‘Front rank, present!’
A hundred barrels came up to the aim.
Hervey would swear he saw the chasseurs check. Yet at fifty yards surely the carbine could have little effect?
A few seconds more and they checked most decidedly; the trot faltered and then the whole line came to a halt.
Would they draw swords and charge? He thought they could do no other.
But the chasseurs made no motion. They stood as if on parade. Were they waiting for them to make the first move?
‘Sixth Light Dragoons, carry arms!’
As one, the carbines came down from the aim.
‘Sixth Light Dragoons, walk-march!’
That settled it! Reynell was not going to be bustled from the field. If the chasseurs wanted to wait out of carbine range then the regiment would close it. It was a bold move, an audacious move; some might say foolhardy. But Reynell would give no cause for complaint against the Sixth, off or on the field. No one, whatever Sir John Moore had them do in the days to come, would be able to say the Sixth lacked fight.
At forty yards Reynell held up his hand. ‘Halt!’
They all knew what would be the next order, but no man anticipated it. Strict drill was the imperative in the face of the enemy: a hundred carbines raised as one would have its effect.
But the Sixth faced not only a squadron. Beyond the stationary chasseurs, not a furlong away, looked the better part of a brigade. Hervey could not believe they had laboured a day and a night at the bridge when but a mile upstream, evidently, there was so serviceable a ford.
He made ready his holsters, and he had a mind to keep them open once he drew his pistols again, for there would be no time to spare before he needed a sabre in his hand to meet the charge.
‘Light Dragoons, present!’
Hervey levelled both pistols, his right hand through the reins, not a little anxious about his mare’s steadiness off the bit and a fusillade about to start her.
The pause was long. Or else it seemed to be. He held his breath.
But the chasseurs’ colonel simply brought the hilt of his sword to his lips, then down to his side.
Hervey heard the Frenchman call ‘retire’, and he heard the breath escaping from a dozen men around him. He felt relieved and cheated at the same time.
‘Carry carbines! Threes about!’
The ranks babbled with pride.
‘A good go, that, Mr Hervey, sir?’ came Armstrong’s cheery opinion.
‘Yes indeed, Corporal; very smart it was.’
But did the French not have the field now? Surely General Craufurd’s men could not have made it to Astorga yet? Hervey could not grasp what must be.
In two more furlongs he saw that Lord Paget had no intention of surrendering the field to the French. It even occurred to him that Paget had quite deliberately drawn the chasseurs across the Esla so as to be able to engage them on ground of his own choosing, with the river hemming them in. He had formed the Eighteenth at the narrowest point between the Esla and the birch wood that ran parallel to it, and Hervey saw their brigadier, Stewart, at the head, and the King’s Germans mustered with them. He could see too a squadron of the Tenth beyond, coming up fast from Benavente. He calculated Stewart would be able to dispose six hundred sabres, and only then did he realize that not only had Paget chosen his ground but he had fallen back onto his reserves. He smiled to himself; these were lessons that no amount of book-learning could take the place of.
The Sixth wheeled, tight, to halt rear of the Eighteenth, with the King’s Germans to their left and the Tenth’s squadron closing behind them to form a third, support, line.
There was no time for dressing. ‘The brigade will draw sabres and advance.’
General Stewart’s voice carried easily, but his trumpeter repeated the order.
‘Draw sabres!’
The rasping notice of a bloody fight put an edge to every nerve again. Hervey thrilled at the cautionary ‘brigade’, the first he had heard it – another of the rites of cavalry passage. No matter that the brigade numbered fewer sabres than the regiment had come to the Peninsula with; it would be an affair of four regiments.
‘Walk-march!’
The brigade advanced.
‘Trot!’
The horses stumbled and extended for a dozen yards until settling to the rhythm.
‘Gallop!’
Hervey could hear nothing but pounding hooves and NCOs cursing as they tried to keep the lines in decent shape. A dragoon on the left lost control of his trooper. It took off, flattening like a greyhound from the slips. Poor wretch, he thought, struggling himself to keep Stella in check: if he ever got back in one piece there would be the very devil to pay with his serjeant.
