Massena, as we have seen, held on to his position at Santarem until March 5, 1811 for four dogged, much- enduring months, that is; a prodigy of endurance. Foy meanwhile was sent to explain the situation to Napoleon in person, a moderate-sized division being necessary to convoy him safely across Spain to the Pyrenees.

Napoleon's pride was stung by the Spanish disasters, and his masterful genius quickly framed a new and yet more spacious strategy for his generals. Bessieres, with 12,000 of the Imperial Guard, entered Spain; Drouet, with 10,000 men, marched to join Massena; Soult was instructed to abandon the siege of Cadiz, and, with his whole available force, march to join hands with Massena. This would give that general a force of 70,000 men, sufficient, it was hoped, to overwhelm Wellington.

Soult was the most dangerous element in this combination, and Wellington planted Hill at Abrantes to bar his junction with Massena. But Napoleon's new combination, like all previous plans, was at first postponed, and finally wrecked, by mere angry discords of purpose betwixt his generals.

Soult was more anxious to strengthen himself in his own province, where he maintained semi-royal state, than to succour Massena; nevertheless he marched to the banks of the Guadiana, captured Olivenza on January 22, and began the siege of Badajos.

This great frontier fortress was of the utmost strategic value to Wellington. If it fell into the hands of the French, any invasion of Spain by the English became impossible, while the junction betwixt Massena and Soult was made easy. Badajos was held by a Spanish garrison commanded by Menacho, a veteran of approved loyalty and courage. Menacho was unfortunately slain in a gallant sally on March 2, and his successor, Imas, a knave as well as a coward, promptly sold the city to the French.

The walls were still unbreached, the garrison was 8000 strong; Beresford, with 12,000 men, was pushing at speed to raise the siege, and was within three days' march. And on March 11, with the letter announcing swift-coming relief in his hand, Imas opened the gates to the French. Wellington pronounced the loss of Badajos the sorest disaster which had yet befallen the British, and it was certainly a great and allimportant success for the French. The Spaniard who betrayed Badajos to the French stipulated that he should march out by the breach "to protect his honour." But no breach existed; he had, as Wellington said afterwards, "to make the breach himself out of which to march."

Massena by this time found it impossible to cling longer to Santarem. The country within a radius of fifty miles was a wasted and silent desert. "Nearly ten thousand square miles of country," says Colonel Jones, "remained for five months with scarcely an inhabitant. The wolves, conscious of security, prowled about, masters of the country, reluctantly giving way to the cavalry patrols which occasionally crossed their track."

The French army must move, or die of mere starvation and of the diseases bred of starvation. According to Napoleon's plan, Massena was to cross the Tagus and march to join Soult; but Wellington barred every road that led southward, and held the river so strongly that the attempt to cross was vain. Massena then determined to make a flank march to the Mondego, thus moving apparently from Soult, cross that river, press at speed along its farther bank, then turn westward again to Guarda; thence to Ciudad Rodrigo, where his communications would be restored and his forces could be reorganised for a new march to Lisbon.

Retreat

With the art of an old soldier, Massena effected the first part of this retreat. Leaving Santarem on March 5, he covered his movements with such skill that he gained a clear four days' advance on Wellington. The British, however, came keenly on his track; Picton, with the third division, being pushed constantly forward to turn Massena's flank, and prevent that westward sweep which was to bring him to Ciudad Rodrigo.

Ney covered the French rear-guard with all the skill of a great captain, showing a daring and a resource which he scarcely exceeded eighteen months afterwards, when covering the retreat of Napoleon's shattered columns from Moscow. Picton, whose division was employed in pushing continually past the flank of the French rear-guard, writes that Ney's movements afforded a perfect lesson in the tactics of retreat.

"Moving at all times upon his flank, I had an opportunity of seeing everything he did, and I must be dull in the extreme if I have not derived much useful knowledge from such an example. But it was an army of 35,000 men pursuing one of 60,000. The track, through difficult country, offered a hundred strong situations for defence; and, with a soldier of Ney's fierce and daring temper covering the retreat, almost every day witnessed some gallant stroke of soldiership on both sides.

The French, it may be added, destroyed the country through which they passed, with a ferocity bred of hate and anger, and not merely for the sake of making pursuit difficult. Villaues and towns were burned, convents were sacked, the peasantry slain. The track of the retreating army was black with ruin and red with fire and blood.

