On April 18 Loison advanced against Silveira, who boldly but unwisely offered him battle on the heights of Villamea in front of Amarante. Considering that he had but 2,000 regulars and 7,000 or 8,000 half-armed militia and _Ordenanza_, his conduct can only be described as rash in the extreme. He was, of course, beaten with great loss, and hustled back into the town of Amarante. He would have lost both it and its bridge, but for the gallantry of Colonel Patrick, an English officer commanding a battalion of the 12th of the line, who rallied his regiment in the streets, seized a group of houses and a convent at the bridge-head and beat off the pursuers[317]. Patrick was mortally wounded, but the passage of the river was prevented. This saved the situation: Silveira got his men together, planted his artillery so as to command the bridge, and took post in entrenchments already constructed on the commanding heights on the left bank. Next day Loison stormed the buildings at the bridge-head, but found that he could get no further forward. The town was his, but he could not debouch from it, as the bridge was palisaded, built up with a barricade of masonry and raked by the Portuguese artillery. Soult now sent up to aid Loison still further reinforcements, Sarrut’s brigade of infantry from Merle’s division and the second brigade of Lahoussaye’s dragoons. Thus no less than 9,000 French troops, nearly half the army of Portugal, were concentrated at Amarante.
[317] Silveira to Beresford (Record Office). Cf. Foy’s dispatch to Loison (April 19), in which he owns that he failed to hold the convent, and retired with a loss of ninety-one men of the 17th regiment.
The fact that twelve whole days elapsed between the arrival of these last succours and the forcing of the passage of the Tamega had no small influence on the fate of Soult’s campaign. Hitherto the initiative had lain with him, and he had faced adversaries who could only take the defensive. This period was nearly at an end, for on April 22 Wellesley had landed at Lisbon, the English reinforcements had begun to arrive, and an army, differing in every quality from the hordes which the Marshal had encountered north of the Douro, was about to assume the offensive against him. By the time that Loison at last forced the bridge of Amarante, the British were already on the march for Coimbra and Oporto.