Another object which Lord Wellington had in view, in fighting the battle of Busaco, was to give time to the people of the country in his rear to comply with the proclamation he had issued, and to remove out of the way of the enemy with their goods and provisions. It was especially important to gain this time for the inhabitants of Coimbra, a populous and wealthy town, which Massena would have entered on the 26th but for the force united on the Serra de Busaco. Unfortunately the proclamation, and the specific orders given, were in many instances ill obeyed. This rendered necessary a recourse to compulsive measures, the British general being determined that his proclamation should not be a dead letter, and feeling that the present sufferings, however great, of a portion of the community were not to be put in comparison with the future welfare and triumph of the whole Portuguese nation. If an absolute want of forage and provisions should fall upon the French, together with a want of lodging and accommodation, at the very time that the rainy season was beginning, their progress must be impeded, their losses augmented, and their stay in the country much shortened. With the intention of providing, by means of English stores, provisions, and money, for the emigrating population behind the lines he had chosen near Lisbon, Wellington would have left all the country as bare to Massena as were the summits of the Serras or jagged mountains. He knew that, on starting from Almeida, the French marshal had given his people bread and biscuit for fifteen days, ordering every man to carry his own stock; but he also knew that the impatient French soldiers, wearied by this great additional weight, had thrown the greater portion away, preferring to trust to chance and plunder, to the cattle they were driving with them, and to the vegetables they might pick up. And, since Massena had begun his march, his soldiers had received meat only, and that was growing very scarce. Massena had only made the march which Wellington expected he would make. The British general had no intention of remaining where he was his place of strength, his chosen, inexpugnable position, in which Portugal was to be saved, was not in the Serra de Busaco or on the Mondego, but much nearer Lisbon, and thither a good road remained open to him. By the 29th the whole allied army was already in the low country, between the Serra de Busaco and the sea; and on the 30th it was collected on the left bank of the Mondego, and began its retreat towards the Tagus and the capital. On the 1st of October the British rearguard, after some skirmishing with an advanced guard of the French, evacuated Coimbra, accompanied by all the remaining inhabitants, who ought to have removed three or four days (at least) before, and who now ran away with whatever movables they could carry, with the sick, the aged, and the children thrown on carts, mules, and asses, not knowing whither they were going, and incumbering the road to the British rear; while the French were pressing close upon them, and even hovering on the flank. "It was a piteous sight, and one which those who saw it can never forget," adds an officer who had fought at Busaco, and who was now in the rear of our retreating army. It was like the uprooting and sweeping away of the population of whole provinces, with their flocks and their herds, their household goods and gods, and everything that was theirs it was a scene such as Europe might have presented at the first irruption of the Huns: it was a scene to make good men curse the restless ambition which had led to it and made it necessary. "I feel," says another eye-witness, "that no powers of description can convey to the mind of any reader the afflicting scenes, the cheerless desolation, we daily witnessed on our march from the Mondego to the lines. Wherever we moved, the mandate which enjoined the wretched inhabitants to forsake their homes, and to remove or destroy their little property, had gone before us. The villages were deserted; the churches, retreats so often (yet so vainly) confided in, were empty; the mountain cottages stood open and untenanted; the mills in the valley, but yesterday so busy, were motionless and silent! The flanks of our line of march from this place (Thomar) were literally covered with the flying population of the country. In Portugal there are, at no time, many facilities for travelling, and these few the exigencies of the army had very greatly diminished. Rich, indeed, were those in good fortune, as in possession, who still retained a cabriolet, and mules for its service. Those who had bullock-cars, asses, or any mode of transport On the 28th, the day after the battle, Massena moved a large body of infantry and cavalry from the left of his centre to the rear, and Wellington saw his cavalry marching over the mountains by another road towards Oporto. This road, by the pass of Boyalva to the north of Busaco, completely turned the position of the allies on that iron ridge: the pass had been open before, and Massena might have taken it, but that presumptuous man had preferred risking that engagement which had ended in such terrible loss. The British general now directed Colonel Trant to occupy that pass with his Portuguese division; but a Portuguese general commanding in the north had previously ordered the division to march elsewhere; and, unluckily, when Trant took it upon himself to obeying their families and property, looked contented his lordship's orders rather than those of the general, he lost his way in seeking a short road, and arrived too late to arrest the march of the French, who descended into the plains that lie open to the sea-coast, and seized on the road leading from Oporto to Coimbra in the rear of the British. But and grateful; for respectable men and delicate women, of the second class, might on every side be seen walking slowly and painfully on foot, encumbered by heavy burdens of clothes, bedding, *A. Viensseux. and food."