All in Scarlet Uniform (Napoleonic War 4)

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  ‘Look, sir!’ That was Corporal Rose, who seemed to see unusually well at night. Hanley saw the gleam of bayonets and shadows coming towards them.

  ‘Present!’ Williams shouted. ‘Aim low!’ he added in Spanish.

  ‘Fire!’ The volley punched into the night and for a moment Hanley clearly saw the line of French soldiers in their bright white cross-belts.

  ‘Sorry, William, I seem to be taking over,’ Williams said apologetically.

  ‘Keep them at it,’ Hanley said.

  The French had pulled back some way, so that they could only just be seen as a deeper shadow in the night. Then a building flamed into light over to the right and as the fire blossomed Hanley could see the line of soldiers more clearly.

  ‘A company,’ Williams said before Hanley had finished counting. ‘Perhaps another behind.’ The French still did not fire. ‘They’re up to something.’

  Shouts and a burst of firing came from further down the glacis on their right.

  ‘Sods have broken through on our flank!’ shouted Dobson, who was stationed at that end of the company.

  ‘Back to the town!’ shouted the Spanish major. ‘Or we’ll be cut off!’

  The recruits looked nervously over their shoulders, shuffling as they reloaded.

  ‘Stand fast!’ Rodriguez shouted.

  ‘Give them one volley, and then we go back,’ Williams ordered. He glanced at Hanley for a moment, who saw that they were ready.

  ‘Vive l’empereur!’ The French ahead of them were advancing again, marching forward in order. There was a flicker of red gleams as their bayonets came down to the charge, catching the glow of the burning house.

  ‘Present!’ Hanley shouted, but his voice cracked and he had to cough. ‘Present!’ he repeated. The small line brought their muskets up to their shoulders. Hanley was sure he saw the French hesitate for an instant, stopping in their tracks.

  ‘Fire!’ The volley came almost as one, stabbing into the night.

  ‘Now back!’ he called. ‘Back!’ The sergeants added their shouts and the recruits doubled back down into the covered way and along towards the gate. Hanley waited for a moment and as the smoke thinned he saw that the French line had stopped, with two men down, one of them screaming in agony.

  Then the enemy came forward again and he fled.

  Williams and the sergeants rallied the men in front of the gate. They were held there with another company for an hour, but the French made no effort to come further and eventually they were dismissed to get two hours’ sleep before they were needed again.

  No one cheered the redcoats as they walked through the dark streets. Soldiers and civilians alike looked too tired to care or hope.

  Hanley was struggling to keep his eyes open when they reached their billet. He felt exhausted, his mind and senses unclear, so that it was an effort simply to walk.

  The door of their room was open, and suddenly Hanley was coldly awake. The cots were tipped on their sides, chairs and table knocked over, and papers strewn about the floor. Williams’ Bible was lying open on its face, several pages torn from it. That sight seemed to upset him more than the chaos.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, fishing among the debris for the pages of a long letter he was writing to Miss MacAndrews in the hope of being able to send it one day. ‘You’d think you would be safe from thieves here.’

  Hanley searched carefully. The pouch of letters he had taken from Velarde was still there, but empty. Carefully he hunted for the contents and found everything.

  ‘I do not believe this was a chance robbery,’ he said, certainty growing. ‘Any money gone?’

  ‘Didn’t have much to go,’ his friend said gloomily, but made a quick investigation. ‘No, although this purse was staring them in the face.’

  ‘Thought not. I suspect this is what they wanted.’ Hanley reached into his jacket and pulled out the coded page. ‘It must be more important than I thought.’

  ‘Still no idea what it is?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ he said.

  23

  At dawn the French guns opened fire with renewed fury, dashing hopes of shortages. Twenty-four pound shot deluged the breach, quickly smashing the hasty repairs made by the city’s engineers. The work on the Second Parallel was much advanced, and only strict orders from Marshal Masséna prevented the commander of 6th Corps from going there to urge the workers on as they made the new batteries that would fire at point-blank range. Instead, Ney sent one of his ADCs.

  ‘Engineers are all very well,’ he said, ‘but I need a soldier’s opinion.’

  Dalmas returned two hours later, covered in mud, much to the amusement of his commander.

