[211] The 5th, 9th, 29th, 82nd, 5/60th, and four companies of the 2/95th, in all 4,635 men. They lost respectively 46, 72, 190, 25, 66, and 42 men, or 441 in all; while the rest of the army (ten British and four Portuguese battalions) only lost the remaining 38 of the total of 479 casualties suffered on the 17th, i.e. were not really engaged. It is doubtful whether Delaborde should have fought at all: he was holding on in the hope that Loison’s division would come up and join him, but this junction was very problematical, as nothing had been heard of that general for many days. By fighting at Columbeira, Delaborde risked complete destruction for an inadequate end. It was true that if Loison was now close at hand Wellesley’s further advance might cut him off from Lisbon. But as a matter of fact Loison was still far away. He had reached Santarem on August 13, with his troops so tired by his long march from the Alemtejo, that he halted there for two days to rest them and allow his stragglers to come up. Marching again on the sixteenth, he was at Cercal, fifteen miles from Roliça to the east, while Delaborde was fighting. He barely heard the distant cannonade, and rejoined the rest of the army at Torres Vedras, by a route through Cadaval and Quinta da Bugagliera, which crossed his colleague’s line of retreat at an acute angle [August 18]. It is true that if Wellesley had been accurately informed of Loison’s position on the seventeenth, he could have so manœuvred as to place himself directly between that general and Lisbon on the following day, by seizing the cross-roads at Quinta da Bugagliera. In that case Loison’s division could only have rejoined Junot by a perilous flank march through Villafranca and Saccavem, or by crossing the Tagus and moving along its eastern bank to the heights of Almada opposite the capital. But the English general’s object at this moment was not to cut off Loison, but to pick up a considerable reinforcement, of whose approach he had just heard. On the morning of the eighteenth the brigade of General Acland from Harwich had arrived off the Peniche peninsula, and its advent was reported to Wellesley, with the additional news that that of General Anstruther, which had sailed from Ramsgate, was close behind. It was all-important to get these 4,000 men ashore: they could not be landed at Peniche, whose fort was still in French hands, and the only other anchorage near was that of Porto Novo, at the mouth of the little river Maceira, twelve miles south of Roliça. To cover their disembarkation Wellesley marched by the coast-road through Lourinhão, and encamped on the heights of Vimiero. This movement allowed Loison, who moved by the parallel road more inland, to pass the English and reach Torres Vedras. NOTE TO CHAPTER II