Flashman's Escape (34 page)

Historical Notes

Albuera

Flashman’s account of the battle of Albuera and the events that preceded it align closely with other historical accounts. For those wanting to read more, the book
Albuera 1811
by Charles Dempsey is recommended. It was the bloodiest battle of the Peninsular War and many agreed with Flashman that the battle was hopelessly mismanaged by Beresford, resulting in higher casualties. Beresford himself was distraught over the dead, missing and wounded in his initial despatches to Wellington. Indeed Wellington had these despatches rewritten to make it sound more like a victory before they were submitted to parliament. Later a pamphlet war started between Beresford’s supporters and detractors, of which there were many, highlighting his shortcomings in the campaign. While Beresford was publicly exonerated from blame, he never held independent command in battle again.

Ensign Price-Thomas, just fifteen, really did exist and did die in the manner described by Flashman. Below is an extract of a letter Captain William Stephens of the Buffs wrote to his surgeon uncle:

I cannot refrain from tears while I relate the determined bravery of your gallant little subaltern, who fell on the 16th instant, covered in glory; and it must in some measure alleviate the grief I know you will feel at his loss, to know that he fell a hero.

Stephens goes on to explain that he saw Price-Thomas try to rally his company in the midst of the attack by the Poles when his captain had been injured. “Rally on me, men, I will be your pivot,” the boy is quoted as shouting out. Any rally he achieved was short-lived.

Sources also confirm the extraordinary tale of Lieutenant Matthew Latham, who went to the aid of another fifteen-year-old ensign, Charles Walsh, who was trying to defend one of the regimental flags against the lancers. Latham lost his lower arm to a sabre cut, but still fought on to rip most of the colour from the flagpole despite receiving further sabre blows, including one that severed his nose and part of his cheek. Walsh survived and was taken prisoner, later confirming what happened to Latham, who was left initially for dead. The flag was found on his body the morning after the battle, but it was not until the following day that Latham was found to be still alive and treated. Latham’s story has a happier end than you might expect. The much maligned prince of Wales, later George IV, referred Latham to a noted surgeon called Joseph Carpue for treatment at the prince’s expense. Carpue used a pioneering skin graft technique to give Latham a new nose from skin taken from his forehead. Latham re-joined the regiment in 1816, when it was part of the allied occupation of France after Waterloo. Ironically he married a Frenchwoman and retired from the army in 1820 to live with her in Normandy. He died in 1865.

To give some idea of the scale of the casualties, below is an extract from another letter written by a Captain Arthur Gordon describing what happened to some of the officers in the Buffs. In this he refers to lances as pikes.

I shall endeavour, however, to give you some facts respecting the First Battalion of the Buffs: Captain Burke is killed, Captain Cameron shot in the neck, wounded in the breast with a pike and a prisoner. Captain Marley was wounded twice in the body with a pike, badly. Captain Stevens was shot in the arm, was a prisoner and made his escape; Lieutenant Woods had his leg shot off by a cannon ball; Lieutenant Latham’s hand is shot off, also part of his nose and cheek; Lieutenant Juxon is wounded in the thigh with a pike, Lieutenant Hooper shot through the shoulder, Lieutenant Houghton has received a severe sabre cut on the hand and through the skull; Lieutenant Herbert is dead; Ensigns Chadwick and Thomas are also dead; Lieutenants O’Donnell and Tetlow with Ensign Walsh were wounded and made prisoners, they have since escaped and joined… I was stabbed at the time with a pike in the breast, in the back and elsewhere and the enemy’s cavalry galloped over me.

Interestingly the above account does not list any bayonet wounds incurred by the officers, indicating that, like Flashman, officers stood back from the bayonet duels, where they would have been disadvantaged with just a sword.

The appalling eighty-five per cent casualty rate for the Buffs is confirmed by historical sources. For the battalion as a whole six hundred and forty-three were killed, wounded or missing from a total of seven hundred and fifty-five men at the start of the battle. In Price-Thomas’s company only a private and a sergeant survived unscathed. There were similar numbers for the other two battalions of Colborne’s division that were routed by the Poles. The Buffs were indeed referred to as the resurrectionists in the days after the battle as many of the one hundred and sixty-one missing men escaped their captors and joined the one hundred and twelve initial survivors.

As well as the battle itself, Flashman’s descriptions of the life of a company on the march and the horrendous aftermath of the battle are also confirmed by historical sources. British casualties are estimated at over four thousand, approximately forty per cent of the total British force deployed, although, as noted above, some regiments saw double this number. The French are thought to have lost some six thousand men, roughly a quarter of their original force. French wounded left on the battlefield were also at a much higher risk of being murdered by the Spanish in the course of looting that was inflicted on all nationalities.

George Guthrie

George Guthrie was the senior surgeon at Albuera and at one point he had over three thousand wounded in his care with just four wagons to transport them. He was twenty-four at the time of the battle, having been apprenticed to a surgeon aged just thirteen. He passed his surgeon’s examination aged sixteen and was immediately posted to be a regimental surgeon for a unit being sent to North America. Some of his notes from the battle survive and confirm that men recovered from some astonishing injuries given the limited medical knowledge of the time. This includes a soldier who had a musket ball pass straight through his body as Flashman experienced, and whose wounds finally healed.

It is not known if this Guthrie was any relation to the surgeon called Guthrie that sailed with Cochrane on the
Speedy
, whose adventures are detailed in
Flashman and the Seawolf
. However, biographical information on George Guthrie indicates that there were other surgeons in the family so it is entirely possible

Badajoz

The capture of Badajoz was a brutal affair that was a source of both pride and shame for the British army. While Albuera was the bloodiest battle of the whole Peninsular War, given casualties across the French, Spanish, Portuguese as well as the British, Badajoz was the bloodiest event in the war for the British army alone. There were four thousand six hundred and seventy casualties of which three thousand seven hundred and thirteen fell during the storm of the breaches.

