I pass over the destruction of Redinha, Condeixa, Miranda de Corvo, and many villages on the route; the burning of those towns covered the retrograde movements of the army, and something must be attributed to the disorder, which usually attends a forced retreat: but the town of Leiria, and the convent of Alcobaça, were given to the flames by express orders from the French head-quarters; Lord Wellington’s Despatchesand, although the laws of war rigorously interpreted, authorize such examples when the inhabitants take arms, it can only be justly done, for the purpose of overawing the people, and not from a spirit of vengeance when abandoning the country. But every horror that could make war hideous attended this dreadful march! Distress, conflagrations, death, in all modes! from wounds, from fatigue, from water, from the flames, from starvation! On every side unlimited violence, unlimited vengeance! I myself saw a peasant hounding on his dog, to devour the dead and dying; and the spirit of cruelty once unchained smote even the brute creation. On the 15th the French general, to diminish the encumbrances of his march, ordered a number of beasts of burthen to be destroyed; the inhuman fellow, charged with the execution, hamstringed five hundred asses and left them to starve, and thus they were found by the British army on that day. The mute but deep expression of pain and grief, visible in these poor creatures’ looks, wonderfully roused the fury of the soldiers; and so little weight has reason with the multitude, when opposed by a momentary sensation, that no quarter would have been given to any prisoner at that moment. Excess of feeling would have led to direct cruelty. This shews how dangerous it is in war to listen to the passions at all, since the most praiseworthy could be thus perverted by an accidental combination of circumstances.
CHAPTER IV.
On the 16th the allies halted, partly because the Ceira was swollen and unfordable, partly from the extreme exhaustion of the troops who had suffered far greater privations than the enemy. The latter, following his custom, carried fifteen days’ bread; the allies depended upon a commissariat, which broke down under the difficulties; not from any deficiency in the chief (Mr. Kennedy), who was distinguished alike for zeal, probity, and talent; but from the ill conduct of the Portuguese government; who, deaf to the repeated representations of lord Wellington and Beresford, would neither feed the Portuguese troops regularly while at Santarem, nor fill their magazines, nor collect the means of transport for the march. Hence, after passing Pombal, the greater part of the native force had been unable to continue the pursuit; and the brigades under general Pack and colonel Ashworth, which did keep up and engaged daily with the enemy, were actually four days without food of any sort. Numbers died of inanition on the roads, and to save the whole from destruction, the British supplies were shared with them. The commissary-general’s means were thus overlaid, the whole army suffered, and an imperative necessity obliged lord Wellington to halt. Nevertheless he had saved Coimbra, forced the enemy into a narrow, intricate, and ravaged country, and, with an inferior force, turned him out of every strong position; and this, by a series of movements, based on the soundest principles of war. For, noting the skill and tenacity with which Massena and Ney clung to every league of ground and every ridge defensible, against superior numbers, he seized the higher slopes of the mountains by Picton’s flank march on the 13th; and again by Cole’s on the 14th; and thus, continually menacing the passes in rear of the French, obliged them to abandon positions which could scarcely have been forced: and this method of turning the strength of the country to profit is the true key to mountain warfare. He who receives battle in the hills has always the advantage; and he who first seizes the important points chooses his own field of battle.
In saying an inferior force, I advert to the state of the Portuguese army and to Badajos; for lord Wellington, having saved Coimbra, and seen that the French would not accept a general battle, except on very advantageous terms, had detached a brigade of cavalry, some guns, and a division of native infantry, from Condeixa, to the Alemtejo. He had, therefore, actually less than twenty-five thousand men in hand, during the subsequent operations. In the night of the 13th, also, he received intelligence that Badajos had surrendered, and, feeling all the importance of this event, detached the fourth division likewise to the Alemtejo, for he designed that Beresford should immediately retake the lost fortress: but, as the road of Espinhal was the shortest line to the Tagus, general Cole, as we have seen, moved into it by Panella, thus threatening Massena’s flank and rear at the same moment that he gained a march towards his ultimate destination. Meanwhile, Trant and Wilson, with the militia, moving up the right bank of the Mondego, parallel to the enemy’s line of retreat, forbad his foragers to pass that river, and were at hand either to interfere between him and Oporto, or to act against his flank and rear.
