Run Them Ashore

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  MacAndrews was his usual calm self, keeping the Flank Battalion at a steady pace, and getting Billy Pringle to ride back and forth to make sure that they did not lose contact with the rest of the column. They spent more time waiting than moving, and when Hanley carried an order for them to about-face, the major showed no surprise.

  ‘Second time in less than an hour,’ he remarked.

  ‘The guides went astray,’ Hanley explained, ‘and so we must go back on ourselves for half a mile.’

  ‘Nice change to be in the lead,’ the Scotsman said, and ordered his battalion off. Hanley rode with them for a while, and saw Williams leave the column to walk beside the marching men. The Welshman strode along, a musket on one shoulder and with his few gleaned possessions rolled in a blanket strapped over the other shoulder.

  ‘Evening …’ Williams raised a hand in greeting as he spoke and then his feet slipped from under him and he slid down two yards of bank to splash into a pool. There was much amusement from the Light Company and anyone else who had seen his rapid descent.

  The Welshman emerged, muddy and with water streaming from him as he climbed back up the bank.

  ‘If my poor mother could see me now!’ he called out, and that produced an even more open roar of laughter. It seemed his friend was settling in with his new company.

  The general himself rode back to stop the Flank Battalion when they had gone far enough. Then they stood and gave time for the units ahead to turn around and follow the proper path.

  ‘Hurry up and wait,’ Hanley said under his breath, ‘hurry up and wait.’

  When the sun rose he felt a little more cheerful, although the cold wind robbed it of most of its warmth. At least they could see where they were going a little better, but Hanley was dismayed to realise that they had not even come level with the far end of the lagoon. The column kept going – or at least stopping and starting every ten or twenty minutes.

  Hearing that MacAndrews knew the ground, Hanley accompanied the general to see him. It was nearly noon and they had been going for nineteen hours.

  ‘I reckon about twelve miles, sir,’ the major said when asked how far he thought they had gone. ‘The convent at Casas Viejas must be four or five miles further on, and Medina twelve miles or so beyond that.’

  No one had any good maps of the area, but Hanley could tell that the general had expected the answer.

  ‘Much obliged, MacAndrews,’ he said. ‘Then I had better take a look.’ Graham set off for the head of the column, driving his horse on at such speed that it was a struggle for his two ADCs and Hanley to keep up.

  By the time they arrived, the advance guard was a couple of miles past the convent on the road to Medina Sidonia.

  ‘Generous to march past the garrison of the convent and make it easier for the Frogs to count us,’ one of the aides muttered with ill-concealed contempt. The general was a good deal more tactful, but it took well over an hour to convince the captain general that they should deal with the Frenchmen in the convent. By then almost the entire army had marched on within sight of its walls. MacAndrews was told to select two companies to storm the place, but as soon as the grenadiers and light bobs of the 106th formed up to assault, the defenders bolted from the back gate.

  A squadron of German hussars led the chase, and Hanley rode with the flank companies which followed as fast as they could. There were about one hundred and fifty of the enemy, and when their commander saw the horsemen and realised he could not outrun them he formed his men into line.

  ‘Can see us coming, otherwise he would have gone into square,’ Pringle suggested.

  The trumpet sounded the charge, and the KGL hussars went from walk to trot, and then canter, swords raised high ready to lunge. They were close when the French officer gave the order and a volley rippled along the line. A rider was pitched from the saddle, and two horses went down, but the hussars did not stop.

  The French dropped their muskets, raising their arms to surrender.

  ‘They’ve left it too late,’ Pringle said as the German hussars spurred into them, heavy curved sabres chopping down. ‘You can’t shoot a man one minute and expect his friend to spare your life the next. If they wanted to quit they should have done it straight away.’ Hanley watched in horrified fascination as the hussars cut down again and again. The French did not resist other than to cover their heads with their arms. As the survivors were brought back to the convent Hanley thought that he had never seen such ghastly wounds.

