02 - Keane's Challenge (35 page)

He pulled away, hot in pursuit of the duke, his men pouring after him, and Keane spurred on and followed as if he was out on a field day in the old country, his horse leaping the bushes as she would any hedge or fence.

*

Galloping along the ridge behind the line of infantry, they skirted what remained of the action in the centre and dropped down to the new road before pushing up so that they were now level with the convent at Barca. The tall bell tower, with its gaping arches, towered above them against the morning sky. Riding along the side of the huge plantation which had once been the convent garden, they emerged to find themselves among scores of greenjackets moving steadily backwards up
the forward slope, stopping to let off a round at a cloud of French skirmishers. Keane had been right; this was the main assault, for behind the skirmishers came six huge columns of blue-coated infantry. For a moment he thought that all must be lost. Martin summed up their fears. ‘Where are our lads? Who’s going to stop them?’

But Keane had spotted something. A single, solitary figure of a British officer was sitting on his horse up at the edge of the convent wood. Black Bob seemed to be alone, but looking more carefully they all began to see what Keane had caught sight of, for there, to Crawford’s left, hundreds of men were lying down as if asleep.

Keane called to Morris, ‘They’re Craufurd’s Light Bobs – the 52nd and the 43rd.’

The riflemen continued to retreat up the hill followed by the French, and then, just as the blue-coated columns reached the crest and threatened to swamp the allied line, Keane saw Craufurd remove his bicorne hat and wave it three times in the air. In an instant the recumbent redcoats were up and, their muskets already loaded and primed, within seconds had formed their line. The command was given and, with a precision that was nothing less than beautiful, they emptied their barrels into the face of the French.

Eighteen hundred muskets fired at close range and to Keane’s eyes the French column actually seemed to shake, as if some great Titan had moved the earth and smitten it with an unseen force. He had never seen the like. Then, with their officers shouting huzzahs, the two British battalions pushed forward into the French with their bayonets and for the second time that morning, with the seventeen-inch steel shafts jabbing and
stabbing death into their backs, the enemy gave way and scattered down the hill.

Keane turned to Morris. ‘It is a complete victory, Tom. He’s done it. Wellington’s done it. He’s beaten the best of them.’

He had hardly finished when Archer trotted up. ‘Sir, have you seen? Down there.’

He pointed off to their right, not far from where the French were streaming down the hill. Across the valley floor, out of the village of Moura, Keane could see another column advancing towards them. Then another and another. Looking towards the ridge he saw immediately the troops waiting to receive this new attack. And they were wearing blue coats.

‘Portuguese. They’re bloody Portuguese.’

By some miracle the French had directed their
masse de d
é
cision
, the critical, powerful column that might decide the entire battle, against Wellington’s blind spot, the only brigade on the field made up entirely of raw Portuguese levies and now outnumbered by more than two to one.

‘They’ll be slaughtered.’

Keane watched the horror unfold before him, slowly, almost dreamlike. He looked around for the familiar blue-coated figure. The bay mare. Surely Wellington’s commanding presence was needed here now, if anywhere. As he looked, cannon fire from the Portuguese and British guns began to open up on the advancing French column.

Keane shouted over the cacophony. ‘We need to get word to Wellington. The Portos need him. Before the French reach them.’

He began to turn, getting ready to ride himself to wherever the duke might be, but Morris had beaten him to it. Always the better horseman, he wheeled round and dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks.

He smiled at Keane. ‘Too slow, James. As ever. I’ll do it. It is my turn, I think.’

Keane watched as Morris increased his pace and cantered along the ridge. He had spotted the general now, in conversation with Craufurd, and Keane noticed Wellington turn, drawn to the sound of the guns. Morris was nearing him when from the opposite side of the valley the French cannon began to reply. A ball came across and scudded past to their left, sucking in the air. Others fell among the infantry to their front and more began to land among the Portuguese as the French continued their approach march.

A rain of black roundshot fell to Keane’s left, close to where the duke’s party were standing, and he prayed that none would hit the general. Of course the odds were against it, but as he watched one of the cannonballs smashed into a figure on a horse who had been careering along the ridge, and with an obscene spray of blood sliced his torso in two, like a knife cutting through butter. Keane felt suddenly as if his own breath had been knocked from him and sat unsteady in the saddle. For the horseman had been Tom Morris.

