WELLINGTON’S RETREAT TO THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS (OCTOBER 1810)

The dawn of September 28 brought small comfort to Masséna. His desperate attacks of the preceding day had been repulsed with such ease and such heavy loss, that neither he nor any of his subordinates dreamed of renewing the attempt to force the line of the Serra. Only three courses were open to him—to retreat on Almeida, giving up the campaign as one too ambitious for the strength of his army, or to change his objective and strike backwards at Oporto,—if Lisbon were beyond his grasp,—or to endeavour to move Wellington out of his position by turning his flank, since a frontal attack had proved disastrous. The first course was advocated by more than one adviser, but presented no attractions to the Marshal: he was both obstinate and angry, and did not dream for a moment of spoiling his military reputation by retreating tamely after a lost battle. The blow at Oporto was equally unattractive: he had been told to drive the English out of Portugal, and to capture Lisbon, not to make a mere lodgement on the Douro. Moreover, as he had remarked to Ney before the battle, if he marched on Oporto by the bad road via Vizeu, he might find the British army once more in his front, when he drew nearer to the city, since the Coimbra-Oporto chaussée is both shorter and better than the by-roads which he would have to follow. There remained the third possibility—that of turning Wellington out of the Bussaco position by flanking operations. The country-side did not look very promising, but the attempt must be made.

Early on the 28th the French cavalry was sent out in both directions to explore the whole neighbourhood—a task which Masséna should have prescribed to it on the 25th and 26th,[p. 391] instead of keeping it massed in his rear. The reconnaissances sent southward by Reynier’s light cavalry brought no encouraging report: if the French army crossed the Mondego, it would only run against Wellington’s carefully prepared position behind the Alva. Fane’s cavalry were out in this direction, and would give ample time of warning to allow the allied army to pass the fords of Pe?a Cova and man the long series of earthworks. Only a repetition of the Bussaco disaster could follow from an attempt to take the offensive on this side. From the north, however, Montbrun, who had ridden out with some of Sainte-Croix’s dragoons, brought far more cheering news. This indeed was the flank where, on the first principles of topography, some hope of success might have been looked for. To any one standing either on the Bussaco heights or on the lower ridge in front of them, and casting an eye over the dappled and uneven country-side to the north, it seems incredible that there should be no route whatever across the Serra de Caramula. Both the seacoast-plain of Beira and the valley of the Oerins, the little river which drains the plain of Mortagoa, were thickly populated. Was it likely that there would be no means of getting from the one to the other save by the chaussée through Bussaco, or the circuitous road far to the north, from Vizeu to Aveiro via Feramena and Bemfeita? The maps, it is true, showed no other route: but every day that he remained in Portugal was proving more clearly to the Marshal that his maps, Lopez and the rest, were hopelessly inaccurate. The Serra de Caramula, though rugged, is not one continuous line of precipices, nor is it of any great altitude. On first principles it was probable that there might be one or more passages in this stretch of thirty miles, though it was conceivable that there might be no road over which artillery could travel[441].

There was, therefore, nothing astonishing in the fact that Montbrun discovered that such a track existed, nine miles north of Bussaco, running from Mortagoa, by Aveleira and Boialvo, to Sard?o in the valley of the Agueda, one of the affluents of[p. 392] the Vouga. There was nothing particularly startling in the discovery, nor did it imply any special perspicacity in the discoverers, as many of the French narratives seek to imply. A peasant captured in one of the deserted villages high up the Oerins, and cross-questioned by Masséna’s Portuguese aide-de-camp Mascarenhas, who accompanied Sainte-Croix on his reconnaissance, revealed the fact that this country-road existed. He even, it is said, expressed to his compatriot his surprise that the French had not taken it when first they arrived at Mortagoa, since it was unguarded, while the whole allied army was lying across the Bussaco chaussée. It was, he said, habitually used by the ox-waggons of the peasantry: it was not a good road, but was a perfectly practicable one.

