Swallowing Portugal Will Settle My Spanish Bellyache

by Geoffrey Watson

  He was so worried that his men would be unable to defend the line of the Mondego against the French, if and when Masséna decided to retreat, that Vere gave him two letters. One was to Hagen, who was asked to halt and assist when he came back through Coimbra to rejoin the battalion. The other was to be delivered to Gonçalves when Trant knew that the French were leaving. He was to bring his company to stiffen the defence of the town.

  It was Wilson though, who focussed their thoughts on the immediate future. They had stopped in Espinhal overnight and had accepted an invitation to dine with him. During their conversation Roffhack was musing about how he was going to keep his command usefully occupied on the way back to Lisbon.

  Wilson cleared a space on the table and spread out a map of the whole area. “You were telling me, Colonel, that you harvested a large number of foragers on your way north and then let them all go again. That is correct, is it not?”

  Roffhack wrinkled his forehead. “That is correct, Sir. However, we did deprive them of arms and tunics and told them that they should travel south and surrender if they wanted to eat. They would be of little use to their regiments without uniforms and muskets.”

  “Now, there you are wrong, Colonel. The French have lost thousands to disease in the last month alone. Lack of food and the terrible weather is killing them off in droves. Any of the foragers that you turned loose had only to return to his unit to have a choice of dead men’s uniforms and arms. As you go south, you shall probably encounter the same men that you released on your way north.”

  Roffhack looked at Vere. “As the only alternative was to kill them in cold blood, George, I cannot see how we could have acted differently. On the way back, though, we are in no particular hurry. There is no telling how many we could sweep up. We may even find enough cavalry to give us a chance to try the tactics we have all been practising.”

  Vere gave a short bark of a laugh. “It is ironic that so far the only opportunity we have had to try those tactics was when Hagen came face to face with Gardanne’s chasseurs and they all ran away because Gonçalves had frightened them so much using only our traditional methods. Maybe the new arrivals know nothing about the Hornets and shall be prepared to give us a contest?”

  Wilson jabbed his finger at four or five places on the map, south of Espinhal. “We know that many of the reinforcements have quartered themselves in these towns. Unless you wish to try conclusions with two to three thousand men, it may be sensible to go round them. A fair number of cavalry units are quartered there. Fodder is still to be found in the area, though food, even secret, hidden stores can no longer be obtained and any rations the French have been able to issue have now been cut to less than a quarter. That is, when they are available at all.

  Foraging parties are increasingly desperate and moving farther and farther away from where they are quartered. If Lord Wellington were to drive north at this moment, he should likely catch half of Masséna’s army in the open, spread out and trying to keep themselves alive.”

  Vere nodded, studying the map. “I wager his lordship is very aware of that, Sir, but I assure you that he shall not risk chasing foragers while Masséna is still capable of striking at Lisbon in his absence.

  If, however, we were to go south in three separate squadrons, we can go around or between these towns and harvest as many foragers as we can find.”

  He looked quizzically at Roffhack. “Acting Captain Fischer may be a new boy, but we were impressed enough with him during training to give him B Squadron. Don’t you think that an independent mission, sweeping down the coast, would give him the confidence to claim substantive rather than brevet rank?”

  Roffhack nodded. “I should have suggested it myself had I realised that we were both thinking identically again, George. Shall I take C Squadron and take the left-hand sweep? It shall enable you to go down the centre with A Squadron and play nursemaid to young Pom and his platoon.”

  Vere looked hard at him. “Pom is already more fluent in german than I am and you are the teacher he looks up to. As for nursemaiding; every man in his platoon is more experienced than can be claimed for any of our mixed squadrons. I really do feel that you should have the advantage of his experienced people to stiffen your novices.”

  Roffhack grinned. “I should have used the same argument to place him with A Squadron, but as I see that you intend to pull rank quite outrageously, I shall put him in charge of any prisoners we take. His Portuguese ruffians shall put the fear of god into them and keep them docile.”

  Wilson sat looking from one to the other of them with his jaw hanging partly open. “Does Lord Wellington ever overhear you two gentlemen planning a campaign in such an unconventional way? He is always so precise and formal when he gives his orders.”

  Vere became serious in an instant. “After Talavera, Sir, I was invited to join Lord Wellington’s staff, until the Naval Brigade was created and I rejoined the Hornets. While serving his lordship, I discovered why he is always so meticulous and formal.

  If I am to explain this, may I presume to ask you a somewhat personal question?”

  Wilson became quite formal himself. “You may of course ask, Colonel. I cannot necessarily undertake to give you the answer you may be seeking.”

  “Perhaps so, Sir, but let me pose the question anyway. As a field officer in the British Army, there are many generals who are senior to you. You are required to obey any legitimate order they give you, promptly and without question. Have you enough confidence in their professional competence to be happy to receive such orders?”

  Wilson looked wary, then shrugged. “I am beginning to understand where this discussion is going.” He paused in thought and his eyes began to crinkle with amusement. “It is refreshing to be able to be open about such things among ourselves, but no. Other than probably five generals superior to me, I would go to great lengths to avoid receiving such orders.

