Murray looked dubious, but clearly saw the potential of the plan. ‘That would need the peer’s permission,’ he said, using the name commonly employed by Wellington’s staff following his elevation. ‘Once the French close the circle around the city, there is a strong chance that they will not get out again.’
‘They could not leave once they are there. That would give the wrong sort of gesture altogether and spoil any good it had done.’ Baynes still watched Hanley, and there was a trace of admiration in his voice. ‘We must be prepared to pay a price for this. The only chance would be if the city fell, and by then they might be dead or trapped without any hope of escape.’
‘Yes,’ said Hanley, ‘they might indeed, and Herrasti will know that, and so be more inclined to feel that we will save him.’
Murray remained sceptical. ‘I shall ask. If Lord Wellington says yes, then in the circumstances we would also need to speak to the Spanish.’
‘I cannot see them refusing.’ Baynes was confident and his gaze fell on the lieutenant. ‘An individual may be able to sneak out of the city more easily, especially if he is clever.’
‘That is reasonable to suppose,’ Hanley said, returning the stare.
‘If Joseph’s agents are at work in Ciudad Rodrigo, then I believe you should go and look for them before they do serious harm. You will be able to call on your friends for assistance, should it prove necessary.’
‘You have already chosen the ones to go?’
‘And you have not?’ Baynes gave a half-smile, ignoring the slightly puzzled expression of Colonel Murray. ‘My dear William, do not think I am sending you to Ciudad Rodrigo as some form of penance. If someone, perhaps Velarde, is there, then he must be found and prevented from doing us harm.’
Hanley rubbed his chin, and realised that he must have forgotten to shave, for his normally thick stubble felt very rough indeed. ‘Before that I believe I should go to Salamanca.’
For the first time Baynes registered the slightest trace of surprise, before the mask returned an instant later.
‘Velarde is more likely to be there, at least at the moment.’ Hanley tried to sound more confident than he felt. ‘If he is there, then our sources may be in danger and should be warned.’
‘Sentiment?’ said Baynes.
‘Simple practicality. They are little use to us dead. I also suspect that it will be easier to find Velarde’s trail from there.’
‘If he is there.’
‘Yes, if he is.’ Hanley tried and failed to read Baynes’ secret thoughts.
‘Hmm, I think we shall be wise to let you follow your instincts, wherever they lead. You had better not go alone, though. I have someone suitable to accompany you.’
‘As protection?’
‘Let us say to preserve what you know.’
Hanley was shrewd enough not to find that a great comfort.
‘Of course.’
‘I do like a willing volunteer,’ said Colonel Murray, ‘and now I should leave you to plan your sinister schemes and try to get the peer’s attention.’
14
Compared to Fort La Concepción, Ciudad Rodrigo looked very old.
‘Moorish work, do you think?’ Williams asked Pringle as they looked out from the north-western corner of the roughly square city walls. Behind them was the high domed tower of the cathedral.
‘Looks like it, although someone must have made them thicker at some point.’ The high medieval walls were now wide enough to take a cannon and let it slam back in recoil without tumbling off. There were a few old towers, but no bastions and only simple embrasures cut out of the parapet. It would be hard to fire many guns at the same target, and when the enemy got closer there were most likely blind spots safe from the blasts of the defenders’ cannons. Height was no longer the advantage it had once been. There was a ditch in front of the wall, and this was divided into two by an earth wall and given modern bastions, but these did not mount cannon at present and it was hard to imagine the defenders being able to hold these once the besiegers worked their way closer. The spoil of the ditch was used to make a glacis, but the walls were too high for this to offer much protection.
‘That’s the way they’ll come,’ said Williams, and rested his telescope on the battlement. It was a heavy glass, intended to be mounted on a tripod, and had been a gift from his mother when he joined the army. The magnification was excellent, but it was really too cumbersome for a soldier. Williams refused to accept this, and carried the bulky thing with stubborn determination.
