On February 1, 1809, Soult, after informing Ney that he was leaving him to look after Galicia, marched towards the Minho. He tried to cross it near the fortified town of Tuy, but the strength of the current and the fire of the Portuguese militia from the opposite bank rendered the attempt abortive. Then the marshal, with wonderful activity and vigour, chose a new line of operations, and, marching up to the river, crossed it at Ribada-Via; occupied Orense; then descending again, attacked and captured Tuy, making it his place of arms. He left there part of his artillery, his heavy baggage, his sick and wounded, guarded by a strong garrison, which reduced his force to 20,000 combatants, and with these he boldly advanced to Oporto.

This great town, the second in the kingdom, was in a state of complete anarchy. The bishop, having seized the sole command, had himself traced fortifications, and had brought in the country folk in great numbers to work at them. The people were living in a state of license; the troops were insubordinate, the generals quarrelling among themselves; everything, in short, was in the utmost disorder. The Commission of Regency and the bishop were sworn foes; while the adherents of either side were assassinating the conspicuous men on the other. Such were their arrangements for opposing our army. But, though harassed by continual marching through swarms of insurgents, our army attacked the Spanish force, commanded by La Romana, and the Portuguese, under Sylveira, at Verin, defeating the former completely; while the second retreated beyond the Portuguese fortress of Chaves, which Soult captured. One of the chief inconveniences which we experienced in the Peninsula was that of guarding prisoners. A large number were taken at Chaves, and Soult, not knowing how to dispose of them, accepted their proposal to enter the French service, even though most of them had done the same thing in the time of Junot's expedition and ended by deserting.

The army next moved on to Braga, where there was a second and considerable Portuguese force, under General Freira. This unfortunate officer, seeing his advance-guard beaten by the French, was preparing to retreat, when his troops, consisting almost entirely of peasant levies, killed him with cries of treason. At the same moment the French advance-guard having appeared at the gates of Braga, the population betook themselves to the prisons, where the persons suspected of favouring the French were shut up, and slaughtered them all. Meanwhile Marshal Soult had attacked the enemy's army, which, after a short but brisk resistance, was utterly routed. In passing through Braga the fugitives killed the corregidor, and began to set the town on fire; but, being pursued by the French troops, they set-off in the direction of Oporto. The advantage gained by the capture of Braga was a good deal reduced by a loss which Soult incurred at the same time. The Portuguese general, Sylveira, having flung himself on the left flank of the French army while it was marching on Braga, had carried the town of Chaves, and captured 1,200 of our sick and 800 combatants. Ignorant of this annoying circumstance, Soult left Heudelet's division in Braga, and continued his march to Oporto. The enemy offered gallant resistance at the river Ave, but the passage was forced, the French general Jardon being killed, while the Portuguese, in a rage at their defeat, murdered their general, Vallongo. The divisions of Mermet, Merle, and Franceschi, being thus united on the left bank of the Ave, with the road to Oporto open, concentrated in front of the entrenchments which covered the town and the camp. These contained at least 40,000 men, half being regular troops, under Generals Lima and Pereiras, but the real authority was in the hands of the bishop, a hot-tempered man who swayed the multitudes as he liked. English and Portuguese historians have held him responsible for the murder of fifteen persons of high position, whom he was unwilling or unable to save from the fury of the people, exasperated by the sight of the French army.

