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The object of Masséna was to reach Coimbra before Wellington. His manoeuvres to outflank Wellington's left were skilfully devised, but the British army marched steadily down the valley of the Mondego, carrying with it the population of the district, and took its stand on the ridge of Bussaco, north of Coimbra, barring Masséna's progress.
On the following day, he again found a way of turning Wellington's left, and, in an intercepted despatch, he naturally treated this as a compensation for the repulse at Bussaco, which he did not disguise.
He rode in utter silence, his face set, his brows stern; and Moniz, watching him furtively the while, wondered what thoughts were stirring in that rash, impetuous young brain, and was afraid. Towards noon at last they overtook the legate's party. They espied his mule-litter at the door of an inn in a little village some ten miles beyond the foothills of the Bussaco range.
Never, even at Bussaco, did the French show greater ardour and élan in attack, and it was only after a series of bloody hand-to-hand combats on the summits and sides of the mountains that they were compelled to recoil and rolled backward down the ridge. Baffled in his attempt to relieve Pamplona, Soult turned westwards towards St.
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