Colonel Napier of the 50th Regiment, who had been badly wounded at Corunna, and who had been treated with much attention by Soult and Ney after he was made prisoner at that battle, stopped at Pinhel. He was on his _parole_, and when asked by some of our officers, whom he knew, “where he was going?” replied, “I am going to pass some time with my friend Marshal Ney!” He did pass some time with him, and was an eye-witness to all that went on in his camp; but where such confidence was shown to any British officer, much less one of such high character and honour as Colonel Napier, it is needless to say that it was not forfeited. Napier, after having stayed with his friend Ney for some weeks,[4] returned on his way to England, when _en passant_ he found the ridge of Busaco was about to be contested, and the gallant Colonel, although not on duty, or in any way connected with the army, being in fact on his _parole_, wished to be a looker-on. It so happened that he was wounded, while standing near Lord Wellington. His name was returned, and the French official paper, the _Moniteur_, made some remarks upon the Colonel breaking his _parole_. It was, however, soon explained by the gallant officer, and, in return, the Paris papers did not let pass an occasion which afforded them amusement, and they quaintly remarked “that a man who was so fond of French fire, after what he had got of it before, ought to live in France!” ----- Footnote 4: This story is true; but the visit was only for one day (see _Charles Napier’s Life_, i. 133). ----- After a good deal of delay and vacillation, it appeared that Masséna had at last seriously resolved on his enterprise. He had, under his immediate command, nearly one hundred and twenty thousand bayonets and sabres, but from this force some deductions must be made, by which it would appear that at the utmost he did not bring more than sixty thousand fighting men across the Coa. Finally he passed that river, and our army retired towards the banks of the Mondego, and Lord Wellington was obliged to give battle. But this obligation did not emanate from him—quite the contrary. It was necessary that he should do something, and the thing was forced upon him by the refractory spirit of the Portuguese councils. If then he was to fight, for the first time, with an army of Portuguese to back him, he judged that the ridge of Busaco was a good spot to try them, and he accordingly resolved to take his stand there. This ridge of mountain extends for about eight miles, and near its termination, and on a high point, stands a convent, inhabited by monks and friars. The face of the mountain is rugged, filled with dells and dykes, and the intervening space between its base and the top is one mass of rock and heath.