With this all-important news Montbrun and Sainte-Croix returned to Masséna about midday. The Marshal at once resolved to make an attempt to utilize the Boialvo road. There was some danger in doing so, since it was possible that Wellington might wait till the greater part of the French army had retired from his front, and then descend upon the rearguard and overwhelm it. Or, on the other hand, he might have made preparations to hold the further end of the pass, so that when the vanguard of the invaders was nearing Boialvo or Sard?o they might find 20,000 men, withdrawn from the Bussaco position in haste, lying across their path at some dangerous turn of the road. Indeed, we may confidently assert that if in 1810 the British general had possessed the army that he owned in 1813, Masséna would have had the same unpleasant experience that befell Soult at Sorauren, when he attempted a precisely similar man?uvre—a flank march round the allied army on the day after a lost battle.

But Masséna was prepared to take risks, and the risk which he was now accepting was a considerably less perilous one than that which he had incurred when he chose to make a frontal attack on the Bussaco position on the preceding day. For though flank marches across an enemy’s front are justly deprecated by every military authority, this was one executed at a distance of nine or ten miles from the British line, and not in a level country, on to which Wellington might easily descend from his fastness, but in a broken wooded upland, full of ridges[p. 393] on which the French might have formed up to fight if assailed. If this fact did not remove the danger, it at any rate made it infinitely less. If one of the two possible contretemps should happen—if Wellington should come down with a sudden rush upon the rearguard—that force would have to fight a defensive action on the ridges below Bussaco, till the main body could turn back to help it. In that case there would follow a pitched battle upon rolling and uneven ground, which did not favour one side more than the other; and this, at any rate, would be a more favourable situation for the French than that in which they had fought on Sept. 27. If, on the other hand, Wellington should send a strong detachment to hold the western debouch of the Boialvo road, nothing would be lost—if nothing would be gained. It was improbable that there would be any position in that quarter quite so strong as the tremendous slope of the Serra de Bussaco. The result of an attempt to force the defile might be successful.

At any rate Masséna thought the experiment worthy of a trial. Accordingly, on the afternoon of the 28th, ostentatious demonstrations were made against the front of the Bussaco position, which led to a good deal of objectless skirmishing[442]. Wellington was not for a moment deceived. Indeed, the idea that another assault was impending was negatived by the fact that both Reynier’s and Ney’s men were seen to be throwing up abattis and digging trenches on the flanks of the two roads on which they lay. These could only be meant for defensive use, and presumably must be intended to help the French rearguard to hold the ridges, if the Anglo-Portuguese army should descend upon them. Late in the afternoon officers furnished with good telescopes, and stationed on the highest point of the Bussaco Serra, reported that they could detect columns in movement from the French rear in the direction of the north-west. These were Sainte-Croix’s cavalry and the baggage-trains of Ney and Junot making their way to the rear, in order to get into the Mortagoa-Boialvo road. At six o’clock, dusk having still not come on, it was reported that Ney’s infantry reserves were certainly moving in the same direction. Only Loison’s division was still immovable on its old position opposite Sula. At[p. 394] nightfall, therefore, the movement of the French was well ascertained. It might mean merely a general retreat on Mortagoa and an abandonment of the campaign[443], but this was most unlikely. Far more probable was some march to turn the allied flank by the passes of the Serra de Caramula. Wellington himself had no doubt whatever that this was the enemy’s intention. As the dusk fell he stood for some time on the summit of the Serra, watching the French columns receding in the distance. He then rode back to his head quarters at the convent of Bussaco, and dictated without delay a series of orders which set his whole army in retreat for Coimbra and Lisbon. Before daylight the position was deserted, only a rearguard being left on it. He does not seem to have thought for a moment of attacking, on the following morning, the 2nd Corps and Loison’s division, which had been left in his front, nor of directing his right wing to march on Sard?o, which it could have reached long before the French arrived there. Each of these courses was so obvious that critics have lavished blame upon him for not adopting the one or the other[444].

