SECTION XIV: CHAPTER III

SOULT’S RETREAT FROM OPORTO

The headlong charge of Hervey’s squadron of the 14th Light Dragoons was the last molestation which fell to the lot of Soult’s retreating column on the afternoon of May 12. Marching till dark, the disordered infantry encamped at Baltar, ten miles from Oporto, where they fell in with the detached regiment of Delaborde’s division and with Caulaincourt’s dragoons, who had been guarding this half-way stage between Amarante and Oporto, ever since Loison had marched on into the Tras-os-Montes ten days before. Of the rest of the French army, Franceschi (always in the post of danger) covered the rear at Vallongo, just west of Baltar. Mermet, with the division that had marched from Oporto before Wellesley’s attack was developed, had encamped on the Souza river, four miles ahead of the main column. The Marshal had thus nearly 13,000 men concentrated, and proposed next day to push on for Amarante, in the wake of Loison, who (as he supposed) must now be well ahead in the Tras-os-Montes, clearing for him the way into Spain. It was disquieting, however, to find that no news from that general had yet come to hand—indeed he had not been heard of since May 7, when he was just starting out on his expedition. Wherever Loison might be, the Marshal was bound to follow him in haste, since it was certain that Wellesley would be close at his heels, and that no time was to be lost in lingering.

At half-past one in the morning Soult was roused from sleep, and informed that the long-expected messenger from Loison had at last arrived[427]. The news which he brought was nothing less than appalling: the French detached corps had been not only checked but beaten, the bridge of Amarante had been lost,[p. 344] and Loison was hastily retreating to the north-west at the moment that his chief was moving eastward to join him.

Beresford’s turning movement, in fact, had been completely successful—far more so than Wellesley had thought likely; he had not only succeeded in placing himself across the French line of retreat into Spain, but had beaten Loison and thrown him back into Soult’s arms.

What had happened was shortly this. On May 8 Beresford had picked up Wilson’s detachment at Vizeu: on the tenth he had met Silveira at Lamego. He had thus concentrated some 10,500 or 11,000 men, all Portuguese save Tilson’s brigade and the single squadron of the 14th Light Dragoons. Learning at Lamego that, as late as the ninth, Loison was still in the neighbourhood of Amarante, and had not yet penetrated far into the Tras-os-Montes, Beresford resolved to take the risk of passing the Douro and to throw his army directly across the path of the advancing French. On the tenth, the same day on which the force from Coimbra reached Lamego, he sent Silveira over the river by the bridge of Peso da Regoa, which had never passed out of the hands of the Portuguese and had a strong tête-de-pont on its northern side. Silveira had barely crossed when Loison, who had spent the previous day at Mezamfrio, ten miles away on the Amarante road, came up against him with Heudelet’s and Sarrut’s infantry and Marisy’s dragoons—about 6,500 sabres and bayonets. Emboldened by having entrenchments to help him, and by knowing that Beresford was close behind, Silveira stood firm at the tête-de-pont and accepted battle.

Loison was somewhat discouraged by his adversary’s confidence, and did not fail to note the masses of troops on the southern bank of the Douro, which were moving up to the bridge to support Silveira. However, late in the afternoon he attacked the Portuguese, but was steadily met and beaten off with some loss[428]. Thereupon he drew back and retired to Mezamfrio. On the following day (May 11) he continued his[p. 345] retreat to Amarante, closely pursued by Silveira, who kept driving in his rearguard wherever it attempted to make a stand.

Beresford meanwhile brought his own troops across the Douro on May 11, in the wake of Silveira’s division. On the twelfth he pushed forward to Amarante, intending to fight Loison if the latter should try to hold his ground beyond the bridge. But on his approach he found that the French rearguard (Sarrut’s brigade) had already been driven across the water by the Portuguese[429]. The bridge, however, still remained in Loison’s hands, and as it was no less defensible from the eastern than from the western bank, the army could get no further forward.

Matters were now at a deadlock, for if Beresford could not cross the Tamega, it was clear that Loison, even if heavily reinforced from Oporto, would not be able to force the imposing position on the heights commanding the bridge, which was now held by 11,000 men, including a British brigade. But he might, and should, have continued to hold the town and the bridge-head, till further orders reached him from Soult. Instead of doing so, he made up his mind to retreat at once, and marched off early on the evening of May 12 along the road to Guimaraens and Braga. Thus at the moment when Soult was retiring on Amarante, Loison abandoned the position which covered his chief’s chosen line of retreat. Moreover, he was so tardy in sending news of his intentions to head quarters, that the aide-de-camp who bore his dispatch only reached Baltar after midnight on the twelfth-thirteenth: this was the first report that Soult had received from him since May 8. It was a military crime of the highest magnitude that he had neither informed his chief of the check at Peso da Regoa on the tenth, nor of his retreat to Amarante on the eleventh. Knowledge of these facts would have been invaluable to the Marshal, since it would have shown him that the route through the Tras-os-Montes was[p. 346] blocked, and that he must not count upon an undisturbed retreat into Spain. If he had known of this, he would not have evacuated Oporto by the Baltar road, but would have been forced to march northward on Braga or Guimaraens, instead of due east. So strange, in fact, was Loison’s slackness, that Soult’s advocates have not hesitated to accuse him of deliberate treachery, and have hinted that he was engaged in Argenton’s plot—a hypothesis which would have explained his conduct clearly enough. But, as a matter of fact, Argenton’s revelations to Wellesley show that this was not the case, and that the conspirators looked upon Loison and Delaborde as the two officers who were most likely to give them trouble. It must therefore have been sheer military incapacity, and disgust at the whole Portuguese expedition, which lay at the bottom of Loison’s misbehaviour. Disbelieving in Soult’s plan of campaign, he was probably bent on compelling his chief to retire to Braga, and was (of course) quite ignorant of the fact that Wellesley’s capture of Oporto had changed the whole face of affairs, and that the retreat in that direction was no longer open.

