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Updated: June 21, 2025
Massena, however, was bent upon fighting. He had every confidence in the valour of his troops, and was averse to retiring from Portugal, baffled, by the long and rugged road he had travelled; therefore dispositions were at once made for the attack. Ney and Regnier were to storm the British position, while Junot's corps was to be held in reserve.
The news of Junot's surrender was further embittered by the receipt of information that the Spanish troops under General La Romana, which had slyly been posted first in Hamburg, and then sent to Denmark as Bernadotte's advance-guard, had at last revolted, and were embarking on English ships for home in order to join the movement of national redemption.
Owing in part to Junot's insatiable greed and his appropriation of enormous private treasure, an example which his army was quick to follow, in part to the subsequent disenchantment and a general revulsion of feeling, the plan came to naught. Before long the Spanish general Bellesca seized the French governor of Oporto and began a rebellion in favor of Don John.
I also did not conceal how blamable Junot's conduct appeared to me, and how ungenerous I considered it thus rashly to accuse a woman who was not present to justify or defend herself; that it was no great proof of attachment to add domestic uneasiness to the anxiety, already sufficiently great, which the situation of his brothers in arms, at the commencement of a hazardous enterprise, occasioned him.
Certainly part of Junot's story had been carried out the horse thief came to the tent and came with us to Maginnis, and it was not because he wanted the protection of the troops. Faye insists that an attack was never thought of, but as he was responsible for government property, including the animals, he had to make preparation to protect them. Of course those men wanted only the animals.
Seeing, however, that Junot's men were demoralized by defeat, and that the nearest succouring force was in Navarre, these excuses seem scarcely tenable, except on the ground that, with such commanders as Burrard and Dalrymple, it was certainly desirable to get the French speedily away.
The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them during the first days was now replaced by Marshal Junot's enormous baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a cavalry baggage train. From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in three columns, went on as a single group.
At the commencement of the fight the British force was more than two thousand larger than that of the French, but of these only a half had taken an active part in the battle, while every man in Junot's army had been sent forward to the attack. Sir Harry Burrard's command was a short one, for on the following morning Sir Hew Dalrymple superseded him.
Delphine Gay and her mother were more the ornaments of the salon of the Duchesse d'Abrantès, perhaps, than of that of Gérard; and as the former continued open long after the latter was closed by death, not only the young girl, whose verses were so immensely in fashion during the Restoration, was one of the constant guests of Junot's widow, but she continued to be so as the wife of Émile de Girardin, the intelligent and enterprising founder of the newspaper "La Presse."
As was noted in the previous chapter, the Emperor renewed his offers of a partition of Portugal in the early autumn of 1807; and in pursuance of the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau, Junot's corps marched through Spain into Portugal, where they were helped by a Spanish corps.
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