Flashman in the Peninsula

by Robert Brightwell

  After such a deafening cannonade and then a battle, the relative quiet – with just the odd groan or whimper from the wounded – seemed almost eerie. Hill had ridden forward to congratulate his men as they climbed back up the slope, while Wellesley kept glancing up and down the line to see if the French were preparing to attack somewhere else, but all was still. Slowly the smoke began to thin in the valley and we could see that there was no movement in the French lines at all.

  ‘Surely they will attack again sir?’ one of the staff officers asked Wellesley.

  ‘They will certainly try something,’ he said. ‘Hello, what is this, a flag of truce?’ I looked, and about a hundred men could be seen coming forward, but they were unarmed and not in any military formation. They met Hill on the slope and he sent them further up where they began to collect the French wounded. More French soldiers could be seen now gathering by the Portina stream where they filled canteens and drank the water. Our soldiers watched enviously, the sun was climbing high in the sky now and the morning was already warm. They had been biting down on cartridges and spitting the balls into the muzzles of their guns as they loaded; the salty gunpowder had made their mouths dry and their own canteens were empty. It was evident that the French had not sent nearly enough men to collect their wounded, so now some British soldiers were allowed to leave the line to help carry the French wounded down the slope to the stream. Once there I noticed they did not rush back up and were busy drinking their fill and trying to talk to the French soldiers around them.

  There was no formal truce, but it was unofficially understood all along the line that hostilities had temporarily been suspended. Men who had previously been trying to kill each other now worked together to bandage wounds and carry those that needed help. There followed one of those curious incidents that are hard to understand by those who were not actually there. The British soldiers still on the hill had watched the French, and their comrades who had helped them, drinking and filling their canteens from the stream while their own throats burned. They must have appealed to their officers to be allowed to get water themselves. One British captain released his men to go down and the French soldiers made room for them. In a moment the whole British line had been released. Soon the former enemies were helping to haul bodies out of the stream and pointing out the clearest flows of the precious water.

  There was a strange camaraderie between the common soldiers of the French and British armies. This was the first time I saw it but it continued throughout the war. Soldiers in both armies were in a strange country with different customs and a local language that they did not understand. They were there reluctantly, through conscription on the French side, and poverty and dubious recruitment practices on ours. They both had a healthy respect for the others’ abilities. I know many of the redcoats rather envied the French their revolution, which they imagined would take them out of poverty. They all knew that unlike the British, the French had banned flogging in their army and that many of the French officers had been promoted through the ranks. Redcoats with nothing to lose thought that the French model was modern and enlightened and only fought against it because they were ordered to do so. The French who had lived through the harsh realities of the revolution were more pragmatic about it, but they were still committed to their cause and their emperor. They in turn envied the British, particularly the supply system which kept the redcoat reasonably fed, while for the most part the French were left to fend for themselves.

  We watched as infantrymen reached across the stream to shake hands. Having slaked their initial thirst and filled canteens, thought seemed to turn to the common language of trade. Packs were being emptied of spare loot, food and drink, and exchanged for items that could not be found in their own army. Some French officers were drifting down to the stream now and I suddenly found Campbell had ridden up alongside me as I had been surveying the scene.

  ‘Let’s go down,’ he suggested, nodding at the détente below us. ‘There will be no more fighting here for a bit.’ I nodded in agreement; anything that kept those bloody cannon quiet was good for me. Having seen the French soldiers from a distance more than once, I also was curious to discover what they were like when they were not trying to kill me. We walked the horses down, dismounted and let our mounts drink their fill at the stream too while we refilled our canteens. Soldiers from both sides had now cleared the bodies from the water but in places it was still decidedly pink with blood. A French voltigeur pointed out to us the fastest flowing part of the stream where the water was clearer. He was in the act of trying to exchange a small gold crucifix for some thick leather boot soles, a bottle of rum and a leatherworking needle.

  ‘It eez from a nun,’ the voltigeur explained, shaping a buxom hour glass figure with his hands and giving the British sergeant he was trading with a knowing wink. He could not have said anything better to peak British interest for there was great fascination about nuns among the British army at that time. While nuns were familiar to the Catholic Irish troops, for the Anglican British they were a strange foreign concept. Most had never seen one, as when soldiers were in town the convents were firmly locked up and guarded. Lascivious rumours had been spreading for weeks amongst the British army that if young women from good Spanish families became too promiscuous they were shut away in convents to protect the family honour.

  Most soldiers believed that if they could only get into one of these places to liberate the girls, the women would be so grateful that they would satisfy every depraved need as a reward. It wasn’t just the common soldier who believed this fantasy either. A few weeks previously a major from the medical corps had launched a ‘rescue’ attempt on a nearby convent, enthusiastically supported by a number of dragoons. As the terrified women ran around screaming inside, the gallant heroes attacked the door with axes and bawled up reassuring endearments that the girls would soon be under their dubious protection. They were in the act of fetching a cannon to blast the door when the provosts finally forestalled the onslaught.

