Battle of Almeida

“ Of this danger he was well aware, but judged it worth risking, in view of the importance of holding the best possible position for covering the siege of Almeida. No battle-ground that was ever chosen is destitute of some fault. ”

“ Mir Hussain, Admiral of the Gran Soldan of Egypt and commander in chief of the Mohammedan fleet in this battle, anchored his main force of more than a hundred ships in the mouth of the channel between the island of Diu and the mainland, designing to fall back before the Portuguese attack towards the island, where he could secure the aid of shore batteries and a swarm of 300 or more foists and other small craft in the harbor. Almeida had only 19 ships and 1300 men, but against his vigorous attack the flimsy vessels of the east were of little value. ”

“ Massena having taken the field again, with the object of raising the blockade of Almeida, then closely invested by Lord Wellington, the British commander, determined that this important fortress should not be relieved, resolved, even on unfavourable ground and with an inferior force, to risk a battle.
The river Côa flows past Almeida, its banks are dangerous and steep, and its points of passage few. Beside the bridge of the city, there is a second, seven miles up the stream, at Castello Bom; and a third, twenty miles farther still, at Sabugal. To fight with the river in his rear was hazardous ”

“ Constantly at its head, encouraging and directing it, he was within sight of every man in his division.
Masséna having laid waste the country in his retreat, the pursuit had to be relaxed on account of the difficulty of obtaining provisions. By 5 April 1811 the whole of Portugal, with the exception of Almeida, had been freed from French troops at the point of the bayonet, and the allied army invested Almeida. On 2 May Masséna advanced on Almeida. The battle of Fuentes d'Onoro followed on the 5th, when the principal share in the fighting once more fell to Picton's division. ”

“ Brennier, the governor of Almeida, then despairing of relief, blew up the fortifications of the place, made his way, with little loss, through the British lines, and rejoined Masséna. Ciudad Rodrigo was next blockaded, but the French easily introduced convoys, and the blockade was abandoned. Little progress was made in the south. Some smaller places Marshal Beresford recovered; but he had scarcely invested Badajoz when the approach of Soult, with a powerful army, obliged him to raise the siege. He fought a battle at Albuera on the 16th of May. ”

“ It was employed in the investment of Almeida, and in the operations against Marshal Marmont, on his advance to the relief of Ciudad Rodrigo in January 1812. At the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo it bore a distinguished part. It marched to the siege of Badajos, and was in active operations against the enemy on his advance to the Tagus, and subsequent retreat from Portugal. It moved in the advanced guard on the march of the allies to Salamanca and the Douro. It suffered severely in the battle of Salamanca on the 22d of July 1812. ”

“ But, not realizing the fearful strength that lay behind the French cavalry advance, he resolved to treat himself to a rearguard action, and not to [p. 260] go till he was pushed. On a survey of the ground it is easy to understand the temptation, for it would be hard to find a prettier battlefield for a detaining force, if only the enemy were in no more than moderate strength. A long double-headed spur runs down from the high plateau on which Almeida stands to the Coa. ”

“ Too great confidence, either in the allied strength or the weakness of the garrison, most probably led him to adopt an imperfect system of blockade, which led to mortifying results. His dispositions were entirely erroneous. It is true that the right face of Almeida was vigilantly watched—but there, no movements could have been made with any prospect of succeeding—while the left unfortunately, was overlooked—and the banks of the Aqueda and bridge of Barba del Puerco, on the direct route to the French outposts, were left unguarded. ”

“ It was not till the following autumn that a proper siege-train was organized for the Anglo-Portuguese army. Almeida could only be attacked by the weapon of famine; Badajoz, which was beleaguered at the same time, had to be battered with a few guns borrowed from the ramparts of the neighbouring fortress of Elvas. The British army had now been two years in Portugal, yet Wellington still lacked the materials for conducting the smallest offensive operation against strongholds in the hands of the French. ”

“ Almeida was at that time garrisoned by some Portuguese troops commanded by an English officer. The French had invested it, but Lord Wellington expected that it would have been able to baffle the enemy until the commencement of the rainy season, and would thus retard the enemy's movements. Almeida was a town of very great strength, but Massena opened fire on it about the 23rd of August, and it was obliged to capitulate as soon afterwards as the 27th, a magazine containing most of the ammunition having blown up, taking with it great part of the town and the fortifications ”

“ Had Badajos held out some time longer this diversion might have been of some consequence, as Ciudad Rodrigo would have been much distressed for provisions, and Almeida not in the safest state of defence. As it is, all he has got has been his trouble for his pains, great sufferings to his army, and a hasty retreat before an army but very little superior in numbers to his own. ”

“ Almeida and Elvas, the two chief fortresses of the realm, were safe in the hands of French garrisons. The provinces might rise, but without lavish help from Spain or England they could not put in the field an army of even 10,000 men, for assemblies of peasants armed with pikes and fowling-pieces are not armies, and of field-artillery there was hardly a piece outside Lisbon, Elvas, and Almeida. Nor was there left any nucleus of trained soldiers around which the nation might rally: the old army was dissolved and its small remnant was on the way to the Baltic. ”

“ A much more vigorous resistance was offered by the Moors of Mombasa, but the town was taken and destroyed, and its large treasures went to strengthen the resources of Almeida. At other places on his way, such as the island of Angediva, near Goa, and Cannanore, he built forts, and adopted measures to secure the Portuguese supremacy. On his arrival in India he took up his residence at Cochin, where a Portuguese fort had been built by Alphonso d’Albuquerque in 1503. ”

