A Mild Case of Indigestion

by Geoffrey Watson

  He smiled broadly. “Welbeloved is my name, my boy. Who are yew?” The man went red, but he was no fool and realised immediately that there was more to this than had first seemed likely. He was not going to abandon the high ground without a struggle however. “I am Lieutenant Cholmondeley, Welbeloved. The General has sent me to bring you to him.”

  Welbeloved turned to Mercedes, his eyes twinkling. “I think yew should join me, my dear. I’m sure Sir Arthur would be unhappy not to meet yew.” He turned back to the lieutenant. “Lead on, Chumley. Yew’d better meet my wife, first. This is Lieutenant Chumley, my dear. My wife is the Countess of Alba, Chumley. Yew may have heard of her?”

  Cholmondeley had indeed heard of her. Lieutenant-Colonel Anstruthers was also on Wellesley’s staff and talked of little else. He recovered his composure as the two of them mounted and he led the way with a muffled, “Be good enough to follow me, Sir and My Lady.”

  If Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley was surprised when Cholmondeley introduced Welbeloved and the Condesa, he showed not a flicker of discomfort. Gallantly, he removed his bicorn and bowed over her hand. “I heard something of your adventures Madame, before I left England. Little did I imagine that I would meet you in the middle of a battlefield, or that I would be grateful that it was not your left hand with that fearsome weapon that you offered for my salute. You must forgive me if my present business is with your husband, but I am hopeful that you will both join me for dinner, once we have sent Joseph Bonaparte and his two marshals about their business.”

  Mercedes gave him her best smile. “What a very civilised invitation, Sir Arthur, we would not miss it for the world. Be sure that you deal with these barbarous invaders as they deserve.”

  Wellesley smiled and bobbed, then turned. “Now then Welbeloved, I have read all I could find about your masterful action in support of Sir John and I would wish to learn more from you later. Firstly, will you please explain to me why no-one has seen fit to inform me of your presence in the middle of my war?”

  Welbeloved looked quizzical. It was more or less what he had expected. “I suppose it is a combination of circumstances, General. We are officially under the Admiralty as Royal Marines, and when have the Admiralty and the Horse Guards ever talked to each other? There again, until one of our French captives told us of yor splendid victory at Oporto, I had thought yew fully occupied defending Lisbon. I can assure yew that no-one has as yet seen fit to inform me of yor presence in the middle of my war.”

  Wellesley threw back his head and roared with laughter. “I like you, Welbeloved, you have a refreshingly American direct way of speaking, but I can’t see that your band is going to be much help with our present little fracas. You didn’t envisage using them on the battlefield, did you?”

  “Not from choice, General, but I have noticed that yew don’t have a great many riflemen. My men have also been trained to do that job. With their Fergusons, the twenty men with me are more effective than sixty greenjackets. I’ve sent another twenty to the foot of those mountains, to help out at the discretion of Lord Vere. If yew should care to accept the Condesa on yor staff for the duration of the battle, she will be delighted to carry yor orders to us in an emergency.”

  There was silence for several seconds as the general considered the proposal and eyed the Condesa. Eventually, “You know your business best Welbeloved, as you have already demonstrated. I have never used a member of the fair sex in any of this rough trade, but, as you have remarked, General Craufurd and his light infantry brigade have not yet been able to join us.”

  He turned to the Condesa. “I don’t expect the French to attack before dawn, My Lady. If you would attend on me by then, I will be happy to have two such professional bodies of men at my call.”

  Anything else he would have said was interrupted by an enormous volley of musketry from the Spanish lines on the far side of the redoubt. Telescopes were immediately trained on the source of so much powder smoke and any possible target.

  There must have been well over a thousand muskets firing but the nearest French to be seen were well over half-a-mile away and quite unaffected by this seemingly senseless aggression.

  Wellesley turned to his liaison officer. “If they will but fire as well tomorrow, the day is ours; but as there seems nobody to fire at just now, I wish you would stop it.”

  The poor fellow had no time to react before at least four battalions of Spanish conscripts abandoned their positions behind the breastworks and fled to the rear, carrying with them anyone in their path.

  It seemed a good time for Welbeloved and Mercedes to return to the Hornets as Sir Arthur sent his liaison officer to Cuesta, asking him to fill “the ugly hole those fellows have left” from the reserve line.

  Looking down from the southern slope of the Medellin. The Hornets could see that General Cuesta was rapidly filling the ugly hole. It seemed as if the ancient, but ineffective, warrior was responding to Wellesley’s serious ‘requests’ with relief that he was not having to use his own initiative. Wellesley’s decision to place the thirty thousand Spaniards behind prepared defences, however flimsy, meant that all Cuesta had to do was stand on the defensive and hold some of his more seasoned battalions in reserve, to respond to any sudden emergencies.

  The French might be tempted to attack the Spanish, as the perceived weaker partner, but they would have to break through their defences and expose their flank to counter attack by the British. If, on the other hand, they attacked on the open plain north of the redoubt, it would be man against man, with small chance of any flank attack by the Spanish.

