rom beginning to end Massena's campaign was marked by unexpected
disaster. Such were the zeal and endurance of the Spaniards that the
old, ill-constructed fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo held out from the
beginning of June until the ninth of July. Owing to the great heat and
the preparations necessary in a hostile and deserted land, Almeida,
which next blocked the way, was not even beleaguered until August
fifteenth, and it held out for nearly a fortnight. Finally, on
September sixteenth, Massena crossed the Portuguese frontier, and
Wellington, who lay near by but had not ventured to assume the
offensive, began a slow and cautious retreat down the valley of the
Mondego, devastating the country as he went. At last he made a stand
on the heights near Busaco, over against a gorge where the river
breaks through the hills into the plains below. Massena attacked on
September twenty-seventh and was repulsed with a loss of four thousand
five hundred dead and wounded. His division commanders showed at once
a spirit which soon developed into unruliness: they had declared from
the outset that their force was not sufficiently strong for the task
assigned to it, and they now demanded a retreat. But the veteran
Massena stood firm: his scouts had brought word of a certain
unprotected vale or rather depression of the land on the English left,
which, having apparently escaped Wellington's observation, was not
fortified, and the French commander determined to outflank his foe on
that line. The movement was thoroughly successful and the British
began a rapid retreat southward before the advancing French.

Massena found easy sustenance for man and beast in the rich lowlands
about Coimbra, and halting in that town for a short time to recruit
his strength and nurse his sick, started at last in the full tide of
success for Lisbon and the sea, to drive the English to their ships
and complete the Continental embargo. As one day succeeded another,
his hopes grew higher until at last he overtook and began to skirmish
with the English rear-guard. But after a final dash on October
eleventh, that rear-guard suddenly vanished. Two days later the French
were brought suddenly to a standstill before a long, perfectly
constructed, and bristling line of fortifications of whose existence
they had known absolutely nothing. These were the famous lines of
Torres Vedras, constructed by Wellington in his recent enforced
vacation, to guard his eventual retreat and em