Early in November, the besiegers before Cadiz fired a salute in honour of Massena’s triumphant entrance into Lisbon. Such demonstrations could not deceive the inhabitants of the Isle of Leon; but might serve to depress the Spaniards, who had no such means of information; and also to encourage the French themselves, whose confidence in their fortune had by this time received some abatement, and whose hopes of bringing the contest to an end rested chiefly now upon the success of the campaign in Portugal. Massena had undertaken the conquest of that kingdom in full expectation of outnumbering16 any disciplined force which could be opposed to him, and still more certainly of outmanœuvring it; for the French Government well knew with what misplaced parsimony the military plans of the English were calculated; and they had neither reckoned upon the skill of the British general, nor the resolution of the British ministry, nor the spirit and exertions of the Portugueze people. He had been confirmed in this expectance by the cautious system which Lord Wellington had, through that parsimony, been compelled to observe during the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo: and though it was by an accident of war that Almeida had fallen into his hands, the speedy reduction of a place so important at that juncture increased the habitual confidence of one who had been accustomed to hear himself called the Child of Victory. That presumption had received a lesson at Busaco, and a check for which he was equally unprepared at the lines of Torres Vedras. Could Lord Wellington have spared a sufficient force to have occupied Santarem, as well as Abrantes; or had the orders of the Portugueze Regency for removing all provisions, been carried into full effect in that part of the country, he must soon have been compelled to retreat. The wonder, however, is that so much devoted obedience was found to a measure, as dreadful in its immediate consequences to the persons upon whom it fell, as it was indispensable for the deliverance of the country. But being allowed to take a position which was not to be forced without a greater expense of life than his antagonist could afford; having found the means of present subsistence, and possessing also that impassibility, ... that utter recklessness of the sufferings which he inflicted, ... that perfect destitution of humanity, ... which one of his fellow-marshals ♦See vol. ii.♦ had said was necessary for a commander in this atrocious war, he was enabled to wait for assistance, and for the chance of events.

He had sent General Foy to give Buonaparte the fullest account of his situation; and to supply his wants till farther orders or effectual reinforcements should be received, he ordered General Gardanne, who commanded on the Agueda, to escort a convoy of ammunition. Strong reconnoitring parties were sent out frequently, both on the Coimbra and Castello Branco roads, in the hope of meeting him; and one of these parties had at length the mortification to ascertain that he had been within three leagues of their advanced posts on the Zezere, and had then turned back, a peasant having deceived him, by declaring that the whole French army had withdrawn. Whether the man acted thus upon the impulse of the moment, or had been sent from Abrantes upon this hazardous service, he succeeded in alarming men who, from the want of other tidings, were prepared to believe the worst. Gardanne’s corps consisted of 3000 men; but they were so dispirited in their retreat, that when Colonel Grant, with a handful of the Ordenanza, fired upon them at Cardigos, they abandoned their convoy: nor did this active officer desist from the pursuit, till they had lost all their baggage and several hundred men; thus reaching the frontier in a manner which had every appearance, and all the consequences, of a precipitate and forced retreat. The Comte d’Erlon, General Drouet, who commanded the 9th corps, had meantime arrived there; and he determined to enter Portugal, and open a communication with Massena. Advancing, therefore, with 10,000 men, he left some 8000 under General Claparede, at Guarda, to drive away the Portugueze force in his rear.

Silveira commanded the force in that quarter: the other divisions, under Brigadier-General Miller, Colonels Wilson and Trant, shut in the line of the Mondego to the confluence of the Alva. Trant was in Coimbra, which he had recovered by a movement as important in its effects upon the campaign, as it was promptly conceived and ably executed. Wilson had occupied the road from Ponte de Murcella to Thomar, establishing himself at Cabaços; but when the French had occupied Thomar, they attacked him twice from thence, and at length compelled him to fall back upon Espinhal. This was precisely in the line of Drouet’s march; and he was thus placed between two fires, the enemy who had driven him from Cabaços being now strongly posted there. He therefore collected boats at Pena Cova, and crossed the Mondego, timing this movement so critically, that the next day, when the enemy had passed the Alva at Ponte de Murcella, and occupied Foz d’Arouce and the neighbouring ♦Dec. 25.♦ villages, he re-crossed with a regiment of militia and some cavalry at the same place, took post the same evening at St. Andre, and captured some of their marauders there in the act of pillage; being then so near the invading force, that several of their stragglers came dropping in during the night, thinking their comrades were in possession of the place, and did not discover their mistake till they were captured. Early on the morrow he moved on Foz d’Arouce; Drouet’s rear-guard had just quitted it; the village had been sacked, and several of its inhabitants of both sexes were lying dead in the streets, victims of those outrages and cruelties which invariably marked the movements of the French in Portugal. Wilson hung upon their flank and rear; and, cutting off their stragglers and marauding parties, which was all that could be done with so small a force, made about an hundred prisoners. Trant also marched from Coimbra with part of the garrison, in the direction of Miranda de Corvo, to harass the enemy, if he should take the Condeixa road; but Drouet, having communicated with the party at Cabaços, who expected his advance, halted at Espinhal, till he received instructions from Massena to proceed with his corps and establish himself at Leyria. Wilson then collected his division, and closed upon his rear, for the purpose of impeding him in that marauding system upon which the whole army depended for subsistence. Their detached parties were then brought in daily contact; a sort of warfare in which the Portuguese were fully equal to their invaders, and in which they had always the great advantage of sure intelligence.