The explanation of his conduct is neither that he failed to see the two alternatives which were in his power, nor that he showed (as several French writers maintain) an excessive timidity. Still less is it possible to urge, as some have done, that he was ruined by his own neglect to occupy the Boialvo road. He knew of that pass, had taken it into consideration, and in one of his dispatches speaks vaguely of a means which he was hoping to discover to render it useless to the enemy[445]. This remedy cannot mean, as some have supposed, the moving thither of Trant’s corps of Portuguese militia. It is true that Wellington had ordered this force to occupy Sard?o some days before. But it was neither large enough, nor composed of troops solid enough, to resist, even in a strong position, the attack of a single French brigade. Some other device must have been meant, though we[p. 395] cannot determine what it may have been. The true key to Wellington’s action is to remember the immense pains that he had taken in building the Lines of Torres Vedras, and the elaborate arrangements that had been made during the last few weeks to complete the system for devastating Portugal in front of the enemy. It was by these means, and not by fights in the open, that he had from the first designed to defeat the invader. Bussaco had been an ‘uncovenanted mercy’: if Masséna chose to run his head against that stone wall, it was worth while to man it, and to permit him to break himself against its granite boulders. But such an operation as descending into the plain to attack the 2nd Corps on the 29th, or offering battle in front of Sard?o on that same day, was not within the scope of Wellington’s intentions. If he had wished to engage in that sort of fighting, he had already had ample opportunities to attack sections of the French army during the last two months. But to get engaged with one corps in a rolling upland, and then to have the other two converging on him while the fight was in progress, he had never intended—nor would he do so now. He gave his orders for the retreat of the army on Coimbra actually before the French had possession of their own end of the Boialvo pass, and at a moment when a single night march would have sufficed to place Cole, Craufurd, and Spencer across the western end of it, with ample time to choose a position before the enemy could arrive in front. He explains his refusal to do so in his ‘Memorandum of Operations in 1810’ in the following terms: ‘It would have been impossible to detach a corps from the army to occupy the Serra de Caramula after the action of the 27th. That corps might have been hard pressed and obliged to retreat, in which case it must have retreated upon Sard?o and the north of Portugal. It could not have rejoined the army, and its services would have been wanting in the fortified position in front of Lisbon. It was therefore determined to rely upon Colonel Trant alone to occupy the Serra de Caramula, as his line of operations and retreat was to the northward. Nothing could have been done, except by detaching a large corps, to prevent the French from throwing a large force across the Caramula. When, therefore, they took that road, there was nothing for it but to withdraw from Bussaco. And, after quitting[p. 396] Bussaco, there was no position that we could take up with advantage, in which we could be certain that we could prevent the enemy from getting to Lisbon before us, till we reached the fortified positions in front of that place[446].’ As to the other possibility, that of attacking the French rearguard below Bussaco instead of endeavouring to stop its vanguard at Sard?o, Wellington only observes that ‘they had at least 12,000 or 14,000 more men than we had, and good as our position was, theirs was equally good.’ If he had fallen upon Reynier, the latter (he thought) could have detained him long enough to allow Ney and Junot to return, and so he would have found himself committed to an offensive action against superior numbers on unfavourable ground.

These arguments are unanswerable when we consider Wellington’s position. He might have succeeded in checking Masséna at Boialvo or Sard?o; but, if he did not, ruin would ensue, since he might be cut off from the detached corps, and then would not have men enough to hold the Lines of Torres Vedras. He might have crushed Reynier before he was succoured, but if he failed to do so, and became involved in a general action, a disastrous defeat was possible. In short, considering what failure would mean—the loss of Lisbon, the re-embarkation of the army, probably the end of the Peninsular War—he rightly hesitated to take any risk whatever. At the same time, we may suspect that if the allied army of 1810 had been the army of 1813, Wellington might very possibly have played a more enterprising game. But the Portuguese still formed the larger half of his force, and though he had ascertained by their behaviour on the 27th that they were now capable of fighting steadily in a defensive action on favourable ground, it was nevertheless very doubtful whether he could dare to risk them in a battle fought under different conditions. One cheering example of the courage and discipline of these newly organized regiments did not justify him in taking it for granted that they could be trusted under all possible conditions, as if they were veteran British troops.