  ‘You have seen the nuns then?’ asked the sergeant, his voice hoarse with desire.

  ‘Of course,’ said the voltigeur, ‘I took zis from ze neck of ze pretty one myself.’

  ‘And it is true then that they are willing?’ asked the sergeant again, thrusting with his hips to make it quite clear what he meant.

  The voltigeur looked puzzled for a moment and then laughed. ‘Zey stop screaming after ze second or third man has raped them.’ The British sergeant looked disappointed. Not, I suspected, at the act of rape for when looting a captured town they showed little restraint, but at the thought that the convents were not full of willing and eager women. I looked across the stream and saw that a French lieutenant, also watering his horse, had been eavesdropping on the same conversation. He turned to me and grinned.

  ‘Are you shocked at the behaviour of the French army, Captain?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I replied, thinking back to the capture and looting of Gawilighur I had witnessed. ‘I have seen our army behave in the same way in India.’

  ‘But perhaps you think men and women of the Christian cloth should be protected yes?’ he asked in well-spoken French. ‘I did before I came here, but it is a barbaric place. With my own eyes I have seen the bodies of four of our dragoons that were beheaded by monks. Tricked to enter a tower one at a time by an altar boy with a large gold cross. Once they stepped through the door….pffft.’ He finished the sentence by gesturing across his throat with the flat of his hand. ‘When we realised what was happening we threw the monks from the top of their own tower.’

  ‘It is a brutal country,’ I agreed.

  The French lieutenant nodded to the south where the Spanish army, who had not so far been attacked, held the Talavera end of the line. ‘Do you trust your Spanish allies?’ he asked. I gave a non-committal shrug, judging it would not be wise to admit I was half Spanish myself. ‘Remember they were our allies before, a few years ago.’ the lieutenant continued. ‘They welcomed our troops into their
country when we entered last year and then when our men were well dispersed and off their guard they attacked.’

  While true the Frenchman’s description left out some key facts. The Spanish people had welcomed the French troops when they thought the French were supporting the replacement of the unpopular Spanish king with his Spanish son and heir. They had revolted when they discovered that the French had imprisoned their king and his heir and replaced them with Napoleon’s brother.

  ‘Do you know what they did to our sick soldiers at the hospital in Manzanares?’ the lieutenant asked. ‘They killed every single one, but not quickly. Some were even boiled in oil so their corpses were all shrivelled up. One had been hauled with a rope up a chimney and a fire lit underneath. When we got there we found bits of bodies everywhere. You might think we are cruel, but you wait until they turn on you.’

  The voltigeur, who had been listening to our conversation, now turned to the British sergeant and gestured down the hill at the Spanish. ‘Zey shoot then zey run away, yes?’ He had clearly heard about the debacle of the previous day.

  ‘They run like frightened jack rabbits,’ agreed the sergeant. ‘No bleedin’ use at all.’ He gestured back over his shoulder at the British baggage camp where the wives and other camp followers awaited the outcome of the battle. ‘Our women make better soldiers than them.’ We all laughed at that and having seen some of the formidable army wives in the camp, I thought he was undoubtedly right.

  The conversation was interrupted by a trumpet call and the sudden drumming of horses’ hooves.

  ‘What is going on up there,’ asked Campbell, pointing to a troop of French dragoons that were riding down the French side of the valley and dispersing to shout out something to the soldiers gathered at the stream.

  ‘It seems we are to attack again, gentlemen,’ announced the French lieutenant as drums on the French side now started to beat the recall. All along the line the blue coated men started slowly to pull back to their side. The lieutenant saluted, ‘You should have at least half an hour before our regiments are ready.’ Having remounted his horse he turned with a grin and added, ‘I wish you good fortune in our coming victory,’ before riding away back up the hill.

  ‘Cheeky bugger,’ Campbell muttered. ‘We have beaten them back once already.’ He slapped me on the back before adding enthusiastically, ‘We’ll do it again and then ride to break them, eh Flashy!’ Men on our side were also starting to walk back to their former positions on the hill. Looking down the stream where moments before there had been hundreds of men, there were now just a few stragglers of both sides taking a last chance to loot the dead before rejoining their comrades.

  Campbell had spurred his horse into a trot, apparently eager to get back into action, but I did not have the stomach to follow suit. I had used what little resolve I had facing that onslaught of artillery and the risk that at any moment the French columns could burst through that seemingly fragile thin line of red coated killers. It takes courage to ride into danger once, but having relaxed by the stream I was damned if I was going to stare at those distant cannon and await their random charge of death a second time.

  Chapter 14

  The French were gathering again on the opposite side of the valley from the British position, and I glanced back across to where the Spanish infantry stood, untested, in their wavering lines. That is the place for me, I thought. My resumption of duties as liaison officer was long overdue and I knew just how to achieve it. I made a point of stopping half way back up the hill in front of Wellesley and studying the Spanish lines through my glass. From where he was I could see that Wellesley did not have a direct view of the entire Spanish line and he was too busy looking to his front to worry about them. Then I rode up alongside him.

