Portuguese officers on his staff for information as to the country he had to cross; but as they had accepted service under the French eagles, they naturally had never visited the district held by the British, and knew nothing of what the British were doing. When he turned fiercely upon his Portuguese officers, they urged this in self-excuse. But they had failed to warn Massena of the existence of the hills themselves. "Yes, yes," said the angry French general. "Wellington built the works; but he did not make the mountains."

Massena spent three days in examining the front of Wellington's defences, and decided that a direct attack, with his present forces, was hopeless. But his stubborn, bear-like courage was roused, and he resolved to hold to his position in front of Wellington till reinforcements reached him. It became a contest of endurance betwixt the two armies, a contest in which all the advantages were on the side of the British. Their rear was open to the sea; ample supplies flowed into their camps. The health of the They looked down.

men was good, their spirits high. from their hill-fortress and saw their foe waging a sullen warfare with mere starvation. For six desperate and suffering weeks Massena stood before Wellington's lines. The French had raised plunder to a fine art; they could exist where other armies would starve. And Massena's savage and stubborn genius shone in such a position as that in which he now

stood. He kept his men sternly in hand, maintained sleepless watch against the British, and sent out his foraging parties in ever greater scale and with ever wider sweep. To maintain thus, for six hungry and heroic weeks, 60,000 men and 20,000 horses in a country where a British brigade would have perished from mere famine in as many days, was a great feat. Massena's secret lay in diligent, widespread, and microscopic plunder-plunder raised to the dignity of a science, and practised with the skill of one of the fine arts; and Massena added the ruthlessness of an inquisitor to the skill of a great artist in robbery. "All the military arrangements are useless," wrote Wellington, "if the French can find subsistence on the ground which they occupy." And Massena very nearly spoiled Wellington's plans by the endurance with which, in spite of famine and sickness, he held on to his position in front of the lines of Torres Vedras.

The long weeks of endurance were, of course, marked by perpetual conflicts betwixt the foraging parties and pickets of the two armies. A curiously interesting picture of this personal warfare is given in Tomkinson's "Diary of a Cavalry Officer." The British cavalry patrols carried on a sort of predatory warfare with the enemy's parties on their own account. They looked on them as game to be hunted and captured; and the British private went into the business with characteristic relish, and performed really surprising

feats. A sergeant and a couple of dragoons would bring in a "bag" of a score of French infantry with great pride. On the other hand, there was a constant stream of desertions on both sides of the lines. That the French stole to the lines where they knew that at least food awaited them was not strange; but the British desertions were almost as numerous and much more mysterious.

"The

Wellington himself was puzzled by it. British soldiers," he wrote to Lord Bathurst, "see the deserters from the enemy coming into their lines daily, all with the story of the unparalleled distresses which their army were suffering, and with the loss of all hope of success in their enterprise. They know at the same time that there is not an article of food or clothing which they need which is not provided for them; and that they have every prospect of success; yet they desert!" In the French camp there was neither food nor hope; within the British lines there were both. Yet every night the astonished British officers had to report desertions. "The deserters," Wellington adds, "are principally Irishmen;" but they were not all Irishmen. The truth is, the average British private hates inaction. He is hungry for incident and movement. He found weeks spent in camp monotonous, and he deserted by way of variety.

The logic of starvation proved at last too strong for even Massena's stubborn courage, and on Novem

ber 15 he fell back reluctantly to Santarem, having lost more than 6000 men, principally by starvation, in front of Torres Vedras. Wellington pushed out cautiously in pursuit, but at Santarem Massena turned grimly round on his pursuers. He now held a strong position with supplies in his rear; and by holding Santarem he still seemed to threaten Lisbon, and so put a mask over the face of his own defeat. Wellington, on the other side, was not disposed to engage in active operations. The winter was bitter, the rivers flooded, the roads impassable. And so the memorable campaign of 1810 came to an end with two great armies confronting each other, but neither willing to strike. But all the honours and the substantial results of the campaign were with Wellington. Napoleon's confident strategy had gone to wreck on the lines of Torres Vedras.

CHAPTER XVIII

MASSENA'S FAILURE

ASSENA, as we have seen, held on to his posi

MASS

tion at Santarem till March 5, 1811-for four dogged, much-enduring months, that is; a prodigy of endurance. Foy meanwhile was sent to explain the situation to Napoleon in person, a moderate-sized division being necessary to convoy him safely across Spain to the Pyrenees. Napoleon's pride was stung by the Spanish disasters, and his masterful genius quickly framed a new and yet more spacious strategy for his generals. Bessières, with 12,000 of the Imperial Guard, entered Spain; Drouet, with 10,000 men, marched to join Massena; Soult was instructed to abandon the siege of Cadiz, and, with his whole available force, march to join hands with Massena. This would give that general a force of 70,000 men, sufficient, it was hoped, to overwhelm Wellington.

Soult was the most dangerous element in this combination, and Wellington planted Hill at Abrantes to bar his junction with Massena. But Napoleon's new combination, like all previous plans, was at first post