On the 14th the French rear-guard were driven from a strong position at Casal Nova, where they had encamped the preceding night. The whole line of their retreat was full of advantageous positions, of which they well knew how to avail themselves; but he who pursued them was also a master in the art of war; and in his own retreat had acquired a perfect knowledge of the ground. Their outposts were driven in: they were dislodged by flank movements from the posts which they successively took in the mountains, and were flung back with considerable loss upon the main body at Miranda do Corvo, where it was well posted to receive and support them. Here Regnier, with the second corps, effected his junction, so that the whole French army was now assembled. General Nightingale, who had pursued this column, rejoined the British army the same day at Espinhal: and as it was now in the power of Lord Wellington to turn their position, they abandoned it during the night.

A thick fog on the following morning gave them time, and favoured their movements. Some deserters came in, who said that they were destroying carriages, baggage, and ammunition. About nine the day cleared up, and the troops, renewing the pursuit, passed through the smoking ruins of Miranda do Corvo. Hitherto they had only seen proofs of the cruelty of the enemy along the road; they now began to see proofs of his distress; for from this place the road was strewn with the wreck of a retreating army, broken carriages, baggage, carcasses of men and beasts, the wounded and the dying. Amid this general havoc, nothing was more shocking than the number of horses, asses, and mules, which the French, when their strength failed, had hamstrung, and left to suffer a slow death. To have killed them at once would have been mercy, but mercy was a virtue which this army seemed to have forsworn: it even appeared, by the manner in which these poor creatures were grouped, that Massena’s troops had made the cruelties which they inflicted a matter of diversion to themselves! Every day the bodies of women were seen whom they had murdered. In one place some friars were hanging, impaled by the throat upon the sharpened branches of a tree. Everywhere peasants were found in the most miserable condition; poor wretches who had fallen into the hands of the French, and been tortured to make them discover where supplies were hid, or made to serve as guides, and when their knowledge of the way ended, shot, that they might give no information to the pursuers. The indignation of our army was what it ought to be; men and officers alike exclaimed against the atrocious conduct of their detestable enemies. “This,” said Lord Wellington, “is the mode in which the promises have been performed, and the assurances fulfilled, which were held out in the proclamation of the French commander-in-chief, when he told the inhabitants of Portugal, that he was not come to make war upon them, but, with a powerful army of an hundred and ten thousand men, to drive the English into the sea! It is to be hoped that the example of what has occurred in this country will teach the people of this and of other nations, what value they ought to place on such promises and assurances; and that there is no security for life, or for any thing that renders life valuable, except in decided resistance to the enemy.”

The retreating army had no provisions except what they plundered on the spot, and could carry on their backs, and live cattle, with which they were well provided. As far as Condeixa the allied troops had been supplied by transport from Lisbon, to their own admiration, so excellent had been the previous arrangement. But as they advanced, they suffered more privations than the enemy whom they were driving out of the country, for the French left the land as a desert behind them, and the commissariat could not keep up with the rapidity of such a pursuit. The dragoons always kept sight, of the enemy; they were constantly mounted before daybreak, their horses were never unsaddled, and were obliged to carry their own sustenance, which, it may be supposed, was sufficiently scanty. In the midst of a country where the people regarded them not merely as allies, but as friends, brothers, and deliverers, that people had not even shelter to afford them, and none of the troops had tents; those which they occupied in the lines were left there. But they reaped an abundant reward in the success of their general’s well-concerted and patient plan, in the anticipated applause of their own countrymen, in the blessings of the Portugueze, and in that feeling, ... of all others the happiest which can fall to a soldier’s lot, ... that they were engaged in a good cause, and that the wickedness of the enemy rendered it as much a moral as a military duty to labour for his destruction. With these feelings they attacked them wherever they were found. Massena had taken up a formidable position on the Ceyra, which falls into the Mondego a few leagues above Coimbra, and is one of the Portugueze rivers in whose bed gold has been found; a whole corps was posted as an advanced guard in front of Foz de Arouce, on the left side of the river. Here Lord Wellington again moved his divisions upon their right and left, and attacked them in front. In this affair the French sustained a considerable loss, which was much increased by a well-managed movement of the English 95th. That regiment observed a body of the enemy moving off in two parallel columns. There was a woody cover between them, into which the 95th got, the fog and the closing evening enabling them to do so unperceived; from thence they fired on both sides, and retiring instantly that the fire was returned, left the two columns of the French to keep up a heavy fire upon each other as they passed the cover. The darkness of the night increased their confusion: many were drowned in crossing the river, ... a mountain stream swoln by the rains, ... and it is said that one column blew up the bridge while the other was upon it. Much baggage, and some ammunition carriages, here fell into the hands of the pursuers. The light division got into the enemy’s bivouac, and found not only some of their plunder there, but their dinners on the fires. A heavy fog had delayed the movements of the army, and prevented a more serious attack, from which much had been expected.

