vision was ordered to occupy the pass of Boyalva to the
north of Busaco, through which this cavalry must pass; but a Portuguese
general had previously ordered this division to inarch elsewhere; and
before this could be countermanded, the French descended into the plains
that lie open to the sea-coast, and seized on the road leading from
Oporto to Coimbra, in the rear of the British. Massena, however, had
only made the march which Wellington foresaw he would make, and he now
commenced a retreat towards Lisbon. Both the British and the Portuguese
effected their retreat with ease and regularity. They were followed by
the French, whose van caught sight of the chain of hills behind which
lay the city of Lisbon on the 7th of October:

"But in the middle path a lion lay."

Wellington by this time occupied the lines of Torres Vedras, the
formation of which have conferred as much honour on him as any of the
great victories which he achieved. A recent writer gives this outline
sketch of these lines:--"The peninsula, or promontory, at whose
south-eastern extremity Lisbon is situated, is crossed rather obliquely
by two serras, or chains of mountains, which extend with various
altitudes and various degrees of steepness, but with partial
interruptions or openings, from the shore of the Atlantic to the right
bank of the Tagus. These two serras run nearly parallel with each other,
at a distance of from six to eight miles; the point of the line nearest
to Lisbon being close to the Tagus, between Via Longa and Quintilla.
Through the passes in these serras and the low ground bordering the
Tagus four roads from the interior of the country led to the capital.
The hand of nature had marked out these two lines of defence, and
British science and engineering had been employed for a whole year in
strengthening them, and in blocking up the openings which seemed the
most accessible. Here redoubts were erected; here the whole face of a
mountain was scarped and hewn into the appearance of the facet of some
Titanic fortress; here the threads of mountain-rivulets--which would be
something more than rivulets at the end of October and in November--were
collected and brought together into one bed; and here rivers,
tributaries of the great Tagus, were dammed up, or were provided with
dams which could be used, and with flood-gates which could be shut, so
as to inundate the country at the foot of the hills, on the approach of
the invader. The line of