Swallowing Portugal Will Settle My Spanish Bellyache

by Geoffrey Watson

  Two days later, having avoided French patrols and desperately searching foraging parties, Pom reported to Lord Vere and the Hanoverian Hornets and was rushed to brief Lord Wellington on the addition to Masséna’s strength.

  The Commander-in-Chief looked incredulously at the young man when Vere ushered him in. “By Gods, Lord George, I was told that a young lieutenant had fooled Gardanne into running back to Spain, but nobody told me how young.” He studied Pom. “I regret, Lieutenant, that I can only understand english or french, but I have no doubt that Lord Vere can help out.”

  Pom smiled and answered in almost flawless english. “It shall perhaps be easier for me, My Lord, if we converse in english. I am practised in french, but prefer not to speak it unless I am trying to confuse the enemy.”

  Wellington laughed. “Lord Vere has told me that you managed that very well indeed. You must have been a much better scholar than I. It was torture for me to construe latin and greek at school. I had many a beating for it and it did me no good at all. You are fluent then in english, french, portuguese and spanish?”

  “Indeed, My Lord. Also italian and two tongues from my mother’s homeland, cantonese and mandarin chinese, although I learned those from my mother and have not studied them.”

  Wellington looked thoughtful. “Any time you feel that you need a rest from killing and confounding Frenchmen, I can offer you a position with my staff, Lieutenant Pom. If you can translate and understand military matters as well as you appear to, you have a talent that is rarer than teeth in a fowl. For the present, however, tell me about this division that is coming to succour Masséna.”

  Pom had spent a whole day watching the French moving out of Celorico and gave a concise account of the make up of the relief column, even down to the general composition of the baggage train.

  Wellington turned to Vere. “This remarkably clear account makes me think that perhaps we should welcome the advent of these reinforcements. If we assume that two thousand of the original ten shall be left as garrisons on the way, there shall be only eight thousand reinforcements for Masséna.

  Listening to young Pom, do you not think that the size of the baggage train seems very little bigger than what a division of that size should have for its own use?”

  Vere nodded. It struck me particularly, My Lord. Having been forced to introduce a baggage train to the Hornets, I have become more than normally sensitive to supply problems.” He turned to Pom. “What made you note the baggage train in particular, Pom?”

  Pom’s eyes became mere slits as his cheeks lifted in amusement.” It was more important that I should do so. On the first and second convoys, we shot as many draught animals as Frenchmen. We were trying to stop the convoy and the French are short of horses, oxen and mules. They are harder to replace than soldiers.”

  Wellington’s great laugh boomed out again. “An’ I was able, I should willingly exchange Pom for one of my generals, he knows more about soldiering than most of them, and in such a short time too.”

  Vere grinned with him. “It may well be instinctive in his case, My Lord, but I had no difficulty, following his recital, in agreeing with your conclusions that this division shall be but another eight thousand mouths to feed rather than an effective addition to his fighting strength. The only real advantage they bring is that Masséna now has his lines of communication re-opened all the way back to Spain.”

  Wellington looked down his long nose. He remarked drily. “I have no doubt that after so long in idleness; let me see, it must have been all of three weeks; you are itching to take your new battalion to do something about that. Or am I mistaken?”

  Vere was not abashed in the slightest. “If you think it shall be helpful, My Lord, the new recruits are most anxious to prove their worth as Hornissen and I dare say Mr. Pom shall welcome some company in the dangerous country south of the Mondego.”

  “There was a quick interjection from Pom. “I should be happy to follow in your footsteps, Sir. I had hoped, as a matter of filial courtesy, to call briefly on my parents while close to Lisbon. Of course, if it shall be inconvenient I may send a note instead.”

  “It is not to be thought on, Li. Of course you must do your filial duty. It shall be the day after tomorrow before we can be ready to leave. Shall that be long enough for your purpose?”

  More than adequate, Sir. My mother moved back from Coimbra, when the French arrived and my father shall be glad to see me, even if his wife does not approve.”

  He could see that both Vere and Wellington were consumed with curiosity, but good manners absolutely forbade them to satisfy it.

  “Perhaps I should explain, My Lords. My father is a nobleman, a cousin of the Pombal Family, hence my name. My mother is the daughter of a mandarin of the first rank, possibly a duke or marquess in European terms.

  My grandfather and father formed a trading enterprise and it is quite customary, as I believe it to be with your royal houses, for a daughter to be given to reinforce the bonds. In China she was considered his number one wife and I am his oldest son.

  When we came to Portugal, the church could not recognise the liaison and his family insisted that he marry a suitable Portuguese wife. It means that in China I am a mandarin of the second or third rank, even though I am half foreign devil. In Portugal I am only the bastard of a nobleman and it is incumbent on me to found my own dynasty in due course.

  Strangely enough, in spite of the corruption in my father’s country, there are greater opportunities to rise higher than would ever be open to me under the rigid social system in Macao. That is, until the French came and spoiled everything.”

  It was Wellington who reacted first. “Thank you kindly for that explanation Mr. Pom. We never doubted that you were a gentleman and your exploits show that noble blood shall always rise to the top.

