Swallowing Portugal Will Settle My Spanish Bellyache

by Geoffrey Watson

  Guest noticed him assessing his glass and smiled cheerfully. “We thought it was a happy coincidence, Colonel. There are several dozen more of this vintage in Captain’s stores. I suppose you should say we owe them to your efforts, as they were taken out of Gloire after you captured her.”

  MacKay held his glass up to the stern lights and admired the dark, clear red. “I am deeply touched, Sir. I had nae thought that the frigate would hae wine o’ this quality on board. I should nae hae trusted my young lieutenants tae sail her all the way tae Ferrol else.”

  Earlier in the year, MacKay had led his Hornets into Gijon to recapture H.M.Brig Proserpine and had found her captor, the handsome frigate Gloire lacking most of her crew, who were ashore, celebrating their expected prize money.

  Escaping with the frigate, the brig and a lugger had earned MacKay his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and the captain’s share of the prize money. Not only was he now a senior officer but also a moderately wealthy one.

  Cockburn smiled as he watched MacKay recollecting the exploit. “I always knew there was talent that you were hiding, Hamish, even when you were just a lad, following Welbeloved about like a puppy. Now that you are one of us, we don’t have much formality when we are relaxing. Save the ‘Sirs’ until we are on watch.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir Charles. I am getting the hang of it. It is maist awkward when I see marine officers who are now my juniors and who knew me when I was serving wi’ you as a plain marine. Did ye no feel the same when old friends saw you after you got the Falcon frigate?”

  “Indeed yes, but only to a limited extent. It has to be more difficult. In sailor’s terms, you started before the mast and there will always be resentment among men with ‘interest’ against those with real ability, coming up through the hawsehole. Wouldn’t you agree, John?”

  “Very much so, Sir Charles. I would have been a lieutenant all my life if I had not had the fortune to be in the right place to follow in your footsteps each time you earned another step. There are many of my fellows who wished me joy through gritted teeth.

  I hate what the French have done to the world since all this madness began, but it has to be admitted that their army has beaten almost everyone in Europe because it is led by men who have proved in battle that they are better than anyone else.

  Even our Navy is riddled with nepotism, but the saving grace is that anyone really incompetent is weeded out in the first five years at sea. The other side to that is that any one willing to submit themselves to those first five years should really be locked up in Bedlam for life as irremediably insane.”

  He stopped talking, looking faintly embarrassed, only to find that Cockburn and MacKay were nodding agreement. “I think John has said it all, Hamish. If anyone, senior or junior, ever dares to look down their nose at you, just remind them that the Hornets of the Naval Brigade are the only part of the army where commissions cannot be purchased. Like the French, they have to be earned.”

  “That is true, Sir Charles, but we are mair and mair sairly pressed tae find suitable officers, now that we are growing sae quickly. Four British companies, twa Spanish, one Portuguese and now you tell me that George Vere has doubled his Germans frae twa tae four. Nearly thirteen hundred men need about forty-five lieutenants and a dozen captains.

  We can find leaders frae the quality o’ men that we attract, but they need tae hae some learning as well, tae make guid officers.

  The Condesa and my wife hae spent hours teaching our sergeants tae read and write, which is the minimum requirement. Add tae that, about half the men can make themselves understood in spanish and maist of our foreign recruits can obey orders in english. I dinna ken what George will dae about all his new Germans, but I expect that some o’ them will already be officers. That tends tae mean that their training and rejection rate will be twice as high as the rest.”

  They continued chatting about old times until the meal was finished and the covers removed. Then Cockburn became businesslike. “I have some six hundred marines distributed about my flotilla. Not above half of them are veterans. By that I mean experienced in fighting ashore and not only in ship actions.

  My orders were written by the Admiralty and they exhort me to render all help and assistance to Spanish arms along the southern coast of Spain. Thankfully, London knows little of the actual situation ashore and I have great leeway in how I interpret their instructions. As usual, it seems that a successful outcome to anything I attempt will be what they intended. Any failure will cost me my command.”

  MacKay was smiling broadly. “Nothing changes much, does it, Sir Charles? You should regard it as a sign that they trust you tae dae the right thing in all circumstances.

  Sir Joshua disna gie orders as such. He suggested that Lord Wellington would be obliged if I brought A and B Companies tae Andalusia and supported any Spanish actions against the French, or at any rate, kept the Frogs hoppin’ about. I think the last suggestion was his. It sounds his style.

  It was only this week that I worked out that Soult has the only force able tae help Masséna frae the scrape he’s got himself intae. Even the recent fiasco at Málaga was helpful if it took a few thousand troops frae those available tae strike through Portugal.

  Then I heard that the Spanish army in Murcia, all ten thousand o’ them, is likely tae come looking for Sebastiani in the next couple of weeks. I wadnae want tae involve the Hornets wi’ them, as they would want tae control us wi’out kennin’ how tae gae about it.

  So I took the plunge and came tae find if the Navy would co-operate with an idea I’ve had. If I’d kent ye were here I’d hae come sooner.”