*"The column of march of the torious armies of Bonaparte, with 25,000 British allies," says another officer, "presented an extra- troops and 30,000 native soldiers; that the predicordinary scene, the varieties of which it is impos- tions of Napoleon, verified everywhere else, must sible minutely to describe; but, when it is explained-be realised in this particular case, that the British, that the route was absolutely and coutinuously covered during its whole extent, some idea may be formed as to its unusual aspect. It was not alone troops of all arms, attended by the incumbrances and followers of an army; it was not peasantry, removing with their families; it was not the higher orders of society, travelling conformably to their rank; it was not the furniture, grain, cattle of an extensive line of country, passing from one station to another, but it was all these combined, pressing forward in one varied, confused, apparently interminable mass." It is to be remarked, however, that, great as might have been the sufferings of this forced emigration, the people must have suffered infinitely more if they had remained in their homes during the French advance and the infernal retreat which followed it. And better had it been for the general cause in the Peninsula if Lord Wellington's proclamation had been in all instances more strictly obeyed. His lordship had given a good deal of time for preparation, having issued his proclamation as far back as the 4th of August, or nearly two months before he commenced his retreat from Coimbra: in advancing from that city, in crossing the Mondego and taking up his position on the barrier of Busaco, his only inten tions were to gain time, to try the Portuguese le vies, and to show the enemy what stuff the allied army was made of: he never thought of remaining more than a few days at that advanced position, which could not defend Lisbon; and the Portuguese inhabitants in his rear were repeatedly warned to remove with their substance. When the French entered the forsaken city of Coimbra, they discovered ample stores of provisions; but, fortunately for the allies, and fatally to themselves, the soldiery pillaged and wasted these stores instead of husbanding them for the future necessities of the army.‡ When the intelligence of these movements reached England, that party which had always represented the glorious struggle as hopeless said that Wellington had gained another victory only to commence another retreat; that it was one of the wildest flights of human presumption to think of defending a country like Portugal, against the vast and vic Recollections of the Peninsula.-" The French army found the city of Coimbra, as it had previously done Vizeu, perfectly deserted; the houses closed against them; the inhabitants wandering over the face of the country, or crowding the roads leading to Lisbon. This emigration, produced in great measure by the instructions of Lord Wellington, was of incalculable inconvenience to an invading army, moving without magazines, consequently depending for subsistence on the countries through which it advanced. Instead of beholding a large population, subjected to intimidation and reluctant discovery of the stores in their possession, the bare walls of the houses alone remained; while the depositaries of grain, or provisions of any descrip tion, fell but unfrequently and accidentally into its power."-Leith Hay. + Colonel Leith Hay, Narrative. On moving from Coimbra, Massena left 5000 sick and wounded in that city. Three days after his departure, Colonel Trant, with a part of his rapid Portuguese division, entered the town and captured the whole of the French hospitals, together with some marines of the Imperial Guard, who had been leit there to protect the sick. or such of them as should escape the ignominy of a capitulation, must be driven back to their ships, leaving nothing to England, after all the sacrifices of money and of life she had made, but humiliation and disgrace, and an increase of debility which must render her so much the less able to contend with the enemy for her own existence as a nation. But no such raven croaked over the tent of the great commander. The plan of defence which he had formed and matured was still unbroken and entire, and so were his own hopes. He was never so confident as he was a day or two after he began his retreat from Coimbra. Writing to the admiral in the Tagus, he says, "I have very little doubt of being able to hold this country against the forcë which has now attacked it. There will be a breeze near Lisbon, but I know that we shall have the best of it." And writing to his brother Henry, now ambassador in Spain, he says, We shall make our retreat to the positions in front of Lisbou without much difficulty, or any loss. My opinion is, that the French are in a scrape. They are not a sufficient army for their purpose, particularly since their late loss and that the Portuguese army have behaved so well; and they will find their retreat from this country a most difficult and dangerous operation."* In fact, both the British and Portuguese effected their retreat with the greatest ease and regularity; General Hill, with his division on the right, moved by Thomar and Santarem ; the centre of the army moving by Leiria and Rio Mayor, and the left by Alcobaça and Obidos. Massena followed in one immense colunin by the centre or Rio Mayor road, his advanced guard occasionally skirmishing with our gallant light division. On the 7th of October the French van caught sight of the chain of hills, behind which, at the distance of twenty-four miles, lay the city of Lisbon. And now up, Lines of Torres Vedras, and show the lion in the middle path!