A well-aimed shot crashed out in the silence and felled the first blandengue turning the corner. Return fire was ineffective: the disciplined Highlanders spaced their own to cover reloading, and the advance was halted.
The enemy recovered and spread out before making a first charge. This was stopped within yards, fleeing men stumbling over bodies sprawled in the street. Then they split their numbers, advancing down several streets simultaneously. The sergeant placed his men in pairs to confront them but now there was a tidal wave of attackers.
One went down, the other snatching up his musket, but the enemy saw their chance and closed with them. In a welter of blood, the exulting Spanish hacked and gouged at the bodies as they surged forward.
Pack drew in his outer guard and sent for field guns. These were positioned at street intersections; loaded with grape, they could quickly be wheeled round and fired down any street where the enemy were massing.
That night Beresford ordered a counter-attack. Three parties set out at four in the morning, one to steal along the riverbank while the other two circled around to drive in from the flank. This was, however, a city in a feverish state of alert, and very soon they were detected and found themselves fighting for their lives.
Soon the British had no alternative but to pull back and tighten their defences.
Then at eleven in the morning there came a defining moment. Colonel Pack, at the head of his advance guard, was trying to hold the line in the face of impossible numbers when the firing began to fall off; in less than an hour it had stopped completely. Into the silence came an eerie, distant thumping. It strengthened until a small group appeared at the end of the long avenue. An ornately dressed officer in a plumed hat was preceded by a soldier with a massive drum on which he kept up a steady double beat – ta ta boom, ta ta boom. Behind him, two soldiers supported a large white flag of truce.
‘Let’s hear him, then,’ Pack growled.
It was the Virrey Diputado Quintana, who had earlier met them at the gates of the city to proffer surrender. This time he bore a letter from General Liniers. It was addressed to the commander-in-chief of the British forces, General Beresford.
Pack found a close escort for Quintana and he was taken to the fort where Beresford, it seemed, was not about to be impressed.
‘The general is in conference and will see you in due course,’ Quintana was told, and shown to an ante-room where he sat with his letter, fuming.
When at last he was ushered in he wasted no time. Standing rigidly erect, he intoned, ‘Sir. Comandante Liniers is privy to your difficulties in every wise and demands you give up the city of Buenos Aires.’
Beresford gave a thin smile. ‘Sir, I’m unaccustomed to demands placed upon my person by others, still less by a foreign officer. Good day to you, sir.’ With a brief bow he turned on his heel to leave.
‘General Beresford! Sir! I have a letter from the commander-in-chief of the Spanish forces, Comandante General Santiago Liniers.’
‘I give you joy of it,’ Beresford said tightly.
‘Sir, sir – the letter, it contains … It is very important!’
‘Very well. Read it,’ Beresford commanded his interpreter.
It began by pointing out that the British had seized Buenos Aires in the first place by an audacious stroke, enabled by a lack of direction of the population, but these same, inspired by patriotic enthusiasm and led by regular troops under a full general, were now about to fall on Beresford’s tiny force. It ended with an ultimatum demanding unconditional surrender by one o’clock.
‘Why, this is nothing but a threat, sir,’ Beresford said, in mock astonishment. ‘But do allow me to consider it for a space, and I shall pen a reply.’
Quintana was led away, expressionless.
‘Gentlemen,’ Beresford said, after his officers had assembled. ‘The Dons are in earnest, I believe.’
Clinton grinned and whispered to Kydd, ‘If the commodore knew what’s in contemplation, I’d wager he’d have an apoplexy.’
‘Do put a stopper on your jawing tackle, William.’
Kydd wondered how the general would style his withdrawal. It was fast becoming clear that Buenos Aires must be abandoned, either now or in the near future. If there were to be an orderly evacuation the rearguard must be supported at the same time as the main body was extracted, but without a wharf or normal port facilities it could be a hard-fought action for the Navy.
