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Updated: June 12, 2025
"Were the general to march north, he would not get news of Victor's advance in time to get back to save Lisbon, therefore I fear that it is absolutely impossible for him to attempt to check the French until they cross the Douro, perhaps not until they cross the Mondego.
Yet no general, not even Napoleon himself, brought about so many startling surprises as Wellington. The passage of the Douro, the storm of the frontier fortresses, the flank attack at Vittoria, the passage of the Adour, the passage of the Bidassoa were each and all of them utterly unexpected by the French marshals; and those were by no means the only, or the most conspicuous, instances.
Some years ago, when the Spanish Cortes were discussing a treaty with Portugal on improving the course of the river Douro, a deputy rose and said, "If the Douro is turned into a canal, transportation will be made at a much lower price. Portuguese cereals will sell cheaper in Castile, and will make a formidable opposition to our national labor.
Some few years before, he had emigrated with a large family of seven sons and two daughters, and being fond of field sports, and greatly taken with the beauty of the locality in which he had pitched his tent in the wilderness, he determined to raise a mill upon the dam which Nature had provided at his hands, and wait patiently until the increasing immigration should settle the township of Smith and Douro, render the property valuable, and bring plenty of grist to the mill.
The Marquis of Douro and Lord Charles Wellesley's Tale to his little King and Queen; completed Dec. 2nd, 1829. 3rd Vol.: 1. The Duke of Wellington's Adventure in the Cavern; 2. The Duke of Wellington and the little King's and Queen's visit to the Horse-Guards; completed May 8th, 1830. 4th Vol.: 1. The three old Washer-women of Strathfieldsaye; 2.
A peasant, whom they fell in with soon after they started, had undertaken to show them a ford. It was breast deep, but the stream was not strong, and they crossed without difficulty, holding their arms and ammunition well above the water. They learned that there was, indeed, a French brigade at the bridge of San Felices. Marching north now, they came before daybreak upon the Douro.
Bankes, who had seen the whole of England, the greater part of Italy and France, and almost every province of Spain and Portugal, frequently remarked, that in all his travels he had met with nothing equal to it, excepting only in some parts of the latter country, Entre Minho and Douro, to which alone he could compare it."
Indeed the only natural frontiers are formed by the last thirty miles of the Minho in the north, by about eighty miles of the Douro, which in its deep and narrow gorge really separates Traz os Montes from Leon; by a few miles of the Tagus, and by the Guadiana both before and after it runs through a part of Alemtejo.
The main body of the enemy's army beginning to fill all the streets of Oporto, the marshal at once sounded retreat, and the wounded and sick were left to the care of the English. When, on the evening of the 12th, the army reached the town of Baltar, Soult learned that the roads by Braga had been intercepted, as well as by the valley of the Douro.
If this alone were carried out, it would be, I believe, sufficient to settle the whole question. My idea is to obtain separate collections from all the principal rivers of Spain and Portugal, and even to have several separate collections from the larger rivers, one from their lower course, one from their middle course, and another from their head-waters. Take, for instance, the Douro.
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