He did not hear General Stewart shout ‘Charge!’ Nor the bugle. But the hussars in front suddenly let go the check reins and thrust their sabres in the air, exactly as the manual prescribed.
‘Hold hard!’ bellowed Colonel Reynell, determined to keep the supports in hand. ‘Hold hard!’
Hervey held hard for all he was worth, first with one hand, then with two. He heard the carbines, saw the smoke, glimpsed the red plumes. And then it was a mêlée worse than Sahagun.
Reynell led the line straight in. Hervey reined hard right to drive deep into a gap, ready either to cut with his sabre or bring it to the guard if any should be bold enough to challenge. He saw a chasseur hacking at one of the Eighteenth’s men, lunged and brought his sabre down. Cut Two: left, diagonal right. He cleaved the head open from ear to chin.
There was no time to admire the work, nor to be repulsed by it; a sabre front nearside threatened the same to him. Up went his own to the Head Protect, blade horizontal across the top of his Tarleton, edge upwards, point left. Before he could lock his wrist the French sabre struck, driving his into the Tarleton’s mane. But it slid off Hervey’s blade and down, giving him the split-second’s advantage to follow through.
‘Left Give Point!’ he shouted, as if the master-at-arms were drilling him. It pierced the green chasseur cloth just above the kidneys. The man was dead in the saddle before Hervey could withdraw it.
It was an affair of minutes only. The work of the sword was exhausting as well as bloody, and the point at which men sensed the fight went against them came quickly. The French began breaking off. For them, now, it was flight, and for Stewart’s men pursuit. Chasseurs ran for the river as fast as their wearied horses could bear them. The pursuers spared them nothing unless they threw down their arms. Those who chose to dispute it and then at the last minute yield, found no quarter. The Sixth did not kill its captives, ever. But the interval between fighting and yielding could sometimes be too brief for blood to cool sufficiently. Hervey understood it now.
He galloped hard, no longer constrained to the supports, nor even to ride behind the brigadier. In the pursuit it mattered only that the enemy was given no chance to re-form. And that needed cold steel to press them. He gave Stella her head, and leaned as far forward in the saddle as the long stirrups allowed. He overtook one Frenchman and then another; the first horse was blown, the second lame. He gave point right then left, not looking back, certain his sabre had done its work. He saw the river, and chasseurs plunging in. But the Eighteenth commanded the ford, and just as at Sahagun, Frenchmen were drowning rather than yield. He galloped along the bank, desperate to take a prisoner.
One Frenchman at least had the sense to yield. He dropped his reins and held out his sword with both hands. Only as Hervey advanced to take his prize did he see the epaulettes and sash of a general officer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE FINEST OF INSTRUMENTS
Elvas, 1 November 1826
Hervey picked up a stone and threw it as far as he could from the ramparts; if only it would make a splash, with the satisfying sound of deep water, just as might have been at the Bhurtpore moats had he not captured the sluices before the siege. There was no doubting it: however clever the engineers were with their pontoons
and fascines, water stopped men in their tracks. The Esla had been their saving all those years ago, for a time at least.
He smiled. ‘That is how I evaded penury!’
Dom Mateo looked puzzled.
‘My charger, L’Etoile du Soir – Stella; she had taken all I possessed, and more. And I had to sell her at so unfavourable a rate later that I was a thousand pounds in debt to my agents. The general’s sword was mine to keep, and it was a Mameluke he had got in Egypt, studded with emeralds and rubies. I sold it to an officer in the Guards, paid half into the regimental widows’ fund and the rest to the agents. I was in pocket a full five pounds!’
‘Not a very great sum for your troubles.’
‘No indeed. Especially when I lost a pelisse coat and half my tackling at Corunna.’
Dom Mateo raised his eyebrows. ‘I wonder what I myself shall lose.’
Hervey frowned. ‘Dom Mateo, there is no cause for you to lose anything, save a shoe or two.’
Dom Mateo looked doubtful. ‘Reputation or life are what I had in mind, Hervey.’
