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divided by stone walls, was most unsuitable for cavalry. But a figure familiar to Scovell and the other staff veterans of Corunna had then become part of the equation. Major General Charles Stewart, who had used his influence to secure the post of Wellesley’s adjutant general, had insisted that they charge, even though he was not in command of the cavalry and had not seen the difficult ground in question. The 16th had gone in and lost many men while the French had retired in good order. Things would have to go better today.
    Down on the bank, men of the 3rd Foot, the Buffs, were climbing into the barges. They were usually used for ferrying port wine, that ruby red commodity that lubricated the Anglo-Portuguese relationship. But the barges that carried casks of the stuff down the Douro toward John Bull’s table were being pressed into service ferrying troops—thirty men in each. The first wave set off at about 11 A.M . This was the moment of maximum danger, for if the French shot at them in the boats they would be almost defenseless. The Portuguese bargemen skillfully sailed them over, set them down and turned back to the south bank for the next wave.
    Until this moment, the British might as well have been invisible, butcrossing the Douro in broad daylight they had to be spotted, and they were. Reports began to arrive at French headquarters. Troops in red were crossing the river barely one mile away. Were they Swiss? The Swiss troops under French command also wore red coats. Perhaps some of the sentries were panicky too. Marshal Soult was woken.
    As the Buffs formed up on the quay, the few French troops in the area ran to sound the alarm. The British quickly found a steep road that runs up the side of the northern bank. Almost on all fours, weighed down by their equipment, they ran up the flagstones, struggling against the steepness of the gradient. A hail of musketry might engulf them at any moment, so the Buffs’ commander raised his men’s spirits by getting them to give three cheers as they went. At the top of the slope, the Buffs burst into the Bishop’s Seminary, a complex of buildings with the heavy construction of a fortress, and began barricading themselves. At last the French realized what was happening. The seminary was a critical place, since it guarded the landing point down on the quayside where further waves of troops were starting to arrive in rapid succession.
    The man responsible for defending this sector of Oporto was General Maximilien Foy, a gifted artillery officer whose career was to become intertwined with that of the British, and he would be present at almost as many of Wellesley’s battles as men like George Scovell himself. Foy was sharp enough to know that disaster could only be avoided by swift action. He ordered three battalions into attack formation and sent them forward at about 11:30.
    Foy’s advance was precisely the counter-stroke anticipated by Wellesley. In the gardens beside the Serra monastery on the other side of the river, three batteries of artillery—eighteen pieces—had been wheeled into position. The gun captains bent down and squinted along their barrels, calling final adjustments to the men with spikes levering away at the rear, so the cannons’ mouths would be in perfect position to hurl death across the gorge. At the back of each British cannon, one man stood holding the linstock, a smoldering porte-fire that, when the order was given, would be touched to the hole at the rear of the gun to ignite the powder and begin the barrage. The gunners’ eyes followed the columns of Frenchmen they could clearly see moving toward the seminary four hundred to five hundred yards to their front. They could hearthem as well—gruff voices echoing across the Douro gorge
“en avant!,”’
“à
l’attaque!,”
* the familiar cries of the emperor’s victorious legions.
    A crackle of musketry opened from within the