  Some of them are not just incompetent, their very sanity is in question and even a few of the competent ones have been known to be criminally careless with the lives of their soldiers.”

  “You realise then, Sir, why Lord Wellington has to be most precise and give detailed orders that cannot be misunderstood. General Welbeloved, on the other hand, personally has selected and trained each one of his senior officers. They have, in turn, passed on their knowledge to their juniors and men.

  Because of that, Lord Wellington keeps the Naval Brigade apart from the army: always on a Particular Service and not under the authority of anyone but himself. Also because of that, he gives us the independence to go and be thoroughly objectionable to the Frogs in places the army could not possibly reach.

  He knows what we can do although we surprise him every so often, but always he requests. We know what we can do and have never yet refused a request. Captain Fischer was with the Légion Hanovrienne at Buçaco, when all his senior officers were killed. He brought his battalion back to the service of his Elector, King George.

  He has experience and did well in training to earn his brevet rank in charge of B Squadron. He has sixty veteran Hornets, known as Hornissen in this battalion. The other half of his squadron holds those recruited and selected from the men he brought with him. As juniors, they are Wasps or Wespen in german, until they are judged worthy of the higher accolade. This shall be after they have taken part in successful actions against the French.

  Günther Roffhack and I are both agreed that he shall lead his squadron independently back to the lines. It shall give him more experience and as he is still a Wespe himself, we shall see if he is tempted to go looking for trouble in order to keep his Hornissen sharp and continue the training of his Wespen.”

  “What happens, Colonel, if he finds more trouble than he can handle? He is taking a small squadron through an area swarming with French soldiers.”

  “He won’t, Sir. Half his officers, his sergeant major and most of his sergeants are experienced Hornets. They would make sure that they rode away from anything unmanageable. Don’t
forget that we rode up from Lisbon and the biggest unit we met was half a squadron of dragoons and they fled for their lives.”

  Wilson raised his glass. “I wish you all good hunting then. When you have gone, I shall join Trant in Coimbra. The river is flowing strongly enough in this season to give Masséna pause if he should contemplate an opposed crossing. He may attempt it, but shall need more time than I hope Lord Wellington shall allow.

  Should he retreat this way, I shall have pleasant dreams about half his army fighting for a foothold on the north bank, while our allied army comes up and attacks the other half, trapped with its back to the river.”

  ***

  There was a great deal to think about as B Squadron rode south, having taken a wide sweep to the west around Pombal to within sight of the sea. Brevet Captain Fischer was enormously grateful for the command of his squadron. He had only just got used to the command of a company after the slaughter of his seniors at Buçaco and had expected to have to excel in training, merely to claim a junior lieutenancy with the Hornets.

  He understood how difficult it was for Colonel Lord Vere and Lieutenant Colonel Roffhack. There had been nearly seven hundred recruits from the Légion who had returned to fight for King George. Only two hundred and fifty of them had achieved selection and survived the rigorous training that it took to be accepted as a Wasp: a probationary Hornet.

  That was just the men. The officers were in short supply to start with. All their senior ranks had been the first to be killed and wounded by General Craufurd’s Rifles on Buçaco’s slopes and Lieutenant Fischer had been left as the senior infantry officer.

  Training for aspiring officers at their base near Oporto was much more severe and demanding, as much more was expected of them. Only three were accepted from the infantry and one only from the dragoons.

  He knew that he wasn’t as experienced or as competent as any of the established lieutenants, yet they had given him a squadron and a brevet captaincy and two of his troop commanders were Légion lieutenants who had achieved selection to the Wasps.

  He wasn’t to know that Vere and Roffhack had been watching his progress in minute detail. They knew that he was not yet as expert as the two established Hornet lieutenants in his squadron. Indeed, all of the sergeants were still ahead of him in experience.

  Some quality that he possessed had caught their interest however. Now they were giving him his first real test. They hadn’t said so, but he knew that he had to do more than take his squadron back to Lisbon and collect a few prisoners on the way.

  The nature of the country in the western littoral was milder and more gentle than in the eastern hills and mountains, but Portugal was still a land of hills and woods. It made reconnaissance much more difficult. Most of the roads ran in valleys for much of their distance and watchers from the hills could see columns of troops, sometimes from miles away and sometimes not at all.

  It made it ideal country for ambushes and demanded much greater vigilance from the vanguard troop, out in front by half a mile or more and the four trailblazers, a further half-mile ahead.

  Fischer realised that he was in the fortunate position of predator on the relatively few forage parties venturing this far from Santarém or the other large towns acting as bases for the French. He should not expect to become prey himself, but it was commonsense to be on the lookout for ambushes. Well, it certainly was if you were a Hornet.

  On the way north, they had ridden farther to the east and the foragers they had caught had already split up into smaller units of no more than fifty men. He was thinking of infantry, of course. Any cavalry that they had seen had been travelling rapidly in the opposite direction and numbers could only be estimated from the dust that they raised. As it was still raining for much of the time, dust was an unreliable indication.

  Having captured and released so many foraging parties on the way north, it seemed prudent to assume that the French should be aware that enemy patrols were about. If they had any sense, that meant that they would keep to greater numbers as a matter of safety.

