A Mild Case of Indigestion

by Geoffrey Watson

  Unbeknown to him, his exchange of words had been heard by the Condesa, who surprised him by echoing his own thoughts. “You should not be surprised Monsieur le Commandant, if you remember what I told you about the massacre and rape of an entire village by the vicious, barbarian thugs masquerading as French soldiers. We got there in time to stop the women being killed after they had been used. Now your army will lose more men when those girls go looking for revenge. They are learning how to kill Frenchmen and they no longer care if they are killed themselves.

  Things like this have been happening all over Spain and every time it happens, the survivors will creep away and find a gun or a knife and your armies will have to huddle behind fortified walls, or else find someone has sneaked up and cut their throats as they sleep."

  Rabuteau saluted her. “It is probably no coincidence, Madame la Comtesse, that your words are running parallel to my own thoughts. I had already determined to use whatever influence I have to stop such things happening, if only for the reasons you have given. However, whether we approve or not, the fact is we take uneducated peasants into the army, tell them that Frenchmen are superior to all others and train them mindlessly to kill the enemies of France. The officers should prevent these atrocities of course, but they are also only peasants who have become officers because they are better at killing. What is one to do?”

  “One is to leave Spain, Monsieur. You French have stolen most of our treasures and have nothing more to gain. We are not a rich country any longer and the cost of keeping half a million soldiers here must be far more than any booty you can still extort from the people.”

  “For myself, Madame, I would be happy to leave tomorrow. My family still has property in Normandy, which can in no way be compared to its disadvantage with this arid land. Unfortunately, the Emperor regards Spain as part of his empire, with his brother as king and we are committed to defending it.”

  “You must reconcile yourself then, Monsieur, to constant harassment in an unfriendly country, which will slowly drain away the manhood of France. We may never be able to send an army against you, but will make sure that your soldiers hate to serve here. They will live in fear of losing their lives, not in battle, but in an ambush wherever they go.

  I was myself taken captive by your horse soldiers and was about to be raped when my husband rescued me. That was nearly a year ago and I have lost count of the number of Frenchmen I have killed since then. I am now British as well as Spanish and every soldier I have killed has had a weapon in his hands. You have taught my countrymen not to be so fastidious. They will kill anyone who is French, man or woman, armed or unarmed, young or old and they will rejoice as they do it. Take this message to your king and his marshals when we send you back to your friends. Your leg will be recovered enough in the next day or so.”

  ***

  Later that night, she was discussing the hussar with her husband in the small brown tent that they shared. “Our peacock hussar is really quite a pleasant fellow and must certainly be considered attractive to members of my sex. It was therefore a much greater shock to him to be treated with so much scorn and disdain by young Juanita when he was trying to tell her how much he regretted what had been done to her. Under her bruises, he could see that she is quite a beautiful young woman and he is surely not accustomed to being regarded with quite so much hatred and contempt by someone towards whom he would feel instinctively protective.”

  There was a quiet chuckle beside her. “Should I feel jealous, my love, that yew find our handsome frog so attractive? Perhaps yew imagine that he might turn into a prince if yew were to kiss him?”

  She turned and kissed him quite thoroughly. I have tried my best to achieve that with you, my darling, but as you know, I am going to have to settle for the grumpy old sailor that I married.”

  Some time later, he grunted. “I think yew may be right, but thank yew for trying so hard. Please do not ever give up hope.”

  “Never in this world, my love, but we were talking about our prisoner and I did hope you might be grateful for the information I have been able to glean from him, while pretending to know far more than we really do.”

  “I have always recognized what a clever, scheming, deceitful, delightful, young and beautiful Condesa I’ve married. Are yew now about to tell me that yew have discovered more than that Joseph is trying to get Soult to move his army closer to Madrid to help Marshal Victor to wipe out the Spanish army, somewhere south of Salamanca?

