The force at his disposal consisted of the Coimbra militia and a detachment of volunteers who had enlisted for the army, in all 500 men; but to these an academical corps of 300 was immediately added, the students offering themselves with that alacrity, and displaying that promptitude and intelligence, which belong to youth in their station. The people began to recover confidence when they knew that one party from this little force took the road to Aveiro and another that to Sardam, the two directions in which Coimbra might be approached from Porto. Report magnified the designs of Colonel Trant and the means which he possessed; and the double good was produced of encouraging the Portugueze and delaying the progress of the French, who, if they advanced to Coimbra, would have commanded the resources of a fertile country, have approached nearer to the armies with which their operations were to be combined for effecting the conquest of the kingdom; and moreover, in case of failure, would have had an easier retreat open through Beira. A most timely supply was obtained from the magistrates of Aveiro, who having consulted the Camara of Coimbra, placed the public money which had been collected in their city at Colonel Trant’s disposal, and also a considerable magazine of maize and other grain, ... both being thus secured from the enemy, into whose hands they must otherwise have fallen, if even a slight detachment had been sent thither. The fugitives from Porto and from that part of the country which the invaders occupied found in Coimbra all the assistance that could be afforded, and were thus prevented from carrying the panic farther; and the soldiers who had escaped the butchery were refitted and re-embodied as they came in. Colonel Trant offered the command to Baron d’Eben; but the Baron knew by experience what it was to command a hasty and tumultuous force, and chose rather to employ himself in re-collecting his battalion of the Lusitanian Legion. It was offered also to the Portugueze Brigadier Antonio Marcellino da Victoria; but he had witnessed the fate of Freire, and desired to accompany Trant as a simple volunteer. In addition to the force which was thus augmenting, two squadrons of regular troops unexpectedly arrived in Coimbra, with their commander, the Visconde de Barbacena: they had been ordered in a different direction; but being mostly natives of the Campo de Coimbra, they had insisted upon going to defend their own immediate country, and the Viscount deemed it better to obey their inclinations than withstand a spirit of insubordination to which he might too probably have fallen a sacrifice. Colonel Trant removed them as soon as possible out of the city, and separating them from the other troops, stationed them in advance at Mealhada. The Commander-in-chief being duly apprized of what had occurred, gave orders that these troops should remain under his command; and the men, whose intentions had been good when their conduct was most irregular, were thus brought again into the line of duty.
♦Col. Trant takes a position upon the Vouga.♦
With this motley force, a week after the capture of Porto had been known, Colonel Trant set forth. Taking the students’ corps under his ♦April 6.♦ own command, he advanced toward Aveiro, and effected the important purpose of securing the boats and provisions in that port. The right ♦1809.
April.♦ column, under Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell (who had escaped from the carnage at Porto), he sent to the bridge of Vouga. That river (the Vacca of the ancients) rises in the Serra de Alcoba, and having received the Portugueze Agueda, which brings an equal volume of waters, enters the Lake of Aveiro, and forms a harbour there not less beautiful than singular: it is separated from the sea by two long wings of sand, and if the entrance were but good, would be perhaps the most commodious and capacious in Europe. A party of the enemy had crossed by the bridge of Vouga, and recrossed by that of Marnel, leaving in all the intermediate places the accustomed marks of their sacrilegious barbarity. They were part of a considerable cavalry force, under General Franceschi. For having taken Porto, and being masters of the Douro, the French, accustomed to consider military posts and the course of rivers as every thing, and the people as nothing in the scale, held that the country as far as the Mondego was already theirs by right of conquest; and Franceschi’s division would have advanced to occupy Coimbra if he had not thought that the force opposed to him was respectable both in numbers and quality. Its number, which the enemy supposed to be from ten to twelve thousand, did not in reality exceed 2000, even after two companies of grenadiers had joined them from Guarda. They had been stationed there under Camp-Marshal Manoel Pinto Bacellar’s command; but choosing to act upon their own judgement in those days of general insubordination, they compelled their officers to conduct them to the Vouga, as the place where they might soonest be enabled to act against the invaders of their country. With regard to the quality of this little force, the French supposed that there were English troops with it, and a great proportion of English officers. A panic seized Campbell’s men; they fled towards Coimbra; some of the fugitives joined Trant, and added in no slight degree to the anxieties of his situation by the alarm which they communicated. The academical corps indeed, under his immediate command, was one in which he placed just confidence; but the fatal consequence of exposing the flower of a nobility and gentry like ordinary lives had been severely felt in England during the great rebellion; and the Portugueze remembered an example still more ruinous of the same prodigality, when with their King Sebastian they lost every thing except their honour. He addressed them therefore on this occasion; told them they would have to contend against superior numbers, and hinted at the reproaches which he might bring upon himself if he should lead so large a portion of the illustrious youth of Portugal to destruction. The address produced the animating effect for which it was intended, and they answered him with a general exclamation of Moriamur pro Rege nostro.
