1810 – 1811
Bussaco and the Lines of Torres Vedras
From November 1809 Wellington has the Lines of Torres Vedras built across the hills between the Tagus and the sea north of Lisbon. Under Colonel Richard Fletcher, Portuguese regiments and conscripted labourers build redoubts, forts and dams in secret, while the country in front of them is to be stripped of food and its people moved behind them. In 1810 Napoleon orders Marshal André Masséna to drive the British out of Portugal. Ney takes Ciudad Rodrigo on 9 July after a siege begun on 26 April, and Almeida falls on 26 August when its powder magazine explodes.
Marshal André Masséna, portrait by Louis Hersent, 19th centuryWikimedia Commons, Louis Hersent, Public domain (André Masséna (Hersent).jpg)
Masséna advances on Coimbra with about 65,000 men. On 27 September he finds Wellington’s army of about 50,000, half of them Portuguese, on the ridge of Bussaco across his road, posted on the reverse slope out of sight. Reynier’s II Corps and Ney’s VI Corps attack five times, and each time the French columns reach the crest, meet infantry in line and are driven down the slope, Loison’s leading brigade by the 43rd and 52nd Foot near the convent. The French lose 522 dead, 3,612 wounded and 364 captured, the allies 200 dead, 1,001 wounded and 51 missing.
The Battle of Bussaco, aquatint by Charles Turner, Yale Center for British ArtWikimedia Commons, Charles Turner, Public domain (Charles Turner - No.2 Battle of Sierra de Basaco above St. Antonio de Cantaro - B1978.43.1025 - Yale Center for British Art (cropped).jpg)
Masséna then marches round the north end of the ridge, and Wellington falls back, reaching the Lines on 10 October. On 14 October an attack at Sobral shows the strength of the works: 126 of them are finished, held by 29,750 men with 247 heavy guns, most of them Portuguese militia, Spanish troops and British marines and gunners, which leaves the field army free to meet an attack anywhere. Masséna keeps his starving army before the Lines for a month and in mid-November falls back to Santarém.
The Fort of São Vicente above Torres Vedras, a work of the first Line, photographed in 2020Wikimedia Commons, Vitor Oliveira, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Forte de São Vicente - Torres Vedras - Portugal (50922456696).jpg)
In March 1811, his supplies exhausted, Masséna retreats into Spain, having lost about 25,000 men in Portugal. In April Wellington besieges Almeida, and from 3 to 5 May he holds off Masséna’s attempt to relieve it at Fuentes de Oñoro. Masséna is replaced by Marshal Auguste Marmont.
Sources
- John Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. VII (1912).
- Donald Horward (ed.), The French Campaign in Portugal, 1810–1811 (1973).
- John Grehan, The Lines of Torres Vedras (2016).
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