02 - Keane's Challenge

by Iain Gale

  Then he looked towards Keane and Foote, and with a last smile and a nod of acknowledgment turned his horse and rode hard into the French lines.

  Foote stared after him. ‘Well, I’m blowed. What the devil… ? Do you mean he was a spy?’

  ‘A spy, Foote. Quite right, and thanks to you, he got away. You bloody fool.’

  ‘Hang on, old man. There’s no call for that.’

  Keane stared at him. ‘No, I suppose not. And there’s probably no call for this either.’

  Still holding his sword, he swung his right arm and smashed the fist, metal hilt and all into Foote’s head, knocking him from the saddle to the ground.

  He looked swiftly across to where Wellington was rallying the forward battalions and saw to his relief that the duke could not have seen him.

  The Portuguese appeared to have rallied and were pouring fire into the head of the French column nearest them. Another of the attack columns, though, had veered off at an angle and was bearing down upon a ragged battalion of Portuguese cacadores who, having been beaten up the hill earlier, had steadied themselves and reformed to the front of the convent complex.

  Keane called to the four troopers, who had only just managed to extricate themselves from the Portuguese reserve. ‘To me. All of you. Form on the convent.’

  Dismounting, and not caring to see what had become of Foote, Keane drew his carbine from its holster and ran towards the entrance to the convent, a curious roofed triple archway with barley-twist pillars, decorated with pebbles and stones embedded in the masonry. The others ran to join him and together they stood in the arches, guns at the ready. The Portuguese in front of them were pulling back now in the face of the French advance.

  Martin turned to him. ‘Don’t they ever bloody stop, sir?’

  ‘No, Will, they don’t bloody stop, unless we stop them. But we can do that, can’t we?’

  Martin smiled.

  Keane called out, ‘Form up. We’ll give them a volley.’ The Portuguese were on either side of them now in the arches and the cloisters. He glimpsed Pereira among them, trying to keep order. ‘Lieutenant. Lieutenant Pereira.’

  The lieutenant had seen him. ‘Sir. We can hold them here, can’t we?’

  ‘We can and we damned well will. Form up. Two ranks. We’ll give them a volley they won’t forget.’

  Pereira called a command in Portuguese and the blue-and-brown-coated troops shuffled into close order. Keane took command, watching all the time the French column as it began to deploy into a deadly line of muskets. ‘Make ready. Present.’

  Three hundred guns, muskets, carbines and an old and much loved gun from Ireland, which had seen better days but had never been better used, came up to three hundred tired shoulders.

  ‘Fire.’

  The guns spat smoke and flame and the French stopped.

  ‘Reload. Make ready. Present.’

  And through the white smoke French officers shouted commands and sergeants pushed and shoved their men into file, desperate to get a shot off before the second volley came in. But they were too late, and they knew it.

  ‘Fire!’ Keane screamed the word and again the guns gave voice. And this time it was enough. He could not see it through the smoke, but Keane knew that the French were breaking. He could hear it. A murmur of panic that grew by the second. Now was their time. ‘Draw sabres. Fix bayonets.’

  He heard Pereira shout the second command again, in Portuguese this time, and then the rattle and clank as just under three hundred triangular socket bayonets snapped on to muskets and the swish of metal on metal as his own men drew their long, curved swords. There was only one more command to give now. The last command of the day. He drew breath and bellowed, ‘Charge.’

  With a single movement they swept out from the convent and hit the French hard, steel piercing flesh and scraping on bone with a force doubled by the sheer weight of the men advancing behind it. Pushing the French down the hillside. He was aware that they were not alone. That to their right and left other battalions were doing the same, like a huge wave, released at last to dash upon the blue cliffs and crumble them to dust. And the French ran before them, tripping and tumbling as they went. And Keane’s men went after them, pursuing them until they could run no more and so at last they stopped, at the foot of the great ridge. Wellington’s ridge. The ridge of Bussaco.

  Around him the men were catching their breath, doubled over, hands and weapons stained red with the blood of their enemies.

  Archer looked up at him. ‘We did it, sir. You did it.’

  Keane shook his head and he looked along the valley and watched the French run.

  ‘No, Archer, we all did it. And now all we’ve got to do is to do it again and again and again. Until we force those blue bastards out of this bloody country. And then we can all go home and sleep easy in our beds.’

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  The campaign in which James Keane plays a central role in Keane’s Challenge focuses on the construction of the Lines of Torres Vedras and the defence of Portugal. It was to be one of Wellington’s most audacious and most successful.

  From June to September 1810 he played a game of cat and mouse with Massena, and nowhere was he more in need of his intelligence service than here.

  The new field telegraph too came into its own and, quite apart from Wellington’s tactical brilliance, it was through a combination of superior communications, engineering and intelligence that he was able to outwit the marshal and eventually bring him to battle on his own terms.

  I am indebted, as before, to Julia Page’s revealing and compelling publication of the letters and diaries of Major the Hon. Edward Charles Cocks (or Somers Cocks) for detailed information on the campaign and the life of an intelligence officer, although any suggestion of a resemblance of character between Cocks and Keane is not intended.