“ Living by marauding, even though it was organized marauding, such as we have been compelled to authorize, has in no small degree weakened discipline, which is in the greatest need of restoration [231] .’ All this was very true, but it had been equally true on March 22nd, when Masséna gave his orders for the march on Plasencia. The root of his failure lay [p. 182] neither in the state of Almeida, nor in the demoralized condition of the army, but in the fact that he had directed his troops to execute a movement which was impossible without magazines to live upon, or roads to march upon [232] . ”

“ He had moreover discharged more than 2,000 additional sick upon Portugal ere he began field operations: they were encumbering the hospitals of Almeida and Lamego when Cradock appeared. The 10,000 men fit for service were scattered all over Portugal: the two battalions, which had just come back from Spain, and the two others which had been too late to join Moore, were in the north, at Almeida and Lamego [231] . One battalion was in garrison at Elvas [232] . Six lay in Lisbon, as also did the whole of the cavalry and guns [233] : two were on the march from Abrantes to Almeida [234] . ”

“ Massena dared not march by his own right upon Almeida, lest the allies, crossing the ravine at the villages of Alameda and Fuentes Onoro, should fall on his flank and drive him upon the Lower Agueda; hence, to cover the blockade, maintained by Pack’s brigade and an English regiment, it was sufficient to leave the fifth division near Fort Conception, and the sixth division opposite Alameda, while the first and third concentrated on a gentle rise cannon-shot distance behind Fuentes Onoro, and where a steppe of land turned back on the Turones, becoming rocky as it approached that river. ”

“ The march of the British troops was as rapid as the previous preparations had been. Head-quarters reached Almeida on the 8th of November. The infantry were already assembled at that town. The condition of the men was superb, and their discipline exemplary; on that side all was well, but from the obstacles encountered by sir David Baird, and the change of direction in the artillery, it was evident, that no considerable force could be brought into action before the end of the month. Meanwhile, the Spaniards were hastening events. ”

“ The infantry had 600,000 cartridges in their regimental stores [p. 274] (150 rounds per man) but that was of no use for the heavy guns. Moreover, more than half the gunners had perished in the disaster of the previous night—only 200 were left to man nearly 100 guns that were still serviceable. It was clear that Almeida was doomed, since it could not defend itself without powder: but there was a chance that Wellington, whose outposts must have heard and seen the explosion, might think it worth while to dash forward and endeavour to save the garrison during the next twenty-four hours. ”

“ Towards the end of December some large convoys of heavy artillery arrived at Almeida, but every one supposed that they were intended to fortify this place, and none, even of those most in the confidence of the commander-in-chief, had any idea that a winter campaign was about to commence. The French were equally unsuspicious of the truth. Twice as strong as the British, they dreamt not that the latter would take the offensive, and the French marshals had scattered their troops at considerable distances from the frontier in winter quarters. ”

“ The distance from Almeida to Abrantes is more than a hundred and eighty miles, the greatest part is a mountain pathway rather than a road, and the French were obliged to gather their provisions from the country as they passed; now, to forage, to fight several actions, to pursue active peasants well acquainted with the country so closely as to destroy them by thousands, and to march [164] a hundred and eighty miles over bad roads, and all in seven days, is impossible.
The whole French army was now concentrated ”

“ The Army is all on the move, but I am ignorant of what the intention of our Generals is, whether to cross the Coa and raise [159] the siege of Almeida, on which place they have not yet that we know of opened their batteries, or whether by a diversion on this side favor the disturbances which have been reported to have arisen in Spain. Whatever it is, it is a forward movement. Everybody is in high spirits. ”

“ The shipbuilding of the Moors depended on the teak forests of Calicut; the Eastern trade enriched both Turk and Mameluke, and the Sultan of Egypt levied duty amounting to L290,000 a year. Therefore he combined with the Venetians to expel the common enemy from Indian waters. In 1509 their fleet was defeated by the Viceroy Almeida near Diu, off the coast of Kattywar, where the Arabian seaman comes in sight of India. It was his last action before he surrendered power to his rival, the great Albuquerque. Almeida sought the greatness of his country not in conquest but in commerce. ”

“ Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Badajoz, fell into the hands of the British general, then Lord Wellington. His successes were, however, obtained with great difficulty and loss of his soldiers, through the inadequate supply of material to his army by the home authorities. Every fortress which was not strategically abandoned by the French, was won by the skill of the general-in-chief, and the recklessness of life shown by his soldiers, in spite of the want of almost every appliance proper for an army. ”

“ But on the other hand Badajos, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Almeida blocked the principal entrances, and though the two former were very ill provided by the Spaniards, they were in little danger because the last campaign had deprived the French of all their ordnance, arsenals, and magazines, in Andalusia, Almaraz, Madrid, Salamanca, and Valladolid; and it was nearly impossible for them to make any impression upon Portugal, until new establishments were formed. ”

“ And here we may observe how inferior in hardihood the French general was to his adversary. Wellington with eighteen thousand men had escaladed Badajos, a powerful fortress and defended by an excellent governor with five thousand French veterans; Marmont with twenty-eight thousand men would not attempt to storm Ciudad, although its breaches were scarcely healed, and its garrison disaffected. Nor did he even assail Almeida, which hardly meriting the name of a fortress, was only occupied by three thousand militia, scarcely able to handle their arms ”

“ That by the basin of the Douro is guarded at the frontier by two fortresses, Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo; that by the Guadiana is guarded by Elvas and Badajos. Without possession of the pair of fortresses commanding one route or the other, invasion is scarcely feasible: with both pairs in his hands Wellington could choose, and he already held both Almeida and Elvas. Accordingly he resolved during the winter season, when the French would have serious difficulty in moving, to besiege first one and then the other of the Spanish border fortresses. ”