  Cockburn and Guest stared at him, then looked at each other. “I am left feeling grateful that I joined the Navy, I don’t know about you, John. I can follow your strategic thinking, Hamish, now that you have explained it, but life ashore does seem terribly complicated.”

  He beamed at MacKay. “I had been contemplating a series of petty actions, without a deal of significance. Now you tell us that whatever we do here will help our cause in Portugal. Perhaps you shall tell us what you have in mind. Be assured that we will help if we can and that you, naturally, will be in command of any joint operation.”

  ***

  All along the southern coast of Spain, particularly between Gibraltar and Cartagena are small fishing harbours. Some have grown into large, important commercial towns like Málaga and Almeria. Others exist only to supply fresh fish to themselves and the scattered villages in the hills which rise steeply behind them; for the Sierra Nevada sweeps right down to the sea in much of the area.

  What nearly all of these harbours have in common are the remains of old Moorish fortifications. It cannot be said that these small fortresses would be capable of standing up to a siege by a modern army with modern cannon. In the main they had been kept in a sufficient state of repair to provide a place of refuge and defence against three hundred years of sporadic slave raids by the Barbary pirates and Musselmans of the North African coast.

  After the recent assault on Málaga, the French had put small garrisons into half a dozen of the ones with forts still in a good state of repair and guarding harbours offering protection to the local fishing boats.

  Close observation by the Hornets determined that a couple of companies of line infantry were sufficient for most of the garrisons. Under the French system this could amount to anything between two and three hundred men, together with half a battery of four pounders, covering the harbour and any beach where a landing could be made.

  Cockburn had agreed that if the French garrisons could be replaced by marines, the enemy would have to react to the challenge of footholds along their flanks at a time when the Spanish army from Murcia was making its sortie.

  He had actually considered such a move himself, but a landing place covered by artillery and swept by musketry was a recipe for heavy casualties with no guarantee of success.

  What MacKay had guaranteed was that he would attempt to neutralise the cannon by attac
king the garrison from the landward before the marines were rowed ashore. A signal indicating success was to be hung out. No signal and the Navy could retire without loss.

  What he wanted to do was to catch the French off guard by attacking before dawn and using some of the mountaineering skills taught by Johan Thuner, which formed some of the basic training for the veteran Hornets.

  The sun was sinking below the crests of the hills to the west, but there was still enough light for his officers to use their field telescopes from the high ground to determine the position of the four cannon on the walls of the fort. They could also stare hopefully at the areas on either side where two separate details would attempt to scale the walls in the dark.

  Captain Addenbrooke was leading 1 and 2 Platoons of the larboard watch and MacKay had 3 and 4 Platoons of the starboard watch. The naval terms were a conceit indicating the groups attacking from the left and the right.

  It was getting too dark to see anything useful from their perch, but they had already confirmed what they had suspected the previous evening. Not all the French were within the fort. Maybe fifty of them had claimed billets in the little town. That certainly made the assault on the walls more complicated.

  Logic suggested that billeting a quarter of their force outside the protection offered by the fort, the French commander was taking a relaxed view on any danger. It also suggested that any men outside the walls were off duty until dawn and would be most loth to be disturbed during their free time.

  It might also indicate why most of the fishing boats had put out to sea at dusk with lanterns lit for some night fishing. Better to be out catching fish than sharing one’s home with a squad of strange, hostile soldiers.

  Towards midnight, B Company moved into the village on foot. The houses had been built on either side of the single track leading down to the harbour, following the course of the rushing stream that was likely to have carved out the valley in the first place.

  There were no lights in those meaner cottages at the top of the slope. Nothing was showing in the slightly more substantial ones lower down either, but it was more likely that the bigger cottages would be chosen as billets, if only because they were closer to the castle.

  Half a dozen men were left to keep an eye on them while the rest moved down almost to sea level, where the valley opened out to accommodate a small church, slightly bigger and better quality houses and the fort on a rocky spur, commanding the whole of the small bay.

  There were lights showing in the three largest buildings that were standing side by side. MacKay felt for the hands on his watch. Nearly one o’clock and a strong suggestion that the French had taken over the village posada and were spending their overnight leave getting drunk and taking advantage of any other relaxations that the villagers could have been persuaded to offer.

  Over the next forty minutes it became clear that the drinking was taking place in the middle building and that the traffic between it and the houses on either side, represented the other relaxations that predatory soldiers always searched for. It was also evident that these men were not billeted in the town as had been thought. It was merely their turn to receive a coveted dusk-to-dawn pass and it looked as though they were making the most of it.

  The next half-hour was not the part of their leave that any of them enjoyed. The Hornets burst through the doors of all three of the buildings. The revellers all had their arms with them, but none of them made any attempt to retrieve them from where they had been piled. Half of them were too drunk to care. The rest were using rooms in all three houses as a brothel. The unfortunate girls and women collected there were being forced to service seven or eight ‘clients’ each, every night.

  MacKay’s Presbyterian upbringing had been softened by over ten years of soldiering. He knew that many men, particularly sailors and marines at sea for long periods, needed the release of female companionship when their ships reached port.

