Can No One Win Battles if I'm Not There

by Geoffrey Watson

  He looked benignly at the young captain. “If the rest of my intelligence gatherers were half as accurate, half as truthful and one quarter as useful, Captain Gonçalves, I should not only be a happier man, but probably half-way to Madrid by now.

  I really do have a conscience about taking Pom from you, especially as Roffhack tells me that you are not overburdened with officers. I do have a pressing need of his talents though and I am willing to do what I can to help you find a suitable replacement or replacements for your expanding company. I suppose you should wish such replacements to be compatriots of yours?”

  Gonçalves saw his chance and reached for it. “Not necessarily, My Lord. If any of my countrymen possess enough education to be an officer, it is difficult to find one willing to soil his hands and his family by actually fighting and we have need of men who are potentially better fighters than most of your own officers.

  What I have, My Lord, is a company of two hundred men, squeezed into six platoons. To be efficient, I should divide it into two companies of three big platoons with two captains, two sergeants major and four lieutenants.

  I can promote Sergeant Santos to Sergeant Major and make Dodds Acting Captain, but I must seek approval from Sir Joshua or Lord Vere before I can make two companies.”

  Wellington seemed lost in thought, causing Gonçalves to feel uncomfortable as he gazed right through him into the distance. It was deceptive though, as he was merely recalling recent reports. “I have read the accounts of your last two or three reconnaissance patrols and in each case I recall you went out effectively as two companies and almost in company strength for each detachment.

  I see no reason, in view of your achievements, why what is working well should not be recognised, even in General Welbeloved’s absence. I have no official powers of promotion for my officers, but I shall write to Sir Joshua and tell him that circumstances have made it desirable for the Naval Brigade to have two Portuguese companies.

  Subject to his agreement, Dodds is now acting brevet captain and you, naturally, have to be acting brevet major. I wish you joy of your step, Major Gonçalves.”

  “I am most grateful, My Lord. I did not imagine you would do more than pass on your recommendation.”

  “If something needs doing, Major, I generally prefer to get it done quickly. It occurs to me that you had not made provision for two captains in your reorganisation. No doubt you intended to do the job yourself? Are any of your other lieutenants suitable?”

  “Not yet, My Lord. Pom could do it, but he is very young and shall be leaving us anyway. There is, however, an officer in the German Hornets that I should like to..er..poach. I think that is the word you use? The same as you did with Pom.”

  Wellington laughed. “You should never accuse your Commander-in-Chief of poaching, Gonçalves. We send poachers to prison in England. I suspect I know whom you mean though. Is it the lieutenant that has been detached to you? Richard or Richer. Was that his name?”

  “Lieutenant Richter, My Lord, and I do apologise if my faulty understanding of english has given offence.”

  “Never in the world, Major. I am indeed poaching Pom from you, but get him to explain the true meaning of the word. Shall Richter be willing to move and has he enough portuguese?”

  “I believe he may be, My Lord, although I could never have asked him. He now speaks portuguese almost as well as Dodds and if we are to continue working with the German battalion, he should be an invaluable recruit.”

  Ask him then, Major. He shall be acting brevet captain if he accepts and providing Colonel Roffhack agrees, as I am sure he shall, when he knows it has my approval.”

  He waved away Gonçalves’s thanks. “If Richter accepts, the appointment is immediate and his troop sergeant can carry my orders to Roffhack. I have decided to attack Masséna on the day after tomorrow. Your two companies shall be only the second Hornets to fight directly under my orders, on my right flank. Attend me in the morning with the rest of my commanders. You may bring the details of your reorganised command with you.”

  CHAPTER 5

  There had been a population explosion at Santiago del Valle, the mountainous estate of the Count and Countess of Alba.

  According to Joseph Bonaparte, the new, intrusive King of Spain, the entire estate; of which Santiago was only a part; together with the title, now belonged to one of the Condesa’s distant cousins.

  This was because Mercedes, the true Condesa had been fighting the invading French for over three years now and her cousin had seized his chance to ingratiate himself with the new monarch. He had denounced her and handed over a great deal of her valuable artwork, furniture and other valuables in return for being declared El Conde.

  When the Condesa and her new husband had returned to Santiago after the battle of Talavera, they found that her estate manager Uncle Joe had become the guerrilla leader Tio Pepe and had managed to seal off the whole of the mountainous part of her patrimony.

  Her cousin had not the power to get past his armed guerrilleros and King Joseph had enough problems of his own to have any desire to interfere further with something that appeared not to be causing him personally any trouble.

  The cousin’s legitimacy came only from the intrusive king. The ruling regency council had since rewarded Welbeloved’s efforts against the enemy by confirming him as the Conde by marriage to Mercedes Condesa de Alba.

  There was only one, easily defended, road leading up to and through the estate where the Hornets had originally established a base in order to tend many of the English wounded from the battle. Otherwise, they would have been abandoned in Talavera by the Spanish General Cuesta, to become prisoners of the French.

