After this Massena judged the position of Busaco impregnable, and to turn it by the Mondego impossible, as the allies could pass that river quicker than himself. But a peasant informed him of the road leading from Mortagao over the Caramula to Boyalva, and he resolved to turn lord Wellington’s left. To cover this movement the skirmishing was renewed with such vigour on the 28th, that a general battle was for some time expected. Yet an ostentatious display of men, the disappearance of baggage, and the throwing up of entrenchments on the hill covering the roads to Mortagao plainly indicated some other design. Howbeit, it was not until evening when the enemy’s masses in front being sensibly diminished, and his cavalry descried winding over the distant mountains, that the project became quite apparent. Hill then crossed the Mondego, and retired by Espinal upon Thomar, while the centre and left of the army defiled in the night by the other roads upon Milheada. In this manner Busaco was evacuated before the 29th, the guns followed the convent road, and the light division furnished the rear-guard until they passed Fornos, when the open country enabled the cavalry to relieve them. Massena’s scouts reached Boyalva in the evening of the 28th, and it has been erroneously asserted, that Trant’s absence from Sardao alone enabled the French general to execute his design. Trant was however at Sardao, four miles from Boyalva before one o’clock on the 28th; but having, through a mistake of Baccellar’s, marched from Lamego, by the circuitous route of Oporto, instead of the direct road through San Pedro do Sul, he lost men from fatigue and desertion, and could bring only fifteen hundred militia into line; hence his absence or presence could have produced no effect whatever, even though he had, as lord Wellington intended, been at Boyalva itself. Accordingly, the French cavalry, pushing between him and the British horse, on the 29th cut off one of his patroles, and the next morning drove him, with the loss of twenty men, behind the Vouga. When Massena’s main body had cleared the defiles of Boyalva, it marched upon Coimbra, and the allies, crossing the Mondego at that city, commenced the passage of the defiles leading upon Condexa and Pombal. The commissariat stores, which had been previously removed from Raiva de Pena Cova to Figueras, were embarked at Peniché; the light division and the cavalry remained on the right bank of the river; and Baccellar was directed to bring down all the militia of the northern provinces upon the Vouga.