The battle took place largely as Flashman described. Casualties were appallingly high as the attack was made before the breaches had been properly developed. More than forty separate assaults were made at the breaches. The diversionary escalade assault on the fortress which ultimately helped capture the city was an extraordinary feat of courage and daring.

As Flashman recounts, the French took to taunting their opponents, which served to enrage the survivors when they were finally able to enter the city. In an age when the sacking of a captured city was commonplace, the brutality shown to the citizens of Badajoz sickened even contemporary observers. Some officers did what they could and Flashman mentions Harry Smith who married a nun he found in Badajoz. The fourteen-year-old girl, Juana Maria de los Delores de Leon, had certainly sought shelter in a convent, but she was not a nun. She married Smith just a few days after the battle, and despite this briefest of courtships they appeared to live a long and happy life together.

Ironically given the nature of their meeting, this girl has a personal link to a later famous siege. She travelled to South Africa with her husband and with fellow officer Ben D’Urban. All had a part in developing that country and all three had towns named after them. Ladysmith was the scene of a notorious one-hundred-and-eighteen-day siege by the Boers of the British-held town in 1900.

Colquhoun Grant

Grant is another of those extraordinary characters from history whose real-life adventures seem too farfetched to appear in a historical novel. He was the tenth child of a family of minor Scottish nobility and joined the army aged fourteen. Helped in his career at first by several of his siblings, he came to the attention of Wellington for his extraordinary gathering of cattle and supplies from outside Torres Vedras. With the help of local guides, he managed to transport a large herd of cattle, sheep and draught animals carrying grain unmolested through French lines. He subsequently earned acclaim as an exploring officer. It is known that Wellington greatly valued his services and later appointed Grant as head of intelligence for the Waterloo campaign. It is perhaps significant that without Leon to help him Grant did not cover himself with glory, as the French army caught the British completely by surprise as they approached Waterloo. The only description of Leon in Grant’s biography comes from one of his contemporaries. He states that the guide was “a Spanish peasant of fidelity and quickness of apprehension.” His evident intelligence would tend to support Flashman’s interpretation of events.

Colquhoun Grant was captured by the French on the fifteenth of April 1812 just north of Alcantara, near the town of Idanha a Nova, with Leon summarily executed on the spot. His parole was signed on the eighteenth of April, the same day that floods washed away a bridge that would have been an escape route for Marmont’s army. At around this time the French suddenly accelerated their movements, with the French infantry crossing the Agueda through a ford as soon as receding floodwater made it passable. Marmont consequently escaped Wellington’s trap, although there is no written evidence that he gleaned any information from Grant.

Wellington was alarmed and disappointed to learn that Grant had been captured and then that he had given his parole – effectively a promise not to escape. Wellington wanted him back at all costs and offered local guerrilla forces a prize of two thousand dollars in gold if they could recapture Grant and return him alive. Copies of the letter Wellington received from Marmont offering to exchange Grant and one dated the same day from Marmont’s office to Paris offering Grant for interrogation still exist. These would only have heightened Wellington’s desire to get Grant back, and he would have used all resources at his disposal, including Flashman and Doctor Curtis – who is also known to have visited Grant in Salamanca.

Grant’s journey from Salamanca to Bayonne started in the middle of May. Grant’s biographer states that the men commanding the escort were uncomfortable that an officer who had given his parole and behaved honourably was being handed over to the ministry of war. They obviously knew what would await Grant when he reached Paris. When the convoy reached Bayonne there was no one from the ministry of war to meet them as the despatch had been intercepted. It seems that the officers commanding Grant’s escort deliberately abandoned him in a square, to give him an opportunity to escape.

Grant’s extraordinary choice to continue on to Paris is one of the most bizarre decisions of the war. He could easily have escaped back across the Pyrenees and with guerrilla support stood an excellent chance of re-joining the British army without delay. There was no good reason for proceeding to Paris as he had no contacts in the city. If he did travel on to Paris with General Souham, as he claimed, then he was either extraordinarily daring or equally reckless.

Grant maintained that he stopped in Orleans on the journey and ‘divined’ some individuals opposed to Bonaparte, but even his admiring biographer finds this hard to believe. Clearly Grant must have had some assistance to make contact with those who would be willing to help him in Paris. Flashman’s account gives an explanation of how this happened and why he became involved.

Most of the information on Grant’s time in Paris comes from a diary kept by his brother-in-law of the stories he was told by Grant. It is known that Grant definitely reached Paris and there are records of messages that Wellington received from him sent from that city. Unsurprisingly given the nature of their parting, Grant appears to have made no reference to Flashman at all in stories to his relatives.

As Grant did not leave any written records of his own, the second-hand accounts of his time in Paris do vary. There are some claims that he spent as long as nine months in the city, leaving in spring 1813. But Napier, who was in the peninsula at the time, claims he was back within four months of being captured. The timing in Flashman’s account is aligned with that of Napier.

After Flashman lost contact with Grant, it is known that he found his way further down the coast. He made claims that he had contacted a French marshal with Scottish connections for assistance during this journey, but this is unlikely. The two marshals with Scottish/British links, Macdonald and Mortier (who had a British grandmother), are both known to have been on active service in Germany at the time. Grant ultimately escaped by hiring a fishing boat to take him out to sea where the British navy was blockading French ports. On his second attempt he succeeded.