when it was fuelled by the lavish supplies of wine discovered in the taverns. A rumor spread that there was a great stock of food in a warehouse in the lower town, and hundreds of men converged on it, only to find the hoard guarded by dragoons. Some stayed, hoping the dragoons would go away, while others went to find women or plunder.
A few men tried to prevent the destruction. An officer attempted to pull two artillerymen off a woman and was kicked to the ground, then stabbed with a sword. A pious sergeant, offended at what went on in the Old Cathedral, was shot. Most officers, knowing it was hopeless to try and stop the orgy of destruction, barricaded themselves in houses and waited for the madness to subside, while others simply joined in.
Marshal Massena, escorted by hussars and accompanied by his aides and by his mistress, who was fetchingly dressed in a sky-blue hussar's uniform, found a billet in the Archbishop's palace. Two infantry colonels came to the palace and complained of the troops' behavior, but they got small sympathy from the Marshal. 'They deserve a little respite,' he said. 'It's been a hard march, a hard march. And they're like horses. They go better if you ease the curb rein from time to time. So let them play, gentlemen, let them play.' He made certain Henriette was comfortable in the Archbishop's bedroom. She disliked the crucifixes hanging on the walls so Massena jettisoned them through the window, then asked what she would like to eat. 'Grapes and wine,' she said, and Massena ordered one of his servants to ransack the palace kitchens and find both. 'And if there are none, sir?' the servant asked. 'Of course there are grapes and wine!' Massena snapped. 'Good Christ Almighty, can nothing be done without questions in this army? Find the damned grapes, find the damned wine, and take them to mademoiselle!' He went back to the palace's dining room where maps had been spread on the Archbishop's table. They were poor maps, inspired more by imagination than by topography, but one of Massena's aides thought better ones might exist in the university, and he was right, though by the time he found them they had been reduced to ashes.
The army's Generals assembled in the dining room where Massena planned the next stage of the campaign. He had been rebuffed at Bussaco, but that defeat had not prevented him turning the enemy's left flank and thus chasing the British and Portuguese out of central Portugal. Massena's army was now on the Mondego and the enemy was retreating towards Lisbon, but that still left the Marshal with other enemies. Hunger assailed his troops, as did the Portuguese irregulars who closed behind his forces like wolves following a flock of sheep. General Junot suggested it was time for a pause. 'The British are taking to their ships,' he said, 'so let them go. Then send a corps to retake the roads back to Almeida.'
Almeida was the Portuguese frontier fortress where the invasion had begun, and it lay over a hundred miles eastwards at the end of the monstrously difficult roads across which the French army had struggled. 'To what end?' Massena asked.
'So supplies can get through,' Junot declared, 'supplies and reinforcements.'
'What reinforcements?' The question was sarcastic.
'Drouet's corps?' Junot suggested.
'They won't move,' Massena said sourly, 'they won't be permitted to move.' The Emperor had ordered that Massena was to be given 130,000 men for the invasion, but less than half that number had assembled on the frontier and when Massena had pleaded for more men, the Emperor had sent a message that his present forces were adequate, that the enemy was risible and the task of invading Portugal easy. Yet the Emperor was not here. The Emperor did not command an army of half-starved men whose shoes were falling apart, an army whose supply lines were non-existent because the damned Portuguese peasants controlled the roads winding through the hills to Almeida. Marshal Massena did not want to return to those hills. Get to Lisbon, he thought, get to Lisbon. 'The roads from here to Lisbon,' he asked, 'are better than those we've traveled?'
'A hundred times better,' one of his Portuguese aides answered.
The Marshal went to a window and stared at the smoke rising from buildings burning in the city. 'Are we sure the British are making for the sea?'
'Where else can they go?' a general retorted.
'Lisbon?'
'Can't be defended,' the Portuguese aide observed.
'To the north?' Massena turned back to the table and stabbed a finger onto the hatch marks of a map. 'These hills?' He was pointing to the terrain north of Lisbon where hills stretched for over thirty-two kilometers between the Atlantic and the wide river Tagus.
'They're low hills,' the aide said, 'and there are three roads through them and a dozen usable tracks besides.'
'But this Wellington might offer battle there.'
'He risks losing his army if he does,' Marshal Ney intervened.
Massena remembered the sound of the volleys from the ridge at Bussaco and imagined his men struggling into such fire again, then despised himself for indulging in fear. 'We can maneuver him out of the hills,' he suggested, and it was a sensible idea, for the enemy's army was surely not large enough to guard a front twenty miles wide. Threaten it in one place, Massena thought, and launch the Eagles through the hills ten miles away. 'There are forts in the hills, yes?' he asked.
'We've heard rumors that he's making forts to guard the roads,' the Portuguese aide answered.
'So we march through the hills,' Massena said. That way the new forts could be left to rot while Wellington's army was surrounded, humiliated, and defeated. The Marshal stared at the map and imagined the colors of the defeated army being paraded through Paris and thrown at the feet of the Emperor. 'We can turn his flank again,' he said, 'but not if we give him time to escape. He has to be hurried.'
'So we march south?' Ney asked.
'In two days,' Massena decided. He knew he needed that much time for his army to recover from its capture of Coimbra. 'Let them stay off the leash today,' he said, 'and tomorrow we'll whip them back to the Eagles and make sure they're ready for departure on Wednesday.'
'And what will the men eat?' Junot asked.
'Whatever they damn well can,' Massena snapped. 'And there has to be food here, doesn't there? The English can't have scraped a whole city bare.'
'There is food.' A new voice spoke and the Generals, resplendent in blue, red and gold, turned from their maps to see Chief Commissary Poquelin looking unusually pleased with himself.
'How much food?' Massena asked caustically.
'Enough to see us to Lisbon, sir,' Poquelin said, 'more than enough.' For days now he had tried to avoid the Generals for fear of the scorn they heaped on him, but Poquelin's hour had come. This was his triumph. The commissary had done its work. 'I need transport,' he said, 'and a good battalion to help move the supplies, but we have all we need. More! If you remember, sir, you promised to buy these supplies? The man has kept faith. He's waiting outside.'
Massena half remembered making the promise, but now that the food was in his possession he was tempted to break the promise. The army's treasury was not large and it was not the French way to buy supplies that could be stolen. Live off the land, the Emperor always said.
Colonel Barreto, who had come to the palace with Poquelin, saw the indecision on Massena's face. 'If we renege on this promise, sir,' he said respectfully, 'then no one in Portugal will believe us. And in a week or two we shall be governing here. We shall need cooperation.'
'Cooperation.' Marshal Ney spat the word. 'A guillotine in Lisbon will make them cooperate quickly enough.'
Massena shook his head. Barreto was right, and it was foolish to make new enemies at the very brink of victory. 'Pay him,' he said, nodding to an aide who kept the key to the money chest. 'And in two days,' he went on to Poquelin, 'you start moving the supplies south. I want a depot at Leiria.'
'Leiria?' Poquelin asked.
'Here, man, here!' Massena stabbed a map with his forefinger, and Poquelin nervously edged through the Generals to look for the town which, he discovered, lay some forty miles south of Coimbra on the Lisbon road.
'I need wagons,' Poquelin said.
'You will have every wagon and mule we possess,' Massena promised grandly.
'There aren't enough horses,' Junot said sourly.
