lay, and conscious that for stores and weapons to equip it, and money
to pay it, they could look only to Great Britain, the Regency asked
in February for the appointment of a British commander-in-chief. This
was the best pledge that they could give of their honest intention
to place all their military resources at the disposition of their
allies. It had another obvious advantage: Bernardino Freire, Leite,
Silveira, the Monteiro Mor, and the other Portuguese generals
commanding military districts were at feud with each other. It would
be very difficult to place one above the rest, and to secure for
him loyal co-operation from his subordinates. It was probable that
an Englishman, a stranger to their quarrels and intrigues, would be
better obeyed.
The Regency, it would seem, suggested that they would be glad to see
the post of commander-in-chief given to Sir Arthur Wellesley. But
the victor of Vimiero refused to accept it, probably because he had
already secured from Lord Castlereagh the promise that he should be
sent out again to Portugal to supersede Cradock. When he had declined
the offer it was, to the surprise of most men, passed on to General
Beresford. This officer had the advantage of knowing Portuguese; he
had commanded one of Moore’s brigades during the Corunna retreat,
and had seen much service on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a
comparatively young man, being only in his forty-first year, and
was very junior in his rank, having only become a major-general in
1807. Many officers who were his elders had coveted the post, and
some friction was caused by the fact that with his new Portuguese
commission he outranked several of his seniors in Cradock’s army.
Beresford was a good fighting-man, and a hard worker; but he was
neither a tactician nor a strategist, and did not shine when placed
in independent command--as witness Albuera. When Wellington had
learnt his limitations, he never gave him a task of any great
difficulty, and in the later years of the war either kept him under
his own eye or sent him on errands where it was not easy to go
wrong. For really responsible work in 1812-14 he always used Hill,
Hope, or Graham. But in 1809 Beresford was, but for his undoubted
courage, more or less of an unknown quantity to his colleagues and
his subordinates. Fortunately he turned out a good organizer, if a
mediocre general. For what he did in the way of reforming, and almost
recreating, the Portuguese army he deserves considerable credit.
Every one will remember the quaint story of how he was received by
his army after a short absence, with the ingenuous cry of ‘Long live
Marshal Beresford--who takes care of our stomachs[257].’ This in
one way was a high compliment--it was not every general, English,
French, or Spanish, who succeeded in filling his soldiers’ bellies
during the Peninsular War. The power to do so was not the least among
the qualities necessary for a commander-in-chief.
[257] The same story is told of General Robert Craufurd and his
cazadores, in Costello’s _Memoirs_.
Why the British cabinet chose Beresford, from among many possible
candidates, for the very responsible post now put in his charge, it
is hard to see. Castlereagh knew him, as being (like himself) one of
a powerful Anglo-Irish family connexion, with strong parliamentary
influence. This may have told in his favour: it was perhaps also
remembered that he was a personal friend of Wellesley, whom
Castlereagh was intending to send out to command the British army
in Portugal, and moreover his junior. This would facilitate matters
when the two generalissimos had to act together; Beresford would
probably prove a more tractable colleague and subordinate to the
self-confident, autocratic, and frigid Wellesley, than any officer
who was a stranger to him or his senior in years and service. It is
by no means impossible that Castlereagh nominated him at Sir Arthur’s
private suggestion. But into the secrets of ministerial patronage it
is useless to pry.
Appointed to his new post in February, only a month after he had
returned from the Corunna expedition, Beresford at once set sail for
Lisbon, and took up the command ere three weeks had expired since
his appointment. He arrived at the very moment at which Soult was
about to pass the northern frontier, and was at once gazetted as a
Portuguese field marshal. After a short survey of those parts of his
command which lay in and about Lisbon, he reported to the Regency
that the dearth of officers, and especially of competent superior
officers, was so great, that he could not hope to reorganize the
army unless he were allowed to give commissions in the Portuguese
service to many foreigners. As a preliminary measure he asked for
volunteers from Sir John Cradock’s army, and obtained about enough
English officers to give three to each regiment. The main inducement
which attracted candidates was Beresford’s pledge that every one
accepted for the Portuguese service should gain a step--a lieutenant
would become a captain, a captain a major. The Marshal at once
placed all the battalions with notoriously inefficient commanders
in charge of British officers, and drafted into them a larger
proportion of his volunteers than was given to those which were in
better state. He also got leave from the British cabinet to offer
Portuguese commissions to officers serving in corps on the home
station. This gave him by the end of the year some scores of men of
the sort required, and it was by them that the new army was mainly
formed and disciplined[258]. The British drill was introduced, and
to teach it Beresford was allowed to borrow many non-commissioned
officers from Cradock’s regiments[259]. As was but natural, there
arose considerable friction between the new comers and the native
Portuguese officers, over whose heads they were often placed. This
was inevitable, but led to less harm than might have been expected,
because the rank and file, quick to recognize soldierly qualities,
took kindly to their new commanders, and served them loyally and well.
[258] For notes on the difficulties and friction caused by
clashing pretensions of British and Portuguese seniority in rank,
see _Wellington Dispatches_, vol. iv. pp. 368-81, 394-5, and
several other letters to Castlereagh and Beresford.
[259] Largely from the 1/3rd foot. See _Wellington Dispatches_,
vol. iv. p. 463. Other regiments also contributed.
In the beginning Beresford’s reorganization only extended to the
regiments in Lisbon and the south. Those stationed beyond the Douro
were already in the field, and actively engaged with Soult. They had
hardly received any assistance, either of officers or of arms and
equipment, before they became involved in the campaign of March,
1809[260]. In fairness to them this must be borne in mind, when their
conduct in battle is compared with that of the reorganized army in
the following year. The Portuguese Regency, in their report on the
Oporto campaign sent to their Prince on May 31, 1809, pleaded with
truth ‘that the armies formed in the northern provinces were motley
assemblies, whose numbers and good will bore witness to the zeal of
the people, and their determination not to accept the French yoke,
but which could not with any propriety be called regular troops.
They were composed of incomplete and fractional regiments, and the
larger proportion of the rank and file consisted of recruits, many
of whom had not been a month under arms. Some of the corps were
short of muskets: those which had them were armed with weapons of bad
quality[261], and various calibre. All were deficient in the most
essential articles of equipment. It was not fair to expect that such
troops could oppose with any prospect of success a well-armed and
well-disciplined veteran army like that of France[262].’
[260] A few British officers had arrived, such as Col. Patrick
who commanded the 12th of the line in Silveira’s army.
[261] Some of the muskets sent by the British were in the hands
of the Oporto troops, but none had reached the Tras-os-Montes
regiments of Silveira’s army.
[262] All this is analysed from the Portuguese historian Da Luz
Soriano.
The regular troops, and the totally undisciplined _Ordenanza_ levies,
did not form the whole military force of Portugal. There also
existed, mainly on paper, another line of defence for the kingdom.
This was the militia: according to the old military system of the
realm each regimental district had to supply not only its line
battalion, but also two (or sometimes one) battalions of militia.
There should have been forty-three such regiments in existence in
1808, and early in 1809 the Regency ordered that they should be
raised to forty-eight, and that each should consist of two battalions
of 500 men each[263]. This force, however, was purely a paper army:
the militia had not been called out since the war of 1802; there were
a few officers bearing militia commissions, but no rank and file.
When the Regency decreed its mobilization, all that could be done was
that the local authorities should tell off such eligible young men
as had not been embodied in the regular army, for militia recruits.
But as there were neither officers to drill them, nor muskets to
arm them, the conscription was but a farce. The men were not even
called out in many districts, since it was useless to do so till arms
could be procured for them. But in the two northern provinces, when
Soult crossed the frontier, the militia-men took the field alongside
with the _Ordenanza_, from whom they were distinguished by name
alone, for they were almost as destitute of uniform, weapons, and
officers as the _levée en masse_ itself. It would seem that most of
the other border regiments of militia were also mobilized in the
spring of 1809, in the neighbourhood of Almeida, Castello Branco,
and Elvas. That they were perfectly useless was shown in Mayne’s
fight with Victor at the bridge of Alcantara (May 14), when their
conduct contrasted shamefully with the steady and obstinate fighting
of the Lusitanian Legion[264]. In June, Wellesley ordered that all
men for whom there were no arms should be sent home on furlough, and
that the regiments should endeavour to drill and exercise their men
by relays of 200 at a time, each batch being kept two months under
arms. This was apparently because there were not arms, officers, or
drill-sergeants enough to provide for more than a small proportion
of the available number of militia-men[265]. In this way between
8,000 and 10,000 militia were to be out during the times of the year
when the country-side could best spare them from the labour of the
fields. The rest were to be left at home, unless an actual invasion
of Portugal should occur. From the modest scope of this plan, it may
easily be guessed what the state of the militia had been four months
earlier, when Soult was in the Tras-os-Montes, and Beresford had
barely begun his work of reorganization.
[263] For the local organization and nomenclature of the
militia regiments, the reader is referred to the table of the
Portuguese army in Appendix II. It will be seen that there were
theoretically sixteen regiments in the provinces invaded by
Soult, beyond the Douro.
[264] See Mayne, _History of the Loyal Lusitanian Legion_, p.
231, and _Wellington Dispatches_, vol. iv. p. 350.
[265] _Wellington Dispatches_, vol. iv. pp. 389-90 and 478 [June,
1809].
The militia-men were supposed to provide their own uniforms, the
result of which was that few save the officers ever owned uniforms at
all. In 1810 Wellesley had to make formal representation to Masséna
that they were part of the armed force of the Portuguese kingdom,
and not banditti, as the Marshal threatened to deny the rights of
regular combatants to any prisoners not wearing a military dress.
The officers, however, had a blue uniform similar to that of the
line, save that they had silver instead of gold lace on their collars
and wrists. The militia were not entitled to any pay when mobilized
within the limits of their own province. When taken over its border
officers and men were supposed to draw half the pay of the regulars
of corresponding rank, but did not find it easy to obtain the modest
stipend to which they were entitled.
Throughout the war the Portuguese militia were only intermittently
in the field: the longest continuous piece of service which they
performed was that during Masséna’s invasion, when they were all
mobilized for more than a year on end, from June 1810 to July 1811.
At other times, the whole or parts of various regiments were under
arms for periods of varying length, either to relieve the regulars
from garrison duty, or to watch the less-exposed frontier points
in times when the French were active in the neighbouring districts
of Spain. They were very seldom exposed to the ordeal of battle,
as their presence in the line would have been a source of danger
rather than a help. But they were useful for secondary work, such as
guarding convoys, maintaining lines of communication, and (most of
all) restraining minor raids by small bodies of the enemy. During
Masséna’s invasion the greater part of them were not drawn within the
lines of Torres Vedras, like the Portuguese regulars, but left out in
the country-side, to shift for themselves. Here they did invaluable
service in cutting the Marshal’s line of communication with Spain,
and harassing all his detachments. It was they who surprised and
captured his wounded and his dépôt at Coimbra, who worried Drouet,
and who turned back Gardanne, when he tried to push forward from
Almeida in order to join the main French army.
But all this was in the far future when the spring campaign of
1809 began. At that date, as we have already seen, the militia
were as undisciplined, as ill-armed, and as useless as the mass of
_Ordenanza_ levies, with which they were confused.
A word must be added as to the theoretical organization of this last
force. It dated back to the Middle Ages, and had been regularly used
during the days of the enfranchisement of Portugal from the yoke of
the Spanish Hapsburgs, in the seventeenth century. The ‘ordinance’
was a Royal decree summoning to arms all males between sixteen and
sixty with the exception of ecclesiastics. In districts owning a
feudal lord, that person was ex-officio declared chief-captain
(_capitão mor_) of his fief, and charged with the summoning of his
vassals to the field. Where manorial customs had disappeared, the
senior magistrate of the town, village, or district had to take
up the post of _capitão mor_, unless a substitute was named by
the crown. It was the duty of this commander to call out all the
able-bodied men of his region, to divide them into companies of 250
men, and to name a captain, ensign, sergeant, clerk (_meirinho_),
and ten corporals for each of these bodies. Persons able to provide
a horse were to serve apart, as cavalry, under separate commanders;
but no one ever saw or heard of mounted _Ordenanza_ troops during
the Peninsular War; all the horses of the country did not suffice
to provide chargers even for the twelve regiments of the regular
army. The whole levy was supposed to be called out twice a year by
the _capitão mor_, in order that it might be seen that every man
was properly enrolled in a company. But as a matter of fact the
_Ordenanza_ had not been summoned out, save in 1762 and 1802, since
the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. Nor had any care been
taken to see that every householder possessed a weapon of some sort,
as the law directed. When they mustered in 1809, the men with pikes
outnumbered those with fowling-pieces or blunderbusses, and the men
furnished with no more than scythes on poles, or goads, or such-like
rustic weapons, were far more numerous than the pikemen.
The whole mass was perfectly useless; it was cruel to place it in the
field and send it against regular troops. Tumultuous, undisciplined,
unofficered, it was doomed to massacre whenever it allowed the enemy
to approach. It would have been well to refrain from calling it
out altogether, and to turn over the few serviceable arms which it
possessed to the militia.
