A Mild Case of Indigestion

by Geoffrey Watson

  ***

  The euphoria among the Spaniards after the fighting was over was a joy to watch. Ever since they had first allied themselves with the French, they had been losing battles at sea against the English. Since Napoleon usurped the Spanish throne on behalf of his brother Joseph, their armies had been soundly beaten in every battle but one and had come to look upon the French as quite unbeatable.

  It wasn’t that they weren’t brave men. Individually they could fight like demons, but their leaders had generally been of poor quality and most of their officers knew little of soldiering. The spirit of the conquistadors was barely flickering. Little wonder that their armies were half beaten before the first shots were fired.

  Now, a rag-tag group of guerrilleros with no more than twenty ex-soldiers in their ranks, had captured a town from four times their own number of invincible French regular soldiers. What is more, they had stood in line against a dreaded French column and utterly shattered it, with remarkably little assistance from their good friends, the Hornets. They had only been there to show them the best way to do it, hadn’t they?

  It was even pleasant to be cordial to their prisoners; to treat them as fellow soldiers who were unfortunate to be captured. They were able to feel superior and gloat a little. It was amazingly satisfactory to gloat a little over a live prisoner rather than a dead enemy. The number they had killed was satisfying as well, of course, but in a different way, and they only had three casualties themselves.

  MacKay could sense a party coming on. The citizens of the town had emerged with a certain trepidation until they could be certain what had happened, then they wanted a fiesta. Many who had collaborated with the French were keeping themselves well out of sight.

  Whatever their attitude, El Martillo was soon brought down to earth. The town had to be brought back to normal as quickly as possible. All the wagonloads of supplies coming from the east must suspect nothing until they had passed through the gates and found out, too late, that they were guests of the Spanish.

  By the evening, another forty wagonloads were taken and the castle dungeons were crowded with an extra hundred and fifty prisoners. All made up from the drivers and escorts who had surrendered promptly when entering the town gate and finding themselves surrounded by loaded muskets in the hands of surprisingly tolerant Spanish irregulars.

  Not one empty wagon had arrived from the west. Doubtless the unarmed prisoners released from the westgate had spread the news and stopped the drivers sacrificing themselves.

  MacKay and El Martillo discussed the possibilities. Both knew that Soult and Ney would not tolerate this blatant challenge to their authority. They would move against them as soon as they could. The question to be answered was how soon and how many troops would they send?

  It was decided that the Hornets would ride west and observe any preparations that were being made. The guerrilla band would hold the town until the last possible moment, intercepting all supplies and redistributing all that they couldn’t use themselves, to the townsfolk and the peasants in the surrounding countryside.

  Before they left, all wagons would be destroyed and, more importantly, all captured horses and draught animals would vanish into the hills.

  It was also agreed that El Martillo’s band; reinforced by many volunteers from the town; were now experienced enough and sufficiently well armed to continue the fight alone. The Hornets would follow after Welbeloved with all the fresh intelligence they had acquired.

  At dawn, thirty-six hours later and twenty miles farther west, MacKay watched a regiment of hussars leave the town in which they had spent the night and ride towards the rising sun and El Martillo.

  The six guerrilleros who had accompanied the Hornets were sent back immediately to warn their leader and the Hornets stayed in the hills to see what else was on the move. The hussars would be no more than a reconnaissance force, but sending a whole regiment was a statement of intent at the very least.

  By noon, the statement had become a definite threat. This was developing into more than a move to save face and recapture a town. Regiment after regiment of foot soldiers, batteries of guns and squadrons of cavalry were leaving the town on the road to the east. Westward, beyond the town, a rolling cloud of dust was rising into the heated air, showing that more and more soldiers were marching into and through the town.

  This was an army on the move and whether it was Soult’s or Ney’s or both was of no account. The Hornets now had to follow Welbeloved and let him know that, potentially, all the French soldiers in Galicia were gathering to add their weight to whatever was to be decided in the centre of Spain.

  CHAPTER 14

  It was not Welbeloved’s fault that he did not understand women. After all, he could hardly remember his mother, who had died when he was very young. Someone had taught him to read and write before he had joined his father, scouting for the then Major Ferguson in the war of independence; or the rebellion against the Crown, as he had been taught to call it.

  During those years he was in an almost exclusively male world. Then when his father was killed, he took over his Ferguson and his role as scout, until the British decided that it was far too costly a war, that they were never going to win and withdrew their forces completely.

  Forced to go to sea, because the newly independent colonies did not look kindly on loyalists who had fought against them, he went from one male society to another and was taught mathematics and navigation out of necessity.

  Still in his twenties, he was master and part owner of his small trading schooner when she was sunk by Greek pirates off Turkey. The Turkish Pasha; whose forces had tidied up afterwards; was so impressed by the slaughter wreaked on the pirates by Welbeloved’s Ferguson, that he conscripted him to teach his countrymen how to make and use the weapon.

  Given the corruption and technical backwardness in the Ottoman Empire, such an undertaking was bound to fail, but while he was there he was treated as an honoured guest with his own household, including a pretty slave girl from Sicily. Until he left Turkey and joined Cockburn after Nelson’s victory at the Nile, his education was further advanced by a knowledge of Turkish, a more intimate knowledge of Italian and the ability to give great pleasure to a slave girl. In no way did this experience give him any greater understanding of women.

