SECTION IV THE ENGLISH IN PORTUGAL CHAPTER I

THE OUTBREAK OF THE PORTUGUESE INSURRECTION

Down to the moment of the general outbreak of the Spanish insurrection Junot’s task in Portugal had not been a difficult one. As long as Spain and France were still ostensibly allies, he had at his disposition a very large army. He had entered Portugal in 1807 with 25,000 French troops, and during the spring of 1808 he had received 4,000 men in drafts from Bayonne, which more than filled up the gaps made in his battalions by the dreary march from Ciudad Rodrigo to Abrantes[166]. Of the three Spanish divisions which had been lent to him, Solano’s had gone home to Andalusia, but he had still the two others, Caraffa’s (7,000 strong) in the valley of the Tagus, and Taranco’s at Oporto. The last-named general died during the winter, but his successor, Belesta, still commanded 6,000 men cantoned on the banks of the Douro. The discontent of the Portuguese during the early months of 1808 showed itself by nothing save a few isolated deeds of violence, provoked by particular acts of oppression on the part of Junot’s subordinates. How promptly and severely they were chastised has been told in an earlier chapter. There were no signs whatever of a general rising: the means indeed were almost entirely wanting. The regular army had been disbanded or sent off to France. The organization of the militia had been dissolved. The greater part of the leading men of the country had fled to Brazil with the Prince-Regent: the bureaucracy and many of the clergy had shown a discreditable willingness to conciliate Junot by a tame subservience to his orders.

The Duke of Abrantes himself thoroughly enjoyed his Vice[p. 207]royalty, and still deluded himself into believing that he might yet prove a popular ruler in Portugal: perhaps he even dreamed of becoming some day one of Bonaparte’s vassal-kings. He persisted in the farce of issuing benevolent proclamations, and expressing his affection for the noble Portuguese people, till his master at last grew angry. ‘Why,’ he wrote by the hand of his minister Clarke, ‘do you go on making promises which you have no authority to carry out? Of course, there is no end more laudable than that of winning the affection and confidence of the inhabitants of Portugal. But do not forget that the safety of the French army is the first thing. Disarm the Portuguese: keep an eye on the disbanded soldiers, lest reckless leaders should get hold of them and make them into the nucleus of rebel bands.... Lisbon is an inconveniently large place: it is too populous, and its people cannot help being hostile to you. Keep your troops outside it, in cantonments along the sea-front’: and so forth[167]. Meanwhile financial exactions were heaped on the unfortunate kingdom to contribute to the huge fine which the Emperor had laid upon it: but there was evidently no chance that such a large sum could be raised, however tightly the screw of taxation might be twisted. Junot accepted, as contributions towards the ￡2,000,000 that he was told to raise, much confiscated English merchandise, church plate, and private property of the royal house, but his extortions did little more than pay for his army and the expenses of government. Portugal indeed was in a dismal state: her ports were blocked and her wines could not be sold to her old customers in England, nor her manufactures to her Brazilian colonists. The working classes in Lisbon were thrown out of employment, and starved, or migrated in bands into the interior. Foy and other good witnesses from the French side speak of the capital as ‘looking like a desert, with no vehicles, and hardly a foot-passenger in the streets, save 20,000 persons reduced to beggary and trying vainly to live on alms[168].’ The only activity visible was in the arsenal and dockyards, where Junot had 10,000 men at work restoring the neglected material of the artillery, and fitting out that portion of the fleet which had been in too bad order to sail for Brazil in the previous November.

The sudden outbreak of the Spanish insurrection in the last days of May, 1808, made an enormous change in the situation of the[p. 208] French army in Portugal. Before Junot had well realized what was happening in the neighbouring kingdom, his communications with Madrid were suddenly cut, and for the future information only reached him with the greatest difficulty, and orders not at all. The last dispatch that came through to him was one from the Emperor which spoke of the beginnings of the rising, and bade him send 4,000 men to Ciudad Rodrigo to hold out a hand to Bessières, and 8,000 to the Guadiana to co-operate in Dupont’s projected invasion of Andalusia[169]. These orders were dispatched in the last days of May; before they could be carried out the situation had been profoundly modified.

