Run Them Ashore (39 page)

A big sergeant came at them, wearing the shoulder wings and white plume of a grenadier, and he jabbed with his half-pike and ran through one of the men who had killed his officer. He ripped the blade free and swung the staff, tumbling another enemy with the blow and forcing the rest back.

Sinclair tried to urge his mount through the press, but could not tell what he hoped to do for he both loved and hated these fierce countrymen of his. Another of the eagle guard fell, his thigh gouged deep by the spearhead of the pike so that blood pumped from the wound and sprayed across the sergeant’s white trousers. He recovered his balance, stamped forward and killed the man who had picked up the eagle.

The crowd split apart. Suddenly there was enough room to run and so hundreds of men fled, and as they pushed by his horse, Sinclair found himself being carried with them. The slowest still fell to the Irish bayonets, but they were few and the remnants of the 8ième Ligne escaped. Behind them they left the big Irish sergeant holding the eagle aloft in triumph. There was a wreath fastened over its head as a battle honour, but now the Irish had
taken this symbol of pride and the regiment would have to live with the shame.

‘Bejabers, boys, I have the cuckoo!’ Sinclair heard the cry in so familiar an accent and he laughed amid the bitterness of defeat.

EPILOGUE

It had been dark for hours by the time the men of the Flank Battalion felt the wood planks of the bridge of boats beneath their feet. After so many miles of mud and earth the springiness was an odd sensation, especially when the boats shifted under their weight and with the tide. Williams heard the cables creak and hoped that the Spanish engineers had done a good job when they made the crossing. The Light Company proceeded in silence, too tired even to complain about another night march or the uselessness of their allies. It was almost midnight on a day when they had fought a battle and lost so many comrades. There were Spanish soldiers holding torches to guide them across the bridge, and in the flickering light Williams thought his men’s faces looked blank, eyes staring without seeing as they shuffled along, struggling to take each new step. The bridge led to the Isla, and if a man kept on this road he would come in time to Cadiz.

They had won the battle, driving the French away, and the two squadrons of KGL hussars had done sterling work chasing the fleeing enemy, and driving back the dragoons who tried to screen the retreat. The Germans took prisoners, and two more French cannon, but they could not prevent Marshal Victor from following the road back to Chiclana. Whittingham, the Englishman in charge of the Spanish cavalry, had done little. Captain general La Peña had done even less, sitting with ten thousand men faced by a quarter of their number of French soldiers. He could easily have driven them back, as easily have cut off Victor as he retreated, but he had not. Instead the regiments under his command had chafed and sat idle.

Two hours ago a Spanish colonel, no less, had come up to Williams, a mere lieutenant, and apologised. ‘The man should be shot,’ he had declared of his own commander. ‘He is a useless coward and we must be rid of his kind if we are to win this war.’

The Walloon Guards and the Ciudad Real Regiment had reached Barrosa Hill a mere ten minutes after the British had captured it, having force-marched back as soon as they received the order. Williams’ men had joined the other redcoats in jeering the approaching soldiers. It was unfair because they were good and willing regiments, but with so many fallen comrades the men of the Light Company were not inclined to be fair.

There was a rumour that General Graham and the Spanish commander had argued, and whether or not it was true the British had gone back to the Isla. The Spanish had not, although it seemed unlikely that they would stay on their own. Victor’s men were driven off, but their regiments were not crippled, and so once the Allies crossed back to the Isla, the French would no doubt resume the siege as if nothing had happened.

‘We’ve lost twelve hundred men,’ Hanley had told him earlier on, ‘and the French at least two thousand,’ and yet for all that blood they would all soon be back where they started.

Their friend had been able to bring them news of the battalion, which had done well under FitzWilliam’s leadership. ‘He is mentioned in the dispatch, as is MacAndrews. Stanhope tells me that the general is sure there will be a brevet for him.’

Hanley saved the best news until last. He must have known that the story had spread around the little army with the speed of the electric matter so talked about in recent years and demonstrated on the London stage. ‘The Eighty-seventh have taken an eagle. It is to go with the dispatch back to England. A sergeant took it and he is promised a commission.’

