A Mild Case of Indigestion

by Geoffrey Watson

  At that moment, glancing up, Welbeloved saw that the tail end of what he would have called a squall when at sea, had now cleared the tops of the mountains to the west. It was being blown rapidly eastwards overhead, while a weak sun was breaking through on the tops of the mountains ahead and to starboard.

  He signalled for his small troop to halt when he recognised O’Malley galloping back with a message. “Mr. MacKay is checkin’ a likely ambush point, Sor. Would you be waitin’ a few minutes whoile he looks into it?”

  “Thankyew O’Malley. Go back and let the rearguard know, if yew please.” He turned to his wife and the small troop shepherding the draught horses. “Wait here while I go and see what MacKay has found. He wouldn’t stop us unless he was really unhappy about something.” He put his heels into his horse and cantered forward to his leading troop, standing together and quietly searching all round at the rising ground to their right and where it fell away to the river coming round a bend on their left.

  He cantered on past when he saw MacKay was not present. The road disappeared suddenly, a hundred yards ahead, following the bend of the river. MacKay and Turner were halted there, carefully studying the rocky scree sloping down to a small, sturdy, stone bridge across the foaming river.

  It was the scree that had forced the road onto the other side of the river and many of the rocks and boulders had fallen into the stream bed. Most of the smaller ones had been washed down stream, but the river now rushed and boiled over and around the larger ones and would batter to death anyone unfortunate enough to fall in, well before they would have chance to drown.

  MacKay nodded at the slope. “Yon scarp is just fine for an ambush and there’s a parcel o’ rogues hidden behind thae rocks. They won’t be feeling kindly towards us if they think we’re French.”

  Welbeloved adjusted his small telescope and studied the slope. The men lying there had been well trained. Without the glass he would not have seen most of them. There were no sudden movements by men ducking out of sight. They were watching but showing so little of themselves that only MacKay’s suspicious nature and his experiences as a youth, stalking game in the Scottish Highlands, had identified the danger.

  He moved the glass slowly and caught a straight line and regular curve that had no business to be there. He came back to it and focussed carefully. There could be no doubt. He was looking at a soldier’s shako; a shako moreover swathed around with green cloth.

  With a quick prayer of thanks that the rain had almost ceased, he swept off his cloak to reveal the uniform underneath. Cupping his hands, he yelled in a voice trained to be heard at the masthead of a ship in an Atlantic storm. “Soldado de los Lobos Verdes de José, do you hide from us because you think we are French invaders come to kill you?”

  There was silence, followed by excited shouts of ‘el Capitano Ingles’ and ‘los Avispónes have returned,’ as half-a-dozen soldiers, all wearing green swathed shakos, erupted from cover and came bounding down the slope to crowd round the horsemen. They were followed more cautiously by twenty or thirty ferocious tatterdemalions in a ragged assortment of clothes, led by a small man with enormous black moustachios, wearing a faded blue hussar tunic and a fur cap sporting a large Napoleonic eagle fixed upside down to the front.

  Sending Turner back to bring on the rest of the party, Welbeloved and MacKay dismounted and greeted the six Green Wolves with enthusiasm. The men themselves were almost dancing with excitement and pulled them towards their commander. They submitted to hearty embraces and Welbeloved was able to use his Italian/Spanish, which by now had become quite fluent. “You can only be the famous El Marquisito, Señor. I am told that in the last week you have finally managed to drive the French out of the Asturias.”

  The little man gave an enormous grin. “It is most gracious of you to say so Señor, but we both know that the French regard us as little more than irritating fleas, to be squashed if they can find us and ignored if they cannot. They no longer dare travel in small parties like yours, particularly through the defiles and mountain valleys, where we can roll rocks down onto them for lack of powder and shot.

  We are thankful that they are moving out of the north, but cannot claim credit. It is known that Marshal Soult has taken his army into Portugal to drive the English from Porto and Lisbon. Perhaps Marshal Ney is collecting all his troops from around here, in order to go and assist him?”

  Just then the rest of the Hornets arrived and more glad cries of greeting erupted. Having ascertained that there were no French remaining this side of Lugo, Welbeloved suggested that they travel on to Meira for the night, where they could continue their discussions in more comfort.

  They all rode on to Meira and found little more comfort. Under El Marquisito’s watchful eye, everyone was given shelter under a roof. This in itself was more than welcome as heavy showers continued all night, but so little food was available that Welbeloved insisted that his men use the rations they were carrying. There was some fodder for the horses. The French hadn’t found all of it, even though they had taken most of the animals it was intended to feed. This year’s grass was well advanced and with no local animals around to eat it any more, the horses revelled in fresh greenery.

  The Condesa, Welbeloved and MacKay gathered together with El Marquisito and Luis Lopez who they remembered as a Sergeant in Joseph’s Wolves, the unit they had formed to help fight General Tasselot’s army last autumn. Because they were local men, Lopez and his friends had stayed on to help the partisans while the rest had gone south to try and join whichever Spanish armies were still resisting. With the training given by Welbeloved and the hussar, Major Anstruthers, Lopez and his men had helped El Marquisito to recruit and teach his motley crew how to harass the French throughout the north.