"Nothing," wrote Picton, "can exceed the devastations and cruelty committed by the enemy during the whole course of his retreat."

Massena's last marches in Portugal, in a word, were marked by an outburst of inhuman savagery worthy rather of African tribes than of civilised soldiers. Wellington describes the French retreat as made dreadful "by a barbarity seldom equalled and never surpassed."

It is impossible to give in detail the stern and bloody combats bred of a pursuit so keen and a retreat so stubborn and skilful. At Pombal, on March 11, the French attempted to hold an ancient castle which covered the bridge. The riflemen of the Light Division, however, leaped on the castle with so fierce a charge that the French were swept out of it as by a whirlwind, and the bridge was carried so swiftly that, although it was mined, the broken French had not time to blow it up.

Redhina

At Redhina, on March 12, Ney made a resolute stand with 5000 infantry and a strong force of artillery, in order to give time for Massena's guns and baggage to pass through a long mountain defile. Ney's front was so determined that Wellington brought up his main body for the attack. The Light Division went forward with great spirit to turn Ney's right, and an advance was made along the whole British front; but Ney, timing his movements with the coolest accuracy, vanished through the defile just in time to evade Wellington's onfall. He even turned suddenly on his pursuers, recovering and carrying off a dismounted howitzer by a gallant rush which he himself led. Ney was determined, though in retreat, to maintain a temper of haughty courage in his men.

Wellington's pursuit was so close and eager, that Massena, though he summoned Coimbra, found it impossible to cross the Mondego, and so swung round to Casal Nova, moving up the rugged valley of the Mondego to Guarda. At Casal Nova on the 14th, the fiercest fight of the retreat took place.

Casal Nova

A heavy fog shrouded the landscape. The sound of rumbling wheels, the tread of marching battalions, came constantly through the damp air, but the positions of the French were quite hidden. Erskine, who was in charge of the Light Brigade, was a soldier of more fire than discretion. He came up to his pickets, swore with energy, and in spite of the evidence of the men's senses, "there was not a Frenchman in their front," and with great rashness pushed the 52nd forward in column through the fog, the Rifles following.

The regiment vanished in the eddying mist; a fierce rattle of musketry presently broke out; suddenly, like some vast aerial curtain, the fog lifted, and then the 52nd found itself thrust into the middle of Noy's entire corps. The regiment, to quote William Napier, "resembled nothing so much as a red pimple on the face of the country, which was black with the French masses."

The 52nd fought gallantly, but it was a duel betwixt a regiment and an army. Wellington came up, and three divisions had to be pushed forward to save the 52nd from being destroyed. Once in this desperate combat the 52nd failed to follow its officers. Napier left four companies of the 52nd in a good position, and took two companies down a deep ravine, in whose gloomy depths he had just heard the shouting charge of the left wing of his regiment.

He found himself with his two companies in front of a huge mass of the enemy. He halted for a moment under cover of a wall, and realised that to attack was his single chance. With Captain Dobbs by his side, he called on his men to follow, leaped the wall, and ran with a shout at the enemy.

Only two men of the 52nd, however, followed, and here were four men charging an army. Napier tried again to bring up his men, and once more failed. This, he adds, was the bitterest moment of his life. The men, as a matter of fact, were blown from climbing down and up the ravine with their heavy packs; they could hardly lift a foot; and those two particular companies, Napier adds, had been without their captains for some time. Napier himself presently fell, badly wounded, with a musket-bullet lodged near his spine.

At the village of Foy d'Aronce, again, on March 15, Wellington caught Ney in a false position. He had repeated, on a small scale, Craufurd's blunder at the Coa, keeping two divisions on the British side of the Deuca, with only a single bridge by which to retreat. It was rapidly growing dark; thick rain was falling. But Wellington was a captain in whose presence it was singularly dangerous for an opponent to blunder.

A glance showed him Ney's fault. Picton was hurled on the French left; the British horse-artillery galloping up, smote its front, and Ney's battalions broke. Some were flung into the river, others effected a bloody retreat across the bridge, but they lost 500 men and an eagle.

On March 16 Wellington halted. He had outmarched his supplies; his men were worn-out with fatigue. But in the game of strategy he had won. Massena had been able neither to move towards Soult, nor to cross the Mondego to reach unexhausted country and leap on Oporto. On the 16th the pursuit was renewed, and Massena fell back to Guarda, and thence to Sabugal. Here he made a last and obstinate stand. To retreat farther was to be pushed across the frontiers of Portugal.

