Flashman's Escape

by Robert Brightwell

  After days of marching and counter-marching we finally arrived where I had suspected we would end up all along: Albuera. We reached it in mid-April and after all the rushing about we then sat there doing nothing for a month.

  Albuera was a miserable place. It had 150 houses and a rather grand old church. But the French had been there before us and it was all now in ruins with barely a roof on any of the buildings. The population of several hundred had been reduced to just an old man and a cat when we arrived. It was down to just an old man five minutes later, when Boney spotted the cat.

  We settled in as best we could, stretching what tent canvas we had over the roofs of buildings to make them weather proof and gathering plenty of wood to put fires back in the hearths. The stragglers caught up and those with blistered and cut feet had plenty of time to wonder what the rush had been about. While other captains allowed their men to sit about and do little, I decided to put my men through their paces. Every other afternoon Lieutenant Hervey and Sergeant Evans would take them up on the ridge for musketry drill and bayonet practice for hours. At the same time the women and children would be despatched in groups off to the woods to find firewood and check various traps and snares set for fresh meat.

  Oh, I was the proper diligent officer and I was even commended in front of the officers’ mess by Major King. He might have been less complimentary if he knew that I spent most of the time my men were exercising doing my favourite form of ‘drilling’ with Lucy Benton. But it was not just about getting the men and women out of the way so that Lucy and I could have a quiet afternoon together. I was all too aware that when a battle did come, my life would partly depend on how well my company fought. The veterans and recruits were paired together so that the new men learnt how to fight, and I venture that Hervey came to appreciate the skills of Sergeant Evans too. The company was coming together as an effective single unit, and if its captain was able to take advantage of the situation to do some ‘bonding’ of his own then so much the better.

  While I was conducting my own military manoeuvres, things were happening elsewhere. Other British brigades had been detailed to start the entrenchments for the siege of Badajoz. This was back-breaking and dangerous work with the French lobbing out shells to disrupt the digging. Astonishingly only at this point did someone notice that the cannon we had brought with us were not suitable for bringing down the huge walls of the city. Artillerymen were sent off to Elvas, the nearest big British fortress on the other side of the Guadiana, to bring away their largest guns. But by the time they had got them back to the river the pontoon bridge had been partly swept away by the strong current. It took several days to repair and by then Wellington was coming over the bridge with the guns, frustrated at the delay and insisting that the assault on Badajoz start as soon as possible. He disappeared again back to his own army in the north a few days later. From what I learned later from Ben D’Urban, the result of his interference was more dithering from Beresford and feuds between the senior officers.

  With suitable guns finally delivered, the bombardment of the city walls of Badajoz started on the eighth of May. It must have been one of the shortest sieges in military history, for they stopped again just four days later on the twelfth. Soult, doubtless monitoring our pitiful progress, decided that it was now time for him to react. He set off with his army from Seville. The poor gunners, who had only just started their work, were told to take the valuable siege guns all the way back over the river to Elvas. Our general was worried that they could be captured if we lost the coming battle. As you can tell from that decision, even Beresford did not have confidence in his own abilities!

  I saw our illustrious commander again the day after we had heard that Soult was on the march. He had come to view his designated battlefield and spent the day riding around it, holding a sheaf of papers that seemed to be Wellington’s instructions for fighting the battle. His large horse looked like a pony under his great frame, with his feet dangling well below its belly. A group of staff officers rode with him, pointing out various features on the landscape, while he searched for reference to them amongst his papers. At one point they rode near the edge of the village where I was standing and it was then that I saw that amongst the officers with him was Grant. The pompous stuffed shirt could not resist riding over to gloat at my misfortune, followed by the ever-present Leon.

  “Morning, Flashman. I hope you are preparing for action, for the French are on their way.”

  He bristled with self-importance, but as the rest of the staff were still nearby I gritted my teeth and made an effort to be civil. “Yes, that rumour has spread even to us fighting men. Are you still rounding up stray cattle or have they found you something more useful to do?”

  “We have just ridden from the outskirts of Seville and seen the French army for ourselves, haven’t we, Leon?” He glanced over his shoulder at his guide before continuing. “They are now around eight days’ march away with plenty of cavalry, so you might want to practise getting into a square.”

  “As we told the general,” interrupted Leon smoothly, “Soult could be here in a lot less than eight days if he does long forced marches.” Leon gave me a meaningful look as though to indicate that is what he expected the Frenchman to do. I just hoped that Beresford’s one eye had detected that Leon was a shrewd judge of what to expect, but I doubted it. The man himself turned and barked at Grant to re-join him.

  “Captain Grant, when you are quite ready I would be obliged if you would take down some notes to give to Wellington.

  “Duty calls, old boy,” called Grant with a self-satisfied smile as he rode away. God I hated that bastard.

  That evening I was summoned to the old church where General Stewart, one of Beresford’s subordinates, gave the more senior officers of his command a briefing on what he thought was happening.