  The French had responded by razing villages close to any attack and by protecting their supply convoys so well that the partisan’s supplies of powder and shot were nearly exhausted and their ability to cause trouble severely limited. MacKay settled down to make lists of arms, ammunition, boots and clothes that were needed desperately and Welbeloved wrote a requisition for presentation to Hickson, back in Ribadeo.

  Knowing that many of the muskets and carbines carried by the guerrilla bands, were captured from the French, it had seemed sensible to arrange for a large number of the cartridges in the store to be fitted with the smaller calibre shot used in the 1777 pattern muskets used by the French. There ought to be enough to make the Marquisitos operational once more, when added to the dozen British 0.75inch Brown Bess muskets and six hundred cartridges they would also receive.

  In return for these supplies, Welbeloved extracted an undertaking that they would do their best to keep him informed, direct or through Hickson, of any proposed movements or plans of the French that came into their hands through captured despatches or any other sources. He remembered a vital despatch from Napoleon’s chief of staff, Marshal Berthier. This had been captured by a guerrilla band he was working with, north of Madrid. Prompt transfer into the hands of Sir John Moore had enabled him to extract his army from almost certain defeat.

  El Marquisito magnanimously volunteered the services of Sergeant Lopez as guide and local ambassador to any rival bands of partisans between Lugo and the Portuguese frontier south-east of Orense. The mountains north of the frontier rose to a height of six to seven thousand feet and someone who knew the mule trails and goat tracks in that largely roadless area was likely to prove invaluable.

  The following morning they moved off south, aiming to bypass Lugo and any French garrison it might still contain. The resupplied Marquisitos were quite capable of creating alarm and confusion with them. Lopez led them along lesser-used tracks, away from the connecting roads between the towns. Welbeloved reasoned that if a French army under Marshal Soult was in northern Portugal and another under Marshal Ney was gathering to support him from Galicia and was moving close to the frontier; it would be better to seek out partisans on the fringes of these activities.

  Guerra was the Spanish
word for war and guerrilla meant little war. Thirty Hornets and however many guerrilleros he could recruit, could not wage war. They could nevertheless harass the fringes of the army; the supply lines; the baggage trains and lines of communication.

  Deprive a modern army of their reserves of gunpowder and they became a mob of men with knives on the end of staves. A Roman legion with shields and short swords would have been able to cut them to pieces. The Hornets and five or six hundred Spanish stragglers had routed a small French army of five thousand last winter, basically by destroying most of their reserves of gunpowder.

  At the moment, there was no telling who was going to be around to fight the French. If the British were confined in Lisbon, there were still some Spanish forces in Estramadura and Seville. If Welbeloved’s men could weaken just a few of the armies sent against them, Spain could hopefully continue indefinitely with the struggle against the invaders; draining them of men and resources until Napoleon realised that the cost of keeping his brother on the throne of Spain was more than even he wanted to pay.

  They would just have to stir up as much mischief as they could and look out, at all times, for ways of sapping French morale and heartening the oppressed Spanish people.

  CHAPTER 3

  Welbeloved was a firm believer in the Goddess of Fortune. He knew for certain that She favoured those of her devotees who were willing to be bold but not rash. She was also capricious and would sometimes look kindly upon his opponent, no matter how many stupid mistakes he made.

  During the last fortnight he had wondered at Her seemingly ambivalent attitude. On the one hand had been the reunion with Luis Lopez who had proved to be a godsend; or rather a goddess-send; for his ability to find passes through impassable mountains. On the other hand, Lopez’s talents had been stretched to the limit finding a slow but unremarked way south for the Hornets, through ever increasing numbers of French soldiers infesting the hills and valleys through which they were moving.

  Most of these French were foraging parties looking to feed themselves and their animals. Both the roads from the east however, running to the north and south of the Cabrera mountains in the direction of Orense were thick with heavily escorted wagons of military supplies.

  These supplies were heading west and included many of Napoleon’s favourite daughters, the six and eight pound cannon of the artillery regiments. They were moving in numbers enough to equip an army and this seemed strange to Welbeloved who couldn’t work out why Soult’s and Ney’s armies would need so many extra guns in a country where it was difficult enough to move the ones they already had.

  This unusual concentration of troops had already convinced the Hornets to travel at night throughout the last week, resting up during the day, high up in uninhabited pastures normally used only by herdsmen during the summer months. The forced harvesting of food animals by the French had driven many herdsmen to seek out these hidden uplands much earlier in the season and the Hornets were able to purchase sheep and goats denied to the French and the hungry Spanish peasants in the more populated areas below.

  Dame Fortune was now smiling once more on the Hornets and it was all a matter of timing. Lopez had timed their last night march to arrive at the camp of the local guerrilla leader, just as dawn was breaking. The camp itself was on a small plateau at the head of a very steep valley, carved by a mountain stream. A man on foot, clambering laboriously and perilously straight up the fall of the stream could reach it, but a horseman would have to ride up a winding road in the broader adjacent valley and cross over the spur separating them.

