Flashman in the Peninsula

by Robert Brightwell

  ‘Christ knows what those two could come up with if they were put together,’ exclaimed Wellesley, ‘more training exercises for French cavalry probably.’ He looked me in the eye, ‘No Flashman, liaison with Cuesta is the job I need you for. After his recent defeat it will be harder than I expected, but I know you are cool under pressure. Compared to India it should be a walk in the park for someone of your abilities.’

  ‘I'll do my best, sir,’ I was wondering, not for the first time, if my unearned reputation would be the death of me. The trip to India had nearly seen me eaten by a tiger and blown apart by rockets, but at least here I spoke the language and could lie low if I had to. ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’

  Wellington leaned over the table, pulling a map from his papers and laying it out between us. He traced his route with a finger as he talked. ‘In two days’ time I am marching north with the army to Oporto and Marshal Soult. Information we have from deserters is that their morale and supplies are low, so if we can get across the river near Oporto easily we should beat them.’ He stabbed the town of Oporto with his finger. ‘Then I plan to turn south and try to beat Marshal Victor before he can be joined by any other French forces. I need to beat these marshals one at a time or we will be overwhelmed.’ The movement of his finger became vaguer now circling a wide area in the middle of Spain. ‘What I need you to do is find Cuesta, see what is left of his army and make sure that he is ready to join me to beat Victor. I doubt his army will be much use but we need all the men that we can get.’

  ‘Where do you think Cuesta is now sir?’

  ‘Craddock has no idea,’ admitted Wellesley. ‘Many of his men fled north into the hills for protection after the battle at Medellin. I am hoping that they are at least holding the bridge here at Alcantara as that blocks the route straight into Lisbon across the Tagus valley.’ As he spoke, he pointed to a town on the map just inside the Spanish border where two rivers joined and then headed to Lisbon. ‘Go here first Flashman. If Cuesta has the brains of a woodlouse then he should at least have some forces here who can direct you to him, if he is not there himself.’

  ‘Do I have an escort?’

  ‘God yes, the hills around here aren’t safe for a single horseman, there are all manner of villains and bandits around. I can spare you a troop of thirty dragoons. Downie is going with you. He needs to find out what supplies the Spanish can provide as we head south.’

  I sat back, and in my naiveté I did not feel too alarmed. Few bandits would take on thirty well-armed troopers unless they were guarding a pay chest, and the alternative was to march north with Wellesley and get embroiled in what would probably be a contested river crossing and battle with Soult. From what I had heard, Soult was a very capable commander and Wellesley was then not yet the proven military genius that he became. I knew better than anyone that his victories in India had an element of good fortune to them. A hardened commander like Soult, with his veteran soldiers, would not make the same mistakes. If Wellesley was beaten we would soon hear of it and would have a clear ride back down to Lisbon, or if necessary we could head further south to Seville, the independent Spanish capital.

  ‘Give Cuesta this letter,’ Wellesley continued. ‘It details my plans, and I don’t need to tell you to make sure it does not fall into enemy hands. Once you have had a chance to assess Cuesta’s strength and intentions then I would be obliged if you would ride back and let me know.’ That, I thought, could be the tricky bit. I did not want to ride slap into a routed British force and the pursuing French.

  ‘When do we leave?’ I asked

  ‘Downie is organising the cavalry escort, they leave from the square at noon.’ He looked up and saw me looking thoughtful about my mission and grinned. ‘Don’t worry Flashman, I know you would prefer to be testing your steel against Soult and his men. But this duty is vital for the next phase of the campaign, taking on Victor and his army. I will make sure you are in the thick of the action when we meet him, have no fear.’ You can imagine how reassuring I found that statement, but I managed to sound suitably enthusiastic for form’s sake as I took my leave.

  I met the escort in the square just before noon. The troopers were led by a Sergeant Butterworth, but there was no sign of Downie.

