[181] According to Delagrave he got the news neither from Ney nor from an aide-de-camp of his own whom he had left with the 6th Corps to transmit information, but from an emissary of Masséna named Girod, who thought of him when the proper authorities failed to do so.
[182] Called the Deuça by Napier and other writers—an erroneous contraction of Rio de Eça.
[183] Late Champlemond’s, heavily engaged against Reynier at Bussaco.
[184] viz. Ashworth’s (late A. Campbell’s), Spry’s, Madden’s (late Eben’s), and Harvey’s, of which the third had only one regiment engaged at Bussaco, and the others had been on parts of the line not attacked by the French.
[185] I walked round Casal Novo on September 28, 1910. It is a very small place, under a low undulation of the high-lying plateau which the road crosses.