Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p2.djvu/549

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addenda to captains.
521

burst over the squadron, and one fell into the water and exploded between the Orestes and Echo, then only a few fathoms apart.

On this occasion, the Miguelites, under Marshal Bourmont, made four successive assaults in the vicinity of Lordello. In the last attempt, that position would have been forced, but for the indomitable courage of the British and Scotch brigades, who charged their opponents with the bayonet, and routed them in every direction. The loss sustained by the assailants was supposed to exceed 1000 men; the constitutionalists had about 200 killed and wounded, including Colonel Cotter, of the Irish brigade, and Captain Almaida, one of the aides-de-camp to General Saldanha.

On the night of July 26th, 1833, the Duke of Braganza and his Ministers embarked for Lisbon in the Britannia steam-vessel, leaving General Saldanha in command of the garrison of Oporto. Between this period and the middle of iugust, both belligerents, notwithstanding the repeated remonstrances of Captain Glascock, persevered in the reprehensible practice of firing across the river at unarmed individuals, thereby endangering the lives of the officers and men of the British squadron.

The last service performed by Captain Glascock during the civil war in Portugal, was the saving from conflagration upwards of 150,000 pounds worth of wine and brandy, the property of British merchants at Oporto. The following account of his proceedings on this occasion was officially addressed to Captain Lord John Hay, of H.M.S. Castor, senior officer without the bar, Aug. 17th, 1833:

“My Lord,– From the previous information I had given your Lordship, relative to the destruction of the Portuguese Company’s wine in the vicinity of Villa Nova, you will not be now surprised to learn that the threat of Don Miguel’s General has at length been put into execution. Several thousand pipes of wine were yesterday destroyed; the houses containing the wines were undermined, and the property in question blown up at one o’clock.

“When it is recollected that the ‘lodges’ belonging to the Portuguese Company were intermingled with those of the British merchants, it becomes a matter of astonishment how the property of the latter has escaped; but it