† But those lines were already up; and every thing was prepared to keep the French at bay, "As famish'd wolves survey a guarded fold." We have mentioned the first conception of this" grand defensive scheme, which had more or less occupied the mind of Wellington ever since the campaign of 1808. It had been indispensable to conceal the great project, and to mystify the French as to its existence; and this had been done with astonishing address. Even when most actively engaged in directing the construction of the works, Wellington had the art to make not only the enemy, but also the people of the country, believe that he intended nothing serious there; and it is said that, in order to keep up the illusion, he sometimes spoke of the plan, even to officers of his own army and Colonel Gurwood, Wellington Dispatches. "But in the middle path a lion lay " 1 t Walter Scott, Vision of Don Roderick, about his own person, as a thing which had flitted' | line of the two, both by nature and by art, and, if through his head, but which had been abandoned. And, even when Massena received better information, he remained in the belief that the works thrown up were little more than field-works, which might easily be turned or overpowered by his own batteries, and that so extensive a line was not defensible by such a force as the British general commanded, but must have several weak points, at some one or two of which, a concentrated, sustained attack, costing perhaps a few thousands in killed and wounded, must eventually succeed. For a complete notion of the lines of Torres Vedras the reader must consult military and scientific books, and Wellington's own dispatches. We can only offer an outline sketch. The peninsula or promontory, at whose southeastern extremity Lisbon is situated, is crossed, rather obliquely, by two serras, or chains of mountains, which extend, with various altitudes and various degrees of steepness, but with partial interruptions or openings, from the shore of the Atlantic to the right bank of the Tagus. These two serras run nearly parallel with each other, at a distance of from six to eight miles; the point of the line nearest to Lisbon being close to the Tagus, between Via Longa and Quintilla. Through the passes in these serras, and the low ground bordering the Tagus, four roads, from the interior of the country, lead to the capital. The hand of nature had marked out these two lines of defence, and British science and engineering had been employed for a whole year in strengthening them, and in blocking up the openings which seemed the most accessible. Here redoubts were erected; here the whole face of a mountain was scarped and hewn into the appearance of the facet of some Titanic fortress; here the threads of mountain rivulets (which would be something more than rivulets at the end of October and in November) were collected and brought together into one bed; and here rivers, tributaries of the great Tagus, were dammed up, or were provided with dams which could be used, and with floodgates which could be shut, so as to inundate the country at the foot of the hills on the approach of the invader. The line of defence was everywhere double, while in some parts there was a treble range of batteries and redoubts. The first line, which was twenty-nine English miles in length, began at Alhendra on the Tagus, crossed the valley of Aruda (rather a weak point), and passed along the skirts of Monte Agraça, where - there was a large and strong redoubt: it then ran across the valley of Zibreira, skirted the deep ravine of Ruda, to the heights of Torres Vedras, and thence followed the course of the little river Zizandre to its mouth on the Atlantic. The second or inner line, at a distance varying from six to eight, and in some points to ten miles, extended from Quintilla on the Tagus, by Bucellas, Monte Chique, and Mafra, to the mouth of the little river S. Lourenço on the sea-coast, a distance of about twenty-four miles. This was by far the stronger VOL. IV.-GEO. III. the first line were forced by any enemy, the retreat of the army upon the second was secure at all times. Both these lines were secured by breastworks, abattis, and stone walls with banquettes and scarps. Not an opening nor interstice, through which a mountain goat could pass, but was blocked up or guarded. Down the hollows in which the roads ran were pointed the black muzzles of numerous guns, projecting from batteries which could maintain a fire in front and a crossing fire from the flanks. And, to provide for every occurrence, to make sure of a safe and easy passage to our ships of war in the Tagus, there was in the rear of the second line a shorter, closer line, to protect the embarcation of our troops. This innermost line of all was strong enough to check even a brave enemy had there been no other lines before it; it rested at one extremity on a tremendous redoubt, and at the other on the broad ditch and lofty walls of the castle of S. Julian. About 100 redoubts or forts, containing altogether more than 600 pieces of artillery, were scattered along these lines.† In fortifying such lines as these of Torres Vedras, for the support of a large army in the field, the ordinary practice is to construct batteries and other points d'appui, which shall present as imposing a front as may be to the attacking force, but shall be open and defenceless in the rear, and thus useless if once turned. But in the present instance the redoubts thrown up were not of this ordinary nature; they were not so much field-works as regular castles, many of which were capable of containing several hundreds of men, while there was one that required a garrison of 3000. Equally strong in the rear, flanks, and front, these castle-like redoubts were built as if each had been intended to stand a siege of six weeks at the most moderate computation; and they were so placed that they were all, to a certain extent at least, independent of those near them, and well sheltered from the fire of their neighbours, if those neighbours should fall into the hands of the enemy. Supposing the front line to be forced, the forts were still there to interrupt the enemy's communications and cut off their supplies; and our retiring columns had only to march a few miles to the rear, in order to assume ground even more defensible than that which they had abandoned.