Swallowing Portugal Will Settle My Spanish Bellyache

by Geoffrey Watson

  He called for Sergeant Major Vidal and Lieutenant Pom. There were eight veteran Hornets in 5 Platoon and three more in Vidal’s platoon. His orders were simple: “When it is dark, go and find half a dozen bags or kegs of gunpowder from the French camp. Once that is achieved, any other mischief you make is up to you, but I want Dodds to have the powder at the bridge by dawn.”

  Pom was the only Wasp in the group, but most of the men were from his platoon and assuredly, he would not be a drag on their efforts. Vidal was firmly in command.

  They left well before dark. It was essential that they leave their horses some distance away and climb into the hills overlooking the area where the French had their bivouac for the night.

  It was not easy for the masses of wagons, draught animals and mules to find space to stop in the valleys through the mountains. Five thousand soldiers in addition could be fitted into any space between the wagons, but very few were keen to sleep where they could be trodden on by mules, oxen or heavy horses.

  An area where the mountain road opened out into a wide valley was essential but not necessarily as wide as could be desired. The guards for the convoy were accustomed by now to sleep as close together as seamen in a crowded ship. At least it helped to keep warm in the bitter conditions throughout the hills.

  The Hornets found a position overlooking the mass of men and wagons. They had two small field telescopes with them, courtesy of Captain Gonçalves and Lieutenant da Silva. These were used as a priority to locate a suitable place for climbing down, bearing in mind that it would have to be done in the dark.

  Next came a careful examination of the wagons. Those carrying food for the troops were easy to see, having their covers removed while their rations were distributed. They were scattered throughout the area and would be the responsibility of each company and squadron. Each man would have the barest essentials, being expected to make up his diet by foraging. As they were guarding the convoy from dawn to dusk, there was little time for such activity and as there was no food left to find in the mountains, they would all have had a lean time for the past several days.

  Whether the men would be allowed to supplement the food issue by breaking into the supplies they were carrying to Masséna, was a question that had been intriguing Fernando Gonçalves for some time.

  He was beginning to suspect that the French back in Spain were either unaware of the perilous shortage of food suffered by their army north of Lisbon, or just couldn’t accept that the rich, food-producing country south of Coimbra had been stripped bare quite so ruthlessly.

  This didn’t concern Vidal and Pom at the moment. They were concentrating on the wagons, or rather looking carefully for any wagon that had not been claimed as shelter by troops wanting to sleep out of the rain.

  It was not an infallible guide, but generally it required a soldier to have a complete lack of imagination to wish to spend a night under a load of gunpowder, particularly as no camp fire to ease the chill was normally allowed within yards of it.

  Normal practice was to isolate such wagons from the sleeping areas, but the rules could have been relaxed a little, given the acute shortage of space in such a restricted area.

  Sensible practice also dictated that wagons carrying gunpowder should be kept apart, both when on the road and when parked. If one was packed so carelessly that a jolt could detonate it, a prudent driver would not want to be within fifty yards with a similar load.

  Their search produced three possibilities where there seemed to be a marked reluctance to use the shelter on offer. Two of them were on the bank of the river and would have required the Hornets to wade through several hundred sleeping Frenchmen. The other was directly below a raw scar that rose vertically for twenty feet or more, with a very steep climb down to the top of the scar from a point about a hundred yards from where they stood.

  The French set sentries before the last of the light faded. There was no compromise. Having heard that the Hornets were about, the commanding officer put a cordon around the entire camp and did not economise on numbers. If, as seemed likely, they were doing two hours on watch, every soldier in the escort would lose that much sleep this night and they would be close enough together to hear the slightest unusual noise, even if they couldn’t quite see each other.

  Vidal took his men directly to the top of the slope above the top of the scar. Ropes were always part of each man’s equipment and they used them to ease their way, silently and carefully down to the narrow ledge where the small spur had broken away in times past.

  The first change of sentries was necessary before they could move. They would need every minute of the two-hour watch if they were going to achieve anything at all. This affair could not be hurried or they would have the whole of the camp on their necks.

  After years of service, the changeover was a very casual affair. The non-commissioned officers organised it. Replacement sentries appeared at the specified time. A muted challenge and the relieved man retired to his blankets, while the new vedette settled himself for a damp and boring two hours.

  The Hornets lay on top of the scar and peered over. The faint light from dozens of campfires helped to show two wagons parked on the rockier area in front of the face of the scar. The darker area to the side was where the winter flow of water from the valley sides trickled down and formed a boggy area around the small streamlet.

  It was useless for sleeping on but had enough grass and reeds to occupy many of the draught animals. This produced enough noise and movement to distract the sentries from the ropes that snaked down and the Hornets that used them to steady their descent and keep sound and movement to a stealthy minimum.

  It was vital to maintain silence. The first two face-blackened Hornets from each rope ghosted up and dealt with the two nearest sentries. It was a job for the long knives that Ryan had taught them to use. Afterwards, the four of them spread themselves out as guards and outposts for the rest of the men, who busied themselves hastily investigating the contents of each wagon.