  ‘No point treating that lot,’ the surgeon announced, and had half the wounded laid out in a line while he treated the few who had any hope of survival. Hanley spoke to the handful of unwounded, and some of them shook as he spoke to them. They all told the same story. There was a brigade at Medina Sidonia, so substantial a force that Marshal Victor was bound to come to its aid if the Allies attacked.

  The plan seemed to be working, until it became clear that it was no longer the plan. La Peña had changed his mind, and had decided to march instead back towards the coast, heading towards Victor’s main force at Chiclana. Hanley was there when General Graham used all his charm and diplomacy to persuade the captain general to press on to Medina instead. Don Manuel would not be shifted, and his only concession was to delay the march from 5 p.m. to eleven. A second meeting and even longer bargaining postponed the movement until six the next morning, an hour before sunrise. In the event there were more delays and they did not start until eight. Hanley could only wave when the whole army marched back along the track, watched by the Flank Battalion, which had been left behind as rearguard.

  A few cavalrymen appeared about a mile away on the heights to the north, too far to pick out the details, although no one was in any doubt that they were French. As the army swung southwest to take the road running along the edge of the lagoon, the horsemen shadowed them, more appearing as the day went on. At one point they came closer – Hanley remembered MacAndrews telling him that if you could see faces and cross-belts with the naked eye then they were within half a mile. That was not all he saw. Leading one of the patrols was an infantry officer riding a grey. Even at that distance his green coat was a good deal lighter than those of the dragoons beside him.

  ‘Sinclair,’ he said to the general.

  ‘Impudent fellow, ain’t he?’ Graham replied. ‘But there is nothing we can do about him at present. If I send out the hussars they will not catch them and there are not enough of our own horse to shield the whole column.’

  There was the same stop-start progress until the latest stop stretched into a half-hour. Graham rode forward to discover the delay.

  ‘The causeway is lost,’ La Peña announced. They were at the point where the road went along a narrow piece of solid ground between a river and the lagoon. Today the land was flooded and it was invisible, the wind making waves across the surface of a veritable lake. A few of the stakes marking the causeway stood out of the water at crooked angles, but most had gone, rotted or swept away by the flood, and there were not enough to give a good idea of the route.

  ‘We are searching for a crossing point,’ the captain general assured his British subordinate. All around, the leading Spanish battalions had spread out on the low rises either side of the track before it came to the water. Some were standing, some sitting as they waited. A few were wading out into the water, carrying boots and stockings and with their trousers rolled up. They went with great care, for it was too cold for any sane man to relish being drenched. Hanley saw one officer being carried on the back of a sturdy private, the gallant leader of men complaining like a dowager if any water splashed on to him. There was no sense of urgency, no officer taking charge.

  General Graham said nothing, and simply set his horse straight at where he guessed the trackway led through the water. The staff followed, although Hanley had trouble persuading his gelding to risk stepping into the lake. For the next ten minutes they all rode up and down, the flood past the horses’ bellies and soaking their boots where it was deeper. It was
a couple of feet less deep and the ground far more firm when they struck the causeway. The general was busy calling out soldiers from the waiting battalions. The Spanish infantry came willingly, striding into the cold water, and then standing to mark the causeway. Hanley thought that they were happy to be doing something. There seemed a far greater sense of purpose among the soldiers and junior officers than among their commanders.

  Soon the infantry were marching across by companies, and Graham cheered them on and joked with them in Spanish as he sat on his horse, the waves lapping against its chest. La Peña sent one of his aides out to say that he was worried that the causeway would not carry guns, given that it was being churned up by the men’s feet. Graham sent one of his staff to hurry the closest British battery to the spot. It took twenty minutes, and the escorting party of riflemen from the 95th were sweating from keeping pace. At the general’s command the greenjackets went through the water, keeping step as if on parade even where it reached their waists. The artillery drivers used their whips to push the trace horses into the flood, and soon the first and the second teams of six horses, a limber and a gun were through to the other side. The next one skidded when a horse took fright, and the nine-pounder cannon lurched off the causeway, a wheel sticking fast in the mud as it sloped away.

