Flashman and the Emperor

by Robert Brightwell

  “We would,” the man said, jutting his chin out as though he patently thought this was a stupid question.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  The man was puzzled, apparently thinking the answer was self-evident, and it was Mallee who spoke up. “You think that they will kill us as they have fought more battles?”

  The first marine flew up at that. “It does not matter how many battles they have fought, we will kill them.” He tore off his shirt and showed me his back that was criss-crossed with scars from an earlier flogging. “You see this? This is why we will fight. You give us proper weapons and then we will kill them,” he insisted.

  I laughed and shook my head. “Hell, I have worse scars than those. What was that? Fifty lashes? In the British army, I have seen men killed with three hundred. Just wanting to kill someone is not enough.” I turned to Mallee. “You can guess how badly the Portuguese are going to want you to die, when they see armed former slaves coming at them. They will think that you are easy to kill and now they are right. You might have courage, but you have no discipline and no fighting skills.” I stared around the room and tried to look as many in the eye as I could. “Think about it,” I told them. “Do you want to die like slaves or fight like soldiers?” I left them then and gestured to Lieutenant Moreira to come with me up to the main deck.

  “What will they do?” he asked.

  “I think some of them are pretty smart,” I replied. “If they can get over their pride then they should see the sense in what I am saying.” I was right. Half an hour later Mallee came to find me. They were ready to start training, he announced. I went back down to the marines’ deck and could already hear a steady rhythmic clack-clack of wood hitting wood. I stood for a while and watched the two rows of fifteen marines facing each other. Left guard, right guard, clack-clack, no one making any effort to vary the stroke or move forward. I saw the big marine who had claimed he did not need training and stepped up behind the man he was fighting. I pulled him back and took his sword to leave the big man facing me. He grinned at the prospect of fighting me and started to hit my sword harder. I gave ground and started to back across the deck. His smile grew wider as he thought he was beating me but then, when I was close to the side of the ship, I suddenly reversed my swing and my wooden blade was at his throat.

  “How many Portuguese soldiers have you shown your back to, going this far out of the line?” I asked him. “One of them would have put a blade in it long ago. Turn around,” I commanded. “Do you see that gap in your line where you were standing before? There is a Portuguese soldier there now. One of the men who were on either side of you is now fighting two instead of one. He will die, making a bigger gap. Soon all your comrades will have soldiers fighting them from behind as well as in front. Do you see now why you need training?”

  He stood silently for a moment, taking in what I had said. Evidently, he could see the sense in it, for at length he asked, “So how should we fight?”

  “When Cochrane wants to board a ship,” I told him, “he will want to do it quickly. Never give them time to think or react; we push hard and fast.” I organised them into a hollow arrowhead with a line at the back as a reserve and in case they were encircled. “When we board, the decks are likely to be crowded, so you need to carve out some space to give you room to fight. If you push the enemy closer together, you also make it harder for them to swing weapons at you.”

  “But how do we push them back if they are trying to attack us?” asked one of the men.

  I grinned as I remembered Eriksson’s words. “No more clack-clack,” I told them while miming their earlier method of fighting. “Remember, you must keep them moving back. Press in close and sweep their weapon to one side with a swing of yours, kick them in the balls and then stab them as they double up. Then move on to the next: swing, kick, stab, swing, kick, stab.”

  That was all a few days previously. I grinned as I watched the mutinous sailor being dragged below. Clearly my training was taking hold, which it should have been as the ship had been ringing to the chant of ‘swing, kick, stab’ these last few days. They had all been practicing moving forward in formation and I had shown them how to deal with men armed with boarding pikes and bayonets too. Some were only working at it half-heartedly, but there was a core that seemed genuinely willing to fight.

  Later that day we came in sight again of the Brazilian coast. We had reached the province of Bahia. Its capital, the city of Salvador, had a huge inland bay that gave ample protection to its fleet. Cochrane set a course for an island thirty-five miles south of the city. There he had arranged to rendezvous with Captain Taylor and his frigate the Nitherohy, which we had last seen in Rio.