NOTE.--By far the best account of the Portuguese army and military
system is to be found in Halliday’s _Present state of Portugal and
the Portuguese Army_, an invaluable book of 1812. Something can
be gleaned from Dumouriez’s _Essay on the military topography of
Portugal_ [1766]. A little information comes from Foy, but many of
his statements in his vol. ii. are inaccurate. The Wellington and
Beresford dispatches in the Record Office are, of course, full of
information, but would be very unintelligible but for Halliday’s
explanatory memoir, as they presuppose knowledge of the details of
organization, but do not generally describe them. For the Lusitanian
Legion, see Mayne’s monograph on that corps, and the dispatches of
Sir Robert Wilson. I have inserted in an appendix a table of the
reorganized army as it stood in the autumn of 1809.
[Illustration: _Portuguese Infantry
a Private of the Lisbon Regiment
and a man of the Algarve Ordenanza.
From a drawing of 1809.
Walker & Cockerell Ph. So._]
SECTION XIII: CHAPTER IV
COMBATS ABOUT CHAVES AND BRAGA: CAPTURE OF OPORTO (MARCH 10-29, 1809)
When La Romana marched off to the east, and abandoned his Portuguese
allies to their own resources, the duty of defending the frontier
fell upon General Francisco Silveira, the military governor of the
Tras-os-Montes. He had mobilized his forces at Chaves the moment that
Soult’s departure from Orense became known, and had there gathered
the whole levy of his province. The total amounted to two incomplete
line regiments[266] four battalions of disorderly and ill-equipped
militia[267], the skeletons of two cavalry regiments, with hardly 200
horses between them[268], and a mass of the local _Ordenanza_, armed
with pikes, goads, scythes, and fowling-pieces. The whole mass may
have numbered some 12,000 men, of whom not 6,000 possessed firearms
of any kind[269]. Against them the French marshal was marching at the
head of 22,000 veterans, who had already gained experience in the art
of mountain-warfare from their recent campaign in Galicia. The result
was not difficult to foresee. If the Portuguese dared to offer battle
they would be scattered to the winds.
[266] The 12th and 24th regiments--Chaves and Braganza.
[267] Militia of Chaves, Villa Real, Miranda, and Braganza.
[268] The 6th and 9th cavalry.
[269] Brotherton to Castlereagh, March 13.
Silveira’s levies were not the only force in arms on the frontier.
The populous province of the Entre-Douro-e-Minho[270], roused to
tumultuous enthusiasm by the bishop of Oporto, had sent every
available man, armed or unarmed, to the front. A screen of militia
and regulars under General Botilho was watching the line of the lower
Minho: a vast mass of _Ordenanza_, backed by a very small body of
line troops lay in and about Braga, under General Bernardino Freire;
another multitude was still thronging the streets of Oporto and
listening to the windy harangues of the bishop. But none of these
masses of armed men were sent to the aid of Silveira. He was not one
of the bishop’s faction, nor was he on good terms with his colleague
Freire. Neither of them showed any inclination to combine with him,
and their followers, in the true spirit of provincial particularism,
thought of nothing but defending their own hearths and homes, and
left the Tras-os-Montes to take care of itself. Yet they had for
the moment no enemy in front of them but the small French garrison
of Tuy, and could have marched without any risk to join their
compatriots.
[270] Entre-Douro-e-Minho had a population of 500,000 souls,
Tras-os-Montes only 180,000.
Relying on the aid of La Romana, General Silveira had taken post
at Villarelho on the right bank of the Tamega, leaving the defence
of the left bank to the Spaniards, whom he supposed to be still
stationed about Monterey and Verin. On the very day upon which the
Army of Galicia absconded, the Portuguese general sent forward a
detachment, consisting of a line regiment and a mass of peasants, to
menace the flank of the French advance. This force, having crossed
the Spanish frontier, got into collision with the enemy near Villaza.
Since Franceschi’s horsemen and Heudelet’s infantry had turned off
to the east in pursuit of La Romana, the Portuguese fell in with
the leading column of Soult’s main body--a brigade of Lahoussaye’s
dragoons supported by Delaborde’s division. This force they ventured
to attack, but were promptly beaten off by Foy, the brigadier of
the advanced guard, who routed them and captured their sole piece
of artillery. The shattered column fell back on the main body at
Villarelho, and then Silveira, hearing of the departure of the
Spaniards, resolved to retire and to look for a defensive position
which he might be able to hold by his own unaided efforts. There
was none such to be found in front of Chaves, for the valley of
the Tamega widens out between Monterey and the Portuguese frontier
fortress, and offers no ground suitable for defence. Accordingly
Silveira very prudently decided to withdraw his tumultuary army to
the heights of San Pedro, a league to the south of the town, where
the space between the river and the mountains narrows down and
offers a short and compact line of resistance. But he waited to be
driven in, and meanwhile left rear-guards in observation at Feces de
Abaxo on the left, and Outeiro on the right bank, of the Tamega.
Soult halted three days at Monterey in order to allow his rearguard
and his convoy of sick to close up with the main body. But on March
10 he resumed his advance, using the two parallel roads on the two
banks of the Tamega. Franceschi’s light horse and Heudelet’s division
pushed down the eastern side, Caulaincourt’s brigade of dragoons[271]
and Delaborde’s infantry down the western side of the river. Merle
and Mermet were still near Verin. As the Tamega was unfordable in
most places, the army seemed dangerously divided, but Soult knew well
that he was running little or no risk. Both at Feces and Outeiro the
Portuguese detachments, which covered Silveira’s main body, tried to
offer serious resistance. They were of course routed, with the loss
of a gun and many prisoners.
[271] Of Lahoussaye’s division.
On hearing that his enemy was drawing near, Silveira ordered
his whole army to retreat behind Chaves to the position of San
Pedro[272]. This command nearly cost him his life; the ignorant
masses of militia and _Ordenanza_ could only see treason in the
proposed move, which abandoned the town to the French. The local
troops refused to march, and threatened to shoot their general:
he withdrew with such of his men as would still obey orders, but
a mixed multitude consisting of part of the 12th regiment of the
line (the Chaves regiment), and a mass of _Ordenanza_ and militia,
remained behind to defend the dilapidated town. Its walls had never
been repaired since the Spaniards had breached them in 1762; of
the fifty guns which armed them the greater part were destitute of
carriages, and rusting away in extreme old age; the supply of powder
and cannon-balls was wholly insufficient for even a short siege. But
encouraged by the advice of an incompetent engineer officer[273], who
said that a few barricades would make the place impregnable, 3,000
men shut themselves up in it, and aided by 1,200 armed citizens,
defied Soult, and opened a furious fire upon the vedettes which he
pushed up to the foot of the walls. The Marshal sent in a fruitless
summons to surrender, and then invested the place on the evening of
the tenth; all night the garrison kept up a haphazard cannonade,
and shouted defiance to the French. Next morning Soult resolved
to drive away Silveira from the neighbouring heights, convinced
that the spirits of the defenders of Chaves would fail the moment
that they saw the field army defeated and forced to abscond. The
divisions of Delaborde and Lahoussaye soon compelled Silveira to
give ground: he displayed indeed a laudable prudence in refusing to
let himself be caught and surrounded, and made off south-eastward
towards Villa Real with 6,000 or 7,000 men. The Marshal then summoned
Chaves to surrender for the second time; the garrison seem to have
tired themselves out with twelve hours of patriotic shouting, and to
have used up great part of their munitions in their silly nocturnal
fireworks. When they saw Silveira driven away, their spirits sank,
and they allowed their leader, Magelhaes Pizarro, to capitulate,
without remonstrance. In short, they displayed even more cowardice
on the eleventh than indiscipline upon the tenth of March. On the
twelfth the French entered the city in triumph.
[272] Brotherton to Cradock, from Povoa de Aguiar, March 13.
[273] He was called Magelhaes Pizarro, but cannot be said to
have shown either the endurance of the Portuguese seaman, or the
reckless courage of the Spanish _conquistador_, whose historic
names he bore.
Soult was much embarrassed by the multitude of captives whom he had
taken: he could not spare an escort strong enough to guard 4,000
prisoners to a place of safety. Accordingly he made a virtue of
necessity, permitted the armed citizens of Chaves to retire to their
homes, and dismissed the mass of 2,500 _Ordenanza_ and militia-men,
after extracting from them an oath not to serve against France during
the rest of the war. The 500 regulars of the 12th regiment were
not treated in the same way. The Marshal offered them the choice
between captivity and enlisting in a Franco-Portuguese legion, which
he proposed to raise. To their great discredit the majority, both
officers and men, took the latter alternative--though it was with the
sole idea of deserting as soon as possible. At the same moment Soult
made an identical offer to the Spanish prisoners captured from Mahy’s
division at the combats of Osoño and La Trepa on March 6: they
behaved no better than the Portuguese: several hundred of them took
the oath to King Joseph, and consented to enter his service[274].
[274] See Naylies, p. 81; St. Chamans, p. 120; Le Noble, p. 120;
and Des Odoards, p. 213.
The Duke of Dalmatia had resolved to make Chaves his base for
further operations in Portugal. He brought up to it from Monterey
all his sick and wounded, including those who had been transported
from Orense; the total now amounted to 1,325, of whom many were
convalescents already fit for sedentary duty. To guard them a single
company of a French regiment, and the inchoate ‘Portuguese Legion,’
were detailed, while the command was placed in the hands of the _chef
de bataillon_ Messager. The flour and unground wheat found in the
place fed the army for several days, and the small stock of powder
captured was utilized to replenish its depleted supply of cartridges.
From Chaves Soult had the choice of two roads for marching on Oporto.
The more obvious route on the map is that which descends the Tamega
almost to its junction with the Douro, and then strikes across to
Oporto by Amarante and Penafiel. But here, as is so often the case
in the Peninsula, the map is the worst of guides. The road along
the river, frequently pinched in between the water and overhanging
mountains, presents a series of defiles and strong positions, is
considerably longer than the alternative route, and passes through
difficult country wellnigh from start to finish.
The second path from Chaves to Oporto is that which strikes westward,
crosses the Serra da Cabrera, and descends into the valley of the
Cavado by Ruivaens and Salamonde. From thence it leads to Braga, on
the great coast-road from Valenza to Oporto. The first two or three
stages of this route are rough and difficult, and pass through ground
even more defensible than that on the way to Amarante and Penafiel.
But when the rugged defiles of the watershed between the Tamega and
the Cavado have been passed, and the invader has reached Braga,
the country becomes flat and open, and the coast plain, crossed by
two excellent roads, leads him easily to his goal. It has also to
be remembered that, by adopting this alternative, Soult took in
the rear the Portuguese fortresses of the lower Minho, and made it
easy to reopen communications with Tuy and the French forces still
remaining in Galicia.
If any other persuasion were needed to induce the Marshal to take the
western, and not the eastern, road to Oporto, it was the knowledge of
the position of the enemy which he had attained by diligent cavalry
reconnaissances. It was ascertained that Silveira with the remains of
his division had fallen back to Villa Pouca, more than thirty miles
away, in the direction of Villa Real. He could not be caught, and
could retreat whithersoever he pleased. Freire, on the other hand,
was lying at Braga with his unwieldy masses, and had made no attempt
to march forward and fortify the passes of the Serra da Cabrera.
By all accounts that the horsemen of Franceschi could gather, the
defiles were blocked only by the _Ordenanza_ of the mountain villages.
This astounding news was absolutely correct. Freire’s obvious course
was to defend the rugged watershed, where positions abounded. But
he contented himself with placing mere observation posts--bodies
of thirty or 100 men--in the passes, while keeping his main army
concentrated. The truth was that he was in a state of deep depression
of mind, and prepared for a disaster. Judging from the line which he
adopted in the previous year, while co-operating with Wellesley in
the campaign against Junot, we may set him down as a timid rather
than a cautious general. He had no confidence in himself or in his
troops: the indiscipline and mutinous spirit of the motley levies
which he commanded had reduced him to despair, and he received
no support from the Bishop of Oporto and his faction, who were
omnipotent in the province. Repeated demands for reinforcements of
regular troops had brought him nothing but the 2nd battalion of the
Lusitanian Legion, under Baron Eben. The Bishop kept back the greater
part of the resources of which he could dispose, for the defence of
his own city, in front of which he was erecting a great entrenched
camp. Freire had also called on the Regency for aid, but they had
done no more than order two line battalions under General Vittoria
to join him, and these troops had not yet crossed the Douro. When he
heard that the French were on the march, and that he himself would
be the next to receive their visit, he so far lost heart that he
contemplated retiring on Oporto without attempting to fight. Instead
of defending the defiles of Ruivaens and Salamonde, he began to send
to the rear his heavy stores, his military chest, and his artillery
of position. This timid resolve was to be his ruin, for the excitable
and suspicious multitude which surrounded him had every intention of
defending their homes, and could only see treason and cowardice in
the preparations for retreat. In a few days their fury was to burst
forth into open mutiny, to the destruction of their general and their
own ultimate ruin.
Soult meanwhile had set out from Chaves on March 14, with Franceschi
and Delaborde at the head of his column, as they had been in all the
operations since their departure from Orense. Mermet and Lahoussaye’s
dragoons followed on the fifteenth: Heudelet, with whom were the head
quarters’ staff and the baggage, marched on the sixteenth: Merle,
covering the rear of the army, came in from Monterey on that day,
and started from Chaves on the seventeenth. Only Vialannes’ brigade
of dragoons[275] was detached: these two regiments were directed to
make a feint upon Villa Real, with the object of frightening and
distracting Silveira, lest he should return to his old post when
he heard that the French army had departed, and fall upon the rear
of the marching columns. They beat up his outposts at Villa Pouca,
announced everywhere the Marshal’s approach with his main body,
and retired under cover of the night, after having deceived the
Tras-os-Montes troops for a couple of days.
