Instead of rashly charging west to beat the British, Massena was systematically destroying all major opposition in Spain first so that he would not be interrupted when he did move on the redcoats. Only Cadiz and a handful of fortresses such as Badajoz were left in Spanish hands, but they were in no state to go on the offensive. Eventually he turned his attention to the northern routes into Portugal which were guarded by the fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo held by the Spanish and Almeida in Portugal garrisoned by the British. The French finally laid siege to Ciudad Rodrigo early in the summer and immediately there was a cry from Spain for us to march to its relief. This was supported by much of the army who were fed up with doing nothing while its allies’ forces were picked off one by one. It did no good, Wellington refused to move and the Spanish commander of Ciudad Rodrigo was forced to surrender.
Croaking against Wellington now rose to new heights. Like an African swamp in springtime, nearly everyone was at it, claiming that our gallant commander did not know what he was doing. Of course while most people agreed that Wellington’s inaction was wrong, there was no consensus on what he should be doing instead. All sorts of lunatic schemes were discussed, with hotheads pressing for an immediate attack, while some wanted to join the Spanish at Badajoz and others wanted to retreat to the coast. While Maria kept assuring me that Wellington had a plan and all would be well, it was hard to put complete faith into such vacuous promises.
The situation only became worse when the French besieged the British garrisoned at Almeida. The fortress was expected to hold out for at least a month but a day after the cannonade started a French shell ignited a trail of gunpowder that led straight to the magazine. When the news of the resulting disaster came through, many people claimed that they had heard or felt the explosion in our winter quarters. The castle, the cathedral and the whole centre of Almeida was completely destroyed. Hundreds of the garrison were killed and the few survivors had little choice but to surrender.
We were now getting reliable reports of French numbers, they were less than expected but still a formidable force: around sixty-five thousand veteran soldiers were with Massena. Now that Almeida had fallen they were only thirty miles away. Against this the British still had just twenty-five thousand men, most of which had stood at Talavera. The officers who pushed for us to fight pointed out that there were a similar number of Portuguese troops now available which General Beresford had been busy training up over the winter. Robert Wilson had long since sailed home after endless snubs from Wellington but his Legion had been absorbed into this new Portuguese army. While they had been impressive, I also remembered the Portuguese militia at Alcantara who had run away. Wellington ignored suggestions to stand and after some prevarication, ordered a retreat fifteen miles south west to Gouveia. For the first time he seemed hesitant and uncertain. When a man with such immense self-confidence looks worried it is time for lesser men to look for a fast horse and a way out.
By chance just such a way out presented itself. Maria had over the last few months received several messages from her husband. Initially he had been in Cadiz but later he escaped back to his lands in Granada. Since then he had been working with partisans and other groups to plan a route of safety for his wife back to Granada. On the day that we heard of the destruction of Almeida, a pair of swarthy men arrived in the camp looking for Maria. They were her guides to take on her on the first part of the journey, fifty miles south east to Fuentes de Onoro, where she would meet a bigger troop of men to take her over the mountains.
As a British officer I had a duty to the army but as a gentleman I had a duty to protect ladies, especially of my own family. Most important of all, as a man determined to protect my own skin at all costs, I had a duty to get out of harm’s way as soon as possible. With my unearned reputation, no one would suspect the gallant Flashy of running out on the army just as it seemed an engagement with the French was likely.
It was fortunate that the guides that the marquis had sent looked a proper pair of cut throats. You would think twice before entrusting an impoverished grandmother to them, never mind a pretty aristocratic woman and her maid carrying jewels and other valuables. When Maria came to take her leave of Wellington I made sure that the villains were on hand and I saw him give them a disdainful glare. While I had my story ready, I did not even have to use it as Wellington had the same idea.
‘Do you know those guides your cousin is using?’ he asked me quietly once Maria had left the room.
‘No sir, and I don’t like the look of them above half. I was thinking…’ I replied, before he interrupted me.