  I am in no doubt that you shall achieve high status if you survive in the dangerous, if temporary, profession that you are now embracing. I know you shall wish to remain with Welbeloved’s cut-throats until we have expelled the French from Portugal. After that, I shall have need of a liaison officer on my staff to fulfil the role that Lord Vere abandoned last year.

  We are hoping that the Hanoverians shall be working more closely with the army by the Spring. Do you imagine that you shall be able to add german to your impressive list of tongues by then?”

  Pom was silent, looking quite astonished for many seconds. He was diffident in his reply. “It should be impertinent, if not insubordinate to dream of questioning your judgement of me, enormously flattering though it is and unworthy though I am. I have, though, worn this uniform for just four months and, as my English comrades would say, have not had time fully to learn my trade.

  It may be that by the Spring I shall have learned a little more and I shall need all that time to acquire a working knowledge of german. Perhaps if your lordship were to reconsider the offer when the French leave Portugal, Lord Vere shall be in a position better to advise on my suitability?”

  Wellington nodded and exchanged glances with Vere. “I wager that Lord George shall not have altered his opinion by then, Mr. Pom, but I shall ask him to incorporate your platoon and company into the Hanoverian battalion until such time as you have, between you, cleared the Serra da Estrela of the garrisons that the French may have left.

  He will also write a report for you to take to your father, detailing your progress in your new profession. I don’t doubt that his permission ought still to be sought for you to wear uniform at all.”

  CHAPTER 21

  When Colonel Lord Vere led four squadrons of German Hornets from the lines at Torres Vedras, they were anticipating many clashes with the enemy forces in the whole area between Santarém and Coimbra.

  It was an area of roughly forty miles between the River Tagus and the sea and eighty miles south to north between the two towns. Masséna had brought his army into this area three months ago. Perhaps sixty thousand men had been brought to a halt at the fortifications and mountains north of Li
sbon. A few weeks later they had settled into defensive winter quarters at Santarém, determined to wait until Wellington came out to fight.

  Nobody could tell how many of them had since succumbed to starvation and diseases encouraged by lack of food, but many thousands had been deserting and bringing tales of famine into the lines to justify their actions.

  Now Pom had brought news of another eight thousand reinforcements arriving from Spain and Vere was quite expecting to find all the major towns garrisoned, all the way back to Coimbra.

  It wasn’t the case at all. For the most part the towns and villages were deserted. The Portuguese inhabitants were withdrawn to safety in Lisbon, or if they had been too stubborn to leave, had been tortured and killed by French foragers looking for their life-saving hoards of food.

  Every house, village and town within easy reach of Santarém had been plundered and left desolate. Foraging parties were moving farther and farther out and taking longer and longer to return to their units.

  As the Hornets moved steadily north they encountered more and more foraging parties, ranging in size from a dozen to fifty, all under the command of sergeants and corporals. It was too much trouble to chase any foraging cavalry units and they were allowed to escape, whereas the infantry were rounded up, disarmed, stripped to breeches and shirt and turned loose to make their way back to their units or direct to the lines, whichever they chose.

  Taking prisoners was not an option. They couldn’t be made to keep up with the Hornets, even though the twenty light wagons of their own baggage train were slowing the pace at which they would normally travel.

  The biggest challenge of the whole journey should have been getting through or around Coimbra in the face of the garrison that Drouet must surely have left there if communications were to be maintained with Spain.

  They were still ten miles short of the Mondego when they found a brigade of Portuguese militia in control of Espinhal. The French reinforcements had been using it as a base until two days before, when they and the troops in Coimbra had moved south to join Masséna. Trant had gone back into Coimbra immediately and Wilson had brought his brigade to occupy Espinhal.

  Masséna’s communications with Spain had been open for exactly four days and would now be closed again until another strong force could be sent south through the mountains from Celorico.

  The principal reason why Wellington had agreed to the Hornissen travelling north was to close the route to Spain and the French had obligingly done it for them.

  However, there was still work to be done that would fit in with the training programme of the new Hanoverians. Wilson promised that he would get word back to Lisbon that the Hornets were spending the next week or so closing down all of the forward bases in the mountains; all those that Drouet had established on his way through.

  Without Gonçalves and his Company it may well have been more than a week or so. The French had garrisoned three large villages no more than two marches apart for their infantry. Profiting from recent bad experience they had increased the strength of each garrison by over two hundred troops and were making every effort to improve the defences.

  Here again, Vere need not have worried about the French communications. Once the reinforcements had passed through, Gonçalves and his men, together with the ordenança had blocked the roads to all three villages against parties of anything less than battalion strength and were busy plotting ways of getting the garrisons out.

  As soon as the Germans and the Portuguese joined together there was no need for elaborate plots. Two of the villages, including São Martinho, were sheltered by hills that provided vantage points for the hundred converted Baker rifles of the Portuguese.

  With the Hanoverians camping around them, well out of range of their muskets and Gonçalves’s riflemen perched in the hills and shooting anything that moved, both garrisons accepted the inevitable and surrendered within two days.

