Beat the Drums Slowly

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  ‘I want a line either side of the road. Put them about a yard out, leaning towards the road, and then sharpen the tops.’ He thought for a moment. ‘How wide is a horse?’

  Mulligan pondered for a moment. ‘Couple of feet, I suppose.’

  ‘I want it so that a cavalryman can’t squeeze through between them.’

  ‘How about we put them a yard apart and then have another line a couple of feet back and in the gaps.’

  ‘Excellent. The ground’s hard so it won’t be easy.’

  ‘We’ll manage, sir.’ The corporal was holding a bulky sledgehammer.

  ‘I got the idea from Agincourt,’ said Williams.

  Mulligan shook his head. ‘Don’t know the gentleman, sir.’ The officer was not quite sure whether the man was serious.

  Williams walked on to the bridge. The two artificers had prised up one of the stones. Underneath was hard-packed gravel.

  ‘Going to be hard to shift,’ said the older of the two men.

  A shot split the peaceful air. ‘Cavalry!’ shouted the sentry up on the rocky hill. Williams looked and spotted a lance pennant just above the point where the road dipped into the ravine to come down to the bridge. Far too far even for a rifle shot. ‘Two of them, sir!’

  So much for surprise, he thought wearily. It was only a patrol, but they would have seen red coats and blue and would know that there were soldiers – British soldiers – around the bridge. Maybe there was one more surprise. Williams turned back to the artificers.

  ‘Make a trail of powder leading back from this hole. Do it so that they can see you.’

  ‘What’s the point, sir? We haven’t even made space for a charge, let alone put one in place.’

  ‘Yes, but they won’t know that, will they.’

  And perhaps, Williams thought to himself, just perhaps, it will make them rush.

  22

  It was raining again, and the drops spattered on to the churned soil as Murphy piled up a little cairn over the grave. His wife’s tears flowed as quickly as the rain could wash them away. It was a terrible thing, and maybe worse for a woman, although he knew that he would miss the little chuckles of the boy. He had been growing, and it seemed every day he was more aware of them, and alert to what went on around him. Mary tried to sing, and the words choked so he sang for her as he had heard others lament at funerals. He knew she would have liked a priest, but he had not been able to find one. They had arrived in the dark and left the straggling village before dawn. The child had died some time during their short hours of sleep. Mary had been so weary that it was only when she woke that she realised what had happened. The other women had gathered, and some had tried to rub life back into the little body while others comforted the mother.

  In not much more than a day the reserve had marched forty miles, through sleet and later the driving rain. There was little food and no shelter, and no wagons left with room to carry the women and children. Esther MacAndrews was walking as often as she rode, letting one of the exhausted wives sit uncomfortably astride her horse to give them some rest. The major’s wife was starting to look old and drawn, but she still fussed over the children and encouraged the women along. She had wept when she saw the little corpse, and pushed her way through the others to embrace poor Mrs Murphy. Esther remembered the black despair of burying her own children.

  There were corpses all along the road. The horses were heaped on either side, some cut by hungry men looking for meat and others gnawed by vermin. Dead men were getting more common, almost as frequent as those lying incapably drunk. The cold had killed a lot. At one cluster of bodies, the grenadiers had been sent to rout up any they could. The men had become more brutal, kicking at the prone figures or even prodding them with bayonets. Hanley had walked over to a cluster of red shapes around a shattered cask. They lay in a circle – three men, a woman and a boy of no more than ten. Some of the rum from the barrel had stained wide patches of ice a darker shade. All five of the people were dead, and he struggled to understand the thoughts of such desperate, hopeless folk as they lapped at the drink until they fell asleep where they lay and never woke up. Later they passed corpses fallen in the road and trampled into the mire by men too weary to step around them.