  They were fortunate that their reasoning had been correct. Forty minutes after the change of sentries, a dozen kegs of gunpowder were being hauled up the steep side of the valley and stacked at the top. They would be a heavy load at one keg per man and awkward to carry. It would be a difficult journey over slippery rocks back to the horses, but it would be doubly worthwhile if it gave the Hornets fresh supplies of powder; even the poorer quality French powder; and deprived the French of a full wagon load.

  Sergeant Major Vidal had left half-an-hour’s worth of slow match burning in the powder wagon. The timing would be unpredictable with almost half a yard of match burning away and generating heat in a wagonload of explosive. It had to give them fifteen minutes start, when they would be out of range of any falling debris and away from the slope that they had climbed down.

  In fact they were over a mile away when they heard the thunderous explosion that would spoil any hope that the French might have of any more sleep that night. The slow match must have burned true, almost to the minute, allowing them to stagger back to the horses with their kegs of powder and reach the bridge in time for a couple of hours sleep before dawn.

  It wasn’t the mining of the bridge that presented problems. Dodds had helped the Condesa deal with many more difficult structures. It was the timing that had to be got right, because Gonçalves was spoiling for a fight and wanted the bridge blown only after at least half of the cavalry had crossed and could be trapped away from the support of their infantry.

  A trip line was of no use, as the first to cross would activate it and would hear the small explosion that lit the fuse. It would give him time to extinguish it before it reached the mine.

  He would have to rely on a slow fuse and light it just before the first troop of horsemen came into view. He needed to calculate how long it would take, allowing for natural caution, for the first squadron to cross the bridge.

  Assuming that they would be adopting the same formation, with one troop well in advance of its squad
ron, he sent his platoon to act the part and timed them from first sighting until they reached the bridge, when he judged that the following squadron would just be coming into sight.

  He snapped his watch shut, pulled a face and looked at Gonçalves. “We don’t have enough slow match left after blowing the rocks down and setting off the powder wagon, Sir. If we are to let the whole squadron across the bridge I shall need to fire the fuse when the troop in the van is close enough to see me doing it and therefore close enough to put it out.”

  Gonçalves looked disappointed. “Is there no way you can delay the explosion, Mr. Dodds? Would it help if we allowed some of our men to be surprised and chased over the bridge? You could ride away with them, having lit the fuse before you go. The burning match would be out of sight, would it not?”

  Dodds considered the idea and beamed with a sudden thought. “I would be most incredibly suspicious of any such ruse, Sir, were I a Frenchman, but if they actually caught us trying to destroy it and failing, would they not think we were merely incompetent and press on after us?” He explained what he meant and got clapped soundly on the back.

  When the vanguard troop came into view of the bridge, they were incensed to find an equal number of the enemy clustered in the middle of the arch. Their commander looked round carefully in case there was a trap, but realised that the men were only attempting to damage the span to stop the convoy crossing.

  His instinctive reaction was to get his bugler to sound the advance, both to get his troop moving and to warn the squadron following that he was dealing with an emergency.

  Number One Platoon reacted with well feigned panic to the sound of the bugle; abandoning what they were doing and running for their horses. Sergeant Santos was the last to join them, having lit the fuse below the bridge and scrambled out under cover of the general panic.

  Dodds was left alone in the middle of the bridge, acting his part like a veteran thespian, desperately miming setting a fuse to two kegs of powder standing on the outside edges of the apex of the arch.

  He watched them covertly and carefully fired one of them as the French passed a point he had marked earlier. He dashed across to the other and cast a despairing glance at the approaching horsemen and left it and fled for his horse.

  He galloped off with his men with the most superb timing. The first part of the plan worked to perfection. Both the Hornets and the French were fifty yards either side of the bridge when the keg exploded. Both stopped to see what the result had been and had to wait while the dirty white cloud of powder smoke dissipated.

  It was as disappointing as Dodds knew it would be. The keg had to have been placed in a hurry by an amateur and most of its power had blasted straight upwards. The low parapet at the side had a few stones displaced and the second and unlit keg on the other side had been dashed against the other parapet without exploding. It looked like a futile, bungled attempt by men who knew very little about gunpowder.

  The French troop commander very probably had no more knowledge himself, so that when he approached cautiously, he saw exactly what he was expected to see. There was even a triumphal sound to the bugle call that sent his troop over the bridge in pursuit and urged the rest of the squadron to make the best speed possible in support.

  His squadron commander had much more experience and his bugler stopped the leading troop from galloping off into a possible trap. Nevertheless, he too accepted the evidence of failure and the squadron joined together on the far side of the bridge and set off at a canter to find the enemy.

  The first bend in the road brought them onto a long straight stretch in a valley wide enough for them to advance on a front fifty horses across. The bugler sounded a halt while the commander studied the fifty horses and men stretched across the far end, quite motionless, watching to see what the French would do.

  There were few obstacles and no obvious gullies in the way of a full charge. The commander realised that he could send double the number of the enemy, riding four deep at the centre of the thin line facing him. In fact, he could afford to be cautious and keep half his men in reserve. Those facing him could not be regular soldiers. No sensible, professional cavalryman lined his men up in thin lines, inviting his opponent to punch straight through the middle.

