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 fl............