On June 6 there arrived at Oporto the news of the insurrection of Galicia and the establishment of the Provincial Junta at Corunna. The first thought of the new government in Galicia had been to call home for its own defence the division in northern Portugal. When its summons reached General Belesta, he obeyed without a moment’s hesitation. The only French near him were General Quesnel, the Governor of Oporto, his staff, and a troop of thirty dragoons which served as his personal escort. Belesta seized and disarmed both the general and his guard, and forthwith marched for Spain, by Braga and Valenza, with his prisoners. Before leaving he called together the notables of Oporto, bade them hoist the national flag, and incited them to nominate a junta to organize resistance against Junot. But he left not a man behind to aid them, and took off his whole force to join General Blake.

On receiving, on June 9, the news of this untoward event, Junot determined to prevent Caraffa’s troops on the Tagus from following the example of their countrymen. Before they had fully realized the situation, or had time to concert measures for a general evasion, he succeeded in disarming them. Caraffa himself was summoned to the quarters of the commander-in-chief, and placed under arrest before he knew that he was suspected. Of his regiments some were ordered to attend a review, others to change garrisons; while unsuspectingly on their way, they found themselves surrounded by French troops and were told to lay down their arms. All were successfully trapped except the second cavalry regiment, the ‘Queen’s Own,’ whose colonel rode off to Oporto with his two squadrons instead of obeying the orders sent him, and fractions of the infantry regiments of Murcia and Valencia who escaped to Badajoz[p. 209] after an ineffectual pursuit by the French dragoons. But 6,000 out of Caraffa’s 7,000 men were caught, disarmed, and placed on pontoons moored under the guns of the Lisbon forts, whose commanders had orders to sink them if they gave any trouble. Here they were destined to remain prisoners for the next ten weeks, till the English arrived to release them after the battle of Vimiero.

The imminent danger that Caraffa’s force might openly revolt, and serve as the nucleus for a general rising of the Portuguese, was thus disposed of. But Junot’s position was still unpleasant: he had only some 26,500 men with whom to hold down the kingdom: if once the inhabitants took arms, such a force could not supply garrisons for every corner of a country 300 miles long and a hundred broad. Moreover, there was considerable probability that the situation might be complicated by the appearance of an English expeditionary army: Napoleon had warned his lieutenant to keep a careful watch on the side of the sea, even before the Spanish insurrection broke out. All through the spring a British force drawn from Sicily was already hovering about the southern coast of the Peninsula, though hitherto it had only been heard of in the direction of Gibraltar and Cadiz. Another cause of disquietude was the presence in the Tagus of the Russian fleet of Admiral Siniavin: the strange attitude adopted by that officer much perplexed Junot. He acknowledged that his master the Czar was at war with Great Britain, and stated that he was prepared to fight if the British fleet tried to force the entrance of the Tagus. But on the other hand he alleged that Russia had not declared war on Portugal or acknowledged its annexation by the Emperor, and he therefore refused to land his marines and seamen to help in the garrisoning of Lisbon, or to allow them to be used in any way on shore. Meanwhile his crews consumed an inordinate amount of the provisions which were none too plentiful in the Portuguese capital.

Junot’s main advantage lay in the extreme military impotence of Portugal. That realm found its one sole centre in Lisbon, where a tenth of the population of the whole kingdom and half of its wealth were concentrated. At Lisbon alone was there an arsenal of any size, or a considerable store of muskets and powder. Without the resources of the capital the nation was absolutely unable to equip anything fit to be called an army. Oporto was a small place in comparison, and no other town in the kingdom had over 20,000[p. 210] souls. Almeida and Elvas, the two chief fortresses of the realm, were safe in the hands of French garrisons. The provinces might rise, but without lavish help from Spain or England they could not put in the field an army of even 10,000 men, for assemblies of peasants armed with pikes and fowling-pieces are not armies, and of field-artillery there was hardly a piece outside Lisbon, Elvas, and Almeida. Nor was there left any nucleus of trained soldiers around which the nation might rally: the old army was dissolved and its small remnant was on the way to the Baltic. The case of Spain and of Portugal was entirely different when they rose against Napoleon. The former country was in possession of the greater part of its own fortresses, had not been systematically disarmed, and could dispose—in Galicia and Andalusia—of large bodies of veteran troops. Portugal was without an army, an arsenal, a defensible fortress, or a legal organization—civil or military—of any kind.

