'It transpired that Deborah had known Uncle Roger, as he stayed here with the Stuarts during the Spring of 1811. At that time she had with her an ex-school friend, one Lady Mary Ware with whom, I gather, Uncle R had a secret affair, during which Miss D acted as their confidante. The last Miss D heard of Lady M was in the following autumn—that she was about to marry a wealthy merchant. Since then D's letters have been returned marked "gone from here", and I could give her no news of Uncle R, since he left England on one of his secret missions some fifteen months ago.
'I need no telling how distant our war here is to people at home in England. It is scarcely even mentioned by society belles like yourself, except when news comes of some relative killed or seriously wounded. And I'll confess that I hardly gave it a thought myself except when there had been occasion to celebrate a victory. But now that I am involved, I feel you will want to know something of the situation in the Peninsula and of our prospects.
‘ It has been a grim struggle and our army would long since have been defeated and driven into the sea had it not been for the brilliance of our great commander, and the fact that the enemy had for years to hold down all but a tiny corner of Spain, and the greater part of Portugal. It is this last that, in spite of their enormous superiority in numbers, has prevented them from ever being able to bring against us in the open field a force greatly exceeding our own. And the Duke is truly inspired. Again and again, whenever he has found himself in an unfavourable position, he has had the courage to invite censure by retiring, as he has twice done from Madrid; yet, time after time when opportunity offered, he has caught the French off their guard by clever stratagems, launched a lightning attack and destroyed whole divisions of them.
'We also owe far more than people realise to the Portuguese and the Spaniards. While behind the lines of Torres Vedras the Duke embodied and trained many regiments of the former. They are well disciplined troops and in battles since have displayed high courage. The contribution by the Spaniards has been still greater, although at times their forces have proved a dubious asset.
'As at least you will know, owing to Cadiz being situated at the end of a narrow eight-mile long peninsula the Spaniards succeeded in retaining that city and there formed a Junta which, after the flight of their King, assembled a Cortes that declared itself the government of Spain, and later entered into an official alliance with us. Incited by their fanatical priests, all but a very small part of the population in the north and south of Spain accepted the orders of the Junta and rose in revolt against their conquerors. Not only did they raise half a dozen armies, but also innumerable bands of fierce irregulars living in the mountains have constantly harassed the French from one end of the country to the other, cutting their communications and capturing convoys of supplies.
'Most unfortunately, the generals of their regular forces have proved both incompetent and unreliable; so that on numerous occasions during battles in which they took part with us, they failed to carry out the tasks allotted them by the Duke, with the result that we were deprived of what should have been complete victory. Last autumn the Cortes decreed that its generals should no longer act independently, but come under the Duke, as Generalissimo. So far, only the Spanish army in Galicia has given us full co-operation, but in this year's campaign, we are hoping that others will also prove of value.
'However, the fact remains that the Spanish regular and irregular forces have compelled the enemy to distribute his men in several armies, each of which is separated from the others by great ranges of mountains, so that none of them is readily able to come to another's assistance.
'The hatred displayed by the Spaniards and French for each other is almost unbelievable. Neither take any prisoners and butchers the wounded without mercy. When the French take a town, they massacre everyone they find in it and burn it to the ground. When the Spaniards capture a convoy or small body of troops, they torture them to death, often nailing them to doors and roasting or skinning them alive.
'Only on the east coast have the French succeeded in pacifying the country and this because, alone among the Marshals, Suchet decreed a policy of conciliation, spared the towns he took and even allowed their own Mayors to continue in authority. Yet his sixty thousand men are as severely harassed as are those in other parts of the country. Spanish forces constantly attack them. They are always defeated by Suchet’s troops, but fade away into the mountains, only to reappear after a week or so and again attack.