Their friend had said more, assuring Williams that he was due a substantial sum of prize money from the Navy. He had said as much before, when the Welshmen had come through the lines to Tarifa, and yet it did sound far-fetched. Jane MacAndrews was not far away, probably asleep in her bed as anyone of sense
ought to be at this hour. Their last meeting had been one of joyous hope, cruelly interrupted, but the long months had not altered the essential truth that she was rich and he was not. Prize money brought fortunes for admirals and considerable wealth for captains. While pleasant enough, he doubted it would make him the girl’s equal and so the hope could be no more than a daydream.

Love was not enough without honour, although he could imagine Pringle struggling to understand and Hanley filled with baffled incredulity if he dared say such a thing aloud. The thought brought memories of Guadalupe, of the love she had declared for him. He did not know whether she had escaped back to join her sister and the partisans, or what would happen to that beautiful, sad girl. The little war had horrors that even the bloody hill of Barrosa could not match.

Williams remembered the slow growth of happiness in the young woman’s face, the tenderness with which she had watched him, and felt honour was a cheap word by comparison. He also recalled her dancing, the graceful sensuous movements as her skirt twirled and her shoes pounded the floor, and then the feel of her in his arms, the softness of her lips. The voice of the man he aspired to be told him that it was just as well that they had been interrupted. The man he was had no such certainty, and he found himself thinking of her touch and her smell. Tired as he was, the thrill coursed through his body and led his mind back to Jane.

‘Bravo, boys, bravo!’ An engineer officer was waiting as they stepped off the planking on to dry land. ‘Welcome home!’ The man must have greeted each unit in the same way, and his voice was hoarse from cheering them.

Williams and the Light Company marched back on to the Isla, and he could not help wondering whether it had all been worthwhile. His leg, which had behaved itself for the rest of the day, started to ache again.

‘Come on, lads, step lively and we’ll soon have hot food and a good night’s sleep.’ That, at least, was something worthwhile.
Tiredness threatened to flood over him – not just the long marches and the day’s battle, but the months spent away from the regiment. The time with the partisans was already fading to seem unreal. Williams marched on, too weary to feel or think anything.

Six days after Graham’s British division crossed back to the isthmus of Cadiz, a Spanish army came out of the main gate of another city. There were almost eight thousand of them, dressed as well as brushes and polish could make them in their old and faded uniforms. Each battalion had two Colours held proudly before it, and a large band played as they marched in step through the Trinidad Gate at Badajoz, following the road out of the fortress before wheeling into a field and forming up as if on parade. With them went two heavy guns, the limbers pulled by mules.

Major Jean-Baptiste Dalmas watched them with a deep sense of satisfaction, smiling as, company by company and regiment by regiment, the Spanish soldiers laid their firelocks on the ground and went into captivity. The governor of the fortress had insisted on the ritual as a mark of honour, and the French had cheerfully granted the empty symbols of a bygone age.

Marshal Soult would rightly take the credit for the capture of the fortress, although he would not have the leisure to enjoy it for tomorrow the main body of the army must return south to restore order in Andalusia. Massena was retiring from Portugal, his army starved to the point where it could no longer hold on, and that meant that the conquest of the country had failed for the moment. With this surrender, the French held three of the four great border fortresses between Spain and Portugal. The road to Lisbon could be opened again, whenever sufficient force could be gathered to do the job properly, and in the meantime the routes leading to Spain would be held against the Allies.

Dalmas had made it happen. In February he had found the route through the hills so that the French cavalry could take the Spanish army in the flank. Ten days ago, the cuirassier had waited in a hidden pit not far from the city walls, knowing from one of his paid sources that the Spanish were about to launch a sortie
against the French siege lines. Brandt was with him, his British rifle carefully loaded with loose powder rather than a cartridge, and the ball wrapped in a leather patch so that it gripped the barrel tightly. His spy told him that General Rafael Menacho, the commander of the garrison, planned to watch the attack from the ramparts to encourage his men.

He did not tell anyone except Marshal Soult what he planned, and when the Spanish attacked some Frenchmen died as they overran the forward trenches. Dalmas let the fleeing French and the advancing enemy pass before he propped open the roof of their hide. A close inspection of the ramparts soon revealed the governor, peering through an embrasure.

Dalmas let Brandt take his time. There was enough room for him to be some feet away from the Polish marksman so that he could see what happened without being hindered by the smoke of the discharge. The man now wore the green uniform of Sinclair’s Irish Regiment and had a sergeant’s yellow stripe on his sleeve.

