On the morning of March 16th, the hills beyond the Ceira, where a whole army had been visible on the preceding day, were now seen to be almost void of defenders—only a trifling rearguard was visible watching the broken bridge from a distance. Wellington sent scouts over the river to reconnoitre, but did not cross it in force. He had accomplished his main design of thrusting the French off the Coimbra road and into the mountains, and he had entirely outmarched his provisions. He had now got so far from his base at Lisbon that food sent up from thence had far to travel, and he had not yet succeeded in setting up an intermediate dépôt at Coimbra, though store-ships were already ordered from Lisbon to its port of Figueira[196], now that there was no danger of the enemy crossing the lower Mondego. During the last week the army had used up all that it carried with it, and the Portuguese brigades, badly supplied by the native commissariat, had run short even before the British. Pack’s and Ashworth’s men had received no regular rations for four days[197], and had only kept up to the front by gleaning in the deserted bivouacs of the French, and borrowing the little that the British commissariat could spare. Everything had run dry by the 16th, and Wellington considered that no great harm would be suffered by waiting a day on the Ceira, for the first convoy to come up from the rear, since the French were now in rugged ground, where they could not make any long attempt to stand for sheer want of food. They must continue their retreat or starve in a depopulated country. Accordingly Wellington settled down at Lousão and took stock of the general position of affairs: the result of his halt was an immense discharge of arrears of correspondence—he had written only one dispatch between the 10th and 16th of March, but got off seventeen on the last-named day. Some of these are very important, as showing that he regarded the crisis as over, and the ultimate evacuation of Portugal by the French as certain. The most notable are two orders to Beresford[198], making over to him once more the 4th Division and De Grey’s heavy dragoons for the expedition into Estremadura, which now had as its object not the relief of Badajoz (whose capitulation was known) but the holding back of Soult from Campo Mayor and Elvas.

It will be remembered that the 2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese had been left behind near Abrantes when Wellington determined, on March 9th, not to send an expedition against Soult, till he could make it up to a force sufficient to cope with the army that was beleaguering Badajoz. They were not to commit themselves to any offensive operations, or to cross the Portuguese frontier, till the reinforcements arrived, but were to move a stage on their way toward the south. Accordingly the head quarters of the 2nd Division were at Tramagal on the 14th, with its attached cavalry (the 13th Light Dragoons) at Crato in advance, while the Portuguese horse of Otway had been sent to watch the roads to Elvas by Portalegre and Estremos. Here there was a halt for a week, Beresford being absent with Wellington for five days, and it was not till the 17th that the movement towards Estremadura began again, on his return. Meanwhile Masséna, oddly enough, knowing of the existence of a considerable allied force at Abrantes, and not feeling it on his own flank, formed a theory that it must have been sent in a long sweep up by the Zezere, to drop into the upper Mondego valley and cut him off from Spain. Nervousness as to this imaginary movement had no small effect on his main operations[199].

By sending off Cole and De Grey to join the future Army of Estremadura, on the 16th March, Wellington reduced the force about him by 7,000 men, and had no more than 38,000 left on the Ceira. The newly formed 7th Division, which was marching up from Lisbon, and would ultimately replace Cole with the main army, was at this moment only reaching Santarem; it did not come up to the front till March was at its end. For the rest of his operations against Masséna, therefore, Wellington was more than ever in a state of numerical inferiority, and forced to be cautious. But he was in a confident mood, foreseeing that the enemy could not now stop in Portugal, and must be starved into a prompt retreat over the frontier.

His conviction that the crisis was over is shown by another dispatch of the 20th March, in which he directs that the whole of the Lisbon Militia and Ordenança be dismissed to their homes, the former on furlough, the latter for good. The Militia of the lower Beira (the Castello Branco country) and of northern Estremadura were also to return to their native districts, to be sent on leave or kept under arms according as further events might determine[200]. Thus the Lines of Torres Vedras were left ungarrisoned, there being no further danger to be feared in the direction of Lisbon.