‡ It was erroneously supposed by some that the regular army, in the event of an attack, would occupy these redoubts, and be wholly engaged and shut up in the works. Nothing was • It is said that the front line, on which the allied army was placed, and on which it had a complete triumph, was at first intended rather as a line of isolated posts, or as a sort of outwork to retard the advance of the French and cool their impetuosity, than as the permanent position; but that, through the long delay of Massena in opening the campaign in Portugal, and in advancing from Almeida, time had been given to the English engineers to render this first line so formidable as to induce Lord Wellington to make his stand upon it. The highest praise was due, and was given to these engineer officers, whose labours were directed at first by Colonel Fletcher, and afterwards by Captain J. T. Jones, both of the Royal Engineers. Dispatches.-A. Vieusseux, Military Life of the Duke of Wellington.-Colonel Leith Hay, Narrative.-Major Sherer, Memoirs of the Life of the Duke of Wellington.-Southey, in Edinburgh Annual Register, and Hist. of Peninsular War. Marquess of Londonderry, Memoir of the War in the Peninsula. 3 M farther from Lord Wellington's mind: his design was to garrison these strong posts with his artillery, and the militia and least disciplined regiments of the Portuguese, whilst he kept the whole of the British army and the élite of the Portuguese free and unencumbered, to be employed as circumstances might require. By this arrangement he secured to himself the double advantage of a movable army and a fortified place. While the immovable part of the force, the artillery, the militia, &c., held the castle-like redoubts, the whole allied regular army, numerous, brilliant in equipment, high in spirit, confident in their great commander, would move, free as the wind, in every direction, to cover the summits of mountains, to descend into valleys, or to rush against any luckless French column that, with diminished numbers, might perchance force a passage through the batteries and redoubts, and the almost impenetrable obstacles of this grand position. Within the foremost of these lines Lord Wellington and the allied army entered on the 8th of October, leaving the French van behind them in the plain. As soon as the army arrived, and each division took up its assigned quarters, the defences, which were strong enough before, were made still stronger, as if the great leader were determined to take a bond of fate. The powerful British fleet in the Tagus and a flotilla of gun-boats were made to flank the whole of the right of the position; a fine body of English marines occupied the line of embarcation, and Portuguese militia and artillery manned the castle of S. Julian and the forts on the Tagus, and, in conjunction with the respectable armed citizens who had formed volunteer corps, garrisoned Lisbon, into which our ships of war and transports threw everything that was needful. Telegraphs were erected along the two lines, to communicate information from one extremity of the lines to the other and to every part of the position; and these signal-stations were properly put in charge of experienced seamen from the fleet. To complete the barriers, pallisades, platforms, and planked bridges leading into the works, 50,000 trees were placed at the disposal of the engineer department. There was no lack of hands to do the necessary work; 3000 artillerymen and officers of the country were on the spot; 7000 Portuguese peasantry were employed as labourers; and the British engineers, artillerymen, and artificers (the latter recently imported or increased in numbers), were aided by our foot soldiers, who found great excitement and amusement in the occupation. From Torres Vedras to Lisbon the whole country was as busy as bees in the honey season;-it was covered, or constantly traversed, like an anthill in an autumnal evening. Every day, every hour, the whole position, and particularly the first line, was gaining strength from all this unremitting labour. The roads leading up to the position were destroyed; and, as Wellington had gained the inestimable advantage of bringing the French down as the rainy season was setting in, they found an inundated country and a swamp to give them damp welcome. Within the front line there was made a good broad road to afford easy passage to our troops to every part of that line; and other roads, between the first and the second line, and between the second and the line of embarcation, were either repaired or made, to facilitate communication, to admit the passage of artillery, or to shorten the distance by which the troops had to move for the purposes of concentration or resistance. And again, in case of an almost impossible reverse, all the roads and stone bridges between the outer line and the line of embarcation were undermined. A finer field for manoeuvring than that which lay behind the ridge of Torres Vedras could scarcely be desired or conceived.