  “If the Portuguese admiral offers us battle,” declared Cochrane, “I will want every ship we have.”

  “Do you think he will come out and fight?” I asked.

  “Well if he doesn’t, we are not going in after him, not in daylight at least. Here, look at the chart.” He showed me how the city of Salvador guarded the entrance into the bay, which was big enough to harbour the entire Royal Navy. “We will wait here at the island of Morro de São Paulo,” he said pointing. In truth, it was not a proper island as it was joined to the mainland in the south but with a wide river to the north it would be hard for the Portuguese to send troops against the anchorage without naval support.

  “The Portuguese will get word we are there in a day or two. So I will send the schooner, Real, to keep an eye on Salvador while we wait. If any ships appear, she will easily be able to outrun them to warn us.

  “When do you think Taylor will arrive?” I asked.

  “I told him to be here by the end of the month. He has a fast frigate and even if they had to wait a week for supplies, he should make it in time.” Cochrane seemed his usual confident self and not at all concerned with the prospect of engaging with a much larger enemy. We dropped anchor by the island, which from the deck seemed idyllic with long beaches of white sand. It was tempting to go ashore, but one of the Brazilians warned me that beyond the island on the mainland, lay mangrove swamps. These, he said, were populated by crocodiles and snakes as thick as a man. Heaven knows if that is true, but they did have a pig-like animal living in the trees, as one of the boat crews we sent ashore for water shot one. We had some of it for dinner.

  It seemed that Cochrane was justified in his confidence, for the following day, the twenty-ninth of April, a sail was spotted to the south. As it crept closer it was identified as the Nitherohy. By the end of the day it had dropped anchor with the rest of Cochrane’s ships. His fleet was complete. Captain Taylor came aboard the flagship that night to join the other captains and his admiral as they discussed what to do next.

  “We will wait one more day here,” announced Cochrane, “to allow Taylor time to replenish his water casks. Then we will put to sea. We will go up the coast and start our blockade of Salvador.”

  “And what if the larger Portuguese fleet comes out to oppose us?” I asked.

  Cochrane grinned. “Oh I am sure that they will, Thomas. They will not have much choice with us stopping all trade with the port. They will come out and we will nibble away at them.”

  “Nibble away at them?” repeated Jowett, sounding confused.

  “That is how I won in Chile,” Cochrane explained. “When I arrived there, the Spanish had far more ships, but one by one I captured them and added them to my fleet instead. Eventually, I had enough to drive them from the Pacific. We will do the same here with the Portuguese.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting that we do not have reliable crews for the ships we already have? How are we going to get more men for the prizes?” I asked.

  Cochrane waved my concerns aside. “Once our crews see that we are winning and that they are earning prize money, they will soon see where their loyalty lies. Half of my crews in Chile were former Spanish sailors who had changed sides.”

  It made sense, I suppose. I thought back to the sergeant who had bought Jackson’s locket. He
had changed sides more than once in his career. Little did I realise then, that Cochrane’s assumptions were fatally flawed.

  Chapter 15

  It was dawn on the fourth of May 1823 when we saw them. We had been patrolling off Salvador for a couple of days and so far, no ship had tried to run our blockade. As the prevailing winds were from the east we had stayed a good distance out to sea to give us room to manoeuvre, while keeping the schooner, Real, closer inshore to act as look-out. The western horizon was still dark when we heard her distant signal gun fire.

  “Dammit,” muttered Cochrane staring at the little vessel with the largest telescope we had. “I can see she is flying a signal, but it is too dark to make out the flag to read it.” He turned to Crosbie. “Send a look-out to the masthead, maybe they can see what is happening.”

  Ten minutes passed as we paced up and down the quarterdeck, knowing that something was happening to the west, but unable to see what it was. More light slowly spread across the sky as the sun crept over the horizon. Then at last we got the information we sought.

