Craufurd, with the Light Division, was on the Coa, watching the French operations, with strict injunctions not to fight beyond that river. Craufurd's task was to encourage the besieged Spaniards, bridle French plundering parties, and collect supplies for the British throughout the very plain on which Ney's forces were encamped. It was a difficult and daring task, but one which exactly suited Craufurd's genius. Both soldiers and general were of the highest fighting quality.

The Light Division in warlike fame is worthy to stand beside Caesar's Tenth Legion or the Old Guard of Napoleon; while Craufurd was of an impatient and heady valour which made him accept, with something like rapture, risks from which a more prudent leader would have shrunk. He had under his command a single British division, consisting of 4000 infantry, 1100 cavalry, and 6 guns. Within two hours' march of him were 60,000 French. Yet Craufard held to the farther bank of the Coa--the French bank, that is -- sent out his pickets with cool audacity towards the enemy's lines, and played that daring game for three months, standing ready for instant combat, but sternly warned by Wellington to withdraw the moment the French moved. Craufurd, in a word, with a weak division, stood for long months at the bayonet's point, so to speak, of 60,000 French infantry, all hardy and active soldiers, under generals trained in Napoleon's school; and kept his perilous post unharmed. So alert, so vigilant, so audacious was Craufurd's generalship.

French on the March

The French moved at last. A tempest of rain was scourging the British position as the morning Of July 24 broke. The British troops, after the invariable custom of the Peninsula, had been under arms for an hour before daybreak, and the dripping soldiers were about to be dismissed, when the French in solid columns were reported to be advancing. Ney, with 30,000 infantry and cavalry and thirty guns, was coming on, in fact, at speed.

The French advance stirred Craufurd's blood. He could not bring himself to cross the river without a conflict: and instead of promptly retiring, sent forward his cavalry and guns. The odds were overwhelming against the English, and the position unfavourable in the highest degree for them. They had, in retreating, to descend from the crest of a ravine -- a crest which might be instantly occupied by thirty French guns -- and to cross the Coa by a single narrow bridge. Craufurd's position was a mile in advance of the bridge, and he held that perilous and absurd post in front of the advancing enemy for two hours, till, when he did fall back, he had to pass the defile in all the confusion of a retreat and pressed by an eager enemy five times as strong as himself.

The French came on with loud beating of drums and shrill clamour of voices. The converging columns quickened to a run as they saw the scanty British force before them; 4000 horsemen were sweeping up; white puffs of smoke shot thick and fast from the advancing guns. Ordinary troops caught in such a trap might well have broken, and a moment's failure in steadiness would have been for the English destruction.

But the men of the Light Division were not ordinary troops, Craufurd's scanty cavalry met the advancing French with resolute charges, while the great body of French cavalry under Montbrun, who was not under Ney's orders, hung back, though Ney sent five officers in succession urging them to charge. Etiquette for Montbrun was more than victory!

Simmons describes the French as "coming on again and again with drums beating French officers, like mountebanks, running forward, placing their hats on their swords, capering about like madmen,and crying 'Come on, children of our country! The first that advances Napoleon will reward him.' But nothing shook the order, or the obstinate courage, of the slowly retiring British." A body of hussars in bearskin caps and ligbt-coloured pelisses got amongst a broken group of Rifles, says Simmons, and began to sabre them, but the stubborn Rifles fought man to man. meeting the horsemen's sabres with their bayonets.

Fall Back

The Light Division fell back with dogged steadiness through nearly a mile of broken country, seamed with ravines and tangled with vineyards, before they reached the bridge. Nothing could surpass the cool soldiership of the British. They held each point of vantage stubbornly, checked the too vehement French with stern counter- charges, filed with adroit speed over the bridge, and instantly lined the farther bank to cover the passage with their lire.

To gain time for the last files to cross, McLeod of the 43rd, waving his cap, and calling on his men to follow, rode straight at the foremost French column; his soldiers, not waiting to form up, ran, an angry cluster, with threatening bayonets, at their officer's call. The French halted in doubt at that disquieting spectacle, and before they could advance again, the last British were across the bridge!

William Napier gives us a pen-picture of Craufurd during this stage of the fight. Napier was holding the road with desperate valour to cover the passage of the broken troops over the narrow bridge. His force consisted of some 300 men of various regiments, whom he had collected. "He (Craufurd) came upon me upon the road," says Napier, "and seemed overwhelmed with anguish at his own rashness in fighting on that side of the river. I have always thought he was going to ride in amongst the enemy, who were close to us, but finding me with a considerable body of men in hand whom he had given up for lost, he changed his design. He was very wild in his appearance and manner."

Napier's company alone lost in this bitter fight nearly half its number in killed and wounded. Craufurd, it must be remembered, had suffered the most shameful experiences a soldier can know under Wh1telocke at Buenos Ayres. He had seen a fine army destroyed, a great enterprise wrecked, and the military honour of his country stained, by mere failure of fighting impulse in the general.

That memory stung Craufurd's fiery nature to new fervours of daring It predisposed him to fight always, on all occasions, and against all odds. Craufurd might not have shown such rash audacity on the Coa in 1810 if he had not witnessed, and suffered from, Whitelocke's helpless cowardice at Buenos Ayres in 1807.

Craufurd's six guns were now barking angrily across the river, from the farther bank, at the French as they came on at the quick-step to carry the bridge. An officer in a brilliant uniform led them, a drummer beating the pas de charge at his side. But so fierce and swift was the fire of English muskets and artillery, that no living man could cross the bridge. Rush after rush was made, and the pile of slain on the bridge rose till it was level with the parapet.

