Chapter XX: Section XIV: Chapter II (2)

While the troops were coming up, Sir Arthur mounted the Serra height, and reconnoitred the whole country-side from the garden of the convent. He had with him Portuguese notables who were well acquainted with Oporto and its suburbs, including several persons who had come over the river on the preceding day, and could give him some notion of the general disposition and emplacement of the French army. Sweeping the valley with his glasses he could see Franceschi’s vedettes moving about on the heights down-stream, and heavy columns of infantry forming up outside the north-eastern gates of the city. At eleven o’clock this body moved off, escorting a long train of wagons--it was Mermet’s division starting for Amarante in charge of Soult’s convoy of sick and reserve artillery. On the quays, below the broken bridge, many French pickets were visible, ensconced at the openings of the streets which lead down to the water. But turning his glass to the right, Wellesley could note that up-stream matters looked very quiet, the rocky banks above the deep-sunk river were deserted, and nothing was visible among the gardens and scattered houses of the south-eastern suburb. It was possible that French troops might be ensconced there, but no sign of them was to be seen.

Many intelligence-officers had already been sent off, to scour the southern bank of the river, and to ascertain whether by any chance the enemy had overlooked some of the boats belonging to the riverside villages. In a short time two valuable pieces of news were brought up to the Commander-in-chief. The large ferry-boat at Barca d’Avintas, four miles above the city, had been scuttled, but not injured beyond the possibility of hasty repairs. It was already being baled out and mended by the villagers. Nearer at hand a still more important discovery was made. Colonel Waters, one of the best scouts in the army, had met, not far south of the suburban village of Cobranloes, an Oporto refugee, a barber by trade, who had crossed over from the north bank in a small skiff, which he had hidden in a thicket. The man reported that the opposite bank was for the moment unguarded by the French, and pointed to four large wine-barges lying stranded below the brink of the northern shore, with no signs of an enemy in charge. Yet the position was one which should have been well watched: here a massive building, the bishop’s Seminary, surrounded by a high garden wall, lies with its back to the water. It was an isolated structure, standing well outside the eastern suburb, in fairly open ground, which could be easily swept by artillery fire from the dominating position of the Serra heights. Waters had with him as guide the prior of Amarante, and by his aid collected three or four peasants from the neighbouring cottages. After some persuasion from the ecclesiastic, these men and the barber consented to join the British officer in a raid on the stranded barges on the further bank. It was a hazardous undertaking, for one French picket had lately been seen to pass by, and another might appear at any moment. But the necessary half-hour was obtained; Waters and his fellows entered the barber’s skiff, crossed the river unseen, got the four barges afloat, and returned with them to the southern bank. They turned out to be big clumsy vessels, capable of holding some thirty men apiece. The explorer had noted that the Seminary buildings above were perfectly empty.

On receiving this intelligence, Wellesley resolved to take the chance which the fates offered him. If the French had shown themselves alert and vigilant, he could not have dared to throw troops across the river into their midst. But they seemed asleep at high noon, and their manifest negligence encouraged him. His mind was soon made up: he ordered Murray with two battalions of his brigade[417], two guns, and two squadrons of the 14th Light Dragoons, to march hard for Barca d’Avintas, cross on the ferry, and seize a position on the opposite bank capable of being defended against superior numbers. But this (as the small force employed sufficiently demonstrates) was only intended as a diversion. The main blow was to be delivered nearer at hand. Wellesley had resolved to endeavour to seize the abandoned Seminary, and to throw his main body across the river at this point if possible. The local conditions made the scheme less rash in fact than it appears on the map. The east end of the Serra hill completely commands all the ground about the Seminary: three batteries[418] were quietly pushed into the convent garden and trained upon the roads leading to that isolated building--one along the shore, the other further inland. If the place could once be seized, it would be possible to protect its garrison by fire across the water. There were only two artillery positions on the French bank, from which the Seminary could be battered: one, close to the water’s edge, was completely under the guns of the Serra convent. The other, on the heights by the chapel of Bom Fin, was rather distant, and could not be used against boats crossing the river, as they would be invisible to gunners working on this emplacement. Cannon placed there might do some damage to the Seminary buildings, but could not prevent the garrison from being reinforced. Realizing all this at a glance, Wellesley hurried down Hill’s brigade to the water’s edge, and the moment that the leading company of the Buffs had got on board the barges, bade them push off. In a quarter of an hour the first vessel was over, and a subaltern and twenty-five men rushed up into the empty enclosure of the Seminary, and closed the big iron gate opening into the Vallongo road, which formed its only land-exit. The men from the other barges were just behind: they set themselves to lining the garden wall and to piling up wood and earth against it, in order to give themselves a standing-place from which they could fire over the coping. The barges went back with all speed, and were again loaded and sent off. Meanwhile Wellesley and his staff were looking down in breathless anxiety on the quiet bend of the river, the silent suburb, and the toiling vessels. At any moment the alarm might be given, and masses of the enemy might debouch from the city and dash in upon the Seminary before enough men were across to hold it. For the best part of an hour the Commander-in-chief must have been fully aware that his daring move might end only in the annihilation of two or three companies of a good old regiment, and a check that would appear as the righteous retribution for recklessness.