  “Deck there!” called the look-out. “I can see sails in the harbour entrance.”

  “How many ships?” shouted Crosbie.

  “Can’t say, sir,” replied the look-out, “but it is more than one.”

  The signal gun on the Real fired impatiently again. De Castro, its master, must have thought we had missed his flag, but only now could you make out the plain dark colour.

  “He is flying ‘Enemy in sight’,” reported Cochrane staring again at the little ship. “Repeat the signal to the fleet.” A few moments later a red flag flew up our halyards to indicate that the enemy had been spotted. A single cannon boomed out to acknowledge the Real and warn the other ships of the message. They were all in a single line behind us, with the Piranga first to follow in our wake. I watched as the red flag rose up her mast too and another gun boomed. Beyond her I could see the sleek lines of the Maria da Glória with her thirty-two guns. In her wake was the similarly sized Liberal, then the recently arrived Nitherohy and bringing up the rear, the small brig Guirani.

  I felt my pulse quicken as I watched the little squares of scarlet cloth ascend the rigging of all five ships in our line. As their guns rang out to acknowledge the signal, I knew that the prospect of action would be having a similar effect on all the men aboard them. There might be a few in our wooden hulls that welcomed the idea of a fight, but I guessed that most were more than a little apprehensive. The exercises and drills were over. Before this day was out the guns would be fired in earnest, with a good chance of hand-to-hand fighting and possibly the taking of prizes. By Christ I hoped it would not come to that, but if it did, I would send my lads in first and do my best to encourage them from the rear. I felt the now-familiar tightening in my guts as I once more considered the awful prospect of battle. I stepped up to the rail and looked out to sea for a moment to gather my thoughts. It would not come to that, I tried to assure myself. I was on the Emperor, which was twice the size of any of the enemy ships apart from their flagship; surely Cochrane would not be foolish enough to take on something that big. Any ship we set ourselves against was bound to strike her colours if we could rake her with our guns.

  My thoughts were interrupted by Crosbie asking if we should turn towards the enemy. With the wind coming from the east we had been patrolling on a north–south line and were then on a northward tack, while the enemy was approaching from the west.

  “No, let them come to us. They will be tacking into the wind and it will give more time for gaps to appear in their line for us to exploit.” Cochrane sounded extremely relaxed, almost bored as he studied his enemy through the powerful signal telescope. He was holding the glass against a line of the rigging to keep it steady, but the swell made it hard to keep what were still tiny patches of white sail in focus. He gave a grunt of exasperation before continuing. “Damned if I can make out how many there are. Signal the Real to go forward and report on what ships are putting to sea.” He snapped the telescope shut and turned to see me watching him. It was then I think I comprehended what an enormous responsibility he was carrying. We were going into battle against odds of two to one and with only half-trained or committed crews. If it was any other commander you would not have found me within a thousand miles of his vessels, never mind aboard the flagship. But an emperor, a country and I, not to mention the crew of his fleet, were all depending on him to perform some kind of miracle. We were not just expecting to survive the encounter, but for him to conjure victory from it.

  He gave a slow nod as he saw me studying him and somehow, I think he guessed what was going through my mind. He knew that I had commanded men in some pretty desperate actions in the army. He must have imagined that I was all too familiar with calmly planning to beat overwhelming odds when in reality, most of my experience centred on running around in a blue funk, desperate to keep myself in one piece.

  “A bit more peaceful than when you stood on that ridge at Waterloo, eh?” asked Cochrane, smiling. “Are you ready to nibble at their fleet, then, Flashman?”

  “I am much more eager to bite down on some breakfast,” I told him. “It will be hours before they come up to us. I think there are some slices of that pig-like animal left and some eggs. Let’s go below, I hate to fight on an empty stomach.”

  Crosbie laughed at us. “You two are a pair of old war horses, champing at the bit. Go below and put your noses in the trough. I will call you if anything happens.”