Despondent, tired out by the work of the preceding day, and suffering physically from a heavy fall from his horse during the retreat, Soult was roused from his slumbers to read Loison’s disastrous dispatch. When he had made out its full meaning he was appalled. All his plans were shattered, and he was clearly in imminent danger, for Wellesley from Oporto and Beresford from Amarante might converge upon him in the morning, with nearly 30,000 men, if it should chance that they had made out his position. No help could come from Loison, who, having now reached Guimaraens, was separated from the main body by the roadless expanse of the rugged Serra de Santa Catalina. Eastward lay one hostile force, westward another, to the south was the impassable Douro, to the north the inhospitable mountains. It was useless to think of making a desperate dash at Beresford’s army: in open ground an attack on the Portuguese might have been practicable, but the bridge of Amarante was a post impossible to force in a hurry, and while the attack on it was in progress, it was certain that Wellesley would come up from the rear. The situation and the results of Baylen would inevitably be reproduced.

[p. 347]

Realizing this, the Duke of Dalmatia came to the conclusion that the only course open to him was to abandon everything that could not be carried on his men’s backs, and to make a desperate attempt to cross the Serra de Santa Catalina before the news of his straits had reached the enemy. He imagined that there must be some sort of a footpath from Baltar or Penafiel to Guimaraens: in a thickly peopled country like Northern Portugal, the hill-folk have short cuts of their own—the only difficulty for the stranger is to discover them. Hasty inquiries in the bivouac of the army produced a Navarese camp-follower, who said that he knew the localities and could point out a bad mule-track, which climbed the hillside above the Souza torrent, and came down into the valley of the Avé, not far south of Guimaraens[430]. It was the kind of path in which the army would meet every sort of difficulty, and where the head of the column might be stopped by a couple of hundred Ordenanza, if it should chance that the Portuguese peasantry were on the alert. But it seemed the only practicable way out of the situation, and the Marshal resolved to try it.

At daybreak the army was warned of its danger; and wasting no time on councils of war or elaborate orders, Soult sent round word that the troops were to abandon everything that could not be carried on the backs of men or horses, and to take to the hills. An immense mass of baggage and plunder had to be left on the banks of the Souza, including the whole of the heavy convoy which Mermet had escorted out of Oporto on the previous day. The Marshal even decided that the infantry should turn out of their knapsacks everything except food and cartridges, an order which those who had in their possession gold plate and other valuable plunder of small bulk took care to disobey. The cannon were destroyed by being placed mouth to mouth and discharged simultaneously in pairs. As much of the reserve ammunition for infantry as could be packed in convenient bundles was laden on the backs of the artillery horses. The rest, with all the powder wagons, was collected in[p. 348] a mass, ready to be fired when the army should have absconded. One curious circumstance, which displays better than anything else the hurry of the retreat, is worth mentioning. The military chest of the 2nd Corps was well filled—it is said to have contained nearly ￡50,000 in Portuguese silver. The Marshal ordered the paymaster-in-chief to serve out all that he could to the regimental paymasters. Only two of these officials could be found, and they were unable to carry off more than a fraction of the money. Soult then ordered the treasure-chests to be broken open, and sent word that the men, as they passed, might help themselves. But hardly a soldier took advantage of the offer: they looked at the bulky bags of cruzados novos, shook their heads, and hurried on. Those who were tempted at first were seen, later in the day, tossing the weighty pieces into the ravine of the Souza. Perceiving that there was no way of getting rid of the mass of silver, Soult at last ordered the fourgons containing it to be dragged alongside of the powder wagons. When the train was exploded, after the rearguard had passed, the money was scattered to the winds. For years after the peasants of Penafiel were picking up stray coins on the hillside[431].

As the French army was beginning its weary climb over the Serra de Santa Catalina a heavy drenching rain commenced to fall. It lasted for three days, and added much to the miseries[p. 349] of the retreat; but it was not without its advantages to the fugitive host, for it kept the Portuguese peasantry indoors, and it would seem that no one in the mountain villages got wind of the movement for many hours. It was not till the French had crossed the ridge and descended, late in the dusk, on to the village of Pombeiro in the valley of the Avé that they began to be molested by the Ordenanza. After a few shots had been fired the peasants were driven off. Next morning [May 14] Soult got into communication with Loison, who was still lying at Guimaraens with all his troops. On the same day Lorges’ dragoons and the garrison of Viana came in from the north, and the whole army, still over 20,000 strong, was reconcentrated. The first danger, that of destruction piecemeal, had been avoided. But Soult’s desperate move had only warded off the peril for the moment: he had still to fear that Wellesley and Beresford might close in upon him before he could get clear of the mountains.

