The fort was simply known as Work Number 119, and it was not much of a fort, merely a bastion built on the summit of a low hill, then given a stone-roofed magazine and six gun emplacements. The guns were twelve-pounders, taken from a flotilla of Russian warships that had taken shelter in Lisbon from an Atlantic storm and there been captured by the Royal Navy, while the gunners were a mix of Portuguese and British artillerymen who had ranged their unfamiliar weapons, determining that the shots would reach across the wide valley that was spread east and west beneath Work Number 119. To the east were ten more forts, reaching to the Tagus, while to the west, stretching more than twenty miles to the Atlantic, were over a hundred more forts and bastions that snaked in two lines across the hilltops. They were the Lines of Torres Vedras.
Three major roads pierced the lines. The principal road, halfway between the Tagus and the sea, was the main road to Lisbon, but there was another road, running beside the river and thus not far from Work Number 119, and that eastern road offered another route to the Portuguese capital. Massena, of course, did not have to use either route, nor the third road which pierced the lines at Torres Vedras and was protected by the River Sizandre. He might choose to outflank the three roads and attempt to march overland, attacking through the wilder and lonelier country that lay between the roads, but he would only find more forts and bastions.
He would find more than the newly constructed forts. The northward-facing slopes of the hills had been scarped by thousands of laborers who had hacked at the soil to steepen the slopes so that no infantry could possibly attack uphill, and where the slopes were made of rock the engineers had drilled and blasted the stone to create new cliff faces. If the infantry ignored the scarped slopes and endured the artillery bombardment from the crests, they could march into the valleys between the steepened hills, but there they would find huge barriers of thorn bushes filling the low ground like monstrous dams. The thorn bush barricades were strengthened by felled trees, protected where possible by dams that flooded the valleys, and were flanked by smaller bastions so that any attacking column would find itself funneled into a place of death and under the flail of cannon and musket fire.
Forty thousand troops, most of them Portuguese, manned the forts, while the rest of the two armies were deployed behind the lines, ready to march wherever an attack might threaten. Some British troops were stationed in the lines and the South Essex had been given a sector between Work Number 114 and Work Number 119 where Lieutenant Colonel Lawford had summoned his senior officers to show them the extent of their responsibilities. Captain Slingsby was the last to arrive and the other men watched as he negotiated the steep, muddy steps that climbed up to the masonry firestep.
"A guinea says he won't make it," Leroy muttered to Forrest.
"I can't conceive that he's drunk," Forrest said, though without much certainty.
Everyone else believed Slingsby was drunk. He was mounting the steps very slowly, taking exaggerated care to place his feet in the exact center of each tread. He did not look up until he reached the top when, with evident satisfaction, he announced to the assembled officers that there were forty-three steps.
This news took Colonel Lawford aback. He alone had not watched Slingsby's precarious ascent, but now turned with a look of polite surprise. "Forty-three?"
"Important thing to know, sir," Slingsby said. He meant that it was important in case the steps had to be climbed in darkness, but that explanation vanished from his head before he had time to say it. "Very important, sir," he added earnestly.
"I am sure we shall all remember it," Lawford said with a touch of asperity, then he gestured towards the rain-soaked northern landscape. "If the French do come, gentlemen," he said, "then this is where we stop them."
"Hear, hear," Slingsby said. Everyone ignored him.
"We let them come," Lawford went on, "and permit them to break themselves against our positions."
"Break themselves," Slingsby said, but quietly.
"And it is possible they will attempt a breakthrough here." Lawford hurried on in case his brother-in-law added more words. The Colonel pointed west to where a small valley twisted southwards past Work Number 119 and then curled around the back of the hill. "Major Forrest and I rode north yesterday," he said, "and looked at our position from the French point of view."
"Very wise," Slingsby said.
"And from those hills," Lawford continued, "that valley is a temptation. It seems to penetrate our lines."
"Penetrate," Slingsby repeated, nodding. Major Leroy half expected him to take out a notebook and pencil and write the word down.
"In truth," Lawford went on, "the valley is entirely blocked. It leads to nothing except a barricade of felled trees, thorn bushes and flooded land, but the French will not know that."
"Ridiculous," Slingsby muttered, though whether that was a judgment on Lawford or the French it was hard to tell.
"But we must nevertheless expect such an attack," Lawford continued, "and be prepared to deal with it."
"Unleash the cat," Slingsby said obscurely, though only Leroy heard him.
"If such an attack develops," Lawford said, his cloak billowing in a sudden gust of wet wind that blew around the hilltop, "the enemy will be under artillery fire from this work and from every other fort within range. If they survive it they will be penned in the valley and we would offer volley fire from the shoulder of this hill. They cannot climb the hill, which means they can only suffer and die in the valley."
Slingsby looked surprised at this, but managed to say nothing. "What we cannot do," Lawford went on, "is allow the French to establish batteries in the larger valley." He pointed to the low ground that lay ahead of Work Number 119. This was the wide valley which lay north of the lines and on the other side of which were the hills that would doubtless become the French positions. The stretch of lowland had once been rich and fertile, but the engineers had breached the embankment of the Tagus, letting the river flood much of the country beneath the fort. The floods came and went with the tide, which was high now, so that under Work Number 119 was a stretch of wind-rippled water that loosely followed the course of a stream that came from the west and meandered through the valley to its confluence with the Tagus.
The stream made a great double bend beneath the hill where Lawford spoke. It swerved from the northern side of the valley, almost reached the southern and then curved back to run into the Tagus. Inside the first bend, and on the British bank, was an ancient barn that was little more than a stone ruin in a grove of trees, while within the second curve, and thus on the French side of the stream, was what had once been a prosperous farm with a big house, some smaller cottages, a dairy and a pair of cattle sheds. All were abandoned now, people and livestock ordered south to escape the French, and the buildings looked forlorn in the inundated landscape. The farm itself was high and dry, perched on a small rise, so that it resembled an island in a wind-fretted lake, though as the tide ebbed the floods would slowly drain away, but the ground would still remain waterlogged and any French advance beside the Tagus would thus be forced to march westwards on the valley's far side until it reached the drier ground somewhere near the half-ruined barn. The enemy could cross the stream there and advance on the British works, a possibility that Lawford raised with his officers. "And if the devils manage to put some heavy guns in that barn," he went on, "or in those farm buildings," he pointed to the farm which lay a half mile east of the barn and was linked to the smaller building by an embanked track that was carried over the stream by a stone bridge, though the flooding meant that only the bridge's parapets were now visible, "then they can bombard these positions. That will not happen, gentlemen."