There was still much work, however, for the Militia of the North, Trant’s and Wilson’s brigades, who were brought down to the middle Mondego, and sent successively to Peña Cova, Mortagoa, and Fornos, to guard the fords and restrain the French from endeavouring to raid the north bank of the river. It was unlikely that they would make a serious attempt to cross in force into the barren country under the Serra de Alcoba, when they were in such a desperate plight for food, and would have the allied army close behind them, for the troops were to march again on the 17th. The middle Mondego, it must be remembered, was bridgeless, and in flood from the spring rains: even if Masséna had driven off Trant and Wilson, it would have taken him a long time to build a bridge (since he had no pontoons) and Wellington would have been pressing him in the rear before he had got more than a vanguard over the water. The Marshal seems never to have contemplated at this date a movement on to Coimbra or Oporto by the north bank of the Mondego, such as is suggested as possible by some of the commentators on the campaign: after the day of Condeixa a retreat eastward was always in his mind[201]. His army was too dilapidated to make the least offensive stroke. ‘I think it necessary for the interests of his Imperial majesty,’ wrote Masséna on the 19th, ‘to bring the troops back nearer to our base of operations by our fortresses [Almeida and Rodrigo], in order to let them recover a little from their fatigues and long privations, and to allow me to replace so much equipment which is now entirely lacking[202].’

On the 16th, the day after the combat of Foz do Arouce, the 2nd and 8th Corps marched before dawn, in drenching rain, and retired as far as the Alva river, where the bridge of Ponte de Murcella, repaired for a moment by Drouet when he passed it a few days before, had again been broken by Wilson’s Militia. It took all the day to repair it, and by the evening only the artillery had been sent across. The divisions of Mermet and Loison followed at a distance, leaving behind the much-tried battalions of Marchand, which Ney had once more chosen to form his rearguard. He drew them up across the road a few miles from the Ceira, expecting to be attacked once more in the morning. But to his surprise Wellington did not cross the river, and only sent a few scouts to discover the position of the Marshal. Meanwhile his engineers mended the bridge at Foz.

On the 17th, at dawn, Masséna sent the 8th Corps across the repaired bridge of Ponte de Murcella, after which it halted at Cortiça, Moita, and other villages beyond the Alva river, whose passage it was prepared to defend. But the 2nd Corps was marched up-stream to Sarzedo, the next ford, and placed there in position, with a detachment beyond the river at the town of Arganil on its south bank. The 6th Corps, following the other two, crossed the Alva at Ponte de Murcella later in the day, and joined the 8th; it left a small detachment beyond the bridge to observe the expected arrival of the Allies. Of the horsemen, Montbrun’s heavy dragoons watched the lower course of the Alva, from Ponte de Murcella to its junction with the Mondego, while Junot’s corps-cavalry was sent up the Alva eastward, to hold the fords beyond Arganil.

These dispositions seemed to indicate an intention to make a serious stand behind the Alva, where the positions are very strong. The river is a fierce mountain torrent in a deep bed, with precipitous banks, and very few fords. Wellington had fixed on this line, during the Bussaco campaign in the preceding autumn, as the position where he should await the French if they advanced by the south bank of the Mondego, and had thrown up earthworks on each side of the Ponte de Murcella. These were, of course, useless to Masséna, since they looked the wrong way; but the river line was almost as defensible from the north bank as from the south, and presented a very formidable obstacle to the pursuing enemy.

By the evening of the 17th Wellington was once more in touch with the enemy. The cavalry brigades of Slade and Arentschildt had crossed the bridge of Foz do Arouce, and followed the 6th Corps to the Alva, with the 6th and Light Divisions behind them. The infantry, however, did not show themselves, but encamped in the hills, some miles from the Ponte de Murcella. They found the road strewn with dead or dying mules and horses, and took a certain number of French sick and stragglers.

But Wellington had no intention of forcing the Ponte de Murcella position; while two divisions took this road, the rest of the army (1st, 3rd, 5th Divisions, and the Portuguese independent brigades) were marched eastward by the steep road along the top of the watershed between the Ceira and the Alva, the route Furcado-Arganil, towards the fords of the upper Alva. They drove out of the last-named place Reynier’s observing detachment, which reported that it had seen the Allies in great force marching up-stream. This news convinced Masséna that his adversary was intending either to cross the ford of Sarzedo and attack Reynier, or to move still further up the valley, and to pass the Alva in its upper course, so throwing himself across the main road to Celorico, by which the Army of Portugal was intending to retreat. Nothing but cavalry scouts having been seen opposite the Ponte de Murcella, it was supposed that Wellington’s whole army was marching on Arganil.

Accordingly, on the afternoon of the 17th, Masséna ordered the 8th Corps to break up hastily from its camps and to march all night to Galliges, on the high road beyond Reynier’s left. This was done, and Junot hurried off, leaving hundreds of foragers scattered on the slopes towards the Mondego, whither they had been sent out in search of food during the day. Ney remained behind at the Ponte de Murcella, to keep the passage as long as possible; he was uncertain, as was Masséna, whether there was in his front only a cavalry screen or a serious force of all arms.

