Flashman's Escape

by Robert Brightwell

  “Those horsemen have turned their line and seem to be walking in our direction now.”

  “Well, if they are French, our cavalry will see them off,” claimed Captain Bailey confidently.

  There was a crackle as a handful of muskets discharged behind us and one ball buzzed over our heads. The gathering of so many enemy officers had attracted the attention of the voltigeurs in the remaining French column.

  Without taking my eye from the lens I called out to Evans. “Sergeant, make sure those frogs don’t get too close.” There was something about the horsemen that seemed familiar, I thought, so maybe they were British. All I could see was a blurred grey silhouette through the rain, but now they seemed to be increasing speed. “I think those horsemen have gone from the walk to the trot,” I told the other officers. “They are definitely coming this way.”

  “Perhaps we should gather a few companies to form a solid line against them, just in case they are French,” suggested Waller.

  “That would mean showing our backs to that French column,” objected King. “General Stewart wants us ready to attack them; I am not changing formation unless he orders it.”

  There was another crackle of musketry and I looked around at the remaining French column. They had sent forward a dozen voltigeurs who were well spaced out. Behind them some men from the main column were also taking some pot shots at us, but at a hundred yards they were not likely to be accurate. Now that they could see their enemy, most of the French infantry seemed to be engaged in checking primings and powder and firing off damp charges to get their weapons ready in the rain for the expected attack.

  Evans had got the company well spaced out and was urging the men to kneel like the voltigeurs when they were not loading so that they made a smaller target. I nodded approvingly and turned back to find that my telescope rest had walked off and was petting a miserable Boney. The ensign had knelt down next to the dog and put his arm around the animal’s shoulders. Boney leant in towards him to share body warmth and I saw that they were both shivering a little. Now that the danger seemed to have diminished slightly I realised that I was freezing as well. My clothes were saturated with icy rain and stuck to my skin.

  I heard a yell and looked over my shoulder to see Private Temple clutching a wound on his arm. It did not seem too bad for he took his hand away to pick up his musket. Aiming it at one of the voltigeurs, he yelled, “I see you. Let’s see how you like this, you bugger,” before firing and giving a grunt of satisfaction at the result.

  “I think they are Spanish,” called out Captain Bailey. He was still staring at the horsemen, who did not seem so distant now.

  Without the telescope I could see the grey, undulating line of cavalry. I dashed the rain from my eyes and squinted but I could not make out any colours. I raised my glass again but my hands were shaking with the cold and it was hard to hold the thing steady. Twice the horsemen swam before my eye and once I thought I caught a glimpse of blue but was not sure. The third time I managed to hold the glass steady for a few seconds. They were two hundred yards off in the pouring rain then. At first I had that nag of familiarity as I looked at them. Then one turned his head and I made out the shape of the strange shako and at that moment the rain thinned sufficiently for me to see the little flag at the top of the lance he was holding. I knew them then all right; they were one of the most feared cavalry units the enemy possessed.

  “They are Polish lancers!” I shouted.

  “Are you sure?” queried King.

  “Of course I am bloody sure – I’ve ridden in the uniform.”

  Any remaining doubt was resolved by a trumpet call from the approaching horsemen who now increased speed to the gallop.

  “Form up to receive horse,” yelled Major King to all those about him. But it was too late for that, far too late, and everybody knew it. The ground seemed to vibrate now with the oncoming horses’ hooves and men stared in horror at what seemed approaching certain doom… but for me death arrived early.

  It was as King gave his pointless order that it happened. I felt a thump in my back and a searing pain in my chest. As I stepped forward to keep my balance I saw a red stain grow across my chest. I stared down in horror, my mind numb. Oh, I had been close to death many times before, but each time I had managed to escape, while those around me fell. Now my luck had suddenly run out. I had been shot in the chest, whether from a voltigeur or a lucky strike from the column I did not know or care. All I did know was that shots passing through the torso were invariably fatal. I was done for.