He was conscious of Archer beside him. ‘Sir, that was Captain Morris, wasn’t it?’

Keane said nothing.

Ross was speaking. ‘Captain Keane, sir, Captain Morris is dead, sir. He’s dead. Shall I ride to the duke, sir. Shall I tell him, sir? The Portuguese.’

Keane collected his wits. Tried to obliterate the horror he had just witnessed. ‘No, sarn’t. I’ll go.’ He urged his horse into action and moved fast towards Wellington, coursing the ridge and in doing so riding over the bloody mess that had been Tom Morris.

‘Sir. Your Grace.’

Wellington turned and saw him. ‘Keane?’

‘The Portuguese, sir. Over there.’ Keane pulled up and, turning, pointed back the way he had come, towards where the four French columns were about to reach the top of the ridge. Wellington, instantly aware of the situation, tipped his hat to Keane and took off, followed by the cloud of staff.

Keane joined them, taking care not to look down at Morris’s ruined corpse as he passed, and was almost back with his men when, looking towards the Portuguese brigade, his attention was taken by one of their officers. The man was sitting astride his horse at the rear of the second battalion, giving orders to a subordinate. But what most struck Keane about him was that the man wore a pair of round-rimmed spectacles and his face was topped by a shock of wavy orange hair.

Keane froze for a moment, then moved quickly, urging his horse past the staff officers and his own men towards the Portuguese. He could hear Wellington’s voice as he passed. A loud voice, short and precise. ‘Stand firm. Steady there. Stand and you will beat them. Make ready.’ The commander-in-chief of the allied armies, giving the command as if he were a subaltern again.

Keane did not take his eyes from the red-haired man. Pritchard-Macnab-O’Callaghan, was talking now to another officer, and Keane recognized that man too, at precisely the same moment that Captain Aeneas Foote saw him. Keane turned back to his men. ‘Silver, Garland, Heredia, sarn’t Ross. To me.’

The three men came fast and Keane turned to move again, but Foote had left Pritchard and ridden to meet him.

‘Keane, you’re not looking for me?’

‘No, it’s him I want to talk to.’ He indicated O’Callaghan, who nodded politely.

Ross spoke. ‘Sir? Your orders?’

Keane pointed to the man who had been Pritchard. ‘Get him. He’s a French spy.’

Foote laughed. ‘You’re mad, Keane. Stark raving mad. That’s Colonel Sir John Macnab. He’s a British officer.’

Keane ignored him and spoke again to Ross. ‘Get on, sarn’t, get him.’

Ross turned and led the others off, towards O’Callaghan, at the rear of the Portuguese, but O’Callaghan had seen them too and before they reached him had pushed his horse through the two ranks of Portuguese and out beyond them towards the advancing French. The four men began to follow, but the infantry were closing ranks again and they had to struggle to get through, striking with the flats of their swords. O’Callaghan knew he had only one chance and he intended to make use of it. He stooped and then, with a quick movement, unbuttoned his tunic and pulled it off, throwing it to the ground to reveal the dark blue and gold waistcoat of a colonel of the Grenadiers of the French Imperial Guard.

Then he looked towards Keane and Foote, and with a last smile and a nod of acknowledgment turned his horse and rode hard into the French lines.

Foote stared after him. ‘Well, I’m blowed. What the devil… ? Do you mean he was a spy?’

‘A spy, Foote. Quite right, and thanks to you, he got away. You bloody fool.’

‘Hang on, old man. There’s no call for that.’

Keane stared at him. ‘No, I suppose not. And there’s probably no call for this either.’

Still holding his sword, he swung his right arm and smashed
the fist, metal hilt and all into Foote’s head, knocking him from the saddle to the ground.

He looked swiftly across to where Wellington was rallying the forward battalions and saw to his relief that the duke could not have seen him.

The Portuguese appeared to have rallied and were pouring fire into the head of the French column nearest them. Another of the attack columns, though, had veered off at an angle and was bearing down upon a ragged battalion of Portuguese cacadores who, having been beaten up the hill earlier, had steadied themselves and reformed to the front of the convent complex.