Claparede meantime had moved in the direction of Lamego. Silveira, giving him the opportunity which he sought, attacked his advanced guard at Ponte d’Abbade, and was repulsed: having thus exposed the comparative weakness of his force and his own ♦Rash operations of Silveira.♦ want of skill, he was in his turn attacked at Villar de Ponte, and made a precipitate retreat upon Lamego: the enemy pursued him closely; and the Portuguese, with an honourable feeling, when they evacuated the city, carried with them 140 soldiers from the hospital, on their backs; for they had no other means of transport. Silveira then crossed the Douro. Lamego was thus left to the invaders’ mercy, and Upper Beira open to their inroads. In consequence of this rashness on Silveira’s part, Miller and Wilson were ordered toward the Doura by General Bacellar. Silveira, however, had retreated with such precipitation, that neither time nor opportunity was afforded for co-operating with him; but Bacellar took a position on the Payva, on the enemy’s left flank, and Wilson at Castrodayre, on their rear. Claparede would willingly have pursued Silveira beyond the Doura, that he might obtain the resources of a province which had not been exhausted; but these divisions were closing upon him, and menacing his communication with Almeida. He returned, therefore, to his position at Guarda.

But the country which Wilson had previously occupied and protected was thus left open to Drouet’s marauding parties; and no sooner was his removal ascertained, than they were let loose, and carried desolation along the banks of the Alva and to the very heart of the Estella. No part of the country suffered at this time more dreadfully than that which was exposed to this corps: it was in vain that the miserable inhabitants sought to conceal themselves in the depths of the great pine forest which extends over so large a portion of that sandy region; no recesses escaped the search of men who were impelled by hunger, by cruelty which seemed to have become in them a craving and insatiable desire, and by a brutal appetite which rendered them even more dreadful and more devilish than their thirst for blood. The number of inhabitants who perished in the diocese of Leyria (one of the smallest in the kingdom) during the four months that the French retained possession there, was ascertained by official inquiries to be not less than 20,000: and a great proportion of these were butchered in the Pinhal, or died there of famine, and disease, and wretchedness.

If Buonaparte had been in all other respects the hero, the philanthropist, and the philosopher, which he is represented to be by men whose understandings seem to be as impenetrable as their hearts, the history of this single campaign would nevertheless stamp his character with indelible infamy. Expecting, what indeed the event proved, that Lord Wellington had not a force with which to act offensively against Massena in the field, he calculated upon the resources of Lisbon, and made no arrangement for supplying the invading troops with provisions in case of any unexpected obstacle to their immediate and complete success. They were left as in Spain, to support themselves how they could; and in the cruelties which such a system inevitably occasioned, the evils of war received their only possible aggravation. After the battle of Busaco this army subsisted entirely upon what it could obtain by plunder. Throughout Portugal the peasantry employ oxen for draught; these fell into the enemy’s hands, wherever the orders of the Regency had not been obeyed; and though those orders had met with an obedience unexampled in its extent, from a devoted people, yet there were many who, in hope that the danger might be averted, delayed parting with what it was ruin for them to lose; and thus the French obtained a supply of cattle, which, though it would have been inconsiderable for a British army, was not so for men in whose way of preparing food nothing is wasted. But the supply was not large; because kine are nowhere numerous in that country, where there is little or no use made of their milk, and little demand for their meat; and it was not lasting, because want of bread occasioned a consumption of animal food unusual among the French; for wherever they went they found the ovens and the mills destroyed. They bruised the corn and then boiled it, and they roasted the maize, till with that alacrity and cleverness which characterise the whole nation, they had repaired the demolished mills, and in places where there were none, constructed some of their own devising, turned by an ass at the end of a lever, or by force of arm. The hand-mills which soon afterwards made part of their regimental equipments were an invention of Marmont’s, suggested probably by the inconveniences which Massena suffered at this time. If the ingenuity with which they thus remedied one of their wants is characteristic, the circumstance is not less so that finding no other fit material for mill-stones they resorted to the churches, and took for that purpose the slabs with which the graves were covered, or the vaults closed!