  ‘The Spanish seem to be moving men about at their end of the line,’ I lied. ‘They may be planning to advance and attack the flank of the next attack. Is that what you ordered, sir?’ I asked sounding slightly surprised.

  ‘Damn them, no!’ Wellesley glanced towards the Spanish but found, as I knew he would, that his view was blocked by the curve of the hill. ‘If they attack they will just get in our way and then when they retreat they could break up our line. Flashman ride down there, will you, and tell them that under no circumstances are they to attack.’

  It took a superhuman effort but I think I actually managed to look disappointed as I acknowledged the order; I turned my horse to safety down the reverse slope of the hill.

  ‘Never mind Flash, you had enough action last night you know,’ called Campbell consolingly at my crestfallen face. You stupid brave ass, I thought as I rode away. It would be a cold day in hell before they got me back atop this hill with the French still on the other side of the valley. My heart was singing as I rode down the slope. I was away from danger and on a strong horse if I needed to make a fast escape. If the French did attack the Spanish then I could guarantee plenty of confusion to cover my hasty withdrawal. I had not even reached the bottom of the hill before the first French cannon boomed to signal the resumption of the bombardment. Even though there were now thousands of tons of rock between me and the guns, my spine tensed at the memory of the danger, and in sympathy for those poor devils I had just left behind.

  I took my time getting back to the Spanish and could follow the now familiar stages of the battle from the noise alone. The cannon bombardment continued as I walked the horse slowly around the bottom of the hill. Then the British guns commenced firing, which indicated that the large French columns were approaching, and finally the French guns stopped as the French gunners were worried about hitting their own side. When I reached the edge of the hill the rolling volleys began. From that distance they merged into a continuous crackle of musketry. I knew that it would be devastating the blue ranks in front but this time the French must be prepared. I listened for some new tactic that would cause the volleys to falter and signal a change in our fortunes. I craned to look around the hill to see the action but it was taking place on the forward slope, out of my view. Then the British guns did stop, but after a slight pause as bayonets were fixed, the silence was replaced by a now familiar roar and I could picture that red line surging forward to bring more death and destruction to the enemy.

  I slumped slightly in relief as I had feared the French would employ a different tactic rather than one that had failed already. Little did I realise that the critical moment of the battle was just about to happen. I trotted on towards the Spanish, confident of victory. Their lines would give me a better view of what was happening in front of the British. Soon I could see the blue jacketed men streaming back over the Portina stream. But I realised now that the French had kept two huge columns of men back from the attack. One of those untouched columns watched impassively from the far side of the Portina as their beaten comrades rushed back towards them. It was at that moment that the British nearly lost the battle.

  Previously, the British had pursued the enemy as far as the stream, but no further. Now I saw that a large formation of redcoats, the guards division as it turned out, had crossed the water and pursued the enemy up the far slope. In the distance there was the sound of trumpets indicating that our cavalry were charging the northern end of the enemy lines. For an instant I was jubilant: after taking punishment in a defensive position for so long, we were finally going on the offensive. But I had forgotten that we were outnumbered two to one by experienced troops, and in the twinkling of a sabre the balance changed again.

  While I could not see them from my vantage point, the French infantry at the northern end of the battlefield was swiftly assembling in square formation and putting up a robust defence against our cavalry, supported by horsemen of their own. But what I could see were the two huge French columns, each at least two hundred men wide and several ranks deep. One now calmly took aim at the hundreds of British redcoats running up the hill towards them. It was almost the reverse of the situation on our side of the valley earlier in the day; only the French dispatched nearly half of
the men facing them with a single devastating volley. Before the survivors could recover, the first massive column of blue coated men started to advance. They were aiming for the large gap that had been left in our lines by the guards division. If they got through it the battle would be lost. The second column also started moving, aiming for the weak spot where the Spanish and the British lines joined. I realised that the French had planned a new strategy after all; a trap, and we had walked no charged, right into it.

  Trumpets urgently rang out to recall British troops to the lines but the survivors would not be able to fill the gap they had left. The British units south of the guards’ position now started to move north to close the breach the first column was aiming for. What Wellesley could not see from his position was the new gap that this opened up between the British and the Spanish, which the second French column was now marching straight towards.

  The Spanish troops who had been next to the British watched white eyed as their allies left them.

  In a matter of moments it seemed that defeat had been snatched from the jaws of victory. I watched transfixed as imminent disaster unfolded before me and did not notice the other rider come along side until he spoke.

  ‘I have what your Wellesley calls reserves this time,’ said Cuesta with a touch of pride in his voice, as though he had just learned a new trick. I looked around and he sat there, his eyes shining with excitement as he stared at the advancing French, gauging how long they would take to reach the allied lines. Now I noticed a thin column of men running at a steady pace behind the Spanish lines and heading towards the newly created gap. Cuesta saw where I was looking and added, ‘They are some of my best men.’