There were firing squads, there was pillage, bayonetted churchmen, abandoned crying babes sitting next to their slain parents, and any sort of brutality, there were two men in rich-looking clothing being hanged from an iron Liberty Tree, the sort that the French erected in every town they conquered since 1793, as if they were bringing freedom, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity to people crying out for relief from their former rulers.
Damned if some of the Frog soldiers don’t resemble some of Sapphire’s crew! Lewrie thought; Just filthier and more “Jack Nasty-Face.”
“Is that’un supposed to be Bosun Terrell, sir?” Fywell asked.
“I took some from life, Mister Fywell,” Westcott said with a simper. “If they all looked like apes, they wouldn’t be villainous. They’d be caricatures.”
“You do a nice looting, and good burnings, Mister Fywell,” Lewrie congratulated the Mid. “I quite like the tavern drunks, too.”
“But, none of this is strictly true, is it, sir?” Fywell had to ask. “Mean to say, we don’t know if the French are really doing these things.”
“It’s what we wish the Spanish to believe, young sir,” Lewrie told him. “They’re a proud, suddenly conquered, and sold-out people. Sooner or later, some Frenchman will be insulted, have a chamber pot dumped on his head, they’ll kill whoever did it, and these sorts of things will happen, then there’ll be general riots, to which the French will respond with exactly this sort of barbarity. Trust me that it’ll happen. And we want it to happen. Then Spain becomes a British ally, and Napoleon gets his nose tweaked.
“Hmm, best sign this’un with a Spanish-sounding name,” Lewrie instructed. “Then, I’ll take them to Mister Mountjoy.”
“Who’s he?” Fywell asked Westcott in a whisper.
“A British government official in charge of such things, my lad,” Westcott told him, “a fellow in the ‘hush-hush’ business.”
“A spy, do you mean, sir?” Fywell asked with a gulp.
Gawd, but is he young! Lewrie thought.
“The man who chose our targets last Summer,” Lewrie admitted. “And the least said of him, the better all round. Get it?”
“Aye aye, sir!” Fywell said, half-appalled, half-intrigued.
“Well, thank you both for your efforts, and your good work, sirs,” Lewrie said, signalling that the meeting in his cabins was done. Westcott stayed awhile longer than Fywell.
“I didn’t show you all of mine, sir,” Wesctott confessed. “Do you want to see these?” He had a folder in his hands.
“Utterly pornographic, are they, Geoffrey?” Lewrie asked.
“Utterly, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, smirking.
Lewrie leafed through several, finding fully de-nuded women, Frogs with their pricks showing (none too large, mind) virginal girls being taken in every possible orifice.
“By God, but you must get yourself a new mistress ashore, sir!” Lewrie said, a tad wide-eyed. “If I showed these to Mountjoy, he’d be staggered, makin’ garglin’ noises. He’s a prim sod, given his line of work.”
“Working on it, sir, working on it,” Westcott promised.
* * *
“Oh yes, these are excellent, Captain Lewrie,” Mountjoy said, leafing through the sketches, nodding and humming over the barbarities, then going wide-eyed over Westcott’s “specials,” and made some “my words” and “egads.”
“Think they’ll do?” Lewrie asked.
“Oh, they’ll more than do!” Mountjoy said with delight. “For the most part, I’ll claim that these events occurred up North, not in Madrid, where the French have already seized cities on false pretexts. The people at the newspaper have aided me most nicely, too. What do you think of those, there on the desk?”
Lewrie looked over a pile of what looked to be snippets from newspapers. He could not make heads or tails of them, for they were all printed in Spanish or Portuguese. “What are these?” he asked.
“Eyewitness accounts of French atrocities, allegedly from Lisbon, or Northern Spanish papers,” Mountjoy said with a hint of pride. “See on the backs, there are incomplete articles, as one would expect to see when clipping something out of a paper. I’m passing them on to Mister Viale to give to General Castaños, and read for himself. The Gibraltar Chronicle is fitting my work in between their own work, and I’ve had to dip into my funds to pay them for it … dearly, you see … but I think it’s worth it. They’ll be doing some one-sheet tracts, too. I wish I could produce entire Spanish papers to send along the coast, but that would be asking too much of the Chronicle. When the Duke of Kent was here, he wrote a three-hundred-page book of regulations and ordered them to print it. They couldn’t put out the paper for two whole months, and swear they’ll never miss an issue again.”