On the dawn of Sept. 29, therefore, the two armies were marching away from each other. On the Bussaco position there remained only Craufurd’s Light Division, strengthened by[p. 397] Anson’s cavalry brigade, which was brought up behind the Serra, to form the mounted section of the force which was for the next ten days to act as the rearguard of the allied army. Opposite them only Reynier remained, and he had drawn far back on to the Mortagoa road, where he stood in a defensive position in the morning, but retired, brigade after brigade, in the afternoon. The main body of Wellington’s army was retiring in two columns: Hill, and Hamilton’s Portuguese division crossed the fords of Pe?a Cova and marched for Espinhal and Thomar. The force which had been left far out on the right behind the Alva—Fane’s cavalry and Lecor’s Portuguese militia—joined Hill and accompanied him to Lisbon. This column was absolutely unmolested by the enemy during the whole twelve days of the retreat to the Lines. The French did not so much as follow it with a cavalry patrol. The other and larger column, formed of Spencer, Cole, Leith, and Picton, with Pack’s, Coleman’s, and Alex. Campbell’s Portuguese, marched for Mealhada and Coimbra. Craufurd and Anson started twelve hours later to bring up the rear. During the hours while the Light Division was waiting its orders to start, some of its officers explored the evacuated French position, and found parked in an enclosure 400 desperately wounded soldiers, whom Masséna had abandoned to the mercy of the Portuguese peasantry. He had used up all available carts and mules to carry his wounded, but had been forced to leave the worst cases behind. They were picked up and moved into the convent of Bussaco[447]; on what became of them afterwards it is well not to speculate. No friendly column came that way again[448], and the Ordenan?a were daily growing more exasperated at the conduct of the invading army. The French were not only carrying out in an intermittent fashion Masséna’s edict of Sept. 4, directing that all men with arms but without uniforms were to be shot at sight, but burning every village that they passed, and murdering nearly[p. 398] every peasant that they could hunt down, whether he was bearing arms or no[449].

Meanwhile, on the 29th and 30th of September, the French army was executing its flank march, practically unopposed, though not unobserved. Sainte-Croix’s division of dragoons was at the head of the line of march: then came the infantry of the 8th Corps, which had been put in the vanguard because it had not suffered at Bussaco. Next came the reserve cavalry of Montbrun, followed by the Grand Park and the massed baggage of the 6th and 8th Corps, mixed with a convoy of over 3,000 wounded. Ney’s troops brought up the rear of the main column. Reynier was a day’s march to the rear; having spent the 29th opposite the Bussaco heights, he only reached Mortagoa that evening. Sainte-Croix’s cavalry on this same day had passed the watershed and reached Avellans de Cima, where they met a patrol of De Grey’s dragoons, who had sent parties out in all directions, from their head quarters at Mealhada in the coast-plain. From this time onward the French advanced guard was watched by the four regiments of Slade and De Grey, who were directed to hold back its exploring cavalry, and not to permit it to reach Coimbra an hour sooner than could be helped. There was also a clash on the afternoon of the 30th between part of Sainte-Croix’s dragoons and the Portuguese militia of Trant in front of Sard?o. Trant had been ordered to be at that place[p. 399] on September 27: he only arrived there on the afternoon of the 28th, not by his own fault, but because his superior officer Baccelar, commanding the whole militia of the North, had ordered him to move from Lamego to Sard?o by the circuitous road along the Douro, and then from Feira southward, instead of taking the straight road across, the mountains north of Vizeu, where he might possibly have been stopped by some outlying French detachment. Trant had at the moment only a squadron of dragoons and four militia regiments with him (Porto, Penafiel, Coimbra, and a battalion of light companies), and these, from hard marching, and from desertion, were in all less than 3,000 strong. Knowing that he was expected to hold the debouch of the Boialvo road against anything short of a strong force, Trant made an attempt to stand his ground. But his vanguard bolted at the first shot fired, and with the rest he had to make a hurried retreat beyond the Vouga, leaving the road free to the French[450]. Sainte-Croix had already pushed in[p. 400] between him and the British cavalry, who now began to make a slow retreat towards Mealhada. At that place, early on the 30th, Slade and De Grey were joined by Anson’s eight squadrons, who had come in at the tail of Craufurd’s division after the rearguard evacuated the Bussaco position. On this day the main column of the British infantry marched through Coimbra, leaving the Light Division alone in the city. Wellington’s head quarters that night were at Condeixa six miles south of the Mondego. The three cavalry brigades retired, bickering with the French advanced guard all day, as far as Fornos, eight miles north of Coimbra. Masséna’s infantry, after emerging from the Boialvo pass, were now pushing south, and bivouacked on the night of the 30th, Ney and Junot’s corps at Mealhada, Reynier’s at Barreiro, ten miles behind the others. The biscuit which the French army had taken with it from Almeida was now almost exhausted, and it was a great relief to the troops to find, in the deserted villages of the plain of Coimbra, considerable quantities of maize and rice, with which they could eke out or replace the carefully hoarded rations.

