A Mild Case of Indigestion

by Geoffrey Watson

  There was another blast of grape, followed by an “Aye aye, Sir, and a rush of feet as Bennett squeezed in beside him. “Well done Bennett! Yew can kneel in front of me and I’ll shoot over yor head. Sorry it’s a left handed shot but I confide we’ll manage.” “Aye, Sir, that we will. It’s they gunners ain’t it?”

  “That’s right. Start on the middle one. They’re just reloading, but watch out for anyone using a linstock. If they put it to a touch-hole, duck back.”

  Bennett shot the man wielding a rammer and Welbeloved killed the loader holding a bag of grape. As they both reloaded, MacKay shot the man wielding the linstock on the next gun and his partner killed the gunner who dashed forward to pick it up. Then it was open season. Any gunner who showed himself for more than a second, died.

  The guns were silent with a few surviving crew-members crouched behind them. Then came the sound of the Fergusons of Evans and O’Malley as they got to work on the engineers. There was an almighty crash as the sheer legs collapsed and fell into the valley, but there were already three sturdy baulks of timber in place and the officer, waiting with his men to cross, took the initiative and led the way at a run. Evans shot him as he reached the other side, but the soldiers were now pouring across and heading up the track towards the plateau.

  Evans yelled to Welbeloved and MacKay to retreat and all the Hornets dashed back into cover again, just as the first of the climbers flooded onto the plateau, together with a mass of line infantry charging out of the track, hot on the heels of Welbeloved and his small party.

  MacKay didn’t make for cover. He saw the double line of guerrilleros still spread around the plateau. They were unsure what to do in the sudden emergency. Some of them were firing at the climbers as they came over the edge of the plateau. This was almost entirely ineffective as the first over were the tirailleurs, the legendary sharpshooters of the French army. They had dropped to the ground to present a small target to the Spaniards and were now shooting into the Spanish lines with very little reply.

  He whipped out his own bayonet, fixed it and ran along the line encouraging the Spaniards to do the same and follow him. He ran towards El Martillo, holding up his rifle with bayonet attached. The Spaniard grasped what was needed immediately and bellowed to his men, who scrambled to obey.

  It wasn’t pretty as many of them fumbled and dropped their muskets or bayonets, but most of them followed MacKay and El Martillo in a wild charge across the stretch of ground towards the prone tirailleurs.

  The basic training for these French sharpshooters was to swarm out between the opposing forces on the field of battle and to harass and unsettle the enemy line. If they themselves were attacked in force, they were taught to retire into and through their own lines and let the infantry of the line do the fighting. On the exposed plateau, the only thing behind them was a drop of three hundred feet. One or two shots were fired at the charging partisans and most of the tirailleurs managed to scramble to their feet, fumbling desperately to fix their bayonets, which were very rarely used in their normal role.

  None of them was fully prepared for the sudden onslaught of a hundred or more screaming Spaniards and the fight quickly turned into a bloody massacre. Some of the French managed to reach the edge of the cliff and threw themselves in desperation towards the half dozen climbable points. Those that missed fell all the way to the bottom. Those that succeeded were followed by a hail of rocks that sent them also down by the fast route.

  Such was the blood lust, that MacKay had to grab hold of El Martillo and literally shake him to alert him to the danger posed by the troops swarming through the entrance to the plateau. He left him shouting and beating his men back into lines facing the horde of men in blue uniforms that even the attentions of the Hornets had been unable to stem.

  As before, when the French had attacked, they flooded outwards from the narrow confines of the track and as before, the Fergusons had created a pile of bodies for the following men to climb over. On this occasion however, the press of men from behind was remorseless. They couldn’t see the Hornets, but they could see the ever increasing powder smoke all along the edge of the plateau and a hail of bullets was directed towards it, effectively slowing down the rate of fire of Welbeloved’s men.

  In accordance with their training, the Hornets had already singled out anyone who looked like an officer or sergeant and the French, lacking orders, were standing in any sort of order and firing and reloading their muskets mechanically. While they were doing so, more men were swelling their numbers and jostling for position to get a shot off at the slope that was thick with smoke from the rifles.

  The French were instinctively responding to the area of greatest danger and because there was no shooting from the lines of the Spaniards, they were ignoring them for the moment, probably feeling a certain contempt for these ragged irregulars.

  El Martillo finally got his men into position and ready, thanks to the private battle between the French and the Hornets. The first volley was from fifty or more muskets and was devastating because of its surprise. Ten seconds later, the second rank had stepped past their comrades while they were reloading, and delivered the second volley.

  All the partisans had been made to practice their marksmanship to some extent and at only fifty yards they had a large target to aim at. It is possible that the two volleys killed and wounded twenty or more men, but they did succeed in attracting the almost undivided attention of the French. The third and fourth volleys focussed that attention even more and this enabled the Hornets to resume their execution from the terraces around the arena.

  Some officer, newly arrived on the far side of the French mass, then took charge. Orders were barked out and men started to move into a curved, convex line, facing both the Spanish and the Hornets. Those of them that had not already done so, fixed bayonets and began to march in quick time, half towards the Spaniards and half spreading out to deal with the infuriating riflemen.

