Note 172 — Chapter I

Some French authorities, favourable to Masséna, assert that he was not responsible for the failure to occupy Coimbra, that Ney, on the 10th, had been told to send Marcognet’s brigade to support Montbrun, who said that he could not succeed without infantry help (Pelet, Notes sur la campagne de Portugal, p. 334). But Ney, it is said would not detach the brigade. This seems most improbable, for (1) Junot’s corps, which was in Ney’s rear and five miles nearer to Coimbra, would have been the natural source from which to seek for infantry supports for Montbrun, and (2) Masséna does not accuse Ney of this particular piece of disobedience in his report to Berthier of March 19, nor in the later one of March 22, when he is giving his reasons for superseding his colleague and sending him home to France. He simply says, in recounting his reasons for not seizing Coimbra, that Montbrun and the engineers reported ‘that the river was in flood, that the bridge had two arches broken, that the left bank was occupied by the forces of Trant and Silveira, and defended by cannon. It would have required several days to repair the bridge and to drive the Portuguese out of Coimbra; there was no pontoon train with the army, and not a single boat on the Mondego. In face of the danger of being attacked by Wellington’s whole force while the passage was in progress, he resolved to renounce it.’ The one battalion of infantry which was sent to Montbrun’s aid on the 12th came from Solignac’s division in Junot’s corps—as might have been expected.