  “Gentlemen,” he barked at us, “Soult is marching to relieve Badajoz and we stand astride the road he must take to reach the city.”

  “When will he get here?” someone asked.

  “He left yesterday and he could be here as soon as three or four days’ time.” I was glad that someone had taken Leon’s warning seriously. “He will want to come at us quickly to take us by surprise and because he knows that our force is scattered and will need some time to gather. We have two Spanish armies marching towards us to help and General Beresford is gathering other allied units that will rendezvous here. If all goes to plan, we should have a three-to-two advantage in numbers and a strong defensive position on the ridge. Soult will have to decide whether to attack us to go back to Seville, but I think we can be confident that he will not reach Badajoz.”

  It all sounded very positive and Stewart was a capable man. If Wellington had overall command, I would have shared Stewart’s confidence, but I was fast losing faith in Beresford. According to mess gossip he seemed to spend most of his time arguing with his senior men and had now sacked his cavalry commander. He had accepted as a replacement Sir William Erskine, who was a former inhabitant of a lunatic asylum. Mercifully the French were expected to arrive before Erskine could take command.

  Major King took the opportunity over the next few days to put the regiment through its paces and I supported him enthusiastically. My life would depend on how quickly they could load and fire, their organisation for rolling company volleys and their ferocity of charge. I was proud that the third company was one of the best in the battalion after the rigorous exercises I had organised for the men… and one of their wives.

  I knew I would have to lead them into battle, but once the actual shooting started my position would be behind them and that was where I intended to stay. I was comforted that even the newer recruits seemed to know the drills and for good measure we formed square a few times in case enemy cavalry somehow got behind us.

  “The men are shaping up portentously well, aren’t they, sir?” opined Sergeant Evans at the end of the second day of battalion drilling.

  “Prodigiously well,” I agreed. “Are t
hey confident about the coming battle, do you think?”

  “Oh yes, sir, the prospect of loot always cheers up a soldier. Deductions take up most of their pay, but any man can get rich on a battlefield.”

  “He can also get killed or maimed on the battlefield,” I reminded him.

  “Dead or rich, sir, it is a break from the monotone of being a soldier.”

  We were walking back to the ruined village, which looked even more depressing in the long shadows of late afternoon. “The monotony,” I stressed the correct word, “of a soldier’s life must be better than that of those villagers. We are generally well fed and clothed, but everyone just takes what they want from them. Where do you think they are?”

  “Some will be living in the forest, sir, avoiding anyone in a uniform of whatever colour. We have caught a glimpse of one or two when we have been gathering wood. They are not far away, and will come back when we have all gone.”

  Chapter 4

  The evening before the French arrived we moved our bivouac from the village over to the other side of the ridge. The road the French wanted to advance along went right through the little town. So the huddle of buildings was likely to be in the front line of the battle. Encampments were marked out in the fields beyond the hill, but this served to highlight that quite a few were still vacant. The Portuguese cavalry had not reported when it would arrive and no one knew where it was. The Spanish army under General Blake had been expected that afternoon but had not appeared. That was worrying, but of more concern were the absent British forces that were expected to form the backbone of any defence. General Kemmis’s brigade was also missing, whereas the large part of the army besieging Badajoz was expected to make the sixteen-mile march from the city that night to arrive just in time for the action.

  While some of the soldiers seemed excited at the prospect of a fight, my mood was matched by the low, dark clouds that seemed to be gathering over the battlefield. Nobody seemed clear on what was happening, how many of the French would arrive, where our missing troops were or even if we should fight at all. I discovered that for the last few days Beresford had been seriously debating with his officers abandoning Albuera and pulling back over the Guadiana, effectively leaving Badajoz to the French. All that evening the dithering Cyclops could be seen riding endlessly up and down the ridge that would form the spine of our position. He was still holding the now torn and dog-eared papers from Wellington and staring anxiously around with his one eye for his missing men. Hardly an inspiring sight.

  It was a miserable night; not that I would have been able to relax much anyway, worrying what the dawn would bring. There was an intermittent, light rain that made everything cold and damp and we were continually disturbed by soldiers and units blundering about looking for where they should be camped. It was pointless even trying to sleep, and like most of the men I ended up crouched around one of the campfires, trying to keep warm.

  “Have you been in many battles, sir?” asked Price-Thomas. He was sitting on a log next to me and tickling Boney behind the ears.

  “A few,” I replied. Then, mentally, I started to add them up. There had been a crazy shore action at Estepona with Cochrane; Assaye, Argaum and Gawilghur in India; and Alcantara, Talavera and Busaco in the peninsula. Each had brought its own degree of terror, but this time I thought things might be different. Blake’s Spanish force had arrived that night and so it should be the first battle in the peninsula where we outnumbered the enemy. While our army might be confused and disorganised, the French would also be tired from five days of forced double marches. As I sat warming my hands by the fire I wondered how many of them were still strung out on the march coming towards us. If we could win on the ridge at Talavera when we were outnumbered, we could win on the ridge here, I thought.

