INGILBY DIARY. 
245 
order to get upon tlie route of tlie main body of tbe Army. 
Ceaerias. 
Bivouacked near Pombal. 
Bivouacked at Condeina. 
The Army had overtaken the main body of the French yesterday at 
Kedinha, and obliged them precipitately to continue their retreat with 
considerable loss in killed and prisoners, amongst the latter were nearly 
all their wounded. 
We came up with the Army which engaged the French in front of 
Miranda de Corvo. They were dislodged from their position and 
again forced to continue their retreat. We fired a few rounds. 
The Army attacked the French and drove them from their bivouac 
in front of Foz d'Aronce. We fired a few rounds. In these affairs 
we made many prisoners, and the Commander-in-Chief praised the 
conduct of the troops in orders, especially the Light Division, and 
called upon Commanding Officers to select a non-commissioned officer 
from each of its regiments to be recommended for commissions. 
Bivouacked a league beyond Foz d'Aronce. 
The French were bivouacked on the right bank of the Alva, with a 
rear-guard advantageously posted to oppose the passage of the ford at 
the bridge Ponte de Murcella, which was entirely broken up and unfit 
to pass. Lord Wellington ordered a Corps to march in a direction to 
threaten the left of their bivouac, and the other Divisions, supported 
by the fire of the Artillery (and in which our guns shared), then 
advanced to the ford. A few shots were exchanged when, the Division 
appearing on their left flank, the French Army beat to arms, got into 
order of march and, making a precipitate retreat, abandoned their 
half-cooked dinners to those who had passed the river. The Brigade 
bivouacked. 
The Staff Corps having made a bridge in the night capable of bear¬ 
ing infantry, the remainder of the Army passed the Alva, the guns 
fording, and bivouacked at Moita. 
Galizis. 
Cantoned in the village of Maceira. Before the French had aban¬ 
doned the positions of Sobral and Santarem they had suffered great 
privations, and their numbers had become much reduced. They now 
retraced their march, repulsed in their invasion, through a country 
exhausted of provisions and forage. The sick and dead were scattered 
on the roads and in their bivouacs, and the houses and hospitals 
in the villages and towns through which we pursued their columns 
were nearly all occupied, and some filled, with the dead and dying, the 
greatest part perishing from hunger and want. The horses in like 
manner died or became inefficient and were abandoned in great num¬ 
bers, so that many of the tumbrils, with much other materiel of their 
Army was obliged to be burnt or destroyed on the spot or fell into our 
hands. Since the affair at Bedinha some guns had been discovered 
and dug up. The French set fire to the towns and villages and put to 
death numbers of the inhabitants, without regard to age or sex, and 
in return the peasants, watching every opportunity, fell upon their 
stragglers and sick and massacred them instantly, if no British or 
regular troops were at hand to protect them. 