[417] 1st and 2nd Line battalions of the K.G.L., also a
detached company of rifles of the K.G.L.

[418] Lane’s and Lawson’s British guns, and one K.G.L., battery.

But no stir was seen in Oporto: the barges crossed for a second time unmolested: on their third trip they carried over General Edward Paget, whom Wellesley had placed in command of the whole movement. More than half the Buffs had passed, and the Seminary was beginning to be adequately manned, when at last some shots were heard outside the gates, and a few minutes later a line of French _tirailleurs_, supported by three battalions in column, came rushing down upon the enclosures. A full hour had passed between the moment when the first boatload of British soldiers had been thrown across the river, and the time when the French discovered them!

N.B. The trees on the cliff to the right are close outside the enclosure of the Serra Convent: the roof of the Seminary is just visible over the crest of the hill on the other bank. In the background are the low slopes above Avintas.]

The fact was that the enemy’s commander was in bed, and his staff breakfasting! The Duke of Dalmatia had sat up all night dictating dispatches, and making his arrangements for a leisurely flitting, for he intended to stay two days longer in Oporto, so as to cover the march of his other divisions towards Amarante and Villa Real. His desk-work finished, he went to bed at about nine o’clock[419], in full confidence that he was well protected by the river, and that Wellesley was probably engaged in the laborious task of bringing up boats to the mouth of the Douro, which would occupy him for at least twenty-four hours. The staff were taking their coffee, after a late _déjeuner_, when the hoof-beats of a furious rider startled them, and a moment later Brossard, the aide-de-camp of General Foy, burst into the Villa shouting that the English had got into the town. Led to the Marshal’s bedside, he hurriedly explained that Foy had just discovered the enemy passing by boats into the Seminary, and was massing his brigade for an attack upon them. The Marshal started up, sent his staff flying in all directions to warn the outlying troops, ordered all the remaining _impedimenta_ to be sent off on the Vallongo road, and dispatched Brossard back to Foy to tell him to ‘push the English into the river.’ He was hardly dressed and on horseback, when the noise of a distant fusillade, followed by heavy artillery fire, gave the news that the attack on the Seminary had already begun.

[419] Soult’s doings on this day are best told by his
aide-de-camp St. Chamans, who was with him all the morning. No
attention need be paid to the narrative of his panegyrist Le
Noble, who tells a foolish story to the effect that a commandant
Salel came at six o’clock (more than four hours before the Buffs
began to pass), and assured some of Soult’s staff that the
English were already crossing the river. ‘On hearing this,’ says
Le Noble, ‘the Marshal sent for Quesnel, the governor of Oporto,
and asked if there was any truth in the rumour. The latter denied
it and Soult was reassured. If only Salel had been believed,
all the English who had then passed might have been killed or
captured,’ and a disaster avoided. As a matter of fact Quesnel
was right, and not a British soldier had yet crossed [_Campagne
de Galice_, p. 247].

It had been only at half-past ten that Foy, riding along the heights by the Chapel of Bom Fin, had been informed that there were boats on the river, filled with red-coated soldiery. It took him wellnigh three-quarters of an hour to bring up his nearest regiment, the 17th Léger, and only at 11.30 did the attack on the Seminary begin. The three battalions beset the northern and western sides of the Seminary, and made a vigorous attempt to break in, while some guns were hurried down to the river bank, just below the building, to fire upon the barges that were bringing up reinforcements.