'Bonaparte's eldest brother, Joseph, whom he made King of Spain, theoretically commands all the French in the Peninsula, but I am told has little say in directing operations. He is said to be an honest, easy-going, good-natured fellow who takes his sovereignty seriously, and does his best to protect the interests of his Spanish subjects. But the row he has to hoe must be a hard one. He is, in fact, no more than a nouveau riche bourgeois, and the Spanish aristocracy who reluctantly form his Court are the most tradition-bound and stiff-necked in the world. Moreover, poor Joseph is no general, and the Marshals hold him in contempt. It is also our good fortune that the Marshals are intensely jealous of one another and, even when in a position to do so, frequently refuse to come to one another's aid.
'Massena was replaced by the young and energetic Marshal Marmont. For a while he gave our army considerable trouble, but his own conceit led to his downfall. Last July the Duke, with a force of some forty thousand men, had fallen back on Salamanca. Marmont was following him up with about the same number and, only two days’ march behind, King Joseph was coming to the Marshal's support with a further fifteen thousand men. But, rather than wait for the King and have to play Number Two to him, Marmont wanted all the credit for a victory, so impetuously attacked us. The Duke gave him a tremendous trouncing, he was severely wounded by a cannon-ball and, but for the ability of General Clausel, who took over, the whole of Marmont’s army would have been destroyed.’
‘ It was from the time of this battle that the tide of war in the Peninsula really began to turn in our favour. King Joseph beat a retreat as quickly as he could to Valencia, and took refuge with the powerful army under Suchet. This opened the way for the Duke to capture Madrid and delivered both Leon and the Castiles from enemy occupation.
'As the only possible hope of regaining his capital the King had to call on Marshal Soult, who for three years had been holding down the south with another great army and reigning in Seville like an independent sovereign. His march toward Valencia raised the siege of Cadiz, freeing the Anglo-Spanish-Portuguese force that has held out there for so long, and gave the Cortes there undisputed power over the whole of southern Spain.
'Soult is one of the ablest of the Marshals, and his joining up with Suchet at Valencia gave King Joseph an army of ninety thousand men. In addition, the remains of the French army from Portugal had joined with other forces in the north, giving General Clausel another army of some forty thousand in the neighbourhood of Burgos. Against this one hundred and thirty thousand and many thousands more French troops garrisoning Spanish cities, the Duke could bring only sixty thousand; so, although by his operations he had liberated all Portugal and a good half of Spain, he wisely decided to give up Madrid, for while Suchet remained in Valencia Soult was advancing on the capital with one hundred thousand men. The retreat continued until mid-November, by which time the Duke had fallen back on Ciudad Rodrigo, and the French, constantly harassed by Spanish irregulars, were so exhausted that they could press on no further..
'However, this set-back was of no long duration. Shortly after Christmas they learned here of the appalling disaster that had befallen Bonaparte in Russia. It is now confirmed that he left behind him, to die in the snow, no fewer than half a million men. This is greatly to our benefit, as he has withdrawn from Spain twenty-five thousand of the most seasoned officers and men to reform his Imperial Guard, several able Generals and, last but not least, our most dangerous adversary, Marshal Soult.
'This still leaves some two
hundred thousand French in Spain, but they have been much disheartened by losing so many of their veteran officers and N.C.O.s, while reinforcements during the winter have brought our army up to seventy-five thousand, the highest number the Duke has ever had at his disposal. Moreover, the greater part of the French army in eastern Spain is now entirely occupied in endeavouring to keep open their communications with France, which are seriously threatened by thousands of irregulars operating from the mountains of the Asturias and Navarre, under the Spanish General Mina. So we - now have opposed to us only King Joseph, with Marshal Jourdan as his adviser—an ageing General of the Republican wars. We are, therefore, in great heart regarding our prospects in the coming campaign.
'Reverting to myself. After five nights with the hospitable Stuarts, I was ordered to join a convoy and, with my man Briggs, took the coast road north. For many miles beyond the Lines of Torres Vedras the country is in a sad condition, since before retiring behind the lines the Duke secured the agreement of the Portuguese to lay bare the countryside, in order to deny the French sustenance and shelter. All livestock was removed, farms and barns emptied of their contents and left, roofless, the people of the towns were brought into Lisbon and the peasants took to the mountains. The abandoned land is now being brought under cultivation again, but many vineyards are still thigh-high in weeds and brambles, making one highly conscious of the loss and distress inflicted on the hapless poorer sort by the wars of the mighty.
