It was now made apparent, as well by the battle of Barrosa, as by the whole conduct of the Cortes, that no successful exertions were to be expected on that side; and that, though the subjugation of the Peninsula could not but appear every day more hopeless to the Intruder’s government, all reasonable hope of its deliverance must rest upon Lord Wellington, and the allied army under his command. Thus far his foresight had been fully approved by the issue of Massena’s invasion; that general had entered Portugal with 72,000 men, and had received reinforcements to the amount of about 15,000 more: ten he had lost at Busaco; about as many more had died while he perseveringly maintained his ground; and what with prisoners, sick and wounded, and the losses on the retreat, about 40,000 only were remaining when he recrossed the frontier. The invaders had lost their horses, carriages, ammunition, and cannon; but for this they cared not; they had the strong hold of Ciudad Rodrigo on which to retire; and even the wreck of their army was more numerous than the force which drove them out of Portugal.

During these events, the opponents of the English ministry improved with more than their wonted infelicity the opportunity afforded them of exhibiting their errors in judgment, their want of that knowledge which is the foundation of political wisdom, and their destitution of that generous feeling which sometimes renders even error respectable. When the first news arrived that the French were breaking up from their position, they cautioned the public against extravagant expectations; “such accounts,” they said, “have come too often to raise enthusiasm in any but simpletons and stock-jobbers; and there seems no reason for altering the opinion which we have so often expressed, that, happen what may partially, the ultimate loss of the Peninsula is as certain as ever it was, and that we are only delaying the catastrophe by needless proofs of a valour, which our enemies admire much more than our allies. In the meantime, Spain does nothing, except calumniate and kill her exiled patriots; and reasonable people have long ceased to look to any place but South America for the resuscitation of Spanish independence.”

When it was known beyond all doubt to those whose belief was not influenced by their wishes, that Massena was in full retreat and Lord Wellington pursuing him, “these retreats and pursuits,” said they, “are fine things for tickling the ears. Most probably the retreat is, as usual, an alteration of position; and the pursuit a little look-out on the occasion, enlivened by the seizure of a few unfortunate stragglers.” At the discovery that this change of position was from the Zezere to the Agueda, ... nothing less than the evacuation of Portugal, ... the despondents were neither abashed nor silenced. “Buonaparte’s honour,” they said, “was pledged to effect his projects in the Peninsula, and unfortunately his power was as monstrous as his ambition. Massena would now throw himself upon his resources both in men and provisions; he was removing from a ravaged and desolate country, to one comparatively uninjured and fertile; and it was to be remarked, that while the French were falling back upon their supplies, the allies were removing from their own. In such a state of things, could Lord Wellington’s army long exist on the frontiers? The war had become one of supplies and expenses; if the enemy could establish large magazines at Almeida, they could again advance, the same scenes would again be repeated, and Lisbon would again become the point of defence. The result must certainly be determined by the success or ill success of the French in Spain. If Spain falls,” said they, “nothing short of a miracle can preserve Portugal; and that Spain will fall, is almost as certain as that her people are self-willed and superstitious, her nobility divided and degraded, and her commanders incapable, arrogant, or treacherous.” We were, moreover, warned by these sapient politicians, to remember, that there were seven marshals in Spain, besides generals, with distinct commands; and that the French, having retired upon their resources, had only abandoned Portugal for the season, that they might return and reap the harvest which they had left the natives to sow. It was not enough to dismay the nation by thus prognosticating what the French would do, they threw out alarming hints of what, even now, it was to be apprehended they might have done. “If,” said they, “Massena had received adequate reinforcements from France, the positions which he took at Guarda and Almeida would have drawn the allies into a most dangerous predicament; and let us imagine what might at this very instant be the perilous situation of Lord Wellington, if a considerable army had really been collected under Bessieres!” Happy was it for England, that the councils of this country were not directed by men who would have verified their own predictions, leaving the enemy unresisted, as far as Great Britain was concerned, because they believed him to be irresistible!