  The Spanish guns and transport that had taken this road had nearly all given out in this last stretch. Some of the collapsed animals lay in their traces, tongues lolling out and eyes rolling madly. General Paget ordered parties of men to put them out of their misery. The men of the Royal Horse Artillery were busy painting or chalking ‘SPANISH’ on each of the abandoned carriages, for they did not want Bonaparte claiming to have taken their guns. The stuff was washing off in the rain almost as soon as they applied it. Pringle had not had the energy to wander over to the officer in charge and ask him whether he really thought it would stop the French Emperor claiming whatever he wanted.

  Among the debris of the Army of Galicia’s train were carts piled high with uniform jackets and trousers, greatcoats and blankets, and the even greater prize of boots. Quartermasters rode among the mass of soldiers from the reserve calling out for them to leave the stores for their allies. The Spanish were not there, nor likely to be before the French, and the men were in need now. MacAndrews listened to the complaints of one captain from the Quartermaster General’s department with every mark of respect and sympathy. He assured him that the 106th would take nothing, and enthusiastically damned the rogues from other regiments who so readily resorted to plunder. At the same time he let his officers turn a blind eye, and it was only when the order came to press on quickly that they drew the men away. There was a rumour that a French column was pushing round the flank to cut them off and so the march continued through the night.

  Dobson kept his old worn-out boots and put them in his pack when other men tossed theirs away with a curse. He also took some for Murphy, who had been barefoot for days. Three hours of marching destroyed almost every pair of the new shoes. Uppers came away from soles owing to bad stitching. Worse were the shoes, where two wafer-thin layers of leather sole were padded out by nothing more than clay.

  Hanley’s disgust vented itself as he stood with Pringle and watched the engineers completing their preparations to blow up the stone bridge outside Nogales. ‘Is it not shameful?’ he said bitterly as he saw Murphy once again with his feet merely wrapped in rags. ‘To supply such trash to our ally.’

  ‘The stuff we get is not always much better.’ Pringle was equally gloomy, but had little appetite or energy for anger. ‘I dare say some noble man of commerce decided that there was even less likely to be a complaint if the goods were being shipped off to another country.’

  ‘It is a betrayal.’

  ‘It is business – and the man behind it will probably die rich and fat. He will never know the joy of sleeping in a snowdrift and being chased by the French!’ Pringle could see his friend still seethed with rage, so decided to be practical. ‘There are plenty of cordwainers and cobblers on the books. Perhaps we can get them to repair the wretched things?’

  There was a shout from the engineers, gesturing at everyone to stand back and be careful. The last riflemen had run back across to this bank and were reforming on their regiment. An engineer captain lit the powder trail, dashed back to the shelter of a ditch and crouched down. When it came, the explosion was flat, and sounded as damp as the rain.

  ‘How very unimpressive,’ said Pringle.

  ‘And useless too.’ Wind quickly drove the smoke away and they could see that the blast had done no more than take a chunk out of the side of the bridge. ‘Oh, our friends are back,’ added Hanley. On the hills in the distance they could see the drab shapes of French dragoons, with their long green cloaks over their uniforms.

  The march resumed and the pace stayed quick. Halfway through the day they came to another bridge, with four elegant arches which Hanley was positive were Roman. ‘It seems criminal to harm it.’

  ‘They must have heard you,’ commented Pringle, after another disappointi
ng explosion had done little more than chip some of the stonework.

  ‘They built well, the Romans,’ said Hanley admiringly.

  The next stream proved to be readily fordable for a hundred yards on either side, prompting General Paget to tell the engineers to save their efforts for more fruitful projects. All of the hussars had pulled back behind the reserve, their horses quite used up, and so the rearguard was formed solely by the infantry and the Horse Artillery Troop. In the afternoon, the general attempted a ruse, ordering the gunners to unlimber their six-pounders and then leave them in plain view as if abandoned. The captain Pringle had seen supervising the painting of abandoned Spanish equipment was today visibly enjoying the risk to his own cannon. The 28th waited, concealed on the far side of the hill behind the guns, while the grenadiers and Light Company of the 106th watched from a patch of woodland on the other side of the road. A few French dragoons forded the stream when the rest of the reserve moved off. They were reluctant to push any farther, and after half an hour, the general gave up and had the guns hitched back to the limbers and taken away. In the horse artillery all of the gunners had their own horses or sat on the limbers, so they moved off quickly, as the infantry trudged more sedately behind. In the next valley, parties of the 95th were waiting to resume their role as rearmost outposts.

