[173] I spent two interesting hours at Redinha on September 29, 1910, going round the battle-ground, guided by Mr. Reynolds of Barreiro. The village is most irregularly built, and the way to the bridge not obvious, the streets being tortuous and narrow. The place is easy to defend, but not easy to get out of. A courteous denizen of Redinha, Mr. J. J. Leitão, presented me with an unexploded British shrapnel shell, which he had got out of the sand of the river-bed just above the bridge. Several more had been found on this spot; they must have been thrown by the pursuing British artillery at the French column hurrying over the bridge, and had fallen short, into the water. Each contained thirty-two balls, but the powder had decayed into an impalpable red dust. The shell that we got is now in the United Service Museum. It took some time to file the Light and 3rd Divisions over the bridge, and to make a new line in face of Ney’s second position on the ridge two miles beyond the stream. But when the two divisions once more went forward, each turning, as before, the enemy’s flank opposed to it, while Pack and the 5th Division formed up again in the centre, Ney gave back without any very strenuous resistance, and, abandoning his second position, fell back upon Condeixa, a village with a defile in front of it, five miles north of Redinha on the great Coimbra _chaussée_. The day’s work had been a very pretty piece of manœuvring on both sides. Ney hung on to his two successive positions just so long as was safe, and absconded on each occasion at the critical moment, when his flanks were turned. A quarter of an hour’s more delay would have been ruin, but the retreat was made just in time. The two stands had delayed Wellington for a day, and his army had only advanced ten miles in the twenty-four hours. Yet it is unjust to accuse the British general of over-caution, as Napier and all the French annalists have done. He was quite right not to attack with the first division that came up, and to wait till he had three and a half in line. For he was aware that great strength lay in front of him, and, for all he knew, the troops of Mermet might have been supported not only by Marchand, as was actually the case, but by the whole of Junot’s corps. In that case an early attack would have meant a bloody check, and an enforced wait, till the 3rd, 4th, 1st, and 5th Divisions should have come up. As it was, the French rearguard was dislodged with a very modest loss on the part of the Allies, 12 officers and 193 men, of whom the large majority were in the Light and 3rd Divisions, the troops which had done the work. But the 4th Division and Pack’s Portuguese suffered some casualties, while waiting under cannon-fire for the flanking movement to take effect[174]. The French loss was 14 officers and 213 men, nearly all from Mermet’s division, as that of Marchand was little engaged[175].