Flashman's Escape (4 page)

“We will need to report this to headquarters so that some of our gunners can collect it,” I said to Evans as we examined the gun.

Evans looked around to check we could not be overheard before replying. “I would rather not send Corporal Benton this time, sir.” He looked me in the eye. “Some of the women are wondering where Mrs Benton disappears to at night when her husband is not on the march. It could get ugly, sir – not for you, but for Sally.” He looked up at the sun before adding, “In any event, if I send Benton now he will probably be back before nightfall.”

I cursed inwardly, knowing he was right. Heaven knows I am not one to always observe social conventions; why, I have even fornicated in a cathedral during a mass. But I realised that I would have to be a little more subtle going forward. We sent Price-Thomas instead.

Around the gun there were more bones and scraps of hide to indicate that the draft animals hauling the gun had been butchered for food before the men advanced further. Perhaps some locals had found the carcasses after the French had moved, for there was barely a morsel of the creatures left.

Certainly some of the local population were still around; this was proved when we came across more French bodies later that afternoon. There were five of them, all stripped naked, but two buttons found in the dirt were from French uniforms. Their bodies were pitiably thin and they seemed to have dropped out of the march through fatigue. Four had been bludgeoned and mutilated. One of them appeared to have had a cannon ball dropped on his head. Whether this had been done while they were alive it was impossible to tell. But the locals had got creative with the fifth Frenchman, who I guessed had been found alive. They had staked him out spread-eagled on the ground and then built a fire over his genitals.

“Good grief,” exclaimed Hervey when he saw the body. “Both sides in this war behave like savage animals.”

“It is not so bad between us and the French,” I told him. “We each treat prisoners of the other with respect. But between the French and the partisans, as you can see, no quarter is asked for or given.”

I could see that he was hesitating about burying those bodies as well, but as we needed to catch up with the rest of the battalion, I forestalled that by ordering the company to advance.

We found the other companies camped out in neat rows that evening and duly took the space allotted to us. As expected I was summoned to Major King to explain my absence the previous evening.

“It won’t do, Captain,” he berated me. “There is an order of march and it must be obeyed. You were seen by two other companies stopping by a stone church. If they had not reported you, we might have thought you were missing or attacked.”

I had already discovered that Major King was a very rule-driven man, but I had thought of one excuse that might serve. “There had been a lot of atrocities in the village, sir – children burnt to death to reveal food hoards, that sort of thing.”

“War is a brutal business, Flashman, you should know that by now.”

“Indeed I do, sir.” I paused before continuing in a more confidential tone. “But your nephew took it quite badly. In fact he insisted in front of the men that all of the bodies be given a Christian burial. I did not countermand the order as I did not want to undermine his authority. But once we were finished it was too late to go on and so we camped in the church.” The best excuses are those with a basis of truth and this one I thought would serve perfectly. Hervey would probably unwittingly confirm it if asked about the atrocities.

“Ah, I see,” replied the major thoughtfully. “In that case let’s say no more about it. Young Richard will need to get used to the realities of war. My sister always was a bit highly strung. Still, he will settle down. Speaking of the realities of war, have you heard the latest news?!”

“What is that, sir?” I asked, noting from the grim look on his face that it was unlikely to be good.

“The damn Spanish have surrendered Badajoz to the French, so instead of relieving the siege we are now recapturing the place. I take it you have been there?”

“Yes, I stayed there with the rest of the army for a while during the retreat after Talavera.” I remembered it as a forbidding fortress with the river down one side and thick, tall walls around the rest. When I had been there it had a big garrison of nearly ten thousand men and the best part of two hundred cannon around the walls. “But I understood that they had enough food, sir, and they knew we were coming. Why on earth did they just hand over the town?”

“It seems the old commander was killed and the new one was bluffed by the French into surrendering. Soult certainly did not have enough men to capture the place by force. So now we must besiege the French garrison while holding Soult’s army off as he will be bound to disrupt our operations.”

The optimism of just a few days ago that we would be pushing back a French army weakened by hunger and disease was fast diminishing. Unlike Massena’s forces, Marshal Soult’s men had not starved over the winter. Soult had also proved he was a cunning and capable commander. That got me thinking of our own general and I realised that this would be my first army action without Wellington, or Wellesley as he was when I first knew him, in command.