At first, something like discipline was observed in the marauding parties, and regular detachments with their respective officers were sent on this degrading service; but it was found that these detachments brought home little or nothing, while they who went forth without orders and purveyed for themselves, returned driving before them beasts well laden with the provisions they had discovered; they were soon left, therefore, to take their course, without the slightest attempt on the part of the generals at regulation or restraint; and a system was thus tolerated, ... not to say encouraged, ... in which it is even more dreadful to reflect upon the depravity on one side, than the unspeakable miseries which were endured on the other. French writers who were themselves engaged in this accursed expedition have told us that the whole army had at times no other food than what was obtained from hiding-places which the Portuguese who fell into their hands had been made by torture to discover; and that acts of this kind were as ordinary a topic of conversation among the soldiers as any other incidents of their campaign! In excuse for this, they observe, and truly, that the army must otherwise have perished, ... that they were like starving sailors, when as the only means of prolonging their own lives they kill and eat their comrades, in extremity of hunger. In proportion as this apology, if such it may be called, be valid, is the guilt of that tyrant by whose deliberate orders the army was detained in such a situation; and inferior only to his guilt is that of the commander by whom such orders were obeyed. Life is what every soldier must hold himself ready to lay down whenever his military duty should require the sacrifice; but woe to that soldier who acts as if life were all that he had to lose!

The same writers, who by the plea of necessity excuse a system so atrocious that even that plea cannot be admitted without doubt as well as shuddering, tell us also of supererogatory crimes committed by this army for which no motive but that of fiendish wickedness is assignable, no palliation possible. When a family was hunted out among the rocks, woods, or mountains by these hell-hounds, happy were the men who did not endure torments, the women who did not suffer violation, before they were murdered. The French officers, when any of them were made prisoners, endeavoured always to reject the opprobrium of these flagitious and undeniable deeds upon the Italians and Germans in their army: but let us be just to human nature, which has neither made the Italians and Germans more depraved than the French, nor the French than the English. The Italians, indeed, having grown up in a country where great crimes are notoriously committed with impunity, may have been accustomed to regard such crimes with less repugnance than either the Germans or the French. But French discipline had made all in its armies of whatever stock good soldiers: the first thing needful for moral improvement is to bring men under obedience, which is the root of civil virtue: military discipline had done this; had moral discipline been connected with it as it might and ought to have been, they who were made good soldiers, if they had not by the same process been made good men, would have been withheld from any open wickedness. But this was systematically disregarded in Buonaparte’s armies; the more thoroughly his servants had corrupted their feelings and hardened their hearts, the better were they fitted for the work in which they were to be employed. Under like circumstances, British soldiers might have been equally wicked; but no British Government has ever been so iniquitous as to place its soldiers in such circumstances. The only offence deemed worthy of punishment in Massena’s army was insubordination towards a superior. A wretch might sometimes be apprehended in an act of atrocity so flagrant that it was not possible to let him escape; but there was no attempt to prevent such horrors, not even when there was the wish: they were known and suffered, ... by better minds in despair, by others with unconcern. In such an army, the soldiers who brought young and handsome women to the camp, as part of their booty, were considered as humane; and humane by comparison they were, though these women, ... whatever their former condition had been, ... were played for as a stake at cards, were bartered for provisions or horses, and were put up publicly to sale! It is related, that such women as survived the first horrors of their situation became reconciled to it, because of the terror in which they had previously lived, and because their lives were now secure; that they attached themselves to those who became, as it is called, their protectors; and that it was no uncommon thing for a woman to pass from one such protector to another, rising a step at every exchange, till she became at last the mistress of a general!