But while the factious part of the British press was thus displaying how far it was possible for men to deaden their hearts against all generous emotions, the Portugueze governors were expressing their gratitude to England for the effectual support which she had given to her old ally. They told the people that their day of glory was at length arrived; they had passed through the fiery ordeal, by which the merits of men were tried and purified; they were become a great nation. “Humbling themselves,” they said, “before the first and sovereign Author of all good, they rendered thanks to their Prince, for establishing, in his wisdom, the basis of their defence; ... to his British majesty, to his enlightened ministry, and to the whole British nation, in whom they had found faithful and liberal allies, constant co-operation, and that honour, probity, and steadiness of principle, which peculiarly distinguished the British character; ... to the illustrious Wellington, whose sagacity and consummate military skill had been so eminently displayed; ... to the zealous and indefatigable Beresford, who had restored discipline and organization to the Portugueze troops; ... to the generals and officers, and their comrades in arms, who had never fought that they did not triumph; ... finally, to the whole Portugueze people, whose loyalty, patriotism, constancy, and humanity, had been so gloriously displayed, during the season of danger and of suffering.” “Portugueze,” said they, “the effects of the invasion of these barbarians; the yet smoking remains of the cottage of the poor, of the mansion of the wealthy, of the cell of the religious, of the hospital which afforded shelter and relief to the indigent and infirm, of the temples dedicated to the worship of the Most High; the innocent blood of so many peaceful citizens of both sexes, and of all ages, with which those heaps of ruins are still tinged; the insults of every kind heaped upon those whom the Vandals did not deprive of life ... insults many times more cruel than death itself; the universal devastation, the robbery and destruction of everything that the unhappy inhabitants of the invaded districts possessed: ... this atrocious scene, which makes humanity shudder, affords a terrible lesson, which you ought deeply to engrave in memory, in order fully to know that degenerate nation, who retain only the figure of men, and who in every respect are worse than beasts, and more blood-thirsty than tigers or lions; who are without faith and without law; who acknowledge neither the rights of humanity, nor respect the sacred tie of an oath.”

They proceeded to speak with becoming feeling and becoming pride of the manner in which the emigrants from the ravaged provinces had been received wherever they had fled. The great expense of subsisting the fugitives at Lisbon had been supported, they said, by the resources which were at the disposal of Government, but still more by the voluntary donations of individuals, among whom they mentioned with particular distinction, the British subjects in Portugal. It remained for completing the work, to restore the fugitives to their homes; to render habitable the towns which the barbarians had left covered with filth and unburied carcases; to relieve with medicine and food the sick, who were perishing for want of such assistance; to revive agriculture, by supplying the husbandman with seed corn, and bread for his consumption for some time, and facilitating his means of purchasing cattle and acquiring the instruments of agriculture. These, they said, were the constant cares of the Government, these were their duties; but their funds were not even sufficient to provide for their defence, and therefore they called upon individuals for further aid.

Lord Wellington in the preceding autumn, as soon as he fell back to the lines of Torres Vedras, had represented to his own Government the distress to which those districts must be reduced through which the enemy passed, ... a distress which Portugal had no means of relieving. “Upon former occasions,” he said, “the wealthy inhabitants of Great Britain, and of London in particular, had stepped forward to relieve foreign nations, whether suffering under the calamities inflicted by Providence, or by a cruel and powerful enemy. Portugal had once before experienced such a proof of friendship from her oldest and most faithful ally: but never was there case in which this assistance was required in a greater degree than at present, whether the sufferings of the people, or their loyalty and patriotism, and their attachment to England, were considered. I declare,” said Lord Wellington, “that I have scarcely known an instance in which any person in Portugal, of any order, has had communication with the enemy, inconsistent with his duty to his own sovereign, or with the orders he had received. There is no instance of the inhabitants of any town or village having remained, or of their having failed to remove what might be useful to the enemy, when they had sufficiently early intimation of the wishes of Government, or of myself, that they should abandon their houses, and carry away their property.” He therefore recommended this brave and suffering people to the British Government, and the British people, whenever the country should be cleared of its barbarous invaders, as he hoped and trusted that it would.

