Читать книгу English Battles and Sieges in the Peninsula - William Francis Patrick Napier - Страница 9

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Before eight o’clock on the morning of the 12th the British army was secretly concentrated behind a rocky height, on which stood a convent immediately facing Oporto. The Douro rolled in front, and the French on the other side could with two marches gain the Tamega, secure their retreat, and defeat Beresford in passing; for that general had been sent over the Douro, above the confluence of the Tamega, merely to infest Soult’s line of march towards the Salamanca country, and thus induce him to take the rugged Chaves road leading to Gallicia, and that could not be risked unless the main army under Sir Arthur was closely pressing the French rear; hence his safety, and the forcing Soult into Gallicia, alike called for an immediate passage of the Douro. Yet how pass a river, deep, swift, more than three hundred yards wide, and in the face of ten thousand veterans guarding the opposite bank? The Macedonian hero might have turned from it without shame.

The stream came with an elbow round the convent height, which barred sight of the upper water from the place where Soult was watching for ships which did not exist; and he knew not that the British army was behind the frowning rock above, nor that a great captain was on its summit, searching with an eagle glance the river, the city, and the country around. Horses and baggage that captain saw on the Vallonga road, and the dust of distant columns as in retreat, but no large force near the river; the guards also were few and widely spread, the patrols not vigilant—an auspicious negligence seeming to prevail. Suddenly a large unfinished building called the Seminary caught his eye; it was isolated, had an easy access from the water, and was surrounded by a high wall which extended to the river bank on each side, inclosing space enough for two battalions, the only egress being an iron gate opening on the Vallonga road. This structure commanded everything around, except one mound, within cannon-shot, but too pointed to hold guns; there were no French posts near the building, and as the direct line across the water was entirely hidden from the city by the rock, Sir Arthur, with a marvellous hardihood, instantly resolved to force a passage there in face of a veteran army and a renowned general, his means being as scanty as his resolution was great, yet with his genius they sufficed.

Colonel Waters, an officer on his staff, a quick-witted, daring man, discovered a poor barber, who had come over the river the night before in a small skiff and readily agreed to go back; he was accompanied by the Prior of Amarante, who gallantly offered his services: thus Waters crossed unperceived and returned with three large barges. Meanwhile eighteen guns had been placed in battery on the convent rock, and General John Murray was detached with a brigade of German infantry, the 14th Dragoons, and two guns, to seek a passage at the Barca de Avintas, three miles up the river: he was reinforced with other troops when the barges were secured, and then also the head of the army cautiously approached the water.

At 10 o’clock, the French being tranquil and unsuspicious, the British wondering and expectant, Sir Arthur was told that one boat was ready. Well! Let the men cross was the reply, and a quarter of an hour afterwards an officer and twenty-five British soldiers were silently placed on the other side of the Douro in the midst of the French army! The Seminary was thus gained, all remained quiet, and a second boat passed. No hostile stir succeeded, no sound of war was heard; but when the third boat passed, tumultuous noises rolled through Oporto, the drums beat to arms, shouts arose, the citizens, vehemently gesticulating, made signals from their houses, and confused masses of troops rushing out from the higher streets threw forward swarms of skirmishers, and came furiously down on the Seminary.

Secrecy was then no longer valuable and the army crowded to the river bank. Paget’s and Hill’s divisions pressed to the point of passage, Sherbrooke’s to where the bridge had been cut away the night before. Paget himself passed with the third boat, but on the roof of the Seminary was deeply wounded. Hill took his place, and the musketry, sharp and voluble from the first, augmented as the forces accumulated on each side; yet the French attack was eager and constant, their fire increased more rapidly than that of the English, and their guns soon opened against the building. The English battery on the convent rock swept the inclosure on each side and confined the attack to the front; but Murray did not come down the right bank, and the struggle was such that Sir Arthur was only restrained from crossing by the remonstrances of those about him, and the confidence he had in Hill. Soon, however, some citizens were seen bringing over several great boats to Sherbrooke, while a prolonged shout from the streets, and the waving of handkerchiefs from the windows, gave notice that the enemy had abandoned the lower town: Murray also was then descried on the right bank.