While his battalions were still encamped on Portuguese soil, he at least seemed to threaten Lisbon, and a decent mask was put over the despairing visage of defeat; but to re-enter Spain was to make his failure confessed and open. His position at Sabugal was strong, and Massena had every motive for making a desperate stand. His reputation as a captain was at stake. To be driven in defeat across the Spanish frontier would be a shock to the whole French power in Spain.

Wellington, however, was in a happy mood of generalship. At daybreak the two fighting divisions of the British army-the third and the Light Divisions-with Slade's cavalry, were to ford the Coa; the fifth division and the guns were to carry the bridge of Sabugal, and Regnier's corps, which formed Massena's left wing, would thus be pierced and crushed before Massena's centre could come to its support.

But war has strange chances and mischances. The morning was thick with fog, and Erskine's impatience well nigh ruined Wellington's combination. The 43rd and a wing of the 95th under Beckwith were launched at the French without support and at the wrong point. Beckwith, in fact, with a single regiment and four companies of Rifles, was assailing an entire French corps with its artillery and cavalry. A breeze blew the fog aside, and at the same moment Beckwith saw his danger and Regnier his opportunity.

A heavy French column with guns was sent forward to crush Breckwith's tiny force. The 43rd and 95th, however, were troops who took a great deal of "crushing." The 43rd held the crest of the hill, and resolutely charged and broke the French column as it came up in attack, while the Rifles tormented the flank of the attacking column with their fire.

Again, and yet again, the French column came gallantly on, and was as often driven back. In one of their counter-charges the 43rd actually captured a French howitzer, and round the captured piece a bloody combat raged, the French being as vehement to recover it as the British were stern to hold it.

The 52nd, drawn by the tumult of the fight, came up to the aid of the 43rd. Regnier put his whole reserve -- 6000 infantry with cavalry and artillery -- in motion to crush the two unconquerable British regiments; but by this time Picton's division was coming into the fight, the fifth division had carried the bridge at Sabugal, and Regnier, to escape so formidable a combination, fell hastily back.

The fight had raged only an hour, but round the dismounted howitzer lay more than 300 of the slain while the French wounded or captured exceeded 1200.

"This," wrote Wellington, "was one of the most glorious actions British troops ever engaged in."

"We have given the French," he added, "a handsome dressing, and I think they will not say again that we are not a maneuvring army. We may not manoeuvre so beautifully as they do; but I do not desire better sport than to meet one of their columns en masse with our lines. The poor second corps received a terrible beating from the, 43rd and 52nd on the 3rd."

On April 4th, Massena was in full retreat; on the 5th, he crossed the frontier into Spain, and fell back through Ciudad Rodrigo to Salamanca, and Wellington stood on the Portuguese frontier, visible to Europe as one of the great soldiers of the age. He had saved Portugal.

He had arrested and rolled back the most formidable invasion that country had ever known. He had driven the most famous of French marshals, commanding an army of French veterans, in ruin and defeat back into Spain.

The mere arithmetic of Massena's losses is amazing. Nearly 40,000 Frenchmen had perished or had been taken prisoners in the six months which elapsed betwixt September 16, 1810, when Massena, in all the pride of apparently irresistible strength, had entered Portugal, and April 5,. 1811, when, with broken fortunes and wrecked fame, he re-crossed the Spanish frontier. And in discipline and character, as well as in health and numbers, the French suffered to an extent which arithmetic can hardly express.

A French pen may describe the aspect Massona's army wore when it re-crossed the Portuguese frontier. "They marched in disorderly crowds," says Thiers, "loaded with plunder, mingled with long files of wounded borne by asses, with artillery and baggage waggons drawn by oxen, for the greater part of the horses had died from want of nourishment. Hardly did there remain horses enough to manoeuvre the guns in the presence of the enemy, and the cavalry were in such a state of exhaustion that the riders could not venture to give their steeds the rein for a charge. The soldiers, blackened by the sun, thin, covered with rags, without shoes, but still bold and audacious in language, did not support their distress with the resignation which sometimes dignifies misfortune. They vented their ill-humour on all the world for so many sufferings undergone for no purpose; they broke out against their immediate superiors, the generals-in-chief, and the Emperor himself."

Chapter XIX: Barossa and Fuentes