It remains to be seen how the two British generals had employed the day during which the French were scaling the heights of the Serra de Santa Catalina. Wellesley had crossed in person to Oporto long ere the fighting was over, and had established his head quarters in Soult’s villa on the heights, where he and his staff thought themselves fortunate in finding ready for their consumption the excellent dinner which had been prepared for the Marshal. As long as daylight lasted the British infantry continued to be ferried over to the city, but they were not all across when night fell. The artillery, the train, and all the regimental baggage were still on the wrong side of the river, and as the great bridge was destroyed beyond hope of repair, all the impedimenta had to be brought over in boats and barges. It was mainly this fact that delayed Wellesley from making an early move on the thirteenth. He could not advance without his guns and his reserve ammunition, and did not receive them till the day was far spent and the natural hour for marching was past. There were other circumstances which hindered him from pressing on as he would have liked to do. The infantry were tired out: they had marched more than eighty miles during the last four days, and had fought hard at Grijon and Oporto. Human nature could do no[p. 350] more without a halt, and Wellesley was forced to grant it. Moreover, there was the question of food to be taken into consideration. The troops had outrun their supplies, and the provision wagons were still trailing up from Coimbra. In Oporto no stores of any importance were discovered, for Soult had stopped collecting more than he could carry, the moment that he made up his mind to retreat, and had been living from hand to mouth during the last few days of his sojourn in the city. The only thing that abounded was port wine, and from that the soldiers had to be kept away, or results disastrous to discipline would have followed[432].

With great reluctance, therefore, Wellesley resolved to halt for a day, only sending forward Murray and the German Legion, with a couple of squadrons, along the Baltar road. This brigade did not come up with Soult’s rearguard, though they found ample traces of his passage in the shape of murdered stragglers and abandoned plunder. No doubt the Commander-in-chief would have directed them to push on further, and have supported them with every battalion that could still march ten miles, if only he had been aware of the fact that Beresford had got possession of the bridge of Amarante, and that the enemy was therefore in a trap. But he was only in communication with his lieutenant by the circuitous route of Lamego and Mezamfrio, and the last news that he had received of the turning column led him to believe that it was still in the neighbourhood of Villa Real, and that Loison continued to hold the passage of the Tamega. Writing to Beresford on the night of the capture of Oporto, he desired him to make every effort to hold on to Villa Real, and to keep Soult in check till he himself could overtake him[433].

It was not till the afternoon of the thirteenth that Wellesley obtained information that put him on the right track. The intelligence officer with Murray’s column[434] sent him back word[p. 351] that heavy explosions had been heard at Penafiel, and that the smoke of large fires was visible along the hillside above it. This gave a strong hint of what was probably taking place in that direction, but it was not till five in the afternoon that full information came to hand. This was brought by the Portuguese secretary of General Quesnel, who had deserted his employer and ridden back to Oporto, to give the valuable news which would save him from being tried for treason for serving the enemy. He gave an accurate and detailed account of all that had happened to Soult’s column, and had seen it start off on the break-neck path to Guimaraens. Only about Loison was he uncertain—that officer, he said, was probably still at Amarante, holding back Silveira and Beresford[435].

On receipt of this important intelligence Wellesley sent orders to Murray to press on his small force of cavalry, and some mounted rifles (if he could secure horses or mules) as far as Penafiel, to verify the secretary’s information[436]. A later dispatch bade him press on to Amarante, if Loison was still there, in order to take that officer in the rear; but if he were gone, the Legionary brigade was to follow Soult over the hills towards Guimaraens and Braga, and endeavour to catch up his rearguard[437]. The orders arrived too late: Murray, on the morning of the fourteenth, learnt that Loison had long ago departed, and that Soult was far on his way. He followed the Marshal across the Serra de Santa Catalina, but never got near him, though he picked up many French stragglers, and saw the bodies of many more, who had been assassinated by the peasantry[438].

