[157] For the perilous adventure among these cuttings of a small French column which crossed the Estrada Nova, that which escorted Foy back to Santarem in Feb. 1811, see the autobiography of General Hulot, pp. 325-33. A considerable number of men and horses fell down these cuttings in a forced night-march, and in all several hundred men of Foy’s column perished, starved and storm-beaten on this inhospitable road. The survivors only got through by cutting a slippery foot-track along the precipices: nothing on wheels could have passed that way. [158] In Foy’s interesting minute of his conversation with Napoleon about the invasion, on Nov. 23, 1810, when he had taken home Masséna’s dispatches: ‘Montrez-moi les deux routes de Ponte de Murcella et de Castello Branco,’ says the Emperor. Then after a pause: ‘Et l’Estrada Nova? Pourquoi Masséna n’a-t-il pas débouché par l’Estrada Nova?’--‘Sire, à cause d’Abrantès et du Zézère.’--‘Oui, Masséna a bien fait; maintenant il faut prendre Abrantès: Elvas ne nous servirait de rien.’ See Foy’s _Mémoires_, p. 111. The Castello Branco road, therefore, with this dependent by-road, the Estrada Nova, was practically left out of consideration by the Marshal. There remains the choice between the two northern routes, Celorico-Vizeu-Coimbra, and Celorico-Chamusca-Ponte de Murcella-Coimbra. Both traverse rough ground--but ground less rough than that to be found on some parts of the Castello Branco road. Along both there is an intermittent belt of cultivated land, and not unfrequent villages. Both are intersected by many good military positions, on which a defending army can offer battle to an invader with advantage. In especial, the northern road strikes and climbs the granite ridge of Bussaco with every disadvantage for the attacking side, and the southern road is contracted into a difficult defile at the passage of the Alva near Ponte de Murcella. On the whole, however, this last is the better line for advance:--the strongest testimonial to the fact is that Wellington expected Masséna to take it, and erected at the passage of the Alva almost[159] the only earthworks, save those of the lines of Torres Vedras, which he constructed in his preparations for the reception of the invader. When he first heard that the Marshal was moving forward from Almeida to Celorico, and was clearly aiming at the Mondego valley, he announced that he should endeavour to stop the invader on the Alva[160], not apparently thinking it at all probable that Masséna would move by Vizeu and the north bank of the Mondego. On realizing that this was really his adversary’s design, he observed with some exultation that, while there were certainly many bad roads in Portugal, the enemy had taken decidedly the worst of those open to him[161]; moreover, he had committed himself to attack the heights of Bussaco, the most formidable position in the whole of northern Portugal.