and constantly closing again, after the array had been broken by trees or houses in the line of its advance, strongly impressed the French soldiers, most of whom, like the British, were that day to make their first essay in real warfare against an antagonist worthy of their arms. CHAP. LIV. 1808. 62. No sooner, however, was Laborde made aware of the risk he ran, if he remained in his present situation, of being outflanked on either side, than he fell swiftly back, Combat of in admirable order, and took up a second position much Roliça. stronger than the former, in a little plain projecting into the valley higher up in the gorge of the pass, and shut in by close rocky thickets on either side. Thither he was rapidly pursued by the British-the right, centre, and left still moving in the same order. Never in the whole progress of the Peninsular campaigns did war appear in a more picturesque and animating form than in the first engagement of the British soldiers. The loud shouts of the advancing columns, re-echoed by the surrounding hills and answered by as confident cheers from the enemy; the sharp rattle of the musketry among the woods, which marked the advance of the assailants as they drove before them the French light troops; the curling wreaths of smoke which rose above the foliage, and were wafted by the morning air up the sides of the mountains, amidst the rays of a resplendent sun, formed a scene which resembled rather the mimic warfare of the opera stage, than the opening of the most desperate and sanguinary strife recorded in modern times. Such was the impetuosity of the attack, that the leading troops of the centre column, particularly the 29th regiment, forced their way through the gorge, and alone sustained the brunt of the enemy's fire before any of their comrades could come up to their assistance. But the severity of Camp. de the concentric discharges, not merely from the line in Portugal, front, but from the woods on either flank, was so great, Gurw. iv. that this gallant regiment, on first emerging into the little 81, 84. plain, wavered and broke, and their noble colonel, Lake, 137. as he waved his hat to lead them back to the charge, was killed.1 At that critical moment, however, the 5th and 9th came up, the 29th rallied, and the whole rushed for 1 Thieb. 173, 178. Lond. i. 130, LIV. 1808. 63. Victory of CHAP. ward with irresistible impetuosity upon the enemy. The French were obliged to give ground; the position was carried before it was menaced by the flank columns getting into its rear. Even then the enemy retired the British. slowly and in compact order, keeping up a continued fire from the rearguard, and exhibiting, equally with the advance of the assailants, the finest specimen of discipline and steadiness amidst all the confusion incident to a retreat over broken ground and through entangled thickets. In this brilliant affair the British lost five hundred men killed and wounded; the French six hundred, and three pieces of cannon: and as the former, though nearly triple the enemy upon the whole, were necessarily, from the narrow and rugged character of the ground, inferior, in the first instance at least, at all the points of attack, it was hard to say to which of these two gallant nations the palm of courage and skill in this their first encounter in the Peninsula was to be awarded.* 66 "Caedes prope par utrinque fuit. . . . . . Нос Nap. i. 202, principium simul omenque belli, ut summae rerum prosperum eventum, ita haud sane incruentam ancipitisque certaminis victoriam Romanis portendit."1+ 1 Foy, iv. 304, 315. Thieb. 174, 172. Gurw. iv. 81, 84. 205. Lond. i. 130, 137. 64. The British advance to Vimeira. On the following morning orders were, in the first instance, issued for the continuance of the pursuit; and it was universally believed in the army that the enemy would be pursued, at the point of the bayonet, to the Rock of Lisbon. But at noon accounts arrived at headquarters of the arrival of Generals Anstruther and Ack * In this, as in all the other actions of the war, the estimate of the numbers engaged is taken from a medium of the accounts on both sides; keeping in view the credit due to the different narratives, and the maxim testimonia ponderanda sunt potius quam numeranda. In this affair Sir Arthur estimates the French at 6000 men, Thiebault at 1900, Foy at 2500, Toreno at 5000, Thibaudeau at 3500.-See THIEB. 