  ‘He was ’ere earlier sir,’ said the dour sergeant. ‘Fussin’ around about supplies ’e was.’ Butterworth looked across at his men who, like the two of us, stood next to their mounts. Judging from the way a few of them were checking saddles and tack they looked experienced men. Butterworth followed my gaze and added, ‘Most of us were with the first expedition sir. Got taken off at Corunna, but we had to shoot the horses then and leave them behind. These mounts are a bit green and most didn’t eat much on the voyage so some of the girths have had to be tightened. Bit of exercise on solid ground and some grass will see them good again.’

  ‘I am sure you are right sergeant,’ I replied, testing the girth on my own horse, which seemed tight enough.

  ‘What ho, Flashman!’ A voice called out from nearby, and there walking towards me was Downie, and alongside him a pensive Campbell. This could be awkward, I thought. If there was any justice Campbell should be damn grateful for the favour I did him, but you could never tell with these puritanical types. He could now be wracked with remorse and blaming me for leading him astray. My thoughts were interrupted by Downie calling, ‘Are you ready to go? I have got you some eggs.’

  ‘Eggs?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘Yes, hard-boiled eggs, excellent on the campaign if supplies get low. Lots of energy and they keep well, ready wrapped to keep them clean so to speak,’ he laughed.

  ‘Thank you.’ I accepted the small cloth sack he offered that looked and felt like an overstuffed scrotum, and from the shape contained half a dozen eggs.

  ‘Don’t eat them in the first few days remember,’ advised Downie. ‘Save them until rations are low.’ He turned to Butterworth, ‘Now Sergeant, did you sort out some eggs for the men as I asked?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ replied the sergeant with a stony blank look on his face. ‘The men have all the eggs they need.’ I looked over the sergeant’s shoulder and several of his troopers were now smirking at this response. It was evident that these experienced troopers felt that they needed the advice of the boyishly enthusiastic Downie like a drowning man needs a drink. I turned back to Campbell who, to my relief, grinned at me.

  ‘You knew what those girls were from the outset, didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I replied, with my best ‘butter would not melt in my mouth’ expression of innocence. ‘The girl I was with was entirely respectable, you would not believe how many pictures of her mother we had to look at, then some of her cousins. By the time we came back, the door was locked and ... well, I am too much of a gentleman to say what I thought was happening.’

  Campbell laughed out loud. ‘You planned it all in the tower! They hinted as much when I thought I might need to pay them this morning. They told me you had paid for me.’ He paused, ‘I might regret it when the Christian guilt sets in but right now I think it was the best night of my life.’

  ‘When you are old and grey,’ I replied, ‘what are you going to remember most, last night or a night on your knees praying?’

  ‘You are right, which is why I wanted to give you this,’ he was holding out another cloth bag.

  ‘It’s not more bloody eggs is it?’ I said, taking hold of the gift. The shape at the bottom of the bag was a tube and when I looked inside I saw a small folding telescope which looked expensive. ‘Are you sure? This must have cost a good few guineas?’

  ‘I have another. This was loot from the first campaign, and for the service you have done me you are very welcome to it.’ We shook hands, and then with Downie calling that it was time to leave, I mounted up and the column of horsemen trotted out of the square.

  There are perhaps four weeks of the year when the weather in Spain and Portugal is pleasant, two in the spring and two in the autumn. Outside of
these it is either too cold and wet, or too hot. Sadly, our trip to Alcantara did not coincide with one of those fortnights. Once we had ridden out of Lisbon the countryside rose up in a series of steep hills called the Torres Vedras, the top of most of them hidden by low cloud. We stayed in the valleys following the river, but the ground was wet and boggy and we frequently had to wade through gushing streams bringing rain water down from the hills. There was a steady drizzle of rain for most of the day. I was already feeling cold, soaked and miserable by the end of the first day when we had only reached the end of the large Tagus estuary.