  Lopez was leading them in by the back door, a narrow col connecting with the higher slopes of the adjacent valley. They paused to look down on the wakening camp, with the first columns of smoke from the cooking fires rising in the still air. The sun was up but not yet visible, lingering on the other side of the mountains. Everything was clear and sparkling. Men and women were beginning to move about, starting the day, preparing food, tending the horses hobbled on the grassy slopes.

  The setting was idyllic; just the sort of place to relax after a taxing journey. Welbeloved stared and reached for his telescope. The steep slope down which the stream tumbled was swarming with the dark green uniforms and black shakos of French light infantrymen, struggling upwards towards the shelf on which the rough wooden huts of the camp were scattered.

  The Hornets could have arrived earlier and been among the lambs down below awaiting slaughter. He whispered his thanks to the Goddess and rapped out a string of orders. Six of his men crowded into the available space and opened fire on the voltigeurs. The range was too far to be accurate, even for the Fergusons, but would force the soldiers to start the attack while most were still scrambling the last few difficult yards to the top. More important, it would sound the alarm for the partisans.

  The Condesa, Isabella and a few of the men took the horses back a short distance to where the path opened out into a tiny meadow. The rest followed Welbeloved down the narrow track towards the camp, automatically assessing possible cover on the way down in case they had to make a fighting withdrawal.

  The partisans were boiling out of their huts, frantically loading muskets and running towards the voltigeurs, who had climbed onto the level shelf, firing their muskets as they arrived then immediately fixing their bayonets and forming a line which started to advance towards the crowd of guerrilleros. Some of the Spaniards fired at the advancing line, which ignored the odd casualty, and continued to move forward, showing a deadly row of glittering bayonets.

  The partisans turned and ran in all directions and a few women from the huts ran with them. Some went towards the horses, some towards the path down which the Hornets were running and some towards the track over the spur into the next valley, from where the sound of muskets already signalled another French assault.

  The Hornets at the top of the path were still shooting and causing the occasional casualty. Now twenty of them arrived at the bottom and spread out on the slope where they could aim over the heads of the Spaniards trying to escape up the same slope. The range to the advancing line of bayonets was now only two hundred yards and one by one they settled themselves down and opened fire.

  A full half-company of voltigeurs had scrambled up the slope. A line of fifty soldiers advancing with bayonets is a fearsome sight for anyone who is unable to defend himself. It is also a big target even for muskets. For Fergusons at two hundred yards it was almost as good as point blank and the targets were co-operating by standing upright while they advanced.

  A third of them fell at the first salvo and the rest all dived for any cover they could find on the rough ground, pulling off their bayonets and desperately struggling to load their muskets. Now they were smaller targets but their heads could still be seen and another fifteen were sprawling on the ground before a rush of men with fixed bayonets from the side of the plateau, took over as targets for the third discharge from the rifles.

  This could only be the other half-company of voltigeurs whose task had been to break through the guarded entry from the next valley. Ideally, the two attacks should have been simultaneous, but the opening shots from the Hornets had spoiled that plan. Brief resistance from the sentinels on the road had delayed things just long enough for the newcomers to meet the concentrated fire of all the Hornets, including those from the col who had started down the slope as soon as they heard the opening shots from below.

  The shooting had now become general. The men were firing individually and rapidly. Some were slightly quicker than others and there was a continuous hail of bullets which felled half the newcomers in the first twenty seconds of their charge.

  Only a regiment of redcoats in double line could possibly bring such concentrated destruction on a body of men, and only a proportion of their shots would be fatal. These voltigeurs had probably never faced a line of British soldiers and the shock was total. Those at the back suddenly found themselves at the front and stumbling over the bodies of their comrades.

  Almost as
one, they skidded to a halt, then turned and fled, leaving a lone officer slowly coming to a stop, his sword drooping towards the ground. Welbeloved bellowed for everyone to cease fire and watched the survivors disappearing down the exit track or jumping and scrambling down the slope by the stream.

  The officer just stood there in shock until Welbeloved signalled for the Hornets to surround him. He could see that the Spaniards had re-established some sort of order and that a gang of them was already looting the corpses and swiftly cutting the throats of the pitiful few who were still alive.

  MacKay moved aggressively to intercept three or four ruffians intent on venting their anger on the Frenchman. He used his quite basic knowledge of Spanish very forcefully and they quickly moved away to help their friends who were now stripping the bodies. It was amusing to listen to his tirade and to realise that the first words that a soldier learned of any foreign language were almost certainly likely to be swear words.

  Welbeloved watched the officer, a captain of voltigeurs, as he realised that these men around him were not Spanish and that he had a faint chance of staying alive. Not that staying alive was uppermost in his mind, which was still struggling to come to terms with the rout of his company and the terrible feeling of loss, inadequacy and helplessness that this had caused.

  He suddenly realised that he was still clutching his sword and let it clatter to the ground. His words were bitter as he recognised Welbeloved’s status by his sash. “I would prefer that you had shot me with my men rather than it should come to this. I am Capitaine Vaux of the Seventh Regiment of Voltigeurs and I surrender myself to you claiming protection from the scum we were trying to purge from the face of the land.”