The skill which some of these marauders acquired in their search for food, resembled the sagacity with which savages track their prey. That they should detect with unerring certainty any place of concealment in a dwelling or an out-house, might have been expected from the habits of plunder which they had been indulged in in former campaigns; but when they were questing in woods, or among rocks, or in the open country, a new sense seemed to be developed in them. There were men in every company who could discover a depôt of provisions by scent far off. Such resources, however, could ill suffice for such an army; and the reinforcements which they received bringing with them no supplies, added as much to their difficulties as to their strength. Wine, which was found in abundance at first, was lavishly consumed while it lasted. Bread failed entirely; and in many corps the rations of maize were reduced first to a half, then to a third. A third of the whole army was at last employed in thus purveying from a wasted country, and their comrades are described as stationing videttes to watch for their coming, and communicate by signals the joyful intelligence if they came with supplies; for little now was brought back by the most successful marauders, and sometimes the whole produce of such an excursion was consumed before they returned to their quarters. They had found when they entered the kingdom whole towns and villages deserted at their approach; more appalling spectacles were presented now in the recesses to which they penetrated; whole families were seen there lying dead; or in a state worse than death: and those who were not suffering from famine or disease seemed to be bewildered in mind as well as rendered wild in appearance, by perpetual terror and exposure.

The helpless and the most devoted were they who suffered thus, ... old men, women, and children; and they who remaining to protect wives, children, sisters, and parents, or to perish with them, forewent for the performance of that duty the pursuit of vengeance. Meantime, the greater part of the effective population were actively employed. Everywhere in the rear of the enemy parties of the militia and ordenanza were on the alert: and when General Foy, returning from Paris, entered Portugal with an escort of 3000 men to rejoin the invading army, Lieutenant-Colonel Grant, with eighty of the ordenanza, took possession of a height which commanded a pass near the village of Enxabarda, and kept up a fire upon them for two hours, as long as daylight served. Above 200 of their dead were counted within the distance of four leagues, the inclemency of the weather having killed many of the wounded. The invaders were not prepared to encounter such severe cold as is sometimes felt among these mountains. About three hundred men of Drouet’s corps were frozen to ♦Feldzug von Portugal, p. 66.♦ death during a night march between Castello Branco and Thomar. There was a peasant belonging to the latter district of great bodily strength, and answerable hardihood, who, being deprived of his former peaceful occupations, took up in its stead that of destroying Frenchmen, that he might live by spoiling them as they did by spoiling others; this man is said to have killed more than thirty of the enemy, during the month of February, with his own hand, and to have recovered from them about fifty horses and mules, which, with other booty, he carried to Abrantes for sale. He continued to carry on this single-handed war as long as they remained in the country; and became so well known by his exploits that the French set a large price upon his head; but he was in no danger of being betrayed by his countrymen, and too wary to be entrapped. A cave in the mountains was his usual abode. Some of the wretched inhabitants from the adjacent parts took refuge near him, and felt themselves comparatively secure under his protection.

Small parties from Abrantes cut off some 300 of the enemy during the two first months of the year. In one of these desultory affairs, which were all that occurred, while the two armies were waiting anxiously, each with its own views, Captain Fenwick, a most enterprising young officer, who commanded at Obidos, and had been engaged more than twenty times with the French foraging parties, received a mortal wound near Alcobaça: he was pursuing with some Portugueze recruits a party of fourscore French, when one of them, as he was within a few yards, turned round and shot him through the body. He had so won the confidence and good will of the peasantry, many of whom he had armed with French musquets, that they not only brought him the best information, but were ready under his command to face any danger. No man could have been more regretted for the excellent military qualities which he had displayed, and the expectations which were formed of him. The only other affair deserving of notice occurred at Rio Mayor. General Junot made a reconnoisance thither from Alcanhede in considerable force, having learned that there were stores of wine and corn in the town. The piquet which was stationed there retired. Junot rashly galloped into the town, and a soldier of the German hussars waited for him and brought him down. But though this robber left some of his blood upon that earth which had long been crying for it, the wound was not fatal, the ball having lodged between the nose and the cheek bone. A box of topazes which he designed as a present for Marie Louise, was intercepted by a party of the Spanish army in Extremadura, who with rare disinterestedness, foregoing all right to the prize, delivered it to the government. There were seventy-three stones, valued at 3250 dollars: as it was not possible in such times to discover from what churches or what family they had been plundered, the Spanish government disposed of them by raffle, and appropriated the produce to the relief of faithful Spaniards in the province of Burgos and La Mancha.