  It was no different with his first wife. The sister of a Genoese doctor, impressed into the French army, she assisted her brother with the wounded and the sick. He had first seen her completely naked, being assessed as a slave by her Turkish captors, during Napoleon’s ill-fated campaign into Turkish Palestine and Syria. In order to free her, he had actually bought her, thus making her his slave until he could take her on board the British ship waiting offshore.

  That he was attractive to the fair sex cannot be denied. This may only have been a theory, but it was strengthened by the fact that she subsequently seduced him into marriage and gave him a beautiful daughter: but no better understanding of women. He was at that time, serving with Cockburn, his captain, aboard the frigate Falcon, while she was ashore in Sicily and Naples, looking after his daughter.

  Perhaps Mercedes understood him better than he understood her. Left to himself, he would never have had the audacity to propose marriage to her, however much he might have wished to.

  An injury at the conclusion of the last campaign, ensured that she was fully in control of his convalescence and was able to direct him effortlessly and painlessly (other than from his wound) into matrimony once more. He welcomed it and wanted it more than anything before in his life, even though as a direct consequence he had been accused of political opportunism, because she was related (however distantly) to King George himself. The knighthood that had been proposed for him after his defeat of General Tasselot had been withheld, but it was the king himself who had approved his honorary appointment as Colonel of Marines, with a substantial yearly income that made him a wealthy man, when added to all the money from prizes that had accumulated over the years.

  It had
never been his intention that Mercedes should again be exposed to the dangers of campaigning with the Hornets. It was unheard of that titled members of the gentler sex should be exposed to such perils and hardships. As stated earlier, however, he did not understand women. This is why she was riding at his side along the bank of the Tajo, as happy and cheerful as if the ‘misunderstanding’ of three nights ago had never occurred and as if she couldn’t conceive why he should be so concerned about her condition.

  She had managed to conceive though; he thought worriedly. Or so she would have him believe, subject to confirmation in a week or so. He therefore welcomed the distraction provided by the sight of four brown uniforms coming in the opposite direction. George Vere was rejoining, hopefully having delivered his news and captured dispatches to Sir Arthur.

  The Hornets made camp in a defensible little valley, carrying a stream down to the main river. Vere recounted details of the reception he had received at Talavera, where Wellesley and twenty thousand of his army were waiting and living on half rations.

  Sir Arthur, apparently, was grateful for the first reliable intelligence he had received since entering Spain and was anxious; as any army commander would be; to receive as much more as possible. He was however, deeply suspicious of the motives behind the presence of the Hornets in Spain. Knowing that his enemies in England; which included the Opposition in Parliament and the Prince of Wales at this time; were doing their best to undermine his position and belittle his achievements, he wanted to see Welbeloved as soon as possible and he required confirmation of his authority to be there at all.

  As almost everything connected with the Hornets had been dealt with by the Admiralty on the basis of a particular, and secret, service, it appeared that Sir Arthur had never been told that the Navy was encouraging and supplying the partisans.

  Little had ever been made public about their successes at the time of Sir John Moore’s campaign, because it had all developed from a mission to rescue the Condesa de Alba and the Marqués de San Palo from the French. The Hornet’s involvement in the retreat to La Coruña had been quite accidental.

  Wellesley had heard about it nevertheless, but mainly from one of his officers, Major Anstruthers of the Hussars. This officer had joined Welbeloved at that time and had trained and led four or five hundred defeated and scattered Spanish infantry and cavalry. He had helped to restore their faith in themselves and together they had had great success. Now promoted Lieutenant-Colonel on the recommendation of the late Sir John Moore, he was helping Wellesley in his former role as reconnaissance scout behind enemy lines, while still wearing his gorgeous hussar uniform in defiance of all who would stop him.

  It did seem strange to Welbeloved that the Admiralty controlling the greatest navy in the world would not bother to inform the British army fighting for its existence in Spain and Portugal, that it had initiated an operation in that very same area, to encourage resistance among the Spanish people themselves. He didn’t know whether it was arrogance or simple inefficiency, but it did look as though he was going to have to clear his decks with General Wellesley if he was to be of any help at all in what was, after all, a war that could decide the very existence of Great Britain.

  He was in a very thoughtful mood as the Hornets followed the river upstream the next morning. When he had accepted the duty of returning to Spain, it had been with the limited objective of supporting and encouraging Spanish partisans to keep resisting the French invaders. It was not thought that the Spanish people could win any war against Bonaparte’s armies. That was asking far too much. The strategic thought was that the more bands of effective guerrilla fighters, the more soldiers of the Emperor would be needed to contain them and the fewer would be available to fight Britain’s major allies, the Austrians and the Prussians.

  Even as the Hornets set sail from England, nobody seriously thought that Wellesley could do more than defend the Lisbon peninsular and that the most likely outcome would be another evacuation as at La Coruña.

