Hervey 07 - An Act Of Courage

by Allan Mallinson

  Over the Cerro de Medellin, descending now its north slope, the Sixth saw what was the reason for their new orders. When they had left the valley in the morning, it was empty. Now there were so many French – two divisions, by Lieutenant Martyn’s rapid reckoning – that it seemed another army had been hiding and awaiting its moment.

  But a closer look would tell them different. As they halted behind Colonel Anson’s brigade, the officers took out their telescopes. Two divisions there might be, but they did not come on with the élan of those which had just attacked in the centre. There were Spanish troops on the north side of the valley, on the steep slopes of the Sierra de Seguilla, threatening their open right flank, and a British battery on the north-east shoulder of the Cerro de Medellin, able to enfilade them for much of their advance. And a mile to their front, tempting them, it seemed, to advance, were the Duke of Albuquerque’s cavalry. Little wonder the French came on gingerly, thought Hervey. Had they yet seen Anson’s brigade?

  He had not closed his telescope when a galloper sped down the slope from behind them, making straight for the brigadier. Hervey recognized him as one of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s – the same he had met in the grey dawn of that morning.

  ‘You’re very welcome, Gordon,’ said Colonel Anson, returning the salute. ‘What are we expected to make of those French yonder?’

  ‘The commander-in-chief desires that you attack them directly, Colonel.’

  ‘Does he, by Jove!’

  ‘He is of the opinion that they will not stand. One of the divisions is Ruffin’s, and they have been worsted twice already.’

  Colonel Elley, the cavalry division’s adjutant-general, was standing next to the brigadier. ‘If you can force them into squares, Anson, they’ll be cut up something savage by the Second Division’s guns.’

  Colonel Anson was not entirely convinced, though he was willing enough for a fight. If Fane’s heavies had arrived, as he had been told they would, there could be little doubting the outcome. But one brigade of cavalry against two divisions of infantry . . .

  ‘Very well, though I’m not certain of the ground. We shall advance with caution.’

  ‘I’ll spy out the ground for you,’ said Colonel Elley.

  Anson nodded gratefully, then called the commanding officers.

  His orders were simple enough, the object and the route apparent to every man, so that barely a minute later the brigade was trotting onto the plain and wheeling to the right in two lines.

  Hervey (and, he imagined, the other cornets) thrilled to the prospect of a second brigade action in a single day. And this time it would be a model, since the approach was a good three-quarters of a mile: they would do it as a field day, not like the scramble at the Portiña – all properly regulated and as the manual prescribed. Directing regiment was the 23rd Light Dragoons, looking exactly as his except for their yellow facings. Left were the 1st Hussars of the King’s German Legion, sitting tall with their ‘muff-caps’, as the dragoons called them; and the Sixth formed the support line. Hervey fancied there could be few finer sights than fifteen hundred sabres on the move.

  Ahead, he could see Colonel Elley already selecting the line of advance. It was unusual, he knew – not at all as the manuals prescribed. If any were to be in advance of a brigade it should be skirmishers, not a field officer. But the ground was open, there could be no voltigeurs concealed, and there were no chasseur skirmishers to harry him. And in any case, what did he know of the true practice of the brigade in the advance?

  ‘I wonder that Anson doesn’t select his own line of advance,’ said Lieutenant Martyn, as they settled to the trot.

  Hervey was pleased to have this affirmation of his own opinion. ‘Could it be the brigade’s not scouted forward? Surely not!’ Lieutenant Martyn could hardly contemplate so elementary a failure. His own troop had been about to ride the ground when the Sixth had been ordered back to the centre.

  *

  In five minutes, picking their way purposefully along Colonel Elley’s cleared line, they had covered half of one mile. The batteries on the Cerro de Cascajal now decided they were in range.

