Wellington, by now commander of both the Portuguese and the British armies, adopted a scorched earth policy that brought huge hardship to the Portuguese people. Attempts were made to deny the invaders every scrap of food, while the inhabitants of central Portugal were required to leave their homes, either to take to the hills, go north to Oporto or south to Lisbon, which was to be defended by the extraordinary Lines of Torres Vedras. The strategy worked, but at a very high price. One estimate reckons that forty to fifty thousand Portuguese lost their lives in the winter of 1811-1812, most from hunger, some from the French, but an appalling figure, amounting to about 2 per cent of the then Portuguese population. It was, by any reckoning, a hard-hearted strategy, throwing the burden of the war onto the civilian population. Was it necessary? Wellington conclusively defeated Masséna on the heights of Bussaco, and had he guarded the road around the north of the great ridge, he could probably have repulsed the French there and then, forcing them back to Ciudad Rodrigo across the Spanish border, but that, of course, would have left Masséna's army relatively undamaged.