Keane called to the four troopers, who had only just managed to extricate themselves from the Portuguese reserve. ‘To me. All of you. Form on the convent.’

Dismounting, and not caring to see what had become of Foote, Keane drew his carbine from its holster and ran towards the entrance to the convent, a curious roofed triple archway with barley-twist pillars, decorated with pebbles and stones embedded in the masonry. The others ran to join him and together they stood in the arches, guns at the ready. The Portuguese in front of them were pulling back now in the face of the French advance.

Martin turned to him. ‘Don’t they ever bloody stop, sir?’

‘No, Will, they don’t bloody stop, unless we stop them. But we can do that, can’t we?’

Martin smiled.

Keane called out, ‘Form up. We’ll give them a volley.’ The Portuguese were on either side of them now in the arches and the cloisters. He glimpsed Pereira among them, trying to keep order. ‘Lieutenant. Lieutenant Pereira.’

The lieutenant had seen him. ‘Sir. We can hold them here, can’t we?’

‘We can and we damned well will. Form up. Two ranks. We’ll give them a volley they won’t forget.’

Pereira called a command in Portuguese and the blue-and-brown-coated troops shuffled into close order. Keane took command, watching all the time the French column as it began to deploy into a deadly line of muskets. ‘Make ready. Present.’

Three hundred guns, muskets, carbines and an old and much loved gun from Ireland, which had seen better days but had never been better used, came up to three hundred tired shoulders.

‘Fire.’

The guns spat smoke and flame and the French stopped.

‘Reload. Make ready. Present.’

And through the white smoke French officers shouted commands and sergeants pushed and shoved their men into file, desperate to get a shot off before the second volley came in. But they were too late, and they knew it.

‘Fire!’ Keane screamed the word and again the guns gave voice. And this time it was enough. He could not see it through the smoke, but Keane knew that the French were breaking. He could hear it. A murmur of panic that grew by the second. Now was their time. ‘Draw sabres. Fix bayonets.’

He heard Pereira shout the second command again, in Portuguese this time, and then the rattle and clank as just under three hundred triangular socket bayonets snapped on to muskets and the swish of metal on metal as his own men drew their long, curved swords. There was only one more command to give now. The last command of the day. He drew breath and bellowed, ‘Charge.’

With a single movement they swept out from the convent and hit the French hard, steel piercing flesh and scraping on bone with a force doubled by the sheer weight of the men advancing behind it. Pushing the French down the hillside. He was aware that they were not alone. That to their right and left other battalions were doing the same, like a huge wave, released at last to dash upon the blue cliffs and crumble them to dust. And the French ran before them, tripping and tumbling as they went. And Keane’s men went after them, pursuing them until they could run no more and so at last they stopped, at the foot of the great ridge. Wellington’s ridge. The ridge of Bussaco.

Around him the men were catching their breath, doubled over, hands and weapons stained red with the blood of their enemies.

Archer looked up at him. ‘We did it, sir. You did it.’

Keane shook his head and he looked along the valley and watched the French run.

‘No, Archer, we all did it. And now all we’ve got to do is to do it again and again and again. Until we force those blue bastards out of this bloody country. And then we can all go home and sleep easy in our beds.’

The campaign in which James Keane plays a central role in
Keane’s Challenge
focuses on the construction of the Lines of Torres Vedras and the defence of Portugal. It was to be one of Wellington’s most audacious and most successful.

From June to September 1810 he played a game of cat and mouse with Massena, and nowhere was he more in need of his intelligence service than here.

The new field telegraph too came into its own and, quite apart from Wellington’s tactical brilliance, it was through a combination of superior communications, engineering and intelligence that he was able to outwit the marshal and eventually bring him to battle on his own terms.

I am indebted, as before, to Julia Page’s revealing and compelling publication of the letters and diaries of Major the Hon. Edward Charles Cocks (or Somers Cocks) for detailed information on the campaign and the life of an intelligence officer, although any suggestion of a resemblance of character between Cocks and Keane is not intended.