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Updated: May 11, 2025
Brief as was the struggle within the town, it must have been a terrific one. The artillery were firing at musket range; cavalry and infantry were fighting hand to hand in narrow streets, a destructive musketry pouring all the while from windows and house-tops. At the Amarante gate, where the French defiled, the carnage was also great.
General Loison, unable to force the passage of the Tamega, had evacuated Amarante. The roads from the north would bring the army back to the suburbs of Oporto.
The next day Terence heard the sound of the guns on the Serra height, but the distance was too great for the crack of musketry to reach him, and he had no idea that the British were crossing the river until he saw the French marching across the mouth of the valley towards Amarante. Among such veteran troops discipline was speedly recovered, and they encamped in good order in the valley.
Terence saw, however, that he could not hope to withstand long the attack of a whole French division, and leaving two companies behind to check the enemy's advance, he marched along the crest of the hill until he came upon the road crossing from Amarante to the Ave river.
In one of the cloisters of São Gonçalvo at Amarante on the Tamega famous for the battle on the bridge during the French invasion there is only one arch to each bay below, and it springs from jambs, not from columns, and is very plain. The buttresses do not rise above the lower cornice and have Ionic capitals, as have also the rather stout columns of the upper story.
The half-naked lieutenant drew up his eleven fever patients in line; the bugle sounded; every one came to attention; and the haggard colonel read out the orders of the day. Then the dugout with its load of sick men started down-stream, and Rondon, Lyra, Amarante, and the twelve remaining men resumed their weary march.
As Franceschi's report informed Soult that the whole force of the allies was now upon him, he at once sent off his heavy artillery and baggage by the road to Amarante. Mermet was posted at Valongo, with orders to patrol the river and to seize every boat. Those at Oporto were also secured.
Terence had engaged several peasants to watch the roads leading from Oporto, and as soon as he learned that a long train of baggage and heavy guns was leaving the city by the road to Amarante, he crossed the valley, took up a position on the Catalena hill flanking the road, and as the waggons came along opened a sudden and heavy fire upon them.
Retreat was resolved upon, the powder saturated, the field artillery horsed; the departure was ordered for twelve at noon, and a part of the army was already defiling on the road to Amarante.
This question was addressed to an officer in a staff uniform, who entered at the moment, followed by the short and bulky figure of a monk, his shaven crown and large cassock strongly contrasting with the gorgeous glitter of the costumes around him. "I say, who have we here?" "The Prior of Amarante, sir," replied Waters, "who has just come over.
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