I Think I Really Do Have an Ulcer

by Geoffrey Watson

  Turning back to the clearly agitated Spaniard, he pointed to the departing Hornets. “My men are riding to get behind the enemy, Señor. Doña Juanita shall fetch the other two companies, who shall make an ambush so that the French are caught between them.

  The enemy shall not see the Avispónes and shall need to be encouraged to attack. Oblige me please, by forming your men up at three hundred paces behind the ambush.”

  He smiled thinly. “Try and see yourselves as a very tempting target for the French to charge and smash to pieces. Instead, the French shall be smashed before they can reach you and it shall then be your turn to charge and claim a glorious victory.

  Por favor, now get them into position. Quietly – no bugle calls – and gently; we need no dust cloud to forewarn the French.”

  Sanchez had never made war like this. The whole concept was alien to him, but he reasoned that he was starting with the same number of men as the French and he ought to have some sort of advantage if they were the ones to be riding through an ambush. If only he could rely on his horsemen to hold steady in the face of a French charge?

  He started to bellow orders and his men began filtering down toward the road. MacKay watched them go. Sanchez had done his best with limited funds and supplies. All his men were wearing some kind of shako, which gave them the appearance of a cavalry unit. As far as he could tell, they all had sabres and most of them had some form of firearm. The kindest thing that could be said of their clothing was that it was individual choice. They were wearing the clothes that they had on when they joined, from peasant dress to old regular army tunics, all bestrapped with crossbelts and pouches.

  MacKay rode with them and pointed out to Sanchez how the mostly straight road rose up to curve round a spur of the foothills and thus restricted the view of oncoming traffic until it reached the jut of the spur.

  “When Doña Juanita returns with the Avispónes, they shall wish to set the ambush two hundred paces past that point, General. It shall be convenient if you form up your men after another three hundred paces. I shall join you when the Avispónes are in position.”

  He let them go and stayed where he had a good view of the road and the cloud of dust that the French were raising. He noted that they were being quite pragmatic about this routine reconnaissance, only allowing their mounts to walk. If a siege had started, they did not need to get closer than a few miles before they should hear the guns. They could almost rely on the prevailing westerly winds to carry the noise.

  Until then, there was no point tiring their horses until they had need of them and that could be, possibly, if they met that rabble of a guerrilla band in another ten miles or so.

  Last week, if it had not been a routine reconnaissance, they would have attacked, even though outnumbered. They had no doubt that they could have beaten those irregulars, but may have incurred more casualties than could be justified and thus suffered the wrath of their commanders when they returned.

  This was why they now had double their previous strength and were praying that the partisans were still about. A single, no nonsense charge to rout the peasants and they could sweep right up to the walls of Ciudad Rodrigo and make certain that it was still untouched.

  For four squadrons, the main road was the most direct way of getting to their objective and they had no need to worry about meeting any force that they couldn’t handle. It was, nevertheless, comforting to know what lay ahead and this was taken care of by a couple of troops, scouting up to half a mile ahead.

  MacKay had watched Davison and Tonks settle their men in the open scrubby country on either side of the road. He waited until Juanita and the wagon teams had herded all the horses to the rear of the waiting Spaniards, before he rejoined Sanchez in front of his men.

  He noted the various expressions of astonishment along the mounted ranks as the two hundred and fifty Hornets effectively disappeared before their eyes.

  ‘Welcome to the new warfare in the new century’ was the cynical thought uppermost in his mind. He spoke in a conversational tone to Sanchez.

  “You must persuade your men to be patient, General. The French scouts shall wish to examine you all before they permit their main force to approach.

  I have every confidence that they shall accept the challenge that you are making, but when they attack, they shall have more than two hundred rifles aimed at them. One in every three shall be hit before I blow this whistle to signal them to stop firing.

  Please take that as your signal to attack them. You shall have to use the road only at the start, as my men are scattered everywhere else and shall not appreciate being trampled. Once past them and you may spread out again.

  If they flee, I recommend you to recall your men before they pass that spur. Two hundred more rifles shall be waiting beyond that and shall not have time to distinguish friend from foe.”

  Sanchez may have realised that he was out of his depth, but he was able to visualise the scene from MacKay’s description. Possibly he may not have accepted the estimate of one in three casualties, but if he closed his eyes, he could let his mind imagine the effect of two hundred bullets hitting the enemy and he certainly did not want his men doing anything to upset these terrifying creatures by trampling on them. He called all his captains together and told them, with much emphasis, what they must and must not do.

  They were on their way back to instruct their commands when the first of the French scouts came into sight and stopped in his tracks. The rest of them ranged alongside and stared.

  The mass of Sanchez’s cavalry was the main attraction for their eyes, but they were quite close and were thus identified and largely disregarded very quickly. The chasseur lieutenants had been trained well and surveyed the areas to the left and right of them before returning their gaze to appraise the mounted guerrilleros.

  All their experience told them that soldiers in ambush looked like soldiers trying to be inconspicuous, but giving themselves away by small details, like big, angular shakos or brightly coloured uniforms, broad white crossbelts or shiny cap plates.