  ‘Shocking standards on my staff these days,’ Marshal Ney said, his cheeks looking even redder than usual. ‘You look like you have been shovelling shit. Good job you weren’t wearing that ironmongery of yours otherwise you’d go rusty.’

  ‘Your grace,’ Dalmas said, used to the marshal’s ways. He was in his single-breasted blue tunic and wore a plain soldier’s bonnet rather than his helmet.

  ‘Well, man, tell me, how is it coming along?’

  ‘Battery Eleven is close to completion.’

  ‘The ricochet battery?’

  Dalmas nodded. The guns were to be placed so that they could fire at a sharp angle along the wall, grazing or bouncing off it to destroy any repairs and slaughter the defenders who tried to work there. ‘I am not sure the angle is right.’

  ‘Useless bloody gunners,’ the marshal said, noticing the stiff looks from the artillery officers attending him.

  ‘I do assure you, your grace …’ one of them began.

  ‘Do it later. The proof will be if the thing does its job. The mines?’

  ‘Progressing well although the ground is rocky and hard to work.’ Dalmas had gone into the shafts, and watched the bare-chested sappers carving out a deep mine that would eventually allow them to blow in the counter-scarp. It was a hot day above ground. In the mine, the sweat poured off the toiling men and it was hard to breathe.

  ‘Useless bloody place. We’re either drowning in mud or hacking at stone. How long to finish them?’ Marshal Ney snapped the question at his senior engineer, who in turn glanced at a subordinate.

  ‘Three more days and nights.’

  ‘Dalmas?’

  Again Dalmas nodded. ‘Should be ready on time. The men are working in relays in spite of the dreadful conditions.’ He offered the praise in part because he did not want to be complicit in the marshal’s teasing of his senior officers.

  ‘Good. What if the Spanish try to stop us?’

  ‘They should not know of the mines,’ the senior engineer said quickly.

  ‘And they may be blind and deaf, but they are probably not.’ The marshal made his impatience clear. ‘What if the Spanish try to stop us?’ he asked again.

  ‘A half-company fully armed is kept behind the mine workings.’ The speaker was Chef de Bataillon Pelet, Marshal Masséna’s senior ADC. An engineer and surveyor by training, Pelet’s manner was formal and more than a little self-satisfied, but Dalmas felt that the man was competent. ‘Two more are in the parallel day and night, and three back here ready to go forward if required.’

  Marshal Ney merely grunted his approval.

  ‘Well done, Dalmas,’ he said, choosing to give the praise to a member of his own staff. ‘Three days, gentlemen, and this city is ours.’ There was no formal dismissal of the meeting, but now that they were beginning the fourth week of open trenches the officers were all used to the marshal’s brusqueness. He simply turned his back, and shaded his eyes to peer at the city.

  Dalmas waited.

  ‘Ah, Dalmas. You should go and get some rest.’

  ‘There is the other matter, your grace,’ the captain said.

  ‘Hmm, indeed.’ Marshal Ney returned to staring at Ciudad Rodrigo and the cuirassier waited.

  ‘Why should I let you waste your time, and give you soldiers to keep you company?’ The question was a
brupt, but the marshal did not turn and still had his back to his ADC.

  ‘The Emperor wants it,’ Dalmas said immediately. The orders had actually come from Marshal Masséna’s staff, but ultimately they were from Paris.

  ‘The Emperor, God save his pride, wants a lot of things. And usually he wants them yesterday.’

  ‘Velarde – or Espinosa as he now calls himself – is valuable.’

  ‘If he is alive. What happened to that surrender we were promised? Now I look a fool, summoning the city to surrender so soon. That one-eyed bastard’ – Dalmas knew the marshal meant the Prince of Essling – ‘wanted me to do it, but you know damned well that we’ll hear no more of that. No quick surrender and so we must do it the hard way and I lose men in this mud. What value does Espinosa or whatever he is called have now?’

  ‘Knowledge, sir. The man knows the names of those favourable to our cause here and in many other places in Spain. He even knows people in Portugal.’

  ‘We have the marquis for Portugal,’ Ney said without conviction. ‘Assuming someone else buttons his breeches for him first and tells him what to say.’ The Marquis d’Alorna travelled with the French army. Opinion varied over whether the Portuguese aristocrat was a true supporter of the French or simply an adventurer. No one thought much of his ability or intelligence.