Three battalions were now in the Seminary, the attack slackened, and the French began to hurry across the front of the inclosure by the Vallonga road, and Hill, advancing to the inclosure wall, was pouring a heavy fire into the disordered masses as they passed his front, when suddenly five guns galloped out of the city on his left, but appalled at the terrible stream of musketry pulled up: while thus hesitating a volley from behind stretched most of the artillerymen in the dust, and the rest dispersing left the guns on the road. It was from Sherbrooke, who had passed through the streets, this volley came, and he now pressed the French rear while Hill sent his damaging fire into their flank, and the guns from the rock deeply searched their masses. The passage was thus won, the allies were on the right bank of the Douro, and if Murray had fallen on the disordered crowd, approaching him, the discomfiture would have been complete. He however suffered column after column to pass, and seemed to fear they would step aside to push him into the river. General C. Stewart and Major Harvey, impatient of this timidity, took two squadrons of the 14th Dragoons, and riding over the French rear in a narrow way unhorsed General Laborde and wounded General Foy; but having no support from Murray fought their way back with loss, and Harvey lost his arm. Of the English twenty were killed, one general and nearly a hundred men wounded on the day; the French lost a general and five hundred men killed or wounded, and they left several hundreds in hospital. Five guns were taken in the fight; and stores of ammunition with fifty pieces of artillery, the carriages of which had been burned, were found in the arsenal. The overthrow was great, but Napoleon’s veterans were so inured to war that no troops so readily recovered from a surprise. Before they reached Vallonga their order was restored, a rear-guard was formed, and in the night was rejoined by a detachment from the mouth of the Douro, which had been guided by some friendly Portuguese: then Soult, believing Loison held Amarante, thought himself well out of his difficulties. He was soon undeceived.

Sir Arthur Wellesley now brought his baggage, stores, and artillery over the Douro; but this was not effected until the evening of the 13th, and though Murray’s Germans were sent in pursuit on the morning of that day, they did not advance more than ten miles. “An enemy once surprised should never be allowed time to recover,” is a great maxim, and so proved on this occasion: yet there were sound reasons for the halt. Part of the troops were still on the left bank of the Douro, and the whole had outmarched provisions, baggage and spare ammunition, having made more than eighty miles of rough ground in four days, besides fighting. Men and animals required rest, and nothing was known of Beresford, whose proceedings had been of far greater importance than either he or Sir Arthur knew at the time.7

Loison had fallen back from Pezo de Ragoa on the Douro the 10th when Beresford crossed that river. The latter was then in the position required for turning Soult on to the Chaves road; but Loison again retreated on the 11th, and Beresford, finding him timid, followed briskly, while a Portuguese insurgent force under General Sylveira closed on his flank. The 12th his outposts were driven into Amarante, and next day he abandoned that place.

These events were unknown to Sir Arthur on the 13th, but he heard Soult had destroyed guns and ammunition near Penafiel, and judging that to be a result of Beresford’s operations, reinforced Murray with cavalry, ordering him to push on to Penafiel, and if Loison lingered near Amarante to open a communication with Beresford—the latter was then to ascend the Tamega and intercept the French at Chaves.

On the 14th Sir Arthur had moved forward himself, and the 15th reached Braga; Beresford was then near Chaves, Sylveira marching towards Salamonde, and Soult’s capture seemed inevitable to his pursuers; he was however beyond their toils, having by a surprising effort extricated himself from perils as fearful as ever beset a general.

While retreating towards Amarante he was between the Douro and the Sierra de Catalina, both said to be impassable, and the road was very narrow and very rugged. His design was to pass the Tamega and march on Braganza; failing in that, he could from Amarante and Guimaraens reach Braga by a good road leading behind the Catalina ridge; in either case however Amarante was to be first gained, and his safety depended on Loison holding that place. But that general had relinquished it to Beresford on the 13th, and marched on Guimaraens, though a staff officer, sent by Soult on the 12th, was in his camp protesting against the movement: the retreat from Oporto being also known to him. He thus deliberately abandoned his general and two-thirds of the army to what appeared certain destruction; for Beresford could not be forced, and if Murray only had come up on the French rear, and he was not far off, Soult must have laid down his arms.

This calamity was made known to that marshal as he was passing the rugged bed of the Souza, a cross torrent falling into the Douro. The weather was boisterous, the troops worn with fatigue and recently defeated were dismayed, voices were heard calling for capitulation, and all things tended to ruin: but in that hour of peril the Duke of Dalmatia justified fortune for having raised him to such dignity. He had fallen from his horse and severely injured his hip, broken before by a shot at the siege of Genoa, yet neither pain nor bodily weakness nor danger could abate his resolution. A Spanish pedlar told him of a path leading up that bank of the Souza which he had just left, by which he could scale the Catalina ridge and reach the Guimaraens road to Braga: whereupon, with a haughty commandment he silenced the murmurs of treacherous officers and fearful soldiers, destroyed his guns, abandoned his military chest and baggage, loaded the animals which had carried them with sick men and ammunition, and repassed the Souza to follow his Spanish guide. Torrents of rain descended and the path was wild and rough as the desolate region it threaded, yet with a fierce domination he forced his troops over the mountain, and descending on Guimaraens, refound Loison: Lorge’s dragoons came in at the same time from Braga, and thus almost beyond hope the whole army was concentrated.