  Large clumps of dry grass or small boulders scattered about in the open did not fit into this description, even if a pair of cold eyes was peering out of each of them. Their attention fled back to the mass of mounted men and messengers sped back to inform the following squadrons that a hundred or so contemptible Spanish irregulars were being stupid enough to stand in their way.

  MacKay was calming Sanchez by giving his own commentary on the way the French commanders were thinking. “Naturally, the senior officer shall question what is being reported. He shall not understand why irregular” – with a glance of apology – “Spanish horsemen shall dare to challenge equal numbers of invincible imperial cavalry.”

  A quick glance at Sanchez suggested that he might have been of the same opinion, but it was far too late to care now.

  “The commanding officer shall not wish to commit his men until he has seen for himself, the extraordinary situation reported to him – there! – you can see him for yourself, General. Pray do not be tempted to raise your hat in acknowledgement of his scrutiny through his field telescope.”

  This provoked a snort of amusement from Sanchez, who was now quite relaxed and actually beginning to enjoy this extraordinary encounter and the almost unbelievably casual revelation about what the French were supposed to be thinking.

  MacKay continued quietly and matter-of-factly. “He has now satisfied himself that his lieutenant has not taken leave of his senses, but that his opponents must have done so. Expect a bugle call to summon the rest of his command, with the intention of causing you to soil your breeches. He cannot imagine that you have counted correctly or you should not be waiting.

  There! He is committing himself. The other squadrons are arriving and deploying across the road and down the slope. They cannot move to their left because of the steep slope of the spur.

  I should like him to begin now, before all of his troops are deployed. Do you have a bugle call to cause your men to
draw their sabres, General? Just that and it may act as a spur to get them moving.”

  Sanchez nodded and spoke to his bugler, who played a three-note sequence, twice. Even MacKay was impressed. On the last note of the second call, every Spanish sabre flashed into view.

  The outcome was as MacKay had hoped. There was an immediate reply from a French bugle and four ranks, each of fifty horsemen began to trot, with the two squadrons in the rear crowding up to deploy behind them.

  He had successfully hurried them into action before they were all settled, but MacKay was edgy. He knew that Davison and Tonks had a problem, because the French were too close for comfort. The nearest Hornets were only twenty seconds trot away from the leading riders and it was frighteningly easy for nine or ten Hornets to pick the same target when given so little time. Every horseman they ignored would be among them before they could reload.

  Then they opened fire and MacKay realised that Davison and Tonks had put their heads together beforehand. The Hornets were shooting by platoon, thirty men at a time, with about a second’s interval between the platoons. It gave each man a wide choice of targets and the second and third platoons could see if their prospective targets were already hit.

  Switching targets caused small delays: enough that after the third volley, the sound of their discharges became a continuous thunder of shots.

  None of the French rode more than fifty or sixty yards. In front of the billowing powder smoke was now a mass of riderless horses. Few of the beasts were injured, as the range was too close for the marksmen to miss the riders.

  MacKay blew a long blast on his whistle. It signalled a cease-fire, but firing had already stopped. Instead it caused the Spanish bugle to sound and Sanchez’s irregulars poured forward in a tight column until they had ridden past the Hornets, when they spread out and erupted through the mass of riderless horses into the bewildered cavalry survivors behind.

  Most of the French turned and fled. There was only one way they could go and they jostled and fought their way along the road round the spur until they could spread out and get away from the swords of the Spaniards. Those at the rear of the rout had no room to defend themselves and fell in their scores to the Spanish sabres; weapons wielded by riders with four years of hoarded up vengeance to claim.

  Most of the Spaniards had enough discipline to obey the insistent bugle, recalling them before they rounded the spur. Those, whose blood lust made them deaf to the bugle, had to take their chance against the fire of Captain Colston’s B Company, under the intimidating gaze of Algernon Cholmondeley’s A Company, sitting their horses in a double line, waiting to round up any survivors.

  MacKay gazed at the triumphant and exultant Spaniards. None of them could have experienced such a complete and casualty-free victory before.

  Doubtless, Sanchez would claim a much greater part in the achievement than he had earned, but MacKay did not begrudge it to him. The discipline of his horsemen had been admirable. They had done everything asked of them, even standing firm in the face of an enemy intent on hacking them to pieces.

  Their reward would be not only the glory of the victory, but most of the horses and all the uniforms, arms and equipment. Some half-competent seamstresses could scavenge enough cloth to make them look like a regular cavalry unit, armed with standard pattern French carbines. They were certainly disciplined enough to be treated as a regular unit in future.

  Some of the horses would be good enough for remounts and the Hornets would take some for their wagon train. Most of them would need a great deal of training before they could be of much use in campaigning. The French shortage of horseflesh was nowhere more evident than in these young, skittish and half-trained beasts.

  It was a very thoughtful MacKay that returned to the siege headquarters. Salamanca had sent out a much larger patrol than he had anticipated. Not one trooper would return and that itself was sufficient reason for messengers to go racing to Marmont.