It is necessary to remember this in order to excuse the utter feebleness of the Portuguese rising in June, 1808. Otherwise it would have seemed strange that a nation of over 2,000,000 souls could not anywhere produce forces sufficient to resist for a single day a column of 3,000 or 4,000 French soldiers.

The insurrection—such as it was—started in the north, where the departure of Belesta and his division had left the two provinces of Tras-os-Montes and Entre-Douro-e-Minho free from any garrison, French or Spanish. Oporto had been bidden to work out its own salvation by Belesta, and on the day of his departure (June 6), a junta of insurrection had been acclaimed. But there followed a curious interval of apathy, lasting for ten days: the natural leaders of the people refused to come forward: here, just as in Spain, the bureaucracy showed itself very timid and unpatriotic. The magistrates sent secret offers of submission to Junot: the military commandant, Oliveira da Costa, hauled down the national flag from the citadel of San Jo?o da Foz. The members of the insurrectionary junta absconded from the city or kept quiet[170]. It was only on the news that the neighbouring districts and towns had risen, that the people of Oporto threw themselves frankly into the rebellion. The rough mountain districts which[p. 211] lay to the east of them showed a much more whole-hearted patriotism: between the ninth and the twelfth of June the whole of the Tras-os-Montes took arms: one junta at Braganza nominated as commander the aged General Sepulveda, who had been governor of the district in the days of the Prince-Regent: another, at Villa Real on the Douro, also put in its claim and chose as its leader Colonel Silveira, an officer who was destined to see much service during the war of independence. Though the French were no further off than Almeida, the rival governors nearly came to blows, but the final insurrection of Oporto created a new power to which both consented to bow.

On June 18 the false report that a French column was drawing near Oporto so roused the multitude in that city that they broke loose from the control of the authorities, rehoisted the Portuguese flag, threw into prison Da Costa and many other persons suspected, rightly or wrongly, of a wish to submit to the enemy, and called for the establishment of a provisional government. Accordingly a ‘Supreme Junta of the Kingdom’ was hastily elected with the Bishop of Oporto at its head. This was a strange choice, for the aged prelate, Dom Antonio de Castro, though popular and patriotic, was neither a statesman nor an administrator, and had no notion whatever as to the military necessities of the situation. However, the other local juntas of Northern Portugal united in recognizing his authority. His colleagues started on the organization of an army with more zeal than discretion; they called out the militia which Junot had disbanded, and tried to reconstruct some of the old regular battalions, by getting together the half-pay officers, and the men who had been dismissed from the colours in December, 1807. But they also encouraged the assembly of thousands of peasants armed with pikes and scythes, who consumed provisions, but were of no military use whatever. In the seven weeks which elapsed before the coming of the English, the Supreme Junta had only got together 5,000 men properly equipped and told off into regular corps[171]. The fact was that they could provide arms for no more, Northern Portugal having always looked to Lisbon for its supplies. Field artillery was almost wholly wanting—perhaps a dozen guns in all had been found: of cavalry three[p. 212] skeleton regiments were beginning to be organized. But of half-armed peasantry, disguised under the name of militia, they had from 12,000 to 15,000 in the field.

The Supreme Junta also concluded a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with the Galician Spaniards, from whom they hoped to get arms, and perhaps a loan of troops. Moreover they sent two envoys to England to ask for aid, and eagerly welcomed at Oporto Colonel Brown, a British agent with a roving commission, who did his best to assist in organizing the new levies. The command of the whole armed force was given to General Bernardino Freire, a pretentious and incapable person, who turned his very moderate resources to no profitable account whatever.

A few days later than the outbreak of the insurrection in the regions north of the Douro, there was a corresponding movement, but of a weaker kind, in the extreme south. On June 16 the small fishing-town of Olh?o in Algarve gave the signal for revolt: on the eighteenth Faro, the capital of the province, followed the example. General Maurin, the Governor of Algarve, was lying ill in his bed; he was made prisoner along with seventy other French officers and men, and handed over to the captain of an English ship which was hovering off the coast. The whole shore between the Sierra de Caldeir?o and the sea took arms, whereupon Colonel Maransin, Maurin’s second-in-command, resolved to evacuate the province. He had only 1,200 men, a battalion each of the 26th of the line and the Légion du Midi, and had lost his communications with Lisbon, wherefore he drew together his small force and fell back first on Mertola and then on Beja, in the Alemtejo. The insurgents whom he left behind him could do little till they had obtained muskets from Seville and Gibraltar, and made no attempt to follow the retreating column northwards.

