Flashman in the Peninsula

by Robert Brightwell

  Mayne thought that Victor might now try to attack Lisbon by going further south and passing through the area Cuesta was guarding. Having just escaped Victor’s forces once I had no wish to meet them again. I thought that the French would sweep through Cuesta’s diminished army like a pack of foxes in a henhouse and we had yet to hear of Wellesley’s victory at Oporto. When Mayne asked for someone to take news of our victory to Wilson I jumped at the chance. Not only was I keen to meet my old friend again, but to find him I had to travel west, away from the French. Doubtless because he was keen to get rid of me, Mayne agreed.

  This time with a small escort of dragoons I followed the better travelled route along the river. The journey was without incident and we arrived at a town called Tomas on the fifth of June. There we found Wilson and learned of Wellesley’s victory at Oporto. When I revealed how Victor and his army had been turned back by the Legion, Wilson was jubilant. News of Oporto was already being circulated around the Portuguese army, and a message about Alcantara was sent to Wellesley so that this could be circulated among the British. Privately Wilson admitted to me that he was sure Wellesley would do no such thing.

  It was good to see Wilson again and he told me how victory in the north had been achieved.

  ‘Wellesley managed to find some wine barges and cross the river to a convent on the opposite shore,’ he explained. ‘They were able to fortify the convent to hold the French off until they had enough men across to attack the town. The French were taken by surprise and Wellesley sat down to a dinner that had been cooked for Marshal Soult.’ He gave a shout of laughter and slapped his knee. ‘Two famous victories against the French on the same day eh? Napoleon will be furious when he finds out. Mind you,’ he added with a grin, ‘Wellesley had over twenty thousand men to defeat his marshal. We sent our marshal back with just the few hundred in my regiment.’

  A broken bridge was rather a significant factor in our victory, I thought, but I did not say anything as Wilson was in high spirits and there was no need to dampen them. Wilson was the complete antithesis of the man he viewed as his rival British commanding general. While Wellesley was haughty and reserved, planning carefully and moving cautiously, Wilson was engaging and impulsive. He was convinced that a small force, led with daring and reacting quickly to circumstance, could do just as much damage to an enemy as a much larger army. ‘A rapier will kill you just as dead as a cannon,’ he quoted. ‘That is why I must always have freedom to act as I think fit.’ He was determined that his regiment would not be absorbed as just another unit in the British army… and particularly not under Wellesley’s command.

  Within a few days word came through that Victor was also pulling back into Spain. He must have realised that he was probably the next French marshal that Wellesley planned to confront. This of course meant that I could now return to my original orders and visit Cuesta and take information on Cuesta’s army back to Wellesley. Despite his dislike for Wellesley or perhaps because of his liking for me, Wilson caught up with me again before I left. ‘Be careful of the old fox,’ he warned of Cuesta. ‘The Spanish Central Junta government does not trust him and he views them as impertinent opportunists. There are various feuds between the Spanish generals and they all hate Cuesta. I would not trust any of them to come to his aid if he was in a tight spot. But on the positive side he has an implacable hatred of the French,’ Wilson grinned at me before adding, ‘which probably only slightly exceeds his dislike of the British.’

  With that endorsement ringing in my ears I set off. The original message I carried from Wellesley had been destroyed by my fall into the river but it was out of date now anyway. I carried despatches from Wilson and Beresford, the commander of the Portuguese army, to prove who I was and had six British dragoons as escort including troopers Chapman and Doherty. A week later and we found ourselves riding into Cuesta’s camp and understanding for the first time the plight of the Spanish army.

  The camp was in one of the main passes between Spain and Portugal, an area that in recent years the French and Spanish had fought over frequently. As a result many of the local farmers, fed up with their women getting raped and their crops stolen, had moved on so that most of the farms were abandoned. The few peasants that could be seen still trying to scratch a living from the earth looked dirt poor and certainly not able to support the thousands of men now bivouacked nearby. We crested a hill late one afternoon and got our first glimpse of the Spanish army camp. It was June and the weather was already hot. Before us was a large olive grove and under virtually every tree half a dozen raggedly dressed soldiers could be seen lying in the shade. On the air was the stench of uncovered latrine ditches.