  He would have to suggest to Welbeloved that Sanchez could be entrusted with the road to Salamanca, while he took the 1st Battalion to join Gonçalves and the Portuguese and cut Marmont’s communications between Almaraz and Salamanca.

  Realistically, if it were possible to keep Marmont in ignorance for another week, he would be unable to gather enough troops together before Wellington had had four or five weeks of siege. With only two thousand defenders in the town that ought to be twice as much as he would need.

  CHAPTER 10

  Lord Wellington had watched over and helped the Naval Division grow from sixty men at the time of Talavera, until they were close to two and a half thousand now. He trusted Welbeloved to operate independently of the army, while he was almost paranoid in insisting that the commanders of all his other divisions followed his written orders with minute attention to every detail, down to the merest comma.

  Recognising, if not entirely understanding, the special nature of the Hornets, his policy was dictated largely by horror at the thought of what a disaster some of his senior generals could bring upon the new division, if it were ever to be placed under their command.

  Now that Welbeloved was confirmed in the rank of Major General of Marines; even though this was fictitious in naval terms; no one, other than himself could interfere with the deployment of the Hornets.

  He was naturally very grateful for the undertaking; nay the guarantee; that Welbeloved and MacKay had given, that no messengers should be allowed to reach Marmont to warn him that the siege had started. He even accepted that they believed that they could stop the French gallopers in accordance with their undertaking.

  If he had any quarrel with Welbeloved’s guarantee, it was with the period of time that the cork could be kept in the bottle. French dispatch riders could very possibly be stopped for several weeks, but not all Spaniards were anti French.

  Many of the afrancesados; the French supporters; genuinely believed that the new French system of government was better for Spain than the basically feudal, autocratic system it had replaced.

  They were not alone. In England, many of the Opposition held the same opinion, without taking into account that Napoleon had made himself into just as despotic and autocratic a ruler as the dynasties he had replaced.

  It was foolish to think that one of the local afrancesado merchants would not be travelling south in the next few days. He need not necessarily be carrying a message, but he would know that Rodrigo was under siege and it was natural that he should talk about it. He didn’t even have to be a French supporter.

  Wellington had to assume that Marmont would know about the siege within a week. That made the other intelligence brought in by the Hornets so much more important.

  With his garrisons scattered over vast areas of north and central Spain, it was surely impossible for Marmont to gather together an effective army in under two weeks? Longer still, now that twelve thousand of his soldiers were in full march eastwards to help Suchet?

  Surely, it had to be possible to count on three full weeks to reduce the town? Masséna had taken three weeks last year against a Spanish garrison of nearly five thousand. General Barrié only had two thousand men and although the damage to the walls had been repaired since then, they could not be as strong as before.

  In war; particularly when the French were involved; estimating time was guesswork. Time and again they had resurrected armies, even broken armies, and appeared with thousands of men, when it seemed physically impossible to do so.

  The only answer was to move so quickly that Rodrigo would fall before Marmont had time to do anything. Wellington needed to drive his army through all the siege operations at top speed. He would use entire divisions, if need be, to dig the trenches for the parallels. The guns must be emplaced and working almost before Barrié knew they were serious.

  Outside the walls there were fortifications that had to be cleared before parallels could be started. The convent of San Francisco, to the north of the town and another convent of Santa Cruz to the west, had been fortified and a
newly built redoubt called the Renaud Redoubt needed to be cleared before digging could start.

  On the first night, Craufurd’s Light Division crept close to the Renaud Redoubt and opened fire to keep the enemy garrison quiet while their comrades broke in and captured it.

  The first parallel was started the same night and thousands of men pushed it forward, working in shifts, night and day.

  By the third day there were seven batteries in action, pounding the north wall of the town with considerable success. The French themselves had breached the north-east wall last year, but Wellington’s large calibre, modern siege guns were damaging the ancient north walls with every shot; to such effect that Wellington briefly considered an immediate assault.

  Instead, another raiding party assaulted the fortified convent of Santa Cruz and a second parallel was started that brought the batteries to within two hundred yards of the walls during the next two days.

  On the next day, Julian Sanchez and his men brought in the prisoners and wounded from MacKay’s successful ambush and while the work parties in the parallels were changing shifts, General Barrié sallied out and recaptured Santa Cruz, doing a great deal of damage to the second parallel.

  This incensed Lord Wellington and provoked a furious response. The French were again driven out of Santa Cruz and by the middle of the afternoon, all the damage had been repaired and all the siege guns were once more in action against the various targets.

  They continued enlarging the original breach in the north wall. They battered the fortified convent of San Francisco in the north and the area of the north-east wall that had been only recently repaired after the French siege.

  With the heavy guns battering the convent walls and the last of the Condesa’s shells blasting holes in the roof, San Francisco was taken by early evening. All the defenders dashed back into the town, abandoning any idea of further defence of their outposts. Every heavy gun now concentrated on the main breach in the north wall and the rapidly growing breach in the north-east wall, where the hasty repairs were crumbling to the sustained assault.