Kings and Emperors

by Dewey Lambdin

  “We winnin’ it, sor?” another asked.

  “It certainly looks like it,” Lewrie told him. “What’s cooking, and could you spare me a morsel or two?”

  The meat on the spits was not chunks of salt-meat junk; it looked more like rabbit, or chicken. The army had Provosts to prevent looting and foraging, but the civilian carters did not quite fall under their authority, and would have ignored them if they did. Not only did they have rabbit and chicken, but, true to the carter’s word, they had baked fresh bread, not the dark army-issue ammunition loaf, but Irish soda bread, and where they had gotten the eggs and milk to make their dough didn’t bear thinking about.

  Dark meat was most people’s preference, but since beggars can’t be choosers, Lewrie ended up with a pair of scrawny chicken breasts, and two thumb-thick slices of bread liberally spread with butter for the princely sum of six pence. The carters drove a hard bargain, sniggering in glee to rook an Englishman and an officer, but he paid it gladly, and found himself a low stone wall along the rutted road that ran through Vimeiro for his dining table, washing it all down with canteen water, and not above licking his fingers when he was done, dignity be-damned.

  There were rather a lot of flies, though, and Summer swarms of midges or gnats to pester him during his meal. After a long look round, he discovered that there was another field surgery set up in the village, wounded soldiers trickling to it from the last attack by the French on this part of the line; was it his imagination, or did the humming of myriads of flies dominate over the moans and cries of the hurt and dying?

  A troop of cavalry came clattering by at the lope, in some urgency, swinging out to the hills to the South. Somewhere, drummers began to beat the Long Roll, bugles blew, and weary soldiers arose from where they rested, armed themselves, and began to form ranks, as if yet another pair of French columns would make a fresh attempt upon the village. Brigadiers and Colonels and their aides left the two-storey house that served as headquarters, quickly saddled up, and loped off to follow the cavalry troop down the road that led to Torres Vedras and Lisbon.

  He was tired, yes, but Lewrie’s curiosity was piqued, so he mounted his horse and rode South to see what was happening, coming abeam of a clutch of mounted officers busy with their telescopes.

  “Bless my soul, it ain’t an attack,” he heard one Colonel say. “There’s no more than one squadron of cavalry, flying a flag of truce!”

  “Think you’re right, Bob,” a Brigadier agreed. “Damn my eyes, but I believe there’s a General with them. It’s Kellermann, by God, the fellow with the white hair? Oh, a clever old fox is Kellermann. Practically saved their revolution in Ninety-Three, when everyone in Europe marched against the French frontiers. Fought them all off with his levée en masse.”

  “Well, he’s come to pull their chestnuts from the fire today, sir!” the Colonel whooped. “We’ve broken them, bloodied every one of their damned battalions! I wonder if His Nibs will settle for a truce, or demand surrender.”

  “Won’t be up to Wellesley,” the Brigadier grumbled. “That’ll be up to ‘Betty’ Burrard, he’s senior.”

  Good Christ, we’ve won! Lewrie thought with glee; They ain’t invincible! As hapless as the British Army had behaved in Holland, as disastrous as their efforts had been at Buenos Aires where two armies had been forced to surrender to half-trained, poorly-armed Argentine patriots, no one had given this army, or “Sepoy” General Sir Arthur Wellesley, much of a chance against the French, yet…! The odds had been beaten, the French had been beaten, beaten like a drum, and Lewrie was suddenly very glad, and proud, to have seen it happen, and take even a minuscule part in it!

  I could be dined out on this tale for years! he crowed.

  Gallopers were headed along the ridge line to pass the word, and Lewrie identified Lt. Beauchamp coming from the opposite direction, with Wellesley and Burrard just crossing the Maceira to come to the parley.

  With a sense of satisfaction and conclusion, Lewrie turned his horse about and headed back to the bay, crossing the shallow Maceira and threading his way through the baggage train to the open plain between the hills. It was a long two miles, but he let the horse pick its own way down to the sea. He worried whether there would be someone to take charge of the beast, or would he have to leave it to graze with dropped reins. It had been a poor prad, but it had served him well enough, and he gave the horse an encouraging pat on its neck.

  Fortunately, there were soldiers from the Commissariat loading more waggons and carts to bear fresh supplies from the ships up to the army, and one of their officers swore that he’d look after it.