Meanwhile Beresford had acted with great decision, and with an intelligence which he did not always display. When, on the morning of the thirteenth, he found that the French had disappeared, and that Amarante (after having been thoroughly sacked)[439] had been abandoned to him, he did not waste time in[p. 352] a fruitless pursuit of Loison in the direction of Guimaraens, but resolved to endeavour to cut off the retreat of the whole French army towards the north. If they had absconded by way of Braga, the chase would fall to Wellesley’s share, but if they had taken the other road by Chaves, all would depend on his own movements. Accordingly he resolved to march at once on the last named town, without waiting for orders from the Commander-in-chief. Having hastily collected three days’ provisions, he moved off himself by the high-road up the valley of the Tamega, detaching Silveira and his division to strike across country, and occupy the defiles of Ruivaens and Salamonde on the Braga-Chaves road, where it would be possible to detain, if not to stop, the retreating columns of Soult if they should take this way [May 14]. While on his march Beresford received Wellesley’s letters, which prescribed to him exactly the line of conduct that he had already determined to pursue[440]. After three difficult marches in drenching rain, which turned every rivulet into an almost impassable torrent, and spoilt the inadequate provision of bread which had been served out to the men, the division reached Chaves about 12 p.m. on the night of the sixteenth-seventeenth. The men were absolutely exhausted; though the distance covered had not exceeded some fourteen or fifteen miles per day, yet the rain, the starvation, and the bad road had much thinned the ranks, and those who had kept up with the colours were dropping with fatigue. The slowness of the column’s advance was certainly not Beresford’s fault; he had allowed only a six hours’ halt each day on the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth, and had been pushing on as hard as was, humanly speaking, possible. Nevertheless he was too late: on the seventeenth, the all-important day of the campaign, he held Chaves, but his[p. 353] troops were too tired to start early or to march far. The bad weather which made the French retreat so miserable, had at least saved the flying army from its pursuers[441].

Soult meanwhile had gathered in Loison and Lorges, and his whole army was concentrated at Guimaraens on the morning of the fourteenth. From the point where he now lay, in the upper valley of the Avé, there are only two carriage roads, that to Amarante by which Loison had arrived, and that to Braga. There was a bare chance that if Wellesley had received his information late, and moved slowly, it might be possible to escape from him by the road to Braga. If, however, he had marched promptly from Oporto, he would be able to intercept the retreating army at that place. Soult refused to take this risk, and resolved instead to plunge once more into the mountains, and to cross the watershed between the Avé and the Cavado by a rugged hill-path, no better than that which had served him between Penafiel and Guimaraens. It was accordingly necessary to sacrifice all the guns, munitions, and baggage belonging to Loison and Lorges, just as those of Mermet and Delaborde had been destroyed on the banks of the Souza. The guns were burst, the ammunition exploded, the baggage piled[p. 354] in heaps and burned. After this second holocaust the army struck up a track by the Salto torrent, which ultimately brought them over the crest, and down upon the village of Lanhozo, eight miles from Braga, and just at the foot of the position which Eben had occupied during his unhappy battle on March 20. The weather had been abominable, and the rearguard had been forced to bivouac in misery on the hills, the darkness having come down upon them before the descent into the valley of the Cavado was completed.

Next morning Soult sent out Lahoussaye’s dragoons down the valley of the Cavado towards Braga, to see if that city was already in Wellesley’s hands or whether it was still possible to escape across his front and gain the high road to Galicia. As the Marshal had feared would be the case, they met British light cavalry pushing briskly up the road towards them; it was clear that the pursuers were already in Braga, and Soult at once ordered his columns to turn their faces to the north-east, and follow the road up the Cavado towards Salamonde and Ruivaens. The British were ere long visible in close pursuit.

Sir Arthur had quitted Oporto on the fourteenth with his whole force except the brigade of Murray, which had already gone forth on the eastern line of pursuit, and the 20th Light Dragoons, which he had been ordered to send back to Lisbon. On that day his army covered twenty-two miles of road in vile weather, and slept at Villa Nova de Famelic??o. On the fifteenth the British started early, and their vanguard had already marched twelve miles and reached Braga when the French dragoons were descried. The latter, seeing themselves forestalled, retired on their main body, and when Wellesley’s men mounted the crest of the Monte Adaufé (Eben’s old position in the battle of March 20), they caught a glimpse of the whole French army retiring up the valley. Soult, immediately on hearing that the pursuers were in Braga, had commenced a new retreat. He had rearranged his order of march. Loison now led the column, with Heudelet’s division and Lorges’ dragoons: then came the droves of artillery horses and pack-mules, with the reserve ammunition and the little baggage that had been saved, followed by Delaborde and Mermet. Merle’s infantry and Franceschi’s horse were in the rear, under the Marshal’s[p. 355] own command. In this order the French remounted the stream of the Cavado as far as Salamonde, where the broad valley narrows down to a defile. They were followed by the British light dragoons, but the infantry of the pursuing column had not got far beyond Braga, where Wellesley’s head quarters were established that night. Murray’s German brigade, which had crossed the mountains from Guimaraens in Soult’s wake, joined the main body on this evening.

On reaching Salamonde Soult was informed by the cavalry in his front that they had been brought to stand at the bridge of Ponte Nova, a few miles up the defile, by a body of Ordenanza, who had taken up the wooden flooring of the bridge, torn down its balustrades, and barricaded themselves upon the further side. Unless they could be dislodged ruin stared the Marshal in the face: for the British were close in his rear, and there was no lateral line of escape from the precipitous defile. Surrender next morning must follow. In this crisis Soult saw no chance of safety before him save a dash at the half-demolished bridge. When darkness had fallen he sent for Major Dulong, an officer of the 31st Léger, who enjoyed the reputation of being the most daring man in the whole army, and told him that he must surprise the Portuguese by a sudden rush at midnight, and win the passage at all costs. He was allowed to pick 100 volunteers from his own regiment for the enterprise.