Meanwhile the city of Coimbra was full of distressing scenes. Though Wellington had ordered the whole population of Western Beira to leave their abodes as soon as the French reached Vizeu, yet only the richest of the inhabitants of Coimbra had departed. The bulk had still held to their houses, and the news of the victory of Bussaco had encouraged them to hope that no evacuation would be necessary. The Portuguese govern[p. 401]ment, though it had consented to carry out Wellington’s scheme of devastation, and had duly published proclamations commanding its execution, had taken no great pains to secure obedience to it. The sacrifice, indeed, that was demanded of the citizens of a wealthy town such as Coimbra was a very great one—far more bitter than that imposed on the peasantry, who were told at the same moment to evacuate their flimsy cottages. It was bitterly resented, and, despite of the proclamation, four-fifths of the 40,000 inhabitants of Coimbra were still in their houses when, on the night of the 28th-29th, arrived Wellington’s dispatch stating that he was abandoning Bussaco, that the French would be in the city by the 30th or on the 1st of October, and that force would be used, if necessary, to expel people who still clung to their dwellings. During the next two days the whole of the population of Coimbra was streaming out of the place by the roads to the south, or dropping down the Mondego in boats, to ship themselves for Lisbon at the little port of Figueira. Even on the 1st of October, the day when the French were reputed to be facing Fornos, only eight miles away, all had not yet departed. Many of the poor, the infirm, and the reckless remained behind to the last possible moment, and only started when the distant cannonade on the northern side showed that the British outposts were being driven in. Twenty miles of road were covered by the dense column of fugitives, headed by those who had started on the 29th and brought up behind by those who had waited till the last moment. There was a great want of wheeled conveyances: the richer folks had gone off with most of them, and others had been requisitioned for the allied wounded. Hence, many could take off nothing but what they could carry on their persons. An eye-witness writes that he saw the whole chaussée covered with respectable families walking on foot with bundles on their heads, while in the abandoned houses he noticed food of all sorts, table-linen, shirts, and all manner of other property, which was left behind in disorder because it was too heavy to be carried[451]. Another tells how ‘the old and the infirm, no less than the young and robust, carrying with them all their more valuable effects, covered the fields as well as the road in every direction, and from time to[p. 402] time the weary fugitives, unable to carry further the heavier articles that they had endeavoured to save, dropped them by the wayside and struggled onward, bereft of the remnant of their little property[452].’ Fortunately the weather for the first eight days after the evacuation of Coimbra was warm and dry, so that the unhappy multitude had almost reached Lisbon before they began to suffer any inconvenience from the October rains.