  Welbeloved cursed silently but at length. There were just too many to deal with. Shooting as fast as they could, the Hornets might get three shots each away before the French were upon them. He had to blame himself for the predicament they were in. he had as good as forecast, apart from the cannon, what the French would do: and then allowed them to do it.

  He shot a large grenadier and reloaded automatically while looking about him, trying to imagine some way of extricating the Hornets from the trap. A volley of shots to his left blasted a gap in the advancing lines and he was horrified to see Mercedes, Isabella and the seven girls standing near the bottom of the track from the camp, busily reloading for another volley.

  He shot another Frenchman only a few yards away and his fingers flew as he fed another ball into the breech. The next volley sounded as though all the Hornets had fired together and almost all the French front runners over a front of fifty yards, fell down together.

  The cheering broke out at the same time, further disconcerting the attackers. He raised his eyes farther up the path to where a buckskin-brown line of men had spread out loosely on either side. In the centre, directing the operation was the welcome, and more than welcome figure of Lord George Vere with his second platoon of newly trained Hornets.

  There were still too many French soldiers to handle, if they continued to advance but that one volley had blasted a bigger hole in their ranks than two or three loads of grape shot. The whole line hesitated just long enough for Vere’s men to reload and then there were sixty Fergusons ripping their ranks to pieces. The soldiers in front of the Hornets turned and fled.

  Welbeloved offered up a quick thankyou to the Goddess and redirected the Fergusons onto the flank and rear of the group now fighting hand to hand with the guerrilleros.

  When facing the berserk fury of Spaniards fighting for their lives and the murderous hail of bullets from the side and behind, the French quickly lost all enthusiasm for this kind of warfare and followed hot-foot after their comrades.

  After the mauling the guerrilla band had received,
the Spanish were in no mood to let their enemies escape them. They chased and harried them all the way back to the bridge, where they exchanged shots with a hastily formed rearguard until all the survivors were once more on the other side and fleeing back down the track.

  MacKay put six men in position to discourage anyone from trying to remove the cannon, but the French just streamed past without touching them and the few gunners still alive had left with the first of the fugitives.

  The clearing up after a battle was always the worst time of all. Welbeloved was utterly drained and weary, even though his watch told him that barely an hour had passed since the first shots had been fired. Four of his men were out of action following the hail of bullets from the French. Another six had superficial wounds that needed dressing. Two of the four had been hit in the arm and shoulder and the other two had been aiming their rifles at just the wrong moment and had been killed instantly by bullets in the head.

  The guerrilleros had suffered badly. The ragged collection of artisans and peasants had stood in line with extraordinary bravery against trained and veteran soldiers who outnumbered them by two or three to one. Over fifty of them were dead or wounded but their steadiness under fire had ensured that they had accounted for at least double their own casualties in their single wild charge at the tirailleurs.

  It was impossible to assess the French casualties except in one respect. There were no wounded. The partisans and their women, including the seven girls, had moved through the scattered piles of bodies, making sure they were all dead, before stripping them of uniform and equipment and casually throwing them down into the valley below. The French could come and collect them for burial if they so cared.

  The muskets and carbine muskets that they had harvested from the dead made an enormous pile. There were enough to equip most of the guerrilla bands in the northwest of Spain. El Martillo quickly agreed to store them and act as a depot to supply arms and ammunition to any partisans who could come and collect them. No doubt he would be able to do some recruiting in the process and increase his own power and prestige at the same time.

  Welbeloved left everything to MacKay. On the basis of the information they had extracted from Rabuteau he was now determined to move south to make contact with any British forces entering Spain from Portugal. Rabuteau himself was released immediately. There was no point in keeping him once he had been shown the carnage caused to the forces of Marshal Soult. He was more valuable spreading doubt and despondency back in the French army. They took him over the bridge and pointed him in the direction that the soldiers had fled.

  The Hornets were split into two groups. MacKay was given ten of the veterans and the two badly wounded. To these were added ten of the new Hornets and Corporal Hickson who had come with them from Ribadeo, leaving his depot in charge of the Purser from Daphne and a small naval squad.

  His job was to step up his harassment of the enemy and to train and encourage El Martillo and his men to do likewise. Only when he was satisfied that the Spaniards had become a formidable fighting force could he leave them to their own devices and follow the rest of the Hornets.

  The Condesa lost her maid as well. Corporal Ramon Hickson was staying with Lieutenant MacKay and Isabella was not going to let him out of her sight again. Mercedes immediately took the now twelve year old Dolores under her wing. The youngest rape victim had quite got over her ordeal with the resilience of the very young, but she had been left an orphan and was very willing to learn how to better herself in service to someone she regarded almost as a goddess.

  The rest of the veterans, together with Lord Vere and twenty of his new Hornets under Sergeants Dodds and Atkins would accompany Welbeloved and the Condesa south, guided by the new Hornet, now with his own Ferguson and inherited uniform, Luis Lopez.

  CHAPTER 11

  The departure of Welbeloved with his greater share of the Hornets was the start of a period of frenzied activity for MacKay and his smaller band.