Brandt fired, and Dalmas saw Menacho jerk back and vanish behind the wall. They pulled the cover back over themselves and waited for the sally to be repulsed. His source soon confirmed that the governor was dead, and the next most senior officer was a timid man, lacking confidence and easily swayed by those around him. The promise of more money to another officer, who had already been generously rewarded, convinced the man to say the right things. The French pressed on with their siege, and when they sent in a summons to surrender, the new governor found a way to convince himself that capitulation was the only sensible course.

‘Well done, Dalmas,’ Soult said as they rode past the rows of prisoners and headed into the fortress. Its walls were formidable, the little breach the French guns had made narrow and steep. ‘It would have cost us two thousand men to get in and even then we might have failed.’

‘Instead it cost us thousands of gold coins,’ Dalmas said.

‘King Joseph’s money, and he can afford it.’ The marshal
spurred ahead, for he must lead the procession into the town, but Dalmas was happy to lag behind. The war would go on, and in the years to come the French would win. In the meantime there would be plenty of opportunities for an able soldier to gain high rank and fortune. Dalmas was a very happy man as he rode through the Trinidad Gate into Badajoz.

HISTORICAL NOTE

Run Them Ashore
is a novel, but the story is firmly grounded in fact and I have done my best to describe the real events and people as accurately as possible. The 106th Foot is an invention, but I have tried to make its officers and men act, speak and function like their real counterparts. This is the fifth story in the series begun in
True Soldier Gentlemen
, and it opens at a time when Allied fortunes in the Peninsular War were at their lowest ebb and ends just when things were beginning to turn around. Even so, it would be another year before the balance openly shifted in their favour.

The title comes from a song about the Royal Navy, which played an essential if often ignored role in the ultimate success of Wellington and his soldiers. British intervention in Portugal and Spain would have been impossible without the Navy’s capacity to land them there. Continuing the war would have been equally impossible without British control of the sea routes to and from the Spanish Peninsula. Wellington’s complex series of fortifications, the lines of Torres Vedras, are justly famous for stopping the French invasion. Yet they relied on his army as a mobile reserve to block any breakthrough. That army could not have been fed without constant shipments of grain and other supplies brought by sea. Sufficient transport ships and escorts were kept at Lisbon so that the entire army could have been evacuated if it became necessary. Without this assurance it is doubtful that Wellington would have stayed where he was, and it is certain that the ministers in London would not have let him risk Britain’s only field army.

We remember Trafalgar and Nelson, but can easily forget that British naval supremacy over the next decade was maintained only by immense effort. There were no more fleet actions on that scale, and much of the work was unglamorous, maintaining a blockade year in year out around ports like Brest and Toulon. The Navy was expensive – far more so than the army – and it needed to keep growing, for there were never quite enough ships to perform all its roles without risk. Several of the ships featured in the story were quite new at the time – HMS
Rodney
had been launched only in December 1809 at Deptford. Each year Napoleon was building more line-of-battle ships than Britain – in part because he controlled more of the resources necessary for shipbuilding. The French would struggle to man them, particularly to man them with well-trained crews, but over time the numbers would swing more and more in their favour. Hence the deep worries of admirals and ministers alike that the French would seize the remnants of the Spanish fleet and its dockyard supplies.

There was more than a little irony in Cadiz becoming the focus of so much naval activity just a few years after Trafalgar. A strong British squadron was stationed there, alongside the Spanish and French ships they had so recently been blockading. The French ships became prison hulks – the dramatic escapes of men on two of these mentioned in the book did occur, and it was only with some effort that I resisted the temptation to alter the real chronology and have these episodes happening during the story. By 1810 most of the Spanish ships were in a very poor state. In real life as in the story the seventy-four-gun
El Vencedor
had to be towed by the
Rodney
when it carried British troops to Fuengirola, and sank with all hands soon after that operation.