Billy Pringle did not need to draw his own glass to know that his lieutenant was right. To the south of the town was the River Agueda, filled to the brim with spring rain and making even these old city walls very difficult to attack. East of the town sprawled a suburb, with dozens of stone houses and walled gardens. In the last year the governor had fortified three stoutly built convents and thrown up earthworks around the whole area. It was not impossible to come that way, but it was difficult. To the west beside the river yet another convent had been turned into a miniature fortress, and walled orchards and gardens offered more good defensive positions.
It did not matter. Williams looked to the north, where a few hundred yards from the north-western corner of the town a hill rose up sharply. Beyond it was another, even bigger hill.
‘They are called the Little and Great Tesons,’ said Pringle. From the Great Teson French gunners could look down over the glacis and see the base of the old medieval wall. The hill was well within range of siege guns, and if the artillerymen could see a target then they could also pound it steadily, and the Moorish architects had not built their wall to withstand the weapons of the future. Sieges were slow affairs, as the attackers dug their way gradually closer and closer. By the time the French reached the Little Teson, the walls would most surely be breached if their gunners were any good at all – and the artillery was the Emperor’s own arm and many said that French gunners were the best in the world. Once they had batteries on the nearer hill they could pound the city and its defences to dust.
‘It seems that we have some distinguished guests.’ Williams drew back from his glass and pointed. Pringle gratefully pushed his spectacles back to the top of his head and leaned down to take a look. The lens needed some adjustment for his eye, but as the blurs became sharp he saw a group of horsemen atop the Great Teson. Some were gaudily dressed – no doubt the ADCs – but the important men were in dark blue coats and from this distance he could not really make out the heavy gold lace and the thick plumes on their cocked hats. The men were generals, perhaps even one of the marshals who had made all Europe tremble.
‘Captain Pringle, sir.’ The interruption came from Lieutenant Leyne, an eager young Irishman whose voice was still apt to break at moments of excitement like this. ‘The governor wants us.’ Leyne was short and a good deal bigger around the middle than Pringle himself. The dash up to the ramparts to find his commander had left him with a face nearly as scarlet as his jacket. ‘All of us, sir!’ added Leyne, almost bursting with enthusiasm.
‘Bills, you had better form the company. Now, young Philip, you had better show me the way.’ Pringle was twenty-six, and that seemed so ancient compared to the seventeen-year-old lieutenant beside him. Perhaps, he thought ruefully, the real difference was that Leyne had yet to see any action. That tended to age a man quickly.
An hour later and it seemed as if Leyne would very soon get his long-desired first whiff of powder. A major from General Herrasti’s staff had led them to the lee of the Convent of Santa Cruz, the outpost beyond the western walls of the fortress.
Pringle had his entire command of almost fifty officers and men with him. Apart from Williams and Leyne, he had Lieutenant Dolosa, and while Billy continued to have doubts about the man, so far he had more than played his part, helping them to settle in since their arrival five days ago. If any of the officers looked nervous, it was Leyne, who could not keep still and continually hopped from foot to foot.
His NCOs were all good. Dobso
n and Murphy were old comrades, and Corporal Rose of the 51st was a quietly competent young man from Warwickshire. That all three shared a mutual respect for the Spanish sergeant and two corporals was an extremely high recommendation; they seemed part of some instinctive brotherhood of non-commissioned officers. His thirty-nine men were a different matter, part of the second batch of raw recruits to come to Fort La Concepción. Although Spanish and British instructors had done their best, the men had simply not yet had the time to be ready.
Nevertheless, the orders had come to send a company to Ciudad Rodrigo. Pringle could see that MacAndrews was none too pleased, especially since the orders had specified that Billy was to command and Williams to go with him. The instructions claimed that they would help to train the garrison of the city, but there was no hint of that once they arrived. They were a reinforcement pure and simple, and Pringle found it worrying to think that they might be one of the better-trained companies in the garrison. Of even greater concern was his suspicion that Hanley had played a part in their new orders. His friend was a worthy chap in many ways, but he was also a gambler who got a thrill from the scale of the stakes. A year before he had helped engineer an attack on a detachment under Pringle’s command, so that the enemy would in turn be surprised by Allied cavalry. It had worked – just barely – but men had died and Billy doubted that Hanley thought of such things and instead focused solely on winning.