That hope had now been accomplished: his letter was laid before Parliament, and a message from the Prince Regent was presented, stating, “That, having taken into consideration the distress to which the inhabitants of a part of Portugal had been exposed, in consequence of the invasion of that country, and especially from the wanton and savage barbarity exercised by the French in their recent retreat, which could not fail,” he said, “to affect the hearts of all persons who had any sense of religion or humanity, he desired to be enabled to afford to the suffering subjects of his Majesty’s good and faithful ally, such speedy and effectual relief as might be suitable to this interesting and afflicting occasion.” Accordingly a grant of ♦Marquis Wellesley.♦ 100,000l. was proposed; Marquis Wellesley saying, when he moved an address to this effect, “he hoped he had not lived to see the day, though he had sometimes been surprised by hearing something like it, when it should be said that ancient faith, long-tried attachment, and close connexion with our allies, were circumstances to be discarded from our consideration, and that they should be sacrificed and abandoned to the mere suggestions and calculations of a cold ♦Earl Grosvenor.♦ policy.” Earl Grosvenor was the only person who demurred at this motion. “He felt considerable difficulty in acceding to it,” he said, “particularly when he considered how much had been done already for Portugal, and he would ask whether their lordships were really prepared to take the whole burden upon themselves, and exempt the Portugueze altogether from the charge of relieving their own countrymen? It was a principle as applicable to public as to private affairs, that you should be just to your own people before ♦Marquis of Lansdowne.♦ you were generous to other nations.” The Marquis of Lansdowne spoke in a better mind: “Whatever,” he said, “might have been his opinion regarding the policy of our exertions in Portugal, no doubt existed with him, that the efforts made by the people of Portugal eminently deserved at our hands the aid now asked, to relieve that distress into which they had been plunged by the enemy. Even, therefore, if he believed that Lord Wellington would be again compelled to retreat, still he would vote for the present motion, convinced that it could not fail to make an impression in Europe highly favourable to the British character, by displaying its beneficence, its generosity, and its humanity, as contrasted with the savage barbarity of the enemy. In extending to the people of Portugal that generosity for which they might look through Europe and the world in vain, we placed our national character upon a pinnacle of greatness which nothing could destroy. Even if our army was compelled to evacuate Portugal, and we should be unable to withstand there the progress of the French, still the posterity of the inhabitants of Portugal would remember with gratitude the aid afforded to their ancestors in the hour of their distress. For these reasons, the address should have his hearty concurrence.”

Mr. Ponsonby in like manner, when the vote was moved in the Commons, declared, “that it was not less due to the spirit of Portugal, than to the magnanimity of Great Britain, ... that it was as consistent with our interest, as it was material to our honour. The only regret,” said he, “with which it is accompanied on my part, proceeds from the reflection, that the vast expenditure of this country should render it necessary to limit the vote to so small a sum.” But the liberality of the British people has seldom been more conspicuously displayed, than in the subscriptions which were made on this occasion. About 80,000l. was subscribed. The public grant was to be measured, not by ♦Public subscription.♦ the necessities of the Portugueze sufferers, but by the means of the British Government; and the Prince of Brazil called it “a most ample donation, entirely corresponding to the generosity with which a great nation and its Government had assisted Portugal.” The individual proofs of beneficence were acknowledged in the most honourable manner; the Prince issued an order, that the list of subscribers should be printed at the royal printing-office, and copies sent to the chambers of each of the suffering districts, where, having been publicly read after mass, they should be laid up in the Cartorios, or archives of the respective districts; the original list was to be deposited among the royal archives in the Torre do Tombo at Lisbon, “that the humanity of the one nation,” said the Prince, “and the gratitude of the other may be attested to future generations.”