  And there were boats plying ’twixt the supply ships and the shore, and Lewrie managed to flag one down and cadge a ride out to Sapphire, out where he belonged, waded out to clamber aboard and take a seat on the stern-most thwart beside a Midshipman.

  “How goes the battle, sir?” the young lad asked. “No one can tell us anything.”

  “The French are suing for terms,” Lewrie told him, grinning. “We beat the bastards, and broke every one of their battalions.”

  “Huzzah, sir! Hear that, lads?” the Mid called to his oarsmen. “We’ve won the battle!”

  Lewrie closed his eyes and slumped in weariness, still with a pleased smile on his face, quite enjoying the rock, pitch, and thrust of the boat’s motion as it was stroked out into the bay.

  Once aboard, I think I’ll have me a sponge-off, and a good, long nap, he promised himself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Phoebe frigate came into the bay the day after the battle, and a great military show it was to form a grand parade to welcome Lieutenant-General Sir Hew Dalrymple to his new post as Commander-In-Chief of British forces in Portugual. Lewrie watched it from a comfortable sling-chair on Sapphire’s poop deck, sheltered from the heat under a canvas awning that spanned the length and breadth of that deck.

  He thought it odd, even so, that the army had returned to its encampments, with only a few regiments still posted to keep an eye on the French. Those officers he had overheard as they had awaited the arrival of General Kellermann and his truce party had opined that once the French were dis-armed, the army would march on Torres Vedras, nearer to the prize, Lisbon, for there were very good defensive positions to be had there and that they should strike while the iron was hot.

  That was up to General Burrard, Lewrie supposed, and none of a sailor’s business, but he thought it silly to spruce up and march to band music just to make a show for Sir Hew. Frankly, he, and all his crew were growing tired of idling at anchor off the mouth of the Maceira, watching boats working by day and night to ferry off wounded soldiers to ships that would bear them back to England and proper hospitals. Shouldn’t they be going somewhere?

  * * *

  It was a couple of days later before orders turned up to sail, and they came mid-morning during cutlass drill.

  “Boat ahoy!” Midshipman Ward shouted overside at an approaching rowboat, using a brass speaking-trumpet to augment his thin shrill.

  “Despatches for your Captain!” came the reply, and a side-party was hastily assembled. Lewrie broke off his own sword practise with Marine Lieutenant Roe and went to the bulwarks in his shirtsleeves.

  “Oh, Goddamn,” he groaned, “it’s that damned fool, Hughes.”

  “It seems he’s rejoined Sir Hew’s staff, sir,” Lt. Roe said, making a sour face. “Better there than in command of troops, I suppose. At least he won’t stumble about and get himself captured again, on staff.”

  “Well, there are proper soldiers, and then there are clerks, Mister Roe,” Lewrie quipped. “I’m sure he has all his paperwork just tiddly.”

  Lewrie sheathed his hanger and trotted down to the quarterdeck to welcome Hughes aboard, loath as he was to clap “top lights” on him again. He even plastered on a grin.

  “Ah, Captain Hughes! Welcome aboard,” he said in greeting as Hughes completed his climb up the battens to the deck.

  “Good morning, Captain
Lewrie,” Hughes purred back, in kind, “though, there was a sudden vacancy and I was able to purchase a promotion. It’s Major Hughes, now. Substantive, not brevet.”

  “Congratulations, Major Hughes,” Lewrie amended. “Care for a ‘wet’ in my cabins? Cool tea, or cool wine?”

  “Thank you, sir, I’d much appreciate it,” Hughes said with an harumph. “Sir Hew has need of you and your ship to bear despatches to Admiral Cotton, off Lisbon, and another set for General Drummond at Gibraltar.”

  “This way, if you please, Major Hughes,” Lewrie bade, waving an arm towards the coolness of his great-cabins.

  * * *

  Once seated on the starboard-side settee, and with a glass of wine in his hand, Hughes gave him a quizzical look. “I heard tell that you were ashore the day of the battle, sir, potting the odd Frenchman alongside the soldiers, what?”

  “Curiosity, aye, and I was,” Lewrie said agreeably. “Quite the sight to see, Frogs dyin’ in droves, and runnin’ like rabbits.”

  Left unsaid was “You should have been there,” and Hughes was aware of it. He harumphed again and took a deeper sip of his wine.