Wellesley, from his eyrie on the Serra heights, had been watching for the long-expected outburst of the French. The moment that they came pressing forward, he gave orders for the eighteen guns in the convent garden to open upon them. The first shot fired, a round of shrapnel from the 5½-inch howitzer of Lane’s battery, burst just over the leading French gun on the further bank, as it was in the act of unlimbering, dismounted the piece, and by an extraordinary chance, killed or wounded every man and horse attached to it[420]. A moment later came the blast of the other seventeen guns, which swept the level ground to the west of the Seminary with awful effect. The French attack reeled back, and the survivors fled from the open ground into the houses of the suburb, leaving the disabled cannon behind them. Again and again they tried to creep forward, to flank the English stronghold, and to fire at the barges as they went and came, but on every occasion they were swept away by the hail of shrapnel. They could, therefore, only attack the Seminary on its northern front, where the buildings lay between them and the Serra height, and so screened them from the artillery. But in half an hour the 17th Léger was beaten off and terribly mauled; they had to cross an open space, the Prado do Bispo, in order to get near their adversaries, and the fire from the garden wall, the windows, and the flat roof of the edifice, swept them away before they could close.

[420] This interesting fact I owe to the diary of Captain Lane,
still in manuscript, of which a copy has been sent me by Col.
Whinyates, R. A., a specialist on the history of the British
artillery in the Peninsula.

Meanwhile the English suffered little: the only serious loss sustained was that of General Edward Paget, whose arm was shattered by a bullet. He was replaced in command by Hill, who (like him) had crossed in one of the earlier barges. The number of troops in the building was always growing larger, the Buffs were all across, and the 66th and 48th were beginning to follow.

After a short slackening in the engagement, General Delaborde came up, with the three battalions of the 70th of the line, to support his brigadier. This new force executed a far more sustained and desperate attack on the Seminary than had their predecessors. Hill in his letters home called it ‘the _serious_ attack.’ But it had no better fortune than the last: a thousand English infantry, comfortably ensconced behind stone walls, and protected on their flanks by the storm of shot and shell from the opposite bank of the river, could not easily be moved. So well, indeed, were they covered, that in three hours’ fighting they only lost seventy-seven men[421], while the open ground outside was thickly strewn with the dead and wounded Frenchmen.

[421] Viz. 1/3rd, fifty men, 2/48th, seventeen men, 2/66th, ten
men, killed and wounded. The French 17th alone lost 177 [Foy’s
Dispatch].

Soult was now growing desperate: he ordered up from the city Reynaud’s brigade, which had hitherto guarded the quays in the neighbourhood of the broken bridge. His intention was to make one more attack on the Seminary, and if that failed to draw off in the direction of Vallongo and Amarante. This move made an end of his chances; he had forgotten to reckon with the Portuguese. The moment that the quays were left unguarded, hundreds of citizens poured out of their houses and ran down to the water’s edge, where they launched all the boats that had been drawn ashore, and took them over to the English bank. Richard Stewart’s brigade and the Guards who had been waiting under cover of the houses of Villa Nova, immediately began to embark, and in a few moments the passage had begun. The 29th was first formed up on the northern bank, and dashed up the main street into the city, meeting little or no opposition; the 1st Battalion of Detachments and the Guards’ brigade soon followed. In half an hour they had come upon the flank of the French force which was attacking the Seminary, and had taken in the rear and captured one of Soult’s reserve batteries, whose horses were shot down before they could escape along a narrow lane. As the British went pouring through Oporto the whole population, half mad with joy, stood cheering at the windows and on the roofs, waving their handkerchiefs and shouting _Viva_. The rabble poured down into the streets, and began to attack the French wounded, so that Sherbrooke had to detach a company to protect them from assassination[422].

[422] All this is well described by Leslie of the 29th (p. 113),
Stothert of the Scots Fusilier Guards (p. 41), and Cooper of the
2/7th, who crossed later.

When Soult found himself thus attacked in the flank, he saw that there was no more to be done, and bade the whole army retreat at full speed along the road to Vallongo and Baltar. They went off in a confused mass, the regiments all mingled together, and the artillery jammed in the midst of the column. Hill came out of the Seminary and joined in the pursuit, which was urged for three miles. ‘They made no fight,’ writes an eye-witness, ‘every man seemed running for his life, throwing away their knapsacks and arms, so that we had only the trouble of making many prisoners every instant, all begging for quarter and surrendering with great good humour[423].’

[423] Leslie, ibid.