  We spent over an hour below in the great cabin. The Nitherohy had brought a letter from Cochrane’s wife, Kitty, which had arrived in Rio after we had sailed. He prattled on about his family while I tried to force some food down. I don’t normally drink spirits before noon, but on this occasion my morning coffee was reinforced with several brandy stiffeners to keep my nerves in check. The Nitherohy had also brought some London newspapers. I tried to distract myself with affairs from home, but there was nothing new there. Lord Liverpool’s government was still bickering over Catholic emancipation, which was largely unchanged from when I had first got involved in government affairs over twenty years before. At length, Cochrane declared that it was time to step back on deck and with a growing sense of trepidation I followed him up through the hatch.

  Our vessels were maintaining our north–south patrolling line, while three miles to the west the Portuguese fleet was still slowly tacking directly towards us. They too sailed in a single line, so it was hard to see how many there were. I studied them with my glass. Their line was not exactly straight, but their biggest ship, their three-decker, was at the head, which obscured those behind. From what little I could see of the fleet beyond the Portuguese flagship, I thought that there must be at least half a dozen other ships. I moved my glass to the right and saw the little schooner, the Real, struggling against the wind to re-join us. It was still a mile away.

  Cochrane was finding it difficult to count the enemy ships as well. “Send a signal to the Real asking how many ships she can see,” he instructed. A minute later a stream of signal flags ran up one of our halyards and a signal gun boomed. It was a good distance to read flags, especially as the wind blew them partly in the direction of the Real. Crosbie had one of the ship’s boys climb up another halyard, which he did like a monkey, to hold the signal flags out one at a time so that the little schooner could be sure to read them. We all waited impatiently for a response. Then we saw two flags rise on their halyards and the puff of smoke from a signal cannon.

  “He is answering thirteen,” announced Crosbie. “That’s odd. They only have nine war ships in their fleet. Do you think they are trying to escort some merchant ships though our blockade?”

  “Ask them how many warships,” snapped Cochrane, turning his big signal telescope back to the enemy fleet. This time we did not have to wait long for a reply. We watched as the two tiny signal flags dipped a few feet and then rose again and a second signal gun puffed its smoke.

  “Christ,” muttered Crosbie. “Thirteen a
gainst the five fighting ships in our line. The schooner will be of no use,” he said of the Real. “It will be hot work holding the rest off while we cut some of them out.” As he spoke he glanced at Cochrane, who was still studying the enemy ships through the glass. Staring around the quarterdeck, I noticed that everyone there was studying Cochrane. We were all waiting for him to pronounce our next move. He continued his silent inspection while those about him fidgeted anxiously. Even Crosbie was starting to look apprehensive as he added, “We have the wind advantage, sir. We could pass through their line, rake a few of their ships and head south. If we bide our time we will find them at a disadvantage sooner or later.”

  At last Cochrane put down the glass. He glanced across at the Real, still flying the signal flags and then over his shoulder at the ships following on behind. He must have realised that the numbers would have been read by his other captains and that similar conversations were being held on their quarterdecks. “Change course to due east,” he announced, “and signal the fleet to follow.” The new course would take us past the Portuguese line but a mile or so to their north, out of effective range of their guns.

  The Emperor surged forward as it turned to run before the wind. As we raced past them, all of us studied the long straggling line of Portuguese vessels. The extra four ships turned out to be troop transports that carried over twenty guns apiece. Each could hold a regiment of infantry and their equipment, but Cochrane thought that they were riding too high in the water for that.

  “They may have a couple of hundred men to deter boarding, but no more than that,” he predicted of these unexpected additions to the enemy fleet.

  “They are not reacting to our change of course,” Crosbie pointed out.

  “Of course not,” agreed Cochrane. “Their admiral will be delighted that we are giving up the wind advantage. He probably thinks we are trying to make our escape.”