Keeping the army supplied and reinforced meant the protection of transport ships, which in turn involved the Navy in the difficult and unpopular business of escorting convoys. The burden of these fell on the smaller ships, such as frigates, sloops and brigs, and the principal threat was not the French Navy, but the privateers which were encouraged to establish themselves in the
ports of southern Spain. Some French generals even invested in these little ships and their crews as a moneymaking enterprise as well as a contribution to the war effort. Their prey included not only British transports and the smallest Navy vessels, but Spanish and other ships coming from the New World. Most captains far preferred orders allowing them to cruise in search of these privateers rather than the dull routine of convoy escort. Yet the privateers were numerous and the Navy was overstretched, so that at best they controlled the problem and could not solve it. ‘Cutting out’ raids to take or burn privateers and any enemy merchant vessels were common whenever the Navy was able to find the ships and men to undertake them. The attack on Las Arenas in the story is as fictional as the place itself, but is based on real operations. Casualties in such attacks were often one-sided, and if they went well the Navy suffered little loss while inflicting serious damage on the enemy.

In the autumn of 1810 most of Spain was under French control apart from a few coastal areas. The French would most probably have taken Cadiz had it not been for the swift action of the Duke of Alburquerque – who was subsequently attacked by his rivals, sent to London as ambassador and died there a few months later. If Soult had taken the city and the last remnants of the Spanish government, then the rest of the country might well have collapsed. With Wellington fallen back to the lines of Torres Vedras it was very hard for anyone to be optimistic about the Allied cause in these months. The Navy’s control of the sea meant that he could cling on there, allowed some support to be sent to Spanish enclaves on the coast, and permitted Cadiz to be reinforced.

Cadiz lay in a naturally strong position, but modern historians have been a little too ready to see it as impossible for the French to take without strong naval forces. This is certainly not the impression gained by reading Graham’s letters from the time or indeed the comments of naval officers who were concerned about the poor state of defences on the Isla. The race to build flotillas of gunboats and other small vessels to dominate the
Inner and Outer Harbours suggests a serious threat. The fighting there is described faithfully in the book, and involved the use of Congreve rockets and bomb ships. As the months passed, there was a steady growth in confidence, and only occasional scares. On one occasion Graham ordered a mortar to fire from just outside Cadiz itself to prove that the French batteries on the other side of the harbour were out of range. The French lacked many of the things they needed – some of the heavy guns they used were dredged at low tide from cannon belonging to ships driven ashore and wrecked after Trafalgar. Marshal Soult had others, including some mortars, cast in Seville and taken south with great effort. Some of these were able to fire on Cadiz itself, although in the event they achieved very little.

Cadiz proved secure, and was packed with politicians and refugees so that for a while it became one of the most populous cities in Spain. Many Spanish as well as British observers were shocked by the impression of a community too busy with politics and with celebrations to worry about the dire state of the war. One officer from the 79th Foot – later the Cameron Highlanders – noted in his journal that he attended one party where ‘… common decency seem’d laid aside. Some of the Ladys [sic] appeared in Men’s Clothes, and the men again in those of the Women. One great piece of wit amongst the Men was the dropping of handfuls of a very small sweet meat down the backs and Bosoms of the Ladys who though of course much annoyed took it all in good humour’. Thus the indignities inflicted on Jane MacAndrews have their basis in fact, but I did not feel Williams would be inclined to show such ‘good humour.’ Similarly there are many stories of hired assassins prowling the streets to seek vengeance for real or imagined slights. No doubt these tales exaggerated the frequency of such things, but they are common enough to justify this episode.

The French never attempted a real assault on Cadiz, but the siege lasted until 1812 and thus with hindsight it is easy to see its outcome as a foregone conclusion. Yet allowing the Regency Council and Cortes to stay secure and holding on to this enclave
were ways of staving off defeat, much like Wellington’s strategy in Portugal, and Allied leaders were keen to find ways of striking back. It was rightly considered essential to encourage and support the irregulars fighting the guerrilla – the little war. On several occasions Spanish regular troops launched what were effectively raids into enemy-held territory, sometimes coming by sea or setting out from the shelter of Gibraltar or other coastal towns still held by the Allies. The most successful were probably those operations where they never encountered serious opposition and withdrew before the French caught them. In such cases the gain was making the enemy gather a field force, drawing troops away from other duties. The French were left frustrated and tired, and usually it meant that other areas were stripped of troops and so offered better opportunities for the irregulars.

