[195] Sprünglin says 400, Masséna, in his dispatch to Berthier, under 200, Marbot 150, Victoires et Conquêtes 400. Sprünglin, as Ney’s aide-de-camp, had the best chance of knowing. But Martinien’s lists, in which I can only find ten or twelve casualties among officers, suggest a smaller total, roughly perhaps 250.
[196] See Dispatches, vii. p. 366.
[197] There is a bitter letter from Pack of March 21st in his Memoirs concerning the ‘bad commissariat and worse medical establishment of an inefficient and penniless government which no officer can serve with pleasure or advantage,’ which quite bears out Wellington, Dispatches, vii. p. 371.
[198] Wellington had called Beresford up to him on May 9th, and the latter was present at Pombal and Redinha. He rode hastily back to pick up his forces, which were to form the Army of Estremadura, on the 16th and reached Thomar on the 17th March.
[199] Masséna to Berthier, from Maceira, March 19: ‘D’après les rapports, le général Hill [he means Beresford, who had been in charge of Hill’s former command since December] se portait avec sa division et un gros détachement de Portugais à travers les montagnes du haut Zézère, se dirigeant sur la rive gauche du Mondégo. Dès ce moment j’ai abandonné l’espoir de garder cette rive sans risquer une bataille.’ ... ‘Dans l’état actuel des choses et d’après les mouvements que l’ennemi peut faire sur mes flancs, par le Mondégo ou par les montagnes de Guarda, où s’est dirigé le corps de Hill, il est nécessaire de rapprocher l’armée de notre base d’opérations’ [i. e. to retreat into Spain].
[200] Wellington to Beresford. (Dispatches, vii. 375-6.)
[201] ‘Rien ne nous empêchait,’ says Masséna’s biographer Koch, ‘de passer à gué le Mondégo, et de nous rendre maîtres de la Sierra de Alcoba, d’où nous menacerions Coïmbre et toute la contrée comprise entre le Mondégo, le Duero et la mer.’ But there was a hindrance—or rather three hindrances—the Mondego was not fordable at the moment, and what was more important, the starving army could not have lived on the country-side north of the Mondego. Moreover the passage of the Mondego with a lively enemy at his heels would have been too dangerous for Masséna, who had already refused to accept such conditions on the day of Condeixa.
[202] From Masséna’s dispatch to Berthier, March 19.
[203] Diary of George Simmons of the 95th, p. 146.
[204] Napier says, ‘by an ingenious raft contrived by the staff-corps’ (iii. 126), but Tomkinson of the 16th Light Dragoons and Simmons speak of a wooden bridge.