  The grey-haired general was at the spot in a moment, kicked his feet free of the stirrups and jumped down into the water. By the time Hanley and the rest of his staff joined him Graham was grinning at an Irish bombardier as they both pushed with all their strength to shift the wheel. A couple of Spanish ADCs arrived, their gold-laced blue jackets quickly soaked and covered in mud as they too strained to push the nine-pounder. The commander of the leading division was now wading along the causeway, chivvying his men to keep moving. Senior officers and artillerymen clustered around the nine-pounder, straining until they felt it move, and with a jolt the gun rolled back on to the causeway. The bombardier whooped and slapped one of the Spanish ADCs on the back. Hanley was worried for a moment, but then the aristocratic young man gave the NCO a polite bow and went off to remount.

  Captain General La Peña watched.

  It was midnight before the army halted. Everyone was soaked and there was no hot food – indeed little enough food of any sort. News arrived that the garrison of Cadiz had launched its sally on the previous night as arranged, since the message telling them that the army would not be in position on time had yet not reached the city. ‘They took the French by surprise and overran their first line, but then French reserves struck back and they were tumbled back to the Isla,’ an ADC told Hanley.

  The captain general proposed another night march, but Graham and his own divisional commanders convinced him that the men were exhausted and in need of rest. They spent a cold night with no fires and only the wet ground as a bed. On the next day scouting patrols were sent out, and Hanley rode with the general on a reconnaissance of his own. French dragoons were about, and although they kept their distance he spotted Sinclair more than once. Confusion over who was to give the orders meant that no cavalry had been sent out to look at the ground or search for the enemy, but La Peña proposed dividing the army so that the British marched on one road and the Spanish on another, nearer the coast.

  ‘It will help us to move faster,’ he said, but Graham was unconvinced, and so Hanley went out with two of the ADCs and was able to confirm that the road allocated to the British was impassable to artillery and difficult for everyone else.

  On the way back they weaved between the fir trees of a straggling forest. Hanley’s gelding was close to exhaustion, and soon lagged behind the thoroughbreds of the other two officers. It was a gloomy day, the light in the wood poor, and so it was a shock when he came to a clearing and found Sinclair sitting on his horse.

  The Irishman was alone, but he was also quicker off the mark and whipped a pistol from one of his saddle holsters before Hanley had even got his fingers around his sword hilt.

  ‘Why, it is Captain Hanley. Good afternoon, sir,’ Sinclair said with a pleasant smile. He pulled the hammer back and the click seemed appallingly loud in the stiller air under the trees. ‘I take it you are not surprised to see me in this uniform? You certainly seem unimpressed.’

  ‘We know you are a traitor.’ The words sounded foolish and rather pompous, but it was hard to think of anything to say. At this range the man could not miss.

  ‘The pistol is another clue, I suppose. Good little British officers are not meant to point weapons at one another, except of course in a matter of honour. As to treachery, does that not depend on your point of view? Would you believe me if I said that I have held true to a cause all my life, or would you prefer to hear that I sold my own mother into slavery to buy a bottle of brandy? What does it matter what you choose to think of me?’

  There was the sound of hoofbeats near by, but Hanley could not tell more than that they were somewhere ahead and had no idea whether it was one of the ADCs or a Frenchman coming to find Sinclair.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll kill you today,’ Sinclair said, and backed his grey horse away.

  ‘Conscience?’ Hanley asked, and tried to edge his sword out so slowly that the other man would not see it move. His heart was pounding and his throat dry as sand-paper, but he tried to keep his voice steady.

  Sinclair levelled the pistol at the Englishman’s head. ‘Maybe that, or maybe they are not paying me enough.’ He wheeled the horse and sent it cantering away among the trees. He was gone by the time one of the staff officers appeared.

  ‘Thought we’d lost you, old boy.’