On the morning of the 18th this problem was solved, for the Light Division came down to the river, drove Ney’s rearguard across it, and opened a cannonade against the troops of the 6th Corps visible on the opposite bank. No serious attempt was made to pass, the intention being only to hold Ney to his ground as long as possible by demonstrations, while the real crossing was made far up-stream. This plan had the desired result. In the afternoon Ney received the news that the Allies had begun to cross the Alva at the ford of Pombeiro, from which they had driven off one of Reynier’s battalions. If any considerable force got over the river at this point, the 6th Corps was cut off from the rest of the army; accordingly the Marshal ordered his three divisions to march off without a moment’s delay; ‘I never saw Johnny go off in such confusion,’ says a Light Division diarist[203]. The cavalry brigade of Arentschildt sent out reconnoitring parties, who forded the river, while the engineers rigged up a temporary wooden bridge close to the Ponte de Murcella[204], by which the 6th and Light Divisions were able to cross at dawn on the following day.

On the left the decisive crossing at Pombeiro had been made by the Guards’ brigade of the 1st Division[205]: Reynier made no attempt to support the single battalion at the ford, but called it in, and drew up in battle order on the Serra de Moita some distance above the river. There was no fighting here, and after dusk the 2nd Corps decamped, taking the road Galliges-Chamusca-Gouvea-Celorico, which runs parallel to and above the Alva; the 6th Corps fell in behind the 2nd; the 8th, which had already got further to the east during the march of the preceding night, led the column and was beyond Galliges in the afternoon[206].

On the night of the 18th-19th and the following morning the whole French army made a most protracted and fatiguing march, which cost them many stragglers and much material. This was the longest stage which Masséna made during the whole retreat, more than twenty miles of mountain road being covered in one stretch. On the evening of the 19th the head of the 8th Corps was at Pinhanços, that of the 2nd at Çaragoça and Sandomil, that of the 6th at Chamusca. The British cavalry in pursuit picked up an immense number of prisoners this day, mainly small parties of foragers belonging to the 6th and 8th Corps, who had been marauding in the direction of the Mondego when their regiments received sudden orders to march: they returned towards their camps to fall into the hands of the British cavalry. Arentschildt’s brigade alone took 200 this day[207], and the total according to Wellington’s dispatch was 600 men[208]. Among them were an aide-de-camp of Loison’s and several other officers. Some droves of oxen were captured from the foragers and from the rear of the 6th Corps, and this was the only food which the British vanguard got that day, for once more, as several diarists ruefully note, ‘biscuit was out.’ The pursuers state that ‘quantities of tumbrils, carts, waggons and other articles were abandoned by the enemy’[209], and no doubt were right, though Masséna wrote that evening from Maceira, ‘Nous n’avons pas laissé en arrière un malade, un blessé, ni la moindre voiture d’artillerie ou de bagages’[210]. But his dispatches frequently contained what he knew that Napoleon would desire to see rather than the truth. Considering the difficulties of the retreat, and the skilful way in which he had conducted it, he might have been contented with his actual achievements, and need not have padded out his reports with ‘terminological inexactitudes’. It must be confessed that his aide-de-camp Fririon played a good second to him when he wrote in his journal that between the 15th and 31st of March the Army of Portugal left behind only twenty prisoners and fifty men lost while marauding[211].

On the morning of the 20th March Wellington’s army was all across the Alva, but only the cavalry and the Light, 3rd, and 6th Divisions continued the pursuit. The small convoy received on the 17th was exhausted, and what little food remained was made over to the three divisions named above, while the 1st, 5th, and Pack’s and Ashworth’s Portuguese halted for five days at Moita and the neighbouring villages, till the first train of provisions sent up from Coimbra should arrive. Of the troops which could still be fed, the Light Division pushed on as far as Galliges that night, the 3rd and 6th were behind them. The French, thanks to their desperate night march, were already a long way ahead, and it was late on the 20th before the cavalry overtook, near Cea, their extreme rearguard, two battalions of Heudelet’s division and a hussar regiment. General Slade, whose brigade was leading, refused to attack them until infantry and guns came up to his aid, and the French slipped away before Elder’s Caçadores and Bull’s battery reached him[212]. ‘This was the second day without bread, and the third without corn for the horses, and we had marched nearly five leagues,’ explains a cavalry diarist[213]. The pursuers were as harassed as the pursued, and could go no further, but Slade was thought to have shown weakness. He picked up a good many stragglers and sick, and found the road strewn with broken vehicles and dying mules.

