For this reason he was told to change his route. The Emperor had originally intended to invade the country over the usual line of attack from Spain, by Almeida and Coimbra, which Masséna was to take three years later, in 1810. But when the events at the Escurial showed that a crisis was impending in Spain, Napoleon changed his mind: there was the fortress of Almeida in the way, which might offer resistance and cause delay, and beyond were nearly 200 miles of difficult mountain roads. Looking at his maps, Napoleon saw that there was a much shorter way to Lisbon by another route, down the Tagus. From Alcantara, the Spanish frontier town on that river, to Lisbon is only 120 miles, and there is no fortress on the way. The maps could not show the Emperor that this road was for half of its length a series of rocky defiles through an almost unpeopled wilderness.
Orders were therefore sent to Junot to transfer his base of operations from Salamanca to Alcantara, and to march down the Tagus. The Spaniards (according to their orders) had collected the magazines for feeding Junot’s force at Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo. But for that Napoleon cared little. He wrote that the army must take the shortest road at all costs, whatever the difficulty of getting supplies. ‘I will not have the march of the army delayed for a single day,’ he added; ‘20,000 men can feed themselves anywhere, even in a desert.’ It was indeed a desert that Junot was ordered to cross: the hill-road from Ciudad Rodrigo to Alcantara, which hugs the Portuguese frontier, has hardly a village on it; it crosses ridge after ridge, ravine after ravine. In November the rains had just set in, and every torrent was full. Over this stony wilderness, by the Pass of Perales, the French army rushed in five days, but at the cost of dreadful privations. When it reached Alcantara half the horses had perished of cold, all the guns but six had been left behind, stranded at various points on the road, and of the infantry more than a quarter was missing--the famished men having scattered in all directions to find food. If there had been a Portuguese force watching Alcantara, Junot must have waited for many days to get his army together again, all the more so because every cartridge that his men were carrying had been spoiled by the wet. But there were no enemies near; Junot found at the great Tagus bridge only a few Spanish battalions and guns on the way to join his army. Confiscating their munitions to fill his men’s pouches, and their food to provide them with two days’ rations, Junot rushed on again upon the 19th of November. He found, to his surprise, that there was no road suitable for wheeled traffic along the Tagus valley, but only a poor track running along the foot of the mountains to Castello Branco, the sole Portuguese town in this part of the frontier. The march from Alcantara to Abrantes proved even more trying than that from Ciudad Rodrigo to Alcantara. It was through a treeless wilderness of grey granite, seamed with countless ravines. The rain continued, the torrents were even fuller than before, the country even more desolate than the Spanish side of the border. It was only after terrible sufferings that the head of the column reached Abrantes on November 23: the rear trailed in on the 26th. All the guns except four Spanish pieces of horse artillery had fallen behind: the cavalry was practically dismounted. Half the infantry was marauding off the road, or resting dead-beat in the few poor villages that it had passed. If there had been even 5,000 Portuguese troops at Abrantes the French would have been brought to a stop. But instead of hostile battalions, Junot found there only an anxious diplomatist, named Barreto, sent by the Prince-Regent to stop his advance by offers of servile submission to the Emperor and proffers of tribute. Reassured as to the possibility that the Portuguese might have been intending armed resistance, Junot now took a most hazardous step. Choosing the least disorganized companies of every regiment, he made up four battalions of picked men, and pushed on again for Lisbon, now only seventy-five miles distant. This time he had neither a gun nor a horseman left, but he struggled forward, and on the 30th of November entered the Portuguese capital at the head of 1,500 weary soldiers, all that had been able to endure to the end. They limped in utterly exhausted, their clothes in rags, and their cartridges so soaked through that they could not have fired a shot had they been attacked. If the mob of Lisbon had fallen on them with sticks and stones, the starving invaders must have been driven out of the city. But nothing of the kind happened, and Junot was able to install himself as governor of Portugal without having to strike a blow.