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X.

1808. July.

CHAP. had left at least three thousand upon the different fields of battle*. The character of the intrusive government would be imperfectly understood hereafter, if its language as well as its acts were not faithfully recorded. The bulletin which announced this statement to the Portugueze, and to that great portion of the civilized world in which the events of the war were anxiously observed, proceeded to say, "this is the mournful result of a frenzy which nothing can justify, which nothing can excuse, and which obliges us to multiply the number of victims who excite sorrow and compassion, but upon whom a terrible necessity compels us to inflict the strokes of just vengeance. Thus it is that the Portugueze people, blind instruments of the unfeeling calculations of the British cabinet, destroy with their own hands the happiness which we with all our power were endeavouring to make them enjoy! Thus it is that from the bosom of tranquillity, of good order, and of repose, they draw upon themselves the destructive scourge of war, and bring devastation even upon the very fields where God had given abundance! Thus it is that deluded men, ungrateful children as well as guilty citizens, change all the claims which they had to the benevolence and protection of government, for deserved misfortune and wretchedness, ruin their families, carry de

* General Thiebault, by whom the bulletin was signed, gives a different statement in his book (p. 155). The French loss is

there given at sixty men killed, and from 130 to 140 wounded; that of the Portugueze as at least 4000 left upon the field.

X.

July.

solation, flames, and death, into their dwellings, CHAP. transform flourishing cities into heaps of ashes and vast tombs, and by their fatal union draw 1808. upon the whole country the calamities which they provoke, which they deserve, and from which (weak victims as they are) they cannot escape, covering themselves with shame, and completing her destruction. Thus it is that no other resource remains to them than the clemency of those whom they sought to assassinate,.. a clemency which they do not implore in vain, when, acknowledging their crime, they ask pardon from the French, who, incapable of belying their noble character, are Bulletin 4. always as full of generosity as of valour." This Observador was the language of Buonaparte's governor in 368.

* As another example of the arts used to impose upon the Portugueze people by the intrusive government, the following extract from the fifth bulletin of the army of Portugal may be read with feelings very different from what the detail in the text must excite. "On the 10th of July forty English disembarked at the foot of the village of the Costa, to take in water and provisions. That point was defended by only five carabineers of the thirty-first regiment of light infantry. Notwithstanding this disproportion of numbers, these five men, in sight of all the inhabitants, attacked the forty English, repulsed them, forced them to abandon upon the beach all that they had purchased, and pursued them to the sea.' Yet even this is outdone in the same bulletin. "Three conscript lads (it is farther said), of the sixtysixth regiment, occupied a small

post on the sea-shore, in front of
Cascaes, when they saw a boat
put off from the English squa-
dron, and make towards them..
Immediately these three lads
placed themselves in ambush, to
wait till the boat should draw
near: as soon as it reached the
shore they rose from their am-
bush, fired upon the boat, killed
the pilot (who was the master of
Admiral Cotton's ship), obliged
two English officers, and six sea-
men or soldiers, who were in the
said boat, to come on shore, and
lay down their arms upon the
beach, and then conducted them
as prisoners of war to the quar-
ters-general of General Solignac
at Cascaes. This fact discovers
a presence of mind, a degree of
intelligence, and a vigour, which
do honour to the three lads." To
complete the story, it should have
been added, that the three lads
ate the eight Englishmen.

Portuguez,

X.

1808. July.

CHAP. Portugal! "To be the victim," says Mr. Wordsworth, commenting upon these things and words at the time, in that strain of profoundest feeling and philosophy by which his higher compositions are so eminently distinguished, "to be the victim of such bloody-mindedness, is a doleful lot for a nation; and the anguish must have been rendered still more poignant by the scoffs and insults, and by that heinous contempt of the most awful truths, with which the perpetrator of those cruelties has proclaimed them. Merciless ferocity is an evil familiar to our thoughts; but these combinations of malevolence historians have not yet been called upon to record; and writers of fiction, if they have ever ventured to create passions resembling them, have confined, out of reverence for the acknowledged constitution of human nature, those passions to reprobate spirits. Such tyranny is, in the strictest sense, intolerable; not because it aims at the extinction of life, but of every thing which gives life its value,.. of virtue, of reason, of repose in God, or in truth."

Loison ordered towards

Coimbra.

Loison, for the sake of intimidating the country, and thereby preventing the danger of such resistance as he had experienced in Tras os Montes, had sent before him a report that he had been reinforced by 16,000 men from the army of Marshal Bessieres; and this news was officially transmitted to Junot by the Corregedor of Abrantes. At first the French received the tidings with entire belief, and with a joy proportionate to the danger from which they now thought themselves delivered. A comparison of

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X.

1808.

July.

dates and distances occasioned some uncomfort- CHAP. able doubts, and the next day advices came that Loison had arrived at Abrantes with no other force than his own. But even this was of no inconsiderable importance: it relieved them from their anxiety concerning him, it brought the whole of their disposable force within reach and within command, for Kellermann had now arrived with the troops from Alem-Tejo; and Junot determined upon striking a great blow before the English should appear. Kellermann had been sent to Alcobaça, where the troops under General Thomières, who covered Peniche, and those of Margaron (who had received the submission of the people of Thomar, and exacted from them Neves, iv. 20,000 cruzados) were to be under his orders. Loison was now instructed to form a junction with them and take the command; crush the insurgents in that part of the country, march against Coimbra, subdue and chastise that city, thus quenching one great furnace of the insurrection, and return to Lisbon. Before he reached Thiebault, Alcobaça part of these instructions had been fulfilled by Thomières.

64.

146.

sacked and

That General had advanced with a few hundred Nazareth men to Obidos, with the intention of relieving burnt by the fort at Nazareth; but a reconnoitring party the French, which he sent forward to Barquinha was driven back, four of his scouts were made prisoners and sent on board an English vessel, and a report that a considerable body of English had landed there to assist the insurgents deterred him from

X.

1808. July.

July 14.

CHAP. proceeding in time. The Portugueze themselves raised this report; in reality they had applied for aid to the English, who, some time before, had taken possession of the Berlengs; a few pieces of cannon were given them, but the garrison was so scanty that no men could be spared; and the short respite which they obtained by deceiving the enemy would have been better employed in providing for escape, than for a feeble and disorderly resistance. Nine days after their triumph Thomières proceeded against them with 3000 men, in the belief that some English had joined them. One column, under cover of the darkness, got under the ill-served guns of the insurgents before they were perceived; the Portugueze fired in haste without aim and without effect, and then took to flight. A few drunken fellows, who had undertaken to serve the guns, remained by them, with a woman and a few old men, and these were put to death. The town of Nazareth was sacked, and set on fire. The jewels which they took from the church of N. Senhora de Nazareth were estimated at more than £20,000; for of the innumerable and many-named idols of Our Lady in Portugal, this was the most celebrated. It is the very image which, according to the legend, St. Jerome sent from Bethlehem to St. Augustine, and St. Augustine to his monks at the Caulian monastery, from whence, at the destruction of the Goths, it was brought by King Roderick and Romano to this spot. It is said, that during the last century the idol has some

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