with the result that those measures, although prosecuted now more
vigorously, never reached the full extent which Wellington had
desired. Treachery, too, stepped in to shorten the time still
further. Almeida, garrisoned by Portuguese and commanded by
Colonel Cox and a British staff, should have held a month. But
no sooner had the French appeared before it, on the 26th August,
than a powder magazine traitorously fired exploded and breached
the wall, rendering the place untenable.

To Wellington this was perhaps the most vexatious of all things in
that vexatious time. He had hoped to detain Massena before Almeida
until the rains should have set in, when the French would have
found themselves struggling through a sodden, water-logged country,
through bridgeless floods and a land bereft of all that could sustain
the troops. Still, what could be done Wellington did, and did it
nobly. Fighting a rearguard action, he fell back upon the grim and
naked ridges of Busaco, where at the end of September he delivered
battle and a murderous detaining wound upon the advancing hosts of
France. That done, he continued the retreat through Coimbra. And
now as he went he saw to it that the devastation was completed along
the line of march. What corn and provisions could not be carried
off were burnt or buried, and the people forced to quit their
dwellings and march with the army - a pathetic, southward exodus of
men and women, old and young, flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle,
creaking bullock-carts laden with provender and household goods,
leaving behind them a country bare as the Sahara, where hunger
before long should grip the French army too far committed now to
pause. In advancing and overtaking must lie Massena's hope.
Eventually in Lisbon he must bring the British to bay, and,
breaking them, open out at last his way into a land of plenty.