The French army had lost, so the Marshal reported, no more than eighty killed and 350 wounded, an extraordinary testimony to the badness of the Portuguese gunnery. How many of the garrison and the populace perished it will never be possible to ascertain—the figures given by various contemporary authorities run up from 4,000 to 20,000. The smaller number is probably nearer the truth, but no satisfactory estimate can be made. It is certain that some of the regiments which took part in the defence were almost annihilated[294], and that thousands of the inhabitants were drowned in the river. Yet the town was not depopulated, and of its defenders the greater proportion turned up sooner or later in the ranks of Silveira, Botilho, and Trant. The slain and the drowned together may perhaps be roughly estimated at 7,000 or 8,000, about equally divided between combatants and non-combatants.

Soult meanwhile could report to his master that the first half of his orders had been duly carried out. He had captured 200 cannon, a great store of English ammunition and military equipment, and more than thirty merchant vessels, laden with wine. He had delivered Foy and some dozens of other French captives—for it would be doing the Portuguese injustice to let it be supposed that they had killed or tortured all their prisoners. In short, the victory and the trophies were splendid: yet the Marshal was in reality almost as far from having completed the conquest of northern Portugal as on the day when he first crossed its frontier. He had only secured for himself a new base of operation, to supersede Chaves and Braga. For the next month he could do no more than endeavour ineffectually to complete the subjugation of one single province. The main task which his master had set before him, the capture of Lisbon, he was never able to contemplate, much less to take in hand. Like so many other French generals in the Peninsula, he was soon to find that victory is not the same thing as conquest.

N.B.—The sources for this part of the Portuguese campaign are very full. On the French side we have, besides the Marshal’s dispatches, the following eye-witnesses: Le Noble, Soult’s official chronicler; St. Chamans (one of the Marshal’s aides-de-camp); General Bigarré, King Joseph’s representative at the head quarters of the 2nd Corps; Naylies of Lahoussaye’s dragoons; and Fantin des Odoards of the 31st Léger. On the Portuguese side we have the lengthy dispatches of Eben, the narrative of Hennegan (who had brought the British ammunition to Oporto), some letters from Brotherton, who was first with La Romana and then with Silveira, and a quantity of official correspondence in the Record Office, between Beresford and the Portuguese.