  “Yayss,” Hughes drawled, “young Wellesley did well, for his first encounter with the French. His victory convinced them to offer terms, with their fellow, Kellermann, speaking for Marshal Junot, of even greater import. We refer to it as the Convention of Cintra, the largest town nearby. Junot is offering to evacuate all of Portugal.”

  “Well, just damn my eyes!” Lewrie exclaimed, wishing he had something stronger than his cool tea to toast that. “But, doesn’t Junot have the bulk of his hundred thousand troops still whole, and grouped round Lisbon? Why should he just give it all up?”

  “Well, he’s surrounded, Captain Lewrie,” Hughes boasted. “He is blockaded by sea, bound in by the Tagus River at Lisbon, and has nowhere to go but to straggle back cross the rough mountains into Spain. Here,” he offered, handing over two thick packets of reports and letters. “There is a letter for you, a summary of the terms of the treaty, so you may answer any of Admiral Cotton’s, or General Drummond’s, questions on the broader points. Yes, it’s best that the French evacuate Lisbon, and their other enclaves, before they run out of provisions and Sir Hew’s troop positions prevent them from foraging the countryside.”

  Lewrie opened his letter and scanned down the terms, quickly scowling in dis-belief.

  “Mine arse on a band-box!” he barked. “Ship ’em home to France, on British ships, with all their arms, flags, and personal possessions? They’ll be on parole, won’t they? Unable to serve against us ’til exchanged for an equal number of British prisoners?”

  “Ah, no,” Major Hughes carefully corrected. “That would require the existence of an hundred thousand or so British soldiers held by the French, already, and we know that ain’t so. Equally, there would be no way to enforce that rule once Junot’s army is back on French soil, so that demand was not made.”

  “Good Christ, Hughes, we’ll just hand Napoleon a whole bloody army back? ‘Sorry ’bout that, just dust ’em off and they’ll be good as new, and better luck the next time’?” Lewrie fumed. “Mine arse on a band-box, has Sir Hew addled his brains? If it was up to me, the whole lot’d be stripped naked and sent back over the Pyrenees with their thumbs up their arseholes, and marchin’ on their heels and elbows!”

  “Colourful,” Hughes said, only mildly amused, more simpering than laughing, reminding Lewrie over again how much he disliked the beef-to-the-heel bastard.

  “Did Burrard, or Wellesley, agree t’this … idiocy?” Lewrie asked.

  “The Convention is an agreement ’twixt Sir Hew and Sir Henry,” Hughes said with a sniff. “Sir Arthur is greatly out-ranked by years of seniority, and has very little say in the matter. Within a few days, General Sir John Moore is expected to arrive here with additional re-enforcements from England, and will assume overall command in the field, supplanting Wellesley, or reducing him to a divisional commander, anyway, should Sir Hew or Sir Henry deem his continued presence useful.”

  “Oh, so he’s good enough t’be the first British General to beat the French since the war began,” Lewrie cynically surmised, “but he’s not the established Army’s favourite, so he has to go? Is that what you’re sayin’?”

  “Well, Captain Lewrie, you surely must know that there is an odour round the entire Wellesley clan that makes them not quite … quite, shall we say?” Major Hughes said with a well-informed simper, idly waving his empty wineglass for a re-fill. “They rankle people the wrong way, and Sir Arthur’s reputation was made in India, after all, his command there sponsored by his brother, who jumped him over men of longer service. And, he is not an easy man to socialise with, being so stand-offish and severe. He may get some of that from his unfortunate choice of wife, haw haw. A very ugly woman to begin with, and one who has turned into the worst sort of religious shrew, with few social graces.

  “Is it any wonder, then, that Sir Arthur pursues quim hotter than most, on the side, hmm?” Major Hughes intimated, leaning closer and winking. “He may be more circumspect in his dalliances than his brother, who has become a laughing-stock in England, but Wellesley is just as mad for a romp.”

  “Good God, Hughes, who ain’t?” Lewrie laughed off. “Don’t tell me you’ve been got at by the ‘Leaping Methodists’ of a sudden!”

  That rankled Hughes, reminding him of his former mistress, Maddalena Covilhā, and the fact that she was Lewrie’s mistress, now.

  “A top-up, sir?” Pettus enquired, poised over Hughes’s shoulder with the wine bottle. Pettus knew all about it, and was a clever fellow. Servants, at sea or in civilian homes, usually knew everything that their masters and mistresses were doing. Pettus looked at Lewrie with a smirk on his face, unseen by Hughes, finding the subject of Maddalena, and Hughes’s sudden huffiness, amusing.