The safety of a whole army has seldom depended upon a more desperate venture than that which Dulong took in hand. Nothing remained of the bridge save the two large cross-beams, no more than three or four feet broad; they were slippery with continuous rain, and had to be passed in complete darkness under the driving sleet of a bitter north wind. Fortunately for the assailants the same cold and wet which made their enterprise so dangerous had driven the Ordenanza under cover: they had retired to some huts a little way beyond the bridge. If they left any one on guard, the sentinel had followed his friends, for when Dulong and his party crept up to the passage they found it absolutely deserted. They crossed in single file, and reached the further side unobserved, losing one man who slipped and fell into the fierce river below. A moment later they came on the Portuguese, who were surprised in their sleep: many were[p. 356] bayonetted, the rest fled in dismay—they were but a few score of peasants, and were helpless when once the passage had been won.

For six hours Soult’s sappers were working hard to replace the flooring of the ruined bridge with tree trunks, and boards torn from the houses of the neighbouring village. At eight it was practicable, and the troops began to cross. It was a long business: for 20,000 men with 4,000 cavalry horses and a great drove of pack-animals had to be passed over the narrow, rickety, and uneven structure, whose balustrades had not been replaced. All the day was spent in hurrying the troops across, but they got forward so slowly that Soult saw himself forced to place a strong rearguard in position, to hold back the pursuers till the main body was safe. He left behind a brigade of Merle’s division, and two of Franceschi’s cavalry regiments, ranged behind a lateral ravine which crosses the road some distance below the bridge. They were placed with their right on the rough river bank and their left on the cliffs which overhang the road; orders were given to the effect that they must hold on at all costs till the army had completed the passage of the Ponte Nova. At half-past one the British light dragoons arrived in front of the position, saw that they could not force it, and started a bickering fire with the French pickets, while they waited for the main body to come up.

Owing to the long distance which Wellesley’s infantry had to cover, the day wore on without any serious collision on this point. But meanwhile Soult found that another and more serious danger lay ahead of him. After crossing the Cavado at the Ponte Nova there were two paths available for the army—the main road leads eastward to Chaves by way of Ruivaens, a branch, however, turns off north to Montalegre and the sources of the Misarella, the main affluent of the Cavado. The former was the easier, but there was a grave doubt whether Chaves might not already be in the hands of Beresford and his turning column—as a matter of fact it only arrived there a few hours after Soult stood uncertain at the parting of the ways. Bearing this in mind, the Marshal resolved to take the more rugged and difficult path; but when Loison and the vanguard were engaged in it they found that the bridge over the Misarella, the[p. 357] Saltador as it was called from the bold leap which its single arch makes across the torrent, was held against them. Again it was only with Ordenanza that the army had to deal: Beresford had just reached Chaves, but his troops were some miles further back; Silveira, who ought to have been at Ruivaens that morning, had not appeared at all. But Major Warre, an officer of Beresford’s staff, had ridden ahead to rouse the peasantry, and had collected several hundred half-armed levies at the Saltador bridge, which he encouraged them to hold, promising that the regulars would be up to support them before nightfall. Unfortunately he could not persuade them to destroy the bridge, on which all the cross-communications of the Misarella valley depend. But they had thrown down its parapets, built an abattis across its head, and thrown up earthworks on each side of it so as to command the opposite bank. This, unhappily, was not enough to hold back 20,000 desperate men, who saw their only way of salvation on the opposite bank.

When Loison found his advance barred, he made an appeal to that same Major Dulong who had forced the Ponte Nova on the preceding night. Again that daring soldier volunteered to conduct the forlorn hope: he was given a company of voltigeurs to lead the column, and two battalions of Heudelet’s division to back them. Forming the whole in one continuous mass—there was only room for four men abreast—he dashed down towards the bridge amid a spluttering and ineffective fire from the Portuguese entrenchments on the opposite bank. The column reached the arch, passed it, was checked but a moment while tearing down the abattis, and then plunged in among the scared Ordenanza, who fled in every direction, leaving the passage free. Dulong was wounded, but no more than eighteen of his companions were hit, and at this small sacrifice the army was saved. Late in the afternoon the whole mass began to stream up the Montalegre road; they had no longer anything more to fear than stray shots from the scattered Ordenanza, who hung about on the hillsides, firing into the column from inaccessible rocks, but doing little damage.

If Dulong had failed at the Saltador Soult would have been lost, for just as the passage was forced the rumbling of cannon began to be heard from the rear. Merle was attacked by the[p. 358] British, and was being driven in. At five o’clock the Guards’ brigade, forming the head of Wellesley’s infantry, had come up with the French rearguard. It was formidably posted, but Sir Arthur thought that it might be dislodged. Accordingly he placed the two three-pounders, which accompanied the column, on the high road, and began to batter the French centre, while he sent off the three light companies of the brigade[442] to turn the French left flank on the cliffs to the south. When the crackling of their musketry was heard among the rocks, he silenced his guns and flung the Guards upon the enemy’s main body. They broke, turned, and fled in confusion, though the regiment on the road, the 4th Léger, was considered one of the best in the French army[443].