“What is General Beresford like?” I asked.

“Well, he did a good job of organising the Portuguese army,” claimed King. “You will soon get a chance to see him as he is gathering his forces. There will be British, Portuguese and some Spanish troops. All told we should have around thirty-five thousand men. Against us the most that Soult is likely to be able to gather is around twenty thousand, so Beresford can afford the odd mistake.” As it turned out these were prophetic words indeed, but at the time they gave me some comfort.

The army did gather over the coming days. First our battalion joined another three, to make a brigade of around three thousand men. This was commanded by Brigadier Colborne. For a few days we marched together in a long column. It was still freezing cold but I gradually got used to being in the saddle again. Rarely could we find an intact building to sleep in, and while there were a few tents it was often warmer to sleep outside by a fire where there was at least some warmth. Sometimes rocks would be heated in the fire while dinners were cooked and then, using bayonets, these hot rocks were rolled onto blankets to give extra warmth during the night.

After a few days marching we crested a rise and found some of the other British, Spanish and Portuguese brigades camped before us, under a smog of campfire smoke. Given the smudge in the sky from the fires could be seen for miles, it was surprising that the very next day a much smaller French force of two and half thousand blundered into us. As we outnumbered the enemy by more than ten to one, you might think it would be a simple affair to roll up and capture the hapless French column. If you think that then you clearly have not fought under the command of General William Carr Beresford.

That day was a damn frustrating experience. Previously, as a staff officer, I had been with Wellington and had heard reports from scouts and seen decisions being made. I had known what was happening and why orders had been given. This time I was just a poor bloody infantry officer halfway down the column and nobody had any idea what was happening.

After hearing distant trumpets to indicate that some action was underway, we were ordered to march two miles and prepare for battle. Then we did absolutely nothing. First one hour passed and then two. We heard the odd crash of a cannon but nothing like the sound of a full battle. While other officers fumed at the delay, I was privately delighted. I had no wish to go anywhere near a battle if I could help it. Previously I had some freedom to roam around the battlefield, doing my best to avoid the action. Now I was obliged to lead my men into battle, which gave me much less scope for honourable evasion.

As I had a good glass, King ordered me to ride to the top of a nearby ridge and report on what I could see. I got there just in time to see the small French force pulling back completely unmolested. Meanwhile other British units could be observed scattered around the countryside, also doing nothing. I could make no sense of it.

Then I saw a group of staff officers coming along the ridge, led by an extraordinary character. Judging by the amount of gold braid it had to be Beresford and he was a giant of a man: a full six inches taller than any other officer and broad too, with a chest like an ox. The high collar that he wore combined with his huge chest gave the impression that his head was far too small for the rest of his body. When his little pin head turned in my direction, he glared angrily at me as though I had no right to be on the ridge and I saw that he only had one eye that moved, the other was of glass. I saluted smartly and moved to one side as his large horse thundered past.

As the rest of his staff followed at a respectful distance I saw one that I knew from my early days in the peninsula.

“Ben,” I called to him once Beresford was out of earshot. “What on earth is going on? We have been waiting around here for ages and now the French are pulling back without anyone bothering them at all.”

“Hello, Flash,” cried Ben D’Urban. He reined in his horse and waited until his companions had ridden on so that we were alone. “Between you and me,” he confided, “the general has dithered his way to a defeat. Our cavalry cut off the French escape and captured their guns, but then Beresford worried that there might be another French force coming to their rescue and ordered our men back. Now it seems that there was no second French force and we have let this one escape and recapture their lost guns too.”

“He is not very decisive then?” I probed.

“Oh, he is a good administrator, but he does not have much battle experience. His last independent command was the aborted attempt to capture Buenos Aires in Argentina. But Wellington obviously has some confidence in him.” D’Urban laughed and leaned forward confidentially. “Although he has given the good general long lists of instructions on how he should conduct the campaign, even including where he should make a stand if Soult attacks.”

“Where is that then?”

“A place called Albuera; it is on the road from Seville to Badajoz. Soult would have to come past it to try to lift our siege and it has a ridge from which the army can fight; a good defensive position.”