The dezembargador, Joam Gaudencio Torres, and Mr. Croft (one of a family which had been long established at Porto, and who was subsequently attached to the British legation) accepted the charge of distributing this grant, and for that purpose, of visiting the districts which had been ravaged, and seeing in person to the distribution. It required no common degree of humanity, and no ordinary strength of heart, to undertake so painful an office. The time, it may be hoped, is approaching, when the usages of war will as little be admitted before man, as a plea for having destroyed the innocent and the helpless, as it will before God. Massena had gone to the utmost limits of that dreadful plea before he broke up from his position. Opposite to the house in which he had fixed his own quarters at Santarem were the ruins of a church, into which a number of wretched children, whose parents had perished, and who were themselves perishing for hunger, had crept, that they might lie down and ♦Children famished at Santarem.♦ die. They were found there by the first British troops who entered the town, stretched upon straw and rubbish ... the dying and the dead together, reduced to skeletons before they died. When the officer, who relates this in his journal, saw them, pieces of bread which our soldiers had given these poor orphans were lying untouched before many who were incapable of eating, and some who had breathed their last. Multitudes, indeed, had been famished before he abandoned his hopes of conquest; but for the subsequent conduct of that merciless general and his army no military motives can be assigned ... none but what are purely malignant and devilish. Marshal Massena had formerly declared, that if he could land with an army in England, he would pledge himself, not indeed to effect the conquest of the country, but to reduce it to a desert. In Portugal it was proved that out of the wickedness of his heart his lips had then spoken; for on his retreat, he endeavoured, in perfect conformity with the political system of his emperor, to increase by every possible means the horrors of war and the sum of human suffering. The cruelties which were perpetrated by that retreating army formed but a little part of the evils they inflicted upon the brave nation which had successfully ♦State in which the French left the country they had occupied.♦ resisted them; and in the districts which they devastated, the inhabitants who perished under their hands were less to be compassionated than those who survived. The famine which they intentionally produced, by destroying every thing in the course of their retreat and within reach of their power, continued to depopulate the country long after it was delivered from its enemies. Endemic diseases were produced by want of food and of raiment, by exposure, by grief, and hopeless wretchedness. The hospitals, with which Portugal abounded, had shared the general destruction: many had been burnt, others gutted, the resources of all destroyed; and those of the clergy and of the convents, to which the sufferers would otherwise have looked for aid, and from which they would have found it, were in like manner totally dilapidated. The income of the Bishop of Leyria was reduced from 40,000 cruzados to forty; and others had suffered in a like degree. In that district the population was cut down by the barbarities of the enemy, by famine, and by disease, from 48,000 to 16,000; and in the subdivision ♦Pombal.♦ of Pombal from 7000 to 1800. Two hundred families in the town of Pombal derived before the invasion a comfortable subsistence from husbandry; after the retreat an hundred and sixty-four of those families had totally disappeared; and the few survivors of the remaining thirty-six were suffering under famine and disease. In a principal street of that poor town the commissioners found one dismantled dwelling, standing alone in the midst of ruins, and containing three wretched inhabitants. Such was the desolation which this more than barbarous enemy had left behind them, that in what had been the populous and ♦Santarem.♦ flourishing town of Santarem, the screech owls took possession of a whole street of ruins, where it seemed as if man had been employed in reducing human edifices to a state which rendered them fit receptacles for birds and beasts of prey. The number of these birds, and the boldness with which the havoc everywhere about inspired them, made it frightful to pass that way even in the daytime; insomuch, that a soldier who had been promoted for his personal bravery was known more than once to forego his mess, rather than pass to it through these ruins. Dogs who were now without owners preyed upon the dead. Wolves fed on human ♦Leyria.♦ bodies in the streets of Leyria; and retaining then no longer their fear of man, attacked the living who came in their way. The servant of an English gentleman was pursued one evening by two, in the outskirts of that city; he escaped from them only by climbing a single olive tree, which, happily for him, had been left standing; it was just high enough to afford him security, yet so low that the wolves besieged him in it all night; three or four others joined them in the blockade, and when he was seen and rescued in the morning, the bark as high as they could reach had been scored by their repeated endeavours to spring up and seize him.

There were parts of the country where the people, having no other sustenance, allayed the pain of emptiness without supplying the wants of nature, by eating boiled grass, which they seasoned, such as could, with the brine and scales left in the baskets from which salt fish, or sardinhas had been sold, these being at that time the scarce and almost only remaining articles of food. Among a people in this extreme distress, the commissioners had the painful task of selecting the cases which could bear no deferment of relief, when every case was urgent, when multitudes were perishing for want, and when the whole amount of the means of relief at their disposal, economized as those means were to the utmost, was deplorably inadequate to the just and pressing claims upon it. Eighteen months after the retreat, the price of provisions in the wasted provinces was about six times higher than before the invasion; a fact from which some conception may be formed of the misery endured in the course of those months, and of the state of things when the commissioners entered upon their arduous and painful task. Inadequate to this dreadful necessity as the aid of England was, yet, while it is to be feared a greater number perished for want of human, or of timely help, 43,000 sick and 8000 orphans were saved by it. The relief was not bestowed in food alone, and in the means of removal, but in the means of future subsistence ... cows, oxen, implements of agriculture, and seed of various kinds. The gratitude of the people, to their honour it should be said, was more in proportion to the intention and good-will which were thus manifested, than to the actual relief which was afforded. And if in Portugal, as there would have been in any other country, men were found whose hearts were so hard and their consciences so stupified that they sought only how to make the necessities and miseries of their fellow-creatures an occasion of lucre for themselves, it may safely be asserted, that never in any public calamity was there less of such wicked selfishness displayed than at this time. The commissioners who were employed ten months upon this service, (which was not less hazardous than painful, for it exposed them continually to contagious disease as well as to the constant sight of suffering), performed their office gratuitously, and would not consent to have their personal expenses reimbursed: the secretary and assistants who always accompanied them refused to accept any pecuniary recompense for their time and labour: and the house of the Vanzellers of Porto advanced money for purchasing great part of the cattle, and would receive no commission whatever upon the negociation and payment of the bills. A brother of that house, while the allied army occupied the lines, received under his own roof at Lisbon, and at his own cost maintained more than forty refugees, who were all personally unknown to him before that time: and at his mother’s22 country house near Porto, as many as came daily were fed in her own presence, from seventy to an hundred and upwards being the usual number. It is consolatory to record such examples in a history where so many errors and crimes must be recorded. When the distribution was completed, the Portugueze Regency assured the British Government that there did not appear to have been a single complaint against the justice and regularity with which it had been made, and that this scrupulous and efficient application of the grant to the ends intended was owing to the unwearied exertion of Mr. Croft and his colleagues: they added, that they should lay those high services, as they properly denominated them, before the Prince of Brazil, and expressed their desire that Mr. Croft’s conduct might be made known to the Prince Regent of Great Britain. That gentleman was, in consequence, created a Baronet, and received the royal Portugueze order of the Tower and Sword.