The chase continued as far as the Ponte Nova, which the broken troops crossed in a struggling mass, thrusting each other over the edge (where the balustrades were wanting) till the torrent below was choked with dead men and horses. The British guns were brought up and played upon the weltering crowd with dreadful effect. But the night was already coming on, and the darkness hid from the pursuers the full effect of their own fire. They halted and encamped, having slain many and taken about fifty prisoners, of whom one was an officer. It was only at daybreak that they realized the terrors through which the French had passed. ‘The rocky bed of the Cavado,’ says an eye-witness, ‘presented an extraordinary spectacle. Men and horses, sumpter animals and baggage, had[p. 359] been precipitated into the river, and literally choked its course. Here, with these fatal accompaniments of death and dismay, was disgorged the last of the plunder of Oporto. All kinds of valuable goods were left on the road, while above 300 horses, sunk in the water, and mules laden with baggage, fell into the hands of the grenadier and light companies of the Guards. These active-fingered gentry found that fishing for boxes and bodies out of the stream produced pieces of plate, and purses and belts full of gold money. Amid the scenes of death and desolation arose their shouts of the most noisy merriment[444].’

On the night of the 17th Soult’s army poured into Montalegre, a dilapidated old town on the edge of the frontier, from which all the inhabitants had fled. Little or no food could be procured, and the houses did not suffice to shelter more than a part of the troops. Next morning the 2nd Corps took to its heels once more, and climbed the Serra de Gerez, which lies just above the town. On descending its northern slope they had at last entered Spain, and had reached safety. But the country was absolutely desolate: for twenty miles beyond Montalegre there was hardly a single village on this rugged by-path. Still dreading pursuit, the Marshal urged on his men as fast as they could be driven forward, and in two long marches at last reached Orense.

Wellesley, however, had given up any hope of catching the 2nd Corps, when once it had passed the Saltador and reached the Spanish frontier. He had halted the British infantry at Ruivaens, and only sent on in chase of the flying host the 14th Light Dragoons and the division of Silveira, which had at last appeared on the scene late in the evening of the seventeenth. What this corps had been doing during the last forty-eight hours it is impossible to discover. It had started from Amarante on the same day that Beresford marched for Chaves, and ought to have been at Ruivaens on the sixteenth, when it would have found itself just in time to intercept Soult’s vanguard after it had passed the Ponte Nova. Apparently the same wild weather and constant rain which had delayed Beresford’s column had checked his subordinate. At any rate it is certain that Silveira, though he had a shorter route than his chief, only got to Ruivaens late[p. 360] on the seventeenth, while the other column had reached Chaves more than twelve hours earlier.

The French had disappeared, and it was only next morning that Silveira followed them up on the Montalegre road. He captured a few laggards by the way, but on reaching the little town found that Soult’s rearguard had quitted it two hours before his arrival[445]. By Wellesley’s orders he pushed on for one day more in pursuit, but found that the enemy was now so far ahead that he could do no more than pick up moribund stragglers. On the nineteenth, therefore, he turned back and retraced his steps to Montalegre[446].

Much the same fortune had befallen Beresford’s column. By Wellesley’s orders Tilson’s brigade and their Portuguese companions marched from Chaves by Monterey on the eighteenth, on the chance that Soult, after passing the Serra de Gerez, might drop into the Monterey-Orense road. But the Marshal had not taken this route: he had kept to by-paths, and marched by Porquera and Allariz, to the left of the line on which Beresford’s pursuit was directed. At Ginzo the cavalry of the pursuing column picked up fifty stragglers, and came into contact with a small party of Franceschi’s chasseurs, which Soult had thrown out to cover his flank. Learning from the peasantry that the French had gone off by a different route, Beresford halted and returned to Chaves. His men were so thoroughly worn out, and the strength of the column was so much reduced, that he could have done little more even if he had come upon the main body of the enemy[447].
Map of Northern Portugal