[275] Lorges’ other brigade, that of Fournier, had been (as it
will be remembered) left behind in Galicia with Marshal Ney.
The divisions of Delaborde and Franceschi, while clearing the passes
above Chaves, met with a desperate but futile resistance from the
_Ordenanza_ of the upper Cavado valley. Practically unaided by
Freire, who had only sent to the defile of Salamonde 300 regular
troops--a miserable mockery of assistance--the gallant peasantry did
their best. ‘Even the smallest villages,’ wrote an aide-de-camp of
Soult, ‘tried to defend themselves. It was not rare to see a peasant
barricade himself all alone in his house, and fire from the windows
on our men, till his door was battered in, and he met his death on
our bayonets. The Portuguese defended themselves with desperation,
and never asked for quarter: if only these brave and devoted fellows
had possessed competent leaders, we should have been forced to give
up the expedition, or else we should never have got out of the
country. But their resistance was individual: each man died defending
his hamlet or his home, and a single battalion of our advanced
guard easily cleared the way for us. I saw during these days young
girls in the fighting-line, firing on us, and meeting their death
without recoiling a step. The priests had told them that they were
martyrs, and that all who died defending their country went straight
to paradise. In these petty combats, which lasted day after day, we
frequently found, among the enemy’s dead, monks in their robes, their
crucifixes still clasped in their hands. Indeed, while advancing
we could see from afar these ecclesiastics passing about among the
peasants, and animating them to the combat[276].... While the columns
were on the march isolated peasants kept up a continual dropping fire
on us from inaccessible crags above the road: at night they attacked
our sentries, or crept down close to our bivouacs to shoot at the
men who sat round the blaze. This sort of war was not very deadly,
but infinitely fatiguing: there was not a moment of the day or night
when we had not to be upon the _qui vive_. Moreover, every man who
strayed from the ranks, whether he was sick, drunk, tired, or merely
a marauder, was cut off and massacred. The peasants not only murdered
them, but tortured them in the most horrid fashion before putting
them to death[277].’
[276] Every French diarist of Soult’s army has tales of the stoic
courage displayed by the Portuguese clergy. A story from Naylies
of Lahoussaye’s dragoons may serve as an example. Near Braga he
came on a cart escorted by a single priest with a gun on his
shoulder. He was the chaplain of a convent, who was taking out
of harm’s way a party of nuns. When he saw himself overtaken, he
quietly waited in the middle of the road, shot the first dragoon
dead, and was killed by the second as he was trying to reload his
musket.
[277] St. Chamans, _Mémoires_, pp. 119-21.
Among scenes of this description Franceschi and Delaborde forced
their way down the valley of the Cavado, till they arrived at the
village of Carvalho d’Este, six miles from Braga, where they found
a range of hills on both sides of the road, occupied by the whole
horde of 25,000 men who had been collected by Freire. The division
which followed the French advanced guard had also to sustain several
petty combats, for the survivors of the _Ordenanza_ whom Delaborde
had swept out of the way, closed in again to molest each column, as
it passed by the defiles of Venda-Nova, Ruivaens, and Salamonde.
Mermet’s division, which brought up the rear, had to beat off a
serious attack from Silveira’s army[278]. For that general, as soon
as he discovered that he had been fooled by Lorges’ demonstration,
sent across the Tamega a detachment of 3,000 men, who fell upon
Soult’s rear. But a single regiment drove them off without much
difficulty: they drew back to their own side of the mountains, and
did not quit the valley of the Tamega.
[278] For combats waged by Lahoussaye’s dragoons, who were in the
middle of the long column, see the journal of Naylies (pp. 83-4).
For attacks on Mermet, in the rear column, see Fantin des Odoards
(p. 214).
It was on March 17 that Franceschi and Delaborde pushed forward
to the foot of the Portuguese position, which swept round in a
semicircle on each side of the high-road. Its western half was
composed of the plateau of Monte Adaufé, whose left overhangs the
river Cavado, while its right slopes upward to join the wooded Monte
Vallongo. This latter hill is considerably more lofty than the
Monte Adaufé and less easy of access. In front of the position, and
bisected by the high-road, is the village of Carvalho d’Este: at the
foot of the Monte Vallongo is another village, Lanhozo, whose name
the French have chosen to bestow on the combat which followed. To the
left-rear of the Monte Adaufé, pressed in between its slopes and the
river, is a third village, Ponte do Prado, with a bridge across the
Cavado, which is the only one by which the position can be turned.
The town of Braga lies three miles further to the rear. The invaders
halted on seeing the whole range of hills, some six miles long,
crowned with masses of men in position. Franceschi would not take
it upon himself to attack such a multitude, even though they were
but peasantry and militia, of the same quality as the horde that had
been defeated near Chaves a few days before. He sent back word to the
Marshal, and drew up in front of the position to await the arrival of
the main body. But noting that a long rocky spur of the Monte Adaufé
projected from the main block of high ground which the enemy was
holding, he caused it to be attacked by Foy’s brigade of infantry,
and drove back without much difficulty the advanced guard of the
Portuguese. The possession of this hill gave the French a foothold on
the heights, and an advantageous _emplacement_ for artillery such as
could not be found in the plain below.
It was three days before the rest of Soult’s army joined the leading
division--not until the twentieth was his entire force, with the
exception of Merle’s infantry, concentrated at the foot of the
enemy’s position, and ready to attack. This long period of waiting,
when every mind was screwed up to the highest pitch of excitement,
had completely broken down the nerve of the Portuguese, who spent the
hours of respite in hysterical tumult and rioting. Freire, as we have
already seen, had been planning a retreat on Oporto, but he found the
spirit of his army so exalted that he thought it better to conceal
his project. He pretended to have abandoned the idea of retiring,
and gave orders for the construction of entrenchments and batteries
on the Monte Adaufé, to enfilade the main approach by the high-road.
But he could not disguise his down-heartedness, nor persuade his
followers to trust him. Presently the wrecks of the _Ordenanza_
levies, who had fought at Salamonde, fell back upon Braga, loudly
accusing him of cowardice, for not supporting them in their advanced
position. The whole camp was full of shouting, objectless firing in
the air, confused cries of treason, and mutinous assemblies. On the
day when the French appeared in front of the position Freire grew so
alarmed at the threats against his life, which resounded on every
side, that he secretly quitted Braga to fly to Oporto. But he was
recognized and seized by the _Ordenanza_ of Tobossa, a few miles to
the rear. They brought him back to the camp as a prisoner, and handed
him over to Baron Eben, the colonel of the 2nd battalion of the
Lusitanian Legion, who had been acting as Freire’s second-in-command.
This officer, an ambitious and presumptuous man, and a great ally of
the Bishop of Oporto, played the demagogue, harangued the assembled
multitude, and readily took over the charge of the army. He consigned
his unfortunate predecessor to the gaol of Braga, and led on the
mutineers to reinforce the array on Monte Adaufé. When Eben had
departed, a party of _Ordenanza_ returned to the city, dragged out
the wretched Freire, and killed him in the street with their pikes.
The same afternoon they murdered Major Villasboas, the chief of
Freire’s engineers, and one or more of his aides-de-camp. They also
seized and threw into prison the _corregidor_ of Braga, and several
other persons accused of sympathy with the French. Eben appears to
have winked at these atrocities--much as his friend the Bishop of
Oporto ignored the murders which were taking place in that city. By
assuming command in the irregular fashion that we have seen, he had
made himself the slave of the hysterical horde that surrounded him,
and had to let them do what they pleased, lest he should fall under
suspicion himself[279].
[279] I agree with General Arteche in thinking that Eben’s
dispatch to Cradock, from which this narrative is mainly drawn,
does him no credit. Indeed, it is easy to adopt the sinister
view that Eben was aiming at getting the command, did nothing to
discourage the mob, and was indirectly responsible for Freire’s
murder. As Arteche remarks ‘with a little more resolution and
a little less personal ambition, the Baron could probably have
prevented the catastrophe’ (vol. v. p. 393). But Freire’s conduct
had been so cowardly and incapable that the peasants were
reasonably incensed with him. Why had he not defended the rugged
defiles of Venda Nova and Salamonde, and what could excuse his
absconding and abandoning his army?
It would seem, however, that Eben did the little that was possible
with such material in preparing to oppose Soult. He threw up more
entrenchments on the Monte Adaufé, mounted the few guns that he
possessed in commanding situations, and did his best to add to the
lamentably depleted store of munitions on hand. Even the church roofs
were stripped for lead, when it was found that there was absolutely
no reserve of cartridges, and that the _Ordenanza_ had wasted half
of their stock in demonstrations and profitless firing at the French
vedettes. On the morning of the nineteenth he extended his right
wing to some hills below the Monte Vallongo, beyond the village of
Lanhozo, a movement which threatened to outflank and surround that
part of the French army which was in front of him, and to cut it off
from the divisions still in the rear. This could not be tolerated,
and Mermet’s infantry were dispatched to dislodge the 2,000 men who
had taken up this advanced position. They were easily beaten out of
the village and off the hill, and retired to their former station
on the Monte Vallongo. The French here captured two guns and some
prisoners. Soult gave these men copies of a proclamation which he had
printed at Chaves, offering pardon to all Portuguese who should lay
down their arms, and sent them back into Eben’s lines under a flag
of truce. When the _Ordenanza_ discovered what the papers were, they
promptly put to death the twenty unfortunate men as traitors, without
listening to their attempts to explain the situation.
On the morning of March 20, Soult had been joined by Lorges’
dragoons and his other belated detachments, and prepared to attack
the enemy’s position. To defend it Eben had now, beside 700 of
his own Legion[280], one incomplete line regiment (Viana, no. 9),
the militia of Braga and the neighbouring places, and some 23,000
_Ordenanza_ levies, of whom 5,000 had firearms, 11,000 pikes, and the
remaining 7,000 nothing better than scythes, goads, and instruments
of husbandry. There were about fifteen or twenty pieces of artillery
distributed along the front of the six-mile position, the majority
of them in the entrenchments on the Monte Adaufé, placed so as to
command the high-road.
[280] Eben’s dispatch is in the Record Office, in the
miscellaneous volume at the end of the Portugal 1809 series.
Knowing the sort of rabble that was in front of him, Soult made no
attempt to turn or outflank the Portuguese, but resolved to deliver a
frontal attack all along the line, in the full belief that the enemy
would give way the moment that the charge was pushed home. He had now
about 3,000 cavalry and 13,000 infantry with him--Merle being still
absent. He told off Delaborde’s division with Lahoussaye’s dragoons
to assail the enemy’s centre, on both sides of the high-road, where
it crosses the Monte Adaufé. Mermet’s infantry and Franceschi’s
light horse attacked, on the left, the wooded slopes of the Monte
Vallongo. Heudelet’s division, on the right, sent one brigade to
storm the heights above the river, and left the other brigade as a
general reserve for the army. Lorges’ dragoons were also held back in
support.
As might have been expected, Soult’s dispositions were completely
successful. When the columns of Delaborde and Heudelet reached
the foot of the enemy’s position, the motley horde which occupied
it broke out into wild cheers and curses, and opened a heavy but
ineffective fire. They stood as long as the French were climbing up
the slopes, but when the infantry debouched on to the plateau of
Monte Adaufé they began to waver and disperse[281]. Then Soult let
loose the cavalry of Lahoussaye, which had trotted up the high-road
close in the rear of Delaborde’s battalions, the 17th Dragoons
leading. There was no time for the reeling mass of peasants to
escape. ‘We dashed into them,’ wrote one officer who took part in
the charge[282]; ‘we made a great butchery of them; we drove on
among them pell-mell right into the streets of Braga, and we pushed
them two leagues further, so that we covered in all four leagues
at full gallop without giving them a moment to rally. Their guns,
their baggage, their military chest, many standards fell into our
power[283].’
[281] Eben, in his report, says that at the moment of the French
assault one of his guns in the battery commanding the high-road
burst, and killed many of those standing about, and that the rout
commenced with the stampede caused by this explosion.
[282] Naylies [of the 19th Dragoons], p. 87.
[283] Even while flying through the streets of Braga, some of
the routed horde found time to pay a visit to the town gaol, and
to murder the _corregidor_ and the other prisoners who had been
placed there on the eighteenth.
Such was the fate of the Portuguese centre, on each side of the
high-road. Further to the right, above the Cavado, Heudelet was
equally successful in forcing his way up the northern slopes of the
Monte Adaufé; the enemy broke when he reached the plateau, but as
he had no heavy force of cavalry with him, their flight was not so
disastrous or their loss so heavy as in the centre. Indeed, when they
had been swept down into the valley behind the ridge, some of the
Portuguese turned to bay at the Ponte do Prado, and inflicted a sharp
check on the Hanoverian legion, the leading battalion in Heudelet’s
advance. It was not till the 26th of the line came up to aid the
Germans that the rallied peasantry again broke and fled. They only
lost 300 men in this part of the field.