‘Flashman, I think it would be best if you went with them, at least to Fuentes de Onoro. Make sure she is put in safe hands or bring her back. I am very fond of your cousin and I cannot think of a better bodyguard for her. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of time for you to get back before we are likely to see action.’ One of his aides stiffened at that for it was the first time I think he had referred to any imminent battle, but I was too busy stopping my face breaking out into a relieved grin.
‘You can count on me, sir,’ I told him. ‘I will do my best to ensure that she does not come to harm.’ I meant it too; even if I had to travel all the way to Granada, or at least close enough to Granada to get a boat and slip to the British bastion of Gibraltar for safety. For if Wellington was planning a fight then odds of nearly three to one, excluding the unproven Portuguese, did not sound appealing. If by some miracle the British won, then I could slip back down from the hills loudly cursing my luck at missing the fight. On the other hand if, as seemed likely, they were chased into the sea, I would be safely out of it and on my way to safety.
I was feeling well pleased with myself as we slipped away late that afternoon. Never have I escaped action so easily. One of the guides, called Rodriguez, led the way then Maria and I followed. Consuella and the other guide brought up the rear. The guides each led a baggage mule for the small amount of luggage that the ladies were able to bring with them over the mountains. The two guides, despite their appearance, seemed capable men. They treated Maria respectfully as their mistress, although they looked wary of me. You can never be too careful and I made sure that I had a loaded pistol in each coat pocket just in case of trouble. Boney bounded alongside our group, glad to get away from Celorico at last.
‘It was generous of Arthur to let you come with us,’ said Maria as we rode along the path.
‘Well, he wanted to make sure you got through safely. I am to report to him as soon as I am back from Fuentes de Onoro,’ I told her. ‘But if things do not look safe there I am to bring you back or possibly go further with you as escort until I am sure you are safe.’
‘That is very thoughtful of him with a battle coming. He must need you for that as well.’
‘Oh, we both want to beat the French but the safety of you two ladies,’ and here I looked round and winked at Consuella, ‘means a lot to both of us.’
‘Still,’ persisted Maria, ‘Fuentes de Onoro is only two days ride, with luck you will be there and back long before the French attack.’
‘I am sure I will,’ I agreed, while deciding that whatever we found at Fuentes de Onoro, I would deem it insufficient protection and insist on going further. I turned to the guide, ‘Where in Fuentes are we meeting the rest of the escort?’
‘We are not meeting them in Fuentes,’ the guide replied curtly.
‘Really?’ asked Maria, puzzled. ‘I thought you said that was where we would find the rest of the party.’
‘We meet them in the hills behind Fuentes, at an old stone windmill.’ I felt the first prickle of alarm at this change in the story and then the guide gave me something I could really worry about. ‘By now,’ he added, ‘the French are probably in the town of Fuentes, so we will have to keep to the hills.’
‘They are in Fuentes already?’ I asked in surprise. ‘I thought they would march from Almeida,’
The guide looked at me curiously. ‘They are everywhere east of here,’ he st
ated simply.
I was started realise that my escape might not be as straightforward as I thought. While the French had three hundred thousand men across Spain, I had imagined that there would just be pockets of French to be avoided and the bulk of the populace and the territory would be friendly to Spanish partisans. Now I began to realise that in this area at least, with Massena’s army on the move, the reverse might be true. I trotted my horse up a slight incline to get a better view across the hills. We could see for miles, but equally, soldiers miles away would be able to see us.
Rodriguez, seeing me scanning the horizon, grinned at me for the first time. ‘Do not worry señor, the French are not nearby.’ He rode up alongside so that Maria could not hear the rest. ‘When they enter a village they are looking for food, valuables, women, anything they want. They usually burn a house or two to get any villagers to hand over these things. You can see their progress from the smoke.’ He was right as we saw the next day, when several plumes of smoke marked the north eastern horizon. By then we had also seen several groups of refugees, hurrying south to escape the French, with small bundles of food and any possessions that they could easily carry. They would often stop to speak to our guides, telling them where they had seen the French forces.
