My first reflection, on ascending the Serra of Busaco, was one of astonishment how any troops could act in such terrifically broken ground. It seemed almost impracticable to my mule. Yet up these tremendous steeps the French scaled rather than charged with a degree of active energy and hardihood, which well deserves the compliment paid to them by Napier: “In this battle of Busaco, the French, after astonishing efforts of valour, were repulsed, in the manner to be expected from the strength of the ground, and the goodness of the soldiers opposed to them.” (_Hist. War in the Penins._ book xi. chap. 7.) It was not easy in imagination to conjure up the spectacle of these elevated crags fronting the peaceful convent, and these crests of rugged mountains scattered in tumbling confusion around, bristling all over with bayonets as they did before sunrise on that eventful morning, thirty-six years since, and the French emerging from those wooded ravines, and rushing up the face of these fearful heights, down which they were hurled again, their bodies strewing the way to the very depths of the valley. A mist capped the mountain on my visit, and it was so on the day of the battle--the 27th September, 1810. “In less than half an hour the French were close upon the summit; so swiftly and with such astonishing power and resolution did they scale the mountain.” (Napier, _Hist. War in the Penins. ibid._) “The Duke”’s despatch is, as usual, succinct and forcible. Massena’s character, as drawn by Napoléon, was as follows:--“Brave, decided, and intrepid * * his dispositions for battle bad, but his temper pertinacious to the last degree.” His rashness was here apparent. His ruthless cruelty and infamous burnings and destruction, in retreating from the Lines of Torres Vedras six months later, including his firing of the Convent of Alcobaça, make the name which Napoléon gave him, “the child of victory,” unworthy by the side of Ney, “the bravest of the brave.”
The battle of Fuentes de Onoro, fought on the 5th May, 1811, was no very decided triumph, although most undoubtedly a victory, since the principal object of the allies, the covering of the blockade of Almeida, was successfully accomplished. The village of Fuentes, so often attacked throughout the day, was unflinchingly and gallantly defended; and on the chapel and crags which surmount the town we maintained our ground to the last, while the French retired a cannon-shot from the stream. My attention was invited in a more lively degree by the neighbouring fortress of Almeida, which was the scene of such repeated actions during the Peninsular War, and where occurred the curious siege in 1844 by the forces of the Portuguese government, when it was occupied by a revolutionary party under the Conde do Bomfim, aiming at the subversion of Dona Maria’s prerogative.