Hervey frowned the more. ‘Dom Mateo, I will speak freely. You are not at liberty to hazard your life in a vain act of courage. For such it would be were you to lead two hundred sabres against a thousand men and more. It might serve well for a cornet, but never a general.’
‘By your account just now a brigadier led not greatly many more at Benavente. I cannot lock myself up in the fortress here and watch the rebels make free in the very place I am set in charge.’
‘I know, Dom Mateo; I know. I am racking my brain for an answer, I promise you. A ruse, anything!’
Major Coa came struggling to the ramparts. Hervey and Dom Mateo watched the effort with admiration. On level ground he could move as fast as the next man, but the vertical tried him sorely.
‘My dear friend,’ Dom Mateo began, laying a hand to his chief of staff’s shoulder in reply to the salute.
‘Senhor General, you asked to inspect the citadel. Now would be a propitious time. It is lit, and I have double sentries posted throughout.’
Dom Mateo was glad of it. He might at least assure himself that Elvas would not go the way of Almeida, whose magazine had exploded to a single shell, putting to naught all the elaborate and costly devices of Marshal Vauban’s art. ‘But why do you not send me word instead of hobbling up here as if practising an escalade?’
‘Senhor, a major does not summon a general!’
Dom Mateo smiled. ‘My friend, forgive me; I was never major!’ Hervey struggled but thought he gained the sense of things. He liked the major’s propriety in coming in person to the ramparts: a very soldierly impulse animated him, for all that he was pé do castelo. He resolved to talk with him privately, as soon as he found opportunity without risk of offence to Dom Mateo. Perhaps he might have some moderating influence, were they not able to come up with a ruse.
‘Major Coa invites me to a tour of inspection, Hervey. Shall you accompany me? I can at least take satisfaction in showing you a well-found garrison.’
Hervey had seen the citadel by night, and its outside by day, but he had not seen the great powder magazine in the depths of the circular fort. Since the explosion of the Almeida magazine, the engineers had dug deeper and built stronger at Elvas, so that powder now lay forty feet below the ground, beneath concrete as thick as nature would permit. Steel doors and shutters closed off the tunnels and shafts by which powder was brought to the surface on rails and lifts, and thence to the bastions by narrow canal, the way lit by reflecting-lamps in parallel tunnels to eliminate the danger of flame with powder. And every ten yards there was a lath braced high between the tunnel walls, heaped with gypsum to suppress fire after an explosion. Hervey expressed his regard for the magazine’s discipline and method as they emerged from one of the two lifts that raised the kegs and shell.
‘I do not imagine there is a safer place to be in a siege, Hervey,’ said Dom Mateo, and with evident pride. ‘It is unquestionably bomb-proof.’
‘I can well imagine.’ Hervey turned to Major Coa. ‘My compliments to you, sir.’
Dom Mateo’s chief of staff bowed. ‘Musket cartridges are stored in smaller magazines within the bastions. Perhaps we should visit, General?’
‘Yes, yes; anything that might be found wanting. There can be no excess of inspections!’ agreed Dom Mateo, only too happy to be diverted by things that he understood. ‘Shall you come, Hervey?’
Hervey glanced left and right. ‘What is the rest of the citadel?’
‘Guard quarters and armouries,’ said Major Coa. ‘And stores.’ Then he remembered, smiling. ‘And a very good number, I believe, bearing the letters BO.’
‘BO?’ Dom Mateo wondered why he should not know such a thing when it came to his own garrison.
Hervey smiled. ‘Board of Ordnance. Yes, General d’Olivenza told me. The Duke of Wellington established something of a depot here.’
‘Douro? In my fortress?’
‘Did he not sleep here when the army laid siege to Badajoz? I think so.’
‘Douro slept in my quarters? My honours multiply!’
Hervey smiled again. ‘May I see what remains, General? I imagine things to be very antique, and not a little decayed.’
‘No, indeed not, Major Hervey,’ said Major Coa before Dom Mateo could reply, stung by the suggestion of poor storekeeping. ‘To my knowledge only biscuit has been ruined.’
Hervey shook his head. ‘It is hard to imagine how biscuit could ever change its property!’ He turned to Dom Mateo again.
