The Peninsula, the stage on which this new act in the great drama was to be played, is, roughly, a square 500 miles On each face, washed by the sea on all sides save on the eastern half of its northern face, where it is united to France; the Pyrenees, with their lofty peaks, their wild defiles, and their deep valleys, standing as a barrier betwixt France and Spain.

Portugal is -- again roughly -- a strip 100 miles wide along the Atlantic sea-board, the western face of the great square of the Peninsula. A tangled skein of hills parallel with the sea-coast forms the dividing-line betwixt Spain and Portugal. Portugal was thus an ideal base for operations against the French in Spain. It lay along the western flank of Spain, open to the sea along its whole extent, its coast-line pierced by three navigable rivers-the Douro, the Tagus, and the Guadiana-while the barrier of eastern hills formed a shaggy screen, behind which a tempest of war could be gathered, to burst north or south on the bewildered French as might be judged best. The first step was obviously to drive the French out of Portugal, and make that country the base of British operations.

A strange succession of blunders, however, marked, on the British side, the opening stages of the Peninsular War. There were at the moment 120,000 French troops in the Peninsula; beyond the Pyrenees were 400,000 veterans, the victors of Jena and of Friedland, ready to be hurled by the overwhelming military genius of Napoleon on any intruder in Spain itself. In that country there was a wide-spread and distracted guerilla warfare, but practically no regular army. Napoleon was by no means disposed to underrate his enemies. He took the Spanish revolt, when he had once seen its scale, quite seriously; and, to quote Napier, "the conqueror of Europe was as fearful of making false movements before this army of peasants as if Frederick the Great had been in his front."

Yet Napoleon's sober estimate of the whole body of insurrectionary forces in Spain was, that it was incapable of beating 25,000 French in good position. "The Spanish," he said, "are the merest canaille."

"Spain," he declared again, "had only some 15,000 soldiers left, with some old blockhead to command them." When stepping on to such a field against such an enemy, and with allies so despicable, England might be expected to concentrate its whole strength on the task, and to commence operations with clear plans and on a great scale.

But this was by no means the case. More than 10,000 good troops, under Moore, were lying idle in their transports in a Swedish port; 10,000 more were being wasted in Sicily. Yet another small army, under General Spencer, was practically derelict in the Mediterranean. There remained a force of some 9500 men about to sail from Cork for a raid on the Spanish colonies; and this modest body of troops was now placed under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley for operations in the Peninsula.

Castlereagh had at least one faculty of a statesman, the gift of choosing fit instruments, and, by a flash of genius, he had selected Wellesley for this important command.

His Indian fame marked him out as the natural leader of the English expedition to the Peninsulaan expedition intended to drive the French out of Portugal, and use that country, with its long stretch of sea-coast, as the base of operations against the French in Spain.

But the British Cabinet, while despatching this expedition under a leader so competent and for a purpose so clear, took two steps admirably calculated to defeat their own designs. They divided their forces by sending iopoo men under Spencer to Cadiz, and they despatched Sir Harry Burrard to supersede Wellesley, and Sir Hew Dalrymple to supersede Sir Harry Burrard.

Thus the great struggle in the Peninsula was begun, on the English side, with divided forces and under distracted leadership.

British Expedition Sails

On July 12, 1808, the expedition under Sir Arthur Wellesley sailed from Cork. Hill, Craufurd, Fane, Bowes, Ferguson, were in command of brigades. The troops included some regiments destined to win great fame in the Peninsula -- the 50th, the 71st, the gist, the 95th, &c. Wellesley himself pushed on ahead in a fast frigate to Corunna and put himself in communication with the Galician Junta. He was told bluntly that Spain wanted English money and arms, but not English soldiers. Thence he sailed to Oporto, where it was arranged that 5000 Portuguese troops should join him as soon as he landed, near the mouth of the Tagus.

For seventy miles north of Lisbon Rock, the Portuguese coast is one of the most unfriendly in the world. The rivers have shallow, impracticable bars; the coast is rocky; a terrific surf rolls ceaselessly in from the Atlantic. But a little north of where the Peniche peninsula juts out from the mainland, like the bulbous nose from a drunkard's face, the river Mondego offers an uncertain and perilous landing-place.

Here the first British soldiers in the Peninsula were landed. The weather was fine, yet the breakers rolled shoreward so heavily that it took Wellesley five days to land his troops and supplies, and it was clear that, if a south wind arose, retreat by the sea would be cut off. Spencer joined him before the landing was completed, bringing the army up to 12,300 men. The Portuguese reinforcements proved almost as unreal as Falstaff's men in buckram. Freire, the Portuguese general, had indeed an uncertain number of men under his flag, and promptly drew 5000 stands of arms from Wellesley for their use -- but he refused to join the British in any combined operation, and actually commanded that the English general should feed his troops!