Had Ney’s advice been followed, the French, as soon as they had ascertained that it was hopeless to attack the lines of Torres Vedras, would have retreated immediately to the frontier. Well had it been for the credit of that army, and well for humanity, if this counsel had been taken. But he and Massena were upon ill terms; Massena, by his defence of Genoa, had acquired a character for endurance which was supposed to influence him at this time and Buonaparte, in whose calculations human sufferings were never regarded, undoubtedly expected that there would be a change of ministry in England, and that the first measure of the Whigs when in power would be to withdraw the army from Portugal and leave Lisbon open to him. That party deceived him by their hopes as much as they deceived themselves; and they in return were duped by the falsehoods which the French Government published for the purpose of deluding the French people. The only statements which were allowed to be made public in France admitted, indeed, that the English force, and still more the nature of the ground, rendered the lines of Torres Vedras a strong position; but they affirmed that within those lines there was so severe a famine, that people lay dead and dying in the streets of Lisbon, while the French in their quarters were abundantly supplied. But at this very time it was felt by the invading army as no slight aggravation of their sufferings, that while they were in want of every thing, there was plenty beyond that near demarcation which they were unable to force, with all their courage and their excellent skill in war. Throughout the tract which they occupied, the towns of Torres Novas and Thomar were the only places where the inhabitants had generally remained in their houses; but now, when they who had erroneously chosen this as the least of two evils found that the food was taken from them and their ♦State of the people within the lines.♦ children, they began to retire within the British lines, ... almost in a starving state. Lisbon, notwithstanding the great military force which it then had to support, and though 200,000 fugitives had taken shelter there, was constantly and plentifully supplied; and the distress for food which was felt there, arose only from want of means wherewith to purchase what was in the market. This was relieved by the Government and by the religious houses, who in feeding the poor at this time rendered unequivocal service to the community. Private charity also was never more nobly manifested than in this exigency; among the British officers, a weekly subscription was regularly raised in aid of the destitute; and it is believed that not less than 80,000 of the persons thus suddenly thrown upon the mercy of their fellow-creatures were housed, fed, and clothed at the private cost of those who in their own circumstances had very materially suffered from the interruption which the war had occasioned to their trade, from the pressure of war taxes, and of other requisitions rendered necessary by the exigencies of a state which was struggling for existence. There had been more danger from disease than from dearth, for no sooner had the army retreated upon the lines than the military hospitals were filled, and various other public and private buildings in or near the capital, which were appropriated to the same use. The hospital stores of every kind had been consumed, or carried off by Junot’s army, and had not yet been re-supplied. Recourse was immediately had to the benevolent feelings of the people, and clothing and other things needful for the sick were liberally contributed. But during the time that the armies remained in their respective positions, the fever in the hospitals proved more destructive than the sword of the enemy. Meantime the condition of the Portugueze who remained without the lines, though within the protection of the allies, became every day more dreadful; they were not within reach of that eleemosynary distribution by which their less miserable countrymen were supported; any thing which the country could afford was only to be obtained by rescuing it from the enemy, or by marauding in those parts which were open to his ravages; and when the men of the family perished in this pursuit, or were rendered by over-exertion and disease incapable of following it, there was no other resource for the women and children and the men thus rendered helpless, than the scanty aid which the troops stationed there could bestow. The British officers at Caldas da Rainha formed a hospital for these unhappy persons, anxiety and inanition having produced a fever: in that little, but then crowded town, the average of burials was from twenty-five to thirty a day: a trench was dug, and the dead laid along the side of it, till a Priest came once a day, and with one funeral service consigned them to the common grave. Orphaned children were wandering about with none to care for them, or give them food: and frightful as the mortality was, it would have been far greater but for a distribution of soup and maize bread, made once a day by the British officers.