  That was when a strangely muffled explosion told the Hornets that the charges on the bridge had blown. If the result had been a success, the dragoon squadron in front of them was cut off from immediate support by their second squadron. Even the following infantry would be an hour or two before they could come up and get across in force.

  It certainly hadn’t been loud enough to bother the dragoon commander, who was accustomed to ‘noises off’ during a battle. His bugler sounded the advance and half the squadron advanced at the trot in three lines, aiming to break through the centre of the waiting line and circle back to wrap up the outer wings.

  At half distance, the bugler sounded the canter. Given the saturated conditions underfoot, that would probably be the pace at impact, but they would never know. Three platoons of Hornets were spread across the valley, quite concealed from the dragoons.

  They needed no orders. They had been told to start shooting when the cavalry passed a given point and the first aimed volley took as many as half the riders from the saddle, causing chaos as those untouched tried to press on, but at the same time, avoid the fallen.

  They were trained cavalry and managed the manoeuvre brilliantly, but once clear, ran into the second aimed volley and a dozen of the waiting Hornets rode forward to deal with the two or three survivors.

  The first instinct of the horrified dragoon commander was to lead his remaining half squadron in a furious charge to avenge his lost troopers. He quickly realised that was exactly what the enemy wanted and the complete extinction of half his squadron would be followed by the massacre of the other half.

  He took his men and went back for support. It was the decision that Gonçalves had been expecting, but no support was available, only twenty or thirty riderless horses and their dejected riders doing their best to help some of their comrades in the stream below where the bridge had been.

  Dodds’s calculations had not taken into account the urge to join the action by the second squadron. They had broken into a canter as soon as they heard the bugles of their vanguard sounding the preliminaries to the charge.

  Rushing to support their friends, they had been caught by the explosion while their second troop was crossing and were left with a dozen men and horses dead in the small gorge.

  Half the squadron was still on the far side and most of the first troop, in a state of shock, trying to help their wounded friends, when the remains of the first squadron cantered back and attempted to restore order.

  This was the scene that the Hornets found when they came into sight. Leaving a platoon to round up the horses and guard the wounded and three or four prisoners, Gonçalves led four platoons, all remounted, back up the road, hoping to find the bridge destroyed and half a squadron of dragoons with no way of escape.

  What he found was a squadron and a half, split almost equally on either side of the stream and no sign of any infantry support. More than likely, the footsloggers were still blissfully unaware that their cavalry had got themselves into a terrible scrape.

  One and Five Platoons dismounted and spread out into skirmishing order with Dodds in command on the left and Pom as his junior on the river side. Both platoons were fully armed with the modified Bakers, with an effective range many times greater than the standard carbines that the dragoons carried.

  Not that the dragoons gave much thought to their carbines. They were cavalry and they were being threatened by a force that they found difficult to regard as soldiers. The ones on horseback had hardly been involved and the ones that had wreaked such havoc had only been seen as clouds of powder smoke and the occasional brown clad man, spread over a wide area.

  Anyone could see that there had been many, many more than these in hiding when they had been so deadly.

>   The dragoon commander had the bugle sound and ninety men rushed to get into their saddles and formed up. One thing they did enjoy was getting in among skirmishers. No long rows of glittering bayonets to cause the horses to baulk. Just frightened men running for their lives, to get to safety inside a square of infantry.

  There were no safe squares here. The dragoons, waiting with sabres drawn, looked for their intended victims.

  They had vanished! Every Hornet in the two platoons had noted the mass drawing of sabres and had picked his position within yards of his partner. Every man was prone and waiting for the hated executioners of Ordenança to deliver themselves up in turn for execution.

  The French commander gave the order to advance and turned back to find that the skirmish line had vanished. He began to have qualms. The scene in front of him looked identical to the one that had cost him half his command.

  It was too late now, though, to have doubts. There were far too few skirmishers to be as dangerous as before, weren’t there? He ordered the canter. It was less than a quarter of a mile to the line of waiting horsemen and he had last seen the skirmishers far too far ahead of them to hope for any support.

  Very briefly, he noticed a cloud of powder smoke to his left. It was too far away to be dangerous, but it was his instinct that told him so, not his reasoning. His reasoning wasn’t working very well and there was a terrible pain in his chest.

  Two hundred yards away, Acting Lieutenant Pom opened his breech screw and rolled another ball into the hole, followed by a measured charge. He was ready to fire again by the time the commander hit the ground.

  Fifteen of his men followed his example. It was a long drawn-out and ragged volley as they were using their new weapons and firing at moving targets from two hundred yards. Five seconds later, their shooting partners delivered another volley and a quarter of the dragoons had no further interest in the proceedings.

  On his left, Dodds and his men saw the commander fall and took it as the signal to open fire themselves. In not much more than fifteen seconds, half the dragoons were dead or wounded, but their commander was also dead and could not order the retreat. The dragoons charged on.