Fighting a rearguard action, he fell back upon the grim and naked ridges of Busaco, where at the end of September he delivered battle and a murderous detaining wound upon the advancing hosts of France.

That done, he continued the retreat through Coimbra.

And now as he went he saw to it that the devastation was completed along the line of march.

What corn and provisions could not be carried off were burnt or buried, and the people forced to quit their dwellings and march with the army--a pathetic, southward exodus of men and women, old and young, flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle, creaking bullock-carts laden with provender and household goods, leaving behind them a country bare as the Sahara, where hunger before long should grip the French army too far committed now to pause.

In advancing and overtaking must lie Massena's hope.
Eventually in Lisbon he must bring the British to bay, and, breaking them, open out at last his way into a land of plenty.
Thus thought Massena, knowing nothing of the lines of Torres Vedras; and thus, too, thought the British Government at home, itself declaring that Wellington was ruining the country to no purpose, since in the end the British must be driven out with terrible loss and infamy that must make their name an opprobrium in the world.
But Wellington went his relentless way, and at the end of the first week of October brought his army and the multitude of refugees safely within the amazing lines.