Meanwhile Masséna had divided his army into two columns at the fork of the roads near Maceira. The 2nd Corps, taking, on the right hand, the southern and more hilly route, reached Gouvea. The 8th Corps, taking the northern fork, got to Villacortes, and sent its cavalry on ahead to the bridge of Fornos, which they found broken and guarded by Trant’s Militia. The 6th Corps, following the 8th, lay at Pinhanços. Since leaving the Ponte de Murcella the French were a little less pressed for food: the district through which they were now passing was fertile, and had not been raided before; most of the peasantry had returned to it during the winter. Hasty plundering on both sides of the road brought in a certain amount of food, especially in the way of cattle, which had been sent up into the hills, but were often discovered by skilled marauders. There was continual bickering with the Ordenança, one party of whom, only 300 strong, tried, with more courage than discretion, to defend the village of Penalva against the advanced guard of the 2nd Corps. All along the road the pursuing Light Division found the dead bodies of peasantry, mixed with those of the French sick who had fallen by the way.

On the 21st the 8th Corps reached Celorico, where Drouet was found in position with Conroux’s division of the 9th Corps. The 6th Corps reached Carapichina and Cortiça. The 2nd, turning off at Villacortes on the Guarda road, had a most distressing mountain march to Villamonte. The pursuing infantry of the Light and 3rd Divisions reached Pinhanços and Maceira, with the cavalry five miles in front, at the convent of Vinho. They had now dropped fifteen miles behind the French rear, and were quite out of touch with it, but continued to pick up stragglers—200 men are said to have been taken on that day[214]. Like the enemy, they were now commencing to get a little food from the country. ‘The peasants, who had all fled to the mountains on the enemy’s retreat, on seeing us come down, baked bread for the troops, and gave us whatever they had left. They had suffered a good deal, all the principal houses had been burnt, and those left a good deal destroyed, but the [French] troops had not been able to discover all the corn, &c., concealed[215].’

On the 22nd the French army had reached the end of the main retreat. Two corps were concentrated in and near Celorico[216], the other (Reynier) reached Guarda, where it found Claparéde’s division of Drouet’s corps, which had been there for some weeks. They were now only three marches from Almeida and four from Ciudad Rodrigo; communication with these two places was open, for Drouet and the 9th Corps had now come into touch again with the Commander-in-Chief, and were available for keeping the roads safe. The English had been outmarched, and Masséna might have retired to Almeida and Rodrigo practically unmolested, by a good chaussée. But this was not to be the end of the campaign, as every one in the French army, save its Commander-in-Chief, fervently desired. For generals and rank and file alike were tired out, and yearned for a cessation of mountain marches, and a rest in well-provisioned cantonments, before they should be called upon for another effort. But another and a most unexpected episode was to take place before the weary columns reached Rodrigo. Masséna made one more attempt to ‘save his face,’ and to avoid being thrust over the Spanish frontier, along the road on to which his adversary had forced him. This led to a fortnight more of manœuvres in the mountains, and to the combats of Guarda and Sabugal, after which the French Marshal had to pocket his pride and acquiesce in the inevitable. These operations are of a character so different from those which preceded them that they must be treated as a separate story. The retreat from Santarem really ended at Celorico. The events between March 22nd and April 4th must be dealt with apart, since they practically amounted to a belated attempt on the part of Masséna to seize the offensive once more, and to shift the scene of war without his adversary’s consent. The project failed, and (as we shall see) was hopeless from the first.

Before dealing with it, a few remarks on the general character of the operations that had taken place between March 9th and March 22nd must be made. When reading in succession two narratives of Masséna’s retreat from Santarem to Celorico, one by an English and one by a French eye-witness, it is often difficult to realize that the two writers are describing the same series of operations. Most of the French conceive the retreat to have been a series of triumphant rearguard actions, in which their army got off practically unmolested, under cover of the skilful operations of a small covering force. On the other hand, the English tell the tale as if the whole French army was easily hunted out of Portugal by inferior numbers, foiled in repeated attempts to occupy a permanent position in the valley of the Mondego, and finally thrust back in a direction which it did not intend to take. Where the French tell of nothing but an orderly retreat and small losses, the English speak of the capture of hundreds of prisoners, and the destruction of the whole baggage-train of the retiring army.