Far to the left, in the woods on the slope of the Monte Vallongo,
Mermet and Franceschi had found it much harder to win their way to
the edge of the plateau than had the troops in the centre. But it
was only the physical obstacles that detained them: the resistance
of the enemy was even feebler than in the centre. By the time that
the infantry of Mermet emerged on the crest of the hill, the battle
had already been won elsewhere. The Portuguese right wing crumpled up
the moment that it was attacked, and fled devious over the hillsides,
followed by Franceschi’s cavalry, who made a dreadful slaughter among
the fugitives. Five miles behind their original position a body of
militia with four guns rallied under the cliffs on which stands the
village of Falperra. The cavalry held them in check till Mermet’s
leading regiment, the 31st Léger, came up, and then, attacked by both
arms at once, the whole body was ridden down and almost exterminated.
‘The commencement was a fight, the end a butchery,’ wrote an officer
of the 31st; ‘if our enemies had been better armed and less ignorant
of the art of war, they might have made us pay dearly for our
victory. But for lack of muskets they were half of them armed with
pikes only: they could not manœuvre in the least. How was such a mob
to resist us? they could only have held their ground if they had been
behind stone walls[284].’
[284] Fantin des Odoards, p. 216.
The rout and pursuit died away in the southern valleys beyond Braga,
and Soult could take stock of his victory. He had captured seventeen
guns, five flags, and the whole of the stores of Eben’s army: he had
killed, according to his own estimate, some 4,000 men[285], and taken
only 400 prisoners. This shocking disproportion between the dead and
the captives was caused by the fact that the French in most parts
of the field had given no quarter. Some of their historians explain
that their cruelty resulted from the discovery that the Portuguese
had been murdering and mutilating the stragglers who fell into their
hands[286]. But it was really due to the exasperation of spirit that
always accompanies guerrilla warfare. Constantly worried by petty
ambushes, ‘sniped’ in their bivouacs, never allowed a moment of rest,
the soldiers were in a state of nervous irritation which found vent
in needless and unjustifiable cruelty. In the fight they had lost
only forty killed and 160 wounded, figures which afford no excuse for
the wholesale slaughter in the pursuit to which they gave themselves
up.
[285] Eben, in his report to Cradock at the Record Office, says
1,000 only, of whom more than 200 belonged to the Lusitanian
Legion.
[286] Le Noble, p. 142. St. Chamans, p. 121. Naylies and Fantin
des Odoards, though both mentioning the slaughter in which they
took part, do not give this justification for it. The latter says
that the French gave no quarter save to men in uniform.
In the first flush of victory the French supposed that they had made
an end of the _Ordenanza_, and that northern Portugal was at their
feet. ‘Cette journée a été fatale à l’insurrection portugaise,’ wrote
one of the victors in his diary[287]. But no greater mistake could
have been made: though many of the routed horde dispersed to their
homes, the majority rallied again behind the Avé, only ten or twelve
miles from the battle-field. Nor did the battle of Braga even open
the way to Galicia: General Botilho, with the levies of the Valenza
and Viana district, closed in behind Soult and blocked the way to
Tuy, the nearest French garrison. The Marshal had only conquered the
ground on which he stood, and already his communication with Chaves,
his last base, had been intercepted by detachments sent into the
passes by Silveira.
[287] Fantin des Odoards, p. 216.
Soult halted three days at Braga, a time which he utilized for the
repair of his artillery, and the replenishing of the cartridge boxes
of his infantry from the not too copious supply of munitions captured
from the Portuguese. His cavalry scoured the country down the Cavado
as far as Barcelos, and southward to the line of the Avé, only to
find insurgents everywhere, the bridges broken, and the fords dredged
up and staked.
The Marshal, however, undaunted by the gloomy outlook, resolved to
march straight for his destined goal, without paying any attention to
his communications. He now made Braga a temporary base, left there
Heudelet’s division in charge of 600 sick and wounded, and moved on
Oporto at the head of his three remaining infantry divisions and all
his cavalry.
Two good _chaussées_, and one additional mountain road of inferior
character, lead from Braga to Oporto, crossing the Avé, the one
four, the next six, the third twenty-four miles from the sea. The
first and most westerly passes it at Ponte de Avé, the second at
Barca de Trofa, where there is both a bridge and a wide ford, the
third and least obvious at Guimaraens not far from its source in the
Serra de Santa Catalina. Soult resolved to use all three for his
advance, wisely taking the difficult road by Guimaraens into his
scheme, since he guessed that it would probably be unwatched by the
Portuguese, precisely because it was far less eligible than the other
two. He was perfectly right: the Bishop of Oporto, the moment that
he heard of the fall of Braga, pushed up some artillery and militia
to aid the _Ordenanza_ in defending both the Ponte de Avé and the
Barca de Trofa bridges. Each was cut: batteries were hastily thrown
up commanding their approaches, and entrenchments were constructed in
their rear. At Barca de Trofa the ford was dredged up and completely
blocked with _chevaux de frise_. But the remote and secondary passage
at Guimaraens was comparatively neglected, and left in charge of such
of the local _Ordenanza_ as had returned home after the rout of Braga.
Soult directed Lorges’ dragoons against the western road: he himself
with Delaborde’s and Merle’s infantry and Lahoussaye’s cavalry took
the central _chaussée_ by Barca de Trofa. On the difficult flanking
path by Guimaraens he sent Franceschi’s light horse and Mermet’s
infantry. On both the main roads the Portuguese positions were so
strong that the advancing columns were held back: Soult would not
waste men--he was beginning to find that he had none to spare--in
attempting to force the entrenched positions opposite him. After
feeling them with caution, he pushed a column up-stream to a small
bridge at San Justo, which had been barricaded but not broken. Here
he established by night a heavy battery commanding the opposite bank.
On the morning of the twenty-sixth he opened fire on the Portuguese
positions across the water, and, when the enemy had been well
battered, hurled the brigade of General Foy at the fortified bridge.
It was carried, and Delaborde’s division was beginning to pass, when
it met another French force debouching on the same point. This was
composed of Mermet and Franceschi’s men: they had beaten the local
_Ordenanza_ at Guimaraens, crossed the Avé high up, and were now
pushing along the southern bank to take the Barca de Trofa position
in the flank. Thus Soult found that, even if his frontal assault at
San Justo had failed, his left-hand column would have cleared the way
for him a few hours later, being already across the river and in the
enemy’s rear. Indeed his lateral detachment had done all that he had
expected from it, and at no great cost. For though the _Ordenanza_
had opposed it bravely enough, they had never been able to hold it
back. The only notable loss that had been sustained was that of
General Jardon, one of Mermet’s brigadiers, who had met his death by
his own recklessness. Finding his men checked for a moment, he had
seized a musket and charged on foot at the head of his skirmishing
line. This was not the place for a brigadier-general, and Jardon died
unnecessarily, doing the work of a sub-lieutenant.
Finding the French across the river at San Justo, the Portuguese, who
were defending the lower bridges, had to give way, or they would have
been surrounded and cut off. They yielded unwillingly, and at Ponte
de Avé actually beat off the first attempt to evict them. But in the
end they had to fly, abandoning the artillery in the redoubts that
covered the two bridges[288].
[288] Le Noble (pp. 157-8), and Napier following him, say that
the Portuguese murdered their commander, Brigadier-General
Vallongo, when the bridges were forced, tore him in pieces, and
buried his scattered members in a dunghill. It is a relief to
know from Da Luz Soriano, the Portuguese historian, that nothing
of the kind occurred, and that there was no officer of the name
of Vallongo in the Portuguese army.
On the twenty-seventh, therefore, Soult was able to press close in
to Oporto, for the line of the Avé is but fifteen miles north of the
city. On approaching the heights which overhang the Douro the French
found them covered with entrenchments and batteries ranged on a long
front of six or seven miles, from San João de Foz on the sea-shore
to the chapel of Bom Fin overlooking the river above the town. Ever
since the departure of the French from Orense and their crossing of
the frontier had become known, the whole of the populace had been at
work on the fortifications, under the direction of Portuguese and
British engineer officers. In three weeks an enormous amount of work
had been done. The rounded summits of the line of hills, which rise
immediately north of the city, and only half a mile in advance of
its outermost houses, had been crowned with twelve redoubts armed
with artillery of position. The depressions between the redoubts had
been closed by palisades and abattis. Further west, below the city,
where the line of hills is less marked, the front was continued by
a deep ditch, fortified buildings, and four strong redoubts placed
in the more exposed positions. It ended at the walls of San João da
Foz, the old citadel which commands the mouth of the Douro, and had
in this direction an outwork in another ancient fort, the castle of
Quejo, on the sea-shore a mile north of the estuary. There were no
less than 197 guns of various calibres distributed along the front of
the lines. Nor was this all: the main streets of the place had been
barricaded to serve as a second line of defence, and even south of
the river a battery had been constructed on the height crowned by the
Serra Convent, which overlooks the bridge and the whole city.
To hold this enormous fortified camp the Bishop of Oporto had
collected an army formidable in numbers if not in quality. There
was a strong nucleus of troops of the regular army: it included the
two local Oporto regiments (6th and 18th of the line), two more
battalions brought in by Brigadier-General Vittoria, who had been too
late to join in the defence of Braga, a battalion of the regiment
of Valenza (no. 21), a fraction of that of Viana (no. 9), with the
wrecks of the 2nd battalion of the Lusitanian Legion, which had
escaped from Eben’s rout of the twentieth, and the skeleton of an
incomplete cavalry regiment (no. 12, Miranda). In all there cannot
have been less than 5,000 regular troops in the town, though many of
the men were recruits with only a few weeks of service. To these may
be added three or four militia regiments in the same condition as
were the rest of the corps of that force, i.e. half-armed and less
than half-disciplined[289]. But the large majority of the garrison
was composed of the same sort of levies that had already fought
with such small success at Chaves and Braga--there were 9,000 armed
citizens of Oporto and a somewhat greater number of the _Ordenanza_
of the open country, who had retired into the city before Soult’s
advancing columns. The whole mass--regulars and irregulars--may have
made up a force of 30,000 men--nothing like the 40,000 or 60,000 of
the French reports[290]. Under the Bishop the military commanders
were three native brigadier-generals, Lima-Barreto, Parreiras,
and Vittoria. Eben had been offered the charge of a section of
the defences, but--depressed with the results of his experiment
in generalship at Braga--he refused any other responsibility than
that of leading his battalion of the Lusitanian Legion. The Bishop
had allotted to Parreiras the redoubts and entrenchments on the
north of the town, to Vittoria those on the north-east and east, to
Lima-Barreto those below the town as far as St. João da Foz. The
regulars had been divided up, so as to give two or three battalions
to each general; they were to form the reserve, while the defences
were manned by the militia and _Ordenanza_. There was a lamentable
want of trained gunners--less than 1,000 artillerymen were available
for the 200 pieces in the lines and on the heights beyond the river.
To make up the deficiency many hundreds of raw militia-men had been
turned over to the commanders of the batteries. The natural result
was seen in the inferior gunnery displayed all along the line upon
the fatal twenty-ninth of March.
[289] Apparently the regiments of Oporto, Baltar, Feira, and
Villa de Conde.
[290] I draw these deductions from Beresford’s and Eben’s reports
in the Record Office. Beresford (writing to Castlereagh on March
29, the day of the storm) complains that he can get no proper
‘morning states’ out of the officers at Oporto, but says that
the Bishop has there nos. 6 and 18 of the line, Vittoria’s two
battalions and the wrecks of the 2nd Lusitanian Legion. He speaks
of two or three militia regiments, 9,000 armed citizens, and
an indefinite number of _Ordenanza_. Eben gives some details
concerning his own doings. Da Luz Soriano mentions Champlemond
and his battalion of the 21st of the line. As to the _Ordenanza_,
9,000 seems a high estimate for the local Oporto horde, for that
town with 70,000 souls had already supplied two regiments of the
line, two battalions of the Lusitanian Legion, and a militia
regiment, 6,500 men in all.
To complete the picture of the defenders of Oporto it must be
added that the anarchy tempered by assassination, which had been
prevailing in the city ever since the Bishop assumed charge of the
government, had grown to a head during the last few days. On the
receipt of the news of the disaster at Braga it had culminated in a
riot, during which the populace constituted a sort of Revolutionary
Tribunal at the Porto do Olival. They haled out of the prisons all
persons who had been consigned to them on a charge of sympathizing
with the French, hung fourteen of these unfortunates, including
the brigadier-general Luiz da Oliveira, massacred many more in
the streets, and dragged the bodies round the town on hurdles.
The Bishop, though he had 5,000 regular troops at hand, made
no attempt to intervene--‘he could not stand in the way of the
righteous vengeance of the people upon traitors.’ On the night of
the twenty-eighth he retired to a place of safety, the Serra Convent
across the river, after bestowing his solemn benediction upon the
garrison, and handing over the further conduct of the defence to the
three generals whose names we have already cited.
The town of Oporto was hidden from Soult’s eyes by the range of
heights, crowned by fortifications, which lay before him. For the
place was built entirely upon the downslope of the hill towards
the Douro, and was invisible till those approaching it were within
half a mile of its outer buildings. It is a town of steep streets
running down to the water, and meeting at the foot of the great
pontoon-bridge, more than 200 yards long, which links it to the
transpontine suburb of Villa Nova, and the adjacent height of the
Serra do Pilar. The river front forms a broad quay, along which
were lying at the time nearly thirty merchant ships, mostly English
vessels laden with port wine, which were wind-bound by a persistent
North-Wester, and could not cross the bar and get out to sea.