  Although most of the dispatches he was carrying were in code, I did get the clear impression that Soult is most reluctant to move anywhere and would use any excuse to avoid obeying Joseph’s orders.”

  It was too dark for him to see her smug expression. “I can now confirm all that and more. Rabuteau does not approve of Soult’s ambitions, which would see him made king of Portugal and Galicia. Soult is using our small incursions and claiming large-scale rebellions that require him to remain in this area in order to crush them.

  The really important news though, is that Joseph is extremely concerned that Wellesley is said to be bringing his army into Spain to support the Spanish army of Estremadura under General Cuesta. There is only Marshal Victor between them and Madrid and a combined force would most likely outnumber his army.

  Rabuteau was charged with trying to get Soult to dash down and cut off the route Wellesley would have to use to get back to safety in Portugal. In spite of Joseph’s orders, I suspect he isn’t going to, unless he is forced to do so, and the longer we hang on to our gallant hussar, the longer it will take for the news to get back to Joseph.”

  He lay silently with his arms around her, thinking about what she had discovered. His amorous bantering mood was now entirely professional. “These are the answers to so many of our questions. How did yew get him to tell yew about Sir Arthur?”

  “I didn’t have to. He assumed that as we were British, we would know all about it and when I made him angry about Soult and his ambitions, it all came flooding out, together with his anger at not being able to persuade him to march and take the British in the flank.”

  “Then two important things follow on from what yew have found. Firstly, we have to get these dispatches to Wellesley and let him know we are managing to keep Soult and Ney in the northwest for the moment, but that they have a re-equipped army if they do decide to move.

  Secondly, it would suit Soult’s purpose to mount a full-scale attack on this camp at any time now. It could even be that those howitzers that Hamish captured were intended to help him make the assault.”

  He rolled out of his blankets. “I will just go down and check that El Martillo is keeping his sentries on the alert. I get the impression that he thinks he’s impregnable and that we are here to rescue him if the unbelievable should happen.” He disappeared into the darkness.

  ***

  MacKay should have been asleep. He rated the discipline of the guerrilla band only slightly more than that of the regular Spanish army and that was hardly at all. For some time he had been setting sentries to cover the track into the camp, together with a piquet who patrolled the area of the camp during the night.

  He was informed within minutes of Welbeloved’s departure down to the plateau and caught up with him as he reached the bottom of the slope. Welbeloved was waiting for him. His lieutenant was hurrying to catch up and the very few noises he made were enough to alert the senses that had been honed to razor sharpness as a boy in the wild places of America, some thirty years before.

  He greeted him with amusement. “Hello Hamish. Yor intelligence unit is working well. I only made the decision to come and have a snoop ten minutes ago.”

  “Aye, Sir. If I’m going tae run this gang for you wi’ any degree of efficiency, they have tae keep me well informed o’ when you have one o’ your brainstorms. It must be important for you tae desert your bride at this time o’ the night.”

  Welbeloved gave him a quick résumé of the information that Mercedes had gleaned from Rabuteau and the conclus
ions he had drawn from it. MacKay listened with particular interest to the gossip about Soult. “Tae be sure, Sir, since we brought the peacock back wi’ us, I’ve been puzzling over why the Frogs are being sae quiet. I’ve spoken wi’ El Martillo and warned him tae keep his sentries specially alert for any activity in the valley.

  It does nae seem right tae think we gave them such a skelping and they just disappear. They know they really dae have a hornet’s nest up here and it’s most un-French tae dae nothing about it.”

  “My sentiments exactly, Hamish, but put yorself in Soult’s fancy cavalry boots and how would yew go about it?”

  Hamish hardly hesitated. “The answer tae that is tied up wi’ the information you’ve just gi’en me, Sir. If I had a’ the time in the world, I would set my cavalry tae search oot the back way in. Soult must know there is one, although thank the Lord, it’s verra difficult tae find.