♦Cruelties of the French.♦
Fortunately the enemy gave him time; they were delayed by the expectation of Victor’s advance, by Silveira’s movements, and by ill news from Galicia; and Trant profited by their inactivity to guard the bridges, remove the boats, and bring over the flocks and herds of that pastoral country from the northern bank, the owners assisting in this the more readily when they saw some of their cattle seized by the French. Whether it were that Marshal Soult despaired of conciliating the people whom he came to invade and enslave, or if the system of severity was more congenial to his own temper as well as to that of the tyrant whom he served, he endeavoured at this time to intimidate them by measures as atrocious as those which his predecessor Junot had pursued. Such Portugueze as he suspected of communicating either with Trant or Silveira were hung from the trees along the road side, with or without proof, and their bodies left to putrefy there, all persons being forbidden to bury them. Deep as was the detestation of such enemies which this conduct excited, there were other actions at this time which excited, if possible, a stronger feeling of indignant abhorrence. A party of disbanded militia, with a Portugueze Lieutenant-Colonel at their head, surprised a chef d’escadron near the village of Arrifana, and killed him and three dragoons of his escort. He was one of the Lameth family, so noted in the first stage of the French revolution; and having been Soult’s aide-de-camp, had served in the Peninsula with a zeal which could never have been employed in a worse cause. Having been a favourite with the commander and his staff, it was determined to take vengeance for his death; it had taken place in a part of the country of which they had military possession, and they thought proper therefore to consider it as an ♦See vol. i. p. 161, and vol. ii. p. 134.
Operations, &c. p. 196.♦ action not conformable to the laws of war. General Thomieres, who had been accustomed to such services, was sent to inflict what the French called an exemplary and imposing chastisement, ... not upon the individuals concerned, for they were doing their duty elsewhere in defence of their country, but upon the people of Arrifana indiscriminately. A French detachment accordingly entered the village at daybreak, ♦April 17.♦ seized twenty-four of the inhabitants, marched them into a field, and, having tied them in couples back to back, fired upon them till they were all killed. The rest of the villagers, ... brethren and sisters, parents, wives, and children, were compelled to be spectators of this butchery; the village was then set on fire, and many of the women and girls carried into an Ermida or chapel, and there[9] violated.
♦Positions of the French and Portugueze on that side.♦
Satisfied with keeping the country north of the Vouga in subjection, and believing that Trant’s corps consisted of ten or twelve thousand men, the enemy made no attempt to pass that river; Franceschi, who commanded the cavalry, having his head-quarters at Albergaria Nova, and Thomieres at Villa de Feira, where, and at Ovar and Oliveira d’Azemeis, the infantry were stationed. Trant, cautious of exposing his real weakness, advanced only his scanty cavalry to the Vouga; the foot were quartered in Sardam and Agueda, flourishing and industrious villages, which are separated only by the Agueda, a small but navigable stream. The road from thence toward Porto passes through a pine forest, and there, profiting by the broken ground, he had fortified a position, where the enemy could have derived no advantage from their cavalry if they should pass the Vouga. From hence he communicated with Silveira, and even with Porto itself, where there were some citizens ready to expose themselves to any hazard in the hope of serving the national cause.
♦Romana captures the garrison at Villafranca.♦
To gain time in this quarter while a British force was soon and surely expected, was to gain every thing: and Marshal Soult was not in a situation to turn his undivided attention in that direction. Tidings for which he was little prepared, even after what he had experienced of the Galician spirit, came upon him from Galicia. The news of Romana’s defeat before Monterrey had been circulated over that province with such exaggerations as were deemed likely to intimidate the people. The French affirmed that Romana himself had been taken ♦1809.
March.♦ prisoner; they fired salutes and made rejoicings for their victory, and proceeded even to the mockery of offering thanksgiving in the churches. Romana meantime collected and rested his harassed troops at La Puebla de Sanabria: in spite of all the enemy’s artifices his real situation was soon known to the Spaniards, and deputations from some town or village came every day to this faithful General, assuring him that the Galicians were and would continue true to their country. Some 3000 new levies from Castille joined him there, and finding himself more secure and more hopeful than at any time since he had taken the command, he resolved upon striking a blow against the enemy upon the line of posts which they occupied from Astorga to Villafranca. The walls of the former city, ancient as they were, were not to be won without artillery; but Villafranca had no other fortress than the old castle or palace of the Marqueza de Astorga, which the French had occupied; and there he determined to attack them, moving first upon Ponferrada, where he made some prisoners, and recovered a good quantity of corn, several four-pounders, and one dismounted twelve-pounder, part of his own stores and artillery. Having remounted the larger gun, Romana dispatched his Camp-marshal D. Gabriel de Mendizabal to attack the garrison at Villafranca. That officer’s first care was to get between them and Galicia, while the commander-in-chief intercepted their retreat towards Astorga: for this purpose he proceeded to Cacabelos, ♦March 17.♦ and sent one detachment round by the right to occupy the bridge at the other end of the town, while another filed round by the left to join it there; every horseman taking up a foot soldier behind him to ford the Valcarce, and the smaller river which falls into it. Mendizabal, with the remainder of the troops, advanced along the road. His advanced parties drove in the French at all points, till they retired to the castle. The twelve-pounder was brought up; but the Spaniards found that the French fired securely from the old fortification while they themselves were exposed; upon this they entered, and, with fixed bayonets, advanced to storm the castle. Mendizabal was at their head; a ball passed through his clothes without wounding him. He summoned the enemy to surrender, and upon their hesitating what answer to return, repeated the summons with a threat, that if they refused, every man should be put to the sword. The white flag was then hoisted, and a negotiation begun, which the French were conducting with a view to gain time, till the Spanish commander cut it short, by allowing them a quarter of an hour to surrender at discretion. Upon this they submitted; Mendizabal then, as an act of free grace, permitted the officers to keep their horses and portmanteaus, and the men their knapsacks; and the colonel-commandant of the French, in returning thanks for this generosity, complimented him upon his good fortune in having captured the finest regiment in the Emperor Napoleon’s service. The prisoners were about 800. The Spaniards lost two officers and thirty men, eighty-two wounded. The result of the success was, that the Bierzo was cleared of the French, who fell back from the neighbouring part of Asturias upon Lugo, there to make a stand, supported by their main force, which was divided between Santiago, Coruña, and Ferrol.
♦Efforts of the Galicians.♦