Enlarge  NORTHERN PORTUGAL
TO ILLUSTRATE MARSHAL SOULT’S CAMPAIGN
of MARCH to MAY 1809

On May 19 Soult’s dilapidated and starving host poured into Orense, where they could at last take a day’s rest and obtain a decent meal. The Marshal caused the troops to be numbered, and found that he had brought back 19,713 men. As he had started from the Spanish frontier with 22,000 sabres and [p. 361]bayonets, and had received 3,500 more from Tuy, when Lamartinière’s column joined him, it would appear that he had left in all some 5,700 men behind him. Of these, according to the French accounts[448], about 1,000 had fallen in the early fighting, or died of sickness, before Wellesley’s appearance on the Vouga. About 700, mostly convalescents, had been captured at Chaves by Silveira[449]. After the storm of Oporto the British army found 1,500 sick in the hospitals of that city, of Braga and of Viana[450]. They also took some 400 unwounded prisoners at Oporto and at Grijon[451]. It results therefore that the losses of the actual retreat from Baltar to Orense, between the thirteenth and the nineteenth of May, must have been rather more than 2,000 men. But all these had been able-bodied fighting-men—the sick, as we have seen, were abandoned before the break-neck march over the mountains began: adding them and the prisoners of the eleventh-twelfth, to the actual casualties of the retreat, on the same principle which we used when calculating the losses of Moore’s army in the Corunna campaign, we should get a total of 4,000 for the deficiency in the French ranks during the nine days which elapsed between Wellesley’s passage of the Vouga and Soult’s arrival at Orense. Thus it would seem that about one-sixth of the 2nd Corps had been destroyed in that short time—a proportion almost exactly corresponding to that which Moore’s force left behind it in the retreat from Sahagun to Corunna, wherein 6,000 men out of 33,000 were lost.

In other respects these two famous retreats afford some interesting points of comparison. Moore had an infinitely longer distance to cover: in mere mileage his men marched more than twice as far as Soult’s[452]: their journey occupied twenty days as against nine. On the other hand the French had to[p. 362] use far worse roads. From Benavente to Corunna there is a good chaussée for the whole distance: from Baltar to Orense the 2nd Corps had to follow impracticable mule-tracks for more than half the way. As to the weather, there was perhaps little to choose between the two retreats: the nine days of perpetual rain, during which Soult effected his passage of four successive mountain chains, was almost as trying as the cold and snow through which the British had to trudge. Moore’s men were not so hardly pressed by starvation as the 2nd Corps, and they were moving through a country-side which was not actively hostile, if it could scarcely be described as friendly. On the other hand they were pursued with far greater vigour than the French: their rearguard was beset every day, and had constantly to be fighting, while Soult’s troops were hard pressed only on two days—the sixteenth and seventeenth of May. This advantage the Marshal gained by choosing an unexpected line of retreat over obscure by-paths: if he had taken either of the high-roads by Braga and Chaves his fate would have been very different. On this same choice of roads depends another contrast between the two retreats: to gain speed and safety Soult sacrificed the whole of his artillery and his transport. When he arrived at Orense, as one of his officers wrote, ‘the infantry had brought off their bayonets and their eagles, the cavalry their horses and saddles—everything else had been left behind—the guns, the stores, the treasure, the sick.’ Moore, in spite of all the miseries of his march, carried down to Corunna the whole of his artillery, part of his transport, and the greater number of his sick and wounded. If he lost his military chest, it was not from necessity but from the mismanagement of the subordinates who had charge of it. His army was in condition to fight a successful battle at the end of its retreat, and so to win for itself a safe and honourable departure.

Both generals, it will be observed, were driven into danger by causes for which they did not regard themselves as responsible. Soult was placed in peril by attempting to carry out his master’s impracticable orders. Moore thought himself bound to run the risk, because he had realized that there was a political necessity that the English army should do something for the cause of Spain, for it could not with honour retire to Portugal before it[p. 363] had struck a blow. In their management of their respective campaigns both made mistakes. Moore hurried his men too much, and did not take full advantage of the many positions in which he could have held off the pursuer by judicious rearguard actions. Soult’s faults were even greater: nothing can excuse his stay at Oporto during the days when he should have been directing Loison’s movements at Amarante. That stay was undoubtedly due to his vain intrigues with the Portuguese malcontents; it was personal ambition, not any military necessity, which detained him from his proper place. Still more worthy of blame was his disposition of his forces at the moment when the British troops crossed the Vouga: they were scattered in a dangerous fashion, which made concentration difficult and uncertain. But the weakest feature of his whole conduct was that he allowed himself to be surprised in Oporto by Wellesley on May 12. When an army in close touch with the enemy is taken unawares at broad midday, by an irruption of its opponents into the middle of the cantonments, the general-in-chief cannot shift the blame on to the shoulders of subordinates. It was Soult’s duty to see that his officers were taking all reasonable precautions to watch the British, and he most certainly did not do so. Indeed, we have seen that he turned all his attention to the point of least danger—the lower reaches of the Douro—and neglected that on which the British attack was really delivered. It was only when he found himself on the verge of utter ruin, on May 13, that he rose to the occasion, and saved his army, by the daring march upon Guimaraens which foiled Wellesley’s plans for intercepting his retreat. To state that ‘his reputation as a general was nowise diminished by his Portuguese campaign’ is to do him more than justice[453]. It would be more true to assert that he showed that if he could commit faults, he could also do much towards repairing their consequences.