  ‘I’m still here,’ Hanley replied, and followed him back to the army. His back was drenched in sweat that had not come from the day’s hard riding.

  The idea of splitting the army was discarded at Graham’s insistence, and at five in the afternoon of 4th March the Spanish once again led the column off. They were heading for Conil, a village on the coast about eight miles away. The British general was worried by a night march so close to an enemy whose precise strength and location were unknown, but Captain General La Peña dismissed his concerns.

  ‘We shall keep Marshal Victor guessing,’ he declared. ‘And by tomorrow we will have him trapped between us and Cadiz, or force him to leave the road open.’

  Hanley could see that General Graham was unconvinced, and understood why. It was very hard to see how the French would be trapped unless they wanted to be. Nor was it easy to understand what would have been achieved if they were able to march straight to the Isla and Cadiz without fighting. He thought back to Fuengirola, and that nagging sense that no one in charge was quite sure what they were hoping to achieve.

  Soon all the aggravations of the earlier night marches returned, the immediate personal discomfort and annoyances driving away the bigger concerns.

  ‘Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait,’ he found himself muttering again and again as the column kept halting, sometimes every few minutes. He had not had time to mention the encounter with Sinclair, but since the French would have to be blind not to have a fair idea of where the Allies were going it probably did not matter.

  The men in the lead took the wrong path in the darkness. Hanley told the general that he was sure they had left the path to the coast so that the British were heading directly for the main French camp. Graham halted his own troops and rode to see La Peña and sort out the confusion.

  ‘Voilà ce que c’est que les marches de nuit,’ the general said in exasperation when they reached the Spanish commander, and Hanley wondered whether La Peña spoke French. If so, then he did not appear moved by the rebuke. One of the Spanish ADCs insisted that this was the wrong road and the British were on the right one. Hanley insisted the opposite, as did the local guides, and eventually this fact was accepted by everyone. There was more argument about what to do, until after a good half-hour fresh orders were agreed.

  With the sun rising, the army marched on towards the enemy.

  27

  Williams felt the noo
n sun on his face and was glad of its warmth. His leg was troubling him, and felt stiff, the wound to his hip throbbing as if it might burst open again after the succession of night marches on slippery tracks. It was pleasant to be warm and have nothing to do.

  ‘The firing has stopped,’ remarked Lieutenant Black, the senior lieutenant in the first battalion of the 106th and acting commander of the Light Company in the absence of Major Wickham. The latter had secured a staff posting with one of the brigade commanders in Wellington’s army and had left for Lisbon before the Flank Battalion was formed. The Light Company boasted an ensign, but he had fallen sick and was in hospital at Gibraltar, and so Williams was attached to assist Black.

  ‘Dons must have pushed the French back,’ Billy Pringle said. The noise of fighting coming from the direction of Cadiz had got quieter in the last hour or so, which suggested that the advance guard had forced the French back. He was lying on the grass, a rolled cloak as a pillow and his hat pulled down over his face.

  ‘There is no need to look quite so interested,’ Black told Pringle, and began to prod him with his boot.

  ‘God save us from restless and imprudent youth.’ Pringle tipped his hat up with his finger and peered myopically at the lieutenant. His glasses were folded neatly in his inside pocket to keep them safe while he rested. ‘Not in your way, am I?’

  Black grinned, but was still restless and soon began to pace up and down, watched with tolerant amusement by the men of his own company and the grenadiers. The lieutenant had gained his promotion from ensign by volunteering from the militia and bringing thirty recruits with him. Four years on, there were still a dozen of these men with the Light Company. Black was a capable and popular officer, who had served in Portugal and on the retreat to Corunna. Around half of the men of his company had come through those campaigns, and even more of the grenadiers of the 106th had served there and at Talavera. The redcoats sat or lay along the slope of the low ridge, enjoying a rare moment of idleness. To their right were the two companies of the 9th Foot with yellow facings on their jackets, and on the other side was the contingent from the 82nd, also with yellow cuffs and collars.