No measure could have had the effect of inspiring the Portugueze people with so much confidence, as this public distribution of seed corn, and tools, and cattle. They who had been most apprehensive of another invasion, were convinced that Great Britain would not have conferred such a gift, if what was now bestowed upon them were likely to be wrested from them by the enemy; and under that conviction they resumed in hope those labours, from which despair might otherwise have deterred them. But it was far from Lord Wellington’s intention to deceive them into any fallacious opinion of their own security; on the contrary, his first thought, after he had driven the French beyond the frontier, was to warn the Portugueze that the danger might yet be renewed. “Their nation,” he said, “had still riches left, which the tyrant would endeavour to plunder: they were happy under a beneficent sovereign, and this alone would make him exert himself to destroy their happiness: they had successfully resisted him, and therefore he would leave no possible means unemployed for bringing them under his iron yoke.” He appealed to all who had witnessed the successive invasions of Junot, Soult, and Massena, whether the system of the French had not been to confiscate, to plunder, and to commit every outrage which their atrocious dispositions could devise? and whether from the general, to the lowest soldier, they had not delighted in the practice of such excesses? “The Portugueze,” he said, “ought not to relax their preparations for resistance. Every man capable of bearing arms ought to learn the use of them: those who, by their age or sex, were not capable of taking the field, should beforehand look out for places of safety where they might retire in time of need: they should bury their most valuable effects, every one in secret, not trusting the knowledge of the place to those who had no interest in concealing it: and they should take means for effectually concealing, or destroying the food, which, in case of necessity, could not be removed. If,” said Lord Wellington, “these measures are adopted, however superior in number the force may be which the desire of plunder and of vengeance may induce the tyrant to send again for the invasion of this country, the issue will be certain, and the independence of Portugal will be finally established, to the eternal honour of the present generation.” Having issued this proclamation, and made arrangements for the blockade of Almeida, Lord Wellington, leaving his army under Sir Brent Spencer, took advantage of the temporary inaction of the enemy to go into Alentejo.

Beresford had accompanied the commander-in-chief in pursuit of the retreating enemy, as far as the Ceyra. There Lord Wellington received news as unexpected as it was unwelcome, that Badajoz had been surrendered by its base governor. Another piece of intelligence distressed him; a Spanish officer of rank and ability, who had arranged the correspondence which was carried on with his countrymen in those parts of Spain possessed by the French, had been made prisoner in the route of Mendizabal’s army, and immediately entered the Intruder’s service. Lord Wellington acted with characteristic sagacity on this occasion; neither treating, nor considering this person as wholly reprobate because he had shown a want of principle which proceeded from want of courage to endure adversity, he caused a letter to be written to him, containing a hint, that bad as his conduct was, it would be his own fault if he made it unforgiveable. The hint was taken as it was meant; ... for the motive of ingratiating himself with his new patrons was not strong enough to overpower a natural humanity, a remaining sense of honour, and a prudential consideration of the instability of fortune: the officer kept his secret, and lived to be well rewarded for having done so. The surrender of Badajoz, which left the besieging army at liberty to act against the allies wherever they might deem best, divided Lord Wellington’s attention, and checked him in what else would have been a career of victory: but while he continued the pursuit of the retreating army, he sent the Marshal to his command on the south of the Tagus, to provide against the consequences which might result from Imaz’s baseness.