The landing at Fuengirola was a slightly more ambitious attempt at similar ends. It was dreamed up by the governor of Gibraltar and his naval counterpart, won the backing of the Spanish, and happened even though its objectives were never very clear. In real life command was given to Major General Lord Blayney, who left a lively account both of the operation itself and his subsequent captivity. I have not based the character of Lord Turney on him, wanting a fictional leader, but in every other respect I have tried to present a faithful account of what actually happened. It is hard to know whether the intended objective of Malaga was ever feasible. Perhaps it might have been taken, but it is less likely that it could have been held. The real-life Blayney seems to have abandoned it quickly, but did not decide what he wanted to do instead and became obsessed with taking Sohail Castle. Although a brave man with a long record of distinguished service as a subordinate, his performance as a commander was much less impressive, in spite of his personal courage. The castle – which has been restored and can be seen today – might have succumbed to the heavy firepower of HMS
Rodney
, but since she did not arrive until too late, there was no means of breaching its walls. Instead Blayney seems to have expected the garrison to
give in, in part because he dismissed them as poorly motivated foreign auxiliaries.

The Polish soldiers of the Fourth Regiment of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw – a recent creation of the Emperor Napoleon, who stopped short of reuniting all Polish territory into one kingdom – proved him wrong. There were 153 of these men in the castle at the start, reinforced by 63 who sneaked in during the first night of the siege. Another force of some 200 infantrymen along with some 80 men of the French 21st Dragoons launched the bold attack to relieve the garrison. It was not good cavalry country and the dragoons played only a minor if significant role. Blayney had four companies of the 2/87th, the Imperial Toledo Regiment, the short-lived foreign regiment referred to as Chasseurs (and formally named the Foreign Recruits Battalion), as well as artillerymen, sailors and marines – more than 1,600 men in total. Two flank companies of the 82nd Foot – whose shoes are filled by my fictional 106th in the story – landed near the end along with some marines, so that the grand total was probably nearer two thousand. In spite of these odds, the Poles comprehensively trounced Lord Blayney’s expedition, and captured the general as well as large numbers of his men and a lot of stores. Blayney’s ornate sword remains in the collection of Krakow Museum.

The sources for the combat at Fuengirola are poor and often in conflict, and I confess that I do not have the linguistic skills to access the Polish accounts directly. I have tried to be accurate, and, when I could not find the information, to represent it in a way that was at least plausible. The sources for the uniform worn by the Fourth Regiment in October 1810 are contradictory. There is even less readily available information about the chasseurs, other than to say that they were raised from prisoners and deserters.

If Turney’s real-life predecessor Lord Blayney offers an example of poor British generalship, La Peña’s performance during the Barrosa campaign was even worse. As described, the Allies were carried by sea down the coast, and then marched from Tarifa
back towards Cadiz. The Spanish general kept moving at night, which meant that the column strayed on several occasions, tiring his own and the British soldiers. He does not seem to have been at all clear about what he hoped to achieve. The Spanish regiments under his command performed as well as his dismal leadership permitted. The division commanded by Zayas would fight with great distinction later in the year at Albuera. At Barrosa on 5 March 1811, they were kept idle by their commander and thus unable to support their allies in any meaningful way.

Barrosa is an odd battle in many respects, not least because both the British and the French were convinced that they were heavily outnumbered. The totals were closer to roughly 5,000 British against 7,000 French. Victor’s men were veterans, and the sources all claim that they fought the battle in their finest uniforms, and mention the French bands. In contrast few of Graham’s men had seen much active service. Several of the units were second battalions, generally composed of younger soldiers, and others served in detachments, such as the composite battalion composed of companies from the Coldstream and Third Guards – who in the event ended up fighting separately.

The attack on Barrosa Hill by the Flank Battalion occurred as described apart from the inclusion of my fictional characters. It was led in reality by Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Browne of the 28th Foot, who did indeed ride ahead of his men singing ‘Heart of Oak’. The exchanges between MacAndrews and General Graham follow a subaltern’s account of what was really said. Browne came through the action unscathed, but his battalion lost 236 men from the 514 who began the climb and for a long time became no more than a thin skirmish line. Their advance gave the rest of the brigade the chance to deploy and launch a bigger attack. The British were deployed in line and opposed the French in column, but the advantages of the former formation in terms of firepower do not in themselves explain the outcome. Accounts suggest that this was a very hard-fought action, and that it would not have taken much for either side to break. Something kept the less experienced British soldiers in the fight longer than
their opponents, and it was the French who gave way. The same was true of the fighting between Leval’s division and Wheatley’s brigade.