“Who wrote the articles?” Lewrie asked.
“Deacon and I did, in English first, then got some people here to translate them into Spanish or Portuguese,” Mountjoy told him.
“This’un here won’t do,” Lewrie pointed out, holding one up for Mountjoy to look over. “I don’t think the Spanish use the f letter to replace an s as we do, and ye might have a care with all the tildes, squiggles, and what-nots.”
“What?” Mountjoy yelped, astonished, seizing the snippet and poring over it. “Damn! Damn my eyes, just … shit!” He went to his desk and read through each article, highly agitated. “Thank God, it’s only this one that the paper got wrong, then. The rest will do.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Lewrie said.
“I’m sending some of the finished product to London, too. They may find them useful,” Mountjoy said. “Not the illustrations’ original wood-cut blocks, I’ll still need those for later printings, but maybe my superiors can hire some artists to make their own. Got to stir up people back home, to ready them for a wider war, hey? Distribute them into the rest of Europe to turn people against the French?”
“You really need a printing press of your own, Mountjoy.”
“I do, don’t I?” Mountjoy said with a wide grin. “The power of the press. Look at that radical, Thomas Paine, and what his pamphlets did for the American Revolution, how his later work prompted the French Revolution.”
“How Napoleon uses his Moniteur to lie to his own people, and the rest of the world,” Lewrie sarcastically added. “Though by now, the French people say that if someone lies to them, they say that ‘he lies like a bulletin in the Moniteur.’”
“It’s the way of the future, war by newsprint,” Mountjoy said with glee. “England must lead the way in it … even if Bonaparte got to it, first.”
“Well, if you’re happy with the results, I’ll be going, then,” Lewrie told him. “I’m going to sail over to keep an eye on Ceuta one more time. Sir Hew Dalrymple asked me to stay in harbour, but hasn’t come up with anything to do, and my people are goin’ stale.”
“But, what if he suddenly has need of you, or I do?” Mountjoy asked.
“I’m only twelve miles cross the Strait,” Lewrie laughed off. “He can send a small boat under sail, or light a beacon atop of the Rock … if the Barbary apes allow it. I don’t know. He can fire off some Congreve rockets, if he has any. I’ll send the old fart a note today, and, weather allowin’, sail tomorrow after dawn. That’s time enough t’prompt him into any request he has in mind.”
“Very well, then, Captain Lewrie,” Mountjoy agreed. “I have no pressing need of your ship and your services, for now, either.”
“Then I’ll take my leave. Enjoy your newspaper project, sir, and have joy of it,” Lewrie said, bowing himself out.
* * *
And so went the rest of April and early May of 1808; calling at Parsley Island, now garrisoned and equipped with batteries of 24-pounder cannon; circling round the fortress of Ceuta and its peninsula at a safe five miles’ distance, and fetching-to at night within sight of the frustrated, and hopefully starving Spanish garrison, lit up with extra lanthorns on deck like a garden party. A week of that, and Sapphire would return to port for firewoo
d, water, fresh rations, and shore liberty for both watches. Except for Lewrie’s visits with Maddalena when in harbour, it was the dullest sort of duty, almost as bad as what he imagined peacetime service was like. He even found himself with the urge to re-black the guns and obtain brick-dust to polish brass like the finicky-est martinet of a Captain!
It came as a great relief one morning, just after Sapphire was gotten under way, when a small boat came dashing cross the Strait in her direction. Someone aboard the boat had jury-rigged a short staff ahead of her fores’l upon which she flew a British boat jack.
Lewrie abandoned a fine breakfast to go on deck to await the boat’s arrival, leaving his coat and hat in his cabins in curiosity.
“A request for our services from General Dalrymple, might we imagine, sir?” Lt. Westcott said with a hint of eager hope.
“Be careful what ye wish for, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie japed. “It could be your tailor sending a demand for immediate payment.”
The last time Lieutenant Westcott came back aboard from a jaunt ashore, he’d been sporting a new coat and waist-coat, with a parcel of new shirts and breeches.