♦March 16.♦

Having blown up the bridge, the enemy’s rear-guard took a position on the bank of the river, to watch the ford. The loss which they had sustained on the preceding day was betrayed in part by the bodies which they had thrown into the water to conceal it, but which were seen as the stream bore them down. Lord Wellington was obliged to halt the whole of the following day for supplies, the rains having rendered bad roads almost impassable. Here, too, the ill news from Badajoz compelled him to order toward that frontier a part of his army, which should otherwise have continued in the pursuit. During the night, the French moved off, and the pursuers forded the Ceyra on the 17th. On the 18th, they advanced toward the Ponte de Murcella; the French, who, during the whole of the retreat, made their marches by night, putting their troops in motion a few hours after dusk, had retired over this bridge and destroyed it, using the very mines which the British had constructed for the same purpose, on their retreat in the preceding autumn. They were now posted in force on the right of the Alva. Lord Wellington turned their left by the Serra de Santa Quiteria, and manœuvred in their front; this compelled them to retire upon Mouta. It was believed that they had intended to remain some days in the position from which they were thus driven, because many prisoners were taken who had been sent out in foraging parties toward the Mondego, and ordered to return to the Alva. During the night the staff corps constructed a bridge which was ready at daybreak for the infantry. The cavalry passed at a ford close by, and there was some difficulty in getting the artillery across. On the 19th, they were assembled on the Serra de Mouta, the enemy, as usual, having retired in the night. From this place they continued their retreat with the utmost rapidity. Lord Wellington kept up the pursuit with only the cavalry and the light division under Sir William Erskine, supported by two divisions of infantry, and by the militia on the right of the Mondego. The remainder of the army was obliged to halt, till the supplies, which had been sent round from the Tagus to the Mondego, should arrive; this was absolutely necessary, for nothing could be found in the country.

♦Resistance made by the peasantry.♦

The peasants did not everywhere abandon their villages to the spoilers; in some places they found means to arm themselves, and their appearance deterred the enemy from making their intended attack, the pursuers being so near at hand; in others they entered the burning villages with the foremost of the allied army in time to extinguish the flames. There is a village called Avo, six-and-thirty miles from Coimbra, containing about 130 houses. The ordenanza of that district were collected there; they repelled a body of 500 French in five different attacks, and saved the village. The little town of Manteigas was less fortunate. The inhabitants of the adjoining country, confiding in the situation of a place which was, as they hoped, concealed in the heart of the Serra de Estrella, had brought their women and children thither, and their most valuable effects; but it was discovered, and in spite of a desperate defence, the town was stormed, by a force as superior in number as in arms. The officers carried off the handsomest women; the rest were given up to the mercy of men as brutal as their leaders. But everywhere the naked bodies of the straggling and wounded, which the English found upon the way, showed well what vengeance these most injured people had taken upon their unprovoked and inhuman enemies. In one place a party of them were surprised in a church digging the dead out of their graves in search of plunder.

As the French drew nearer the frontier, their foraging parties assumed more confidence, and at the same time their wants becoming more urgent, made them more daring. They passed the fords of the Mondego near Fornos, in considerable numbers, to seek supplies in a country as yet unravaged; but they were attacked by Wilson, who pursued them across the river and captured a great number of beasts of burthen, laden with plunder of every description, which they abandoned in their flight. He took several prisoners also, and in consequence of the loss which they had thus sustained a strong division was detached against him, which took a position on the left bank of the river, so as to cover the flank of the retiring columns from any further operations of this militia force, till they had passed Celorico. Lord Wellington, for want of supplies, was not able to proceed till the 26th, when he advanced to Gouvea, halted, again the next day, and on the following reached Celorico. The French were then at Guarda, which they occupied in strength, and where they apparently intended to maintain themselves. Between Celorico and that city, the inhabitants of a village, men and women alike, were found dead or dying in the street, their ears and noses cut off, and otherwise mangled in a manner not to be described. The horror and indignation of the allies were raised to the highest pitch by this dreadful sight; and the advanced guard coming up with some hundreds of the guilty troops, whose retreat had been impeded by the premature destruction of a bridge, gave them as little quarter as they deserved. But as the enemy only passed through this part of the country, it had not suffered so much as those places where they had been stationary, and consequently had had leisure to prepare[19] for the work of barbarous devastation which their Generals had determined upon committing. Not having time now to destroy every thing before them, they burnt only the principal houses: poorer habitations escaped; and the peasants who had fled before the retreating army to the mountains no sooner saw the allies come up, than they returned to their dwellings, baked bread for their deliverers from the corn which they had concealed, and did every thing in their power to assist them.

♦Guarda.♦

Guarda stands upon a plain of the Serra de Estrella (the Mons Herminius of the Romans) near the sources of the Zezere and the Mondego, and near the highest part of that lofty range; its site is said to be higher than that of any other city in Europe; the ascent to it continues nearly four miles, by a road wide enough for two carts abreast, winding in numberless sinuations along the edge of a deep precipice, the sides of which are overspread with trees. The city indeed owes its origin to this commanding situation, having grown round a watch tower (called in those days guarda) which Sancho the First erected there in the first age of the monarchy. Lord Wellington collected his army in the neighbourhood and in the front of Celorico, with a view to dislodge the enemy from this advantageous post. The following day he moved forward in five columns, supported by a division in the valley of the Mondego; the militia under Trant and Wilson covering the movement at Alverca against any attempt which might have been made against it on that side. So well were the movements concerted, that the heads of the different columns made their appearance on the heights almost at the same moment; upon which the enemy, without firing a shot, retired upon Sabugal on the Upper Coa; for although Dumouriez, with his superficial knowledge of the country, had spoken of Guarda as the key of Portugal, and upon that authority it has been described as one of the finest military positions in the kingdom, the French Generals perceived that its apparent strength only rendered it more treacherous, and were too prudent to attempt making a stand there, against one whom they now could not but in their hearts acknowledge to be at least their equal in the art of war. Their retreat was so rapid that they had not time to execute the mischief which they intended; our troops entered in time to save the Cathedral, the door of which was on fire: the wood of its fine organ had been taken by the enemy for fuel, and the pipes for bullets. They took a strong position, their right at Ruvina guarding the ford of Rapoula de Coa, with a detachment at the bridge of Ferreiros; their left was at Sabugal, and their 8th corps at Alfayates. The right of the allied army was opposite Sabugal, their left at the bridge of Ferreiros, and Trant and Wilson were sent across the Coa below Almeida, to threaten the communication of that place with Ciudad Rodrigo and with the enemy’s army.