  If King Joseph was pushing me tae prove there is a rebellion in these parts, I would have tae make a serious effort tae storm directly up yon slope, supporting the assault wi’ howitzers or mortars tae keep the defenders frae the edge until I had three or four hundred men on the plateau. I should need upwards of a thousand troops with no guarantee of success, but it would look good in any report sent tae Madrid.”

  They were walking together along the edge of the plateau, looking down into the inky blackness of the valley. There were three of El Martillo’s men spread out along the rim and Welbeloved cautioned them to use their ears as well as their eyes and to listen for the sound of any movement in the darkness below them.

  The fourth sentry was sitting half asleep on a pile of timber by the gap in the track created by Mercedes and her novel mine. The partisans had been collecting suitable tree trunks with the idea of making a drawbridge to span the gap but, as was to be expected, the work was proceeding at a leisurely pace.

  The man started up guiltily when prodded by MacKay’s boot and got a considerable tongue-lashing for his pains. Welbeloved had to smile at the rough but serviceable Spanish that Hamish had picked up. He was using adjectives that Welbeloved hadn’t learned, although the meaning was very clear and the sentry made a great attempt to be seen to be attending to his duties.

  They resumed their discussion as they walked back up to the camp. “I agree almost entirely with yor assessment of the situation, Hamish. I think they will make their play in force very soon and I think when it happens it will be at first light. They will gather their forces together during the hours of darkness and start the climb as soon as there is enough daylight to feel their way up.

  Let us stand-to half-an-hour before dawn and if nothing happens, get Thuner to climb across and go and inspect the Condesa’s avalanche. The French have got some excellent engineers and if they could get horses past that barrier they could drag enough material up here to throw a makeshift bridge across that chasm. Given enough troops I can foresee a great deal of trouble.”

  CHAPTER 10

  In the early hours of the following morning, Welbeloved qualified as a seer. Even as the Hornets stood-to, when the sky behind the mountains to the east was just beginning to herald the arrival of Apollo and his fiery chariot; the first musket shots of the guerrilleros could be heard.

  Welbeloved and MacKay had called on El Martillo before they retired. He had agreed, reluctantly, to double the number of men on watch throughout the night. More to the point, he had warned his whole band; now over a hundred and fifty armed men; that trouble was to be expected.

  Naturally, one couldn’t expect the discipline and steadiness of a military unit, although MacKay had been working with them since he arrived. The first alarm would nevertheless bring them out in force, prepared to shoot, throw rocks or even fused shells down on any enemy foolish enough to attempt to scale the difficult rock faces up to the plateau. Welbeloved hoped that they were not in for some nasty surprises.

  He was determined to let El Martillo’s men defend their own fortress by themselves if he could. He would only bring in the Hornets if it looked as though the enemy was enjoying too much success. He spread his men out as before on the slope overlooking the plateau and walked over to where El Martillo was supervising his guerrilleros, lining the edge of the plateau and heaving rocks at anything that attracted their attention.

  The problem was that they couldn’t see anything clearly and the great piles of stones were being wasted on speculative shadow targets. He pointed out that by the time the enemy got within range, the piled supplies would have been exhausted and a roar from El Martillo brought most of the men back from the edge to be held as a reserve. The rest were told to throw their missiles only when there was a good chance of hitting a climber.

  The sun was now up, but still hidden by the mountains to the east. There was just enough light to see some movement at the bottom of the climb when MacKay’s forecast became fact. A battery of three howitzers opened fire. Welbeloved was looking down and counted the flashes of the first shots.

  He remembered the insurmountable problems they had had with the similar weapons that they had captured and tried to use at Acre and could imagine the difficulties the French must be having to get them to shoot almost vertically upwards. They must have had to push the wheels of the carriages onto ramps and have the trails planted in the ground.

  It wasn’t possible to observe the trajectories in the half-light and only two of the shells exploded, one of them fifty feet overhead, causing consternation but no damage. The other must have hit the side of the cliff and fallen back, as it exploded almost at the bottom of the climb, presumably to the discomfort of the troops waiting to start upwards.