  He had witnessed the scenes of debauchery, when women were allowed on board after a voyage and acknowledged that a commercial transaction between a man and a woman had to be accepted as inevitable in such circumstances. However, the poor creatures in these three houses had been rounded up, imprisoned and made to service as many men as came to them for over three weeks now. In his view, that was worse than rape by a soldier in a battlefield situation, it was cold-blooded mass rape.

  The wives of three of his men had been victims of rape, as had his own wife Juanita. He had captured and hanged the French officers responsible in the first case. Juanita and her fellow sufferers had taken their own, rather unpleasant revenge in the second.

  He determined to deal with the officers who had authorised this atrocity if and when he caught them. Thinking of Juanita, he ordered all the captives to be bound and gagged and left where they were until the Hornets had dealt with the fort.

  Gathering all his men, he split them as agreed and sent Captain Addenbrooke with Sergeant Green and Lieutenant Colston commanding 1 and 2 Platoons; the veteran Hornets and the new recruited Wasps; round to the left. MacKay and Sergeant Major O’Malley took 3 and 4 Platoons led by Lieutenants Moore and Collins to the right.

  The men flowed silently up over the fissured rocks of the spur to the base of the wall of the fort, fifty men on either side, assembling close to the points where prior observations indicated that centuries of erosion had left it less smooth than when it was built.

  The stiff daytime breeze from the west that had died away by nightfall, left scattered clouds moving imperceptibly and obscuring a bright half moon, sometimes for up to fifteen minutes at a time. Hopefully the wind would be back by daybreak or Cockburn’s flotilla and his boatloads of marines would miss their appointment.

  Since the Hornets had originally taken to horseback, they had habitually carried a short steel spike for use on the occasional stone or flint stuck in the hooves of their mounts. Thuner had suggested another use for these as a means of loosening the thin layer of ancient mortar between weather eroded stones.

  Even after all these years, the gaps between the stones were too narrow to get fingers into, but the spikes could be worked and jammed into the cracks and corners to provide hand and foot holds quite firm enough to take a man’s weight and to supplement the many deep cracks and pits that had appeared unnoticed over the years.

  The two best climbers started up together, perhaps ten feet apart. The moon was unobscured at the moment and although they were having to feel their way, there was enough moonlight to show them the best places to prod and probe and push in their spikes so that a line could be attached to help those following.

  On this side of the fort, the wall at the top had suffered damage over the years. There were two places where masonry was missing and the outward slope under the crenellations was no longer effective as a deterrent.

  Looking up and seeing them silhouetted against the night sky, these were the points that the climbers were making for, praying that the sentries on the battlements would be relaxing or gazing out to sea to where they thought that the greatest danger was likely to materialise.

  This is exactly what they appeared to have been doing on the previous night, when the Hornets had kept the best watch they could in the darkness. There was no guarantee whatever that tonight’s guard would be as slack.

  The thought was there, nevertheless. All the troops in the houses had been from a regiment raised in Naples by Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Marshal Murat. Now King of Naples, Murat could be said to have started the war in the Peninsular by the bloody repression in Madrid of the ‘Dos de Mayo’. That was when the Spaniards rose in revolt against the French at the news of the forced abdication of the Spanish royal family and the imposition of ‘El Rey Intruso’, King Joseph Bonaparte.

  Safe in Naples, Murat had sent his tribute, a regiment of Neapolitan troops to serve in Spain. Some said it was because their local tongue was closer to spanish than italian, but they were considered untrustworthy by almost everyone. This could be the reason they were
being used to garrison the coastal towns and villages. Out of sight, out of mind!

  MacKay would have been happier leading the way, but rock climbing had never been one of his major skills and he had to leave it to those selected and trained by Thuner.

  The ball of twine that unwound itself on the way down, was the signal that the first climber had reached the top with no challenge. A rope was attached and drawn back up, then the first bundle of weapons was taken up on the rope and the Hornets were in place and armed. MacKay started upwards, using the ropes and spikes left in place.

  Sergeant Major O’Malley greeted him softly as he stepped onto the parapet. It’s only t’ree lookouts tonight, Sor, and lookin’ out is what they’re about, so it is. Lookin’ out over the sea, all together, right over where 1 and 2 Platoons are climbin’.

  It’s guessin’ I am that they’ve done about half their stint, so I’ve sent Sergeant McBride and a couple of boys to deal with them. No noise, Sor, they’ll use their stickers. We’ll be havin’ to watch out for their reliefs in about an hour, but it’ll be getting’ light soon after that, so we shouldn’t be troubled again.

  MacKay used his telescope to improve his night vision. He was just in time to focus on a brief flurry while the sentries were removed. The Hornets had complete control of the battlements.

  He made out the embrasures holding the four small cannon and while he watched, 1 and 2 Platoons started to climb in by the guns.

  Against all expectations, there were no posterns or other means of entry between the battlemented walls and the keep. Possibly it made sense in case the walls were captured, but while the masonry of the outer walls had been checked and repaired every so often; about every fifteen to twenty years, say; the inner stones of the keep had not been disturbed since the late seventeenth century. A hundred years of neglect allowed O’Malley and his team to go up like squirrels and hoist the Union Flag to the top of the pole, to be seen by the approaching ships of the Navy.