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The passage from Santarem to Abrantes offered the inconvenience of an immediate attack from the enemy in possession of that town, recently fortified by General Hill. It was resolved to wait for the arrival of Marshal Soult, or for the reinforcements which he had been ordered to send into Portugal.
This terrible sight naturally goaded them to such a state of fury that Soult in vain endeavoured to stop the work of slaughter and pillage. This continued for several hours, and altogether the number of Portuguese who perished by drowning and slaughter in the streets was estimated at ten thousand, of which the number killed in the defence of the works formed but an insignificant portion.
His first step, as emperor, was the creation of eighteen marshals, all memorable in the annals of military glory Berthier, Murat, Moncey, Jourdan, Massena, Augereau, Bernadotte, Soult, Brune, Lannes, Mortier, Ney, Davoust, Bessières, Kellermann, Lefebvre, Pérignon, and Serrurier. The individual lives of these military heroes cannot here be alluded to.
The Emperor remained an hour at this fete, and danced the Boulanyere with Madame Bertrand. He wore the uniform of colonel-general of the cavalry of the guard. The wife of Marshal Soult was queen of the ball. She wore a black velvet dress besprinkled with the kind of diamonds called rhinestones.
This was the name Sir John Cradock suggested to Terence, as a memorial of the service they had rendered in repulsing Soult at that river. It was the first time Terence had seen his name with the prefix of colonel. "It looks like a farce," he said, as he broke the seal.
Some of the Duke of Wellington's victories over Soult they stoutly denied, and others they ascribed to great superiority of numbers, and to the large drafts of Soult's best troops for the purpose of forming skeleton battalions, to receive the conscripts of 1813.
He was joined on the march by a Spanish force of thirty thousand men; and a bloody action with a French army of equal force at Talavera in July 1809 restored the renown of English arms. The losses on both sides were enormous, and the French fell back at the close of the struggle; but the fruits of the victory were lost by a sudden appearance of Soult on the English line of advance.
The negotiations were prolonged until evening, but the bishop declined all Soult's overtures, and the fire from the intrenchments continued. In the course of the evening Merle's division, in order to divert attention from the points Soult had fixed upon for the attack, moved towards the Portuguese left, when a tremendous fire of artillery and musketry opened upon it.
During June and the first days of July, he moved by Abrantes and the Tagus valley as far as Plasencia, little knowing that Soult was about to sweep round his rear, with 50,000 men, and intercept his communications with Lisbon. On July 10 he held a conference with the Spanish general Cuesta, who insisted on making an aggressive movement with his own troops only, and met with a repulse.
Montholon. Comte. *Mortier. Duc de Treviso. Mouton. Comte de Lobau. *Murat. Duc de Reggio. Pajol. Baron. Pasquier, Duc de. Prefect of Police. *Pérignon. *Poniatowski. Rapp. Comte. Reynier. Duc de Massa. Rémusat. Chamberlain. Savary. Duc de Rovigo. Sébastiani. Comte. *Sérurier. *Soult. Duc de Dalmatia. *St. Cyr, Marquis de. *Suchet. Duc d'Albufera. Talleyrand. Prince de Benevento. Vandamme.
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