  As the world dissolved into chaos around me, the initial horror changed to shock as the implications sank in and then I felt strangely calm. It was almost a serene moment as I realised my time had come. My mind wandered to the people I had killed and the moment of their passing. I wondered almost idly what dying would feel like. For once I seemed relaxed; the tension of surviving had gone. I was still aware of things going on around me, but it was almost as though I was watching myself from a distance. I remember Price-Thomas pulling on my arm and asking if I was all right, and Boney coming over and licking my hand. As the horses thundered towards us Sergeant Evans issued a string of profane oaths, his normal verbal dexterity having deserted him. Men were running all around me; some seemed to be trying to surrender, others running away and just a few preparing to make a fight of it.

  The next trumpet call brought me slightly to my senses. It was the sound of the charge: the lancers were just fifty yards off now and lowering their weapons to the attack. Two were aiming at Price-Thomas and I as we stood rooted to the spot, watching them come on. I could still breathe; the world was not going black as I had expected. Perhaps it would not be the musket ball that kills me after all, I thought. Instinctively I reached down and drew my sword; it just seemed right to die with the weapon in my hand.

  The lancer aiming for Price-Thomas was fractionally ahead and I can still recall seeing the horseman grin as he crouched over his weapon, aiming it for the centre of the boy’s chest. “Run, boy,” I gasped as I remembered a moment not six months ago, when another lance was aimed at my chest. But I was not the only one to remember my encounter last autumn with Polish lancers. Boney had been there too and had been nearly shot for his trouble. He was not a forgiving dog and had always been fond of the young ensign. Now, as he saw the lancer approach, he sprang forward, snarling in anger. A look of alarm crossed the cavalryman’s face as the dog was already past the now wavering point of his weapon. Price-Thomas threw himself clear and then there was a blood-curdling yelp. The second lancer, who had been aiming for me, had covered his comrade and impaled the dog on his weapon. I felt a white-hot rage burn inside me as I saw Boney writhing to get free. An Irish wolfhound weighs almost as much as a man and the lancer was struggling to clear his shaft of the dog. I managed to stagger forward a few paces. The lancer must have expected us to run away and did not look round, but I was past running. As the Polish trooper looked to his right to pull the weapon free, his horse turned and brought the rider’s left side within my reach. I thrust the razor-sharp sword up under his ribs and into his chest. He shrieked in agony and his back arched in the saddle before his horse reared and pulled the body off my blade.

  “Look out!” I heard Price-Thomas cry behind me, but I did not have a chance to look round before my leg was knocked from under me. I twisted as I fell and just had time to see Price-Thomas pulling on the first lancer’s arm as he tugged his weapon from my thigh. The lancer simply knocked the boy aside and then tried to get his mount to trample me. The horse was whinnying as it moved above me and seemed to be trying to avoid treading on me, evidently a lot kinder than its master. But as the lancer raked his spurs to urge the animal on to new targets a back hoof caught me around the head and for a moment the world did go black.

  I came around to a scene of utter chaos. I had been lying on my side but with a struggle was able to prop myself half up on one elbow. There was a burning pain in my chest, my leg throbbed with a gaping hole in it and
now blood started to drip into my left eye from a cut on my head, but at least for now I was still alive. I was in the tideline of bodies from the attack on the second column and twisted around slightly to rest against a French corpse that lay face down in the mud. My blood-stained sword lay beside me and Boney lay whimpering a few yards away, but my attention was elsewhere.

  Fifteen-year-old Ensign Edward Price-Thomas stood still amongst running soldiers and charging lancers. As its last officer standing, he was trying to gather the men of the third company. “Rally on me, men,” he cried, his voice high in fear and excitement. He was waving his sword in the air to get their attention. Incredibly one soldier, Private Temple, tried to respond to his call, but he was cut down from behind by a lancer as he ran to his young officer. Price-Thomas just stood there and called again, unsure what to do next.