Towards the end of the second day as we were riding higher in the hills, Rodriguez turned to me and asked if I wanted to see Fuentes de Onoro. I rode up with him to the top of a nearby hill, then dismounting, we crept cautiously to the rocky crest. There below us about a mile away was a sizeable town. I took out my glass and studied it. I had never been to Fuentes so did not recognise the buildings, but I did see familiar French troops. There were hundreds of them: an infantry column was marching around the town to avoid clogging up its streets which were already congested with artillery trains and other wagons that needed the smoother roads. Cavalry companies could also be seen patrolling the road in both directions.
‘Señor, may I borrow your glass?’ the guide asked as I finished studying the scene.
‘Of course,’ I passed it over. ‘Those cavalry patrols, will they come up here?’
‘Not unless there is something up here that they want. Small groups will not stray far from the main army unless they have to.’ He studied the town for a minute, carefully looking in all directions, and then passed the telescope back. ‘Did you see the square to the right of the large church?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I took up the glass again to find it. It took a moment before the scene swum into view. It was a tree lined square but wooden beams had been found and pushed into the branches of the trees to join the gaps between them. Hanging from these beams were some two dozen bodies; the whole square had been turned into a giant gallows. ‘Good God,’ I breathed. ‘Are those partisans?’
‘One or two might be,’ replied the guide. ‘But the French probably wanted to make an example and dissuade anyone from causing trouble. They could be the mayor, someone who did not want his wife raped, or people who just happened to be in the wrong place when they were looking to make a point.’
‘You mean that they are killing people for no reason at all?’
The guide gave me a pitying look. ‘You British in your comfortable camp have no idea what it has been like in a Spain occupied by the French. This is nothing. I have seen them kill everybody in a village that they suspected was helping the partisans, men, women and children.’
‘I have heard stories, but I was not sure if they had been exaggerated. But you have seen it, you say.’
‘They do it to cow the populace into submission. But for every person they kill they create more hatred and more partisans. They know that if we find a French sentry on his own we will cut his throat. If we can tempt a small group away from the rest we will ambush them. And the people help us,’ he added. ‘Children have poisoned their wine, old men and women have stabbed them. Just last week we used a group of pretty girls washing by a stream to tempt a patrol of lancers into a valley. We killed all but two, who we tortured to get information.’
He spoke proudly of their achievements, but for the first time I truly began to understand the brutality of the situation in Spain. While French atrocities might encourage support for the partisans, you could easily understand how partisan activities drove more savagery in the French. If your soldiers were being murdered by men, women and even children you would quickly view all civilians as the enemy. I thought back to that conversation on the boat on our way to Portugal and Wellington insisting that we had to behave better than the French to keep the populace on our side. Now the importance of this was clear. ‘Do you know a partisan called Agustina de Aragon,’ I asked suddenly, remembering that she had ridden off to fight amongst all this savagery.
‘The Maid of Zaragoza? Of course I have heard of her, but I did not know she was a partisan. She is not amongst the partisans around here but there are many different bands. Perhaps she is fighting near Zaragoza.’ He started to get up but then he paused and smiled as though he had just thought of something. ‘Are you the Englishman that… knew her in Seville?’ he asked grinning salaciously. There was no doubt what rumour he had just remembered.
‘I did meet her there, yes.’ I admitted stiffly, getting up and returning to my horse.
‘If you are that Englishman then you are also the one that charged with General Cuesta, yes?’ persisted the Spaniard.