Oporto is built on the right bank of the Douro, and commanded by lofty rocks, which at that time were garnished with 200 guns. A bridge of boats, 500 yards long, joined the town with the suburb of Villa Nova. Before attacking Marshal Soult wrote to the bishop entreating him to spare the town the horrors of the siege. The Portuguese prisoner who was sent with the message was very near being hanged. The bishop, however, entered into correspondence but without ordering the fire from the ramparts to cease. Finally, fearing, as would appear, to fall a victim to the fury of the people, which he had himself fomented by giving false hopes of success, he refused to surrender. On March 28 the marshal, in order to withdraw the enemy's attention from the centre of the entrenchments, attacked their wings. Merle's division carried several fortified enclosures on the left, while Delaborde and Franceschi threatened the works to the right. While this was going on, some battalions having cried out that they wished to surrender, General Foy advanced incautiously, followed by his aide-de-camp. The aide-de-camp was killed; the general was made prisoner, stripped naked and dragged into the town. The Portuguese detested General Loison, who had beaten them. 2This general had some time back lost an arm, whence they had nicknamed him Mañeta. On seeing General Foy a prisoner, the populace of Oporto, thinking that it was Loison, began to shout: 'Kill him! kill Mañeta!' But Foy had the presence of mind to lift his two hands, and the mob, seeing its mistake, let him be taken to prison. The bishop, who had brought things to this crisis, lacked courage to face the danger, and, leaving to the generals the task of defending the town as best they could, fled across the river to the convent of La Serra, on the top of the steep hill which commands the suburb of Villa Nova, whence he was able in perfect safety to witness the horrors of the morrow's fight.

It was a fearful night for the inhabitants of Oporto. A violent storm broke out, and the soldiers and peasants fancied that in the roaring wind they heard the sound of the enemy cannon-balls. In spite of all that the officers could do, a fire of cannon and small arms was opened all along the line, and their noise mingled with that of the thunder and the incessant bells. Throughout this frightful uproar the French, sheltered in the ditches against balls and bullets, were calmly awaiting the daylight to attack the place. By the morning of the 29th the weather had cleared, and our troops marched eagerly to the fight. The marshal, as he planned on the previous day, engaged first on the wings. The stratagem succeeded perfectly; the Portuguese generals weakened their centre out of all proportion in order to strengthen their flanks; and Marshal Soult, giving the order to beat the charge, hurled the French troops on that point. The impetuous attack of our soldiers carried the entrenchments, and, pushing on, they entered the two principal forts through the embrasures. killing or dispersing all who resisted. After this success several battalions took the wings in rear, while Marshal Soult ordered another column to advance upon the town and make for the port. Driven from its entrenchments, and cut at several points, the Portuguese army fled through the town in despair. Some reached Fort Sao Joao, on the bank of the Douro, seeking to cross the river by swimming or in boats. General Loison, pointing out the danger of this course, was murdered, and as the French continued to advance, the fugitives made another attempt to cross, most of them being drowned. Meanwhile fighting went on in the town; the column sent forward by the marshal had cleared the barricades which blocked the streets and reached the bridge, where more than 4,000 persons of every age and sex were struggling to cross. The Portuguese batteries on the further shore, catching sight of the French, opened a heavy fire, which did not reach our troops, but told heavily on this heaving mass, while a cavalry detachment in flight cut its way through the terrified crowd. The boats composing the bridge soon became loaded, and several of them sank. Thus the bridge was broken; those who were nearest to the openings were pushed in by the pressure of the crowd from behind, and the river was covered with floating corpses—to such an extent that boats were capsized by them, and many trying to cross in that way were drowned. A good number of the poor creatures were rescued by the French soldiers who first came up, while the Portuguese gunners had fired on their own countrymen. By the help of planks our men crossed the gaps in the bridge, and, reaching the right bank, carried the batteries and captured the suburb of Villa Nova, securing thus the passage of the Douro. As the woes of the town seemed drawing to an end, news came that the bishop's guard, 200 in number, were holding his palace and firing through the windows. A summons to surrender being fruitless, the French broke in and put these myrmidons to the sword. So far our troops had acted according to the laws of war: the town and its inhabitants had been respected As they returned, however, excited by the capture of the bishop's palace, our soldiers saw in the public place some thirty of their comrades, captured the day before, who had been horribly mutilated by the Portuguese, and of whom most were still alive. Exasperated at this horrible sight, the soldiers thought no more of anything save vengeance, and began to take fearful reprisals which were only stopped, with much difficulty, by the efforts of the marshal, the officers, and many of the cooler heads among the men themselves. Ten thousand; Portuguese are said to have been slain that day, including those killed in the entrenchments. Our own loss was not more than five hundred. To the universal satisfaction, General Foy was set free. As for the bishop, having seen the ruin of his ambitious projects—it was said that he wished, for his own benefit, to sever the northern provinces from the rest of the kingdom—he fled to Lisbon, where he not only became reconciled to the Commission of Regency and was received into that body, but was soon appointed Patriarch of Portugal.