The Spanish major looked at his watch and then led them behind the high convent walls and threaded his way through the gardens and orchards. Eventually he halted them, and gestured for Pringle to come with him to an arched gateway and told him in French to be careful. The man spoke the language well, and it seemed their best chance of avoiding confusion.
They walked to a bank topped by a hedge and the major took off his hat before he peered over the top. Pringle copied him, and saw that there was an outpost of French infantry on a low knoll ahead of them. He counted twenty men, a couple of them on guard looking towards the city and the rest sitting on their packs, most smoking short clay pipes. It was a warmer day, and, although it was cloudy, the rain stayed away, yet the Frenchmen wore their dark blue coats. Their collars were yellow, their epaulettes green and yellow and they had tall plumes on their shakos. The men were voltigeurs, the skirmishers of a French battalion.
‘At eleven o’clock the general will send a thousand men out of the main gate against the French,’ said the major. ‘Ten minutes later, take your company and attack this picket. Another company from the Majorca Regiment has worked round through the gardens and will come up behind them. With luck, they will be trapped between you and you can take or kill them all.’
Pringle’s experience made him deeply suspicious of any plan relying on luck. He would have liked to meet the commander of the other company. It seemed strange that he had not seen them pass as they waited, but it was possible that the Majorca men had been in position for hours.
‘I must go,’ the major announced, and that was also worrying, and then Pringle wondered whether he was simply innately suspicious of commanders he did not know – especially ones who were not British.
Pringle called his officers forward and explained the plan. Dolosa’s English was now much improved, and his only questions were ones of detail, not understanding.
‘Is there a signal that will tell us the Majorca Regiment is in position?’
Pringle shook his head, his own doubts reinforced by the expressions of Williams and the Spanish lieutenant. Leyne’s nervous excitement clearly did not permit him similar thoughts.
At eleven o’clock cannon opened fire from all along the city walls. The sound was encouraging, and no doubt that was the intention, but good targets were few as the French outposts were scattered and at some distance. Between the shots they heard cheering, and Pringle guessed that this was the main column launching its attack.
Ten minutes seemed more like hours as they waited. Pringle told Williams to keep the French picket under observation.
‘They’ve formed up,’ he whispered as soon as the main attack began.
Pringle was counting in his head, and only when he thought it was getting close did he fish out his watch and flick open the cover. There was almost a minute to go. The Spanish sergeant had just finished checking the men’s flints. Pringle had not given the order, but the man had gone ahead, knowing that having something to do helped soldiers to deal with their nerves. In time, and with such NCOs, Billy was sure that this could become a good company.
It was ten past eleven.
‘Bills, take your party through and watch our left.’
Williams and the three redcoats would act as skirmishers. It was little more than a token, for four men could scarcely form a serious skirmish line, but Billy Pringle reckoned that the lieutenant and the three NCOs might do more good than if they simply reinforced the line.
The four men jogged through the gap in the hedge. Pringle gave them a moment and then gestured to the company. Sergeant Rodriguez bellowed the command and the recruits followed the British captain. They went in a little column two abreast, and once they were through into the field beyond, the sergeant shouted again and they wheeled to the right to form a line two deep. That was the British way and the method MacAndrews had taught. The Spanish, like the French and all the rest of Europe, usually deployed in three ranks, giving their line greater solidity. For a moment Pringle wished he had thought of doing this, but in truth he had too few men.
Williams was kneeling, ahead and over to the left, and then he pulled the trigger. Rose fired a moment later, and then both were reloading as Dobson and Murphy respectively covered them. Sergeants of a grenadier company were supposed to carry a solid half-pike, but Dobson disliked so basic a weapon and Murphy was newly promoted, and both had stuck to their old muskets.