  As they rode, he studied the topography of the littoral that they were passing through and began to convince himself that as a predator it presented more advantages to him than to the French. Towns and villages were built in the valleys or on the slopes of the hills and the Hornet’s approach to them was either looking down from higher ground or looking up from a valley.

  In either case there was generally a good chance of seeing whether or not they had pillagers in them; this from a distance that made planning how to tackle them much simpler.

  The more visible they were from a distance, the more attractive they would be to foragers, who would be drawn to them as bees to honey and the more foragers, the more likely that his scouts would spot them among the buildings.

  They passed through several villages, both large and small, before breasting a slope that revealed a delightful shallow basin, possibly three miles from edge to edge. There was a collection of dwellings; a large village or small town, high up on the far slope.

  The whole squadron caught up with the scouts and with the vanguard troop while they were still studying the place and the lie of the land leading up to it.

  They all remained just below the skyline while Fischer rode forward to see for himself. There had been a couple of sharp showers in the morning and woolly cumulus clouds were blowing quite rapidly inland, with welcome sunlight breaking through every so often.

  Quite by chance, the village was illuminated, bathed in sunshine through a gap in the clouds and there was movement to be seen through his small spyglass. It was a long way and the glass was only as good as his meagre finances had permitted, but he could distinguish horses and flashes of colour, reds and greens, lit up by the sun’s rays.

  He nudged his horse alongside his senior lieutenant, Ernst Bruch and noted that he was using a far superior field telescope, but then, he had been receiving regular pay for over a year now and could doubtless afford it. He slipped his own glass into his tunic pocket.

  “What do you make of them, Ernst? I thought I saw horses and green uniforms and that could be chasseurs or dragoons.”

  Bruch snapped his glass shut and thought about the question. The impression that Fischer had obtained of him was of a solid, reliable character with a deal of experience. Perhaps one that reacted more to situations, rather than initiating his own.

  He mentally castigated himself for the thought. It was of course something that the Hornets were good at and the situations they reacted to were usually ones they had themselves provoked. His judgement was unworthy.

  Bruch had completed his assessment. “Ja Sir, cavalry they are and not cloaked. Red overalls suggest dragoons and also they don’t wear shakos like the chasseurs. In the town a long time they have been, but lookouts they have posted. Although many woods and thickets are between us, to get close to them unseen shall be very difficult.”

  Fischer self-consciously pulled his battered brass spyglass out of his pocket again and studied the road leading down into the basin from the town. “I don’t think we need to be unseen, Ernst. We should have little advantage charging into the village, not knowing how many there are. I should like to persuade them to attack us so that we can try the tactics that Colonel Vere has had us working on.

  They have to be convinced that we have many fewer men than they do. That, of course, may actually be so. It should probably serve if I were to ride straight down the road with 3 and 4 Troops, after you have taken 1 and 2 Troops in broken order, taking cover from the trees on the left.

  It looks possible to put your men into the left-hand wood of the two about two miles away; the ones with the road running between them through that wide gap. I should try and time my arrival in the gap just as they come tearing down from the town to surprise us.

  We can then try Lord Vere’s tactics with the assurance that your men shall be in the wood, ready to shoot into their flank and cut off their retreat if we repel them.”

  Bruch loo
ked at his captain with greater respect. He knew that he was himself a more experienced Hornet and was naturally disappointed not to have been given B Squadron in his place. He now had to acknowledge that he hadn’t considered how to lure the French out into the open and that charging into the village after them was not such a good idea when one really thought about it.

  He tipped his helmet in salute. “Shall you wait, Sir, while I take my men stealthily over this crest and down into cover before you show yourselves? Once we get behind those trees on the left, just a hundred yards down the slope, to reach the woods by that gap without being seen is entirely possible.”

  Fischer watched the two troops trickle down the slope man by man and assemble again to skirt the edges of the trees, always out of the line of sight of the village.

  He gave them twenty minutes before waving the remaining two troops and the five light wagons over the crest and down the road at a walk.

  The small group of riders would be in sight of the village until the road reached the bottom of the basin. Any sentries would be certain to notice two troops and five wagons travelling together. That much movement would attract attention, even at three miles.

  It seemed sensible to keep the pace down to a walk. The road surface was no better than it should be, which, in Portugal varied by a point either side of atrocious. The wagon drivers would appreciate the rate and there was no need for haste until he was sure that they had been spotted.

  If, as he hoped, they were under observation, it was probably foolish to stop and use his glass to see what was happening. He resisted the temptation, but found it difficult to tell whether the French were preparing to take the bait on offer.

  He was none the wiser when they got low enough for trees to obscure the view, but told his men to go on at the same pace while he found a spot that gave him a clear view and allowed him to use his glass from only two miles away.

  The shadow of a cloud was now over the village, but the glass confirmed three things. The opposition was a unit of dragoons, probably in full squadron strength. The Hornets had been seen and the dragoons had waited until they passed from view before leaving the village. Lastly, the French fancied their chances and were hurrying down into the basin with the most likely intention of setting up an ambush of their own.