Beresford finally spoke, briefly and abruptly: ‘I do not propose to accede to this demand. My duty is clear – to hold the city until reinforced, which at this time I expect hourly. I shall not be quitting my post until then, you may believe. Gentlemen, I shall remain here as long as it is within my power to do so.’
There would be no withdrawal? No retreat out of the city, no return to the fleet – just a holding out until … Kydd glanced at Clinton, whose expression sobered, then turned grave.
The general issued various orders, then turned to Kydd. ‘Sir, I would ask that you find a transport to take off our sick and wounded, to be at the mole before one.’
This was barely disguised advice to any whose business was not at the end of a gun that they should for their own safety leave with them.
Kydd told the general he would attend to the transport directly. But did that include himself? A siege was without question a matter for the Army, which didn’t need distractions. For him, with few ships left and no port to speak of, perhaps it were better he left quietly and returned to L’Aurore.
Then, accusingly, a vivid recollection came of the time when he was a junior lieutenant at the siege of Acre, fighting alongside the Army. Together they had held out against Napoleon Bonaparte in person and prevailed, their victory owed squarely to the tenacity and loyalty of the Navy. If only to honour that memory he must stay and do what he could.
Taking Clinton aside, he told him, ‘I’m coming back after I get the wounded away – I have some ideas. I’ll need a dozen of your Royal Blues, which I’d be obliged if you’d find for me at my return.’
Clinton’s gaze was level and calm. ‘It’ll be done, sir.’
The mole was only a short distance from the fort and there was no firing on the injured soldiers as they were trundled over the mud on the high-wheeled carts and laid gently on the deck of the transport.
Kydd noted with concern that for a hundred yards or so it was open ground to the mole; if their final withdrawal was contested this might be a bloody place indeed.
But he put these qualms to one side for there was work to do. He planned to create a floating artillery platform that could lie offshore and fire into the enemy. This would need to be the shallowest-draught vessel he could find that would bear carriage guns. An empty grain brig, oddly named Iasthma, was conveniently at anchor offshore. Kydd bundled out its captain and crew, and set his party to preparing it as best they might.
It was simple but effective. Everything possible was offloaded – sails, furniture, victuals, spars, stores – and on the bare deck cannon were lined up to form a one-sided broadside. To manoeuvre, a kedge would be streamed out forward and another aft. Sail-power would be replaced by hard work at the capstan but now at least they had means to fight back.
He wished them well and returned to the fort, knowing the unearthly quiet would end at one o’clock. A distant trumpet bayed; it was taken up by another out to the left and one more to the south. An ugly, surging roar sounded in response. Coming ominously from all three directions, it meant that Liniers had succeeded in flanking Pack and his line, and now the net was tightening.
The fighting was vicious and one-sided. Although Pack could command the streets with his artillery it was the city buildings themselves that were his greatest foe. In deference to the sultry heat of summer each had a flat roof, edged for safety with a modest wall all round. Enemy marksmen quickly found these an admirable parapet and, firing down, made a hell of blood and death for the English gunners and any who stood to fight.
Iasthma hauled he
rself up and down the seafront, stopping only to open up with a crash of guns when enemy troops showed themselves. At one point Liniers ordered two of the Spanish field guns down to the shore and a gun duel opened. A hit brought down her mizzen and with it her ensign. Wild cheering erupted from the enemy. A nimble sailor, however, quickly had the colours aloft once more on the bare mainmast, and her crew gave savage cheers as they threw themselves into serving their guns.
Then, for reasons that couldn’t be made out from the shore, the brave vessel took fire, flames starting from her after end and rapidly finding naked powder charges, which flared and blazed. Her guns stopped, and in minutes her crew were in the water, making for the land – to inevitable death or capture.
Beresford had no choice: he pulled in his forces so that only the big square, the Plaza Mayor, was being defended, and this with every gun and soldier he had.
