Page 257 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

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The military operations and the forced lodging of troops were a great burden to civilians.
One priest contemporary to these events wrote a diary in which he speaks about the atroc-
ities committed by the French on their way to Oporto and says this exasperated each time
more the population, who ambushed and killed the soldiers. He also alludes to the deaths
caused by this war, having died besides the civilians many priests and monks who took up
arms against de invaders (Monteiro, 1809, fls.1, fls.4).
In fact, if we are to believe in what Pierre le Noble, a French officer who took part on
this campaign, wrote in his Mémoires about how the inhabitants were forced to take up arms
at the approach of Soult’s army, menaces or arrests were used by the Portuguese authorities
to obtain cooperation and the most reluctant were massacred. it seems also that the consuls
of Denmark, Holland, Prussia and Russia were forced to serve on the Oporto batteries (LE
Noble, 2005: 130; Soult, 1955:78).
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Soult arrived near Oporto on the 26 March 1809 and started the attack on the 29 at
8h 00m in the morning. It was this day that one of the biggest disasters in the city’s history
happened. The bridge of boats, built with vessels put side by side, that linked Oporto to the
southern shore, to Vila Nova de Gaia, collapsed under the weight of the enormous quantity
of people fleeing the city. Many persons drowned in the river Douro. Marshal Soult in his
Memoires speaks of 2.000 people and a French priest émigré of 3.600, but many more lost
their lives during the attack (Soult, 1955: 77; Avril, 2006: 81-82). After this, Oporto was
“thoroughly sacked”, even if it seems that Soult tried to prevent it, but the pillage lasted three
days. As Sir Charles Oman writes in his History of the Peninsular War Soult had conquered
the city and had delivered some French captives, but was “far from having completed the
conquest of northern Portugal as on the day he first crossed its frontier, He had only secured
for himself a new base of operations, to supersede Chaves and Braga”. His main goal, how-
ever, the capture of Lisbon, never occurred and the same Oman states “like so many other
French generals in the Peninsula, he was soon to find that victory was not the same things as
conquest” (OMAN, 1995: II, 248-249; AMS, Dietário de Tibães, 1798-1829: fls, 125).
Colonel Napier an eyewitness of the war in the Peninsula also speaks about the concili-
atory police of Marshal Soult, endeavouring to remedy the soldiers’ fury “recovering and
restoring a part of the plunder, he caused the inhabitants remaining in the town to be treated
with respect, and invited by proclamation all those who had fled to return. He demanded
no contribution, and restraining with a firm hand the violence of his men, contrived, from
the captured public property, to support the army and even to succour the poorest and most
distressed of the population”. At the same time, it seems that there was an amelioration of
“relations between the army and the peasantry”, French soldiers were no longer murdered
and even the priests were not so hostile. It is interesting to note this defence of Soult made
by a British officer. He even criticises Portuguese ferocity when he speaks about the death of
colonel Lameth and the consequent retaliation, In fact, this young officer was ambushed and
murdered near the village of Arrifana his body being “stripped, and mutilated in a shock-
ing manner”. This, in Napier’s point of view, “was justifiable neither by the laws of war
nor by those of humanity” and he concluded that “no general could neglect to punish such
a proceeding”. As a consequence Soult decided to punish the culprits and send with that
purpose to Arrifana general Thomiers accompanied by a Portuguese civilian. After a “judi-