  Several times the Reserve Division halted again and formed up, facing the enemy. The riflemen fired a few times with little result, and the French replied with their carbines to even less effect. General Paget was everywhere, cursing the enemy, snapping at his own men and then urging them on or giving orders directly to captains and even subalterns. His staff, including Captain Wickham, trailed behind him, or dashed off on errands whenever the general had a mind to send them.

  Wickham was cold and wet and found the day increasingly tedious. Neither side appeared to be achieving anything. Once the general sent him running to the top of a high hill to report on what he could see, and that made him wetter still because there was no shelter from the driving wind up there. Nor was there much more to see. The French were there, a few patrols half a mile or so beyond the 95th and the rest farther back.

  When Wickham had half run, half stumbled down the hill, he found the general leaning against a wall as the 91st went past on the road. The Highlanders’ gaiters and bare legs were thickly covered in mud. None of them paid any attention when a very tall and extremely thin officer rode past them and reined in next to the general.

  ‘Pray, sir, where is General Paget?’ he asked in a strangely deep and very precise voice. He was clearly a man accustomed to neatness and efficiency. Even in the rain his skin looked dry, and he kept licking his thin lips. Wickham had to admit that at this moment Paget scarcely looked like a general. His drab cloak was stained and frayed around the edges, and his hat was both bare of any plume and considerably misshapen from exposure to the weather. It also lay on the top of the wall beside him. His hair was plastered flat against his head and his chin boasted at least two days of bristly growth. His patience was even more threadbare. Neither he nor any of his staff bothered to reply, or indeed acknowledge the man in any way.

  ‘Come, come. Where is General Paget?’

  The general donned his hat. ‘I am General Paget, sir. Pray tell me, what are your orders?’ One of his eyes was half closed, and Wickham knew from experience that this was not a good sign.

  ‘Oh, I beg pardon, sir.’ The tone implied that the fault was not his own. ‘I am the Paymaster General …’

  ‘Alight, sir,’ Sir Edward interrupted. His right eye flickered.

  The paymaster general hesitated, then drew his feet from the stirrups and swung himself down slowly, as if humouring a child. ‘I am the Paymaster General. The treasure of the army is only a short way ahead, but the bullocks are jaded and quite done in – absolutely done in. They cannot proceed farther, and so I must have fresh animals to draw the treasure forward.’

  Sir Edward looked around him. When he spoke his voice was low. ‘Pray, sir, do you take me for a bullock driver or muleteer?’ Already the words were growing louder, as his face became redder.

  ‘Or, knowing who I am, are you coolly telling me that through your own neglect or total ignorance of your duty you are about to lose the treasure committed to your charge, which, according to your account, must shortly fall into the hands of the enemy? Those, sir, are French cavalry.’ The general was almost shouting as he pointed at a line of horsemen on the far ridgeline. ‘It is possible that you have never seen them before so do not recognise them. Had you, sir, the slightest conception of your duty, you would have known that you ought to be a day’s march ahead of the whole army, instead of hanging back with your foundered bullocks and carts upon the rearmost company of the rearguard, and making your report at the very moment when that company is absolutely engaged with an advancing enemy. What, sir!’

  The paymaster general was crouching as if he could somehow shelter from Sir Edward’s fury, which continued unabated. ‘To come to me and impede my march with your carts, and ask me to look for bullocks when I should be free from all encumbrances and my mind occupied by no other care than that of disposing my troops to best advantage in resisting the approaching enemy!

  It is doubtful, sir, whether your conduct can be attributed to ignorance and neglect alone!’