  Any sense of imminent danger escaped me and in fact I felt strangely complacent. We were in a strong position. I naively believed that not even that bumbling booby Beresford could mess things up, especially with all his written instructions. My men were well trained, fresh and prepared for battle, and as long as the British force from Badajoz arrived on time, it seemed victory was assured.

  I put my hand on Price-Thomas’s shoulder. “Don’t worry if you are feeling frightened; everyone is before a battle. Just do your duty. I have a good feeling about this one; we will be all right.”

  “That’s good, sir.” The boy’s teeth gleamed as he grinned in the darkness. “And I am not frightened, sir,” he added unconvincingly.

  Dawn was just before half past four in the morning and so from half past three the army was roused so that it could ‘stand to’ in case the enemy attempted to attack at first light. As no one was asleep anyway this just meant huddling in a different place behind the crest of the ridge. But we could not take the fires with us and so we just stood there, shivering with the cold. My company stood in the middle of the battalion’s line but there was no point in trying to inspect the men. In the darkness I could barely see them. The long lines of soldiers talked quietly among themselves, with the occasional scrape of a sharpening stone as men honed their bayonets to an ever-finer edge.

  As the sun crept over the horizon, bugles sounding ‘reveille’ could be heard from the far side of the valley. They were sounded in our camp as well to an ironic cheer from the men. As the grey light of dawn spread across the sky, not a sound could be heard from the east where the French should have been massing for their attack. I could see Major King and some other officers walking their horses along the crest of the ridge. I mounted mine and rode to join them.

  “There were hundreds of French horsemen in the meadow between the river and the forest a few minutes ago,” called out King as I approached. “But now they have all disappeared back amid the trees. They must have been there in case we tried an attack across the river. But as they could see no one on the forward slope, they seem to have gone off for breakfast.”

  “That sounds an excellent idea to me,” I replied as my stomach rumbled at the thought. “We are not going to attack and give up the advantage of the ridge and they are not going to attack as probably half their army is still arriving, footsore from a long march.”

  “They are not the only ones waiting for stragglers,” declared King, pointing to our lines.

  In the improving light I could now see the leading British units coming from Badajoz, approaching down the road. Our battalion was arrayed in a long line on the reverse slope of the ridge out of sight of the French. The village, with its two bridges over the river, was to our front. A couple of battalions of infantry occupied the village and an artillery battery was set up to cover the two bridges.

  “It looks like we will be in the centre of the action,” pronounced King grimly.

  I looked about. Beresford was moving various Spanish units to our right. Beyond the Spanish the rest of the ridge was empty and at its end stood two small hills. The first was just beyond the Spanish position and the second five hundred yards beyond that. As they were hills on top of the ridge summit they were the tallest points around.

  “Should we not have men or guns on those hills?” I asked, pointing.

  “We don’t have enough men to cover the whole ridge, and if the French attack over the bridges then any men on those hills will not be a lot of use.”

  Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I confess that I did not think any more about King’s use of that little word ‘if’. As no attack at all seemed imminent, the battalion was stood down and my mind turned to breakfast.

  The French can be damned inconvenient fellows and I had just been handed a hot mug of tea when the cannon fire started. Over three hours had passed since dawn and we had just been discussing if there would be a battle that day at all. While the sun was now well up in the sky, it was hidden behind dark and brooding storm clouds that promised a deluge before nightfall.

  “Stand to,” came the call and I just had time to take a gulp of the hot liquid to warm me up before I was forced to abandon the rest. Men kissed their wives a
nd children goodbye, did up belts, checked cartridge boxes and picked up their muskets and started to move to our earlier position on the reverse slope. I tried to ignore the fond farewell that Lucy gave her husband; she was wearing the corporal’s greatcoat over a red dress and with her hair blown by the wind she looked particularly fetching. The throng of women and children was calling final reminders to the men to take care, as I pushed my way through to find my horse. Swinging myself up into the saddle, I saw the fighting men of all but one company start to extricate themselves and move up the slope. Each battalion kept one company back to guard the baggage and protect its camp followers. Those fortunate men were already moving forward to strike tents, load carts and try to herd the women and children well away from the scene of any likely action. A handful of women without children followed some distance behind their men up the slope for a glimpse of what was happening, Lucy amongst them.

  My company took its place between the second and fourth in the line. The men looked relaxed and confident; it was not a big cannonade, perhaps a couple of batteries of six guns firing on either side, probing defences. As we had done in battles with Wellington, I thought that we would stay on the reverse slope, protected from their guns, until the French launched their attack. In the past we only appeared on the crest as the French struggled up the hill, just in time to destroy them with rolling volley fire. But now Beresford made his first big mistake.

  “Battalion advance,” ordered King, a call that was echoed by officers and sergeants along the line. Looking along the ridge, I could see that the whole army was moving forward, until we were called to a halt standing on the crest.