Mortier, meantime, not failing to pursue to the utmost the advantage which that misconduct had given him, advanced upon Valencia de Alcantara, Albuquerque, and Campo Mayor, in order that the troops which he knew would be sent against him might be deprived of those points of support. The first of these places had long ceased to be of any importance as a fortress; it was taken by surprise, and seven brass guns, being the whole of its artillery, were destroyed for want of carriages. Latour Maubourg went against Albuquerque; its fortress, a century ago, had been called impregnable; and might now have made some defence, relief being so near at hand; but the appearance of an enemy and a few cannon-shot sufficed to terrify the garrison; they surrendered without resistance, and were sent prisoners to Badajoz with seventeen brass guns of large calibre: the French then razed the works. While these detachments were thus successfully employed, Mortier himself ♦March 22.♦ opened the trenches before Campo Mayor: this fortress resisted better than its Castilian neighbours had done; a battalion of militia incurred some disgrace by its conduct, but the spirit of the inhabitants and the governor was excellent, and the place held out eleven days.

The fall of Campo Mayor was regretted, more for the sake of its brave defenders than for any advantage that could accrue to the enemy from a conquest which they could not maintain. Marshal Beresford arrived at Chamusca during the siege, and on the day that it surrendered, assembled his corps at Portalegre, now strengthened by the 4th division, and Colonel de Gray’s brigade of heavy cavalry. On the 24th, everything was collected at and in front of Arronches; and on the following day he moved against the Campo Mayor, meaning, if the enemy should persist in retaining it, to interpose between that town and Badajoz. The main body of the French had by this time returned to the Caya, the whole of their besieging train had re-entered Badajoz, they had removed thither the heavy guns from Campo Mayor, and Soult had ♦Affair near Campo Mayor.♦ given orders to destroy the works there, which were prevented by the appearance of Marshal Beresford’s corps. About a league from the town, the allies fell in and skirmished with the enemy’s advanced horse: and Brigadier-General Long advancing rapidly with the cavalry, came up with their whole force, which, upon perceiving his movements, had evacuated the place, and was retiring towards Badajoz. It consisted of eight squadrons of cavalry, and two battalions of infantry, commanded by General Latour Maubourg; the latter were retreating in column with two troops of hussars at their head and two closing their rear, the rest manœuvring so as at once to cover the retreat of the foot, and secure to themselves its support: upon the approach of the allies, the French infantry formed an oblong square, and the horse took up a position en potence. Long’s first object was to dispose of their cavalry; he ordered Lieutenant-Colonel Head, with the 13th dragoons, to attack in flank the three squadrons which were on the same line with the infantry; while he, with three Portugueze squadrons, attacked in front the three which formed the angle to the right of the others: Colonel Elder, with two squadrons of Portugueze, was to cover his left, and turn the enemy’s right; and eight squadrons of heavy dragoons to support the attack. As soon as Head advanced, the enemy changed their position, brought forward their right, and met the charge; they were immediately broken, and in their flight carried away with them the other squadrons, which, from the change of position, had in some measure become a second line. From Campo Mayor to Badajoz is an open plain without tree or bush; over this ground the French retreated rapidly, skirmishing the whole way. The 13th pursued with ungovernable eagerness, and the two squadrons of Portugueze which were sent to their support caught the same spirit, and dispersed in the heat of pursuit. In this affair, there were many opportunities for the display of individual courage and dexterity. Colonel Chamorin, of the 26th French dragoons, was encountered by a corporal of the 13th, whose comrade he had just before shot through the head; each was a master of his horse and weapon, but at length the corporal, striking off the helmet of his enemy with one blow, cleft his head down to the ears with another.

The heavy cavalry, meantime, had been halted two miles off, and there only remained with General Long three squadrons of Portugueze with which to harass and impede the French infantry, till it could be brought up: these Portugueze did not stand the fire of the column and the appearance of the hussars; and though they were soon rallied, the retreating column gained ground considerably before the heavy cavalry could overtake them. The 13th and the two Portugueze squadrons were then perceived returning from the pursuit which they had followed with such heedless precipitation, as to have given the enemy the superiority of numbers, and to have lost twenty-four killed, seventy wounded, and seventy-seven prisoners: some of them had pushed on to the very gate of Badajoz, and were taken on the bridge. Marshal Beresford would not risk the loss of more cavalry, and the enemy’s column therefore retired unmolested, retaking fifteen out of sixteen guns which our 13th had taken. The loss of the French was very considerable; in one of their regiments only six officers out of sixteen remained for duty. The next morning a French captain of dragoons came with a trumpet, demanding permission to search the field for his colonel. Several of our officers went out with him. The peasants had stripped the dead during the night; and more than six hundred naked bodies were lying on the ground, mostly slain with sabre wounds. It was long before they could find Chamorin, lying on his face in his clotted blood: as soon as the body was turned up, the French captain gave a sort of scream, sprung off his horse, threw off his brazen helmet, and kneeling by the body, took the lifeless hand, and kissed it repeatedly with a passionate grief which affected all the beholders.