  Welbeloved studied the massed ranks of blue-clad French, raising dust storms to the east and wondered whether tomorrow they would all be thrown at the small British line of redcoats, holding the plains and the Medellin between the redoubt and the mountains.

  CHAPTER 15

  MacKay had expected to be much farther south by now. Indeed he would have been, had the French not been flooding along all the roads to the east. The Hornets wouldn’t have got as far as they had if El Martillo and his men hadn’t guided them along mule tracks and mountain paths parallel to the mountain valley road which followed the path of the river Tera on its way out of the Sierra de la Culebra to join the river Esla south of Benevente.

  Even these side-tracks were no guarantee of easy passage. A French army was a hungry army and foraging for supplies was a way of life for them. Any side road off the main line of march was an irresistible attraction to squadrons of horse soldiers in their lust for food and loot.

  The tiny hamlets and villages in the mountains might produce small amounts of food and fodder, but were mostly too poor to provide loot of any sort. French disappointment at the poor returns from their depredations, soon turned to rape, murder and destruction.

  It was MacKay’s discovery of the burning remains of a village of twenty dwellings and the bodies of the men, women and children who had lived there that made him modify his plans. Hickson was given all the letters and documents from Rabuteau and briefed thoroughly about everything that was known of Soult’s intentions. He and Isabella and Garrett were guided out of the mountains and sent south to find Welbeloved, while MacKay and the rest of the Hornets stayed to help El Martillo and his men frustrate the French foragers.

  The first priority was to observe all the tracks leading off the main highway into the foothills. The foraging parties were all horse soldiers at this stage of the advance. The best that could be done by the scattered observers, was to dash on ahead of the French horsemen and warn the isolated villages and hamlets that death and destruction in the form of French dragoons or chasseurs or other cavalry was on its way to visit them.

  At least it gave time for the populations of the small communities to take what they could carry and disappear into the hills. The penalty visited by the disappointed French was the inevitable burning and destruction of the village, but the lives of the peasants were saved.

  With the recruits that flocked to join El Martill
o’s band after his capture of the town, his partisans now numbered over two hundred. Half of these had benefited from active service and the training that the Hornets had offered. If Soult was indeed leaving Galicia, they were probably enough to deny its reoccupation by anything less than an army.

  At the moment, though, they were overstretched. El Martillo was using all his new recruits as lookouts and for raising the alarm with unsuspecting villagers. He had split his veterans into two groups. These were each shadowing the vanguard of the French army from the shelter of the hills bordering both sides of the road along the river valley.

  It was tiring work. Keeping parallel with the advance of the army meant many miles of travel from one viewpoint to another over goat and mule tracks known only to a few of the locals in his band. Eventually this hard work had its reward when they were making a long diversion around the head of a valley carrying a quite substantial road north into the hills.

  MacKay and El Martillo looked down towards the marching army to see a squadron or more of dragoons move off, away from the main advance and set out to explore the possibilities of this interesting side road.

  His glass showed one large troop, followed by two smaller troops; an indication perhaps of the difficulties of making up losses when serving in outlying provinces such as this. At full strength, the squadron was probably over a hundred men. The numbers riding below were between seventy and eighty and they were trotting up a steep road in the wide mouth of a valley that showed all the signs of narrowing into a little more than a defile, where their options would be limited to going forward or back.

  MacKay passed his telescope to El Martillo and asked casually, “does that road fork in the next few miles?” The Spaniard shot him a quick look then replied equally casually, “not until it climbs over the col into the next valley about five miles away. Señor Teniente.”

  MacKay widened his eyes innocently. “Before it reaches the col, would there be any places, say just round a bend in the road, where fifty men with evil intentions, could hide and give these horsemen a most unpleasant surprise?”

  As MacKay knew full well, El Martillo adored exchanges like this. He struggled to remain casual, but his smile broadened into a wide grin. “It so happens, Señor, that I have heard of just such a place, only about two miles away. However, if the men with evil intentions make the surprise too unpleasant, what is to prevent the French pigs just running back around the corner?”

  He almost hugged himself as he studied the thoughtful expression on MacKay’s face. “Do you know, Señor, I cannot think of anything to stop them running, unless your men have forgotten how to shoot. However, think of the even more unpleasant surprise when they find that the Hornets have been following them and are waiting to greet them on their return.”

  MacKay was nearly knocked from his saddle with the force of El Martillo’s hand pounding his back. Then he was roaring at his men to move and shouting back. “Follow the pigs until you see a spur with a pine tree growing from the side. We will be waiting for them just past that spur.”

  The guerrilleros rushed away and the Hornets moved around the head of the valley until they were hidden from the road. There they waited out of sight with only MacKay watching and counting as the dragoons, presently riding three abreast, came walking their horses up the steepish incline towards the narrowing valley into the hills.

  Then he began to calculate the odds and start worrying. He counted nearly eighty dragoons, all presumably veteran soldiers. El Martillo was preparing to ambush them with fifty men who were now better than average marksmen, albeit with captured and ‘improved’ French muskets.

  Firing from cover, downwards and hopefully within fifty yards, there was an excellent chance that the partisans would kill or wound over twenty with their first volley.