  We found shelter for ourselves and our horses in a large barn and the troopers broke down some of the stalls for firewood to make a blaze to warm us up. It was then that Downie and Butterworth started to argue over the route. Both had hand drawn maps, which were by no means identical. On both, the Tagus bent north east like the curve of a bow. Butterworth wanted to follow the river on the grounds that we could not get lost and there would be a lot of settlements along its banks where we could get food and shelter. Downie was for crossing the river on the nearby ferry and taking the ‘bowstring’ route directly to Alcantara.

  ‘The Tagus spends much of its course in a steep sided valley,’ he insisted. ‘We will spend ages trying to negotiate side streams and rivers, which after all this rain will be in full flood. My route will be much easier.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ countered Butterworth. ‘The area you want to cross is blank on both our maps.’

  In the end Downie won, mainly because he was an officer and stated bluntly that he was going the way he had chosen and ordered Butterworth to follow him. I did not have strong feelings either way but the experience led to a valuable life lesson, which I will pass on for what it is worth. When dealing with maps containing blank spaces, never trust the navigation to an optimist. They will always imagine that smooth roads and plentiful supplies fill the space, which is never the case. There is a reason some spaces on the maps are blank; it is because people rarely pass that way and most folk will normally choose the easiest route. In my considerable experience of blank spaces on maps, they normally contain impassable mountains, pitiless deserts, impenetrable forest or jungles full of hostile tribesmen. None of these were in Portugal of course, but what was there was just a dangerous.

  The journey started off well enough; the ferry took us across the river and we found a road, little more than a narrow track, heading in the right direction. Whereas the crowds in Lisbon had welcomed our presence, as we got further from the more travelled route, the populace were much less hospitable to strangers. We would normally be spotted approaching a village and by the time we got there the doors and shutters would be firmly closed. If we saw any people at all they would be old men and women who would glare at us from the village square with hostile faces. To them we were just soldiers, they did not care about politics or why we were there. They just remembered clearly the ones in blue coats that had travelled in the opposite direction and probably taken anything of value that they could find.

  As we were riding through one of these ghost villages, the window shutter in a large house opened slightly and an attractive young girl stared out and smiled at us. I grinned and waved back, but a second later a hand reached out and grabbed the girl by the collar, dragging her out of sight. The unseen pater familia then shouted at the girl and delivered such a resounding slap that several of us winced in sympathy. But it was good to know that not every woman in the region was a raddled old crone.

  With all this arctic hospitality, the bread, sausage and other supplies we had brought with us soon started to run out. Late in the afternoon on the sixth day we rode through another seemingly abandoned village, and while not a soul was in sight, a decent sized pig could be seen snuffling around a sty attached to one of the cottages. Our dinner the previous night had consisted of boiled beans, hard-boiled egg and the last of some spicy sausage. I don’t know if you have ever camped with thirty men who have only eaten eggs, beans and spiced sausage, but let me tell you after that repast they snore from both ends. I hardly got any sleep and when we threw the blankets off in the morning the stench was truly appalling. I could not go through another night like that, and when I looked around me I saw that most of our number were of the same mind. Nothing was said, but there was an exchange of glances which told me that with one exception, we were planning to have pork for dinner that night. Unfortunately the exception was our nominal commander John Downie. While we were both captains, Downie’s commission preceded mine so he was the senior officer. He barely gave the pig a glance as we went past and was prattling on in his usual enthusiastic manner. I can’t tell you what he was talking about as I had long since stopped listening.

  ‘What supplies do we have left for dinner, John?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, we have plenty of beans left, no more sausage I’m afraid, but we still have enough eggs to make a meal. It might be our last night together before we reach Alcantara. I am sure we must be close now.’

  ‘There was a pig back there, we could buy it to supplement the rations,’ I suggested.

  ‘No, we have brought these supplies with us so we should use them.’ He laughed and added, ‘I am a commissary officer after all, so I should be making the best use of what we carry.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I agreed, thinking a more oblique approach would be required. ‘That forested hill up in front looks a good place to camp tonight. It will give shelter from the wind but will not be too damp.’

  ‘Isn’t it too early to stop?’ asked Downie.