‘Of course you may see it, Hervey. I myself should wish to. I have ever been a student of history!’
Who was the more surprised by the extent of the Board of Ordnance’s expropriate stores, Hervey or Dom Mateo, it would have been difficult to say. Shelf after shelf, room after room, was packed with issue – canteens, water bottles, cartridge bags, digging tools, blankets, boots, helmets, waterdecks, socks, cloaks; the inventory was remarkable. Indeed, the inventory was present, and in the charge of a veteran storekeeper who, Major Coa explained, had signed the ledgers with one of the duke’s commissary officers when the war ended, and had kept the stores ever since. ‘He receives a pension from your government, he is proud to say.’
Hervey shook his head in disbelief. But then, if the Board of Admiralty could have victualling stations the far side of the world, why should not the Ordnance have its stores in Portugal still? Except that, in all probability, no one at the Ordnance remembered they had.
They stepped into the last of the rooms. The smell of camphor was even stronger than before. The shelves were piled high with red coats, neatly bundled.
‘How many have you, senhor?’ asked Hervey, astonished.
Major Coa repeated the question in Portuguese.
‘Dois mil novecentos e treze, senhor.’
Hervey was even more astonished at the precision of the counting.
‘He says that there were more than four thousand,’ added the major, ‘but that ten years ago he was instructed to send two thousand coats to Gibraltar.’
Hervey shook the storekeeper’s hand and thanked him. ‘Please tell him, Major Coa, that I shall be sure to inform the Board of Ordnance of his devotion to duty at the first opportunity.’
He did not add that there was a senior officer from the Board in Lisbon at that very moment. Indeed, he preferred to forget that he was in Elvas without that officer’s leave, express or otherwise.
As they walked the curtain wall towards the first bastion, Dom Mateo expounded on the faithfulness of good Portuguese servants and the co-operation that subsisted between their two countries even after war with France was long over.
Hervey, deep in thought, said nothing but an occasional ‘just so’. Suddenly he stopped and seized Dom Mateo’s arm. ‘I have it, Dom Mateo! I have it! Or if it does not serve, then I believe nothing will.’
‘Have what, Hervey?’
‘I have your means: a ruse de guerre!’
Dom Mateo
’s eyes lit up. ‘Tell me!’
‘What would the rebels do – the Spanish, even – if they were to be confronted by British troops?’
Dom Mateo looked at him quizzically. ‘That is the question to which we all await an answer, is it not?’
‘Yes, indeed. But what would be the effect?’
Dom Mateo frowned. Had he a ruse or not? ‘We suppose they would not dare risk an adventure against the might of the King of England. But, Hervey, the King of England has not yet sent these troops. Neither is it certain that if he does they will come to Elvas. The rebels may be deterred by the presence of the King’s troops, but they assuredly will not be by the mere threat.’
‘Just so. But what if they believed that English troops were already here?’
‘And how might they be induced to believe that?’
‘There are two thousand red coats in your stores!’
There were none in the world save those on the backs of His Majesty’s men, whether white or black or brown. There was no mistaking the British redcoat – ‘Thomas Lobster’. ‘The finest of all instruments,’ the duke had said of his infantry. Time and again in the Peninsula, Hervey had seen what a line of redcoats could do. With five hundred of them barring the road to Lisbon, no Miguelista, or Spanish regular for that matter, would even dare to challenge!
Dom Mateo stood stock still. ‘Hervey, you cannot be suggesting that my men pretend to be Englishmen?’
Hervey smiled wryly. ‘Perhaps not just Englishmen. There is the tartan cloth there too!’
‘It would be a dishonour! By the articles of war, any man captured would be hanged.’
‘He would be hanged for wearing the uniform of his enemy; I know of no such injunction against wearing that of an ally.’
‘Nevertheless it would be insupportable.’
Hervey looked at Major Coa.
The major bowed. ‘Senhor General, may I speak?’
Dom Mateo nodded.
‘Senhor General, there is a long and honoured tradition in our country of wearing English cloth. When we were delivered from the French by our allies, it was English serge with which our new army was clothed.’
Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War Page 32