Although his previous attempts to negotiate with the Portuguese had
not been very fortunate, the Marshal thought it worth while to send
proposals for an accommodation to the Bishop. He warned him not
to expose his city to the horrors of a sack, pointed out that the
raw levies of the garrison must inevitably be beaten, and assured
him that ‘the French came not as enemies, but as the deliverers
of Portugal from the yoke of the English. It was for the benefit
of these aliens alone that the Bishop would expose Oporto to the
incalculable calamities attending a storm[291].’ The bearer of the
Marshal’s letter was a Portuguese major taken prisoner at Braga, who
would have been massacred at the outposts if he had not taken the
precaution of explaining to his countrymen that Soult had sent him
in to propose the surrender of the French army, which was appalled at
the formidable series of defences to which it found itself opposed!
The reply sent by the Bishop and his council of war was, of course,
defiant, and bickering along the front of the lines immediately
began. While the white flag was still flying General Foy, the most
distinguished of Soult’s brigadiers, trespassed by some misconception
within the Portuguese picquets and was made prisoner. While being
conducted into the town he was nearly murdered, being mistaken
for Loison, for whom the inhabitants of Oporto nourished a deep
hatred[292].
[291] Le Noble, p. 161.
[292] Some of the French writers say that Foy was taken prisoner
while carrying a flag of truce and a second letter for the
Bishop’s eye. But what really seems to have happened was that he
conceived a notion that one of the Portuguese outposts wished
to surrender, rode in amongst them, and began to urge them to
lay down their arms. But they seized him and sent him to the
rear; his companion, the _chef de bataillon_ Roger, drew his
sword and tried to cut his way back to his men, whereupon he was
bayonetted. One cannot blame the Portuguese, for officers, in
time of truce, have no right to come within the enemy’s lines,
still less to urge his troops to desertion. Foy proved that
he was not Loison by holding up his two hands. Loison being
one-handed (as his nickname _Maneta_ shows), the populace at once
saw that they had made a mistake. I follow the narrative in Girod
de l’Ain’s new life of Foy (p. 78), corroborated by Le Noble (p.
162). Napier (ii. p. 57), of course, gives a version unfavourable
to the Portuguese.
On finding that the Portuguese were determined to fight, Soult began
his preparations for a general assault upon the following day. He
drove in the enemy’s outposts outside the town, and captured one or
two small redoubts in front of the main line. Having reconnoitred the
whole position, he told off Delaborde and Franceschi to attack the
north-eastern front, Mermet and one brigade of Lahoussaye’s dragoons
to storm the central parts of the lines, due north of the city, where
the fortifications were most formidable, Merle and the other brigade
of Lahoussaye to press in upon the western entrenchments below the
city. There was no general reserve save Lorges’ two regiments of
cavalry, and these had the additional task imposed upon them of
fending off any attack on the rear of the army which might be made
by scattered bodies of _Ordenanza_, who were creeping out into the
woods along the sea-coast, and threatening to turn the Marshal’s
right flank.
Soult had but 16,000 men available,--of whom 3,000 were cavalry,
and therefore could not be employed till the infantry should have
broken through the line of fortifications which completely covered
the Portuguese front. Nevertheless he had no doubts of the result,
though he had to storm works defended by 30,000 men and lined with
197 cannon. He now knew the exact fighting value of the Portuguese
levies, and looked upon Oporto as his own.
The Marshal’s plan was not to repeat the simple and simultaneous
frontal attack all along the line by which he had carried the day
at Braga. There was a good deal of strategy in his design: the two
flank divisions were ordered to attack, while the centre was for
a time held back. Merle, in especial, was directed to do all that
he could against the weakest point of the Portuguese line, in the
comparatively level ground to the west of the city. Soult hoped that
a heavy attack in this direction would lead the enemy to reinforce
his left from the reserves of his centre, and gradually to disgarnish
the formidable positions north of the city, when no attack was made
on them. If they committed this fault, he intended to hurl Mermet’s
division, which he carefully placed under cover till the critical
moment, at the central redoubts. A successful assault at this point
would finish the game, as it would cut the Portuguese line in two,
and allow the troops to enter the upper quarters of the city in their
first rush.
The French were under arms long ere dawn, waiting for the signal to
attack. The Portuguese also were awake and stirring in the darkness,
when at three o’clock a thunderstorm, accompanied by a terrific
hurricane from the north-west, swept over the city. In the midst of
the elemental din some of the Portuguese sentinels thought that they
had seen the French columns advancing to the assault: they fired, the
artillery followed their example, and for half an hour the noise of
the thunderstorm was rivalled by that of 200 guns of position firing
at nothing. Just as the gunners had discovered their mistake, the
tempest passed away, and soon after the day broke. So drenched and
weary were the French, who had been lying down under the torrential
rain, that Soult put off the assault for an hour, in order to allow
them to dry themselves and take some refreshment; the pause also
allowed the sodden ground to harden.
At seven all was again ready, and Merle’s and Delaborde’s regiments
hurled themselves at the entrenchments above and below the city. Both
made good progress, especially the former, who lodged themselves
in the houses and gardens immediately under the main line of the
Portuguese left wing, and captured several of its outlying defences.
Seeing the position almost forced, Parreiras, the commander of the
central part of the lines, acted just as Soult had hoped, and sent
most of his reserve to reinforce the left. The Marshal then bade
Merle halt for a moment, but ordered Delaborde, on his eastern flank,
to push on as hard as he could. The general obeyed, and charged right
into the Portuguese entrenchments, capturing several redoubts and
actually breaking the line and getting a lodgement in the north-east
corner of the city. Parreiras, to aid his colleague in this quarter,
drew off many of his remaining troops, and sent them away to the
right, thereby leaving his own section of the line only half
manned. Thereupon Soult launched against the central redoubts his
main assaulting column, Mermet’s division and the two regiments of
dragoons. The central battalion went straight for the main position
above the high-road, where the great Portuguese flag was flying on
the strongest redoubt. The others attacked on each side. This assault
was decisive: the Portuguese gunners had only time to deliver two
ineffective salvos when the French were upon them. They charged into
the redoubts through the embrasures, pulled down the connecting
abattis, and swept away the depleted garrison in their first rush.
The line of the defenders was hopelessly broken, and Mermet’s
division hunted them down the streets leading to the river at full
speed.
The centre being thus driven in, the Portuguese wings saw that all
was lost, and gave way in disorder, looking only for a line of
retreat. Vittoria, with the right wing, abandoned his section of
the city and retreated east along the Vallongo road, towards the
interior: he got away without much loss, and even turned to bay and
skirmished with the pursuing battalions of Delaborde when once he
was clear of the suburbs. Far other was the lot of the Portuguese
left wing, which had the sea behind it instead of the open country.
General Lima-Barreto, its commander, was killed by his own men:
he had given orders to spike the guns and double to the rear the
moment that he saw the central redoubts carried. Unfortunately for
himself, he was among a mass of men who wished to hold on to their
entrenchments in spite of the disaster on their right. When he
reiterated his order to retreat, he was shot down for a traitor.
But Merle’s division soon evicted his slayers, and sent them flying
towards St. João da Foz and the sea. There was a dreadful slaughter
of the Portuguese in this direction: some escaped across the river
in boats, a large body slipped round Merle’s flank and got away to
the north along the coast (though Lorges’ dragoons pursued them among
the woods above the water and sabred many): others threw themselves
into the citadel of St. João and capitulated on terms. But several
thousands, pressed into the angle between the Douro and the ocean,
were slaughtered almost without resistance, or rolled _en masse_ into
the water.
The fate of the Portuguese centre was no less horrible. Their
commander, Parreiras, fled early, and got over the bridge to report
to the Bishop the ruin of his army. The main horde followed him,
though many lingered behind, endeavouring to defend the barricades
in the streets. When several thousands had passed the river, some
unknown officer directed the drawbridge between the central pontoons
to be raised, in order to prevent the French from following. This was
done while the larger part of the armed multitude was still on the
further bank, hurrying down towards the sole way of escape. Nor was
it only the fighting-men whose retreat was cut off: when the news
ran round the city that the lines were forced, the civil population
had rushed down to the quays to escape before the sack began. It was
fortunate that half the people had left Oporto during the last two
days and taken refuge in Beira. But tens of thousands had lingered
behind, full of confidence in their entrenchments and their army of
defenders. A terrified mass of men, women, and children now came
pouring down to the bridge, and mingled with the remnants of the
routed garrison. The pontoons were still swinging safely on their
cables, and no one, save those in the front of the rush, discovered
that there was a fatal gap in the middle of the passage, where the
drawbridge had been raised. There was no turning back for those
already embarked on the bridge, for the crowds behind continued to
push them on, and it was impossible to make them understand what had
happened. The French had now begun to appear on the quays, and to
attack the rear of the unhappy multitude: their musketry drowned the
cries of those who tried to turn back. At the same time the battery
on the Serra hill, beyond the river, opened upon the French, and
the noise of its twenty heavy guns made it still more impossible to
convey the news to the back of the crowd. For more than half an hour,
it is said, the rush of fugitives kept thrusting its own front ranks
into the death-trap, forty feet broad, in the midst of the bridge.
If anything more was needed to add to the horror of the scene, it
was supplied by the sudden rush of a squadron of Portuguese cavalry,
which--cut off from retreat to the east--galloped down from a side
street and ploughed its way into the thickest of the crowd at the
bridge-head, trampling down hundreds of victims, till it was brought
to a standstill by the mere density of the mass into which it had
penetrated. So many persons, at last, were thrust into the water that
not only was the whole surface of the Douro covered with drowning
wretches, but the gap in the bridge was filled up by a solid mass of
the living and the dead. Over this horrid gangway, as it is said,
some few of the fugitives scrambled to the opposite bank[293].
[293] Le Noble, and Napier following him, state that the breach
in the bridge was caused merely by some of the central pontoons
sinking under the weight of the passing multitude. Hennegan,
who was present in Oporto that day, says the same. But it seems
safer to follow Da Luz Soriano and other Portuguese witnesses,
who state that no such accident occurred, but that the early
fugitives pulled up the drawbridge in order to stay the pursuit,
reckless as to the fate of those who were behind them. Historians
telling a story to the discredit of their own party may generally
be trusted.
At first the French, who had fought their way down to the quay, had
begun to fire upon the rear of the multitude which was struggling to
escape. But they soon found that no resistance was being offered, and
saw that the greater part of the flying crowd was composed of women,
children, and non-combatants. The sight was so sickening that their
musketry died down, and when they saw the unfortunate Portuguese
thrust by thousands into the water, numbers of them turned to the
charitable work of helping the strugglers ashore, and saved many
lives. The others cleared the bridge-head by forcing the fugitives
back with the butt ends of their muskets, and edging them along the
quays and into the side streets, till the way was open. In the late
afternoon some of Mermet’s troops mended the gap in the bridge with
planks and rafters, and crossed it, despite of the irregular fire of
the Portuguese battery on the heights above. They then pushed into
the transpontine suburb, expelled its defenders, and finally climbed
the Serra hill and captured the guns which had striven to prevent
their passage.
Meanwhile the parts of Oporto remote from the pontoon-bridge had
been the scene of a certain amount of desultory fighting. Many
small bodies of the garrison had barricaded themselves in houses,
and made a desperate but ineffectual attempt to defend them. In the
Bishop’s palace at the south end of the town 400 militia held out
for some hours, and were all bayonetted when the gates were at last
burst open. Street-fighting always ends in rapine, rape and arson,
and as the resistance died down the victors turned their hands
to the usual atrocities that follow a storm. It was only a small
proportion of them who had been sobered and sickened by witnessing
the catastrophe on the bridge. The rest dealt with the houses and
with the inhabitants after the fashion usual in the sieges of that
day, and Oporto was thoroughly sacked. It is to the credit of Soult
that he used every exertion to beat the soldiers off from their prey,
and restored order long ere the following morning. It is to be wished
that Wellington had been so lucky at Badajoz and San Sebastian.
[Illustration: COMBAT OF BRAGA
(OR LANHOZO)
MARCH 20TH 1809]
[Illustration: OPORTO
MARCH-MAY 1809
SHOWING THE PORTUGUESE LINES]
The French army had lost, so the Marshal reported, no more than
eighty killed and 350 wounded, an extraordinary testimony to the
badness of the Portuguese gunnery. How many of the garrison and
the populace perished it will never be possible to ascertain--the
figures given by various contemporary authorities run up from
4,000 to 20,000. The smaller number is probably nearer the truth,
but no satisfactory estimate can be made. It is certain that some
of the regiments which took part in the defence were almost
annihilated[294], and that thousands of the inhabitants were drowned
in the river. Yet the town was not depopulated, and of its defenders
the greater proportion turned up sooner or later in the ranks of
Silveira, Botilho, and Trant. The slain and the drowned together may
perhaps be roughly estimated at 7,000 or 8,000, about equally divided
between combatants and non-combatants.
[294] E.g. the 21st of the line had even in September, nearly
six months after the storm, only 193 men under arms.
Soult meanwhile could report to his master that the first half of
his orders had been duly carried out. He had captured 200 cannon, a
great store of English ammunition and military equipment, and more
than thirty merchant vessels, laden with wine. He had delivered Foy
and some dozens of other French captives--for it would be doing the
Portuguese injustice to let it be supposed that they had killed or
tortured all their prisoners. In short, the victory and the trophies
were splendid: yet the Marshal was in reality almost as far from
having completed the conquest of northern Portugal as on the day
when he first crossed its frontier. He had only secured for himself
a new base of operation, to supersede Chaves and Braga. For the next
month he could do no more than endeavour ineffectually to complete
the subjugation of one single province. The main task which his
master had set before him, the capture of Lisbon, he was never able
to contemplate, much less to take in hand. Like so many other French
generals in the Peninsula, he was soon to find that victory is not
the same thing as conquest.