  There were no orderly lines of tents or clearly marked regimental areas, in fact there were few tents at all, just the odd scrap of canvas strung up between trees to provide more shade. No sentries were in sight and we were not challenged. The men near us glanced up but showed no interest as we rode past. As we got closer to the centre of the camp, a file of cadaverously thin men could be seen marching along guarding a supply wagon. Their uniforms, such as the scraps of clothing that they still wore could be called that, were torn with some barely decent.

  ‘Jaysus,’ I heard Doherty mutter behind me as they marched past. ‘Would ye be lookin’ at them. Why their clothes would shame a Connemara tinker.’

  My eyes were drawn to a riot of colour under an awning by a huge carriage in the centre of the camp. There, around twenty officers in uniforms of every colour and hue, except French blue, lounged on chairs and benches around a large table. They watched us approach and as we got close one tall thin officer in a green coat languidly got to his feet and walked towards us. On his head he had placed a tall bicorn hat adorned with an ostrich feather plume along the rim. It was by far the grandest thing about him. His green coat was patched on both elbows, the hem seemed to have been burnt at some point, while one leg of his breeches had been torn at the knee.

  ‘Look at his sword,’ Chapman muttered to the others. ‘The scabbard is covered with rust.’ Then expressing what was undoubtedly an expert opinion he added, ‘You would not bother to steal that even if you found it on the road.’ I grinned. Chapman was right, a man who could not bother to keep rust off the scabbard would probably not keep the blade free of rust, or sharp either. For this officer his sword was just another item of his tatty uniform rather than a weapon. He saw us inspecting him and me grinning and gave a look of haughty disdain.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked, in heavily accented English.

  ‘I come from General Wellesley,’ I replied in my fluent Spanish. ‘He sends his greetings to General Cuesta. I also have despatches from General Beresford and General Wilson.’ He held out his hand and I passed over the despatches.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said curtly, and then marched back to the men near the carriage, leaving us sitting in the hot sun.

  I decided that I was not going to be treated like some itinerant peddler by a bunch of dagos dressed up like a beggar’s circus. ‘Water and look after the horses,’ I said to Chapman after I had dismounted and passed him the reins of my mount. Then I walked over to the men by the carriage. I was a British officer, damn it, and they needed our help to beat the French. Whether their help was of any use to us was another matter. I looked the men sitting under the awning in the eye, daring one of them to challenge me, but they just glared resentfully back. I reached the table set amongst them and picked up an earthenware jug. Pouring what turned out to be wine into one of the silver beakers on the table, I slaked my thirst and I looked about. Ostrich hat was at the door of the carriage talking to someone inside. I could not hear what they were talking about but after a while ostrich hat turned towards me. Looking mildly annoyed that I was already at the table, he gestured me over to the carriage.

  The interior of the coach was dark and gloomy with blinds over the windows to keep out the hot sun. As I reached a door I could see a bed along the far side, strewn with maps and other papers. To my left, in the
shadow, a pair of eyes glinted at me; they belonged to an old man who had one leg propped up on the bed. Opposite was another seat facing the general. I guessed that they expected me to stand outside as ostrich hat had done, but to hell with that, I thought. I had spent a week getting here and the old buzzard was not going to simply dismiss me through a carriage door. Stepping up into the carriage I heard a grunt of surprise from the general who put out a hand out to try and stop me, but I pretended not to have seen it. I dropped into the vacant seat, causing the carriage to bounce on its springs. Cuesta winced as the movement disturbed his leg, which I now noticed was bandaged. Then he glared at me.

  ‘Officers speak to me though the door,’ he barked. ‘Even British captains.’