  The brigade saw the puffs of smoke long before they heard the reports, and the shot before the reports. The Twenty-third, seeing the line of fire, began veering left and increasing pace. The shot bounced harmlessly. The hussars of the German Legion, conforming to the directing regiment’s movement, likewise bore left, but after a minute or so came under a galling fire, if from extreme range, from tirailleurs at the foot of the Sierra de Seguilla, and they too quickened their pace. Colonel Anson found himself conforming rather than leading, so that, half a mile from their objective still, the whole brigade broke into a premature canter. Up on the Cerro de Medellin, the Second Division began cheering them – lines of redcoats with muskets and shakos held high. It seemed to urge on the Twenty-third to an even faster pace. Soon they were close to a gallop.

  Lord George Irvine struggled to maintain proper supporting distance, while keeping the regiment in check so that he alone would judge the moment to release them for the charge. Hervey, finding Jessye easy in-hand as usual, stood in the stirrups for a better view. The long grass minded him of Salisbury Plain, and he reckoned the ground might yet be as broken and treacherous. But as long as the Twenty-third and the Germans were driving across it, what had he to worry about but the odd rabbit hole? Jessye was sure-footed enough on that account. But there were darker patches in the heath, and that meant water. And where there was water there would be ditches. For all the exhilaration of it, he began wondering if the pace were not too hazardous.

  Colonel Elley stumbled on it first. Cantering fast but just in-hand, he managed to check. Then, with a great effort, he cleared the gully, landing well and swinging round to signal frantically.

  Too late. The Twenty-third were running fast, too fast. The Germans were no better. They blundered onto it – a wide, dry watercourse the length of the brigade’s front. Some managed to clear it – a twelve-foot leap; some managed to circle; others tumbled one way or another down the side – eight feet at its deepest. Many were unable to scramble out again. Their second line, warned, tried to rein up, but most of them surged into the struggling remains of the first.

  The French gunners were onto them in an instant, and the leading infantry of the left-hand column opened a biting musketry.

  The Twenty-third’s colonel would not wait and rally, however. He pressed on with any who had leapt clear or managed to scramble out. They were not more than a hundred, and strung out behind him for a furlong and more.

  Lord George Irvine still had the Sixth in-hand, and despite the melee the troop-leaders were able to choose their lines. Those troopers that could, jumped; those that couldn’t slid down into the gully and scrambled up the other side without too much trouble.

  Jessye cleared it by a foot and more. ‘Good girl!’ shouted Hervey, as if he were galloping with Daniel Coates on the Plain.

  There were few fallers, and none who looked back. Lord George pulled up, re-formed the lines at the trot, and then pressed on.

  But the thin and ragged ranks of the 23rd Light Dragoons were half a mile ahead, and the Germans too. Half the Twenty-third now tore in at the hastily formed square of the 27e Léger. They fell in dozens, men and horses. The rest, in a swarm rather than a formation, chased behind Colonel Elley, who had swung left between the 27e’s square and the 24e of the Line’s, which the Germans now threw themselves against. For Elley had seen what no one else had – the French cavalry coming to the belated support of the infantry.

  Lord George had no choice but to follow him, unless he wished to impale the Sixth on the infantry’s bayonets.

  Elley and the remnants of the Twenty-third hurtled into the leading brigade of chasseurs with such momentum that the French line parted rather than meet them. But as the dragoons ran on to the second line, the first closed round them, pincers-like.

  Lord George did not hesitate. With a furlong to run, he lofted his sabre and s
houted, ‘Charge!’

  The collision was appalling – exactly as Lord George meant it to be. Horses fell; riders disappeared beneath kicking hooves and dead flesh. Hervey all but closed his eyes as they ran in. He couldn’t use his sword for want of a man to strike at: all was confusion. But the French were thrown over by the shock of it; that was certain. He could hear the bugle – ‘rally’. Every sense told him to disengage.

  He looked for his coverman, reining round to leave the hacking mass. Then he saw Laming, and three chasseurs at him.

  He dug in his spurs harder than ever before. Jessye almost leapt the distance. His sabre struck powerfully – Cut Two – and the nearest chasseur lost his rein-arm at the shoulder.

  His coverman swooped past and sliced at another, severing the sword-wrist.

  Laming, with but one chasseur to deal, could now drop his guard. He brought up the blade like lightning – Cut Three – cleaving the man’s jaw from below.

