The French army, declining any farther attack on the Sierra, proceeded to turn its extremity, and move upon Lisbon by the way of Coimbra. Here Massena established a strong rear-guard with his hospitals and wounded, but the inspiration occasioned by the victory of Busaco had not yet subsided among the Portuguese. Colonel Trant, a British officer, who commanded a body of Portuguese militia, rushed gallantly into Coimbra, and carried the place by a sudden attack. About 5000 men, many of course wounded, with all the French hospital stores, fell into the hands of the Portuguese; and Massena who could not recover the place, suffered all the loss of stores and provisions which that city afforded as a depôt, and which the fertile district in the neighbourhood might have enabled him to collect. Great was the surprise of both armies when the retreat of the British, and advance of the French, suddenly terminated. The former entered a regular position, which, by the utmost exertion of skill and labour, had been rendered almost impregnable, being most formidably protected by field-works and heavy guns. They found that the Tagus and port of Lisbon afforded them assurance of subsistence, even in plenty, and that their inferiority in numbers was completely made-up to them by the strength of their position. The French, on the contrary, who had fondly expected to enter Lisbon as conquerors, found themselves in a country wasted by the hands of its cultivators; without hospitals or magazines in their rear; in front a foe, of whom they had lately felt the strength; and around, a hostile population, for the greater part in arms. If, in such a situation, Massena could be said to besiege Lisbon, he was, nevertheless, in the utmost danger of suffering those extremities of famine which usually fall to the lot of the beleaguered party. He seemed, by some strange transmutation, to have changed lots with the natives of Lisbon, and to suffer all the evils which he expected to inflict. The war now paused on both sides. Lord Wellington had reached the point of his defence. Massena seemed at a loss where to commence his attack. The deer was turned to bay, but the dog sprung not. The eyes of all Europe were rested upon the Tagus, on whose banks were to be decided the pretensions to superiority asserted by two great generals in the name of two mighty nations. But that event was suspended for several months, during which it is fitting that we should resume the narrative of other matters. FOOTNOTES: [39] "It was in vain that Soult strove with all his power to stop the slaughter. The frightful scene of rape, pillage, and murder, closed not for many hours, and what with those who fell in battle, those who were drowned, and those sacrificed to revenge, it is said that 10,000 Portuguese died on that unhappy day! The loss of the French did not exceed 500 men."--NAPIER, vol. ii., p. 207. See also SOUTHEY, vol. iii., p. 249.