To a certain extent the mental attitudes of both sets of narrators can be understood and justified by the impartial student. When a rearguard action takes place, the covering force left behind by the retiring army always thinks of itself as being opposed to the whole pursuing host. It considers itself to be braving the assault of immensely superior forces, and if it holds its own for a time and gets off without crushing losses, is well satisfied with its own conduct. This is both justifiable and comprehensible. But to the pursuer the same rearguard action presents an entirely different moral aspect. The few squadrons and battalions forming the head of his advance find themselves suddenly brought to a check by a considerable hostile force arrayed in a formidable position. They are forced to halt till their supports begin to come up, from five, ten, or fifteen miles in the rear. Then, when a body of reserve has begun to accumulate behind them, they launch themselves upon the enemy, who gives ground after more or less fighting and retires. The leading brigade or division of the pursuers considers that it has victoriously driven the whole hostile army from its strong position, and is no less satisfied with itself than is the force to which it has been opposed. In short, all rearguard actions begin with a check to the pursuers; they all end with the retreat of the defenders. This is their necessary course; both parties, if their generals play the game properly, may be content with themselves; the one has gained time for the escape of the main body of the retreating host, the other has cleared the way for the progress of the pursuing army. The only method in which their relative merits can be tested, is by asking whether the rearguard detained the advanced guard as long as might have been expected, inflicted disproportionate losses upon it, and got away with the minimum of loss to itself, or whether, on the other hand, the advanced guard evicted its opponents from their position at a rapid rate, with small sacrifices, and with considerable punishment inflicted on the enemy. The mere facts that the rearguard held back the pursuers for some hours, and that the advanced guard ultimately carried the enemy’s position, are obligatory incidents of such fights. When we come to examine the details of the combats which took place between the 11th and 19th of March, we shall neither hold with the French narrators that for many days Ney and two divisions of the 6th Corps fought and held back Wellington’s whole army, nor with the English narrators that the Light and 3rd Divisions, unassisted by their comrades, hunted 40,000 French out of the valley of the lower Mondego. Yet it is true that of forty-four French infantry officers, who were killed or wounded in Portugal between these dates, no less than thirty-seven belonged to the divisions of Marchand and Mermet, while, similarly, of twenty-nine British and Portuguese officers hit in the same period, no less than nineteen belonged to the Light Division and eight more to the 3rd. Clearly therefore Ney did not contend with the whole British army, but only with its two leading divisions, and those two divisions did not contend with the whole French army, but only with the two units which formed its rearguard. Fine writing on both sides, as to struggles against overwhelming odds, must be disregarded. Still more so may the exaggerated estimates as to loss inflicted on the enemy which are to be found in the narratives of most of the first-hand writers. What they are worth may be guessed from Marbot’s statement that the British lost 1,000 men at Redinha—Noël raises this liberal estimate to 1,800[217]—the real casualty list being 240. Similarly Grattan tells us that the French had 1,000 men hors de combat at Foz do Arouce[218], when their actual loss seems to have been about 250.

The accusations of timidity and over-caution which these contemporary chroniclers lavish upon each other’s generals are equally absurd. Wellington is always rallied by the French for want of courage and enterprise, because he did not at once dash the first two or three battalions that came up against a division in position, but waited for his supports. And Ney is criticized by both English and French writers for having sometimes withdrawn from the fight over early, because at Condeixa and on the Alva he hastened to get out of a dangerous situation. Both generals, in reality, acted with perfect tactical correctness; armies do not meet for the purpose of putting in the maximum of fighting, without regard for ends or consequences, and the commander who attacks before he has a sufficient force collected is blameworthy just in the same degree as the commander who holds out too long in a hazardous position.

Most of the French criticism on Wellington is based on the false hypothesis that his army outnumbered Masséna’s during the whole retreat, and that he therefore should have achieved greater results. As a matter of fact, as we have seen, he was never stronger than the enemy, because he had been forced to detach Beresford’s two divisions against Soult before he started. And when, in the later stages of the retreat, the French were short of Conroux’s division of the 9th Corps, which had gone on to Celorico ahead of the main army, it must be remembered that Wellington from March 16th onwards was deprived of Cole’s division and the heavy dragoons, who had been sent off southward to join Beresford. A pursuing army dealing with a superior retreating army must act with the greatest caution, lest it should suddenly run up against the enemy’s whole force, and find itself committed to an offensive action against greater numbers in a strong position. Wellington never fell into this trap; he manœuvred the French out of every line which they took up, without incurring any danger, or allowing his adversary any chance of harming him. While giving all credit to Ney for the brilliant rearguard tactics by which he often held back the pursuers for half a day, it is necessary to give equal credit to Wellington for having fought his way through half a dozen formidable lines of defence, with a minimum of loss, and without once exposing himself to the chance of a serious check. After all, his object was to drive Masséna away from the Mondego and towards Spain, and that object he achieved in the most triumphant fashion.[219]