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Updated: May 15, 2025
They here learned that their corps was in camp, with two other Portuguese regiments, four miles higher up the river. As it was dark when they arrived at Abrantes, they agreed to sleep there and go on the next morning; as Terence wished to report himself to General Hill, to whose division the regiment was attached, until operations should commence in the spring.
A strong force took up its position between Castello Branco and Abrantes, while the militia and partisans occupied the whole country north of Leiria; and the French were thus completely surrounded. Nevertheless, the store of provisions left behind in the towns and villages was so large that the French cavalry were able to bring in sufficient supplies for the army.
The Duchess of Abrantes, in recalling the brilliant winter of 1804-5, says, in her Memoirs: "One especially impressive beauty, particularly in the ball-room, was Madame de Canisy, I have often compared her to a muse.
Finally, however, attracted by the glory of the sunset behind the hills towards Abrantes, she sauntered out on to the terrace, to the intense thankfulness of a poor wretch who had waited there for the past ten hours in the almost despairing hope that precisely such a thing might happen. She was leaning upon the balustrade when a rustle in the pines below drew her attention.
The British commander, therefore, decided in the first place to attack Soult, and the force at Leirya was ordered to march to Coimbra. Five British battalions and two regiments of cavalry, with 7,000 Portuguese troops, were ordered to Abrantes and Santarem to check Victor, should he endeavour to make a rapid march upon Lisbon.
The Mayo Fusiliers were among the regiments stationed at Abrantes, and Terence received orders to take up a position four miles ahead of that town, and hold it unless Victor again advanced in overwhelming strength, and then to fall back on Abrantes. This exactly suited his own wishes.
The Duchess of Abrantes, who was intimately acquainted with Hortense from her childhood and with the whole Bonaparte family, in her interesting memoirs writes: "Hortense de Beauharnais was fresh as a rose; and though her fair complexion was not relieved by much color, she had enough to produce that freshness and bloom which was her chief beauty.
At Abrantes and Santarem, the receptions accorded me took the wildest form of enthusiasm and I there heard for the first time the peculiar name given me in Portugal 'Homen das Botas', 'the man with the boots'. This name grew out of an ancient story connected with the Tagus.
The Christians, when at peace among themselves, were always too many for their Mahometan neighbors, even when the latter were aided by the whole power of Western Africa. The following year the Portuguese were no less successful before Abrantes, which the Africans had besieged. He marched without delay against Santarem, which his soldiers had vainly besieged some years before.
From one of those apartments the husband and father had been led to his trial, and to the scaffold, and now this mother enters this palace virtually a queen, and her children have opening before them the very highest positions of earthly wealth and honor. Calumnies. Testimony of the Berkeley men. Remarks of Napoleon at St. Helena. The voice of slander. Testimony of the Duchess of Abrantes.
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