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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