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Meanwhile the French had become masters of Pogo Velho; the formidable masses had nearly outflanked us on the right. The battle was lost if we could not fall back upon our original position, and concentrate our force upon Fuentes d'Onoro. To effect this was a work of great difficulty; but no time was to be lost.
"Your name is not unknown to us, colonel," the count said. "Living so close to the frontier as we do, we naturally know much of what passes in Portugal; and heard you spoken of as a famous leader of a strong Portuguese regiment, that seems to have been in the thick of all the fighting. But we heard that you had been taken prisoner by the French, at the battle of Fuentes d'Onoro."
We have had some tough work at Fuentes d'Onoro, although nothing to what yours must have been at Albuera, still it was hot enough in all conscience, and we had over a hundred casualties in the regiment. Carruthers and Manley were both slightly wounded. Jones, Anstruther, Palmer, and Chambers were killed, and several of the others hit more or less hard.
The battle which followed at Fuentes d'Oñoro, south-east of Almeida, was among the most hardly contested struggles in the whole Peninsular war. It began on May 3, and, with a day's interval, concluded on the 5th. The British remained masters of the field, and claimed a somewhat doubtful victory, which at least secured the evacuation of Almeida.
The village of Fuentes d'Onoro, one of the most beautiful in Spain, is situated in a lovely valley, where all the charms of verdure so peculiar to the Peninsula seemed to have been scattered with a lavish hand. The citron and the arbutus, growing wild, sheltered every cottage door, and the olive and the laurel threw their shadows across the little rivulet which traversed the village.
Two days after the battle of Albuera, Lord Wellington himself arrived, and from the officers of his staff Tom heard the details of the battle of Fuentes d'Onoro, which had been fought a few days previously, and which had been nearly as hardly contested as had Albuera itself, both sides claiming the victory.
His position extended to about five miles; and here, although vastly inferior in numbers, yet relying upon the bravery of the troops, and the moral ascendency acquired by their pursuit of the enemy, he finally resolved upon giving them battle. Being sent with despatches to Pack's brigade, which formed the blockading force at Almeida, I did not reach Fuentes d'Onoro until the evening of the 3d.
About 36,000 men were under arms. Wellington had had time to rejoin his army. The English occupied the village of Fuentes d'Onoro, between the two streams of the Dos Casas and the Furones; they covered thus their principal communications with Portugal by the bridge of Castelbon over the Coa, and defended against us the road of Almeida.
But if Napier's politics may seem strange, his soldiering was splendid, and his prose among the very best that I know. There are passages in that work the one which describes the breach of Badajos, that of the charge of the Fusiliers at Albuera, and that of the French advance at Fuentes d'Onoro which once read haunt the mind for ever. The book is a worthy monument of a great national epic.
The staff officers who came up from the left informed us that Fuentes d'Onoro was attacked in force, Massena himself leading the assault in person; while thus for seven miles the fight was maintained hotly at intervals, it was evident that upon the maintenance of our position the fortune of the day depended.
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