LXIII. 1810. CHAP. against their right, about three miles distant. The former, headed by Loison's division, preceded by a cloud of light troops, came rapidly up the wooded hollow which leads to Busaco, and the British sharpshooters, driven before them, soon emerged from the woods, breathless and in disorder. Crauford, whose division stood at that point, had stationed his artillery most advantageously to play upon the enemy during their ascent from the hollow; but though the guns were worked with extraordinary rapidity, nothing could stop the undaunted advance of the French troops. Emerging bravely from the hollow, they soon reached the crest of the mountain. The British artillery was quickly drawn to the rear. The shout of victory was already heard from the French line, when suddenly Crauford, with the 43d and 52d regiments, springing out of a hollow behind the highest part of the ridge, where they lay concealed, appeared on the summit, and eighteen hundred British bayonets sparkled on the crest of the hill. The head of the French column instantly fired, but in vain. It was broken and driven. Wel. Desp. back. Both its flanks were overlapped by the English line, and three terrible discharges, within a few yards' distance, drove them headlong down, in wild confusion, with dreadful loss, to the bottom of the hollow.1 1 Vict. et Conq. xx. 83, 87. Nap. iii. 331, 333. 30th Sept. 1810. Gurw. vi. 446, 447. 69. French. The attack on the British right by the two divisions of Bloody de- Reynier's corps, met with no better success. The ground in that quarter was indeed of comparatively easy ascent; and although the British and Portuguese skirmishers opposed a vigorous resistance, and eight pieces of cannon played incessantly on the advancing column, yet nothing could arrest the ardour and gallantry of the French, who mounted with an intrepid step up the hill, and after routing a Portuguese regiment stationed before them, established themselves on the summit, and were beginning to deploy to the right and left. The British position in this point appeared to be carried, and the third division, part of which had been forced to give way, could with CHAP. 1810. difficulty maintain itself against the dense and victorious column which, wheeling to the right, and moving swiftly along the summit of the ridge, had forced itself into the centre of the line. General Leith and General Picton, seeing the danger, brought up their divisions, and the 45th and 88th regiments charged the enemy with such vigour that, after a desperate struggle, they were hurled down the hill, the British firing upon them as long as their muskets would carry, but not pursuing, lest their ranks should be broken, and the crest of the hill be again won. The other French division of Reynier's corps, which advanced up a hollow way, a little to the left of his main column, was repulsed by the left of Leith's division, before they reached the summit of the mountain. After these bloody defeats, the French made no attempt again to carry the top of the ridge, though Loison and Marchand maintained a long and obstinate conflict in the hollows at its foot; but their efforts were effectually held in check by the brigades of Pack and Spencer. At length, towards evening, Massena, wearied Nap. iii. of the fruitless butchery, drew off his troops, after 329, 334. having sustained a loss of eighteen hundred killed and 446, 450. three thousand wounded, including among the latter Cong. xx. Generals Foy and Merle, while the total loss of the Belm.i. 131. allies was not above thirteen hundred men.1 1 Gurw. vi. Vict. et 82, 87. results of The battle of Busaco produced an astonishing effect at 70. the time at which it was fought; and, in its ultimate con- Important sequences, was beyond all question one of the most this battle. important that took place in the whole Peninsular war. It for the first time brought the Portuguese troops into battle with the French, and under such advantageous circumstances as at once gave them a victory. Incalculable was the moral effect of this glorious triumph. To have stood side by side with the British soldiers in a pitched battle, and shared with them in the achievement of defeating the French, was a distinction which they could hardly have hoped to attain so early in the campaign. LXIII. 1810. CHAP. Wellington judiciously bestowed the highest praises upon their conduct in this battle, and declared in his public despatch, "that they were worthy of contending in the same ranks with the British soldiers in this interesting cause, which they afford the best hopes of saving." It may safely be affirmed that, on the day after the battle, the strength of the Portuguese troops was doubled. The sight of this auspicious change dispelled every desponding feeling from the British army. No presentiments of ultimate discomfiture were any longer entertained. The plan of defence which the far-seeing sagacity of their chief had formed, revealed itself to the meanest sentinel in the ranks; and the troops of both nations prepared to 1 Wel. Desp. follow the standard of their chief wherever he should 30th Sept. lead them, with that ready alacrity and undoubting confidence which is at once the forerunner and the cause of ultimate triumph.1 1810. Gurw. iv. 446, 449. 