To Wellington this was perhaps the most vexatious of all things in that vexatious time. He had hoped to detain Massena before Almeida until the rains should have set in, when the French would have found themselves struggling through a sodden, water-logged country, through bridgeless floods and a land bereft of all that could sustain the troops. Still, what could be done Wellington did, and did it nobly. Fighting a rearguard action, he fell back upon the grim and naked ridges of Busaco, where at the end of September he delivered battle and a murderous detaining wound upon the advancing hosts of France. That done, he continued the retreat through Coimbra. And now as he went he saw to it that the devastation was completed along the line of march. What corn and provisions could not be carried off were burnt or buried, and the people forced to quit their dwellings and march with the army—a pathetic, southward exodus of men and women, old and young, flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle, creaking bullock-carts laden with provender and household goods, leaving behind them a country bare as the Sahara, where hunger before long should grip the French army too far committed now to pause. In advancing and overtaking must lie Massena’s hope. Eventually in Lisbon he must bring the British to bay, and, breaking them, open out at last his way into a land of plenty.
Thus thought Massena, knowing nothing of the lines of Torres Vedras; and thus, too, thought the British Government at home, itself declaring that Wellington was ruining the country to no purpose, since in the end the British must be driven out with terrible loss and infamy that must make their name an opprobrium in the world.
But Wellington went his relentless way, and at the end of the first week of October brought his army and the multitude of refugees safely within the amazing lines. The French, pressing hard upon their heels and confident that the end was near, were brought up sharply before those stupendous, unsuspected, impregnable fortifications.
After spending best part of a month in vain reconnoitering, Massena took up his quarters at Santarem, and thence the country was scoured for what scraps of victuals had been left to relieve the dire straits of the famished host of France. How the great marshal contrived to hold out so long in Santarem against the onslaught of famine and concomitant disease remains something of a mystery. An appeal to the Emperor for succour eventually brought Drouet with provisions, but these were no more than would keep his men alive on a retreat into Spain, and that retreat he commenced early in the following March, by when no less than ten thousand of his army had fallen sick.
Instantly Wellington was up and after him. The French retreat became a flight. They threw away baggage and ammunition that they might travel the lighter. Thus they fled towards Spain, harassed by the British cavalry and scarcely less by the resentful peasantry of Portugal, their line of march defined by an unbroken trail of carcasses, until the tattered remnants of that once splendid army found shelter across the Coira. Beyond this Wellington could not continue the pursuit for lack of means to cross the swollen river and also because provisions were running short.
But there for the moment he might rest content, his immediate object achieved and his stern strategy supremely vindicated.
On the heights above the yellow, turgid flood rode Wellington with a glittering staff that included O’Moy and Murray, the quartermaster-general. Through his telescope he surveyed with silent satisfaction the straggling columns of the French that were being absorbed by the evening mists from the sodden ground.
O’Moy, at his side, looked on without satisfaction. To him the close of this phase of the campaign which had justified his remaining in office meant the reopening of that painful matter that had been left in suspense by circumstances since that June day of last year at Monsanto. The resignation then refused from motives of expediency must again be tendered and must now be accepted.
Abruptly upon the general stillness came a sharply humming sound. Within a yard of the spot where Wellington sat his horse a handful of soil heaved itself up and fell in a tiny scattered shower. Immediately elsewhere in a dozen places was the phenomenon repeated. There was too much glitter about the staff uniforms and vindictive French sharpshooters were finding them an attractive mark.
“They are firing on us, sir!” cried O’Moy on a note of sharp alarm.