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.

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[p. 224] 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.

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[p. 225] 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.

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[p. 226] 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.

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[p. 227] Oso?o 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].

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[p. 228] 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[p. 229] 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.

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[p. 230] 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].’

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[p. 231] 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.

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.[p. 232] 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[p. 233] 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].

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[p. 234] 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.

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.

[p. 235]

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].’

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.

[p. 236]

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 man?uvre 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].’

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[p. 237] 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.

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.

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,[p. 238] 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[p. 239] 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].

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 Jo?o 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[p. 240] 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 Jo?o 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[p. 241] 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. Jo?o 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.

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.[p. 242] 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[p. 243] 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].

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[p. 244] 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[p. 245] 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[p. 246] 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. Jo?o 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. Jo?o 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[p. 247] 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].

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[p. 248] 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.
Map of the combat of Braga or Lanhozo

Enlarge  COMBAT of BRAGA (OR LANHOZO)
MARCH 20TH 1809
Oporto showing the Portuguese lines

Enlarge  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 [p. 249]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.

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.