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 Wellesley taking up its position on the ridge of Busaco, twenty miles north-east of Coimbra, when the head of the French army appeared on the 25th. The strength of this position, the moral effect of a victory, and the wish to gain time for clearing the country, determined Wellington to fight there. The French army was now reduced to 65,000, and its cavalry was of no use.

Napoleon had told Masséna not to be over-cautious, but to attack the English vigorously after reconnoitring them (Correspondence, 19 Sept.); and, though a letter to this effect could not have reached him, Masséna acted as Napoleon would have wished. He would not allow Ney to fall on at once, as he wished to do, but spent the 20th in examining the English position, which, though steep and difficult of access, was extended and shallow. On the 27th he directed Ney's corps against the left and Reynier's against the centre, holding Junot's in reserve. Ney's attack was promptly repulsed by Craufurd's division. Revnier's troops fell upon Picton's division, and met with some success, but reinforcements were brought against them from the right, and they failed to keep their footing on the ridge. The French lost four thousand five hundred men and the allies only thirteen hundred. Learning that there was a road over the hills by which the left of the position could be turned, Masséna marched by it next day, gained the Oporto road, and entered Coimbra on 1 Oct. It was deserted, and he found no means of subsistence but growing crops. Leaving his sick and wounded there, to be made prisoners in a few days by the Portuguese militia [see Trant, Nicholas (DNB00)], he followed the allied army, which had fallen back towards Lisbon. He crossed the Monte Junto into the valley of the Tagus, and on 12 Oct. found himself in front of the lines of Torres Vedras.

These works, of which Masséna had first heard five days before, though they had been in progress for nearly a year, consisted of two chains of redoubts across twenty-four miles of rugged country between the Tagus and the sea. The inner chain, about fifteen miles north of Lisbon, started from Alhandra and ran by Bucellas, Mafra, and the San Lorenço river to the coast. The outer chain also had its right at Alhandra, but, passing by Monte Graca and Torres Vedras, it followed the course of the Zizandra to the sea. The number of redoubts was 126 when the allied army took shelter within the lines, and 427 guns were mounted in them. There were also other works below Lisbon, to cover an embarkation at St. Julian's in the last resort. These were garrisoned by English marines, the works of the two advanced lines mainly by Portuguese militia. The regular troops, raised by reinforcements to sixty thousand, were quite unfettered by the works; while the French were cramped by Monte Junto and its spurs, which made lateral movements slow and difficult (, Sieges in Spain, iii. 1-101; Journal of United Service Institution, xl. 1338).

Masséna carefully examined the outer line from end to end, but made no serious attempt to force it; and in the middle of November he fell back to Santarem. The country behind it had not been wasted, and he was able to maintain himself there till the spring, though constantly harassed by partisans in his rear. He had asked for large reinforcements, and at the end of December he was joined by about twelve thousand men, but they did not make up for his loss by sickness. Soult was ordered to march to his assistance from Andalusia, but occupied himself in besieging Olivenea and Badajoz as a preliminary.

Meanwhile Wellington had his own difficulties. The people crowded round Lisbon suffered terribly, and forty thousand are said to have died from privations. Some members of the Portuguese regency, especially Principal Souza, obstructed him in every way and threw on him all the odium of the plan of defence (Desp. 30 Nov. and 18 Jan. 1811). But before Busaco he wrote: 'The temper of some of the officers of the British army gives me more concern than the folly of the Portuguese government. . . . There is a system of croaking in the army which is highly injurious to the public service, and which I must devise some means of putting an end to, or it will put an end to us' (Desp. 11 Sept.) Among these croakers were Brent Spencer, the second in command, and Charles Stewart (afterwards Lord Londonderry) [q. v.] the adjutant-general (, iii. 49;, i. 346). The best officers were constantly asking for leave to go home, many others were inefficient, and where he met with zeal and ability he could not reward it (Desp. 4 Aug. and 28 Jan. 1811; Suppl. Desp. 29 Aug. 1810).

The Perceval ministry did not seem to have 'the power, or the inclination, or the nerves to do all that ought to be done to carry on the contest as it might be' (ib. 11 Jan. 1811). When invasion was imminent, Wellington had asked (on 19 Aug.) for all available reinforcements, but he received only five thousand men in the autumn, and five thousand more in the following