A body of two thousand men, composed of a militia regiment and of the Lusitanian legion, which remained near Castello Branco after Lapisse had crossed the Tagus, were placed under the command of colonel Mayne, and directed to take post at the bridge of Alcantara, having orders to defend the passage of the river, and, if necessary, to blow up the structure. At the same time, the flying bridges at Villa Velha and Abrantes were removed, the garrison of the latter place was reinforced, and general Mackenzie was appointed to command all the troops, whether Portuguese or British, thus distributed along the right bank of the Tagus.
These precautions appeared sufficient, especially as there was a general disposition to believe the French weaker than they really were. Victor could not, by a mere demonstration, shake the line of defence. If he forced the bridge of Alcantara, and penetrated by the sterile and difficult route formerly followed by Junot, it would bring him, without guns, upon Abrantes; but Abrantes was already capable of a short resistance, and Mackenzie would have had time to line the rugged banks of the Zezere.
If, leaving Badajos and Elvas behind him, Victor should pass through the Alemtejo, and cross the Tagus between Abrantes and Lisbon, he was to be feared; but Cuesta had promised to follow closely in the French general’s rear, and it was reasonable to suppose that Mackenzie, although he might be unable to prevent the passage of the river, would not suffer himself to be cut off from the capital, where, having the assistance of the fleet, the aid of the citizens, and the chance of reinforcements from England, he might defend himself until the army could return from the Douro. Moreover, Victor was eighteen marches from Lisbon; it was only by accident that he and Soult could act in concert, while the allied army, having a sure and rapid mode of correspondence with Cuesta, was already within four marches of Oporto.
The main body of the allies was now directed upon Coimbra; and four of the best Portuguese battalions were incorporated in the British brigades. Marshal Beresford retained, under his personal command, about six thousand native troops; Trant remained stedfast on the Vouga; Sylveira on the Tamega; and sir Robert Wilson, quitting the command of the legion, was detached, with a small Portuguese force, to Viseu, where, hanging upon Franceschi’s left flank, he also communicated with Sylveira’s corps by the way of Lamego.
The difficulty of bringing up forage and provisions, which had pressed so sorely on sir John Cradock, was now somewhat lessened. The land transport was still scanty; and the admiral, dreading the long shore navigation for large vessels, was without the small craft necessary for victualling the troops by the coast; but the magazines at Caldas were partly filled, and twenty large country-boats being loaded with provisions, and the owners induced, by premiums, to make the run, had put safely into Peniché and the Mondego. In short, the obstacles to a forward movement, although great, were not insurmountable.
Sir Arthur Wellesley reached Coimbra the 2d of May. His army was concentrated there on the 5th, in number about twenty-five thousand sabres and bayonets; of which nine thousand were Portuguese, three thousand Germans, and the remainder British. The duke of Dalmatia was ignorant that the allies were thus assembled in force upon the Mondego, but many French officers knew it, and were silent, being engaged in a plot of a very extraordinary nature, and which was probably a part of the conspiracy alluded to in the first volume of this work, as being conducted through the medium of the princess of Tour and Taxis.
The French soldiers were impatient and murmuring; their attachment to Napoleon himself was deep and unshaken, but human nature shrinks from perpetual contact with death; and they were tired of war. This feeling induced some officers of high rank, serving in Spain, to form a plan for changing the French government. Generally speaking, these men were friendly to Napoleon personally; but they were republicans in their politics, and earnest to reduce the power of the emperor. Their project, founded upon the discontent of the troops in the Peninsula, was to make a truce with the English army, to elect a chief, and march into France with the resolution to abate the pride of Napoleon, or to pull him from his throne. The conspirators at first turned their eyes upon marshal Ney, but finally resolved to choose Gouvion St. Cyr for their leader. Yet it was easier to resolve than to execute. Napoleon’s ascendancy, supported by the love and admiration of millions, was not to be shaken by the conspiracy of a few discontented men: and, although their hopes were not entirely relinquished until after Massena’s retreat from Portugal in 1810, long before that period they discovered that the soldiers, tired as they were of war, were faithful to their great monarch, and would have slain any who openly stirred against him.
The foregoing facts are stated on the authority of a principal mover of the sedition; but many minor plots had cotemporary existence, for this was the spring time of folly. In the second corps, the conspirators were numerous, and, by their discourses and their slow and sullen execution of orders, had continually thwarted the operations of marshal Soult, yet without exciting his suspicions; but, as he penetrated into Portugal, their counteractions increased, and, by the time he arrived at Oporto, their design was ripe for execution.
In the middle of April, John Viana, the son of an Oporto merchant, appeared at marshal Beresford’s head-quarters, with proposals from the French malcontents. The latter desired to have an English officer sent to them, to arrange the execution of a plan, which was to be commenced by seizing their general, and giving him over to the British outposts: a detestable project, for it is not in the field, and with a foreign enemy, that soldiers should concert the overthrow of their country’s institutions, and although it would be idle and impertinent in a foreigner to say how much and how long men shall bear with what they deem an oppressive government, there is a distinct and especial loyalty due from a soldier to his general in the field; a compact of honour, which it is singularly base to violate; and so it has in all ages been considered. When the Argyraspides, or silver-shields of the Macedonians, delivered their general, Eumenes, in bonds, to Antigonus, the latter, although he had tempted them to the deed, and scrupled not to slay the hero, reproached the treacherous soldiers for their conduct, and, with the approbation of all men, destroyed them. Yet Antigonus was not a foreign enemy, but of their own kin and blood.
An English lieutenant-colonel attached to the Portuguese service reluctantly undertook the duty of meeting the conspirators, and penetrated, by night, but in uniform, behind the French outposts, by the lake of Aveiro or Ovar. He had previously arranged that one of the malcontents should meet him on the water; the boats unknowingly passed each other in the dark, and the Englishman returned to Aveiro; but he there found John Viana, in company with the adjutant-major, D’Argenton. The latter confirmed what Viana had declared at Thomar; he expressed great respect for Soult, but dwelt upon the necessity of removing him before an appeal could be made to the soldiers; and he readily agreed to wait, in person, upon Beresford, saying he was himself too strongly supported in the French army to be afraid.