Touring the Peninsula With Matt

Almeida

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After such an interesting battlefield like Bussaco we continued on to Almeida, a small but important fortification during the Peninsular War and earlier wars with Spain.

Its castle and cathedral were obliterated by a stray French shell entering the ammunition magazine underneath the cathedral (or by Sharpe deliberately lighting a gunpowder trail into the magazine before diving into a nearby bread oven, whichever you wish to believe) causing a massive explosion, one of the biggest pre-nuclear explosions, seconded only by Sir John Moore's destruction of his ammunition at Corunna.

Ironically, the fort was designed and built by Frenchmen, the latter, Antoine Deville, and the former, Carlos Lassart, and the deeper irony was that its defences were destroyed by French shot and shells, with the castle being obliterated by the explosion, and the defenders blown off the walls.

As we approached the walls I was able to see the defences much more clearly, the large triangular ravelins jutting out separately from the walls, the glacis rising up in front, and the large bastions jutting out like arrowheads from the walls.

We entered through the Cruz main gate, driving down a small bridge that originally would have been a drawbridge, with cannons flanking us on both sides, if we had been unwelcome visitors roughly 200 years ago those same cannons would have been pouring grapeshot down upon us!

We checked in at our hotel, and when we were shown our rooms the women pulled back the curtains and the blind and said in a very matter-of-fact voice: "This is the tomb of Sir John Beresford, he was British, the British helped the Portuguese defeat the French when they invaded our country, we are happy to have you British staying here." You can only wonder what they say to French tourists!

After checking at our hotel we went for a wander around the walls, the ravelins were still visible, and the walls were generally intact, if not a bit run down in places.

We then visited the remains of the castle, and the graveyard that marks where the cathedral was.

You could clearly see the foundations of the castle, with the bases of the bastions clearly showing, and the ditch below them. All around were fallen blocks of rock, which had come from the old castle and cathedral, but the graveyard was slightly less appealing, none remains of the old cathedral, and the graveyard seemed little tended to, with weeds growing from the old graves.

Later on in the day we took a second walk around the walls and visited the tomb of Sir John Beresford, through the corroded stonework we made out that he had died during the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, and was a distinguished soldier whose body was buried in Almeida.

Climbing down we made our way towards the ravelin just outside the gate and climbed up on top. The view was brilliant and it made it much clearer to see how clever the defences were, splitting up the attacking forces, and forcing them into a killing area where they would be flanked by cannon.

The next morning we decided to head off to the military museum before we departed. It was built into the Sao Joao de Deus bastion, and originally served as a covered shelter from bombardment, an ammunition magazine and later as a prison during the civil war.

It contained large decorated blocks that originally made up the cathedral and castle, and a large room filled with broken shell-casing, intact shells, and roundshot.

We then set off for Salamanca.

- Matt Mahabadi

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