† The French van halted at Sobral for three or four days, waiting for the arrival of the main body and rear, whose march was impeded by the tremendous rains. This interval was employed by the allies in the manner above narrated. When Massena came up on the 11th he appears to have been taken by surprise at the sight of Wellington's lines; and he employed some days in reconnoitring them from one extremity to the other. He made some demonstrations in order to make the British divisions show out their force. On the 14th there was a little fighting between the town of Sobral and the lines, in which the French were defeated by the English bayonet. They also showed themselves in some force near Villa Franca on the right of the line and close to the Tagus; and here the French general St. Croix was killed by the fire of the English gun-boats. After this no demonstration of any consequence was made. Not a single attempt was ever made to assail any of the works, or to penetrate the outer line in any part of its long range. Those scarped rocks, and those eminences bristling with cannon, smote the heart of Massena with despair; and, by this time, Wellington had united behind that foremost line a force numerically equal to his own. Some reinforcements had arrived from England and from Gibraltar, and the Marques de la Romana had been induced to come from Estremadura and join the allies with a Spanish division 5000 strong. Though, perhaps, indifferent in other respects, these Spaniards might be depended upon behind stone walls and parapets. Lord Wellington counted his British troops, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, at 29,000, and the whole of the regular force of which he could dispose at 58,615. He estimated that Massena had had not less than 70,000 men at the battle of Busaco, but that he The weather kept fine until the very day on which Wellington arrived at Torres Vedras. In a dispatch to the Earl of Liverpool, dated 13th October, he says, "On the 8th the rain commenced which usually falls at this season of the year in Portugal, and has contiuued with great violence ever since. This has probably increased the enemy's difficulties, and delayed his progress.' "I cannot proceed further without desiring to draw the attention of my brother soldiers in a particular manner, not only to the subject (Torres Vedras) of which I am now speaking, but to the whole plan of this campaign, because I am sure that a British army never took part in one better adapted to instruct it in the art of manœuvring on a great scale, nor, consequently, so well calculated to make efficient officers of those who shared in it, or are disposed to take the trouble of studying it as it deserves.”—Marquess of Londonderry. had already lost by war, by disease, and want | strong escort to find or fight his way as best he about 15,000! But 6000 or 7000 of the French army that remained were cavalry, an arm in which the English general continued to be very deficient. Renouncing for the present all hopes of planting the eagles on the towers of Lisbon, Massena put the 2nd and 8th corps partly into the villages and partly in bivouacs in front of the right and centre of the British position, leaving the 6th corps at Otta in his rear. He established his depôt and hospitals in the town of Santarem, and endeavoured to form magazines there. For this last purpose he sent movable columns to scour the country in search of provisions, for he had brought nothing of the sort with him. All this part of the country had been pretty well stripped by the inhabitants, who had either retired to the mountains or within the lines of Torres Vedras; but the French plundered or destroyed what was left, so that for many leagues in Massena's rear the country was reduced to a desert. Nor was this all the woe in that quarter: Colonel Trant, who had carried off the French sick and wounded from Coimbra, was joined by the Portuguese militia under Sir Robert Wilson and Colonel Millar, and all these forces glided in between the army of Massena and the Spanish frontier, cutting off all his communications, and doing other mischief. Trant and Wilson even came down to attack or menace the strong French rear at Otta, obliging Massena to move back a whole division from his front to keep them in check. Towards the end of October, when the privations and the sickness of his army were on the increase, he threw 2000 men across the Zezere to re-open a communication with Spain by way of Castello Branco; and he sent General Foy with a could to Ciudad Rodrigo, whence the general was to repair with all speed to Paris, to acquaint the emperor with the real situation of affairs in Portugal. On the 15th of November Massena began a retrograde movement, for the purpose of withdrawing his army from the low wet grounds in front of Torres Vedras and placing it in cantonments for the winter. He established the 2nd or Regnier's corps in and near Santarem in a very strong position; the 8th corps he put into Pernes, the 6th corps farther back into Thomar, and he fixed his head-quarters at Torres Novas. These positions were not to be assailed with impunity; but before the French could reach them they were molested by the British light division and cavalry, who took some prisoners. Lord Wellington, leaving part of the allied army in the lines, moved forward the remainder towards the Rio Mayor, which separated him from the French position at Santarem; and, having placed Hill's division on the bank of the Tagus opposite to Santarem, his lordship fixed his head-quarters at Cartaxo. If his proclamation had been properly obeyed, Massena must have been starved out of the country before the beginning of December. But the Portuguese inhabitants between the Tagus and the Zezere had remained in fancied security, and the French found considerable supplies in Santarem, Pernes, Torres Novas, Golegao, and other towns. Thus provisions were obtained, by the usual processes of force and intimidation, at least for a part of the winter. And, what was worse for the allies, a number of boats had been carelessly or treacherously left at Santarem, to enable the French to cross the Tagus whenever they liked, and to act on |