'By way of Caldas, Alcobacca, Leiria and Pombal we reached the considerable town of Coimbra. From there we turned inland through the mountains, then by way of Guardaz and Pinzio crossed the frontier to Ciudad Rod-rigo. As the crow flies, the latter is no more than two hundred miles from Lisbon, but the winding road through the mountains adds half as much again to the distance to be covered.
'The scenery along the coast road was most picturesque, particularly as the many varieties of trees were beginning to show their young Spring green, and in the clear air of the mountains breath-taking panoramas opened up at every turn of the way. Before the war the tracks must have been impassable for transport other than by mule, but our engineers have done much to widen them and, in the worst places, lessen the gradient; so it took the convoy no more than a fortnight to reach its destination.
'To do so was a considerable relief to me for, the effects of war apart, Portugal is in the main a desolate and poverty-stricken country. At such miserable inns in which, now and then, I spent a night, there were no beds, but legions of bugs infesting the walls of the rooms, no fresh meat but goat, and little other food but goat's cheese and some bread, washed down with a resinous wine that made one gasp. Fortunately, the Stuarts had warned me what to expect, so I took with me a good supply of hard tack to lessen the monotony of the army ration; although that, I will say, was good and ample, for the Duke has ever held it a first principle that his troops should never lack for food, and they love him for it.
'On my arrival at headquarters, my Lord Duke received me very graciously and promised to find me a post suitable to my rank—I do not imply my rank as an officer for, as you know, nothing higher than a Lieutenantcy could initially be purchased for me, although as an officer of the Household Brigade I carry the seniority of a Captain when with other units of the Army—but as an Earl.
'A few days later it emerged in conversation that, having lived on the Rhine with dear Mama when she was married to that brute, von Haugwitz, I speak German fluently. Thereupon His Grace promptly told me I was just the man to fill the role of an extra A.D.C. and Liaison Officer with the Duke of Brunswick.
'The Duchy of Brunswick now forms part of Westphalia, which Bonaparte created as a Kingdom for his youngest brother, Jerome. The late Duke, a Prussian commander of distinction, was killed at the Battle of Auerstadt in 1806 and his son, Duke Frederick William, upon whose staff I now am, nurses a most bitter hatred against the French for having deprived him of his dukedom. He is a charming and most courageous man. In 1809, he led a revolt in an endeavour to free Brunswick but, owing to the strength of the French garrison, it failed. Undismayed, the Duke and the troops who had risen in support of him retired into Bohemia; then they carried out a most remarkable enterprise—no less than fighting their way right across Germany until they reached the North Sea. British warships took them off and conveyed them to England, where the King gave them the name of his "German Legion" and, at their leader's request, sent them to serve with our army against the French in the Peninsula.
'So you see I am now well settled and eagerly anticipating the opening of the new campaign next month. Being a liaison officer I need spend only part of my time with the Germans, and at the Duke's headquarters I now have a number of congenial companions, with several of whom I had been acquainted in London, and most of them senior to me by only a few years.
'An officer of the 47th Foot who has to proceed to London in order to unravel certain complicated matters with the Paymaster's Department will convey this to you. By the same hand I am despatching a missive to my beloved mother, and have endeavoured to divide my news between you; so each of you must read the other's letter.
'Owing to Boney's enormous losses in Russia, one can hardly doubt that the back of his main army is broken; and, now that the Prussians have united with the Russians against him, it seems there is a good chance that by summer this war of a life-time will, at last, be over. My Lord Duke is in hopes that we will drive the French back over the Pyrenees before they are finally defeated by the Allies in Germany. Be that as it may, when the news does reach
London that the French have been forced to surrender, I bid you, my dear love, to lose not one moment in setting about the preparation of your trousseau; for on my return I'll brook no delay in putting an end to our six years' engagement and making you, sweet Susan, the bride I have so long dreamed of.