  Hervey circled, tight. ‘Are you well, Laming?’

  Laming nodded. ‘Thank you. I really am most greatly obliged – to you both.’

  Three men lay irrecoverably wounded at their feet, with nothing to staunch the copious flow of blood. Hundreds of others lay dead or mutilated not yards away. Yet Cornet Laming insisted on the proper courtesies. Hervey smiled by return.

  They had surely confounded Joseph Bonaparte now? If only the commander-in-chief had been there! He would heap laurels on the Sixth, for sure! After all, the word had been that this was the battle in which he would raise himself to the peerage. And his cavalry had served him well – if, as ever, unobserved.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A BACKWARDS STEP

  Badajoz, 3 September 1809

  A month and more had passed – a month in the saddle, a march away from the French rather than towards Joseph Bonaparte’s capital. And this after decisive victory in the field! It had not been as the army hoped. But unlike the retreat to Corunna, the regiments’ self-esteem, and therefore their discipline, had not diminished. The army had not run before the French, as they had believed they were doing eight months before: Talavera was a famous victory; every man felt it. They had the measure of the French now. The infantry knew they could stand and volley, and throw back the columns which had marched all over Europe. The cavalry knew they were more than a match for twice their number – if chastened rather by the disarray of Anson’s brigade and Sir Arthur Wellesley’s rebuke in consequence (but what was wrong with high spirits, they asked?). The French artillery was the problem. Sir Arthur Wellesley had not the weight or the number of guns to pitch against them, and little prospect of acquiring more. And their Spanish allies were . . . at best unpredictable.

  But Hervey and the other officers of the 6th Light Dragoons knew there were the makings of a successful strategy to evict the French from the Peninsula. Major Joseph Edmonds had told them. ‘Think of it,’ he had said one evening at mess. ‘They cannot merely sit on all those bayonets of theirs; this ain’t the sort of country. Bonaparte – major or minor – has got to defeat Wellesley, not just parry him. As long as the Spaniards can tie down French troops at Madrid and places, Wellesley can draw the rest on to ground of his own choosing. And I can’t see, from what I observed at Talavera, that they could overthrow him thence.’

  ‘And he will have the Portuguese, Edmonds; let us not forget that,’ Lord George had added.

  They had all agreed: the Portuguese would be worthier allies. To all intents and purposes they were British troops – British-armed, British-dressed, British-drilled, British-led. They could fight. They seemed to want to fight. The mess had even raised their glasses to them: ‘A toast – His Majesty’s Lusitanians!’

  And so, in spite of a retrograde march as long as Sir John Moore’s to Corunna, Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army was unbowed. They were not running for the sea; they were seeking favourable ground, and there they would bloody the French, just as they had done at Talavera.

  Hervey had rediscovered the invigorating sense of being clean. Not clean-shaven (for that he was most days), nor clean-bodied (once a week there had been, as a rule, opportunity to strip-bathe in a bucket), nor even clean-vested (for he had managed that several times in the last month). It was, however, the three in combination that had eluded them ever since leaving Lisbon. At Badajoz, the day before, the cavalry had gone into billets – and not bad billets, although it was ever the regimental maxim that a modest billet was better than a good bivouac. With that respite from the march came the opportunity for thorough ablutions, and for ‘interior economy’, as the business of putting the regiment’s administration in order was known. The walls of Badajoz were washed on the northern side by the Guadiana, and bathing in that wide, gentle river, with soap, and clean linen to change into (and the prospect of regular bread and meat), made every dragoon think himself a new man – a new man capable again of the greatest exertion, whereas but a day ago he had thought himself capable only of sleep.

  Not that any dragoon expected great exertion. No walls they had seen since first coming to the Peninsula compared with Badajoz’s – not even at Elvas. The ditches, moats, ramparts and bastions, the river on the north side, the Rivellas stream on the east, were a picture of impregnability. The French would not attack here. No one ought to.