After this affair Beresford cantoned his troops at Campo Mayor, Elvas, Borba, and Villa-Viçosa: they were equally in need of rest and of refitment, great part of the British infantry having made forced marches from Condeixa, and being in want of shoes. General Ballasteros, who was seldom at any time in force without suffering defeat, and never defeated without presently obtaining some success, after experiencing some of these customary alternations, and incurring some severe losses in the Condado de Niebla, had fallen back upon Gibraleon, hoping to effect a junction with Zayas, who had been sent from Cadiz with 6000 men, of whom 400 were cavalry. Something was always to be expected from Ballasteros’s remarkable activity; but there was equal reason for dreading the effect of his incaution: by Beresford’s request, therefore, Castaños wrote to desire that he and Zayas would not commit themselves, but reserve their force entire for co-operating with him. Beresford’s objects at this time were, to throw a bridge across the Guadiana at Jurumenha, ... to recover Olivença, drive Mortier out of Extremadura, and form as soon as possible the siege of Badajoz. Foreseeing the want of a bridge, Lord Wellington had frequently, before the fall of that place, urged the Spanish general officers to remove the bridge-boats, and other ♦April.♦ materials which were in store there, to Elvas. They began to follow this advice, but so late and so slowly, that only five of the twenty boats had been removed, when Mendizabal’s defeat rendered any further removal impossible: these, when laid down, left 160 yards of the river uncovered. Nor was this the only difficulty. It had been supposed that ample supplies had been collected at Estremoz and Villa Viçosa; but owing to the poverty of the Government, and to that mismanagement which, from the highest to the lowest of its departments, prevailed and was maintained, as if by prescriptive right, throughout, not enough were found to ensure the subsistence of the troops from day to day. Moreover, there were no shoes in store for an army which had marched itself barefoot. And had there been no deficiency of stores, and no previous difficulties to overcome, Beresford’s force, consisting of 20,000 effective men, British and Portugueze, was inadequate to the operations which he was to undertake with it, though it was the utmost that Lord Wellington could spare from the more immediately important scene of action on the frontier of Beira.

Nothing, however, that could be done by diligence and exertion was omitted. The Guadiana was in such a state that it seemed feasible to construct a bridge by fixing trestles across the shallow part of the river, and connecting them with the five Spanish boats in the deeper stream; or those boats might be used as a floating bridge for the artillery and heavy stores, and the interval filled with some half dozen tin pontoons, which had been sent from Lisbon to Elvas, and which, though weak and bad of their kind, might bear the weight of infantry, there being a practicable ford for the horse. This latter plan was preferred: materials were collected not without great difficulty, and delays which that difficulty occasioned: trees were to be felled for the purpose, and the trestles were made only seven feet in height, because no timber for making larger was found near the spot. On the 2nd of April the engineers reported that the passage was ready for the following day, and three squadrons passed that evening, and stretched their piquets along the advanced hills; thus making a show which imposed upon the enemy. The troops marched from their cantonments, and arrived at daybreak in a wood within a mile of the bridge. No apprehensions of the river had been entertained, for there had been no rain in those parts; but heavy rains had fallen far off, in the high regions where the Guadiana has its sources. When day broke it was seen that the water had risen three feet seven inches in the course of the night: planks, trestles, and pontoons were swept away by the current, and the ford also had become impassable. Beresford still determined to cross, not losing the opportunity which the enemy by their want of vigilance allowed him. Enough of the trestles were collected from the river to form, with two of the pontoons, two landing-places, and two floating bridges were made of the ♦Passage of the Guadiana.♦ Spanish boats. This was completed by the afternoon of the 5th. The army immediately began to cross; and continued crossing, without an hour’s intermission, from three that afternoon till after midnight on the 8th. Only one man and horse were lost in the operation. Some country boats meantime carried across the three days’ reserve of biscuit; and the same proportion of slaughter-cattle swam over. The troops bivouacked in succession as they passed, forming a position in a small semicircle, from Villa Real on the right to the Guadiana on the left. Severely as the French had suffered in the affair before Campo Mayor, they acted at this time with as much disregard of their enemies, as if they had no abler general than Mendizabal to contend with, and no better troops than those which they had so easily routed. They had 12,000 men within three hours’ march, who might have effectually disputed the passage, or cut off the advanced guard. But so ill were they informed of Beresford’s movements, and so negligent in ascertaining them, that they made no endeavour to interrupt him till the morning of the 8th, when they advanced in some force, and surprised before daybreak a piquet of the 13th dragoons; but they were driven back by the 37th, which closed the right of the position; and finding the allies too strong for them, desisted from any further attempt.