Such were the dispositions of the English general; but the military horizon was still clouded. Intelligence came from the north that Bessieres, after providing for his government, had been able to draw together, at Zamora, above seven thousand men, and menaced an invasion of Gallicia; and, Appendix, [No. II.] Section 9.although Mahi had an army of sixteen thousand men, lord Wellington anticipated no resistance. In the south, affairs were even more gloomy. The battle of Barosa, the disputes which followed, and the conduct of Imas and Mendizabel, proved that, from Spain, no useful co-operation was ever to be expected. Mortier, also, had invested Campo Mayor, and it was hardly expected to hold out until Beresford arrived. The Spaniards, to whom Ibid.it had been delivered, under an engagement of honour, entered into by Romana, to keep it against the enemy, had disloyally neglected and abandoned it at the very moment when Badajos fell, and two hundred Portuguese militia, thrown in at the moment, had to defend this fortress, which required a garrison of five thousand regulars. Nor was the enemy, immediately in the British front, the last to be considered.
Ney withdrew from the Ceira in the evening of the 16th, and on the 17th the light division forded that river with great difficulty, while the rest of the army passed over a trestle bridge, thrown in the night by the staff-corps. The French were, however, again in position immediately behind the Alva and on the Sierra de Moita, and they destroyed the Ponte Murcella and the bridge near Pombeira; while the second corps moved towards the upper part of the river, and Massena spread his foraging parties to a considerable distance, designing to halt for several days. Nevertheless the first, third, and fifth divisions were directed on the 18th, by the Sierra de St. Quiteria, to menace the French left, and they made way over the mountains with a wonderful perseverance and strength, while the sixth and light divisions cannonaded the enemy on the Lower Alva.
As the upper course of the river, now threatened by lord Wellington’s right, was parallel to the line of Massena’s retreat, that marshal recalled the second corps, and, quitting the Lower Alva also, concentrated on the Sierra de Moita, lest the divisions, moving up the river, should cross, and fall on his troops while separated and in march. It then behoved the allies to concentrate also, lest the heads of their columns should be crushed by the enemy’s masses. The Alva was deep, wide, and rapid, yet the staff-corps succeeded in forming a most ingenious raft-bridge, and the light division immediately passed between Ponte Murcella and Pombeira; and at the same time the right wing of the army entered Arganil, while Trant and Wilson closed on the other side of the Mondego.
Massena now recommenced his retreat with great rapidity, and being desirous to gain Celerico and the defiles leading upon Guarda betimes, he again destroyed baggage and ammunition, and abandoned even his more distant foraging parties, who were intercepted and taken, to the number of eight hundred, in returning to the Alva: for lord Wellington, seeing the success of his combinations, had immediately directed all his columns upon Moita, and the whole army was assembled there the 19th. The pursuit was renewed the 20th, through Penhancos, but only with the light division and the cavalry; the communication was, however, again opened with Wilson and Trant who had reached the bridge of Fornos, and with Silveira, who was about Trancoso. The third and sixth divisions followed in reserve, but the remainder of the army halted at Moita, until provisions, sent by sea from Lisbon to the Mondego, could come up to them. The French reached Celerico the 21st, with two corps and the cavalry, and immediately opened the communication with Almeida, by posting detachments of horse on the Pinhel, and at the same time Reynier, who had retired through Govea, occupied Guarda with the second corps.
Massena had now regained his original base of operations, and his retreat may be said to have terminated; but he was far from wishing to re-enter Spain, where he could only appear as a baffled general, and shorn of half his authority; because Bessieres commanded the northern provinces, which, at the commencement of the invasion, had been under himself. Hence, anxious to hold on to Portugal, and that his previous retreat might appear as a mere change of position, he formed the design of throwing all his sick men and other incumbrances into Almeida, and then, passing the Estrella at Guarda, make a countermarch, through Sabugal and Pena Macor, to the Elga; establishing a communication across the Tagus with Soult, and by the valley of the Tagus with the king.