A Frenchman was down, clutching at his knee, but the rest of the picket had shaken out into a chain of skirmishers facing them. It was this movement that had prompted Williams to open fire. Surprise had gone.
Pringle took the company forward, standing a few paces ahead of its right flank. Leyne was behind him and Dolosa watched the left. Billy felt his boots sinking an inch or so into the mud and was surprised at just how waterlogged the field was. Already the ranks were uneven, the rudimentary drill his soldiers had failing to cope with the slippery ground. Flecks of mud were already peppered over Pringle’s boots and his white breeches.
The French were still more than a hundred yards away. That was quite a long range for accurate musketry, but the enemy were already firing. Pringle heard a ball fly close by his cheek. He made himself march on without showing any emotion. His Talavera wound began to itch. There was no sign of the Majorca Regiment, but perhaps they were behind the French outpost and were creeping steadily closer, unnoticed because all of the voltigeurs’ attention was fixed on his men.
Dobson and Murphy fired, now that Williams and Rose had reloaded and were ready to cover them. Half a dozen voltigeurs were aiming at the redcoats, but all the rest shot at the better target of the formed company. There was a terrible, high-pitched scream as one of the recruits was hit in the groin, blood gushing out on to his grey trousers.
‘Keep going!’ called Pringle.
The company stopped, men staring in horror as the man cried out and tried in vain to staunch the flow.
Dolosa was yelling and so were the NCOs, all of them trying to get the company moving again. Sergeant Rodriguez took one man by the shoulders and bodily pushed him forward, and then did the same to the man beside him, but the first one had already frozen again.
Someone fired, not aiming the musket, but simply swinging it down from the shoulder and sending a ball high above the voltigeurs. The sergeant bawled at the man, telling him he would be punished, but it was simply too much for the young soldiers to stand by and not do something against the enemy firing at them. Three more men fired and then the rest copied them. It was no volley, instead more like the spattering of raindrops on a window at
the start of a heavy shower. No Frenchmen fell, and Pringle doubted that any shot came anywhere near its target.
The recruits were happier now, the enemy more than half hidden behind a cloud of dirty grey powder smoke. They began reloading, but they were painfully slow. Men fumbled as they fished for cartridges in their pouches, then spilled half the powder when they bit through the paper. More than one dropped the ball without noticing, and went on regardless. Sergeant Rodriguez cuffed a man who tipped ball and cartridge down the barrel without first taking a pinch of powder for the pan. The young soldier stared blankly at the angry NCO, and then a ball struck him in the chest and he dropped, a look of utter astonishment on his face.
None of the men managed to reload in less than a minute, and they ignored the orders to wait and fired as soon as they were ready. Pringle was better placed to see past the smoke and once again did not see any Frenchman fall. Nor was there the slightest sign of the company from the Majorca Regiment. If they stayed where they were they would lose men and probably do little damage to the enemy. That was fine if the other company arrived behind the French, but would be sheer waste if they did not. Billy Pringle made a decision.
‘Bayonets!’ he shouted. ‘Bayonets!’
Dolosa, Sergeant Rodriguez and the corporals began jostling the men to stop them from loading. With much cursing and a good few blows, one by one they got the recruits to draw bayonets. Once again it was clumsy. Bayonets slipped from nervous hands, and one man dropped the butt of his musket so hard that the hammer slammed down and it fired, driving the ball through his own left wrist. Rodriguez pulled the man out of the line and sent him to the rear, telling him not to make a fuss. The boy – like the rest of them he was really no more than a boy – looked surprised to be rebuked, and then silently walked away, looking like a child worried at being scolded by a parent.
Lieutenant Dolosa was yelling, speaking so fast that Pringle could only just understand the words, telling the men that this was their chance to punish the French for invading their land.
All in Scarlet Uniform (Napoleonic War 4) Page 15