With Moore at Corunna

by G. A. Henty

Accordingly, all the young officers and several of the seniors left with him, but O'Grady and several of the hard drinkers kept it up until midnight, observing, however, more moderation than usual in their potations.

There was none of the grumbling common when men are turned out of their beds before dawn; all were in high spirits that the time for action had arrived; the men were as eager to meet the enemy as were their officers; and the tents were all down and placed in the waggons before daylight. The regimental cooks had already been at work, and the officers went round and saw that all had had breakfast before they fell in. At six o'clock the whole were under arms and in their place as the central regiment in the brigade. They tramped on without a halt until eleven; then the bugle sounded, and they fell out for half an hour.

The men made a meal from bread and the meat that had been cooked the night before, each man carrying three days' rations in his haversack. There was another halt, and a longer one, at two o'clock, when the brigade rested for an hour in the shade of a grove.

"It is mighty pleasant to rest," O'Grady said, as the officers threw themselves down on the grass, "but it is the starting that bates one. I feel that my feet have swollen so that every step I take I expect my boots to burst with an explosion. Faith, if it comes to fighting I shall take them off altogether, and swing them at my belt. How can I run after the French when I am a cripple?"

"You had better take your boots off now, O'Grady," one of the others suggested.

"It is not aisy to get them off, and how should I get them on again? No; they have got there, and there they have got to stop, bad cess to them! I told Hoolan to rub grease into them for an hour last night, but the rascal was as drunk as an owl."

There was no more talking, for every man felt that an hour's sleep would do wonders for him; soon absolute quiet reigned in the grove, and continued until the bugle again called them to their feet. All knew now that it was Leirya they were making for, and that another ten miles still remained to be accomplished. A small body of cavalry which accompanied them now pushed on ahead, and when half the distance had been traversed a trooper brought back the news that the enemy had not yet reached the town. It was just six o'clock when the brigade marched in amid the cheers and wild excitement of the inhabitants. The waggons were not yet up, and the troops were quartered in the town, tired, and many of them foot-sore, but proud of the march they had accomplished, and that it had enabled them to forestall the French.

Laborde, indeed, arrived the same night at Batalha, eight miles distant, but on receiving the news in the morning that the British had already occupied Leirya, he advanced no farther. His position was an exceedingly difficult one; his orders were to cover the march of Loison from Abrantes, and to form a junction with that general; but to do so now would be to leave open the road through Alcobaca and Obidos to the commanding position at Torres Vedras. Batalha offered no position that he could hope to defend until the arrival of Loison; therefore, sending word to that general to move from Torras Novas, as soon as he reached that town, to Santarem, and then to march to join him at Rolica, he fell back to Alcobaca and then to Obidos, a town with a Moorish castle, built on a gentle eminence in the middle of a valley.

Leaving a detachment here, he retired to Rolica, six miles to the south of it. At this point several roads met, and he at once covered all the approaches to Torres Vedras, and the important port of Peniche, and could be joined by Loison marching down from Santarem.

The advanced brigade of the British force remained in quiet possession of Leirya during the next day, and on the following, the 11th of August, the main body of the army arrived, having taken two days on the march. The Portuguese force also came in under Friere. That general at once took possession of the magazines there, and although he had promised the English general that their contents should be entirely devoted to the maintenance of the English army, he divided them among his own force. Disgusted as the British commander was at this barefaced dishonesty, he was not in a position to quarrel with the Portuguese. It was essential to him that they should accompany him, not for the sake of the assistance that they would give, for he knew that none was to be expected from them, but from a political point of view. It was most important that the people at large should feel that their own troops were acting with the British, and that no feelings of jealousy or suspicion of the latter should arise. Friere was acting under the orders of the Bishop and Junta of Oporto, whose great object was to keep the Portuguese army together and not to risk a defeat, as they desired to keep this body intact in order that, if the British were defeated, they should be able to make favourable terms for themselves. Consequently, even after appropriating the whole of the stores and provisions found at Leirya, Friere continued to make exorbitant demands, and to offer a vigorous opposition to any further advance.