  I decided that now was the time to play my aristocratic card. ‘My compliments sir, I am also the grandson of the Marquis of Morella,’ I told him. ‘Through his daughter,’ I added.

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Cuesta coldly, ‘his daughter is only twelve. I suspect that you mean the old marquis who died a few years ago. I take it then that you are not close to the family?’

  ‘I have not had that honour,’ I admitted. In truth I had not met any of them. They had ostracised my mother after she married an Englishman but the association had already saved my life once, when I had been captured by the Spanish back in ’01.

  ‘Then perhaps you also do not know that your cousin is the Marquesa de Astorga?’ He looked at me with a slight smirk before adding, ‘Her husband the marquis is the head of the Junta of Granada and one of the leading politicians of the Central Junta.’

  ‘I am indebted to you sir, I did not know that,’ I conceded, still puzzled why he thought that my newly discovered link with the Astorga nobility was amusing. I knew that a marquis was just one rank below a duke and Granada was a province that had largely escaped French occupation. So in theory my cousin should be married to a wealthy and powerful man. I was sure there was something that he was not telling me so I asked, ‘Is the marquis a popular leader?’

  Cuesta gave a snort of disgust. ‘All of the juntas squawk and flap like a flock of hens to be popular with the mob. They confuse popularity with leadership.’ There was that smirk again as he added, ‘Your cousin’s husband is not too big for his boots like some, but he is no leader.’ Then he looked me in the eye and asked ‘Is your General Wellesley a leader?’

  ‘He is yes,’ I confirmed. ‘I fought with him in India and I have seen him take on an army five times the size of his force and beat it.’

  Cuesta gave a snort of derision. ‘I have heard he can lead native sepoy troops against Indian princes. But here he is not fighting elephants; he is fighting the French with their cannon and veteran infantry and cavalry.’

  ‘Sir, he has just beaten Marshal Soult’s army of veterans,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Yes, but that is just one marshal and most of the veterans got away. There are several marshals in Spain at the moment. What will he do, Captain, when those marshals start to gather their armies together?’

  I thought that whatever happened the British were likely to put up more of a fight than his Spanish army and glanced out at them through the doorway of the carriage. It was an unconscious gesture but Cuesta noticed.

  ‘I know what you are thinking,’ he said. ‘You think that your army is better than mine because it is better dressed and better equipped.’

  ‘No sir, no, not at all,’ I lied diplomatically.

  ‘Your army came to Spain before,’ Cuesta’s voice was rising now as he started to get into a passion. ‘They promised to stand alongside the free armies of Spain. We fed your army and prepared to meet the veterans the Corsican tyrant sent against us, and what did the British do?’ He was shouting now, ‘they ran away and left us. This army did not run away. There were no ships to take us away to full bellies and warm beds. This army fought on, through the winter, facing the marshals of France and their armies alone. When there was no food they fought, when there was snow and ice they fought, when rivers were in flood they fought. And now in the spring you came back from your warm beds and look down on my army because it does not look as smart as yours. Show me your army next spring, if it is still here fighting alongside us, and then you can judge my men.’

  There was a long silence in the carriage after that tirade because there was little I could say. The presence of the British had helped persuade Napoleon to reinforce the raw recruits he had initially sent to Spain. As soon as Bonaparte led his veteran troops into the fray the British army had been in retreat until it was evacuated at Corunna. I could have told Cuesta that even counting Corunna, of the battles we had fought with the French we had won two out of three, whereas the Spanish had suffered a long series of disastrous defeats; but that probably would not have helped the mood in that confined carriage. I was on the point of making my excuses to leave when he asked another question.

  ‘Why did Wellesley send you? I have already had another message from him telling me of his plan to join me to attack Victor.’

  I guessed that Wellesley must have got impatient when I did not return to him quickly and had sent another messenger. ‘He sent me when we landed but suggested that I look for you at Alcantara.’ I added with a touch of pride, ‘I was there with the Lusitanian Legion when it turned back Victor’s attack.’

