Siege of Porto - Besieged Forces

Besieged Forces

On the Royalists side, General Álvaro Xavier Coutinho e Póvoas and Viscount of Santa Marta joined forces. The two generals disposed their armies to surround the city.

Dom Pedro sent a column to attack Valongo, which fell in an ambush by the Royalists along the Ferreira Bridge. This made her go back to Rio Tinto in a defeat that alarmed the city. Meanwhile, the Serra do Pilar was fortified by Major Sá Nogueira. Dom Pedro, who saw the impossibility of occupying the north of the country as originally he had planned, reorganized the army and created the General Staff. He dispatched Pedro de Sousa Holstein, 1st Duke of Palmela, to London, with the mission of obtaining financial support to the cause and contracting officers and soldiers.

On July 27, a violent battle was fought south of Grijó. Póvoas routed the forces of the Count of Vila Flor, who retreated in disorder to the Alto da Bandeira. Due to the rivalry between Santa Marta and Póvoas, the Royalist troops came to be commanded by General Gaspar Teixeira, Viscount of Peso da Régua. This initiated the siege of the city, which was surrounded by a series of strongholds beginning in the Quinta da China in Campanhã near the River Douro, ending near the Senhora da Luz in the mouth of Douro, near the sea. This whole line located north of the river. To the south the lines began at Cabedelo in Canidelo, on the opposite side of the mouth of Douro, and ended at Pedra Salgada, next to the hill of the Seminar, placing fifteen batteries in this area.