  The next three shots were equally erratic. Two of them slammed into the face of the cliff and started small avalanches onto the heads of the soldiers waiting below. The shells themselves ricocheted back in an arc towards the guns that fired them, exploding about half way down with unknowable consequences. The third one shot into the air and fell to earth no one knew where. Welbeloved grinned to himself as he remembered the childhood rhyme.

  He did however, suggest to El Martillo that he get all his men to lie down while they were waiting. They wouldn’t be under cover but they would certainly feel more confident if they were hugging the ground instead of standing as a target for exploding shells.

  Only two more shots were fired. Both of these bounced off the cliff face and exploded on the way down. Presumably, the troops waiting to make the climb were unhappy with the idea of being bombarded by their own guns while struggling to find handholds, and so the howitzers ceased firing.

  The Spaniards on rock throwing duty surged towards the edge of the plateau, ready to brain any climber within fifty feet of the top. Nobody anticipated the blast of grapeshot that swept many of them off the plateau into the valley and left another dozen, dead and dying at the rim. The French engineers had indeed cleared the pile away from the Condesa’s avalanche and somehow brought a battery of guns almost up to the plateau, effectively dominating the whole area up to thirty yards back from the rim.

  All the surviving partisans around the rim, fled to the temporary safety of the dead ground behind the loom of the cliff, out of the line of fire of the guns. Welbeloved had been farthest away at the end near the stream and realised at once that the cannon were firing from the track, which was on a slightly lower level than the plateau itself. Anyone standing was a target, but lying flat they were in the dead ground covered by the rim of the plateau and out of the direct sight of the guns.

  With the spreading effect of the grape they were using; being out of the direct line was no guarantee of safety, but he dragged El Martillo to the ground and suggested forcefully to him that he formed his men into two ranks in an arc at the back of the plateau, in front of the slope where the Hornets were ensconced.

  Calmly, he then fished his small telescope out of his pocket and raised himself so that he could focus on the track, the gap and the guns that were continuing to spray grapeshot over the front of the plateau at regular
intervals, thus allowing the attacking force to climb freely, without facing the shower of rocks from the Spaniards.

  The guns were, as he had expected, light brass cannon, probably three-pounders, but still capable of spitting out up to forty one-ounce grapeshot with each spreading discharge, like an oversize blunderbuss. They were certainly protecting the climbers very efficiently and Welbeloved began to suspect that the ineffectual howitzers were used more as a distraction while the cannon were put in place.

  He also realised that protecting the climbers wasn’t their main purpose. There was much activity at the gap in the track as a large group of blue-clad and siege armoured engineers struggled with a pair of sheer legs, preparatory to swinging a large beam of timber across to start bridging the gap.

  He berated himself for complacency in not actively anticipating what the French were now doing, until it was far too late. Then he was on his feet and sprinting out of range of the grapeshot, yelling to MacKay to bring four men to the point where the track opened onto the plateau.

  He was there first himself and peering round the corner of the cliff face at the three guns, all pointing in his direction. He ducked back hastily as one of them fired, then saw that it was one of their regular shots intended to make the plateau edge a no go area.

  Ten yards ahead was another niche in the rock face which would give him protection from the guns and he made a dash and squeezed behind the rock, just as the whole area was blasted with grape from another of the three-pounders.

  Even from here he couldn’t see the bridge builders and it became clear that from any position on the track where he could see the engineers, he would be in full view, at almost point-blank range, of the cannon.

  Looking back he could see MacKay peering round the corner he had just left. He cupped his hands. "Hamish! They are throwing a bridge over the gap and I can’t see it from here. Send Evans and O’Malley to the dead ground where I was using my glass. Tell them to do what they can to disrupt the work. There is room for one more man by me and then we can all try and make life uncomfortable for the gun crews.”