  The Hornets then turned their attention to the final garrison, holding a pretty little town, built round a sizeable mound in the middle of quite a wide valley. Given time, the ancient fort and town walls could have been rebuilt, but the French hadn’t had the time to do more than improvise and it wasn’t enough.

  Vere approached them under a flag of truce and asked for their surrender, pointing out that both the other garrisons were now taken and that they were many days away from any chance of succour.

  Predictably, his offer was refused, but the Hornets were in no hurry. They settled down comfortably all round the town within two hundred yards and each squadron and the Portuguese company took a two-hour turn, shooting any Frenchman who showed himself.

  The Hornets were prone and the range was too great for the French to have any accuracy, even against standing troops, but they felt that they had to make at least a token reply. They lost fifty men before it occurred to them to remove their shakos. That action coincided with the time that the Portuguese with a hundred modified Bakers were on duty. Fifty or more additional casualties were incurred within twenty minutes.

  After that they remained under cover and only lost men if they strayed from cover when moving about within the town. The next two days were regarded as live target practice for the more talented sharpshooters among the men and most of them had a relaxed time.

  Vere’s patience ran out and on the fourth day he placed the Portuguese company with their rifles in position first. They covered the barricades as A Squadron trotted through their position to move to within a hundred yards of the defences. The reaction was in the sound of a couple of bugles sounding the alarm and a number of heads appearing, possibly relishing the prospect of being able to shoot at something they might stand a chance of hitting.

  They should have known that it was not a sensible thing to do. The number of flintlocks trained on them had doubled. The Bakers could hit a shako plate at two hundred yards and Roberto’s muskets could easily hit a head at a hundred. The heads disappeared permanently under a hail of terrifyingly accurate lead balls and then B Squadron was trotting through the lines to within fifty yards of the barricade.

  This time the French tried a new tactic. About two dozen muskets were thrust over or round the cover and triggers were pulled with no thought of aiming. The hands and arms thus exposed were a larger target than a shako plate and every rifle and musket within range took up the challenge. A great many screams signalled success and discouraged any more foolish gestures and by then C Squadron was on its way.

  The men trotted unhurriedly through the three lines of sharpshooters, coming to rest at the foot of the barricade. Two dozen men each cocked one of the Condesa’s grenades and lobbed it smoothly over the barrier. A series of explosions and more screams was the signal for the whole squadron to scramble over the barricade, closely followed by D Squadron who had timed their own run to perfection.

  The defenders were mostly garrison troops and they had done their best, but the sight of hundreds of brown-clad savages swarming over their barricades, terrified most of them into throwing their muskets down and holding their hands high, yelling, nay screaming for quarter.

  Any who were braver or more stupid and who made the slightest aggressive gesture were shot. The Hanoverians did not carry bayonets, but their short barrelled carbines were all loaded and much handier than the long muskets of the French in close combat work. It is true that they could only fire one shot in a physical assault, but there were more than two hundred of them and very few aggressive defenders.

  Ten minutes after the first grenade was lobbed, the town was theirs, for the cost of one wounded Wespe, who had collected an unlucky shot in his shoulder.

  The reduction of the three small towns had cost the French half their strength in dead and wounded. The dead were buried, the dying wounded were made as comfortable as possible and the merely seriously wounded were sent on their way back to Celorico in the two or three wagons found in each town. Those men with light wounds drove the wagons harnessed with horses from the two troops of chasseurs garrison
ed with the infantry at each town.

  Ten days after leaving Coimbra, three squadrons of Hornissen and Pom’s 5 Platoon went back south over the Mondego. Major Hagen and D Squadron shepherded nearly a thousand prisoners and a hundred and fifty fully accoutred chasseur horses on their way to Oporto and captivity. The horses would be welcomed by the recruits shipped round from Gibraltar and training under that martinet and strict perfectionist, but failed Hornet, Lieutenant Colonel Bailey.

  Gonçalves took his other four platoons back to São Martinho and spent a couple of days cleaning up after the dreadful mess that seven hundred French had made of it. They had an extra twenty spare horses to train and a big consignment of chasseur carbines to be taken to Roberto for modification, when the next wagon train from Oporto came through.

  Half of the standard muskets captured would be handed over to the ordenança in the mountains. The other half would go to Trant and Wilson to make sure that that every combatant in their brigades had a weapon, until adequate supplies of the British Brown Bess could be delivered

  ***

  The two commanders in Coimbra and Espinhal were reluctant to see Vere and his men depart on their way back to Lisbon. In command of Portuguese militia brigades, they were both much more aware of the completely ruthless nature of the French predations in the area in which they were now effectively trapped.

  The men in their own commands were patriotic and brave, but there were limits to their ability to face French troops in combat. Their men were essentially amateur soldiers and were ideal for holding good defensive positions and harrying foraging parties. Face to face combat with French veterans was to be avoided at all costs.

  Both men were senior to Vere, but both were respectful and envious of his formidable command, Trant even speaking wistfully about how impressed he had been during young Pom’s previous visit.