N.B.--The sources for this part of the Portuguese campaign are very
full. On the French side we have, besides the Marshal’s dispatches,
the following eye-witnesses: Le Noble, Soult’s official chronicler;
St. Chamans (one of the Marshal’s aides-de-camp); General Bigarré,
King Joseph’s representative at the head quarters of the 2nd Corps;
Naylies of Lahoussaye’s dragoons; and Fantin des Odoards of the 31st
Léger. On the Portuguese side we have the lengthy dispatches of Eben,
the narrative of Hennegan (who had brought the British ammunition to
Oporto), some letters from Brotherton, who was first with La Romana
and then with Silveira, and a quantity of official correspondence in
the Record Office, between Beresford and the Portuguese.
SECTION XIII: CHAPTER V
SOULT’S HALT AT OPORTO: OPERATIONS OF WILSON AND LAPISSE ON THE
PORTUGUESE FRONTIER: SILVEIRA’S DEFENCE OF AMARANTE
Oporto had been conquered: the unhappy levies of the Bishop had been
scattered to the winds: by the captures which it had made the French
army was now, for the first time since its departure from Orense,
in possession of a considerable store of provisions and an adequate
supply of ammunition. Soult was no longer driven forward by the
imperative necessity for finding new resources to feed his troops,
nor forced to hurry on the fighting by the fear that if he delayed
his cartridges would run short. He had at last leisure to halt and
take stock of his position. The most striking point in the situation
was that he was absolutely ignorant of the general course of the war
in the other regions of the Peninsula. When he had been directed
to march on Oporto, he had been assured that he might count on the
co-operation of Lapisse, who was to advance from Salamanca with his
9,000 men, and of Victor, who was to stretch out to him a helping
hand from the valley of the Tagus. It was all-important to know how
far the promised aid was being given: yet the Marshal could learn
nothing. More than two months had now elapsed since he had received
any dispatches from the Emperor. It was a month since he had obtained
his last news of the doings of his nearest colleague, Ney, which had
been brought to him, as it will be remembered, just as he was about
to leave Orense. At that moment the Duke of Elchingen had been able
to tell him nothing save that the communications between Galicia and
Leon had been broken, and that the insurrection was daily growing
more formidable. After this his only glimpse of the outer world had
been afforded by Portuguese letters, seized in the post-offices of
Braga and Oporto, from which he had learnt that his garrisons left
behind at Vigo and Tuy were being beleaguered by a vast horde of
Galician irregular levies. ‘The march of the 2nd Corps,’ wrote one of
Soult’s officers, ‘may be compared to the progress of a ship on the
high seas: she cleaves the waves, but they close behind her, and in a
few moments all trace of her passage has disappeared[295].’ To make
the simile complete, Fantin des Odoards should have compared Soult to
the captain of a vessel in a dense fog, forging ahead through shoals
and sandbanks without any possibility of obtaining a general view of
the coast till the mists may lift. To all intents and purposes, we
may add, the fog never dispersed till May had arrived, and Wellesley
hurtled down in a dreadful collision on the groping commander, ere he
had fully ascertained his own whereabouts.
[295] Fantin des Odoards, _Journal_, April 28, p. 226.
When the whole country-side is up in arms, as it was in Galicia and
northern Portugal in the spring of 1809, it is useless to dispatch
small bodies of men in search of news. They are annihilated in a
few hours: but to make large detachments and send them out on long
expeditions, so weakens the main army that it loses its power of
further advance. This was the fate of the 2nd Corps after the fall of
Oporto. Soult, compelled to seek for information at all costs, had
to send one of his four infantry divisions back towards Galicia, to
succour Tuy and Vigo and obtain news of Ney, while another marched
eastward to the Tras-os-Montes, to look for signs of the advance of
Lapisse from Salamanca. When these detachments had been made, the
remainder of the army was too weak to resume the march on Lisbon
which the Emperor had commanded, and was forced to remain cantoned in
the neighbourhood of Oporto.
The details of Soult’s disposition of his troops after the fall of
Oporto were as follows: Franceschi’s cavalry, supported by Mermet’s
division of infantry, were pushed forward across the Douro on the
road to Coimbra, to watch the movements of the wrecks of the Bishop’s
army, which had retired to the line of the Vouga. Merle’s division
and half Delaborde’s remained in garrison at Oporto, while Lorges’
and one brigade of Lahoussaye’s dragoons were kept not far from
them, in the open country north of the city, about Villa de Conde
and Vallongo. The other brigade of Lahoussaye’s division, supported
by Foy’s infantry, was sent out on an expedition towards the
Tras-os-Montes, with orders to brush away Silveira and seek for news
of the expected approach of Lapisse. Loison was placed in command
of this detachment. Finally, Heudelet’s division, which had been
guarding the sick and the stores of the army at Braga, was ordered to
send on all the _impedimenta_ to Oporto, and then to prepare to march
northward in order to relieve Tuy and Vigo, and to get into touch
with Ney and the 6th Corps.
It was clear that the further movements of the Duke of Dalmatia would
depend on the intelligence which Loison and Heudelet might obtain. If
Ney should have crushed the Galician insurgents, if Lapisse should be
met with somewhere on the borders of Spain, matters would look well
for the resumption of the advance on Lisbon. It was also to be hoped
that Lapisse would be able to give some information as to the doings
of Victor and the 1st Corps. For it was necessary to find out how the
Duke of Belluno had been faring in Estremadura, and to know whether
he was prepared to co-operate in that general movement against the
Portuguese capital which the Emperor had prescribed in his parting
instructions from Valladolid.
As a matter of fact, Victor, having beaten Cuesta at Medellin on the
day before Soult captured Oporto (March 28), had reached the end of
his initiative, and was now lying at Merida, incapable, according to
his own conception, of any further offensive movement till he should
have received heavy reinforcements. Ney in Galicia was fighting hard
against the insurgents, and beginning to discover that though he
might rout them a dozen times he could not make an end of them. He
had not a man to spare for Soult’s assistance.
There remained Lapisse, who in his central position at Salamanca
should have been, according to Napoleon’s design, the link between
Ney, Victor, and Soult. He had been directed, as it will be
remembered[296], to move on Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, to capture
both these fortresses, and then to advance into Portugal and to
strike at Abrantes: when he arrived there it was hoped that he would
find Soult on his right and Victor on his left, and would join them
in the general assault on Lisbon. There can be no doubt that Napoleon
was giving too heavy a task to Lapisse: he had but a single division
of infantry--though it was a strong one of twelve battalions--and
one provisional brigade of cavalry[297], in all about 9,000 men.
This was ample for the holding down of the southern parts of the
kingdom of Leon, or even for the attack on Almeida and Rodrigo:
but it was a small force with which to advance into the mountains
of central Portugal or to seize Abrantes. If he had carried out
his instructions, Lapisse would have had to march for nearly 200
miles through difficult mountain country, beset every day by the
_Ordenanza_, as Soult had been in his shorter route from Orense to
Oporto. And if he had ever cut his way to Abrantes, he ought to have
found himself faced by Cradock’s 9,000 British troops and by the
reorganized Portuguese regular army, which lay in and about Lisbon,
with a strength which even in February was not less than 12,000 men.
[296] See p. 175.
[297] On Feb. 1 the force was, _présents sous les armes_, 7,692
infantry, about 1,000 cavalry, and 200 gunners.
Napoleon had given Lapisse too much to do: but on the other hand that
general performed far too little. Though he could never have reached
Abrantes, he ought to have reached Almeida, where his presence would
have been of material assistance to Soult, more especially if he had
from thence pushed exploring columns towards Lamego and Vizeu, before
plunging into the mountains on the road to the south. As a matter of
fact, Lapisse in February and March never advanced so much as fifty
miles from Salamanca, and allowed himself to be ‘contained’ and
baffled, for two whole months, by an insignificant opposing force,
commanded by a general possessing that enterprise and initiative
which he himself entirely lacked.
The officer who wrecked this part of Napoleon’s plan for the invasion
of Portugal was Sir Robert Wilson, one of the most active and capable
men in the English army, and one who might have made a great name
for himself, had fortune been propitious. But though he served with
distinction throughout the Napoleonic war, and won golden opinions
in Belgium and Egypt, in Prussia and Poland, no less than in Spain,
he never obtained that command on a large scale which would have
enabled him to show his full powers. It may seem singular that a man
who won love and admiration wherever he went, who was decorated by
two emperors for brilliant feats of arms done under their eyes, who
was equally popular in the Russian, the Austrian, or the Portuguese
camp, who had displayed on a hundred fields his chivalrous daring,
his ready ingenuity, and his keen military insight, should fail to
achieve greatness. But Wilson, unhappily for himself, had the defects
of his qualities. When acting as a subordinate his independent and
self-reliant character was always getting him into trouble with his
hierarchical superiors. He was not the man to obey orders which he
believed to be dangerous or mistaken: he so frequently ‘thought for
himself’ and carried out plans quite different from those which had
been imposed upon him, that no commander-in-chief could tolerate him
for long. His moves were always clever and generally fortunate, but
mere success did not atone for his disobedience in the eyes of his
various chiefs, and he never remained for long in the same post. All
generals, good and bad, agree in disliking lieutenants who disregard
their orders and carry out other schemes--even if they be ingenious
and successful ones[298]. It must be added that Wilson dabbled
in politics on the Whig side, and was not a favourite with Lord
Castlereagh, a drawback when preferments were being distributed.
[298] Wellington, e.g., writes to him on August 5, 1809, ‘It
is difficult for me to instruct you, when every letter that I
receive from you informs me that you have gone further off, and
are executing some plan of your own.’
But when trusted with any independent command, and allowed a free
hand, Wilson always did well. Not only had he all the talents of an
excellent partisan chief, but he was one of those genial leaders
who have the power to inspire confidence and enthusiasm in their
followers, and are able to get out of them double the work that an
ordinary commander can extort. He was in short one of those men who
if left to themselves achieve great things, but who when placed in a
subordinate position quarrel with their superiors and get sent home
in disgrace. From the moment when Beresford assumed command of the
Portuguese army his relations with Wilson were one long story of
friction and controversy, and Wellesley (though acknowledging his
brilliant services) made no attempt to keep him in the Peninsula.
He wanted officers who would obey orders, even when they did not
understand or approve them, and would not tolerate lieutenants who
wished to argue with him[299].
[299] It is most unfortunate that while Wilson wrote and
published admirable narratives of his doings in Prussia and
Poland in 1806-7, and of his Russian and German campaign of
1812-3, he has left nothing on record concerning Portugal in
1808-9. Moreover the life, by his son-in-law, breaks off in 1807,
and was never finished. My narrative is constructed from his
dispatches in the Record Office, the correspondence of Wellesley
and Beresford, and Mayne and Lillie’s _Loyal Lusitanian Legion_.
It was Wilson who first showed that the new levies of Portugal
could do good service in the field. While Silveira and Eben were
meeting with nothing but disaster in the Tras-os-Montes and the
Entre-Douro-e-Minho, he was conducting a thoroughly successful
campaign on the borders of Leon. From January to April, 1809, he,
and he alone, protected the eastern frontier of Portugal, and with a
mere handful of men kept the enemy at a distance, and finally induced
him to draw off and leave Salamanca, just at the moment when Soult’s
operations on the Douro were becoming most dangerous.
The force at his disposal in January, 1809, consisted of nothing
more than his own celebrated ‘Loyal Lusitanian Legion.’ We have
already had occasion to mention this corps while speaking of the
reorganization of the Portuguese army (see page 199). On December 14,
as we have seen, he had led out his little brigade of Green-coats
towards the frontier[300].
[300] It will he remembered that it was only the first division
of the Legion that marched. The second, which could not go
forward for want of uniforms and arms, was left behind in charge
of Baron Eben. That officer had strict orders to move out to
Almeida the moment that he should receive the muskets, &c. that
were on their way from England. Eben, however, disregarded his
instructions, became one of the Bishop’s clique, and involved his
men in the campaign against Soult, thereby marring Wilson’s plans
and depriving him of half his proper force.
Wilson’s reasons for moving forward were partly political,
partly military: on the one hand he wished to get away from the
neighbourhood of the Bishop of Oporto, whose intrigues disgusted
him; on the other he saw that it was necessary to bring up a force
to cover the frontier of Portugal, when Moore marched forward into
Spain. As long as Moore had remained at Salamanca, there was a strong
barrier in front of Portugal: but when he departed it was clear that
the kingdom must defend itself. Wilson therefore advanced to Pinhel,
near Almeida, and there established his little force in cantonments.
He was at this place when the startling developments of the campaign
in the last ten days of December, 1808, took place. Moore retired on
Galicia, Napoleon’s army swept on into Leon, and Wilson found himself
left alone with the whole defence of the north-eastern frontier
of Portugal thrown on his hands. He soon heard of the storming of
Zamora and Toro, and learnt that Lapisse’s division had arrived at
Salamanca. Three marches might bring that general to the border.
