[Illustration: THE PORTA DA SULLA, BUSSACO.]
Early next morning the whole wood, the hermitages, the monastery, and the chapel were filled with English officers, fifty officers being quartered in the monastery itself. Wellington arrived at midday, and when the prior showed him the best guest-chamber, swept and garnished for his use, he refused it, “although it was the best,” because it had only one door, and another apartment with two doors had to be found for him. Whilst this lodging was being prepared and cleaned, the general rode out of the domain by the gate on the north side and inspected the whole position from the highest point of the ridge to the east, on the bare granite crest of which he fixed his own position for the day of the battle. Standing upon this spot there spreads below the steep slopes in the foreground an undulating plain, some five miles across, with Caramulo mountains on the other side. Through this broken plain Massena was forced to march in order to turn or cross the Bussaco mountains, and proceed on his road to Coimbra, Lisbon, and Oporto. When he learnt that the English general had decided to risk everything by making a stand there with forces inferior to his own he at first refused to believe it, for constant success had made him think that his troops could do anything; and if Wellington were beaten here, then annihilation would await the English, and Portugal would follow Spain in bowing to the yoke of France. But if Wellington does take the risk, said Massena, “_Je le tiens! demain nous finirons la conquête de Portugal, et en un pen de jours je noyerai le léopard_.” Ney, Junot, and Regnier in vain counselled Massena not to fling his men away upon attacking such a tremendous position as that of Bussaco, and urged him to retire and await reinforcements from France; but Massena laughed at their wise fears, and decided to storm the height. “_There is only the rearguard of the English there_,” he said; “_if the whole army is there so much the better, the good luck of the darling of victory will not abandon him_.”