  “Run away, you bloody fool.” I had meant to yell the words, but as I inhaled my chest hurt and it came out as a rasping noise. Price-Thomas must have heard something as he looked at me. I remember seeing the surprise in his eyes that I was still alive. I couldn’t shout, but now I had his attention I pointed north towards the rest of the British and Spanish forces and managed to croak, “Run.” I twisted around to see if he would make it, but almost instantly realised that he had tragically misunderstood my last command. He had run, but not to escape. Instead he headed straight to a furious fight that was underway around the regimental colours. I groaned. Price-Thomas had been with the regiment nearly all his young life. He had been brought up to believe that these two six-foot square scraps of cloth were the honour of the regiment, to be defended at all costs. As I watched my lifeblood seep into the mud, I could not think of anything less important to die for.

  There were half a dozen lancers fighting around the two flags. The capture of an enemy colour would normally result in an instant promotion and fame within the army. I could see the sergeants defending the colours with their spontoons. The weapons were designed to bring down enemy horsemen armed with swords; the Poles, with their longer lance weapons, killed them with impunity. Two ensigns held the actual colours and I saw one killed and the flag taken and held aloft by a jubilant lancer. As the trooper tried to ride away with his prize Price-Thomas got in his horse’s way, waving his sword in a futile effort to stop the beast. The ensign did not see the lancer riding behind him or probably even know he was there until the lance went clean through one of his lungs and came out of the front of his chest. The second lancer shook the boy’s body off his point to lie in the mud. Beyond him the ensign holding the second colour was cut down, but I saw Lieutenant Latham of the fourth company grabbing the flagstaff from the boy’s fingers. Two lancers hacked down at Latham with their swords, but still he tried to wrestle the flag away from them and tear some of the cloth from the pole. Incredibly I saw young Price-Thomas somehow stagger back to his feet; his sword still in his hand. He ran a few steps towards Latham and the fight for the colour before more Polish lancers and their horses blocked my view. When they moved away again both Latham and Price-Thomas lay still in the dirt and a lancer was carrying away the pole of the second colour, still with a strip of the precious cloth attached.

  You stupid, brave bastard, I thought as I looked at the boy’s corpse in the dirt. I might be a coward but I can recognise courage in others. There are some I have known who have not felt fear, at least not until the last. But young Price-Thomas had been frightened; despite that he had still charged into the fray to do what he thought was his duty.

  I looked up into the heavens to utter a prayer for both Price-Thomas and myself, as I did not think it would be long before I joined him. My commune with the Almighty was interrupted by a dog’s whimper. I looked down and Boney was struggling to reach me. His back had been damaged and he could not use his rear legs properly, but he was half crawling and half scrabbling across the mud to join me. I reached forward and grabbed him by the collar to pull him the last yard to lie beside me.

  The exertion caused more blood to come from the hole in my chest. My already soaked shirt, was now a mixture of red and pink. I put my arm around Boney and held him close. He gave a little whine and rested his head on my shoulder. There was a puddle in the ground between our bodies and I watched as blood from my leg wound mixed in the muddy water with blood from the hole in Boney’s side.

  I was resigned to dying now and I could not think of better company. The battle still raged, but in the distance. There was no shooting nearby and I leant back against the French corpse and shut my eyes. A few moments later I felt Boney’s head come off my shoulder and he uttered a low but ferocious growl. Opening my eyes, I saw that soldiers from the French third column had come over and were now looting the dead and taking what wounded they could move as prisoner. They searched the French bodies as well as the British for any valuables, and I saw a group of French soldiers driving some prisoners back to the French lines beyond the southern end of the ridge. Amongst them were two survivors from my own company.

  I heard one French soldier crouch near me and rummage through the pack of the man I was lying against. I did not have the strength or the will to object when he turned his attention to me. He removed a ring from my finger and a pistol from my left coat pocket. I hoped he would not find the gold coins that I kept sewn into my belt for emergencies. When he moved to my right coat pocket Boney growled again and his top lip curled up to show his teeth. The soldier thought twice about it and looked on the ground nearby.

  “Where is your sword, monsieur?”

  It had a gold hilt and was one of the most valuable things I owned, but I could not think where it had gone. The last time I remembered it clearly was when I had stabbed the lancer with it. I just stared at the man, puzzled myself as to its location. He looked around at the other men looting the bodies and must have assumed someone else had taken it. He moved on to find some more corpses to search. Boney lay his head back down on my shoulder and in doing so moved his front paw. Beneath it I saw a glint of gold and realised that the dog must be lying on my sword. He had done me one final service.