It was also asserted in France that the discontent of the Portugueze, under the privations which their allies compelled them to endure, was at its height; that Marshal Beresford had ordered every inhabitant to be shot without process, who did not abandon his house upon the enemy’s approach; that Trant and Silveira had been destroyed; and that not a day passed in which English deserters did not come over. Germans and Portugueze, it was said, were not accounted deserters, because they only returned to their duty in joining the army of Napoleon. Such representations obtained more credit among factious Englishmen than in France, and Massena looked with far less hope to the result of his operation than was expressed by these despondents. With that confident ignorance which always characterised their speculations, they gave him an additional army of more than 20,000 men, which was to join him under Bessieres, and they called Sebastiani from Malaga to co-operate in the united attack. “The whole effort,” said they, “will be directed against Lord Wellington: the whole force is collecting and marching to the different points of attack, with the knowledge of the allies, but without their having any means of warding off the blow. The battle must be fought at the time, and in the way we have always foretold: and he must have firm nerves who can contemplate the probable issue with composure.” “The crisis in Portugal,” said another self-constituted director of public opinion, “may now be expected daily; and then let the calumniators of Sir John Moore do justice to the memory of that injured officer, who was goaded to commit his errors, and then abused for being defeated! He had not interest enough to have his errors christened exploits, and his flight victory.” Another demagogue, after representing that it was England which caused the calamities of Portugal, and the English, whom the Portugueze ought to hate and execrate as the authors of their sufferings, asked triumphantly, “Who is there mad enough to expect that we shall be able to put the French out of the Peninsula, either by arms, or by negotiation? Where is the man, in his senses, who believes, or will say that he believes, that we shall be able to accomplish this? Suppose peace were to become the subject of discussion, does any one believe that Napoleon would enter into negotiations about Spain and Portugal? Does any one believe that we must not leave them to their fate? This is bringing the matter to the test. And if the reader is persuaded that we should not be able to stipulate for the independence of the Peninsula, the question is settled, and the result of the war is in reality ascertained!”

An immediate retreat, such as Ney advised, would have been attended with a loss of reputation, which if Massena had been willing to incur, would have been ill ♦Schemes of co-operation from the side of Andalusia.♦ brooked by Buonaparte. But in the position which the French had taken, if they could by any means subsist there, they might look for assistance from Soult, and so waiting, facilitate his operations, by occupying the chief attention of the British army. The Spaniards had nowhere displayed so little spirit as in Andalusia. The people of Cadiz, contented with the security for which they were beholden to their situation, seemed not inclined to make any effort against their besiegers; Soult, therefore, might spare a sufficient force for besieging Badajoz. His means for the siege were ample, and the place must fall unless it were relieved by an army capable of meeting the besiegers in the field; but such a force could be drawn only from the lines of Torres Vedras. If the allies were thus weakened, their position might be attacked; or should this still be thought too hazardous, the passage of the Tagus might probably be effected. This would put great part of Alemtejo in their power, and open the communication with Seville and Madrid. If, on the other hand, Badajoz were suffered to fall without an attempt at relieving it, the same advantage would follow from the advance of the victorious army. Masters of Badajoz, and the other less important fortresses, they might leave Elvas behind them; and if they could win the heights opposite Lisbon, they might from thence bombard the capital and destroy the shipping. With these views, Massena made preparations for crossing the Tagus. The British troops which were detached to the south bank, for the purpose of defeating this intention, were cantoned in the villages there, and suffered very much from ague in that low and unwholesome country. Opposite Santarem the river is sometimes fordable; and once the enemy took possession of an island, called Ilha dos Ingleses, whence they carried off a guard of the ordenanza, and some cattle. The possession of this islet might have greatly facilitated their passage, but they were speedily dislodged by a company of ♦January.♦ the 34th, which remained there for that time. To provide, however, against the possibility of their effecting this movement, and also against the advance of a force from the Alentejo frontier, measures had been taken for fortifying a line from the Tagus opposite Lisbon to Setubal; orders were issued for clearing and evacuating the country on their approach; and the inhabitants (well knowing by Loison’s campaign what atrocities were to be expected from such invaders) were required to retire within this line.

Soult and Mortier accordingly, as had been foreseen, advanced from Seville in the latter end of December. Ballasteros, with his ill-equipped and ill-disciplined, but indefatigable troops, was driven out of the field; and Mendizabal, who, with 6000 foot and 2500 Portugueze and Spanish cavalry, had advanced to Llerena, and forced Girard to retire from thence, was now himself compelled to fall back upon Almendralejo and Merida, and finally upon Badajoz, throwing 3000 men into Olivença, a place which had been of great importance in the Acclamation and Succession wars, but which it would at this time have been more prudent to dismantle than to defend. Taking immediate advantage of this error, Soult sent Girard against it with the artillery of the advanced guard. The trenches were opened on the 12th of January. The commander, Don Manuel Herk, communicated with Mendizabal on the 21st, assuring him of his determination and ability to hold out: but a division of besieging artillery had arrived; it was planted in battery that night; and in the morning as soon as it opened, Herk surrendered at discretion. Mortier then immediately invested Badajoz.

