General Arthur Wellesley's Anglo-Portuguese Army defeated Marshal Soult's French troops and took back the city of Porto.

A Portuguese force under Major General Francisco Silveira captured the French garrison of Chaves, a border town on the river Minho, and blocked Soult's communications with Spain by blockading the area around Amarante.

[7] By May 1809, however, Marshal Soult feared that he was outnumbered by the Anglo-Portuguese army under General Arthur Wellesley, which had advanced rapidly from Lisbon via Coimbra.

To cover such a threat, Soult's troops were largely deployed to the west of the city, and he relied heavily on the river Douro (tidal, deep, fast-flowing and 200 yards wide in Porto) as a natural barrier.

Arriving the same day at Vila Nova de Gaia on the Douro immediately opposite Porto, Wellesley was unable to cross the river.

MG Alex Randoll Mackenzie's British 2nd brigade and a large Portuguese force operated on the line of the Tagus river.

(The restored seminary building still stands today, in Largo do Padre Baltazar Guedes, and now houses the Porto Orphan's College; it bears a memorial plaque to the battle).

On the river bank a few hundred yards upstream from the Monastery of Serra do Pilar, he encountered a local barber, who led him to a small skiff, hidden in brush.

Colonel Waters took a small, unorthodox group consisting of the barber, a prior (as a guide) and a number of local boatmen across the river in the little skiff.

[10] Immediately, a platoon comprising a junior officer and 24 men from the 3rd Foot crossed the river in one of the wine barges and occupied the seminary, which overlooked the landing site.

By the time the French realised that Wellesley's forces were on the north bank, and endangering their eastern flank, the "Buffs" were fortifying their position, the rest of the battalion of the "Buffs" from Hill's brigade were crossing in a steady succession of wine barges, and the bridgehead force was under the command by of one of Wellesley's most respected officers, Major-General Edward Paget.

General of Brigade Maximilien Foy, who was the first to become aware of the British crossing,[10] requisitioned three battalions of the 17th Light Infantry and led an attack on the seminary at around 11:30 am.

However, the seminary, manned and fortified, constituted a very strong defensive position, and Wellesley was also able to bring his artillery to bear from the garden of the Monastery of Serra do Pilar, firing shrapnel with great effect.

Soult was faced with an enemy force in a strongly fortified bridgehead, outflanking him to the east, threatening his line of retreat, growing in strength all the time, via a crossing route he could not disrupt.

He transferred the troops which had been guarding the boats on the wharves of Ribeira in the centre of Porto to join the attack on the seminary, three quarters of a mile to the east.

As soon as the French troops had marched away from the riverside, the people of Porto liberated their boats and set out across the river in "anything that would float" to the wharves of Vila Nova de Gaia on the south bank.

In order to cut off a French retreat, Major General John Murray's 2,900-man brigade, including the 14th Light Dragoons, had earlier been sent across the Douro at a ferry crossing five miles to the south-east of Porto, near Avintes.

His force then marched north and reached a ridge looking down from the south onto the Valongo road, along which the retreating French army was being pursued north-eastwards by British infantry emerging from Porto.

[4] Due to Murray's error of judgement and the fact that the bulk of Wellesley's army were still on the other side of the Douro in Vila Nova de Gaia, the French escaped on 12 May.

The battle of Porto is depicted by Bernard Cornwell in Sharpe's Havoc, Simon Scarrow in Fire and Sword, Allan Mallinson in An Act of Courage, Iain Gale in Keane's Company and by Martin McDowell in the historical novel The Plains of Talavera.