For an instance; immediately on discovering the true line of Marmont’s advance he had hurried to take up a position on the lower Coa, but had been met on his march by an urgent message from Governor Le Mesurier that Almeida was in danger and could not resist a resolute assault.  Without hesitation Trant turned and pushed hastily with one brigade to the Cabeca Negro mountain behind the bridge of Almeida, and reached it just as the French drew near, driving 200 Spaniards before them across the plain.  Trant, seeing that the enemy had no cavalry at hand, with the utmost effrontery and quite as if he had an army behind him, threw out a cloud of skirmishers beyond the bridge, dressed up a dozen guides in scarlet coats to resemble British troopers, galloped with these to the glacis of Almeida, spoke the governor, drew off a score of invalid troopers from the hospital in the town, and at dusk made his way back up the mountain, which in three hours he had covered with sham bivouac fires.

These were scarcely lit when the governor, taking his cue, made a determined sortie and drove back the French light troops, who in the darkness had no sort of notion of the numbers attacking them.  So completely hoaxed, indeed, was their commander that he, who had come with two divisions to take Almeida, and held it in the hollow of his hand, decamped early next morning and marched away to report, the fortress so strongly protected as to be unassailable.

Well this, as I say, showed talent.  Artistically conceived as a ruse de guerre, in effect it saved Almeida.  But a success of the kind too often tempts a man to try again and overshoot his mark.  Now Marmont, with all his defects of vanity, was no fool.  He had a strong army moderately well concentrated; he had, indeed, used it to little purpose, but he was not likely, with his knowledge of the total force available by the Allies in the north, to be seriously daunted or for long by a game of mere impudence.  In my opinion Trant, after brazening him away from Almeida, should have thanked Heaven and walked humbly for a while.  To me even his occupation of Guarda smelt of dangerous bravado, for Guarda is an eminently treacherous position, strong in itself, and admirable for a force sufficient to hold the ridges behind it, but capable of being turned on either hand, affording bad retreat, and, therefore, to a small force as perilous as it is attractive.  But I was to find that Trant’s enterprise reached farther yet.

To my description of Marmont’s forces he listened (it seemed to me) impatiently, asking few questions and checking off each statement with “Yes, yes,” or “Quite so.”  All the while his fingers were drumming on the camp table, and I had no sooner come to an end than he began to question me about the French marshal’s headquarters in Sabugal.  The town itself and its position he knew as well as I did, perhaps better.  I had not entered it on my way, but kept to the left bank of the Coa.  I knew Marmont to be quartered there, but in what house or what part of the town I was ignorant.  “And what the deuce can it matter?” I wondered.