As to Wellesley, it is not too much to say that the Oporto campaign is one of his strongest titles to fame. He had, as we have already seen, only 16,400 British and 11,400 Portuguese troops[454], of whom the latter were either untried in the field or demoralized by their previous experiences beyond the Douro. His superiority in mere numbers to Soult’s corps of 23,000 men[p. 364] was therefore small, and he was lamentably destitute of cavalry and artillery. It was no small feat to expel the enemy from Northern Portugal in nine days, and to cast him into Galicia, stripped of his guns and baggage, and with a gap of more than 4,000 men in his ranks. This had been accomplished at the expense of no more than 500 casualties, even when the soldiers who fell by the way from sickness and fatigue are added to the 300 killed and wounded of the engagements of May 11, 12, and 17. There is hardly a campaign in history in which so much was accomplished at so small a cost. Wellesley had exactly carried out the programme which he had set before himself when he left Lisbon—the defeat of the enemy and the deliverance of the two provinces beyond the Douro. He had expressly disclaimed any intention or expectation of destroying or capturing the 2nd Corps[455], which some foreign critics have ascribed to him in their anxiety to make out that he failed to execute the whole project that he had taken in hand.

There was, it is true, one short moment at which he had it in his power to deal Soult a heavier blow than he had contemplated. On the night of May 12-13, when the Marshal in his bivouac at Baltar learnt of Loison’s evacuation of Amarante, the main body of the 2nd Corps was in a deplorable situation, and must have been destroyed, had the British been close at hand. If Wellesley had pursued the flying foe, on the afternoon of the victory of Oporto, with all his cavalry and the less fatigued regiments of his infantry, nothing could have saved the French. But the opportunity was one which could not have been foreseen: no rational officer could have guessed that Loison would evacuate Amarante, and so surrender his chief’s best line of retreat. It was impossible that Wellesley should dream of such a chance being thrown into his hands. He constructed his plans on the natural hypothesis that Soult had still open to him the route across the Tamega; and he was therefore more concerned with the idea that Beresford might be in danger from the approach of Soult, than with that of taking measures to[p. 365] capture the Marshal. His men were fatigued with the long march of eighty miles in four days which had taken them from the Mondego to Oporto: his guns and stores had not yet passed the bridgeless Douro. It was natural, therefore, that he should allow himself and his army a night’s rest before pressing on in pursuit of Soult. It will be remembered that he did push Murray’s brigade along the Baltar road in the tracks of the Marshal, but that officer never came up with the French. If blame has to be allotted to any one for the failure to discover the unhappy situation of the 2nd Corps upon the morning of the thirteenth, it would seem that Murray must bear the burden rather than the Commander-in-chief. He should have kept touch, at all costs, with the retreating French, and if he had done so would have been able to give Wellesley news of their desperate plight.

As to the pursuit of Soult, between the fourteenth and the eighteenth, it is hard to see that more could have been done than was actually accomplished. ‘It is obvious,’ as Wellesley wrote to Castlereagh, ‘that if an army throws away all its cannon, equipment, and baggage, and everything that can strengthen it and enable it to act together as a body; and if it abandons all those who are entitled to its protection, but add to its weight and impede its progress[456], it must be able to march by roads on which it can not be followed, with any prospect of being overtaken, by an army which has not made the same sacrifices[457].’ This puts the case in a nutshell: Soult, after he had abandoned his sick and destroyed his guns and wagons, could go much faster than his pursuers. The only chance of catching him was that Beresford or Silveira might be able to intercept him at the Misarella on the seventeenth. But the troops of the former were so exhausted by their long march in the rain from Amarante, that although they reached Chaves on the night of the sixteenth-seventeenth, they were not in a condition to march eighteen miles further on the following morning. Whether Silveira, who had taken a shorter but a more rugged route than Beresford, might not have reached Ruivaens ten or twelve hours earlier than he did is another matter. Had he[p. 366] done so, he might have held the cross-roads and blocked the way to Montalegre. We have no details of his march, though we know that he had a bad mountain-path to traverse in abominable weather. All military critics have joined in condemning him[458], but without a more accurate knowledge of the obstacles that he had to cross, and of the state of his troops, we can not be sure of the exact amount of blame that should fall upon him. It is at any rate clear that Wellesley was not responsible for the late arrival of the Portuguese division at Ruivaens and the consequent escape of the enemy.

[Erratum from p. xii: A dispatch of Beresford at Lisbon clears up my doubts as to Silveira’s culpability. Beresford complains that the latter lost a whole day by marching from Amarante to Villa Pouca without orders; the dispatch directing him to take the path by Mondim thus reached him only when he had gone many miles on the wrong road. The time lost could never be made up.]

Beyond Montalegre it would have been useless to follow the flying French. An advance into Galicia would have taken the British army too far from Lisbon, and have rendered it impossible to return in time to the Tagus if Victor should be on the move. That marshal, as we shall see, was showing signs of stirring from his long spell of torpidity, and it was a dispatch from Mackenzie, containing the news that the 1st Corps was on the move, that made Wellesley specially anxious to check the pursuit, and to draw back to Central Portugal before matters should come to a head in Estremadura. He could safely calculate that it would be months rather than weeks before Soult would be in a condition to cause any trouble on the northern frontier.

N.B.—There are admirable accounts of the horrors of Soult’s retreat in the works of Le Noble, St. Chamans, Fantin des Odoards, and Naylies. The pursuit of the main body of the English army is well described by four eye-witnesses—Lord Londonderry, Stothert, Hawker, and Lord Munster. For the march of Beresford’s corps I have only the details given by Lord Gough’s letter, cited heretofore.