A few days later Wilson received from Sir John Cradock the news that
he had ordered the British garrison to evacuate Almeida[301], and
to retire on Lisbon, as the whole remaining force in Portugal would
probably have to embark in a few days. The new commander-in-chief
added that he should advise Wilson to bring off his British officers
and depart with the rest, as the Portuguese would be unable to make
any head against Bonaparte, and it would be a useless sacrifice
to linger in their company and be overwhelmed. This pusillanimous
counsel shocked and disgusted Wilson: he called together his
subordinates, and found that they agreed with him in considering
Cradock’s advice disgraceful. They resolved that they could not
desert their Portuguese comrades, and were in honour bound to see
the campaign to an end, however black the present outlook might
appear[302].
[301] It consisted of the 45th and 97th regiments.
[302] Napier, who is very friendly to Cradock, makes no mention
of this extraordinary dispatch. But it is fully substantiated by
Mayne and Lillie, who were both present at Wilson’s council of
war, and heard the matter discussed. See their _History of the
Lusitanian Legion_, p. 43.
When therefore the British garrison of Almeida was withdrawn, Wilson
entered that fortress with the Legion and took charge of it. He
obtained from the Regency leave to appoint his lieutenant-colonel,
William Mayne, as the governor, and also received permission to
assume command of the local levies in the neighbourhood. These
consisted of the skeletons of two line regiments (nos. 11 and 23)
whose reorganization had but just begun. There were also two militia
regiments (Guarda and Trancoso) to be raised in the district, but at
this moment they existed only in name, and possessed neither officers
nor arms. For immediate action Wilson could count upon nothing but
the 1,300 men of the Lusitanian Legion.
Nevertheless he resolved to advance at once, and to endeavour to
impose on Lapisse by a show of activity. Leaving the Portuguese
regulars and 700 men of the Legion to garrison Almeida, he crossed
the frontier with his handful of cavalry (not 200 sabres), two guns,
and 300 men of his light companies. Passing the Spanish fortress
of Ciudad Rodrigo he advanced some distance on the Salamanca road,
and took up his position behind the Yeltes river, with his right
resting on the inaccessible Sierra de Francia, and his left at San
Felices, half way to the Douro. His whole force constituted no more
than a thin line of pickets, but he acted with such confidence and
decision, beating up the French outposts with his dragoons, raiding
well forward in the direction of Ledesma and Tamames, and stirring up
the peasants of the mountain country to insurrection, that Lapisse
gave him credit for having a considerable force at his back. The
French general had expected to meet with no opposition on his way
to Almeida, believing that Cradock was about to embark, and that
the Portuguese would not fight. He was accordingly much surprised
to find a long line in his front, occupied by troops dressed like
British riflemen, and commanded by British officers--whose strength
he was unable to ascertain. He halted, in order to take stock of his
opponent, when a bold push would have shown him that only a skeleton
army was before him. In an intercepted dispatch of February[303] he
reported that the peasantry informed him that Wilson had 12,000 men,
and that as many more were in garrison at Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida.
[303] See the _Lusitanian Legion_, p. 47.
As the weeks wore on, and the winter drew to an end, Wilson obtained
some slight reinforcements. When he first advanced the Spaniards
could give him no help, for the garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo itself
consisted of nothing but its six companies of urban militia, and
a new battalion of 500 men, which had been on the point of setting
out to join La Romana when its way to Leon was intercepted by the
French. There were 1,400 men to man a fortress which required a
garrison of 4,000[304]! But before January was out, Pignatelli, the
captain-general of Castile, had sent into the place a regiment which
he had raised in the mountains of Avila, and Carlos d’España[305] had
begun to form some new battalions from the peasantry of the Ciudad
Rodrigo district, stiffened by stragglers from La Romana’s army[306].
In February the Central Junta gave Wilson a provisional command over
the Spanish forces in Leon, and he used his authority to draw upon
the garrison of Rodrigo for detachments to strengthen his outposts.
He also requisitioned men from Almeida, when the Portuguese regiments
there placed had begun to fill up their ranks to a respectable
strength. A few cavalry of the re-formed 11th of the line were
especially useful to him for scouting work.
[304] This fact comes from a letter of Ramon Blanco, governor
of Ciudad Rodrigo, dated Jan. 13, which Frere sent home to
Castlereagh, and which is therefore now in the Record Office.
Blanco complains that he is absolutely without trained
artillerymen of any sort.
[305] Carlos d’España, whose name we shall so frequently meet
during the succeeding years, was no Spaniard, but a French
_émigré_ officer of the name of D’Espagne. Englishmen, on account
of his name, sometimes took him for a prince of the Spanish royal
family.
[306] Sir Robert Wilson to Frere, dated Jan. 29, in the Record
Office. The regiment sent by Pignatelli was called ‘Volunteers of
Avila.’
With this small assistance, Wilson, whose total force never exceeded
400 horse and 3,000 infantry, kept Lapisse employed throughout
February and March. He beat up the French quarters on several
occasions, and twice captured large convoys of provisions which
were being directed on Salamanca; to fall upon one of these, a
great requisition of foodstuffs from Ledesma, he dashed far within
Lapisse’s lines, but brought out all the wagons in safety and
delivered them to the governor of Ciudad Rodrigo. At last, emboldened
by his adversary’s timidity, he extended his right beyond the Sierra
de Francia, and established part of the Legion under Colonel Mayne in
the Puerto de Baños, the main pass between Salamanca and Estremadura.
Thus Lapisse was completely cut off from all communication with
Victor and the French army on the Tagus, save by the circuitous route
through Madrid.
Jourdan, writing in the name of King Joseph, had duly transmitted to
Lapisse the Emperor’s orders to march on Abrantes, the moment that
it should be known that Soult had arrived at Oporto. He had even
reiterated these directions in February, though both he and the King
doubted their wisdom. Victor had written to Madrid to suggest that
Alcantara would be a much better and safer objective for the division
to aim at than Abrantes[307]. He wished to draw Lapisse’s troops
(which properly belonged to the 1st Corps) into his own sphere of
operations, and repeatedly declared that without them he had no hope
of bringing his Estremaduran campaign to a happy end, much less of
executing any effective diversion against Portugal. Jourdan agreed
with him, opining that Lapisse would miscarry, if he invaded central
Portugal on an independent line of operations. But no one was so
convinced of this as Lapisse himself, who, with his exaggerated ideas
of the strength of Wilson, was most reluctant to move forward. As
late as the end of March the Emperor’s orders were still ostensibly
in vigour[308], and the general only excused himself for not
marching, by pretending that he could not venture to advance till he
had certain news of Soult’s movements. This the Galician insurgents
were obliging enough to keep from him.
[307] Victor to King Joseph, from Toledo, Feb. 3, 1809.
[308] This is shown by a letter of March 23 from Solignac, one of
Lapisse’s brigadiers, which was intercepted by guerrillas. The
general writes to his friend Raguerie that the march on Abrantes
is certain, and that letters for him had better be readdressed to
Lisbon [Record Office].
At last, however, Jourdan yielded to Victor’s wishes, and authorized
Lapisse to drop down on to Alcantara, keeping outside the limits of
Portugal, instead of making the attack on Rodrigo and the subsequent
dash at Abrantes which the Emperor had prescribed[309]. Overjoyed
at escaping from the responsibility which he dreaded, Lapisse first
prepared to march southward by the Puerto de Baños. But when he
found it held by Mayne and the troops of Wilson’s right wing, he made
no attempt to force the passage, but resolved to carry out his design
by stratagem. Massing his division, he marched on Ciudad Rodrigo upon
April 6. He pierced with ease the feeble screen of Wilson’s outposts
and appeared in front of the Spanish fortress, which he duly summoned
to surrender. But though the place might easily have been carried by
a _coup de main_ in January, it was now safe against anything but
a formal siege, and Lapisse had neither a battering-train nor any
real intention of attacking. When the governor returned a defiant
answer, the French division made a show of sitting down in front
of the walls. This was done in order to draw Wilson to the aid of
the place, and the move was successful. Calling in all his outlying
detachments from the nearer passes and collecting some of Carlos
d’España’s levies, Sir Robert took post close to the walls of Ciudad
Rodrigo, with a battalion of the Legion under Colonel Grant, some
other Portuguese troops and four guns[310].
[309] Jourdan’s _Mémoires_, p. 189, show that he and Joseph
authorized the move, at Victor’s instance, and prove that it was
not made on Lapisse’s own responsibility, as Napier supposes [ii.
72], but in obedience to superior orders.
[310] This narrative is from Mayne and Lillie, supplemented by
Jourdan and other French sources. Wilson thought that he had
foiled a real attack on Rodrigo, but was mistaken: Lapisse was
only feinting.
Having thus lured Wilson away from the passes, the French general
suddenly broke up by night, and made a forced march for the Puerto
de Perales, the nearest mountain-road to Alcantara. He thus obtained
a full day’s start, and got off unmolested. Sir Robert and Carlos
d’España followed on his track as soon as they discovered his
departure, and Mayne also pursued, from the Puerto de Baños, but none
of them could do more than harass his rearguard, with which they
skirmished for three days in the passes. It would not have been wise
of them to attempt more, even if they could have got into touch with
the main body, for the French division was double their strength.
Meanwhile the peasantry of the Sierra de Gata endeavoured to stop
Lapisse’s progress, by blocking the defiles; but he swept them away
with ease, and they never succeeded in delaying him for more than a
few hours. Their incessant ‘sniping’ and night attacks exasperated
the French, who dealt most ruthlessly with the country-side as they
passed. When they arrived at Alcantara, and found the little town
barricaded, they not only refused all quarter to the fighting-men
when they stormed the place, but committed dreadful atrocities on the
non-combatants. Not only murder and rape but mutilation and torture
are reported by credible witnesses[311]. After the houses had been
sacked, the very tombs in the churches were broken open in search of
plunder. Leaving Alcantara full of corpses and ruins [April 12], the
division marched on by Caceres and joined Victor in his camp near
Merida[312] [April 19].
[311] It is impossible to make out why Alcantara was treated so
much worse than other places taken by storm, but the facts are
well vouched for. The report of the local authorities to Cuesta
says that not only all peasants taken with arms in their hands,
but more than forty non-combatants were butchered, and that not
a woman who had remained in the place escaped rape. Lillie,
the historian of the Lusitanian Legion, who was with the force
that pursued Lapisse from Rodrigo, says that he saw the traces
of ‘acts of barbarity that would disgrace the most savage and
uncivilized of mankind’--corpses deliberately mutilated and laid
out to roast on piles of burning furniture, with the bodies of
domestic animals, such as pigs and dogs, placed on the top of the
pile as if in jest [_Lusitanian Legion_, pp. 66-7]. The German
historian Schepeler gives very similar details, adding the note
about the dragging up of bones and coffins from the churches.
[312] All Napier’s criticism (ii. 85-6) on Lapisse’s movement to
Alcantara is vitiated by his ignorance of the fact that Jourdan
and the King, at Victor’s instance, had sent him orders to go
there. But nothing can excuse his previous inaction in February
and March. He ought to have attacked Rodrigo before the end of
January, when it was still almost without a garrison, and in a
state of great disrepair.
Since Lapisse, then, had moved off far to the south, and thrown
in his lot with his old comrades of the 1st Corps, it was in vain
that Soult sought for news of him on the Douro after the fall
of Oporto. When Loison set out to cross the Tamega and to enter
the Tras-os-Montes, in order that he might obtain information of
the movements of the division at Salamanca, that division was
making ready for its march to Alcantara; a fortnight later it had
disappeared from the northern theatre of operations altogether, and
Soult’s last chance of obtaining external help for his invasion of
Portugal was gone. This section, in short, of Napoleon’s great plan
for the march on Lisbon had been foiled, and foiled almost entirely
by Sir Robert Wilson’s happy audacity and resourceful generalship.
But for him, the timidity of Cradock, the impotence of the
Spaniards, and the disorganization of the Portuguese army might have
brought about the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, at the same
moment that Soult was entering Portugal on its northern frontier. His
services have never received their proper meed of praise, either from
the government which he served so well, or from the historians who
have told the annals of the Peninsular War.
We must now return to the details of the Duke of Dalmatia’s
operations. His movements were clearly dependent on the results of
the two expeditions under Heudelet and Loison, which he had sent out
to the north and the east after his victory of March 29.
Heudelet, after discharging on to Oporto the sick and wounded and the
stores which he had been guarding at Braga, started out northward
on April 6, with the 4,000 infantry of his own division and Lorges’
dragoons, whom the Marshal had ordered up to his aid from Villa de
Conde. Heudelet was ordered to disperse the insurgents in the valleys
of the Lima and Minho, and to relieve Tuy and Vigo, where the French
garrisons were known to be in a state of siege. To reach them it was
necessary to pierce through the screen of militia and _Ordenanza_
under General Botilho, which had cut off all communication between
Galicia and the army of Portugal since the month of February.
On April 7 the French general neared the line of the Lima, only to
find the bridges barricaded and Botilho’s horde entrenched behind
them. After some preliminary skirmishing, fords were discovered,
which Heudelet’s infantry passed upon the following morning, sending
the unfortunate Portuguese flying in every direction and capturing
the three guns which formed their sole artillery. On the tenth
the frontier fortress of Valenza was reached: it was found to be
in a dilapidated condition, and garrisoned by only 200 men, who
surrendered at the first summons. Tuy, where General Lamartinière had
been shut up for the last seven weeks, faces Valenza across the broad
estuary of the Minho, so that Heudelet was now in full communication
with it.