Meanwhile Junot, even after he had succeeded in disarming Caraffa’s Spanish division, was passing through a most anxious time. In obedience to the Emperor’s orders he had sent a brigade under General Avril towards Andalusia, to help Dupont, and another under Loison to Almeida to open communications with Bessières. But these detachments had been made under two false ideas, the one that the troubles in Spain were purely local, the other that Portugal would keep quiet. Avril marched southward with 3,000 men, but, when his vanguard reached San Lucar on the Spanish border, he found Andalusian militia provided with artillery[p. 213] watching him across the Guadiana. He also learnt that a large force was assembling at Badajoz, and that Dupont had got no further than Cordova—more than 150 miles away. After some hesitation he retraced his steps till he halted at Estremoz, facing Badajoz. Loison had much the same experience: starting from Almeida he crossed the border and scared away the small Spanish garrison of Fort Concepcion: but when he drew near Ciudad Rodrigo and learnt that the place was strongly held, that all the kingdom of Leon was in revolt, and that Bessières was still far distant in Old Castile, he drew back to Almeida [June 12-15]. Returning thither he heard of the troubles in Northern Portugal, and resolved to march on Oporto, which was still holding back from open insurrection when the news reached him. He determined to hasten to that important city and to garrison it. Taking two battalions and a few guns, while he left the rest of his brigade at Almeida, he marched on Oporto, crossed the Douro at the ferry of Pezo-de-Ragoa, and began to move on Amarante [June 21]. But the moment that he was over the river, he found himself in the middle of the insurrection: among the mountains the peasantry began to fire from above on his long column, to roll rocks down the slopes at him, and to harass his baggage and rearguard. Seeing that he had only 2,000 men in hand, and that the whole country-side was up, Loison wisely returned to Almeida, which he regained by a circular march through Lamego and Celorico, dispersing several bands of insurgents on the way, for the rebellion had already begun to spread across the Douro into the hills of Northern Beira [July 1].

Lisbon in the meanwhile was on the verge of revolt, but was still contained by the fact that Junot held concentrated in and about it the main body of his army, some 15,000 men. On the Feast of Corpus Christi (June 16) the annual religious procession through the streets nearly led to bloodshed. This was the greatest festival of Lisbon, and had always led to the assembly of enormous crowds: Junot allowed it to be once more celebrated, but lined the streets with soldiers, and placed artillery ready for action in the main squares and avenues. While the function was in progress a senseless panic broke out among the crowd, some shouting that they felt a shock of earthquake (always a terror in Lisbon since the catastrophe of 1755), others that the English were landing, others that the soldiers were about to fire on the people. The frantic[p. 214] mob burst through the military cordon, the procession was broken up, the prelate who bore the Sacrament took refuge in a church, and the tumult grew so wild that the artillery were about to open with grape, thinking that they had to deal with a carefully prepared insurrection. A great and miscellaneous slaughter was only prevented by the coolness of Junot, who threw himself into the throng, prevented the troops from firing, cleared the street, prevailed on the clergy to finish the procession, and dispersed the multitudes with no loss of life save that of a few persons crushed or trampled to death in the panic.

But though this tumult passed off without a disaster, Junot’s position was uncomfortable. He had just begun to realize the real proportions of the insurrection in Spain, which had now completely cut him off from communication with his colleagues. He had only the vaguest knowledge of how Dupont and Bessières were faring: and the fact that large Spanish forces were gathering both at Ciudad Rodrigo and at Badajoz inclined him to think that affairs must be going ill in Castile and Andalusia. The long-feared English invasion seemed at last to be growing imminent: General Spencer’s division from Sicily and Gibraltar was at sea, and had showed itself first off Ayamonte and the coast of Algarve, then off the Tagus-mouth. Ignorant that Spencer had only 5,000 men, and that he had been brought near Lisbon merely by a false report that the garrison had been cut down to a handful, Junot expected a disembarkation. But Spencer went back to Cadiz when he learnt that there were 15,000 instead of 4,000 men ready to defend the capital.