  Wellesley’s brilliant and lightning campaign, which had bundled Soult’s army ignominiously out of Portugal had changed everybody’s thinking and made Welbeloved’s task that much less difficult.

  In spite of the euphoria, it had not changed the reality of the situation in any serious degree. Wellesley had an army of twenty to thirty thousand – practically the only army that Great Britain possessed in Europe. The French had more than ten times that number, split into several armies all over Spain.

  They rode into Talavera to find Sir Arthur and a couple of divisions of his army some miles farther east in the region of the river Alberche. Over a week earlier, Sir Arthur had met up with General Gregorio de la Cuesta and thirty-five thousand men of the Army of Estremadura. He had done his best to persuade the old general that they should together attack Marshal Victor and his much smaller army. Cuesta had refused until Victor had had time to realise that he was greatly outnumbered and promptly retreat towards Madrid.

  The cantankerous old man then became over-enthusiastic and went chasing after him with the whole of his army, until he found himself confronting the combined French armies of Joseph Bonaparte, Marshal Jourdan and Marshal Victor, and came scurrying back again, chased by most of the enemy cavalry.

  He had only stopped when he reached the bank of the river Alberche, where he turned to face the French again. Rather than have him meet the enemy in the open, Wellesley had taken two divisions to cover his retirement to the excellent defensive position between Talavera and the Sierra de Segurilla; where his own troops were waiting; but Cuesta had determined that he would retreat no farther and was stubbornly refusing to budge another inch.

  The bulk of Sir Arthur’s army was camped along the length of the Portina stream, coming down from the Sierra, running through Talavera and joining the Tajo south of the town. Welbeloved viewed the position with approval. Both flanks were covered: in the north by the mountains of the Segurilla and in the south by the river and the fortified town. The Portina stream flowed south from the mountains, between two small hills in the north, for three miles, until it reached Talavera and the river.

  Entrenchments, breastworks and other defences followed the line of the stream for a mile through the cultivated area north of the town. A substantial redoubt was even now being constructed by Wellesley’s Sappers and Miners to dominate the centre of the plain and complete the line of the southern defences.

  To the north of the redoubt, the plain stretched two miles to the mountains with the two hills; the Medellin to the west and the Cascajal to the east; on either side of the stream, leaving half-a-mile of flat ground to the north and a mile of open ground to the south, commanded by the batteries of guns in the redoubt.

  Welbeloved took the glass from his eye and smiled mirthlessly at Vere. “If we’re going to have a scrap with the Frogs, George, it has got to be here. It all depends on whether Sir Arthur can persuade Cuesta to bring his army back in support, or whether he’ll just stay where he is and get thrashed. I’m told that Victor’s army is about the same size as ours, but he’s now joined forces with Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Jourdan. That will double his numbers at the very least.”

  “So the worst case is…” Vere was gazing through his telescope to the east as he spoke. “….that the Crapauds beat the hell out of Cuesta on the Alberche and then come swarming over here with an advantage of more than two to one.”

  Welbeloved laughed. “Yew’ve got to the kernel in the nut case, George, though I wouldn’t be happy to be in Wellesley’s boots even if they do get back here. The Spanish themselves think that Cuesta is an incompetent old fool and if he gets beat here, then the whole of the British army is in a scrape.”

  Vere was still peering intently through his glass. “I would hazard a guess that we’re about to find out, Sir. Those clouds of dust have to be caused by an army on the march and not one that is running for its life. I think Sir Arthur is bringing Cuesta back with him.”

  “Correct, George, I thought yew would arri
ve at the same conclusion as I have. Now we have to plan on remaining in this area, no matter what the final outcome of the battle. I want yew to take half the men up into the foothills to the north. Make yorself known to whoever is holding the line there. Be ready to assist if yew can or disappear into the hills if we’ve been beat. We will join yew later if we can, but I am now going onto that hill, the Medellin, to look for General Hill and wait for Sir Arthur.”

  As Vere took his leave and Welbeloved and the other half of the Hornets started towards the Medellin, events began to move forward more rapidly. There was a considerable exchange of musket fire in the distance. As the Hornets began to climb the Medellin, General Wellesley clattered up and immediately started to send his staff officers out with orders directing Cuesta and his army into the breastwork defences between the completed redoubt and the town itself.

  The troops he had taken with him to shepherd the Spaniards back to Talavera had had one of their brigades badly mauled by French sharpshooters. Wellesley had rallied them himself and led them all back to the British lines. These now extended from the redoubt, across the parched plain and Medellin hill, to the southern slopes of the mountains; a front of two miles with the unpredictable Spanish army on the right flank, holding the entrenchments and breastworks between the redoubt and the town.

  Once everything was seen to be working out to his satisfaction, he had time for Welbeloved. One of the immaculate young officers on his staff approached the strange, dull group of men, with astonishment plain on his face but rigidly under control. “Is one of you men called Welbeloved?” The tone wasn’t quite condescending; after all, his general wanted to speak to him; but he was determined that this insignificant group should know their place in the order of things.

  Welbeloved was highly amused. He had encountered this attitude many times over the years, although in the Royal Navy it had mostly been from senior officers who had gained promotion due to family interest rather than outstanding service.