The French army might have been still further mauled, and indeed almost destroyed, if Wellesley’s detached force under Murray had been well handled by its commander. The two battalions of the German Legion, with their attendant squadrons of the 14th Light Dragoons, had crossed the Douro at the ferry of Barca d’ Avintas wholly unopposed. It was a slow business, but the detachment was over long ere Soult had abandoned his attack on the Seminary. Advancing cautiously along the river bank, Murray suddenly saw the whole French army come pouring past him in total disorder on the line of the Vallongo road. He might have made an attempt to throw himself across their path, or at least have fallen upon their flank and endeavoured to cut the column in two; but thinking them far too strong for his small force, and forgetting their demoralization, he halted and allowed them to go by. When all had passed, General Charles Stewart, who had been sent in search of Murray by the Commander-in-chief, came galloping up to the force, and took from it a squadron of the 14th[424], with which he made a dash at the enemy’s last troops. The French had now formed a sort of rearguard, but the dragoons rode into it without hesitation. The French generals were bringing up the rear, and trying to keep their men steady. Delaborde was unhorsed and for a moment was a prisoner, but escaped owing to his captor being killed. Foy received a sabre cut on the shoulder. The infantry broke, and nearly 300 of them were cut off and captured. But the dragoons also suffered heavily; of about 110 men who took part in the charge no less than thirty-five men were killed and wounded. Murray, who watched the whole skirmish from his position on a neighbouring hillside, gave no assistance to his cavalry, though the intervention of his two battalions would have led to the capture of the whole of Soult’s rearguard. It was to infantry of Sherbrooke’s division that the dragoons turned over their prisoners before rejoining their other squadron[425].

[424] So Hawker of that regiment, who took part in the charge,
and describes it well. In Wellesley’s dispatch, _two_ squadrons
are wrongly named.

[425] The best account of this charge is the diary of Hawker;
it runs as follows: ‘After going at full speed, enveloped in a
cloud of dust for nearly two miles, we cleared our infantry, and
that of the French appeared. A strong body was drawn up in close
column, with bayonets ready to receive us on their front. On each
side of the road was a stone wall, bordered outwardly with trees.
On our left, in particular, numbers of the French were posted
with their pieces resting on the wall, which flanked the road,
ready to give us a running fire as we passed. This could not but
be effectual, as our men (in threes) were close to the muzzles of
their muskets, and barely out of the reach of a _coup de sabre_.
In a few seconds the ground was covered with our men and horses.
Notwithstanding this we penetrated the battalion in the road, the
men of which, relying on their bayonets, did not give way till
we were close upon them, when they fled in confusion. For some
time the contest was kept up hand to hand. After many efforts
we succeeded in cutting off 300, of whom most were secured as
prisoners. But our loss was very considerable. Of fifty-two
men in the leading troop ten were killed, and eleven severely
wounded (besides others slightly), and six taken prisoners.’ (Of
the last all save one succeeded in slipping off and got back.)
Out of four officers engaged three were wounded: Hervey, the
major in command, lost an arm. Foy called the attack ‘une charge
incroyable.’

So ended the battle of Oporto, daring in its conception, splendidly successful in its execution, yet not so decisive as it might have been, had Murray but done his duty during the pursuit. The British loss was astoundingly small--only twenty-three killed, ninety-eight wounded, and two missing: among the dead there was not a single officer: the wounded included a general (Paget) and three majors. The casualties of the French were, as was natural, much greater: the attacks on the Seminary had cost them dear. They lost about 300 killed and wounded and nearly as many prisoners in the field, while more than 1,500 sick and wounded were captured in the hospitals of Oporto[426]. The trophies consisted of the six field-pieces taken during the fighting, a great number of baggage wagons, and fifty-two Portuguese guns, dismounted but fit for further service, which were found in the arsenal. Soult had destroyed, before retreating, the rest of the cannon which he had captured in the Portuguese lines on March 29.

[426] Fantin des Odoards (p. 233) says that the French left
1,800 men in the hospitals. This is probably a little too high
an estimate: there were only 2,150 French sick in Braga, Viana,
and Oporto on May 10--five-sixths of them at Oporto. But many
convalescents had marched with Mermet early on the eleventh.
Wellington in his first dispatch merely says that he had taken
700 sick in the hospitals. But three days later, in a letter
to Admiral Berkeley, he writes that he has 2,000 sick, wounded
and captured French in his hands, and must send them to England
at once (_Wellington Dispatches_, iv. 337). He therefore asks
for shipping for them at the rate of two tons per man. Allowing
for 300 unwounded prisoners at Oporto, and 100 at Grijon, there
remain 1,500, or somewhat more, for the men in hospital.