It was the first time I had heard the name, which even now, more than thirty years later, brings back memories I would prefer to forget. But at the time it meant nothing and I could easily imagine the battle on a defensive ridge. All of the battles I had seen with Wellington in the peninsula had involved him hiding his men behind ridges and lines of redcoats beating French columns to deliver victory. Naively I thought I knew what to expect. For the first time we had the advantage of numbers and surely, I thought, we would win the coming action. But I had tragically underestimated Beresford’s ability to bring chaos out of order and this time everything would be different.

Chapter 3

If I had harboured doubts over Beresford’s abilities from our first encounter with the French they were not allayed over the coming weeks. We crossed the river Guadiana using a flimsy pontoon bridge at the beginning of April. I felt uneasy being on the French side of the river, but we did not see a single Frenchman for over a month. That was just as well as the siege operations were descending into farce.

Daily forced marches were ordered, which often outran supplies, and the hilly stony roads destroyed the soldiers’ boots, which had not been in the best state despite Corporal Benton’s efforts. It did not help that destinations were often changed at the last minute, as though we were hurrying to no good purpose. While I was fine on my well-shod horse, every evening a long line of stragglers who had fallen out of the day’s march hobbled into the camp with blistered and bloody feet. They then had little time to eat, repair boots and sleep before the next day’s march.

After days of marching and counter-marching we finally arrived where I had suspected we would end up all along: Albuera. We reached it in mid-April and after all the rushing about we then sat there doing nothing for a month.

Albuera was a miserable place. It had 150 houses and a rather grand old church. But the French had been there before us and it was all now in ruins with barely a roof on any of the buildings. The population of several hundred had been reduced to just an old man and a cat when we arrived. It was down to just an old man five minutes later, when Boney spotted the cat.

We settled in as best we could, stretching what tent canvas we had over the roofs of buildings to make them weather proof and gathering plenty of wood to put fires back in the hearths. The stragglers caught up and those with blistered and cut feet had plenty of time to wonder what the rush had been about. While other captains allowed their men to sit about and do little, I decided to put my men through their paces. Every other afternoon Lieutenant Hervey and Sergeant Evans would take them up on the ridge for musketry drill and bayonet practice for hours. At the same time the women and children would be despatched in groups off to the woods to find firewood and check various traps and snares set for fresh meat.

Oh, I was the proper diligent officer and I was even commended in front of the officers’ mess by Major King. He might have been less complimentary if he knew that I spent most of the time my men were exercising doing my favourite form of ‘drilling’ with Lucy Benton. But it was not just about getting the men and women out of the way so that Lucy and I could have a quiet afternoon together. I was all too aware that when a battle did come, my life would partly depend on how well my company fought. The veterans and recruits were paired together so that the new men learnt how to fight, and I venture that Hervey came to appreciate the skills of Sergeant Evans too. The company was coming together as an effective single unit, and if its captain was able to take advantage of the situation to do some ‘bonding’ of his own then so much the better.

While I was conducting my own military manoeuvres, things were happening elsewhere. Other British brigades had been detailed to start the entrenchments for the siege of Badajoz. This was back-breaking and dangerous work with the French lobbing out shells to disrupt the digging. Astonishingly only at this point did someone notice that the cannon we had brought with us were not suitable for bringing down the huge walls of the city. Artillerymen were sent off to Elvas, the nearest big British fortress on the other side of the Guadiana, to bring away their largest guns. But by the time they had got them back to the river the pontoon bridge had been partly swept away by the strong current. It took several days to repair and by then Wellington was coming over the bridge with the guns, frustrated at the delay and insisting that the assault on Badajoz start as soon as possible. He disappeared again back to his own army in the north a few days later. From what I learned later from Ben D’Urban, the result of his interference was more dithering from Beresford and feuds between the senior officers.

With suitable guns finally delivered, the bombardment of the city walls of Badajoz started on the eighth of May. It must have been one of the shortest sieges in military history, for they stopped again just four days later on the twelfth. Soult, doubtless monitoring our pitiful progress, decided that it was now time for him to react. He set off with his army from Seville. The poor gunners, who had only just started their work, were told to take the valuable siege guns all the way back over the river to Elvas. Our general was worried that they could be captured if we lost the coming battle. As you can tell from that decision, even Beresford did not have confidence in his own abilities!