  ‘Espinosa was clever, your grace. More useful for us and more dangerous.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘It seems reasonable to assume that he is dead, or at the least captured. If he was outside the city then he would have sent word or appeared.’

  Ney turned around. ‘So he is dead. Forget him.’

  ‘He carried a paper on him, with a list of names and other details.’

  ‘Then he was a bloody fool,’ said the marshal, readily convinced that the past tense was appropriate.

  ‘He carried even more knowledge in his head.’ Dalmas flicked his gloves to brush some of the dirt from his jacket. ‘It would be a shame if the enemy were to obtain the paper or the information.

  ‘I suspect that the English agent from Salamanca is now in Ciudad Rodrigo.’

  ‘The sod you failed to catch,’ Ney added sharply.

  Dalmas never minded his commander’s provocations. ‘Espinosa liked being clever. It was not the plan, but I suspect he found this Englishman and convinced him to help him get into Ciudad Rodrigo. He passed several of our patrols with a companion in uniform.’

  ‘So what went wrong for this clever man?’

  ‘The Englishman probably killed him or had him arrested.’

  Marshal Ney gave a nod. ‘Not that clever, then.’

  ‘If the Englishman has learned what Espinosa knew, or obtained his papers, then he is dangerous and it would be unwise to let him reach Lord Wellington.’ Dalmas imagined the Spanish and Portuguese arresting almost all the key French agents, men close to the regency councils in both countries. ‘It will make victory slower and more costly, and a true peace harder to achieve.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Ney looked his ADC up and down. ‘You really do look filthy. Why do I keep you on my staff?’

  ‘Because I know how to win, your grace. Like you.’

  Ney snorted with laughter. ‘Do I? Well, what I really know is that the way to win is to smash Wellington in battle, and since he has not come to the rescue of this fleapit, we should not be wasting our time, but advancing on him. Let him fight or run, and in six weeks the war would be over. But sadly I am not in charge.’ The marshal’s tone suggested the obvious imbecility of such a situation. ‘So I must take orders and watch as we waste time, effort and men for nothing. I am instructed by the Prince to put my best man in charge of dealing with this problem. My best men are busy, so I will give him you!

  ‘When the city falls you will find this English agent. To assist you, you may take thirty dragoons from the Fifteenth, and Captain Duroc’s company from the Légion du Midi. Understood?’

  ‘Your grace.’

  ‘Before that you can do something useful. The Spanish are sending men down in large parties to draw water from the river. That means they must be short of water and so we should stop them from getting it. In three hours I want a plan to set posts to ambush or drive off anyone going near the riverbank.’ Marshal Ney smiled. ‘Show me how we win this one. Three hours, Dalmas, three hours.’

  The plan worked. New pickets and a few small field pieces, placed to cover the Spanish side of the river while remaining safe from the guns on the walls, caused such heavy losses to the water-gathering parties that the garrison stopped sending them. Small groups of women still came to fill kettles and buckets, but when the regimental commander asked what to do, Marshal Ney sent strict orders to leave them alone. They could not carry enough to make a real difference.

  At dawn the next day all the batteries opened fire. Dalmas had the thin satisfaction of hearing the report from the artillery commander that the ricochet battery was indeed at a poor angle to do its work. It did not matter. The newly complete batteries in the Second Parallel were so close to the walls that the eight twenty-four pounders heaved up into them were devastating. Dalmas watched from further along the trenches, so that he could better observe their fire.

  The gunners had to be careful. When a piece was loaded they hauled it into place. Only then did men tasked with the job pluck aside the gabions closing the mouth of the embrasure. Aim was perfected in a few moments, for the elevation remained the same and they were so close that it did not need to be exact. The crew sprang back, covering their ears with their hands, and then a gunner touched the burning match into the quill of fine powder thrust into the vent. The quill flared instantly, followed a fraction of a second later by the savage explosion of the main charge, which flung the heavy carriage backwards, driving the planks they had set down underneath it further into the soil. Dalmas could see the strike almost instantly, slamming into the wall with terrible violence. Flimsy repairs thrown up in timber and earth overnight were shattered to matchwood in a moment. The breach grew wider, and as the cuirassier captain watched he saw large chunks of stone crumble. Then whole buttresses collapsed and he saw the spoil inside tumbled down.