  ‘I think Trooper Doherty is feeling a bit stiff after his fall this morning.’

  On cue Doherty, who had been listening to the conversation piped up, ‘Ah, yes sir, my side is right cruel sore, so it is.’ After a theatrical gasp and wince of pain he added in a brave croak, ‘But I could go on sir if we really have to.’

  I thought the daft bogtrotter had overdone it but Downie never suspected a thing. ‘No, of course we can stop Doherty if you’re in pain. I had no idea you had fallen this morning or I would have asked how you were.’ He turned to me, ‘You are a good man, Thomas, to keep an eye on the men’s welfare like that, I should have done better.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ I brushed the praise aside. ‘Now why don’t we ride to the end of the forest ahead of us to see what lies beyond. We can leave the men to set up camp,’ and here I looked meaningfully over my shoulder, ‘as well as forage anything for the pot.’ The men grinned back conspiratorially as I spurred ahead with Downie. In a short while we were winding our way through the forest on the path and I asked about his navigation. ‘Are you sure we are near Alcantara? I have lost my bearings a bit and we haven’t seen the sun for days with this low cloud.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he looked rather pleased with himself as he added, ‘there are signs you can look out for to help when the sun cannot be seen. For example, moss normally grows on the south side of tree trunks to get the most sunshine, so you can use that as a guide.’ I had never heard this before but looked around and what little moss I could see was scattered on several different sides of the trunks.

  ‘Do you think it would be a good idea to ask for directions tomorrow,’ I asked. ‘Just to confirm what the moss is telling you.’

  ‘I suppose we could,’ he agreed. ‘But I am not sure that I would trust those villagers.’

  It would be a damn sight more reliable than your moss, I thought. You will not be surprised to learn that Downie had got it wrong. A few years later I discovered that moss normally grows on the north side of a tree’s bark. But an old trapper on the Ottawa River in Canada told me that you have to study a hundred trees to get an accurate indication of north as other things such as the direction of rivers and hills also affect the moss.

  We rode back to camp and to Downie’s surprise and my delight a pig was roasting over the fire.

  ‘Trooper Chapman caught a wild pig while out foraging,’ Sergeant Butterworth explained with a straight face to Downie. ‘We can ke
ep the eggs to give us supplies for another day, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ cried Downie, grinning. ‘And as it is a wild pig we don’t have to pay for it.’

  There is nothing like the smell of roast pork to build up an appetite and it was the first fresh meat we had enjoyed in days. A few hours later and we were settling down for the night, comfortably full, when one of the troopers on guard duty warned that a party from the nearby village was approaching. There were about a dozen of them, ten men armed with scythes, billhooks and a few muskets, a priest and an old woman. A number of our men gathered at the edge of our camp to face them, several having taken the short barrelled carbine muskets from the holsters in their saddles first, in case there was trouble. Most of the villagers stopped a hundred yards down the hill and just the priest and the old woman came on. As I spoke the best Spanish, and to stop Downie discovering where the pig had really come from, I volunteered to go down to greet them.

  ‘What can we do for you?’ I asked them in a friendly tone. The old woman, who had a spectacularly hairy wart on her chin, glanced nervously to the priest.

  ‘We have come to seek payment for the pig,’ he replied calmly, while his eyes darted over my shoulder to look at the troopers standing behind me.

  ‘Did you ask the French for payment when they came this way?’ I asked.

  ‘No señor,’ the priest smiled. ‘The French did not sneak into the village like your man. They marched in, took what and who they wanted and killed anyone that got in the way. You are riding west, to fight the French I think. We hope you will be different. It is a poor village and we cannot afford to lose a pig without trying for payment.

  ‘Let me have a word with our commander,’ I said, before walking back up the hill to Downie.

  ‘What do they want Thomas?’ asked Downie.

  ‘It seems that woman’s pig escaped from its sty, which was why Chapman found it in the forest. They are hoping we will pay for the animal.’

  ‘But if it escaped we are under no obligation to pay,’ insisted Downie indignantly.