The city of Badajoz, which in the age of Moorish anarchy was sometimes the capital of a short-lived kingdom, stands on the left bank of the Guadiana, near to the spot where it receives the Gevora, and about a league from the little river Caya, which on that part of the frontier divides Spain from Portugal. Its population before the war was estimated at 16,000. Elvas is in sight, at the distance of twelve miles, standing on higher ground, and in a healthier as well as stronger situation; for endemic diseases prevail at certain seasons in the low grounds upon the Guadiana. Count La Lippe had made Elvas one of the strongest fortifications in Europe. Badajoz is a place of the third order; it has no advantage of natural strength, like its old rival; but it had been well fortified, and was protected by two strong forts, S. Christoval on the west, and Las Pardaleras on the east. The acquisition of this city was of the utmost importance to the enemy; if Massena could keep his ground till it fell, a communication would be opened for him with Andalusia; Mortier’s army would be enabled to co-operate with him and act against Abrantes; and against Lisbon itself, unless the Transtagan lines, which were in progress, should be as formidable as those of Torres Vedras: and supplies might then be drawn from Alentejo, the western part of that province being a rich corn country.

Lord Wellington had concerted his plans for the defence of this important frontier with Romana; and a position behind the Gevora had been fixed on for keeping open a communication with Badajoz. Romana’s army re-crossed the Tagus, and began their march thither; British troops were to follow, as soon as the reinforcements should arrive, which westerly winds, unusually prevalent at that season, had long delayed; ♦Jan. 23.♦ and Romana had named the following day for his own departure, when he was cut off by sudden17 death, occasioned by ossification about the heart. Due honours were paid to his remains by the Portugueze Government, as well as by the British army: his bowels were buried close to the high altar at Belem, the burial-place of the Portugueze kings, during the most splendid age of their history: his heart and body were sent to his native place, Majorca; and a monument was voted to him by the Cortes. Castaños was appointed to succeed him, and sailed from Cadiz for Lisbon accordingly; but before he could arrive, the consequences of Romana’s death had been severely felt. Under the most difficult and hopeless circumstances that noble Spaniard had still kept his army in the field, and had repeatedly annoyed the enemy and obstructed their measures, without ever exposing himself ♦Feb. 6.♦ to any considerable loss. The troops, therefore, had full confidence in him; but when Mendizabal met them at Elvas, and took the command, they had no such reliance upon their new leader. On the same day the Portugueze cavalry, under General Madden, drove the French beyond the Gevora; but being unsupported, they were driven back with some loss by General Latour Maubourg, and the whole force then entered, some into Badajoz, some into Fort Christoval. On the morrow a sortie was made, with more gallantry than good fortune, and with the loss of eighty-five officers, and 500 men killed and wounded: Don Carlos d’España was among the latter. The courage of the men in this sally was not more remarkable than the total want of arrangement in their leaders: when they had won the first battery they could not disable the guns, because they had forgotten to take spikes with them! Not discouraged by this severe loss, the troops came out on the 9th. The enemy’s cavalry retired before them across the Gevora, and they took up their intended position on the heights of S. Christoval, between the Gevora, the Caya, and the Guadiana. From thence Mendizabal communicated with Elvas and Campo Mayor, and there he fancied himself in perfect security. The position, indeed, was strong, and while it was held, Badajoz could not be taken. Lord Wellington had advised Romana to occupy it, but he had advised him to intrench it also, and the necessity of so doing had been repeatedly ♦Destruction of his army.♦ represented to Mendizabal in vain. Well understanding with what an antagonist he had to deal, Mortier would instantly have attacked him if the Gevora and Guadiana had not at this time overflowed their banks. Losing, however, no time in his operations, he carried Las Pardaleras by assault on the night of the 11th. On the 18th all things were ready for the passage of the Guadiana, and a few shells from a well-planted howitzer had the effect of making Mendizabal remove his whole army out of the protection of the fort. Thus he abandoned the main advantage of his position, and yet took no other precaution against an attack than that of destroying a bridge over the Gevora; but soldiers seldom fail to know when they are ill commanded, and Romana’s men now deserted in troops, rather than be exposed to the certain destruction which they foresaw. That very night Mortier threw a flying bridge over the Guadiana, forded the Gevora where it was waist-deep, and surprised Mendizabal on the heights. The camp was taken standing, with all the baggage and artillery: the cavalry fled, notwithstanding the efforts of their officers to rally them; 850 men were killed; more than 5000 taken; some escaped into the city; some, with better fortune, into Elvas; the rest dispersed. The loss of the French, in killed and wounded, was only 170; so cheaply was this important success obtained.

