[14] Upon this windmill the governor intended to mount a gun, and the gun was lying in it, but not as yet mounted, and consequently useless; another dismounted gun was lying near the mill. These guns of course could be of no use in the action which ensued, but they figured in Marshal Massena’s account of it.
[15] Massena’s official statement of this action was a masterpiece of impudent falsehood. He asserted that General Craufurd’s force consisted of 2000 horse and 8000 foot, and that they were all posted under the guns of the fortress; that they gave way before the French, our cavalry not daring to meet them with the sabre, and the infantry pursued at a running step; that we lost sixty officers, of whom twenty-four were buried in the field of battle; 400 killed, 700 wounded, 400 prisoners, one stand of colours, and two pieces of cannon, while the loss of the conquerors did not amount to 300. He took no colours, and the two pieces of cannon were the dismounted guns at the windmill. In a subsequent dispatch Massena assured the war-minister that all his troops were burning with impatience to teach the English army what they had already taught Craufurd’s division. Our own gazette had already shown the veracity of this boaster’s account; but this new insult called forth a counter-statement from General Craufurd, from which this detail has chiefly been drawn, and to the truth of which the whole British army were witnesses.
[16] The author of Der Feldzug von Portugal in den Jahren 1811 und 1812 (Stutgard und Tubingen, 1816) is mistaken in calling it the burial-place of the kings of Portugal.
[17] Some of the Portugueze charging a superior force got so wedged in among the French, that they had not room to use their bayonets; they turned up the butt ends of their muskets, and plied them with such vigour, that they presently cleared the way.
[18] Ten ensigns’ commissions were sent out after this action by the commander-in-chief to Lord Wellington, as rewards for the same number of non-commissioned officers who had distinguished themselves.
[19] The Portugueze officer who was with Massena, and whose journal is printed in the Investigador Portuguez, states the number of killed and wounded whom the French left on the ground at 4600.
[20] There are in fact three passes over this Serra, all of them practicable for cavalry.
[21] Cardoso says, that to the east the Serra de Castello Rodrigo may be distinguished, which is thirty leagues off, the Serra de Minde to the south, and that of Grijo to the north, fifteen leagues distant. Westward is the mouth of the Mondego and the coast.
[22] A loss which was magnified to 500 in Massena’s dispatches.
[23] The under-gardener of the Botanical Garden at Coimbra, with his family, consisting of his wife (a young woman of eighteen, with an infant at the breast) and her mother, having tarried too long to accompany the army, was overtaken in the little town of Soure by some stragglers from the enemy’s advanced guard, who were in search of plunder. These miscreants secured the husband by fastening his hands behind him: they tied the mother in the same manner; the villain then, to whom the wife was allotted, either by agreement among them, or by virtue of his authority, endeavoured to tear the infant from her arms, that he might proceed to violate her in presence of her mother and her husband. Failing in this, and enraged at a resistance which he had not expected, he drew back a few yards, presented his musket, and swore he would fire at her if she did not yield. “Fire, devil!” was her immediate reply, and at the word she and her infant fell by the same shot. The ruffians stripped her body, and compelled the husband to carry the clothes on his back to Thomar, whither they carried him prisoner. During his detention there he pointed out the murderer to a Portugueze nobleman then serving with Massena; but whatever this traitor may have felt at the crime, he did not venture to report it to the French commander, and demand justice upon the criminal: the hopes of co-operation on the part of the Portugueze people which he had held out had been proved so utterly false, that Massena treated him with contemptuous dislike, and moreover every thing was permitted to their soldiers by the French generals in that atrocious campaign. The gardener effected his escape to Coimbra, where a subscription was raised for him, but he soon died, broken-hearted. The man himself related this tragedy to the British officer, from whom I received it. It is recorded here as an example of the spirit which the invaders frequently found in those Portugueze women who were unfortunate enough to fall into their hands.