  It seemed an ideal location for a base for a clandestine unit like the Hornets. After all, there were only two platoons of them at that time and their main purpose was to aid, support and encourage the formation of Spanish groups of guerrilleros, or fighters in the guerrilla or ‘little war’ against the invading French.

  Since then, the Hornets had grown to brigade strength and five hundred of them; the British battalion; had just helped General Graham extricate his army from a fiasco at Barossa, where a small British division had driven off and beaten Marshal Victor and more than twice its own strength.

  The fact that the larger Spanish army of General La Peña had led them into the fiasco and then stood by without firing a shot, had not improved relations between the British and Spanish. Although the Junta in Cadiz had retired La Peña, the allied forces had retreated once more into Cadiz and Welbeloved felt that the Hornets could do no more in the south. He took his men back for a well-earned rest at Santiago.

  Better than five hundred men of the British battalion was by no means all that Santiago now had to cope with. Two companies of Spanish fighters had been recruited and under strict training for several months.

  By the time that Welbeloved returned, they were fully up to strength and armed with Roberto’s modified carbine, but had not yet had the serious combat experience that would raise them from Wasps to Hornets.

  Nevertheless, all had to be fed and the two villages and farmland in the Santiago mountain valley were unable to provide enough without the wagon trains making constant journeys back and forth to Oporto.

  It wasn’t only the fighting men and wagoners that had to be fed. The local population had been swollen by an influx of refugees from three villages and a small town.

  Four months ago, Lieutenant Hickson had rescued these people from virtual slavery imposed by a local priest turned warlord. Hickson and his platoon had killed the priest, set the captives free and returned with a few of the liberated men, but with almost a hundred women, many of them pregnant.

  A good many of these had since given birth, but then so had the Condesa, Juanita MacKay, Isabella Hickson and the wives of Ryan and O’Malley. Dai Evans wife would be making her second contribution in another month or so.

  Welbeloved had a second son, named George after the Condesa’s father. Juanita insisted that
little Hamish Juan MacKay should carry both her husband’s and her late father’s names. Her husband was far too overwhelmed with the whole business to wish to have any say whatsoever, but was secretly overjoyed to have a son and the continuation of his name.

  Isabella beat them both by four or five weeks with a daughter, a future playmate for the two daughters that both Ryan and O’Malley now had.

  One complete wing of the mansion had to be given over to a nursery, where Isabella exercised complete control, even over her besotted father, who assumed the status of universal grandfather to every infant in the place.

  With over a thousand people crammed onto an estate with a peacetime population of under two hundred, there was simply not enough room for everyone to sleep under a roof and winter was not yet over.

  The Condesa found a temporary solution that might eventually become permanent. She annexed to her own estate, the town of San Martin and the three villages that the mad priest had taken for his own small kingdom. The original hidalgo was no longer there, whether a victim of the priest or the French, it was impossible to discover.

  Those few of the residents who had returned, welcomed the garrisons that they had acquired as a guarantee that they would be unlikely to be abducted again.

  Other things changed as well. Over seventy of the rescued women were found not to be pregnant. They were unattached and adrift and suddenly surrounded by eight hundred young men who had been leading an active but largely militarily monastic existence for up to three years.

  Most of the women moved back to their original town or village, where the new garrisons gave them ample choice and little competition in finding a partner, even without the blessing of the Church.

  Naturally, the Condesa was horrified and did what she could, but most of the soldiers were heretics anyway and all of the women were recovering from being abused by the priest acting in the name of the Church.

  She managed to establish the rule that once they had paired up, they were to be regarded as husband and wife and a communal company harem was not to be founded.

  Welbeloved also had to put his foot down. The mobility of the Hornets was not to be questioned. The women could pair up if they wished, but they either stayed in their villages when the men moved on, or became mobile themselves, following their men and learning to protect themselves by using weapons, riding horses and driving wagons, as had the girls of ‘MacKay’s Harem’ in the past.

  As a founder member of that harem, Juanita gathered together the few remaining members and got them to organise a casual company of Women’s Wasps for those prepared to follow their men. It was actually a good move as all the ‘harem’ girls had now formed unofficial partnerships of their own over the last few months with some of the more persistent suitors in the Hornets. It was left to all the new ‘husbands’ to give them training in horsemanship, wagon driving and musket practice.

  The four British and two Spanish companies were then reorganised. The Royal Marine recruits, the new Wasps from Oporto had arrived and had to be absorbed into the British companies. They brought with them plenty of captured horses and all the carbines that had been replaced by the new converted Baker rifles. All the men in the two Spanish companies now owned a horse and a breech-loading carbine and each woman could practice with her partner’s firelock until Roberto’s production could catch up with the additional demand.

  Tio Pepe was still the nominated commander of the Spanish contingent, with Captain Burfoot as senior captain and commander of F Company and Hickson made captain and commander of G Company.

  The Spanish had the same problems as the Portuguese in finding suitable officers. Thus, two of the original Hornets, Johan (Johnnie) Thuner and Paddy Ryan became lieutenants in F and G Companies, together with new lieutenants Cabrera and Luis Lopez. 3 and 4 Platoons in each company now had Sergeant Major Moreno and Sergeant Poyan, Sergeant Major Llamas and Sergeant Hernandez as their commanders. Burfoot and Hickson would initially have to supervise the two sergeants and their platoons.