‘Captain – I’ve no right to ask it of you,’ he said, in a low voice to Kydd. ‘If I had any means of landing a force behind their lines to delay …’
Justina was one of the few vessels left in the roadstead. She had fulfilled her charter as troop transport and had been hovering, waiting for the rich cargoes promised. Now she was at anchor and deserted, her crew long since fled.
‘I shall need volunteers,’ Kydd replied, thinking of the gallant Royal Blues, fighting on land. This would be more to their liking and he knew he could count on them.
‘The St Helena men have volunteered,’ Beresford said, missing his meaning. ‘Artillery men all, they begged a more active war.’
Kydd was touched. That far-off island, a tiny speck in the vast wastes of the Atlantic – and since these were East India Company men, there was no compelling reason for them to be in this fearful cauldron.
He nodded. ‘Thank you, sir. We’ll sail immediately.’
It took a moment or two for Kydd to shift from a land-bound perspective back to the imperatives of the open sea. A respectable north-easterly was building so it would be close-hauled on the starboard tack and the tide safely making, with no doubt, a useful northerly current. It was possible.
Clinton had another Royal Blues detachment mustered ready. There were set faces among them: Iasthma’s fate might well be their own but none had been conscripted into the venture and all knew the risks.
An army subaltern reported that men had now been posted to cover the embarkation at the mole and it was time to leave.
‘I – I would wish you well of the day, sir,’ Clinton said, extending his hand. In his eyes Kydd saw a look almost of pleading and felt a chill presentiment steal over him.
‘Thank you, William,’ he replied, his handshake lingering. On an impulse he unbuckled his sword belt and handed across the fine blade that his Canadian uncle had provided for him and that he had treasured since crossing the miraculous gulf to become an officer. ‘Take care of this until I return, will you?’
He settled the broad baldric of a cutlass across his shoulders, then found a stout weapon, testing its edge, and slipped it into its scabbard. ‘Goodbye, my friend,’ he said simply, and left with his men.
Outside the fort there was a lethal chaos of bullets and stone splinters. Men ran crouched, while marines at the corners of the building fired up at windows and roof-tops until they reached the boats and pushed off.
Looking back as the boat pulled out strongly, Kydd saw a pall of powder-smoke drifting up from all around the dark bulk of the fort. Battle sounds floated out over the water and a choking atmosphere of war and waste was fast clamping in.
Justina was in a neglected state, rigging slack and hanging, her sails mildewed and dank, but by the time the last boatload of St Helenas had come alongside to join the Royal Blues they were ready to cast to the wind. No one spoke as they passed the city, then bore away to close with the land.
Kydd reasoned that after they’d passed the front line there would be far fewer of the enemy. Beresford needed a distraction in the enemy’s rear: if he placed his raiding force at any point from now on it would cause maximum shock and dismay and, conceivably, a lessening of pressure at the front – Liniers would be forced to turn back to deal with it.
They were sailing close to the chill north-easterly and made heavy going of the short, steep waves it kicked up, but they had the tide in their favour. Something niggled at the back of his brain about the combination but nothing crystallised and he shrugged it off.
He tried to find a place for the landing but no spot suggested itself. Possibly that small, tussocked headland? The tiller was brought over and, under brailed course, they nosed inshore. The St Helenas readied themselves, for without boats they would have to wade to the beach.
Then an unwelcome puff of white smoke showed at the shoreline and another: they would have to fight their way in.
The merchantman had only four six-pounders of doubtful vintage but these were plied with ferocity, their rage kicking up gouts of earth around the positions on the foreshore, which then fell silent. Musket fire came from a warehouse and Justina’s guns banged out – windows disappeared and black holes peppered the walls before there, too, resistance ceased.
If they were going to make their move, now was the time. ‘Ease away,’ he ordered, and the ship swung in to a closer angle.
‘Foul water!’ a seaman shrieked forward.
‘Hard t’ starb’d!’ Kydd snarled. There was a mud-shoal or some such ahead – but the clumsy vessel shied from the wind and slowly they ceased their forward motion.