  I think I passed out then for I do not remember any of the rest of the day. From the fact that I am writing this memoir, you will have concluded that I survived. So I should tell you a little of what I missed, which I gleaned from subsequent accounts. The Poles rampaged through three quarters of Colborne’s brigade, effectively destroying three battalions. Of the twenty-seven officers and seven hundred and twenty-eight other ranks that had started the day in the Buffs, only eighty-five unwounded men remained. There were various accounts of the Poles striking down those attempting to surrender and misusing prisoners. They were only stopped when they reached the thirty-first regiment, which was still in a column at the end of the Spanish line. The infantry swiftly formed a square to fight the horsemen off. Even then the Poles were not done and some rampaged behind the Spanish line where they found a group of senior officers including Beresford. One charged our commander, and while he might have been an ineffectual general, Beresford could deal with a lancer. He used his immense strength to pull the man clean off his horse and dash him to the ground, where he was despatched by the bodyguard.

  Some units of our cavalry belatedly tried to see off the Poles but soon found that they were facing the masters of cavalry warfare. Each lancer had a little red and white pennon flag at the end of the lance. When I had been disguised as a lancer I had assumed that these were for decoration and recognition. But they had a more lethal purpose. As the two groups of horsemen met, the Poles would wave the flags in the faces of the British mounts, causing them to rear and create confusion in the British lines, just as the lance point moved with the momentum of half a ton of horseflesh into the red-coated ranks.

  Both sides then launched fresh infantry attacks, and while I lay supine a battle continued to rage all around me. Another stalemate was achieved, but while Beresford dithered several of his subordinate commanders launched a further assault, which broke the deadlock. By dusk the field was ours, but i
t was a field thickly carpeted with the dead and dying.

  Chapter 9

  My next recollection was that night. It was still raining and a thunderstorm was raging over the battlefield. I guessed that it was the flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder that had roused me. For a while I was confused as to where I was. As the memories came slowly back I remembered that I had been dying. The chill of that thought closed around me like a cloak. For a moment I wondered if I was already dead, but after trying to move I decided that I remained with the living. There was still a stabbing pain in my chest and I was shivering with cold. Surely, I reasoned, you would not feel cold and pain when you were dead. Indeed, given the life I had led, if there was a heaven and hell, I was expecting to feel things get too hot rather than too cold.

  I could only see out of one eye and, reaching up, I found that dried and congealed blood had sealed the lashes of the other eye shut. With my remaining eye I looked down at Boney in the gloomy darkness of the night and touched his side. He had passed on to whatever afterlife awaited animals. He lay damp and stiff beside me with his head still resting on my shoulder. I gently moved it aside so that I could sit up. My leg had stopped bleeding and I pulled open my shirt and looked at the wound in my chest. There was a ragged hole I could put my little finger in just beneath my ribs on the left side. It hurt me to breathe, but at least I was still breathing. Staring about, I saw that there were many more bodies than I remembered. There was now a dead British infantryman lying across my feet who had not been there before. I slowly realised that the battle must have continued, but I had no idea whether we or the French were victorious.

  There was a low, continuous murmur of moans and groans from the wounded, interspersed by the occasional high-pitched shriek or shout for help. Somebody nearby was muttering a prayer in French and in the distance a woman was calling out for someone called George. I was staring down the battlefield to my left when the next flicker of lightning illuminated the scene. If I thought the night had no more horrors left, I was wrong. The first thing I saw was a swathe of naked bodies lying across the battlefield. Their white skin shone in the electric light of the storm. Apart from the odd wicked gash, they had been washed clean by the rain. At first I was puzzled: why would there be naked bodies? No one had fought naked. But the next flash of lightning gave me my answer. At the edge of the naked bodies a line of people was moving. There were men, women and even children in local peasant dress. They had sacks and were systematically stripping the dead. But the thing I remember to this day was that, as the lightning flashed to hold the scene in my memory, a peasant woman was frozen in the act of raising a hammer that she must have been using to quell any resistance from one of her victims.