I saw our illustrious commander again the day after we had heard that Soult was on the march. He had come to view his designated battlefield and spent the day riding around it, holding a sheaf of papers that seemed to be Wellington’s instructions for fighting the battle. His large horse looked like a pony under his great frame, with his feet dangling well below its belly. A group of staff officers rode with him, pointing out various features on the landscape, while he searched for reference to them amongst his papers. At one point they rode near the edge of the village where I was standing and it was then that I saw that amongst the officers with him was Grant. The pompous stuffed shirt could not resist riding over to gloat at my misfortune, followed by the ever-present Leon.

“Morning, Flashman. I hope you are preparing for action, for the French are on their way.”

He bristled with self-importance, but as the rest of the staff were still nearby I gritted my teeth and made an effort to be civil. “Yes, that rumour has spread even to us fighting men. Are you still rounding up stray cattle or have they found you something more useful to do?”

“We have just ridden from the outskirts of Seville and seen the French army for ourselves, haven’t we, Leon?” He glanced over his shoulder at his guide before continuing. “They are now around eight days’ march away with plenty of cavalry, so you might want to practise getting into a square.”

“As we told the general,” interrupted Leon smoothly, “Soult could be here in a lot less than eight days if he does long forced marches.” Leon gave me a meaningful look as though to indicate that is what he expected the Frenchman to do. I just hoped that Beresford’s one eye had detected that Leon was a shrewd judge of what to expect, but I doubted it. The man himself turned and barked at Grant to re-join him.

“Captain Grant, when you are quite ready I would be obliged if you would take down some notes to give to Wellington.

“Duty calls, old boy,” called Grant with a self-satisfied smile as he rode away. God I hated that bastard.

That evening I was summoned to the old church where General Stewart, one of Beresford’s subordinates, gave the more senior officers of his command a briefing on what he thought was happening.

“Gentlemen,” he barked at us, “Soult is marching to relieve Badajoz and we stand astride the road he must take to reach the city.”

“When will he get here?” someone asked.

“He left yesterday and he could be here as soon as three or four days’ time.” I was glad that someone had taken Leon’s warning seriously. “He will want to come at us quickly to take us by surprise and because he knows that our force is scattered and will need some time to gather. We have two Spanish armies marching towards us to help and General Beresford is gathering other allied units that will rendezvous here. If all goes to plan, we should have a three-to-two advantage in numbers and a strong defensive position on the ridge. Soult will have to decide whether to attack us to go back to Seville, but I think we can be confident that he will not reach Badajoz.”

It all sounded very positive and Stewart was a capable man. If Wellington had overall command, I would have shared Stewart’s confidence, but I was fast losing faith in Beresford. According to mess gossip he seemed to spend most of his time arguing with his senior men and had now sacked his cavalry commander. He had accepted as a replacement Sir William Erskine, who was a former inhabitant of a lunatic asylum. Mercifully the French were expected to arrive before Erskine could take command.

Major King took the opportunity over the next few days to put the regiment through its paces and I supported him enthusiastically. My life would depend on how quickly they could load and fire, their organisation for rolling company volleys and their ferocity of charge. I was proud that the third company was one of the best in the battalion after the rigorous exercises I had organised for the men… and one of their wives.

I knew I would have to lead them into battle, but once the actual shooting started my position would be behind them and that was where I intended to stay. I was comforted that even the newer recruits seemed to know the drills and for good measure we formed square a few times in case enemy cavalry somehow got behind us.

“The men are shaping up portentously well, aren’t they, sir?” opined Sergeant Evans at the end of the second day of battalion drilling.

“Prodigiously well,” I agreed. “Are they confident about the coming battle, do you think?”

“Oh yes, sir, the prospect of loot always cheers up a soldier. Deductions take up most of their pay, but any man can get rich on a battlefield.”

“He can also get killed or maimed on the battlefield,” I reminded him.

“Dead or rich, sir, it is a break from the monotone of being a soldier.”

We were walking back to the ruined village, which looked even more depressing in the long shadows of late afternoon. “The
monotony
,” I stressed the correct word, “of a soldier’s life must be better than that of those villagers. We are generally well fed and clothed, but everyone just takes what they want from them. Where do you think they are?”

“Some will be living in the forest, sir, avoiding anyone in a uniform of whatever colour. We have caught a glimpse of one or two when we have been gathering wood. They are not far away, and will come back when we have all gone.”