♦Sir Arthur pursues the French.♦
As soon as Sir Arthur was informed of the rapidity and success of Beresford’s movements, he directed that General upon Chaves, to intercept the enemy should they turn to the right. ♦May 14.♦ Beresford had anticipated this order, and had already dispatched Silveira to occupy the passes of Salamonde and Ruyvaens; but the French were flying too fast for this to be executed in time. Their flight, however, was conducted with great presence of mind and judgement. Marshal Soult, when all his divisions were collected, made a display of them near Lanhoso, not to the pursuers, but for the sake of his own men, that they might see their own numbers, and acquire some confidence in their strength. Dispirited as they were by the abandonment of their artillery and baggage and the loss of their plunder, this had a good effect; and the retreat would have been honourable to Marshal Soult if it had not been disgraced by such cruelties as leave an uneffaceable stigma upon the commander of any troops by whom they are perpetrated. Marshal Soult’s soldiers plundered and murdered the peasantry at their pleasure: many persons, when the English arrived, were found hanging from the trees by the way-side, who had been put to death for no other reason than that they were not friendly to their insolent invaders; and the line of their retreat might ♦Sir Arthur Wellesley’s dispatch, May 18.♦ every where be traced by the smoke of the villages which they burnt. They suffered for this as was to be expected: whatever stragglers fell into the hands of the peasantry before the advanced guard could come up to save them were put to death with as little humanity as they had shown. Some of them were thrown alive amid the flames of those houses which their comrades had set on fire.
♦Sufferings of the enemy in their flight.♦
On the evening of the 14th Sir Arthur thought it certain, by the enemy’s movements about Braga, that they intended to retreat either upon Chaves or Montalegre; and he sent orders to Beresford, in case they should take the latter direction, to push on for Monterrey, so as to stop them if they should pass by Villa del Rey. ♦May 16.♦ At Salamonde the pursuers came up with their rear-guard, and drove them out of the town, which they had destroyed. The pursuers slept on the ground that night, and dressed their food and dried their clothes by the fires which the enemy had lighted for their own use. The sufferings of the French during the retreat were only not so severe as those of Sir John Moore’s army, because it was in a milder season; ... but it was made under a fear of the pursuers which the British soldiers had never felt; the rain was heavy and incessant, and time enough for necessary rest was not allowed, ... their danger was so imminent. They who halted at ten at night were on the march again at three in the morning, and in the few intervening hours the cavalry had to seek both provisions and forage, and the infantry to provide for themselves as they could. The greater part of the men had nothing for eight days except parched maize; very many died of want and exhaustion, and not a few lay down by the way to take the chance of life or death, as they might fall into the hands of the British troops or of the peasantry. Their track was strewn with dead horses and mules, who had either been driven till they fell, or killed, or more barbarously hamstrung, when it was not possible by any goading to make them proceed farther.
♦Loss of the French at Puente de Misarella.♦
A bridge over the Cavado had been occupied by the armed peasantry, but mistaking some Swiss troops who were clothed in red for British, they allowed them to pass; but many hurrying over in the darkness, fell into the torrent and were lost. A greater destruction took place at the Puente de Misarella, a bridge with a low parapet over a deep ravine, and so narrow as not to admit two horsemen abreast. The enemy had driven away the peasants who were attempting to destroy it, but a fire was kept up upon them by others from the crags of that wild and awful pass; and upon the report of some cannon fired by the advanced guard of the pursuers upon their rear, the French were seized with panic; many threw down their arms and ran; they struggled with each other to cross the bridge, losing all self-command; and the British advance, when they arrived at the spot, found the ravine on both sides choked with men and horses, who had been jostled over in ♦Naylies, 126.
Operations, &c. 262.♦ the frantic precipitancy of their flight. Here the papers of the army, and the little and more precious part of the baggage, which had hitherto been saved, were lost.
♦The pursuit given over at Montalegre.♦
Marshal Soult was guided in this retreat by an itinerant Navarrese, who, in the exercise of one of the vilest callings (that of hangman alone excepted) in which a human creature can be employed, had acquired a thorough knowledge of the country. This man conducted him by cross roads and mountainous paths, where neither artillery nor commissariat could follow. ♦May 18.♦ Sir Arthur continued the pursuit as far as Montalegre, and then halted, finding that the enemy had gone through the mountains toward Orense by roads impracticable for carriages, and where it was impossible either to stop or overtake them. He estimated that Soult had lost all his artillery and equipments, and not less than a fourth of his men, since he was attacked upon the Vouga. “If,” said he, “an army throws away all its cannon, equipments, and baggage, and every thing that can strengthen it and enable it to act together as a body, and if it abandons all those who are entitled to its protection, but add to its weight and impede its progress, it must obviously be able to march through roads where it cannot be overtaken by an enemy who has not made the same sacrifices.”
♦Movement of troops from Aragon.♦
When the British Commander was commencing his operations from Coimbra, he received information from the Embassador at Seville that a French division of 15,000 men had certainly left Aragon, with the intent, it was believed, of joining either Ney or Soult. It became, therefore, a grave question for his consideration, whether to return, in pursuance of his plan of co-operating with Cuesta, when he should have driven the enemy out of the north of Portugal, ... or push with greater eagerness for the entire destruction of Soult’s army, instead of leaving him to retreat, unite with Ney, and become again formidable by the junction of this force from Aragon. Upon mature deliberation he determined not to vary from his first purpose, because, though the intelligence was announced as indubitable, no tidings of this division had been transmitted from Ciudad Rodrigo, Braganza, or Chaves, quarters where it might have been expected to be known, and because his instructions enjoined him to make the protection of Portugal his principal object. ♦Reasons for not continuing the pursuit.♦ If it were not necessary, therefore, to remain for that object in the northern provinces, he conceived that he should act in the best manner both for Portugal and Spain, by joining Cuesta with all speed, and commencing active operations against Victor. Thus he had determined before he advanced from Coimbra, and therefore he now desisted from the pursuit, satisfied with having done, if not all that he wished, all that was possible, and more than he had expected. Had the Portugueze at Chaves been active in obeying their instructions, and occupying the defiles near Salamonde, the French, who had abandoned their ammunition ♦Naylies, 128.♦ and their guns, must have been irretrievably lost; the very cartridges which the men carried, and which constituted their whole stock, were rendered useless by the rain, and they could no otherwise have escaped the fate they deserved from the hands of the Portugueze than by surrendering ♦Col. Jones, vol. i. 204–7.♦ to the British. As it was, they had lost not less than a fourth of their army since Sir Arthur attacked them on the Vouga.