  “No,” Major Hughes decided of a sudden, setting aside his wineglass and shooting to his feet. “Think I’ll return ashore. You have the despatches, and your sailing orders, sir, and I’ll not detain you.”

  “Oh, must you go so soon, Major?” Lewrie asked most blandly, getting up as well to see him out. “Aye, I think I’ll sail as soon as I can get the anchors up, gladly. Sitting here too long’s turned my crew dull and eager to depart for more excitin’ things. I’ll see you to the entry-port, sir.”

  They went out to the quarterdeck, where Midshipman Leverett summoned the side-party back to duty for the departure honours.

  Lewrie couldn’t help it; as he shook hands with Hughes, he just had to say “Who knows, Major Hughes, I may be able to sail into Lisbon and be ‘in sight’ when the French and Russian warships there are made prize, if there’s time for it, and, it’ll be grand to get back to Gibraltar, at long last. Should I give your regards to your regimental mess?”

  Hughes went slit-eyed and red in the face as he doffed his hat in parting salute, then descended the battens to his waiting boat, making Lewrie grin widely and chuckle silently.

  “Pardon for asking, sir,” Geoffrey Westcott idly asked as he sauntered over, “but, did that fellow bring us sailing orders?”

  “He did, Geoffrey,” Lewrie was happy to tell him. “We’ll get under way right after the hands have had their mid-day meal. We done with cutlass drill?”

  “Aye, sir, and all weapons returned to the arms chests. Here are the keys,” Westcott told him, handing over the keys. “Any chance we might return to Gibraltar? The hands are eager for liberty.”

  “Count on it,” Lewrie assured him, “though we won’t be bearing grand news to General Drummond. Dalrymple and Burrard have cobbled up a disastrous agreement with the French. Junot will evacuate all of Portugal, and leave it to us. It’s sort of a surrender, yet it’s not,” he went on, drawing Westcott to the chart space on the larboard side of the quarterdeck for a bit of privacy, and laying out the terms that he’d been told, giving him a thumbnail sketch.

  “Are they serious?” Westcott gawped, almost beside himself in utter aston
ishment. “Napoleon will have that whole army re-equipped and right back into Spain in three months, maybe send them right back into Portugal to undo everything! Promise me we won’t be escorting them to France, or have anything to do with this madness.”

  “First off, we’re to meet up with Cotton’s blockading fleet off Lisbon, then go on to Gibraltar,” Lewrie assured him, “as far as we can get from it, with no blame attached for bein’ the messenger.”

  “Good!” Westcott determined, much relieved. “When news of this gets to London, anyone involved with this so-called … Convention, is it, will be ruined, maybe stood up against a wall and shot, like old Admiral Byng was. I was wondering why the army wasn’t marching on Lisbon straightaway.”

  “Hughes told me that Marshal Junot was pretty-much trapped with no way out, and runnin’ low on supplies. Dalrymple and Burrard could march South and close the ring round him, but that’d mean a few more battles, and even with Sir John Moore and his re-enforcements coming in a few days, the old fools … how did they put it in the terms of the treaty? ‘To avoid the useless effusion of blood’? They probably thought that Wellesley’s victories were flukes, up against Marshal Junot’s less-competent fools, and it’s mortal-certain that those two wouldn’t risk their own reputations now they’re in command, and got beaten. Wait for Moore, the darling of the Army and Horse Guards, and let him take the blame.”

  “‘Betty’ and ‘the Dowager,’” Westcott sneered. “My Lord! Give it a month or two, and they’ll be up before a court-martial board, mark my words, sir. Anyone associated with it will be tainted for the rest of their lives.”

  “They will, won’t they?” Lewrie said, suddenly breaking out a crafty smile. “Ye know, Geoffrey, our old friend Major Hughes looked like a preenin’ peacock just now, like he’d hitched his waggon to a go-er, back on Dalrymple’s staff.”

  “Thought he’d reverted to a substantive Captain?” Westcott asked, puzzled.

  “Bought himself a jump in rank,” Lewrie shrugged off. “Well, he may have promoted himself, but it may be a hollow Majority if no one’ll have him after word gets out. I think I may have t’go aft and have me a good laugh over his predicament, in private, hee hee!”