  Apart from taking in all the newly qualified Wasps from their training base near Oporto, the British battalion only needed to replace the two sergeants major. Philips joined Captain Cholmondeley and Masters took over the vacancy with Captain Davison.

  Everyone was allowed a week in which to relax, get used to the new regime, regularise their relationships with the now attached women and in the case of the new fathers, spend some time with their wives and new families.

  By the last week in March, the Hornets at Santiago, rested, equipped and mounted, were back in training or at war.

  They found that they had a new opponent to confront in the north of Spain. New in the sense that Napoleon was becoming increasingly irritated with the resistance that his armies were encountering from the guerrilleros and the remnants of the regular Spanish armies scattered across the country.

  By the beginning of the year of 1811, the Imperial Armies occupied more of Spain than ever before. With the possibility of driving the British out of Portugal still to be hoped for, the complete conquest of Iberia ought to be a mere matter of time.

  Napoleon couldn’t forecast that by March, the army of Portugal would be in full retreat, but he could still be incensed that his armies in Spain of up to half a million men, could nowhere move safely outside the towns and cities that they held.

  The top Spanish military leadership might be completely ineffectual but the French found that to move about in numbers of fewer than a thousand men was to invite instant attack by the partisans lurking in the hills and mountains, of which Spain and Portugal had more than any country had a right to.

  When the numbers were equal, the guerrilla forces could never prevail against the regular veterans of the French armies. Against this unwelcome truth it should be stated that some of the leaders of the Spanish irregulars now commanded two or three thousand men, many of whom were mounted.

  Napoleon’s solution was a new army with a new commander, Marshal Bessières. His army was put together from the garrisons of the previous armies stretching from the French border, through Navarre, Cantabria and León as far west as Salamanca.

  The Army of the North came into being in the new year and was said to be made up of about ninety thousand men. Said quickly, it was still a lot of men. It was more than Masséna had been able to take into Portugal and more than Wellington could put into the field, counting all his English, Portuguese and German troops together.

  It sounded a lot of soldiers until one considered what it was meant to do. Welbeloved was sitting relaxing with Hamish MacKay after a lengthy session in the nursery, getting to know both of their new-born sons and afterwards being introduced to the world of the nearly twos by an enthusiastic Uncle Joe.

  “If yew think about it, Hamish, Bessières has to control a region that is split almost in two east to west by the Cantabrian Mountains. Yew were enjoying yorself up there last year, so yew should be able to say how many men should be needed just to keep Asturias and Cantabria quiet?”

  MacKay scratched his head. “It should be easier tae gie a true answer an you ask how long is a piece o’ whipping twine. The ifs determine the answer. My report at the time suggested that raids by our marines together wi’ El Marquesito and his fighters could tie up fifty thousand Frogs.

  If nobody does anything but contest the country outside the big towns, the French must hae thirty thousand troops on the ground or gie up the territory north o’ the mountains.”

  “So there yew have it, my friend. Boney does not look kindly on any of his generals that get beat or give up territory. Bessières won’t abandon the north unless he’s forced out and that means he has, at the very most, sixty thousand men left to garrison a dozen towns between Salamanca and France.

  If what our new boys have just told us is correct and Masséna is retreating from Portugal at last, I wager that what is left of his army shall end up at Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca, if Wellington has not yet forced a decisive battle.

  Even if he
hasn’t fought yet, the French army has got to be in a deplorable state and shall need to be put together again. The new Army of the North is responsible for the supply route from France, along which shall come everything needed to rebuild it, from new drafts of men, thousands of horses, food, clothing and shoes.”

  He paused to visualise the stream of supplies and men that would soon, inevitably, move west toward Salamanca.

  “I think it is time to exercise our new Spanish companies. Burfoot and Hickson have done wonders with them and I know they have already been out in small raiding parties, but they need the experience of working in full company strength.

  They can go out with Cholmondeley and Tonks; A and F Companies and D and G Companies together. The Spaniards shall still look up to the experience of the veterans in the British companies and I have no doubt shall strive to show our new Royal Marine Wasps that they are just as competent. When do yew think they can leave?”

  MacKay smiled smugly. “Our Spaniards can leave within the hour, Sir Joshua. I anticipated you should wish tae test them and told Burfoot and Hickson tae be ready.

  I did nae ken if you should want the veterans tae ride with them, but we hae taught them tae be ready at a’ times and I’m certain Tonks and Hickson may leave today. A Company is at San Martin, but if Burfoot rides over there today, they could both leave together in the morning.”

  “Get them on their way then, Hamish. Tonks and Hickson can leave in the morning. Tell them to give all the latest news to the guerrilleros and help them with any mischief they may be planning.”

  “I’ll get them all ready tae move off in the morning then, but shall you join me at the forge in an hour? Your lady wife has had one of her clever ideas and Roberto has adapted it for use wi’ our carbines.”