The boat crossed Sapphire’s stern and surged up alongside of her starboard side, her bow man hooking onto the main-chain platform with a gaff. There was an Army Lieutenant in the boat, one whom Lewrie recognised; the same young pink-cheeked lad he’d seen attending at Dalrymple’s offices.
“God, the lubber can’t figure out how to scale the side,” Lieutenant Harcourt said with a snicker.
The Army officer had one booted foot on the gunn’l of the boat, but kept staggering, reaching out for the man-ropes, but hopelessly short of seizing them.
“Mister Ward?” Lewrie called to the nearest Midshipman. “Do you go down and gather what correspondence he has, so he won’t fall in and drown himself.”
“Aye, sir!” Ward replied crisply, dashing to the entry-port and down the battens as spryly as a monkey, grinning fit to bust at the chance to further embarass a lubberly Redcoat. He was back in a trice with a wax-sealed letter, which he handed over.
“Thankee, Mister Ward,” Lewrie said, tapping his forehead to acknowledge the Mid’s doffed-hat salute. He went to the bulwarks of the quarterdeck to look down into the boat. “Hoy, there, sir! Might you wish to return to Gibraltar aboard this ship?”
“Ehm, no thank you, sir!” the young officer called back. “I’m comfortable where I am, thank you!” He was re-seated, in the middle of the centre-most thwart, with both his hands gripping the thwart as if for his very life.
“Very well, then,” Lewrie called down to him. “Follow us.”
He broke the seal of the letter and unfolded it.
“Aye, we are requested to return to harbour, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie told him. “The note does not say why, but I am to attend the General at my earliest opportunity. Shape course for the Rock, sir, and crack on sail.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Westcott happily agreed, and as he bawled out his orders to make more sail and alter course, the on-watch hands raised a small cheer that they would soon be back among the taverns and brothels of Gibraltar Town. Getting there would take hours, for the East-set current was dead against the course, making entrance to the Mediterranean easy, but an exit to the Atlantic a long trial. If the winds were light, an all-day’s sail could result in a progess measured in a few miles.
“You have the deck, sir,” Lewrie told Westcott. “There’s my breakfast to finish, and, I s’pose I’ll have t’dress up for the occasion.”
“Might shave close, too, sir,” Westcott said with a grin.
“Pettus! Jessop!” Lewrie shouted as he re-entered his cabins. “Heat an iron for the sash, pin the bloody star on my best coat, and black my bloody boots!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lewrie found the usually quiet Convent headquarters building a bee-hive of activity, with junior officer clerks moving between various offices with more despatch, boot or shoe heels clacking on the old stone flags or tiles. There were Colonels, Lieutenant-Colonels, and regimental Majors present, gathered in small groups, mostly with their own sort, recognisable by the detailing and colours of their uniform coats’ lapel facings and their button-hole lace. Officers turned their heads to peer at him as he approached Dalrymple’s office, muttering among themselves.
“The Navy’s here,” he heard one Colonel bray. “That means we’re going somewhere, haw haw!”
Lewrie announced himself to yet another junior Lieutenant of Foot in the anteroom, and the young fellow made a chequemark on his list. “You are to go right in, sir,” the fellow told him. “You are expected.”
Lewrie entered the offices and left his cocked hat on a side table where there were already several ornately laced and feathered Army officer’s bicornes, and one civilian hat.
“Ah, Sir Alan,” General Dalrymple said in greeting, waving him to come forward. “Do allow me to name to you General Sir Brent Spencer; Sir Brent, this is Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, Captain of HMS Sapphire.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” Lewrie and Spencer said almost as one, and offering their hands briefly.
“Mister Thomas Mountjoy of the Foreign Office, you already know,” Sir Hew went on. “It is his news that prompted this meeting. Do inform us of what you have heard, or learned of, Mister Mountjoy.”
