In this manner hostilities were carried on, each commander impatiently waiting for reinforcements which should enable him to act offensively. How both were disappointed, and how other events hitherto unnoticed, bore upon the plans of each, must be the subject of another book.
OBSERVATIONS.
1º. “War is not a conjectural art.” Massena forgetting this, assumed that the allies would not make a stand in front of Lisbon, and that the militia would not venture to attack Coimbra, but the battle of Busaco and the capture of his hospitals evinced the soundness of the maxim. Again, he conjectured that the English would re-embark if pressed; the Lines put an end to his dream; yet once awake, he made war like a great man, proving more formidable with reduced means and in difficulties, than he had been when opportunity was rife and his numbers untouched. His stay at Santarem shews what thirty thousand additional men acting on the left bank of the Tagus could have done, had they arrived on the heights of Almada before admiral Berkeley’s error was discovered: the supply of provisions from Alemtejo and from Spain would then have been transferred from Lisbon to the French armies, and the fleet would have been driven from the Tagus; when, the misery of the inhabitants, the fears of the British cabinet, the machinations of the Patriarch, and the little chance of final success would probably have induced the British general to embark.
2º. It has been observed, that Massena, in the first week might have easily passed the Tagus, secured the resources of the Alemtejo, and sent the British fleet out of the port. This was not so practicable as it might at first sight appear. The rains were heavy; the fords impassable; the French had not boats sufficient for a bridge; a weak detachment would have been useless, a strong detachment would have been dangerous: to collect boats, cast a bridge, and raise the entrenchments necessary to defend it, in the face of the allied forces, would have been neither a safe nor certain operation; moreover, Massena would then have relinquished the certain aid of the ninth for the uncertain assistance of the fifth corps.
3º. Lord Wellington conjecturing the French to be in full retreat, had like to have received a severe check at Santarem; he recovered himself in time, and with this exception, it would be difficult to support essential objections to his operations: yet, many have been urged, as that, he might have straightened the enemy’s quarters more effectually at Santarem; and that Hill’s corps, passing through Abrantes, could have destroyed the bridges at Punhete, and lining the Zezere cut off Massena’s reinforcements, and obliged him to abandon his positions or even to capitulate. This last idea, advanced at the time by colonel Squires, an engineer of great zeal and ability, perfectly acquainted with the localities, merits examination.
As a simple operation it was feasible, but the results were not so certain; the Lines of Almada being unfinished, the rashness of leaving the Tagus unguarded, before an enemy who possessed eighty large boats, exclusive of those forming the bridges on the Zezere, is apparent; Hill’s corps must then have been replaced, and the army before Santarem would have been so weak as to invite a concentrated attack, to the great danger of the Torres Vedras Lines. Nor was the forcing of the French works at Punhete a matter of certainty; the ground was strong, there were two bridges over the Zezere, and the sixth corps, being within a short march, might, by passing at Martinchel, have taken Hill in flank.
4º. The same officer, at a later period, miscalculating the enemy’s numbers at thirty thousand men, and the allies at more than seventy thousand regulars, proposed that Beresford should cross the Tagus at Azingha, behind the Almonda, and march upon Golegao, while lord Wellington, concentrating at Rio Mayor, pushed upon Torres Novas. It was no common head that conceived this project, by which seventy thousand men would, in a single march, have been placed in the midst of the enemy’s extended quarters; but the hand of Napoleon could scarcely have launched such a thunder-bolt. Massena had still fifty thousand fighting-men; the boats from Abrantes must have been brought down, to pass the Tagus; the concentration of troops at Rio Mayor could scarcely have escaped the enemy’s notice; exact concert, in point of time, was essential, yet the eighth corps could have held the allies in check on the Alviella, while Reynier, from Santarem, and Ney, from Thomar, crushed Beresford between the Almonda and the Tagus: moreover the roads about Tremes were nearly impassable from rain during December; in January, Soult, of whose operations I shall speak in the next book, was menacing the Alemtejo, and a disaster happening to the allies would have relieved the enemy’s difficulties, when nothing else could. A campaign is like other works of art; accessaries, however splendid, must be rejected when not conducive to the main object. That judgement, which duly classes the value of every feasible operation, is the best quality of a general, and lord Wellington possessed it in a remarkable degree; to it, his genius and his courage were both subservient; without it he might have performed many brilliant exploits in the Peninsula, but could never have conducted the war to a successful end.