It may not be out of place to note that the combat of Foz do Arouce bore a singular resemblance to Craufurd’s combat on the Coa of July 24, 1810. In each case a rearguard was tempted to stay too long beyond an unfordable river and a narrow bridge, by the defensible nature of the position in which it found itself, and nearly suffered a complete disaster. The only difference was that Ney had at least double as strong a force as Craufurd, and had also a whole army in line beyond the river to support him, while the British general had no reserves near. In each case the endangered detachment got away by dint of hard fighting, with appreciable but by no means crushing losses. It is curious that the tables were exactly turned between pursuer and pursued in these two fights--in 1810 it was Ney who by a sudden assault hustled the Light Division over the Coa. In 1811 the Light Division was at the head of the striking force which thrust Ney over the Ceira, If Craufurd had been in command instead of the incapable Erskine, there can be little doubt that the matter would have been pushed to a more decisive conclusion, despite of the dusk. [Illustration: FOZ D’AROUCE] On the morning of March 16th, the hills beyond the Ceira, where a whole army had been visible on the preceding day, were now seen to be almost void of defenders--only a trifling rearguard was visible watching the broken bridge from a distance. Wellington sent scouts over the river to reconnoitre, but did not cross it in force. He had accomplished his main design of thrusting the French off the Coimbra road and into the mountains, and he had entirely outmarched his provisions. He had now got so far from his base at Lisbon that food sent up from thence had far to travel, and he had not yet succeeded in setting up an intermediate dépôt at Coimbra, though store-ships were already ordered from Lisbon to its port of Figueira[196], now that there was no danger of the enemy crossing the lower Mondego. During the last week the army had used up all that it carried with it, and the Portuguese brigades, badly supplied by the native commissariat, had run short even before the British. Pack’s and Ashworth’s men had received no regular rations for four days[197], and had only kept up to the front by gleaning in the deserted bivouacs of the French, and borrowing the little that the British commissariat could spare. Everything had run dry by the 16th, and Wellington considered that no great harm would be suffered by waiting a day on the Ceira, for the first convoy to come up from the rear, since the French were now in rugged ground, where they could not make any long attempt to stand for sheer want of food. They must continue their retreat or starve in a depopulated country. Accordingly Wellington settled down at Lousão and took stock of the general position of affairs: the result of his halt was an immense discharge of arrears of correspondence--he had written only one dispatch between