  Hervey, like the rest, was enjoying this new sense of liberty, and, the officers’ duties being done for the day until evening stables, he felt able at last to address himself to a deficiency which had troubled him for the month past. In his billet, a comfortable house near the walls, he picked up his pen, hesitated for a moment while trying to decide whose letter should be first, and then began to write.

  My dear Dan,

  I cannot know if this letter will arrive before my last (on 27th July) wherein I told you of the day’s skirmishing with the French before the city of Talavera de la Reina. Hereafter I shall number these so that you may tell at once when there is an interruption in my reports. Since that letter, as well you may have read in the newspapers, we have fought a general action, which is to be called Talavera, and they say that more men fought here than at Blenheim! Think of that, Dan, for your own cadet has seen a battle as great as that. They say that Sir Arthur Wellesley will be made an Earl! I send you herewith a fair copy of my journal for the day, which I was able to set down within forty-eight hours of the end of the action, for the army was greatly knocked up on account of the fighting, and there was some rest. General Craufurd came up from Portugal with the Lt Brigade which they say made a most prodigious march as fast almost as cavalry, and they were received with great cheering all across the field, the like of which I never heard. And it was as well that they did for the Army has lost five and a half thousand. It was the most dreadful business, and the collecting of the wounded and burying the dead fair wore us out. The ground was so hard we could not dig, and so many dead we had to place in dried beds of winter torrents and cover as best we could, while many more and the horses were gathered in heaps and burned, a dreadful thing to do, but there was no other course for the sun was very hot. I confess the smell was intolerable. And many of the wounded, British and French, for both were treated the same, perished while lying in the blazing sun, in want of water, dressing, and shelter.

  The excitement of battle over, we all felt severe stomach cramps. But for some bread and peaches we had nothing for most two days. We cursed the commissaries greatly, but it was not all their fault, for bread had been baked for the Army before the battle, but the Spaniards had broken into the stores and made off with it, and many of these left the field altogether. Early next morning about 25 of the Spanish deserters, all dressed in white and accompanied by priests, were marched up in front of the Army and shot. One was a young lad, and he dropped before the party fired, but it was no use, for after a volley at 10 paces distant had been given by about 50 men, the whole party ran forward, and firing through heads, necks, breasts, &c, completed their grisly work.

  Since then we have been much about the count
ry between Talavera and the Portuguese border, for Marshal Soult has marched from the north of the country where he had been reinforced since the battle at Oporto, and has collected an army of fifty thousand, which greatly threatens our lines of communication with Portugal since General Joseph Bonaparte has not been besieged in Madrid as it had been thought after the battle, and is able to fasten the Spanish of General Cuesta at Talavera, so that in dividing our forces we should be very materially at risk, and especially so now that it is certain that Soult has fifty thousand not twenty as was first supposed. We have marched up and down but now we are where Sir Arthur Wellesley intends staying. It is said that we should have marched on to Elvas, which is not many miles westwards of here, but that abandoning altogether Spanish soil was too hard a thing for the commander in chief after such a victory as Talavera . . .

  Hervey wrote three pages of news, attached four more (the fair copy of his journal account of the battle), and then composed a second letter, to Horningsham. This was an altogether less dramatic account of the past month, with little narrative of the action to and fro, and even less of the battle itself, merely a line that ‘I was much about the field with my regiment but never in any danger’. One event he felt compelled to write of, however, even though his people knew nothing of the man, for he had never before mentioned him.

  Late in the day of the battle we were obliged to advance across country which had not previously been spied out, and which proved to have several hidden watercourses, some quite deep, and the brigade ran faster than was prudent, so that one regiment (the 23rd Lt Drgns) lost so many men fallen as to be severely disordered, and ours coming up in the support line lost some as well, on the left flank, and one cornet, Quilley, I am afraid broke his neck . . .

  He wrote by way of expiation. Such had been the contempt for Quilley by the time of Talavera that there had been a general sneering at the news of the fall, ascribing it to a ‘what can be expected?’ lack of horsemanship. But when it became known that Quilley was dead, a certain sense of guilt – or perhaps it was merely distaste – had silenced all comment.