While this exodus was going on, Craufurd’s Light Division stood under arms on the northern side of the city, while the six regiments of British horse, in the extreme rearguard, were bickering with Masséna’s squadrons in the plain toward Fornos. On this day the Marshal had strengthened his van with almost the whole of his cavalry, having added to Sainte-Croix’s division, which had hitherto formed the advance, most of Montbrun’s reserve of dragoons, and Lamotte’s light brigade from the 6th Corps. This body of thirty-four squadrons was altogether too strong for Stapleton Cotton’s three brigades, who had to give way whenever they were seriously pressed. Two miles outside Coimbra the British horse was divided into two columns: De Grey’s heavy dragoons crossed the Mondego at a ford opposite Pereira, Slade and Anson’s light dragoons and hussars by another at Alciada, nearer to the city. At the same moment the Light Division, when the enemy’s horse came in sight, retired through Coimbra, crossed the bridge, and pressed up the ascent towards Condeixa, thrusting before them the rearguard of belated fugitives who had only made up their minds to depart at the last possible moment. It is said that the block in front of them was so great that Craufurd’s regiments would have been in a situation of some danger, if they had been closely followed by French infantry, and forced to turn back to defend themselves. But nothing more than a troop of dragoons watched their passage of the bridge and their retreat to Condeixa, and not a shot had to be fired.

It was otherwise with the cavalry column composed of Slade’s and Anson’s brigades: they were closely followed by the bulk of the French cavalry, and had to turn at the ford to hold back their eager pursuers. Two squadrons of the German Hussars[p. 403] and one of the 16th Light Dragoons charged in succession to check the French vanguard, while a fire was kept up by a line of dismounted skirmishers all along the river bank. The hussars lost four men killed, and two officers and thirteen men wounded, besides six prisoners; the 16th, two wounded and one missing in this skirmish. It could have been avoided, according to critics on the spot, if the brigade had retreated a little faster in the previous stage of its movement. But Stapleton Cotton, forgetting the dangers of crossing such a defile as a narrow ford, had been rather too leisurely in covering the last three miles, considering that the French were so close behind him[453]. The enemy’s loss was insignificant[454].

That night the British rearguard lay at Soure and Condeixa, while head quarters and the rear of the main army were at Redinha. The French did not cross the Mondego with more than a few cavalry patrols, and made no attempt to incommode the retreating column. Indeed they were otherwise employed. The entry of an army into a deserted town is always accompanied by disorders: that of the army of Masséna into Coimbra was an exaggerated example of the rule—and for good reasons. The men had been living on bare rations for a month, and suddenly they found themselves in a town of 40,000 souls, where every door was open, every larder garnished, and every cellar full. The very quays were littered with sacks of flour torn open, and puncheons of rum stove in, for Wellington’s commissariat officers had been to the last moment engaged in breaking up and casting into the river the remains of the magazine which had been feeding the army at Bussaco. The houses on every side were full of valuable goods, for most of the inhabitants had only been able to carry off their money and plate, and had left all else behind them. The first division of the 8th Corps, the earliest French troops to enter the place, consisted almost entirely of newly-formed fourth battalions, composed of conscripts, and ill disciplined. They broke their ranks and fell[p. 404] to plunder, only half-restrained by their officers, many of whom joined in the sport. A late comer from the artillery says that he saw one officer breaking open a door with a pickaxe, and another placing a sentry at the door of a shop which he wished to reserve for his own personal pillage[455]. There was wide-spread drunkenness, some arson, and an enormous amount of mischievous and wanton waste. It was afterwards said that Junot’s corps destroyed in twelve hours an amount of food that would have sufficed to supply the whole army for three weeks. It is at any rate certain that Coimbra was full of provisions when............