[234] Pack’s Portuguese were so exhausted and sickly that they were left behind for a rest, and to wait for more food, at Mangualde on the upper Mondego.
[235] ‘General Slade had been in Celorico the whole of yesterday,’ complains Tomkinson of the 16th, ‘and yet had not the least idea where the French had retired to.’ Diary, p. 89.
[236] Wellington to Henry Wellesley, March 27, from Gouvea.
[237] Napier (iii. 129) is wrong in saying that the movement was ‘Supported by the 1st, 5th, and 7th Divisions.’ These only reached Celorico that day, and were fifteen miles from the field. See Diary of Stothert of the Guards, p. 232. Napier was misled by the vague wording of Wellington’s dispatch to Lord Liverpool (vii. 425), from which it might be supposed that these divisions were up.
[238] The 3rd Division arrived some time before the 6th and the Light were in actual touch with the enemy.
Picton writes about this: ‘Masséna with full 20,000 men was on the heights, and in the city of Guarda, when I made my appearance at 9 in the morning, with three British and two Portuguese regiments.... He ought immediately to have attacked me, but allowed me to remain within 400 yards of his main body for about two hours, before the other columns came up. But of course their movements were alarming him, and decided him not to hazard an attack, the failure of which would have probably brought on the total discomfiture of his army.’ Letter in Robinson’s Life of Picton, vol. ii. pp. 3, 4.
[239] See Tomkinson’s Diary, p. 90.
[240] Wellington to Beresford, from Celorico, March 30: ‘Yesterday we manœuvred the French out of Guarda. Masséna was there, some say with his whole army, I think certainly with two corps: not a shot was fired.’ (Dispatches, vii. 412.) Same day to Charles Stuart: ‘They were much stronger than we: I had only three divisions on the hill.’ (Dispatches, vii. 418.)
[241] Napier’s statements (iii. 129) are quite borne out by Tomkinson’s Diary: ‘In the rear of Pega is an open plain of two miles which the enemy had to pass: as usual we looked at them for half an hour: then the guns were ordered up, and in place of firing at the main body could only get within range of their pickets ... we continued to follow, and, although they had no cavalry, our general was afraid to go into the plain to get the guns in range of the infantry: they of course got clear off.’ (Diary, p. 91.)
[242] As late as May 1 the regimental statistics show that the 3rd Dragoons had only 139 available horses, sick or sound, and the 10th Dragoons only 233, They had started the campaign with 563 and 535 respectively.