The fall of Oporto gave Soult a solid base of operations, and replenished his supplies. As at Braga, he adopted a policy of conciliation, endeavoured to heal the misfortunes of war, and recalled the inhabitants who had fled. A curious result, which historians have not explained, and of which naturally the newspapers said little, followed from this course of action. The Portuguese could not forgive the House Braganza for its flight to America; nor did they wish to become a dependency of Brazil or an English colony, which seemed the most likely alternatives. Accordingly they preposed to choose a king; and Soult's orderly rule after the previous anarchy had made him so popular that the leading men went to him suggesting that an independent government should he formed, with himself at its head. Soult, regarding their plan with favour, began to appoint civil officials, raised a Portuguese legion, and managed so well that in a fortnight addesses came in from the captured towns, signed by thirty thousand persons of all classes, and expressing consent to the new order of things. The Duke of Rovigo states in his memoirs that Soult refused these proposals; but several of the generals who were then at Oporto have assured me that they were present at receptions where the Portuguese addressed him as 'your Majesty,' and that he accepted the title with much dignity. Finally, when I put a question on the subject to my old colonel and excellent friend General Peter Soult, the marshal's brother, he answered me frankly that the Emperor on sending his brother to Portugal had authorised him to employ every means to detach the country from the English alliance, and that when the crown was offered to him he considered this not merely the best but the only means of making the interests of Portugal identical with those of France, and therefore that, subject to the Emperor's approval, he made use of it. A further proof is, that instead of expressing any discontent with the marshal's action Napoleon extended his powers considerably, herein yielding only to the exigencies of the situation which made Marshal Soult indispensable. Is it true that Napoleon wrote to him, 'I remember nothing but your conduct at Austerlitz'? This point has never been cleared up. Marshal Bertrand told me that while talking with Napoleon at St. Helena he often tried to turn the conversation towards Soult's short-lived royalty, but that the Emperor would say nothing, from which Bertrand inferred that he had neither incited nor restrained him.

Originally, no doubt, the Emperor's idea was to unite the whole Peninsula into a single state under his brother Joseph; but when he realised that the mutual hatred of the Spanish and Portuguese made this impossible, he would, in his desire to detach Portugal from English influence at any cost, have consented to allow one of his lieutenants to wear the crown, and Soult being, the choice of the majority of the nation, Bertrand thought that Napoleon would have made up his mind to endorse that choice. However that may be, as soon as the offer of the Portuguese to Soult was known in the army there was great excitement, the junior officers and the men who were very fond of the marshal having no fault to find with the plan except its supposed antagonism to the Emperor's wishes. As soon as it was known that the marshal would do nothing without the Emperor's consent, the great majority took his side and was ready to support his projects. Still a large number of senior officers were afraid that Soult's accession to the Portuguese throne would bind the emperor to maintain him there, and that the second corps would be left in the country to settle there after the Roman fashion, whereby they would be engaged in an endless war. Their scheme, therefore, was to make a truce with the English, and, after choosing a leader and appealing to the French troops in Spain, to return altogether to France and force the Emperor to conclude a peace.

This plan, which was inspired by the English Government, 3was easier to form than to execute. It may be doubted whether all the armies and the mass of the French nation would have agreed to it. Steps were, however, taken to carry it out. The English General Beresford, marshal in the Portuguese army, was the soul of the plot, and carried on through an Oporto merchant named Viana a correspondence with the French malcontents, who were mean enough to suggest the arrest of Marshal Soult. As may be supposed, the discovery of this conspiracy put Marshal Soult into much perplexity; all the more so that he did not know the partners to it. His accustomed firmness, however, did not desert him.