Meanwhile the populace of Lisbon was stirred up by all manner of wild rumours: it was said that Loison had been surrounded and forced to surrender by the northern insurgents, that the Spanish army of Galicia was marching south, that an English corps had landed at Oporto. All sorts of portents and signs were reported for the benefit of the superstitious. The most preposterous was one which we should refuse to credit if it were not vouched for by Foy, and other respectable French authorities. A hen’s egg was found on the high-altar of the patriarchal church, with the inscription Morran os Franceses (‘Death to the French’) indented in its shell. This caused such excitement that Junot thought it worth while to show that a similar phenomenon could be produced on any egg by a skilful application of acids. When his chemists[p. 215] exhibited several branded in an equally convincing way with the words, Vive l’Empereur! the enthusiasm of the credulous was somewhat damped[172].

Recognizing that he could expect no further help from the French armies in Spain, and that the insurrection would certainly spread over every parish of Portugal that did not contain a garrison, Junot wisely resolved to concentrate the outlying fractions of his army, which lay exposed and isolated at points far from Lisbon. At a council of war, held on June 25, he laid before his chief officers the alternatives of evacuating Portugal and retiring on Madrid by the way of Badajoz, or of uniting the army in the neighbourhood of Lisbon and making an attempt to hold Central Portugal, while abandoning the extreme north and south. The latter plan was unanimously adopted: in the state of ignorance in which the generals lay as to what was going on at Madrid and elsewhere in Spain, the retreat by Badajoz seemed too hazardous. Moreover, it was certain to provoke Napoleon’s wrath if it turned out to have been unnecessary. Accordingly it was resolved to place garrisons in the fortresses of Elvas, Almeida and Peniche, to fortify Setuval on the peninsula opposite Lisbon, and to draw in all the rest of the troops to the vicinity of the capital. Dispatches to this effect were sent to Loison at Almeida, to Avril at Estremoz, to Maransin at Mertola, and to Kellermann, who was watching Badajoz from Elvas[173]. Many of the aides-de-camp who bore these orders were cut off by the insurgents[174], but in the end copies of each dispatch were transmitted to their destinations. In several instances the detached corps had begun to fall back on the Tagus, even before they received the command to do so.

This was the case with Maransin at Mertola, who, finding himself hopelessly isolated with 1,200 men in the centre of the insurrection, had marched on Lisbon via Beja. On June 26 he reached the latter place and found its ancient walls manned by a disorderly mass of citizens, who fired upon him as he drew near. But he stormed the town without much difficulty, cruelly sacked it, and resumed his march on Lisbon unharmed. This was not the first fighting that had occurred in the Alemtejo; four days before[p. 216] Avril had had to march from Estremoz to chastise the inhabitants of Villa Viciosa, who had taken arms and besieged the company of the 86th regiment which garrisoned their town. He scattered them with much slaughter, and, after the usual French fashion, plundered the little place from cellar to garret.

On receiving Junot’s orders, General Kellermann, who bore the chief command in the Alemtejo, left a battalion and a half[175]—1,400 men—in Elvas and its outlying fort of La Lippe. With the rest he retired on Lisbon, picking up first the corps of Avril and then that of Maransin, which met him at Evora. He then entered the capital, leaving only one brigade, that of Graindorge, at Setuval to the south of the Tagus [July 3].

Loison in the north did not receive his orders for a full week after they were sent out, owing to the disorderly state of the intervening country. But on July 4 he left Almeida, after making for it a garrison of 1,200 men, by drafting into a provisional battalion all his soldiers who did not seem fit for forced marching. He then moved for seven days through the mountains of Beira to Abrantes, skirmishing with small bands of insurgents all the way. At two or three places they tried to block his path, and the town of Guarda made a serious attempt to defend itself, and was in consequence sacked and partly burnt. Leaving a trail of ruined villages behind him, Loison at last reached Abrantes and got into communication with his chief. He had lost on the way 200 men, mostly stragglers whom the peasantry murdered: but he had inflicted such a cruel lesson on the country-side that his popular nickname (Maneta, ‘One-Hand’) was held accursed for many years in Portugal.

