[319] Belmas says that it had started déjà, and must be right: while Lapéne, who thinks that it was loaded up and sent off after the alarm, fails to account for its being six miles along the road when surprised. Heavy guns travel slowly. Beresford corroborates Belmas.
[320] This is Long’s account of the orders given by Beresford (p. 75 of the Vindication of the Military Reputation of the late General Long, by C. E. Long), in a letter from the general to General Le Marchant. This agrees pretty well with Beresford’s version of the facts, and is no doubt correct.
[321] A squadron was absent with Colborne’s column and another troop on distant reconnaissance work, and the regiment was not much over 200 sabres.
[322] Napier’s story that they charged through each other, formed up front to rear, and then charged each other again is strongly denied by Beresford as ‘purely supposititious’ (Strictures, pp. 152-3), and not confirmed by Long or any other eye-witness.
[323] See vol. i. p. 119.
[324] Belmas, iii. p. 557.
[325] So, at least, I gather from Long’s narrative: he says that ‘he sent an order for the advance of De Grey’s brigade’ (p. 34), and in another place (p. 53), that ‘it was only necessary to charge and throw into confusion the cavalry at their (the French) head and rear, and the object was accomplished.’ The object is defined as the ‘annihilation’ of the French column, which Long thinks would have surrendered.
[326] This regiment lost one officer and ten men killed, and thirty-two wounded, beside some prisoners, in the abortive advance. The French statement that the 2nd Hussars made ‘de belles charges’ is therefore evidently justified. But it was the flanking infantry fire which demoralized the Portuguese (Long’s Vindication, p. 49).
[327] By all accounts this was Baron Trip, a Dutch émigré officer, who was serving on Beresford’s staff. The statement was very astounding, even incredible, considering that the country was open and undulating. But it was almost equally incredible that the 13th and 7th Portuguese should have pursued the French dragoons completely out of sight, six miles away, without leaving a man behind.
[328] Colonel Gabriel, a staff officer of the 2nd Division, says that Colborne’s brigade was only 500 yards in rear of the heavy dragoons, and the French still in sight when Beresford ordered the final halt. See Long’s Vindication, p. 65.