  It was not one sided. The French batteries were close and in spite of the fire of the supporting batteries the Spanish continued to man the guns on the ramparts. Some could do no more than pummel the earthworks of the batteries, gnawing at them piece by tiny piece. Others were able to fire through the embrasures and so they waited, trying to time the shot for those brief few seconds when these were uncovered, and send a ball straight through into the battery. It was difficult work, requiring delicate aim, and meant the crews waited beside their loaded guns. More than once a well-placed howitzer or mortar shell plopped on to the top of the wall and massacred an entire crew. Other Spanish gunners died in ones and twos. They were replaced, and if the fire from the wall sometimes slackened it never stopped for long.

  One ball whirred through an embrasure to shatter the head of the gunner holding the linstock with its burning match. The headless body stood for a moment, blood pumping high, before it seemed to fold down into itself. In a moment the corpse was dragged away, and a lieutenant took up the match and fired the shot. He stayed there for two more shots before passing the smouldering match and the task over to a corporal. Instead he went to help them covering and uncovering the embrasure, and so was there when a twelve-pound shot came from the walls and struck the rampart, flinging earth and a handful of stones that sprang up to drive into the lieutenant’s face and eyes. Dalmas watched as they carried the screaming man back on a stretcher. It was a relief when he passed out.

  The first French gun fell silent when another ball glanced off the barrel, ripping off one of the great handles used to help lift it from the travelling to the firing position. Dalmas was close enough to hear the Spanish gunners cheering at this strike. A colonel came to look at the scarred bronze and decided that they could not risk putting in a charge until the gun had been tested. A second twenty-four pounder fell silent
when the top of its left wheel was smashed by another ball. That was not too serious, but a forward battery was not the place to replace the ruined wheel and so the gun would rest quietly until night fell and the work could be done. The hit to the third cannon was more serious. Time after time two Spanish guns had put shot into the embrasure, battering down the gabions placed in front. It took a good deal of work and savage cursing to repair the damage and so the gun could not fire for several hours. When the task was complete, it managed only two shots before a six-pounder ball clipped the muzzle and ran up along the barrel with a sound weirdly like a bell pealing. Big cracks opened up in the wooden carriage, pulling it apart from the heavy iron reinforcement, and no one wanted to risk charging the gun in case the barrel exploded.

  Reduced to five guns, the two main batteries in the Second Parallel fired throughout the day. That night Dalmas heard that the gunners had sent 1,689 balls and 420 shells into the town between dawn and dusk. At the time Dalmas had simply watched the gunners toiling and seen them dousing whole sheepskins in water to throw over the heavy barrels of the guns, throwing up steam but helping to cool the metal. All artillerymen feared an overheated barrel setting off the charge prematurely and either bursting the gun into pieces or more likely firing out the rammer or sponge to impale the man loading the piece. Sponges soaked in buckets hissed as they were thrust into the hot barrel after each shot, putting out the dangerous embers. The spongemen did the job thoroughly, another crewman equipped with a heavy leather thumbstock pressing down over the vent so there was no flow of oxygen to reignite the remaining gases and cause a new explosion.

  At eight and a half feet long, the brass barrels were far taller than a man and several times the thickness and weight of a field gun. The powder bags were big, and even at this range more than one was fed in, before two men staggered to lift the shot up into the barrel. More often than not the rammer also needed two men to force it down tightly, especially as the crews wearied during the long day. Then the ventman pricked the powder bag and stuck the quill into the charge ready for firing. The gun captain checked that the elevation screw had not altered in the recoil from the last shot – usually he had to do nothing – and then gestured to the men to haul on the drag ropes and heave the great cannon forward again. As well as the half-dozen gunners, there were as many more volunteers from the infantry to help them, and even with all these assistants Dalmas could see the veins straining in the men’s faces as they pulled. Gunners and infantrymen alike were all long since in shirtsleeves, backs wet with sweat. A row of jackets lay draped on the inside of the rampart. As well as the usual blue of the line infantry, he spotted a couple of the red jackets worn by the Hanoverian Legion, and the brown-faced blue of the Légion du Midi.