179; GURW. iv. 81; Foy, iv. 314; TOR. ii. 46; THIB. vi. 464. With the utmost wish to maintain an impartial view, and the greatest anxiety to avoid the influence of undue national partiality, it is impossible to study the French accounts of the actions in the Peninsular war, and particularly the numbers engaged and lost on the opposite sides, without feeling as great distrust of the fidelity of their facts, as admiration for the brilliancy of their descriptions and the talent of their observations; and arriving at the conclusion, that the two rival races of modern Europe have here, as elsewhere, preserved their never-failing characteristics; and that, if the palm for the eagle glance and the scientific reflection is frequently to be awarded to the writers of the Celtic, the credit to honest and trustworthy narrative is in general due to the historians of the Gothic race. "The loss was nearly equal on both sides. This first and portentous engagement in the war presaged ultimate success, but was not less ominous of the desperate and sanguinary strife by which it was to be attained."-LIVY, book xxi. c. 29. CHAP. LIV. 1808. land, with their respective brigades from England, off the coast; and, at the same time, that Junot had marched with all his disposable force out of Lisbon to bring matters to the issue of a decisive battle. Orders were, therefore, given to suspend the pursuit, and the line of march was directed by Lourinha to VIMEIRA, where headquarters were established on the 19th, in order to be near the sea-coast to take advantage of the reinforcements which were at hand. On the other hand, Junot, having Aug. 19. by great exertion collected all his disposable force and formed a junction at Torres Vedras with the retiring division of Laborde, found himself at the head of only fourteen thousand men—including, however, twelve hundred horse and six-and-twenty pieces of cannon: heavily had the necessity of occupying many different points in a hostile country weighed upon and divided the twenty-five thousand which still remained at his disposal. On the 19th, General Anstruther's brigade was landed, and on the 20th General Ackland's; and these reinforce- Aug. 20. ments raised the English army to sixteen thousand fighting men, besides Trant's Portuguese and two regiments which were with Sir Charles Cotton off the Tagus. It had, 1 Gurw. iv. 89, 93. however, only eighteen guns and a hundred and eighty Lond. i. 137. horse British, and two hundred Portuguese horse; so that Foy, iv. 319, the superiority of infantry was nearly counterbalanced by 183, 190. the advantage of the enemy in the other arms of war.1 SO 320. Thieb. 65. are overruled Burrard. Accurately informed of the nature of the country through which he was to advance, Sir Arthur proposed, on the 21st, to turn the strong position of Torres Vedras Sir A. Weland gain Mafra with a powerful advanced guard; while lesley's plans the main body was to move forward and seize the adjoin- by Sir H. ing heights, so as to intercept the French line of retreat by Montachique to Lisbon. But Sir Harry Burrard, Sir Arthur's superior in command, who had now arrived off the coast, forbade any such hazardous operation, as 89, 93. Sir endangering unnecessarily part of the army, when the A. Wellesforce already in hand, and still more the powerful rein- ley's Evid forcement approaching under Sir John Moore, rendered Lond. i. 137, ultimate success a matter of certainty without incurring 207, 209. any such risk. The troops, therefore, were concentrated Foy, iv. 319, at Vimeira, and every arrangement made for a decisive 183, 195. battle on the morrow ;2 while Junot, having mustered 2 Gurw. iv. Ibid. iv. 181. 142. Nap. i. 323. Thieb. CHAP. 1808. 66. of the field of battle of Vimeira. every man he could collect at Torres Vedras, set out soon after nightfall, and advanced, through tedious and difficult defiles, to within a league and a half of the British outposts, where he arrived by seven o'clock on the following morning.* The ground occupied by the British in front of Vimeira, though not clearly defined as a military position, was yet Description of considerable strength. The village of that name stands in a beautiful valley, running in a north-westerly direction from the interior towards the Atlantic, with the clear stream of the Maceira glittering over a pebbly bottom in its bosom, at the distance of about three miles from the sea. Hills rise on either side, especially on the northern, where a range of abrupt heights overhang the little plain. Over the summit of these runs the great road from Lisbon, through the hamlets of Fontaneil and Ventoza to Lourinha; while on the south-east is a kind of high table-land, covered in the ravines with myrtle, in the open part bare, over which the approach from Torres Vedras passes. A still loftier mass of heights overlooks these in the rear, and lies between them and the sea.1 On this rugged ground the British army Aug. 20. Thieb. 