  ‘But, sir …’ All confidence had fled from the paymaster’s voice and yet his sense of formalities was still well enough entrenched for this weak protest.

  ‘But, sir! You God-damned rogue! How dare you, sir! You ought to be hanged, and if I could find a high enough tree I shall damned well do it myself!’ There was more, but Sir Edward managed to keep most of it under his breath. ‘Sir, attend to the duties you have so woefully neglected. Take what you can, but neither your money nor your carts will delay me for even a moment. If your bullocks block the road, we shall shoot them, and if you waste any more of my time I will bloody well shoot you as well. Now go, sir!’

  Wickham told Pringle the story as the grenadiers pushed several of the carts over a low cliff not far from the road. The men were enjoying the destruction. As the wagons fell, some of the barrels split open, scattering shiny silver dollars into the snow.

  ‘Nineteen barrels, five thousand in each,’ said the subaltern in charge of the escort. He seemed overwhelmingly relieved to be rid of the responsibility. ‘God knows how many steps in promotion!’

  Wickham watched the falling money with a desperate hunger. He had been pleased to be sent on this errand and had hoped to profit. There had been no chance, and so he watched the atrocious waste. The French would have the silver and many of them would become rich. Down that slope lay the path to comfort, security and respectable society, and it was so tantalisingly close that he almost wept. He looked around, trying to remember the spot, although he could not see any prospect of this being of real value.

  The rearguard pressed on, passing over yet another bridge. The 106th were not at the very rear, so for a while heard only the sporadic shots of the riflemen, and the duller booms of the six-pounders as the French pursuers were made to keep their distance. They formed in a valley behind, but the short defence proved enough to slow the enemy, and when the horse artillery and 95th withdrew, the rest of the Reserve Division was able to march unmolested. They pressed on throughout the night, thankful that the rain slackened and then stopped. It was still dry when the sun rose and broke through the clouds.

  The 106th reached Lugo around ten in the morning. All ranks were pleased to hear that for a while the reserve would not be called upon to provide outposts, and even the news that this meant continuing the march for another five miles before they could rest did not dampen spirits. They marched through the bivouac of the Guards’ Brigade. It seemed a different world. The men were in their shirtsleeves and trousers, sitting at ease around campfires and with jackets and belts newly cleaned and draped over bushes to dry. Cordial insults were exchanged on both sides as the dirty, mostly barefoot 106th marched past. Hanley was
at the rear of the company and noticed that the men stiffened to march more formally, Sergeant Probert calling out the step. Half of them wore odd coloured bits of looted Spanish uniform.

  ‘Who are you, bloody harlequins?’

  ‘No, we’re soldiers. Who are you?’

  The French arrived in the afternoon. Sir John Moore watched their advance guard take up positions facing his own army. The French were in considerable numbers, and he guessed that Marshal Soult had slowed his advance so that he could concentrate a bigger force.

  Sir John scanned the enemy with his glass, comparing notes with his staff officers.

  ‘Two brigades of cavalry, a division of infantry already in position and one – perhaps two – more on the way. Assuming that there are two, what would you make that in total, Colborne?’

  The ever-efficient staff officer already had the answer. ‘Twenty thousand, or perhaps a little more.’

  The general nodded. ‘Yes, that is my guess.’ He had some nineteen thousand or so men. One fresh brigade, standing out in their neat uniforms, joined the army at Lugo. The rest were all very tired, and some virtually exhausted after an order had not been passed on and several brigades had been sent on an unnecessary diversion. Sir David Baird had given it to a dragoon to carry, and the man had got himself drunk. So the men had marched for more than a day over atrocious roads in appalling conditions before the mistake was corrected, and then had to come back the way they had gone.

  Sir John knew that his soldiers were very weary. Their spirit was harder to judge. There had been more abuses in the last days, more theft and drunkenness. In anger he had declared that he would rather be a shoeblack than the general of such an army.