The withdrawal of the French troops from the outlying provinces gave the insurrection full scope for development. It followed close in the track of the retiring columns, and as each valley was evacuated its inhabitants hoisted the national flag, sent in their vows of allegiance to the Junta at Oporto, and began to organize armed bands. But there was such a dearth of military stores that very few men could be properly equipped with musket and bayonet. Junot had long before called in the arms of the disbanded militia, and destroyed them or forwarded them to Lisbon. In the southern provinces the lack of weapons was even worse than in the valley of the Douro: there was practically no armament except a few hundred muskets hastily borrowed from the Spaniards of Badajoz[p. 217] and Seville, and a small dép?t of cavalry equipment at Estremoz which Avril had forgotten to carry off. An insurrectionary junta for the Alemtejo was formed at Evora, but its general, Francisco Leite, could only succeed in equipping the mere shadow of an army. In the north things were a little better: the rising spread to Coimbra in the last week of June, and one of its first leaders, the student Bernardo Zagalo, succeeded in capturing the small coast-fortress of Figueira by starving out the scanty French garrison, which had been caught wholly destitute of provisions [June 27]. Bernardino Freire then brought up the 5,000 regular troops, which the Junta of Oporto had succeeded in getting together, as far as the line of the Mondego. But the insurrectionary area spread much further southward, even up to Leyria and Thomar, which lie no more than sixty-five miles from the capital. From these two places, however, the rebels were easily cleared out by a small expedition of 3,000 men under General Margaron [July 5]. Junot’s army in the second week of July held nothing outside the narrow quadrangle of which Setuval, Peniche, Abrantes, and Lisbon form the four points. But within that limited space there were now 24,000 good troops, concentrated and ready to strike a blow at the first insurrectionary force that might press in upon them.

But for a fortnight the Portuguese made no further move, and Junot now resolved to attack the insurgents who lay beyond the Tagus in the plains of the Alemtejo. His chief motive seems to have been the wish to reopen his communications with Elvas, and to keep the way clear towards Badajoz, the direction in which he would have to retreat, if ever he made up his mind to evacuate Lisbon and retire on Spain. Accordingly, on July 25, he sent out the energetic Loison at the head of a strong flying column—seven and a half battalions, two regiments of dragoons, and eight guns—over 7,000 men in all[176]. This force was directed to march on Elvas by way[p. 218] of Evora, the capital of the Alemtejo, and the seat of its new Junta. On July 29 Loison appeared before the walls of that city. To his surprise the enemy offered him battle in the open; General Leite had brought up such of his newly organized troops as he could collect—they amounted to no more than a battalion and a half of infantry and 120 horse; but to help him there had come up from Badajoz the Spanish Colonel Moretti with about the same number of foot, a regiment of regular cavalry (the ‘Hussars of Maria Luisa’), and seven guns[177]. In all the allies had under 3,000 men, but they were presumptuous enough to form a line of battle outside Evora, and wait for Loison’s attack. A mixed multitude of peasants and citizens, more of them armed with pikes than with fowling-pieces, manned the walls of the town behind them. Leite and his colleague should have drawn back their regulars to the same position: they might have been able to do something behind walls, but to expose them in the open to the assault of more than double of their own numbers of French troops was absurd.

Loison’s first charge broke the weak line of the allied army; the Spanish cavalry fled without crossing swords with the French, and General Leite left the field with equal precipitation. But the bulk of the infantry fell back on Evora and aided the peasantry to defend its ruined mediaeval walls. They could not hold out, however, for many minutes; the French forced their way in at four or five points, made a great slaughter in the streets, and ended the day by sacking the city with every detail of sacrilege and brutality. Foy says that 2,000 Spaniards and Portuguese fell; his colleague Thiébault gives the incredible figure of 8,000. Even the smaller number must include a good many unarmed inhabitants of Evora massacred during the sack. The French lost ninety killed and 200 wounded [July 29].

On the third day after the fight Loison marched for Elvas, and drove away the hordes which were blockading it. He was then preparing to push a reconnaissance in force against Badajoz, when he received from his commander-in-chief orders to return at once to Lisbon. The long-expected English invasion of Portugal had at last begun, for on August 1 Sir Arthur Wellesley was already[p. 219] disembarking his troops in Mondego Bay. Junot was therefore set on concentrating in order to fight, and Loison’s expeditionary force was too important a part of his army to be left out of the battle. Dropping the battalion of the Hanoverian Legion as a garrison at Santarem, Loison brought the rest of his 7,000 men to his commander’s aid.