192. Gurw. iv. 93, 94. *The road by which Sir Arthur proposed to have advanced from Vimeira to Mafra was near the sea-coast; that by which Junot actually came up from Torres Vedras to Vimeira was farther in the interior, but nearly parallel to the former. If, therefore, the design of the English general had been followed out, it would have brought the two armies into a position similar to that of the French and Prussians at Jena; they would have mutually turned and crossed each other in their march, and when they came to blows, Junot would have fought with his back to Oporto and his face to Lisbon, and Wellington with his back to Lisbon and his face to Oporto. But there would have been this essential distinction between the situation of the two armies, after having thus mutually passed each other that Junot, cut off from all his reserves and supplies at Lisbon, would have been driven, in case of disaster, to a ruinous retreat through the insurgent and hostile mountains of the north of Portugal; whereas Wellington, backed by the sea, and having his fleet, containing powerful reinforcements, to fall back upon, would have fought in a comparatively advantageous position. There can be little doubt that, in these circumstances, defeat to Junot would have been attended with decisive consequences, and that Wellington was pursuing the plan of an able commander in throwing himself in this manner upon his enemy's line of communication without compromising his own; the great object and most decisive stroke which can be dealt out in war. At the same time it is not surprising that Sir Harry Burrard, who came in on the broadside of the affair, and could not be supposed to appreciate, so clearly as the commander actually engaged, the vital importance of not delaying an hour the proposed night-march between the sea and the hills, should have declined to plunge at once into so perilous an operation. His real error consisted in interfering at all with an important and delicate military operation, at a time when it was on the eve of execution by an able and experienced general; and the chief fault lay with the government in subjecting the army, at such a critical time, to the successive command of three different generals, who could not be supposed properly to enter into, or thoroughly understand, the operations in the course of execution at the time when they successively assumed the direction. LIV. lay in bivouac on the night of the 20th, the village of CHAP. Vimeira being occupied by a strong detachment, and a few pickets stationed on the heights towards Torres Vedras, to give warning of the arrival of the enemy. 1808. 67. The first information of their approach was obtained at midnight, when a horseman in haste rode up to Sir Arthur with the account that Junot's whole army, said Positions taken up by to be twenty thousand strong, was approaching. Shortly the two before sunrise a cloud of dust was seen to arise in the armies. direction of the road leading from Torres Vedras to Lourinha-column after column were soon after discerned, through the morning dawn, to cross the sky-line of the opposite eminences, and it was evident that the French were bearing down in great force on the British left. After they descended from the heights on the opposite side, however, the direction of their march could no longer be distinctly traced, and the advanced guards were upon the English videttes almost as soon as they were perceived. But Sir Arthur, concluding from the line of the road on which they were moving, that the left was the principal object of attack, had meanwhile ordered four brigades successively to cross the valley from the heights on the south to those on the north of the stream, and before the action began that part of the line was secure. Observing the rapid concentration of troops on the English left, the French accumulated their forces on their own right. General Laborde commanded a column, six thousand strong, which advanced against the centre; while Brennier, with his division of five thousand, moved against the left of the British; and the reserve under Kellerman, with the cavalry led by Margaron, in all about three thousand men, was ready to support any point where their aid might be required. Generals Ferguson, Nightingale, and Bower commanded the English 140,142. left. Ackland united the left to the centre, which, Nap. i. 208, strongly grouped together in the valley in front of Vi- iv. 324, 333. meira, was formed of the brigades of Anstruther and Thieb. 192, Fane; while, on the right, Hill's brigade, in a massy iv. 93, 94. column, rested on the summit of the heights which formed the southern boundary of the valley.1 The action began with the head of Laborde's column, which, advancing with the utmost impetuosity against VOL. XII. H 1 Lond. i. 212. Foy, 194. Gurw. |