71. Massena turns the Wellington has since declared, that he expected that the battle of Busaco would have stopped the advance of British left. Massena into Portugal; and that, if the French general had been governed by the principles of the military art, he would have halted and retired after that check; and the English general wrote to Romana immediately after the battle, that he had no doubt whatever of the success Wellington of the campaign.2 But fortunately for England and the cause of European freedom, Massena was forced on by 1810, that necessity of advancing in the hazardous pursuit of 450; and 3d doubtful success which afterwards drove Napoleon to Gurw. vi. Moscow, and is at last the consequence and the punish to Romana, 30th Sept. Gurw. vi. Nov. 1810, 552. Sept. 28. ment, both in civil and military affairs, of revolutionary aggression. Impelled by this necessity, the French marshal, finding that he could not carry the English position by attack in front, resolved to turn it by a flank movement; and accordingly, on the following day, he moved on his own right, through a pass in the mountains which led to Sardao, and brought him on the great road from Oporto to Coimbra and Lisbon. To attempt such CHAP. 1810. a flank movement with an army that had sustained so severe and bloody a check, in presence of a brave and enterprising enemy, was a hazardous undertaking; but the French general had no alternative but to run the risk, or remeasure his steps to the Spanish frontier. Wellington, from the summit of the Busaco ridge, clearly perceived the French troops defiling in that direction on the evening of the 28th; but he wisely resolved not to disturb the operation. By attacking the French army when in march, he might bring the Portuguese levies into action under less favourable circumstances than those in which they had recently fought, and which might weaken or destroy the moral influence of the victory just achieved. His policy now was to leave nothing to chance. Behind him were the lines of Torres Vedras, now completely finished, and mounted 552. Belm. with six hundred guns; against which he was well iii. 432. convinced all the waves of French conquest would beat 336, 340. in vain.1 1 Gurw. vi. i. 132. Jom. Nap. iii. Torres Accordingly he immediately gave orders for the army 72. to retire to their stronghold. The troops broke up from Wellington their position at Busaco on the 30th, and driving the retires to whole population of the country within their reach before Vedras. them, retired rapidly by Coimbra and Leyria, to Torres Vedras, which the advanced guard reached on the 8th October; and the whole army was collected within the lines on the 15th. The French followed more slowly, and in very disorderly array; while Trant, with the Portuguese militia, came up so rapidly on their rear, that on the 7th of October he made himself master of 30th Sept. Coimbra, with above five thousand men, principally sick Gurw. vi. and wounded, who had been left there. This disaster, and Mem. however, made no change in the dispositions of the vii. 297. Nap. iii. French marshal. Pressing resolutely forward, without 336, 351. any regard either to magazines, of which he had none, or 432, 433. to his communications in the rear, which were entirely 132, 133. cut off by the Portuguese militia,2 he marched headlong 2 Wel. Desp. 1810, 448, 450; Jom. iii. Belm. i. CHAP. 1810. 73. Torres Vedras. Atlas, Plate 64. on, and arrived in the middle of October in sight of the lines of Torres Vedras, of which, strange to say, he had never before heard, but which now rose in appalling strength to bar his farther progress towards the Portuguese capital. The lines of Torres Vedras, on which the British Description engineers had previously been engaged for above a of the lines twelvemonth, and which have acquired immortal celebrity from being the position before which the desolating torrent of French conquest was first permanently arrested, consisted of three distinct ranges of defence, one within another, which formed so many intrenched positions, each of which required to be successively forced before the invading army could reach Lisbon. The first, which was twenty-nine miles long, extended from Alhandra on the Tagus to Zezambre on the sea-coast. The second, in general about eight miles in the rear of the first, stretched from Quintella on the Tagus, to the mouth of the St Lorenza on the sea. The third extended from Passo d'Arcos on the Tagus, to the Tower of Janqueira on the coast. Within this interior line was an intrenched camp designed to protect the embarkation of the troops, if that extremity should become necessary, and it rested on Fort St Julian, whose high ramparts and deep ditches rendered any attempt at escalade impracticable; so that, in the event of disaster, the most ample means were provided for bringing away the troops in safety. Of these lines, the second was incomparably the strongest, and it was there that Wellington had originally intended to make his stand, the first being meant rather to retard the advance of the enemy and take off the first edge of his attack, than to be the permanent resting-place of the allied forces. But the long delay of Massena at the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, had given so much time to the English engineers, that the first line was completed, and deemed susceptible of defence, when the French arrived before it. It consisted of thirty redoubts placed on a |