Wellesley, with characteristic composure, left Freire out of his calculations, and addressed himself to the task of driving Junot -- who had 25,000 good troops against his 12,300 -- out of Portugal. He must hold to the coast in order to keep near his supplies; he must strike at Lisbon, the seat of Junot's power. He pushed on, therefore, southward by a road running parallel with the coast to Leira. Junot had despatched two of his divisional generals, Loison and Laborde, moving by separate lines, to meet and crush the invader.

On August 11 Wellesley found Laborde before him at Obidos. On the i5th the first skirmish took place. Some companies of the 95th and 6oth found some strong French pickets in their front, closed roughly upon them, and drove them headlong. Having got the French on the run, the British followed with reckless valour, till they found themselves charging Laborde's whole force, and were called off with a loss of twenty-seven men and two officers.

"The affair," was Wellesley, "was unpleasant, because it was quite useless, and was occasioned contrary to orders, solely by the imprudence of the officer and the dash and eagerness of the men."

But the incident at least proved the ready, if somewhat hot-headed, fighting quality of the British rank and file.

Battle of Rollica

Laborde fell back to Rolica. Loison was at Alcoontre. Rolica, Alcoentre, and Lisbon formed roughly the three points of an isosceles triangle. If Laborde drew towards Lisbon, he was abandoning Loison; if he kept his commuriications with Loison, lie ran the risk of being cut off from Lisbon. He must fight; and on August 17 at Rolica took place the first serious combat of the Peninsular War.

Rolica was a village standing on a high tableland, rising from the floor of a valley sharply defined by lines of parallel hills. Laborde held the village strongly; but a mile in its rear was a precipitous ridge called Zambugeira, three-quarters of a mile long, uniting the lateral hills and forming a strong second position for the French. Wellesley's plan was to thrust his left-consisting of two brigades of infantry, with six guns and some Rifles, under Ferguson-along the crest of the lateral hill, till the village was turned, then the French must fall back or be cut off.

A smaller force under Trant moved to turn the French left; Wellesley himself with the main body of the British advanced on Laborde's centre. Laborde was quickly pushed from Rolica, but, covering himself with a heavy fire of artillery, he fell back. to his second line.

Wellesley proceeded to thrust him from this by exactly the same tactics, Ferguson moving on the crest of the hill past the French right, Hill and Nightingale pressing on his front. Here came the gallant and costly blunder of the day.

Laborde's front was of singular strength. Three steep watercourses, shaggy with ilex bushes, slippery with waterworn rocks - ravines for goats rather than paths for troops-seamed the steep front of the hill. The 9th and 29th were launched against the position before Ferguson's turning movement had made itself felt. The English loaders, that is, were too eager, and the English privates, it may be added, were quite as eager as even their generals.

The attacking regiments were to have moved up the right-hand ravine, but the centre watercourse seemed to lead most directly upon the enemy's position, and, with the instinct which takes a British soldier by the shortest road to his foe, the two regiments plunged into this ravine. It rose sharply, was rough with broken rocks, and so narrow that, in places, only three men could move abreast. Their officers leading, the red-coats swarmed eagerly up. The ravine, as it reached the crest, narrowed to a mere crack. In the bushes that formed a screen at its head the French riflemen lay thick.

Colonel Lake of the 29th was leading, an officer of brilliant promise. Suddenly a hundred red jets of flame shot out of the bushes; many of the British fell, amongst them Lake. As the 29th charged past their dying colonel, he was still calling, "Forward! Forward!"

The English broke through to the crest, breathless and disordered, and before they could re-form a French battalion ran forward with great courage, delivered a shattering volley, and broke clean through the half-formed 29th. A regiment rent asunder by the impact of a hostile charge is usually ruined; some sixty men of the 2ath, including its Major, were, as a matter of fact, made prisoners.

But the vaIlant 29th, fighting hand to band in irregular clusters, held their ground stubbornly until the 9th coming up the ravine and charging with great fury, the crest was won, though Stewart, the colonel of the 9th, shared Lake's fate.

By this time Ferguson was turning Laborde's right, the 5th had come up the true ravine on the left front of the French, and Laborde yielded the fight. Marching all night, he fell back on Loison, leaving the Torres Vedras road and Lisbon uncovered.

Rolica is not merely the first, it is also the most typical fight of the Peninsula. The French excelled in nimbleness of tactics, the British in dogged and straightforward fighting. The struggle, it may be added, was, for the numbers engaged, singularly bloody. The number of troops actually thrown into the contest on both sides did not exceed 5000; yet the English loss reached nearly 500, the French exceeded 600. Well-nigh every fourth man in the forces actually engaged was killed or wounded.

Chapter V: Vimiero and the Convention of Cintra