  General Robert Craufurd was one of Wellington’s most charismatic commanders of the war and was held in great affection by his men. The son of a Scottish baronet, he had fought the French over some thirty-one years, everywhere from India and the Netherlands to South America, and in 1809 was given command of the nascent Light Division, which he made his own. He had also held a staff post during the Irish rebellion of 1798. Craufurd earned the nickname ‘Black Bob’, partly it is said on account of his mood swings and partly from the heavy stubble on his face.

  Craufurd always led from the front and is the epitome of the modern precept of the British army officer who will not allow his men to attempt anything he himself cannot undertake.

  Following the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo, Craufurd, commanding the British rearguard, blew up Fort Concepcion and withdrew across the border into Portugal, attempting to hold a line east of the Côa river, protecting Almeida, with only 3,500 infantry and 1,200 cavalry.

  In the early hours of 24 July, Ney moved his force of 24,000 men against Craufurd, but the initial attack was stopped by heavy musket and rifle fire. Undaunted, the French 3rd Hussars attacked and devastated the left flank of Craufurd’s line, wiping out a company of the Rifles. Seeing that his line was in danger of being rolled up, Craufurd ordered a retreat to the bridge over the Côa. Although, in truth, Craufurd lacked the assistance of Keane and his men, with gallant help from the Portuguese cacadores his three British battalions, the 52nd, 43rd and 95th, attempted to hold back the French while falling back from the left. Seeing that the 52nd were in danger of being cut off by the French troops occupying the knoll, Major Charles Macleod of the 43rd and Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Beckwith of the 95th led a charge to retake it. Under heavy fire from French infantry, the 43rd and 95th took the knoll and held it long enough for the 52nd to escape.

  Ney then ordered the bridge to be stormed. The French moved forward but, under musket and cannon fire, failed to get further than halfway across. A second light-infantry attack pushed hard over the bridge until it was blocked by the bodies of the French killed and the wounded and the enemy were unable to advance any further. Craufurd’s audacious defence had
bought vital time and enabled him to rejoin the army.

  Wellington’s sacrifice of Ciudad and Almeida have long been sources of controversy. But as usual his logic was unshakeable.

  The brilliance of his plan to retire behind defensive positions and play a waiting game was not universally acknowledged and a number of officers disagreed with him, including Craufurd, who favoured withdrawing completely. Others, including those in the prince regent’s camp, demanded an immediate victory. That did not come until Bussaco, but it was this battle that made the French, including Marshal Ney, learn to forever fear Wellington’s name.

  His scorched-earth policy has also had its critics, but it was undeniably effective. Living off the land was, in the early years of Napoleon’s wars, one of the great advantages of the French, allowing them to rely less on their supply chains and rendering them more manoeuvrable than and capable of running rings around their enemies. Wellington, however, spotted its great disadvantage and in denying the French the essentials of an army, which as his great adversary remarked ‘marches on its stomach’, dealt them a mortal blow.

  Naturally, the ruination of the land did have an effect upon the Portuguese and there are reports of British and allied troops being attacked by farmers.

  Edward Charles Cocks recounts how on 1 August 1810 two of his patrols in two villages were attacked by the peasantry and two men badly wounded. One was tied to a tree for a day, the other stoned and shot in the chest. Cocks seized inhabitants from each village and sent them back to Guarda for punishment.

  Apart from the scorched earth, and the shock defeat of Bussaco, there were other notable reasons for the marshal’s lack of success, for Massena, while being one of Napoleon’s most brilliant generals, was also notorious for his addiction to booty and to the pleasures of the flesh. He was completely infatuated with his mistress, the young Henriette Lebreton, demanding that she be allowed to accompany him on his Peninsular campaign. She went along disguised as a cornet of dragoons, an extra ADC, in a scandalously cut, specially designed uniform. Rumour has always had it that Massena was two hours late joining his subcommanders at the battle of Bussaco because he was otherwise occupied with her and that an ADC had to shout details of Ney’s initial report through his locked bedroom door.

  Massena was later to admit that his infatuation had in part led to the failure of his campaign and the end of his military career.

  Henriette Lebreton (née Renique), was just eighteen and had been a ballet dancer with the Paris Opéra when she met Massena. She was the sister of one of his aides-de-camp, Captain Eugène Renique. By the time she and Massena met she was married to one of his former adjutants, Jacques-Denis-Louis Lebreton, a captain of dragoons, whom she abandoned to follow the marshal.

  While Henriette appears to have been loyal to Massena and we can only assume that she was an astute career woman, her counterpart in the book is clearly less enamoured with her lover.

  Her liaison with Keane and the affair of the copied orders are the stuff of invention, although clearly there were eyes and ears in the French camp, and who can say whether Henriette might not have been involved. Whatever her true nature, she remains one of the mysteries of the war, as her whereabouts after the battle of Bussaco are unknown.

  As Wellington gradually began to beat the French in the Peninsula, the work of intelligence officers such as Keane became slightly more respected by the other, more traditional arms of the British army.

  Grant’s efforts and the work of the Corps of Guides and the exploring officers ensured that Wellington would continue to be far better informed than his enemy, giving him a vital advantage when faced by such superior numbers.

  But it was by no means easy going. The work of the ‘intelligencers’ was arduous, challenging and always extremely dangerous.

  Keane and his men will need to summon all their guile, courage and endurance when they face their toughest challenge yet, in the next book.