“Gladly, Sir Hew,” Mountjoy said, springing from a chair with alacrity. He was beaming fit to bust. “I have gotten a report from a source in Madrid that, on Dos de Mayo, the second of this month, the people of the city rose up en masse against the French, hunting down and killing every off-duty Frenchman they could find, arming themselves as best they were able, and slaughtering them. Marshal Murat turned out his troops and resorted to using artillery against the mobs. The riots were put down after three hours’ fighting, then the French had a riot of their own, entering every building in sight and dragging suspected rioters out to be shot or bayonetted. It was a great slaughter, ’mongst the guilty and the innocent, and atrocious crimes were committed … looting, theft, rape, and pillage on a grand scale, much like what happens when an army breaks into a walled town that resisted a long siege, in mediaeval times. A day later, one other of my sources relates that the garrison troops and the Spanish Navy at Cartagena arose, as well, and that there is great unrest in Seville. I have so far un-substantiated reports that many cities in the North, in Galicia and Catalonia, are also restive.”
“For real, Mountjoy?” Lewrie had to ask, wondering if the riots were invented to spur Dalrymple into some rash action, on a par with the false reports of atrocities that Mountjoy had spun out of thin air.
“For real, Captain Lewrie,” Mountjoy stressed. “The Spanish heard that their old kings had been arrested after they met Napoleon over the border at Bayonne, and that King Ferdinand was being forced to abdicate in favour of a king of Napoleon’s choice, one of his kin, or one of his favourite Marshals.”
“Upon that head, I have heard from General Castaños,” Sir Hew Dalrymple imparted to them all. “There is a rebellious committee forming at Seville, what the Devil do they call it, Mister Mountjoy?”
“A junta, sir,” Mountjoy supplied.
“Yes, a junta,” Dalrymple continued, “which had been pressing General Castaños to declare for them, and raise a general rebellion in Western Andalusia. Castaños has already written me for British aid should he decide to act. He has raised the idea of evacuating the fortress of Ceuta, and adding those troops, and some of the fortress’s lighter cannon to his artillery train, as well.”
“By Jove, that’d be grand!” General Spencer exclaimed. “What’s stopping him, then?”
“That would be the other largest force of Spanish troops in Cádiz, Sir Brent,” Mountjoy told him, dashing cold water on Spencer’s enthusiasm. “The governor of Cádiz is decidely pro-French, and, with the French warships that escaped into port after Trafalgar to count on to defend him, he could put down any rebellion.”
“They can’t get t
o sea, with Admiral Purvis watchin’ them,” Lewrie supplied, “but they could add their gunfire to defeat any attempt to take Cádiz … or bombard the city if the citizens arose against the governor. Their crews could hold the port’s forts if the troops at Cádiz march on Castaños if he does join the junta.”
“You have no news from that quarter, Mister Mountjoy?” Sir Hew asked.
“A tough nut to crack, sir, sorry to say,” Mountjoy said with a frown, and a shake of his head. “I’ve had no luck at getting an … a source in. Not for long.”
“A spy, you’re saying?” General Spencer barked as if someone had just cursed him. “That your line of work, is it, sir?”
“Someone must gather intelligence for military operations,” Lewrie said, defending him. “Else, you swan off into terra incognita, deaf, dumb, blind, and get your … fundaments kicked.”
“Much of a piece with cavalry videttes making scouts, and gallopers to bring news of enemy movements,” Sir Hew grudgingly allowed. “Regrettably necessary, at times. General Castaños informs me that he is also short of arms to give to volunteers whom he expects to come forward once the junta in Seville declares. I have on hand in the armouries at least one thousand muskets, with bayonets, cartridge pouches, and accoutrements, and I think I may spare about sixty thousand pre-made cartridges for that purpose, and shall write London to ask for more, at once. If the Spanish wish to send ships to Ceuta, we will allow them to do so.”
“And I finally get the fortress, without a long siege, ah hah!” General Spencer cried, clapping his hands in delight. He’d spent long months, cooling his heels, once it was realised that Ceuta had been re-enforced, and could not be taken without a larger army.
“Oh, I fear not, Sir Brent,” Dalrymple said with the faintest of smiles on his face. “In light of these new developments, I think that your brigade-sized force would be of more use nearer to Cádiz. That part of your original force, which was sent on to Sicily earlier, I shall recall to join you after you’ve made a lodgement. To encourage the junta, and General Castaños.”
Kings and Emperors Page 11