On the morning of the 9th, as soon as the fog cleared, the army marched in three columns upon Olivença: it was thought not unlikely that the enemy would wait for them there, or on the opposite bank of the Valverde river, where the ground was favourable: they had, however, fallen back to Albuhera, leaving a garrison in Olivença. The place was summoned, and refused to surrender; guns and stores, therefore, were ordered from Elvas; the fourth division remained to besiege it; and the rest of the army moved by Valverde, and bivouacked in the wood of Albuhera, the enemy’s rear-guard retiring before their advance, which entered S. Martha on the 12th. Here the army halted till the 15th, to get up provisions which were still brought from the rear; and on that day Olivença surrendered at discretion, before the breach was practicable. The garrison consisted of about 480 men, in a place where Mendizabal had thrown away 3000. The French had committed a fault of the same kind, though not to an equal extent; the force they left there being totally inadequate to the defence of so large a fortress. The recapture of this place would have produced an angry contention between the Spanish and Portugueze Governments, if Portugal had not been rendered, by English influence, patient in this instance under a galling sense of injustice. The territory on the left of the Guadiana, in which Olivença stands, was part of the dowry given with his daughter to Affonso III. by the Castillian king, Alfonso the Wise; a grant which, though deemed at the time to have been an arbitrary, ♦Claim of the Portugueze to that place.♦ and therefore an illegal cession of national rights, was subsequently confirmed to Portugal with due form by the treaty between kings Dinez and Ferdinand IV. But as the Guadiana might seem to form a natural boundary between the two kingdoms on this part of the frontier, Spain has ever looked with an evil eye upon this cession. Five centuries had not reconciled a people peculiarly tenacious of what they deem national rights, to this dismemberment, as they considered it, though in itself of little importance to Spain, and though what had been ceded to Portugal was in reality the right of winning it from the Moors, and keeping it when won. In times of international war, therefore, the possession of Olivença had been contested not less as a point of honour than for its own value, when it was a place of great strength; and so strong was the border spirit which prevailed there that, when the Spaniards captured it in 1658, the whole of the inhabitants chose rather to leave the town, and lose whatever they could not carry with them, than become subjects to the King of Spain, though the property of those who should remove was offered to any who would remain. It was restored at the end of that war, and Portugal continued to hold it till its cession was extorted in 1801, in the treaty of Badajoz. But the war which was terminated by that treaty had been entirely unprovoked by Portugal: Spain was then acting as the deceived and degraded instrument of French policy; and the Portugueze felt, as they well might do, that the surrender, though made to Spain, had been compelled by France; and that so long as Spain retained Olivença by virtue of that treaty, they were an injured people. The Prince of Brazil, in the proclamation which he issued on his arrival in Brazil, declaring war against France, and against Spain as then the ally and instrument of French oppression, had protested against the injustice which was done him in that treaty, and declared his intention of recovering when he could whatever he had then been compelled to abandon: and the Spaniards were themselves so conscious of this injustice, that the local authorities, with the sanction of the Junta of Extremadura, had, at the commencement of the war against Buonaparte and the Intruder, proposed to restore Olivença and its district to Portugal for a certain sum of money. The Central Government had not authorised this proposal; and Olivença was not to be thought of in times when the independence of both nations was at stake. But fortune had now put it in the power of the Portugueze to right themselves: Olivença had been taken by the French, and retaken from them by an allied force of Portugueze and British: and one of the Portugueze Regents proposed to his colleague the British ambassador that the Portugueze standards should be displayed there, without previous explanation, or subsequent justification of the measure. There prevailed at that time a strong feeling of irritation in the Portugueze Government against the Spaniards, occasioned by the conduct of the Spanish officers on the frontier, and the unrestrained irregularities of the Spanish troops wherever they passed: they had even sacked a townlet near Badajoz; an act for which the Portugueze meditated reprisals, and had actually proposed so insane a measure to the British ministry, when the Spanish regency allayed their resentment by disavowing the act, and issuing orders for the punishment of the parties concerned. Having thus been in some degree mollified, they were persuaded not to injure the common cause by asserting their own claim, just and reasonable as that claim was, but to wait the effect of a treaty then pendant with Spain, in which the restoration of Olivença was stipulated and not disputed. It is discreditable to Spain that the restitution which Portugal was then contented to wait for has not yet been made.