  After the first volley, nothing would go as expected. It never did. Welbeloved’s Dame Fortune might still be smiling on them, but MacKay had to prepare for about fifty enraged dragoons turning and galloping back around the spur to be faced by fourteen Fergusons and six women with carbines. No! Four women only. The other two would have taken the horses to safety.

  The last of the dragoons passed on up the track and MacKay reached a decision. El Martillo had said that the spur was no more than two miles away and the dragoons were walking their horses to save their strength up the long slope. He gave orders to hobble the horses where they were. They would follow on foot. It would be easier to avoid detection by the French rearguard, and if the women could keep up with them, they would be a fully mobile unit, ready to dive for cover and take on anything that the enemy might devise.

  Leading the way in the tracks of the dragoons, he found that it was much easier than he had thought to follow unseen and keep within striking distance. They were not burdened with anything other than their weapons and ammunition and the French were not in any hurry. The track undulated and curved in such a way that there was rarely a stretch of more than fifty yards without quite satisfactory means of concealment if the rearguard should bother to turn and view to their rear.

  True, the girls following at the back were not used to having to trot along an upward slope carrying several pounds of carbine, powder and balls, but they were all hard working and fit village girls and none of them was willing to admit that they couldn’t prove themselves as good as the men.

  The spur, with its distinctive tree came into view much sooner than MacKay had expected and they were within a hundred yards when the last horse disappeared around the bend. The stream that cut into the floor of the defile left no room for horses on the one side of the track and the Hornets and the girls immediately took to the steep slopes on the other side, moving forward easily from cover to cover.

  The rate of their advance slowed to a crawl, but they were within fifty yards of the bend around the spur when El Martillo finally allowed his men to fire on the extended column of cavalry. Immediately on hearing the first volley, the whole party settled behind cover. The men quickly ushered the girls into the safest spots they could find within almost point blank range of the road. Leaving them in place they filtered forward from boulder to boulder until they covered a stretch of twenty to thirty yards in front of the girls and within thirty yards of the corner.

  MacKay had been anticipating a rush of retreating dragoons within seconds of the sound of the first volley, but nothing whatever appeared as a target. Ten seconds after the first volley there was a second salvo and he realised that El Martillo had also benefited from the training that the Hornets had been giving his men. He had obviously paired them up and they were shooting in turns, one firing while the other was reloading in the manner perfected by the French tirailleurs and the British riflemen.

  Then the dragoons came back round the bend. Only the last troop however, and they were not fleeing. They came back out of the line of fire and leapt off their mounts, drawing their carbines and heading back on foot to continue the fight.

  It went against the grain for MacKay to shoot soldiers in the back, but these brave dragoons were not about to give in to an attack by Spaniards whom they held in contempt. Reluctantly, he gave the order and at less than fifty yards, half the troop lay dead on the ground.

  Caught between two fields of fire, the rest ran to find whatever cover they could, some diving down into the stream bed and others huddling up to the steep walls of the spur. Their horses, now thoroughly alarmed, stampeded back down the track.

  On the other side of the spur, El Martillo’s education in warfare was receiving a searching examination. His men were in a dominating position and were shooting in turn, which gave them the best chance of killing as many Frenchmen as possible. He had seen his two volleys bring down twenty to thirty men and by all the rules of sanity, the rest of them should have fled back the way they had come, to be taken by the deadly rifles of his allies.

  The dragoons hadn’t seen it like that. Instead, the stubborn pigs had thrown themselves off their horses and into the bed of the stream from where th
ey were now shooting back at him with their carbines. The last troop of the three had indeed dashed back around the spur, but he had not heard any shots to tell him that his friends were there in support.

  If that troop decided to come back and support their comrades, there would be more dragoons than guerrilleros and that could mean a nasty, bloody fight, which Marshal Soult would count as a victory if everyone on both sides was killed. He would have lost a squadron of dragoons and in return, wiped out half the trained guerrilleros in Galicia.

  Then he heard the ragged volley of shots with the distinctive crack of the Fergusons and breathed a sigh of relief. The odds had swung back again in his favour and it was now up to the dragoons to get themselves out of the trap.

  He had heard the Hornets fire only the one volley, but the noises coming from the other side of the spur now indicated that there was a sniping action going on and he was not going to put any money on the dragoons in such an exchange.

  The French commander in the streambed had obviously decided that his position was now untenable and that he should get out while there was any chance left at all. Most of the squadron’s horses were still wandering unconcernedly about in the road, calmly grazing and browsing on any surviving vegetation and getting in the way of the serious business of men trying to shoot each other.

  A sudden loud order came from the direction of the stream and all the surviving dragoons scrambled onto the road and ran to the nearest horse, leapt into the saddle and made off back down the track.

  Many of the Spaniards were busy reloading their muskets at the time, but enough successful shots were fired to ensure that less than twenty dragoons went racing for safety in a long straggling line.

  MacKay had trusted his men to seek out the survivors of the breakaway troop, while he concentrated on the noises coming from beyond the spur. He had picked up the loud shouted command, followed almost immediately by a very ragged and prolonged volley of shots.