Lamartinière, as it will be remembered[313], had been left behind,
with Soult’s heavy artillery, wheeled transport, and sick, when the
2nd Corps marched for Orense on February 16. He had gathered in
several belated detachments which had started from Santiago in the
hope of joining the rear of the marching column, so that he had the
respectable force of 3,300 men, though 1,200 of them were invalids or
convalescents. The walls of Tuy were in a bad state of repair, but
the governor had found no great difficulty in maintaining himself
against the Galician insurgents on his own side of the Minho, and
the Portuguese levies from the other bank which Botilho sent to
the aid of the Spaniards. But he had been completely shut in since
Soult’s departure, and could give no information concerning Ney’s
operations in northern Galicia, or the general progress of the war
in the other parts of Spain. The only news which he could supply was
that Vigo, the next French garrison, had fallen into the hands of the
enemy. On his way to Portugal Soult had dropped a force of 700 men
at that fortress, lest its excellent harbour should be utilized by
the British for throwing in supplies to the Galician insurgents. The
paymaster-general of the 2nd Corps, with his treasure and its escort,
had lagged behind during the Marshal’s advance, and, being beset by
the peasantry, had entered Vigo instead of pushing on to Tuy.
[313] See p. 188.
When Soult had passed out of sight on the way to Orense, the
Galicians of the coast-land, headed by Pablo Morillo, a lieutenant
of the regular army whom La Romana had sent down from the interior,
and by Manuel Garcia Del Barrio[314], a colonel dispatched by the
Central Junta from Seville, had taken arms in great numbers, and
blockaded Vigo. The French commander, Colonel Chalot, found himself
unable to defend the whole extent of the fortifications for sheer
want of men, and could not prevent the insurgents from establishing
themselves close under the walls and keeping up a continual fire upon
the garrison. He believed that a serious assault would infallibly
succeed, and only refused to surrender because he was ashamed to
yield to peasants. On March 23 two English frigates, the _Lively_
and _Venus_, appeared off the harbour mouth, and began to supply the
insurgents with ammunition, and to land heavy naval guns for their
use. On the twenty-seventh one of the gates was battered in, and the
Galicians were preparing to storm the place, when Chalot surrendered
at discretion, only stipulating that he and his men should be handed
over to the British, and not to the Spaniards. This request was
granted, and Captain Mackinley received twenty-three officers and
nearly 800 men as prisoners, besides a number of sick and several
hundred non-combatants belonging to the train, and camp-followers.
The plunder taken consisted of sixty wagons, 339 horses, and more
than £6,000 in hard cash, composing the military chest of the 2nd
Corps [March 28].
[314] Napier’s ‘Colonel Barrois.’
The Galicians had somewhat relaxed the blockade of Tuy in order to
press that of Vigo, and on the very day when Chalot surrendered,
General Lamartinière had sent out a flying column to endeavour to
communicate with his colleague. It returned pursued by the Spaniards,
to report to the governor that Vigo had fallen[315]. On its way back
to Tuy it suffered a loss of seventy prisoners and nearly 200 killed
and wounded.
[315] Most of these details as to the fall of Vigo come from
a contemporary account in Andrade’s collection, printed in
_Los Guerrilleros Gallegos_, pp. 129-37. Le Noble asserts that
only 794 men were captured, but Captain Mackinley says that he
received nearly 1,300 prisoners, including 300 sick and many
non-combatants. He had the best opportunities of knowing, and
must be followed. Le Noble and the Spaniards do not give the
French commander’s name, but I find that of Chalot as the senior
officer among the prisoners in the list in the Record Office.
Next to him is the paymaster-general Conscience. Toreno and
Schepeler agree with Captain Mackinley in giving the number of
the prisoners at over 1,200.
Heudelet and Lamartinière had now some 7,000 men collected at Tuy,
a force with which they could easily have routed the whole of
the insurgents of the Minho, and forced them to retire into the
mountains. But Soult’s orders to his lieutenants were to avoid
operations in Galicia, and to concentrate towards Portugal. Tuy was
evacuated, and its garrison transferred across the frontier-river
to the Portuguese fortress of Valenza. Before the transference was
completed, the French generals received an unexpected visit from
some troops of the 6th Corps. Ney, disquieted as to the condition of
Tuy and Vigo, had sent a brigade under Maucune to seek for news of
their garrisons. This force, cutting its way through the insurgents,
came into Tuy on April 12. Thus Heudelet was at last able to get
news of the operations of Ney. The information received was not
encouraging: the Duke of Elchingen was beset by the Galicians on
every side: La Romana had cut off one of his outlying garrisons, that
of Villafranca, and his communications with Leon were so completely
cut off that he had no reports to give as to the progress of affairs
in the rest of Spain. Finding that Vigo was lost, and the garrison of
Tuy relieved, Maucune retraced his steps and returned to Santiago,
harassed for the whole of his march by the insurgents of the
coast-land.
Meanwhile Heudelet’s communication with Oporto had been interrupted,
for the Portuguese, routed on the Lima a week before, had come back
to their old haunts, seized Braga, and blocked the high-road and
the bridges. Soult only got into touch with his expeditionary force
by sending out Lahoussaye with 3,000 men to reopen the road to the
North. When this was done, he bade Heudelet evacuate Valenza (whose
fortifications turned out to be in too bad order to be repaired
in any reasonable space of time), and to disperse his division in
garrisons for Braga, Viana, and Barcelos. The whole of the convoy and
the sick from Tuy were sent up to Oporto.
The net result of Heudelet’s operations was that the Marshal,
at the cost of immobilizing one of his four infantry divisions,
obtained a somewhat precarious hold upon the flat country of
Entre-Douro-e-Minho. The towns were in his hands, but the _Ordenanza_
had only retired to the hills, and perpetually descended to worry
Heudelet’s detachments, and to murder couriers and foraging parties.
Meanwhile 4,000 men were wasted for all purposes of offensive action.
Vigo, Tuy, and Valenza had all been abandoned, and touch with the
army of Galicia had been completely lost.
Even this modest amount of success had been denied to Soult’s
second expedition, that which he had sent under Loison towards the
Tras-os-Montes. The enemy with whom the French had to deal in this
region was Silveira, the same officer who had been defeated between
Monterey and Chaves in the early days of March, when the 2nd Corps
crossed the Portuguese frontier. He had fled with the wrecks of
his force towards Villa Real, at the moment when Soult marched on
Braga, and the Marshal had fondly hoped that he was now a negligible
quantity in the campaign. This was far from being the case: the
moment that Silveira heard that the French had crossed the mountains
and marched on Braga, he had rallied his two regular regiments and
his masses of _Ordenanza_, and pounced down on the detachment under
Commandant Messager, which Soult had left in garrison at Chaves.
This, it will be remembered, consisted of no more than a company
of infantry, a quantity of convalescents and stragglers, and the
untrustworthy Spanish-Portuguese ‘legion,’ which had been formed
out of the prisoners captured on March 6 and 12[316]. On the very
day upon which Soult was routing Eben in front of Braga, Silveira
appeared before the walls of Chaves with 6,000 men. Messager retired
into the citadel, abandoning on the outer walls of the town a few
guns, which the Portuguese were thus enabled to turn against the
inner defences. After a siege of five days and much ineffective
cannonading, the governor surrendered, mainly because the native
‘legion’ was preparing to open the gates to Silveira. Twelve hundred
men were captured, of whom only one-third were Frenchmen capable of
bearing arms, the rest being sick or ‘legionaries.’
[316] Le Noble, though he mentions the formation of the legion
(p. 120), omits to state that it was left at Chaves. But St.
Chamans establishes this fact (p. 120); he calls the corps
‘les Espagnols et Portugais qui se disaient de notre parti.’
Des Odoards (p. 212) also speaks of the ‘legion,’ as does
Naylies (p. 81). Its existence explains both the feebleness
of Messager’s defence, and the large number of prisoners whom
Silveira captured. The fighting force of the garrison was only
the one company, plus some hundreds of convalescents, who in the
fortnight since Soult’s departure had been able to resume their
arms.
Having made this successful stroke, Silveira marched down the Tamega
to Amarante, making a movement parallel to Soult’s advance on Oporto.
His recapture of Chaves brought several thousands more of _Ordenanza_
to his standard, and at Amarante he was joined on the thirtieth by
many of the fugitives who had escaped from the sack of Oporto on the
previous day. He spread his army, now amounting to 9,000 or 10,000
men, along the left bank of the Tamega, whose bridges and fords he
protected with entrenchments. Advanced guards were pushed out on the
further side of the river on the three roads which lead to Oporto.
When, therefore, the troops under Loison, which Soult had sent out
towards the Tras-os-Montes, drew near the Tamega, they found the
Portuguese in force. The cavalry could get no further forward than
Penafiel; when Foy’s infantry came up (April 7) Loison tried to
force the enemy back, both on the Amarante and on the Canavezes
road. He failed at each point, and sent back to the Marshal to ask
for reinforcements. Seeing him halt, Silveira, whose fault was not a
want of initiative, actually crossed the river with his whole army,
and fell upon the two French brigades. He was checked, but not badly
beaten, and Loison remained on the defensive (April 12).
At this moment Soult heard of the fall of Chaves, full seventeen
days after it had happened. Realizing that Silveira was now growing
formidable, he sent to Loison’s aid General Delaborde with the second
of his infantry brigades, and Lorges’ dragoons. These reinforcements
brought the troops facing Silveira up to a total of some 6,500
men--nearly a third of Soult’s whole disposable force. As Heudelet
was still absent on the Minho with 4,000 men more, the Marshal had
less than 10,000 left in and about Oporto. It was clear that the
grand march on Lisbon was not likely to begin for many a long day.
On April 18 Loison advanced against Silveira, who boldly but unwisely
offered him battle on the heights of Villamea in front of Amarante.
Considering that he had but 2,000 regulars and 7,000 or 8,000
half-armed militia and _Ordenanza_, his conduct can only be described
as rash in the extreme. He was, of course, beaten with great loss,
and hustled back into the town of Amarante. He would have lost both
it and its bridge, but for the gallantry of Colonel Patrick, an
English officer commanding a battalion of the 12th of the line, who
rallied his regiment in the streets, seized a group of houses and a
convent at the bridge-head and beat off the pursuers[317]. Patrick
was mortally wounded, but the passage of the river was prevented.
This saved the situation: Silveira got his men together, planted his
artillery so as to command the bridge, and took post in entrenchments
already constructed on the commanding heights on the left bank. Next
day Loison stormed the buildings at the bridge-head, but found that
he could get no further forward. The town was his, but he could
not debouch from it, as the bridge was palisaded, built up with a
barricade of masonry and raked by the Portuguese artillery. Soult
now sent up to aid Loison still further reinforcements, Sarrut’s
brigade of infantry from Merle’s division and the second brigade of
Lahoussaye’s dragoons. Thus no less than 9,000 French troops, nearly
half the army of Portugal, were concentrated at Amarante.
[317] Silveira to Beresford (Record Office). Cf. Foy’s dispatch
to Loison (April 19), in which he owns that he failed to hold the
convent, and retired with a loss of ninety-one men of the 17th
regiment.
The fact that twelve whole days elapsed between the arrival of these
last succours and the forcing of the passage of the Tamega had
no small influence on the fate of Soult’s campaign. Hitherto the
initiative had lain with him, and he had faced adversaries who could
only take the defensive. This period was nearly at an end, for on
April 22 Wellesley had landed at Lisbon, the English reinforcements
had begun to arrive, and an army, differing in every quality from
the hordes which the Marshal had encountered north of the Douro, was
about to assume the offensive against him. By the time that Loison at
last forced the bridge of Amarante, the British were already on the
march for Coimbra and Oporto.
Silveira and his motley host, therefore, were doing admirable service
to the cause of their country when they occupied 9,000 out of Soult’s
21,000 men from April 20 to May 2 on the banks of the Tamega. The
ground was in their favour, but far stronger positions had been
forced ere now, and it was fortunate that this one was maintained for
so many days. The town of Amarante, it must be remembered, lies on
comparatively low ground: its bridge is completely commanded by the
heights on which Silveira had planted his camp and his batteries. The
river flows in a deep-sunk ravine, and was at this moment swollen
into an impassable torrent by the melting of the mountain snows.
Loison more than once sent swimmers by night, in search of places
where the strength of the current might be sufficiently moderate
to allow of an attempt to pass on rafts or boats. Not one of these
explorers could get near the further bank: they were swept off by
the rushing water and cast ashore far down stream, on the same side
from which they had started. There had been bridges above Amarante
at Mondim and Aroza, and below it at Canavezes, but reconnaissances
showed that they had all three been blown up, and that Portuguese
detachments were watching their ruins, to prevent any attempt to
reconstruct them. Loison found, therefore, that he could not turn
Silveira’s position by a flanking movement: there was nothing to do
save to wait till the river should fall, or to attempt to force the
bridge of Amarante at all costs. Continual rains made it hopeless to
expect the subsidence of the Tamega for many days, wherefore Loison
devoted all his energies to the task of capturing the bridge. Even
here there was one difficulty to be faced which might prove fatal:
the French engineers had discovered that the structure was mined. It
was necessary, therefore, not only to drive back the Portuguese, but
to prevent them from blowing up the bridge at the moment of their
retreat.