It was the worst of situations. Not only were they prevented from going anywhere but they had lost that most priceless asset to a ship under sail: her manoeuvrability. And, of course, without boats there was no chance of hauling off. They could only wait and pray that the incoming tide would lift them off.
However, minutes later a troop of cavalry appeared along the shore, cantering along as they spied out the situation. Justina’s guns opened up and the leading horseman went down in a flurry of kicking but the rest increased to a reckless gallop until they were out of range, then turned and milled about in a watchful group.
Kydd had known there would be cavalry in their rear but they had come up so fast. Certainly now all ideas of a landing would have to be revised.
He improvised a hand lead with a belaying pin and went about the stationary vessel taking soundings. Expecting to find it shallower forward at the mud-bank and deeper aft, he found, to his surprise, that it was the same all around.
The treacherous Rio de la Plata had betrayed them. One of its inexplicable wind-driven surges had sent the mass of its headwater back against the tide flow and now the broad expanse of mud-flats was beginning to drain – and would leave them high and dry.
The cruel twist was hard to bear and he knew he must make some very bleak choices in the near future.
The cavalry made another pass and Justina’s guns thundered, sending up gouts of mud and water that deterred the horsemen, who raced away to regroup again.
But Kydd had seen one other thing. His gunners had slammed in their quoins to their maximum and the guns were now at the extremity of depression. It meant that as the ship settled on its muddy bed it was canting over. Very soon the guns facing the shore would be pointing helplessly at the sky and on the other side directly into the sea and mud.
The cavalry troop was now being joined by a larger mass of horsemen, galloping along the wide strip of wet mud down by the shoreline. In minutes they would notice Justina’s plight and then they would make their charge.
And they were completely helpless. Kydd tried to cudgel his brain into providing some last ingenious trick that would see them sail away but-
‘They’re coming!’
Led by an officer in plumes and frogging, waving a sabre, the mass of horsemen splashed into the water in a glorious charge towards them.
There were no longer any options.
Kydd opened his mouth to order the colours to be struck – but, of course, there were none, Justina not being in naval commis
sion. In an ultimate stroke of irony they were to be massacred because they could not surrender.
He sent a nervous soldier below to find a bedsheet, which was hung over the side just in time. With much splashing and triumphant whoops, the cavalry sheathed their sabres and noisily surrounded the vessel. The officer shouted hoarsely and they obediently fell back to allow him to get through and climb on to the low main-deck.
Snatching off his tall shako he swept down in a deep bow. When he rose Kydd saw a preposterously young man with intelligent and fine-drawn features.
‘Teniente Martin Miguel de Guemes, your service, sir,’ he said. ‘The fortunes of war – and this ship is prize of His Catholic Majesty.’ He held out both hands meaningfully.
His cup of bitterness full, Kydd slowly unbuckled and rendered up his weapon, his career as a sea officer ended.
A bullet struck the fort roof parapet near Clinton and ricocheted off; he felt the usual sting of stone chips – but this was more serious. They were being fired on from a higher angle. He looked about the chaos of smoke and dust and spied where it was coming from. The San Miguel church.
‘Sar’nt Dodd – we’ve got to get to those rascals or they’ll make it impossible to man our guns.’
The sergeant nodded. ‘Oi – you two!’ he called, and two marines left their embrasures to report.
‘Follow me,’ Clinton ordered, and rattled down the steps to the base of the fort. The square was alive with men, guns and noise, and as they raced across to the ornate church at the corner the air was choked with acrid gun-smoke, the whip and zing of unseen missiles.
They reached the massive doors. Dodd tried to force them open but their solidity resisted all his panting efforts.
‘Bayonets.’
Their points were levered into cracks and the butts of their muskets used as battering rams, but to no avail. When one of the marines fell with a cry, the effort was abandoned.
‘I’ll do it, if’n you’ll leave me at it!’ Dodd gasped, hefting a length of market timber.
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