  Before they had had time to bury their dead, he was bullying El Martillo to set his men to work to close off the gaping hole in their defences provided by the French engineers and the bridge they had half-built over the gap in the track.

  He had in mind, using the three solid baulks of timber to make some sort of swing or drawbridge, to be controlled by the guerrilleros. In the meantime he would feel much happier to see all the timbers hauled onto the camp side of the gap while they were deciding on the best way to use them.

  The first priority, however, was to strengthen the structure that the French had put in place and to haul the three cannon and rigs across the gap. It took until dusk before they had the guns, the limbers and the caissons across and the timber beams safely hauled onto their own side.

  The wagons, with all the reserves of powder and other supplies for the guns, were too big to risk the span. They were all unloaded then pushed over the edge. All the ammunition and supplies were now in their possession and the guns weren’t going anywhere again. MacKay spent a few moments wondering why the French hadn’t pushed the wagons over the cliff themselves. They couldn’t be turned round on the narrow track and completely thwarted any idea of escape for the guns. Perhaps the Fergusons really had eliminated most of the gun crews and left them with too few to care any more?

  Now there was a yawning chasm to be crossed once more and two of the cannon sited to command the approach on the other side. Tomorrow they would start to build a protective emplacement and then think about fabricating a drawbridge. They could also consider hauling the third gun up the steep path, to be put in place in a suitable position to cover the back way in. It seemed inevitable that the French would discover this entrance sooner or later and a brass three-pounder would be effective insurance against attack from the rear.

  It was a weary band of Hornets that trudged up the path to the upper camp in the almost dark of a warm summer evening and it was a very grateful band of men who found a hot meal waiting for them as they walked into the camp. The girls, led by Juanita and urged on by Isabella, had spent all day helping with the dead and injured, but had climbed the slope at sundown and cooked a meal for all the men.

  All the Spanish dead had been laid out close to the other graves below. The two Hornets had been sewn into canvas shrouds awaiting burial close to their camp, as had one of the seven girls. Unfortunately, she had become convinced that she was pregnant from the rape and was determined that the child would not be born. Suicide was forbidden by her church and she found an acceptable alternative by attacking and killing several of the fleeing troops with her bayonet before one of them turned and gave her the end she was seeking.

  MacKay did suspect that there was a fair degree of self-interest involved in the girl’s offerings. He had noticed that Isabella and Juanita had become as thick as thieves and as Isabella now seemed inseparable from Corporal Hickson, she would certainly see it as an advantage to have the girls as a supporting arm of the Hornets at the very least.

  He was in two minds himself. He had always been adamant that women and warfare should be kept as far apart as possible. Now these young women had been thrust unwillingly into the most unpleasant aspect of war and he was full of admiration for the way they had chosen to fight back. He would never allow them to distract his men from their duty, but Juanita was an enormously brave, tough, determined and beautiful young woman, wasn’t she?

  In the morning they buried their dead. El Martillo had sent out for a priest and a doctor and they had been smuggled in overnight. The priest blessed the area that had been prepared as a mass grave and conducted the interment ceremony. He then came and did the same for the girl and the two dead Hornets, completely ignoring the fact that the two men had been heretics in the eyes of his church.

  The doctor also examined the wounded and the walking wounded Hornets and gave instructions regarding future treatment. Welbeloved had used his considerable experience before he left. He had probed and extracted bullets and the pieces of cloth they had carried into the wounds. Th
e application of liberal quantities of brandy to the wounds and to the patient had always had a beneficial effect, though it was still too early to tell whether the wounds would heal or fester.

  Doctor Ruiz made soft clucking noises as he examined them, pronouncing himself very satisfied with the treatment they had received and promising to return in three days, when he would know whether the flesh was knitting satisfactorily or not.

  All the rest had their various flesh wounds redressed and Rifleman Ramsbottom was ordered to take to his blankets and remain there until the doctor came again. MacKay felt sure that he would also be dead but for the new hard-leather head guard that he had been wearing. It had been enough to deflect the bullet, which had nevertheless knocked him unconscious. He had an enormous bruised and bleeding swelling on the side of his head. The doctor was insistent that he should remain still and that cool, wet cloths should be applied at frequent intervals. One of the girls volunteered for this job, making Ramsbottom rather more willing to follow the doctor’s instructions.

  ***

  MacKay’s next problem was organisational. Welbeloved had left him ten of the new recruits, all of the wounded and walking wounded and four fit veterans, with Corporal Hickson as his second in command. His orders were clear and simple. They were also as casual as only Welbeloved could make them and, he supposed, were proof of the complete confidence the Captain had in his experience and ability.

  He was to make sure El Martillo made the camp more secure. He was to harass the French as much as he could. He was to train the new boys until they were equal in all ways to the veterans and he was to take selected partisans with him on his forays to show them how the Hornets made war.

  The time had come for some promotions. Hickson was made acting Sergeant and Thuner and Ryan, the Ulsterman, became acting Corporals. Until the wounded were fully fit once more, this gave him two small squads of Hornets led by himself and Hickson, each with a corporal, a veteran and five of the new men.