The French are adroit soldiers. They could not come to the river's edge without coming under the fire of the British Rifles on the opposite bank; "but some of them," Simmons records, "held up calabashes as if to say, 'Let us get some water to drink.' They were allowed to come down to the bank, when they instantly dropped flat amongst the rocks on its edge, and opened a deadly fire across the stream."

George Napier of the 52nd was holding part of the river-bank against the French, and he describes another incident of the fight.

"Where I was," he says, "the French only came halfway down to the bank of the river from the opposite height, and then a fine dashing fellow, a French stag officer, rode down just opposite my position to try if the river was fordable at that part. Not liking to fire at a single man, I called out to him, and made signs that he must go back; but he would not, and being determined to try it, he dashed fearlessly into the water. It was then necessary to fire at him, and instantly both man and horse fell dead, and their corpses floated down the stream."

It is both asserted and denied that Picton refused to advance to Craufurd's help on the day of the combat of the Coa; but the evidence of Campbell, Craufurd's brigade- major, seems decisive. Campbell was present at the interview betwixt the two generals, both of them fine soldiers, and both too self-willed and fiery to make co- operation easy. "Slight was the converse," says Campbell, "short the interview, but it was hot as short. Craufurd asked Picton if he did not consider it advisable to move out something from Pinhel to support the Ligl-it Division; and in terms not bland, Picton declared he would do no such thing; and with high looks and fierce words the two British generals parted."

General le Marchant draws a vivid picture of these two equally gallant but strangely contrasted soldiers. "Picton," he says, "when wrapped in his military cloak, might have been mistaken for a bronze statue of Cato; so staid was he, so deliberate and austere. Craufurd, of a diminutive and not imposing figure, was characterised by a vivacity almost mercurial both in thought and act; his eager spirit and fertile brain ever hurrying him into difficulty and danger. Craufurd had the faults natural to a hasty temper, Picton those belonging to a morose nature. With all. his faults, Craufurd was unquestionably the finest commander of light troops the Peninsular War produced."

Napier says that it was the fine training which Moore had impressed on the Light Division which enabled them to evade Massena's stroke on the banks of the Coa. Their matchless discipline was their protection. "A phantom hero from Corunna saved them." But that is scarcely fair to Craufurd. He was an unrivalled master in outpost warfare; and, to quote Kincaid, a quite competent authority, "To Craufurd belonged the chief merit of making the Light Division the incomparable fighting instrument it became."

Craufurd held the bridge till night, and then fell back in the darkness with a loss of nearly 300 killed and wounded. But of the French a thousand had fallen. Craufurd's own summary of the day's operations is expressive.

"A corps of 4000 men," he says, "remained during the whole day in the presence of an army amounting to 24,000, performed in the presence of so superior a force one of the most difficult operations of war, a retreat from a very broken and extensive position over one narrow defile . . . and in the course of the affair this corps of 4000 men inflicted upon this army of 24,000 a loss equal to double of that which it sustained."

Almeida Falls

Almeida, which should have held out for weeks, fell by an accident in four days. On August 27, when the trenches had been only open three days, the great magazine and the fortress were blown up by mischance. Night was falling on the town; the fire of the guns had ceased. Suddenly a deep sustained blast of sound rose in the darkening sky and swept over the landscape. The great castle crumbled like a pack of cards. A column of smoke and fire shot up into the air; 500 of the garrison were slain almost at a breath, and with such completeness was the town destroyed, that only six houses were left standing.

The frontier fortresses had thus fallen with unexpected haste, and Alassena as he crossed the border issued a sonorous and very French proclamation. He called on the Portuguese to turn their armsagainst the English who had supplied them. " The English," he declared, "were their only enemies." Resistance was vain.

"Can the feeble armies of the British general" asked Massena, "expect to oppose the victorious legions of the Emperor?" The trembling Portuguese were exhorted to "snatch the moment that mercy and generosity offered."

Napoleon himself shared Massena's confidence. Wellington," he wrote, "has only 18,000 men; Hill has only 6000. It would be ridiculous to suppose that 25,000 English can balance 60,000 French, if the latter do not trifle, but fall boldly on."

Massena, it must be confessed, did in a sense "trifle." He lingered for two months after Ciudad Rodrigo had fallen. He was old; he was in an idle mood; he was amusing himself with a mistress when he should have been pushing on his battalions with breathless speed.

Portuguese Financial Aid

Wellington, meanwhile, had framed his plans for the defence of Portugal with the sagacity of a statesman and the warlike skill of a great captain. Since Portugal was to be the battle-ground against Napoleon, and all its resources were to be employed in the strife, he urged that England must sustain the public finances of the country. A subsidy of £ 300,000 a year was granted towards the civil expenses of Portugal, another of £ 150,000 to enable the Portuguese Regency to adequately pay its officers, bringing up the total English subsidies to more than £ 1 million per annum. The different financial methods of the opposing armies illustrate their separate ideals. The English, with a force of only 30,000 men in the Peninsula, expended £ 376,000 monthly in maintaining the campaign. Napoleon, with more than 350,000 troops in the Peninsula, limited the charges on their account on the French Treasury to £ 80,000 per month. England, that is, spent in the Peninsula  per month for every soldier under her flag there. Napoleon, for the same purpose, spent only four shillings per man. Spanish or Portuguese pockets -- as far as the French were concerned -- had to supply the balance.

Wellington accepted the office of Marshal-General of Portugal, and practically took the whole civil and military administration of the country into his own hands. The ancient military law, which made the whole able- bodied population liable to military service, was revived. Beresford had by this time created a Portuguese army with British discipline and British officers; and that curious genius for the leadership of other races which has made British rule in India and, indeed, the whole modern British empirepossible, had already transformed the shambling inert Portuguese private into a soldier not unfit to meet even French veterans in battle.

Chapter XVI: Busaco