‘Yes I was,’ I conceded, glad that something other than my carnal activities in Seville had been included in the gossip. ‘I also fought at Alcantara when we stopped Victor coming over the bridge. In fact I am now a knight of Alcantara as a result.’ If you have a title, I thought, you might as well use it. The guide seemed impressed. For the rest of that afternoon we rode together as he told me partisan stories and I told him a suitably edited version of my adventures in Alcantara. By early evening we were riding through a wood in the hills behind Fuentes de Onoro when Rodriguez brought us to a halt again. We were coming to the end of the wood and the guide said that we were close to the windmill.
‘We must be quiet now,’ the guide told us, ‘while we check that the French have not found our men.’ He asked me to tie up Boney to a nearby tree so that he did not bound out and give away our position. Then his comrade was sent around the edge of the forest to approach the windmill from a different direction. While he was working his way around, the guide and I made our way up to the edge of the trees where we got our first glimpse of the windmill on the hill opposite, a quarter of a mile away. The ladies had stayed with Boney to make sure he did not bark.
‘My friend will approach the windmill from the far corner of the forest,’ Rodriguez explained. ‘If he pretends to find us by walking back to that corner it is a signal that there is an ambush and we must get away. We might gain a few extra minutes if the French search the wrong area when they realise we are not coming.’
‘You have clearly done this before,’ I said, while studying the windmill through my glass. I could see no sign of life at all.
‘A partisan who is not cunning and careful is soon dead, señor.’
I passed the glass to the guide who studied the windmill and the surrounding area and gave a small grunt of satisfaction as we settled down to wait. A few minutes later his comrade appeared and slowly walked to the windmill. He stopped a few yards from it and seemed to be talking to someone and then he went inside.
‘The man must search the building now to check that whoever is there is not being held at gunpoint,’ Rodriguez said. ‘If any of the French spies in your camp have told them that a British officer and a Spanish marquesa are riding this way, then you would be attractive prisoners so we must be very careful.’
‘You be as careful as you want old sport,’ I agreed, relieved that someone was being as careful of my precious skin as I was. We watched anxiously for nearly five minutes and then finally the other guide reappeared. After a moment’s hesitation he started walking directly towards us, the signal that the rendezvous was safe. The ladies came up at our shout and
Maria threw her arms around me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
‘Thank you, dear cousin,’ she said, ‘for your escort this far, but you had better get back. We have left Boney tied up in the trees. Make sure you write to tell me of your adventures and tell me how I can reach you.’
‘Yes, of course, but I should see who is taking you on the next stage of the journey as well. Wellington was very clear that if you seemed to be in any danger I was to continue to escort you further, and the French are still just a few miles away you know…’ I would have continued but Consuella now threw her arms around me, kissing me on the mouth, thus stopping any further words in a delightful way. Her embrace was a convincing argument that I should find fault with the new escort at all costs. ‘I must speak to the escort commander,’ I gasped when my lips were free.
As it turned out that was not difficult to arrange for he wanted to see me too. The partisan coming back from the windmill started to shout that the ladies should mount up and ride up the valley quickly as they wanted to be well away by dark. Then he turned to me and asked me to go quickly to windmill where the commander had messages that he wanted to pass on to the British. Well, that suited me, so I strode up the hill in the pleasant evening sunshine. I still had not seen any of this new escort so there could not be many of them. I would just tell this new commander that my orders were to continue to escort the marquesa until she was well away from French forces. I was rehearsing to myself what I would say as I walked through the little door of the mill. From the bright sunshine outside my eyes struggled to adjust to the gloom of the interior; not that they got the chance, for a moment after I stepped over the threshold the world went entirely black, as I was hit on the back of the head.
Chapter 21
I came to, not for the first time in my life, with aches in my shoulders and wrists which told me that my arms were tied behind my back. I also had a mysterious pain in my ribs, and I gently moved my legs to discover that they were tied at the ankles. When coming to in a potentially hostile situation it is always a good idea to keep your eyes shut and ears open before your captors realise you are conscious. I sensed there were several people around me, one quite close as I could hear him breathing.
Flashman in the Peninsula Page 27