440 The Captain of Rifles. [APRIL, 



bridge into the wide world, in the most delightful delirium, with the 

 French dragoons at their heels." 



After this specimen of the varieties of human happiness, they 

 reached a small town where the commissaries were destroying some 

 stores which they were unable to carry off. The Rifles came in for 

 shirts and shoes, while the streets were running with rum, which the 

 soldiers were drinking as they marched along. Some years after, the 

 commissariat attempted to charge the men with the price of the shirts 

 and shoes. But they were favoured with a soldier's answer; that 

 " one half of them were dead, and the other half would be d mn-c[ 

 before they would pay any thing." 



At Torres Vedras, the Rifles were happy : they were, of course, in 

 advance of the lines, and lived during the day in the little town of 

 Arruda, retiring, however, to a bivouac among the hills at night. 

 They here indulged in the free luxury of out-post life. " We cer- 

 tainly lived in clover while we remained here; every thing we saw 

 was our own, seeing no one who had a more legitimate claim, and 

 every field was a vineyard. Ultimately it was considered too much 

 trouble to pluck the grapes, as there were a number of poor native 

 thieves in the habit of coming from the rear every day to steal some ; 

 so that a soldier had nothing to do, but to watch one when he was 

 marching off with his basket-full ; when he would deliberately place his 

 back against that of the Portuguese, and relieve him of his load, without 

 wasting any words about the bargain. The wretch would then follow 

 the soldier to the camp, in the hope of having his basket returned, 

 which it generally was, when emptied." 



Massena abandoned his position in front of the lines on the 9th of 

 November, leaving, as is usual with the French, a little evidence of 

 stratagem in " some straw-stuffed gentlemen" to occupy the usual 

 posts of his sentries. " Some of them were cavalry, some infantry, 

 and they seemed such respectable substitutes for their spectral prede- 

 cessors, that in the haze of the morning, we thought that they had 

 been joined by some well-fed ones from the rear." Massena had now 

 retired to Santarem, where he remained four months longer doing 

 nothing. His conduct in this whole campaign was utterly inexplicable. 

 He first stopped to storm the heights of Busaco, when he might have 

 walked round them ; in this attempt he lost 10,000 men killed and 

 wounded. His next business was to have rushed on to Lisbon at all 

 risks, as upon his reaching it depended the success of the campaign. 

 But he halted in front of the lines of Torres Vedras, though he reached 

 them before they were completed, while the British were yet in the 

 hurry of their first occupation, and while it was more than probable 

 that in lines of so many miles extent, he would have found some 

 unguarded or feebly defended post. This he neglected, but sat down 

 to look at the British fortifying them day by day, and receiving rein- 

 forcements, while his own army was dwindling down by hunger and 

 disease. Such was his position through the whole month of October. 

 On his withdrawing from the front of the lines in November, it was 

 the natural surmise, that to avoid the further loss of men in an 

 unfriendly country, where all hope of effective service was now at an 

 end, he would have made the best of his way over the frontier. On 

 the contrary, the spirit of lingering seemed to have taken full posses- 

 sion of this once famous Enfant gate dc la victoire, and at Santarem lie 