'Your ever devoted and adoring Charles.’
On reading those last few lines, Jemima's mouth fell open, her dark eyes started from her head and, trembling with anger, she had to throw the letter from her to prevent herself from tearing it to pieces.
The mentions in it of 'Uncle Roger' had seemed strange, as Charles had never used that term to her on the very few occasions he had spoken of his mother's great friend, Mr. Roger Brook. But, in every other way, the letter was one that Charles might have written to her and its opening had thrilled her with the belief that he was much more deeply in love with her than he had led her to suppose. Only the very end had revealed the horrid truth. He had written three letters at one sitting and, by mistake, put a friendly one for her in the packet addressed to Susan and his mother.
At one blow, all her hopes for the future had been shattered. How utterly wrong she and Maureen Luggala had been in their belief that the mutual affection displayed by Charles and Susan when together was due only to their having been brought up as brother and sister. It was now clear beyond all doubt that, ever since they had been old enough to feel attraction to the opposite sex, they had been in love and had planned to marry in due course. The fact that, during the past year or two, both of them had carried on flirtations with others meant nothing. Her face red with renewed anger, Jemima visualised them telling each other about their affairs and laughing together over the conquests they had made.
Snatching up the letter, Jemima jerked open her door, flounced across the landing and, without knocking, erupted into Lady Luggala's room. The older woman was seated at her dressing table in a peignoir, smothering her face with grease while her yawning maid braided her hair for the night.
Imperiously Jemima snapped at the girl, 'Get out! I wish to talk to Her Ladyship.'
Maureen Luggala had found Jemima difficult enough to handle before she had discovered that she was a cuckoo in the Luggala nest. Since then Jemima had learned that her real mother supplied the funds for the Luggala menage, and that the woman she still called 'mother' in public was no more than a puppet who received her orders from the Irish witch. Headstrong
and imperious by nature, Jemima had lost no time in making use of her knowledge. During the past few months she had dominated the household and the servants no longer dared question her orders.
After one scared glance at Jemima, the maid dropped the rope of half-plaited hair, gave a quick curtsey and, only too glad to get to bed, hurried from the room.
Being by now aware that in an angry exchange with Jemima, she would only get the worst of it, Maureen closed her thin hps firmly for a moment, then asked resignedly, 'What brings you here at this hour?'
Still flushed with wrath, Jemima waved the letter. "Tis this! A letter from Charles. A pox on him! Would you - believe it; after playing up to me in no uncertain manner, he was all the time affianced to that bitch Susan, and plans to marry her the moment the war is over?'
Lady Luggala gave a gasp and her painted eyebrows shot up. ‘It cannot be true! The fondness he shows for her is no more than brotherly.'
'Brotherly, my arse!' exclaimed Jemima furiously. 'He addresses her as "most beautiful and adorable of the Sex." This letter was for her, but the fool put it in a cover addressed to me.'
'Oh, mercy me! Then we are indeed undone.'
'Undone I may be, but I'll have his guts for this.'
'Your disappointment is understandable. But you can hardly accuse him of having jilted you. According to the account you gave me, he did not even have you, let alone promise you marriage.'
'True. Yet he gave me good cause to believe myself a hot favourite in the St. Ermins' stakes. In no other girl did he show such interest. And I've not a doubt that all the time he was telling Susan that I was mad about him; while she, each time she saw me, must have pissed herself with secret laughter at my expense.'
"Tis possible your case is not so ill as you suppose. There's much in the old saying that "men were deceivers ever." Maybe he is playing a double game. He could have become affianced to Susan when they were only boy and girl, and he now regrets it, yet lacks the courage to break it off. There is at least a chance that, although he may not mention marriage in his letter to you, there will be evidence of great affection in it; so still hope for the future.'
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