  ‘They destroyed the Alcantara Bridge,’ he said with an accusing tone. ‘Spain needs that bridge.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ I conceded, irritated that he was missing the bigger picture. ‘But we did turn back an attack from a French marshal, who could have swept into Portugal and attacked Wellesley’s flank or even captured Lisbon.’

  ‘I don’t care about Portugal or Lisbon, I care about Spain and Spain needed that bridge.’

  ‘Then perhaps you should have sent more than fifty cavalrymen to help defend it,’ I protested hotly.

  ‘Damn your impertinence,’ he snapped back. ‘You might be the grandson of a Spanish marquis but you know nothing about Spain or about this war.’ He took a breath to calm himself and then continued. ‘Only I know how to beat the French, not those chattering fools in the juntas or the self-appointed popinjays that now command the other Spanish armies. I beat the French twice in ’95 fighting in the Pyrenees and I will do it again.’ It was true, I learned later, he had beaten two French armies then, but they were poorly led revolutionary conscripts. Since then Napoleon had taken over in France with new tactics and strategies. Things were very different now, but clearly Cuesta did not realise that. I held up my hands in surrender, remembering I was supposed to be Wellesley’s liaison man with this proud fool.

  ‘You must understand sir that the British want to help Spain and Portugal.’

  ‘Yes. No doubt so you have some ports that you can conveniently flee from when things get tough again.’ He gave a dismissive gesture to the carriage door as he added, ‘Tell your sepoy general that I would welcome his support when I next attack Marshal Victor.’ I took my leave and wandered back to the dragoons. Having heard about the battle of Medallin I had not expected Cuesta to be a good general but I was not prepared for such deluded arrogance. I had seen Victor’s army, they were well equipped and well trained. In contrast Cuesta’s army looked like a bunch of lethargic, half-starved scarecrows.

  ‘Is all well sir?’ asked Chapman.

  I looked around to check we were out of earshot of the other Spanish officers and gestured at the surrounding troops. ‘He seriously thinks that this rabble can beat Victor and seems to put his previous defeats down to bad luck. He is no friend of ours either,’ I added. ‘He is very resentful that we evacuated the army last year.’

  ‘Well, we did cut out and run,’ Doherty reasoned. ‘But we should never have got ourselves trapped in the north of the country at all. Wicked cruel place that was in winter.’

  ‘Yes, but...’ I started to reply, exasperated that they were not seeing my point of view, but was distracted when I saw that their breeches were all patched and worn. They were like a spare pair yo
u might keep in a saddlebag; and then I noticed a new gold ring on Chapman’s finger. Swinging round to the staff officers under the awning I now saw that two of them were looking a lot less ragged in the breeches department than they had been before.

  ‘We did a trade,’ explained Chapman simply. ‘I could get a dozen pairs of breeches from the quartermaster with this ring when we get back.’ He paused as though he had surprised himself with a thought and then added, ‘Will we be coming back this way sir?’

  We needed to get back to Wellesley, but on the way out of the valley I stopped a couple of times and spoke to the men dozing under the olive trees. Many had strong regional accents which made them hard to understand, but I divined that most of them were conscripts who had been forced to join the army by their towns or villages to make up a quota. They stayed with the army not out of patriotic duty but because they were peasants with no land who would be arrested if they returned home. Being in the army was marginally safer than roaming the countryside in bandit gangs that were hunted by both the Spanish and the French. When I asked about drilling and training they just shrugged. Many had sold most of their cartridges to local farmers to buy food and so with little powder left they rarely used their muskets.

  I won’t bore you with a detailed account of what happened over the next two months; suffice to say that Trooper Chapman’s travelling trouser emporium flourished, as we did two more journeys with messages from Wellesley to Cuesta. The British army having beaten Soult was now heading south, but painfully slowly as Wellesley would not move until he was sure that he had supplies to feed his men. As June progressed into July the weather got warm and then hot and the road between the British and Spanish armies became well travelled.