This was the first consequence of Romana’s death; far worse were to ensue. Relieved from all inquietude on that side, Mortier now pressed the siege; and yet not with that full confidence of success which the consciousness of his own strength and adequate preparations might else have given him, because he knew that the governor, Don Rafael Menacho, intended to have emulated Zaragoza in the defence which he should make. This governor was killed upon the walls by a cannon ball, when the garrison were making their last sortie to prevent the covered ♦Imaz appointed to succeed him.♦ way from being crowned. Don José de Imaz succeeded to the command: he was an officer of reputation, who had escaped with the troops from Denmark, had shared their sufferings under Blake, borne a part in their victory under the Duque del Parque, and followed their fortunes through evil and good till the present time.

In the official accounts of the French it was said that the English, according to their custom, had remained tranquil spectators of the destruction of their allies. They had, indeed, been so in the early part of the campaign, to the bitter mortification of the army and of the general, who, by the half measures of his Government, was placed in this most painful situation. The ill effects of the Walcheren expedition were felt more in the timid temporizing policy which ensued, than in the direct loss, lamentable as that had been; for the ministry having spent then where they ought to have spared, spared now where they ought to have spent. Just views, right feeling, and public opinion (which in these days is, whether right or wrong, more powerful with a British ministry than any or all other considerations) made them continue the contest; while secret apprehension of ill success, insensibly produced by the constant language of their opponents, who spoke with more than oracular confidence of defeat and total failure as the only possible event, withheld them from prosecuting it with vigour. They considered always what was the smallest force with which Lord Wellington could maintain his ground, never entrusting him with one that might render success calculable, and not yet venturing to believe that British courage would render it not less certain by land than it was by sea. Some excuse for this weak policy, which even to themselves needed excuse, they found in the prepossessions of the king, who, although upon some points of the highest importance he took clearer and juster views than the ablest of his ministers, could never in his latter days be brought to contemplate war upon the enlarged scale which the French Revolution had introduced; but looked upon an army of 20,000 men to be as great a force as it had been in the early part of his reign. Against this prepossession the ministers had always to contend while the king was capable of business; and when his fatal malady removed that impediment, Marquis Wellesley could not yet persuade his colleagues that the parsimony which protracts a war is more expensive than the liberal outlay which enables a general to prosecute it with vigour, and thereby bring it to a successful end.

Had Lord Wellington found a reinforcement of 10,000 men when he fell back upon his lines, Massena, being entirely without provisions at that time, must have retreated as precipitately as Soult had done from Porto. That they were not attacked before they took up a position for the winter, and that no operations against them were undertaken while they remained there, the French imputed either to want of enterprise, or want of skill in the British commander, undervaluing both, as much as they overrated the force at his disposal. But though they were thus unjust in their censures of Lord Wellington, the imputation which they cast upon the British Government had been to all appearance justified up to this time, except in the case of Badajoz, on which occasion it was now made. Nothing but the grossest negligence and incapacity on his own part could have exposed Mendizabal to the total discomfiture which had befallen him. After the loss of his army it was impossible for Lord Wellington to detach a force sufficient for raising the siege, while Massena continued in his position; but it was of such importance to preserve Badajoz, that the British general determined to attack him, strongly as he was posted, as soon as the long-looked for reinforcements should arrive. But the opportunity which both generals at this time desired of thus deciding the issue of the invasion was not afforded them: the winds continued to disappoint Lord Wellington in his expectations of succour; and no patience on the part of the French could enable them longer to endure the privations to which the system of their wicked Government had exposed them. They consoled themselves under those privations by thinking that no English army could have supported them; for that the sufferings which they had borne patiently would have driven Englishmen to desert. But their endurance had been forced now to its utmost extent. Reports were current, that if Massena would not engage in some decisive operations, which might deliver them from their sufferings, he should be set aside, and Ney, in whose intrepidity they had the fullest confidence, be called upon to command them. That degree of distress had been reached at which discipline itself, even in the most intelligent army, gives way; and the men, when nothing was left of which to plunder the inhabitants, began to plunder from each other, without regard of rank, the ♦Feldzug von Portugal, 30.♦ stronger from the weaker. Massena, therefore, was compelled, while it was yet possible to secure supplies for the march, to determine upon retreating to that frontier which he had passed with such boastful anticipations of triumph.