Soult’s energy had been great, his sagacity was now as conspicuous. The slackness of pursuit, after passing Vallonga, made him judge Sir Arthur was pushing for Braga and would reach it first; a fighting retreat and the loss of guns and baggage would then ensue, and perhaps fatally depress the soldiers’ spirit; it would also favour the malcontents, and already one general, apparently Loison, was urging a convention. Soult replied by destroying the guns, ammunition, and baggage of the divisions he found at Guimaraens, and again taking to the mountains crossed them to Carvalho d’Este, thus gaining a day’s march and baffling the combination to surround him. Next morning he drew up his twenty thousand men on the position they had occupied two months before at the battle of Braga, an imposing spectacle, and on the scene of a recent victory, by which he aroused the sinking pride of the French soldier. It was a happy reach of generalship!

Now he reorganized his army, giving Loison the advanced guard and taking the rear himself; at which, says the French historian of this expedition, “the whole army was astonished.” As if it were not consummate policy to oppose the British pursuit with men under the General-in-Chief, while the van, having to fight insurgents, was led by an officer whose very name called forth execrations from the natives—Maneta, the one-handed, as Loison was called, however willing, dared not surrender to a Portuguese force.

From Carvalho the French made for Salamonde, whence there were two lines of retreat; the one by Ruivaens to Chaves, the other, shorter and more rugged, by the Ponte Nova to Montelegre. The scouts said the bridge at Ruivaens was broken, the passage defended by twelve hundred insurgents with artillery; moreover, that men had been all the morning working to destroy the Ponte Nova. The breaking of the first blocked the road to Chaves, the breaking of the second would, if completed, cut the army off from Montelegre.

Night was setting in, the soldiers were harassed, barefooted, and starving, the ammunition was injured by rain, which had never ceased since the 13th, and was now accompanied by storms of wind, with the morning the British army would be on the rear, and if the Ponte Nova could not be secured the hour of surrender was come! In this extremity, Major Dulong, justly reputed as one of the most daring men in the French ranks, was thus addressed by Soult: “I have chosen you from the whole army to seize the Ponte Nova, which has been cut by the enemy. Take a hundred grenadiers and twenty-five horsemen, surprise the guards and secure the passage. If you succeed, say so, but send no other report; your silence will suffice.”

Dulong, favoured by the storm, reached the bridge, killed the sentinel without any alarm being given, and being followed by twelve grenadiers, crawled along a narrow slip of masonry which had not been destroyed. The Cavado river was flooded and roaring in its deep rocky channel below, and one of the grenadiers fell into the gulf, but the waters were much louder than his cry, and the others surprised the nearest guards; then the main body rushed on, and some crossing the broken bridge while others ascended the heights, shouting and firing, scared the insurgents away.

At four o’clock the bridge was repaired and the troops filed slowly over; but the road beyond was only a narrow cut in the side of a mountain, an unfenced precipice yawned on the left for several miles, and the way was finally crossed by the Misarella torrent, rolling in a deep chasm and only to be passed by the Saltador or leaper, a bridge so called because it was a single arch, high and boldly thrown, which admitted only three persons abreast: it was not cut, but was intrenched, and the rocks on the further side were occupied by some hundred armed insurgents. Here the good soldier Dulong again saved the army. For when two assaults had been repulsed he won the passage with a third, in which he fell deeply wounded; yet his admiring soldiers carried him forward in their arms, and then the head of the long French column poured over the Saltador. It was full time, for the English guns were thundering on the rear and the restored Ponte Nova was choked with the dead.

Sir Arthur Wellesley, quitting Braga in the morning of the 16th, overtook Soult’s rear-guard in the evening, at Salamonde, before it could cross the Ponte Nova; it was in a strong position, but men momentarily expecting an order to retire seldom stand firmly. Some light troops turned their left, Sherbrooke assailed their front, and after one discharge they fled by their right to the Ponte Nova. It was dusk, the way to the bridge was not that of apparent retreat, and for a while the French were lost to view; they thus gained time to form a rear-guard, but ere their cavalry could pass the bridge the English guns opened, sending men and horses crushed together into the gulf, and the bridge and the rocks and the defile beyond were strewed with mangled carcasses.

This was the last infliction by the sword in a retreat signalized by many horrid and many glorious actions; for the peasants in their fury tortured and mutilated the sick and straggling soldiers who fell into their hands, the troops in revenge shot the peasants, and the marches could be traced from afar by the smoke of burning houses.