Betrayal

method of bringing down steers. He’d then been badly beaten. Five men had simply disappeared.

For Kydd there was unsettling news. Four feluccas had reached Buenos Aires; they were full of militia from the south, and attempted to land them behind the lines. A small sea battle had ended with their withdrawal, but if the Spanish had the sense to make a massed attack with more, it was certain that Kydd’s tiny navy would be overcome.

He fought off a sense of inevitability and doom, and when the victuallers failed to arrive from Rio de Janeiro it was four upon two – the meagre rations of two men now shared four ways.

Night brought with it its own terrors: sleep in the barracks was once shattered by a demented screeching and howling outside that went on and on. An armed party sent outside returned white-faced – wild dogs had been staked under the walls, then flayed alive and left.

And in the morning the naked and mangled body of one of the missing soldiers was found on the foreshore.

Was this the beginning of the end?

Chapter 14

The sound of trumpets echoed up from Whitehall Avenue. Grenville hurried to the window of the Admiralty, quite neglecting the table of grave faces that were discussing the war at sea. ‘I say, what a grand sight!’ the prime minister exclaimed. ‘Come and see, you fellows!’

With a scraping of chairs the others dutifully obliged, moving to the long windows to peer down into the crowd- lined streets. In the distance the head of a cavalcade was approaching, an escort of the Loyal Britons Volunteers proudly stepping out with fixed bayonets to the sound of two military bands.

People were shouting and cheering, urging on the colourful parade in waves of joyfulness. ‘My word, but I’ve not seen the mobility so exercised since Trafalgar,’ murmured Sidmouth, the Lord Privy Seal.

Even the torpid figure of Fox, the notorious but ageing foreign secretary, gained some measure of animation. ‘An’ they’ve little enough to cheer these last months since Austerlitz,’ he grunted.

Since that climactic confrontation at sea Napoleon had raged about Europe, winning one titanic battle after another. This had brought the late Pitt’s coalition to ruin, and had rendered England without friends and alone in the war once more. Now, however, they had a victory: better than that, there was plunder – treasure that took a stream of wagons, each drawn by six horses, to make the journey from Portsmouth to the Bank of England.

The thump of drums grew louder and details of the procession clearer. ‘What flag’s that?’ enquired Grenville, noticing a Royal Marine holding aloft a green and gold tasselled banner in the first wagon.

‘I’ve been told it’s that of the viceroyalty of Peru, my lord,’ Viscount Howick, the first lord of the Admiralty, said sourly.

‘And the others?’

‘Flags various, taken at Buenos Aires.’

The procession came nearer, the shouts more strident. Each wagon had a large pennant aloft bearing the single word ‘treasure’ woven with blue ribbons, and drawn behind each was a gleaming brass field-piece taken from the enemy. ‘Nice touch,’ Sidmouth grunted appreciatively.

The cavalcade came to a ceremonial halt below their window.

A smart party of Royal Marines emerged from the front portico bearing a banner of blue silk with words in gold – ‘Buenos Aires, Popham, Beresford, Victory!’ – and carried it out to a carriage where Captain Donnelly of Narcissus graciously accepted it on behalf of the gallant soldiers and sailors so far away.

‘Come now, Charles, why so peevish?’ Grenville said. The government could safely be said to be, at least by implication, responsible for this ray of light into the dark miseries of war.

‘The man’s insufferable, very plausible and has insinuating manners,’ Howick blustered. ‘Had the hide to dress up a pirate raid on the Spanish as a tilt at liberation.’

‘Popham? I’d have thought we’ve reason enough to be grateful.’

‘He sails off on some unplanned treasure-hunting expedition, and then starts badgering me to find reinforcements from somewhere for his whimsy.’

‘Isn’t that what we want in a commander – pluck and enterprise?’

‘He left station without so much as a by-your-leave,’ the first lord snorted, ‘which for the Navy you can be very sure will earn any commander a court-martial at the trot.’

‘Like Nelson,’ Grenville responded lightly. The great admiral’s legendary and unauthorised race across the Atlantic had necessarily been accepted by the Admiralty.

‘Hmm. Popham was lucky – he takes a city the size of Bristol with a handful of men and ships, then trumpets it to all the world like a fairground huckster. Pens letters that puff South America as the next big market after India and gets the City all in a tizzy. Now I don’t suppose I can touch him – he’s the people’s hero.’

In the wide street below, the bands started up again and the parade got under way, heading for a grand climax along Pall Mall. The two men watched it together as it disappeared around the corner.

‘I dare say I should get reinforcements out to the villain,’ muttered Howick.

The Plaza de Toros, the bullring, was at the Retiro in the north of the city. After dark in the moonless night it was approached from three directions by a silent stream of men and equipment. By midnight General Liniers had an encampment established within the city.

The only British in this district were a sergeant and seventeen men of the 71st, who occupied a derelict house. In the pre-dawn cold a tired sentry was aroused by the sound of dogs barking maniacally. He woke his sergeant, who was in no doubt of what was happening.

‘Go as fast as y’ legs’ll carry you, an’ tell Colonel Pack they’re on the move,’ he told the lad. ‘Say I’ll hold ’em as long as I can.’

The sixteen soldiers were posted in fours, covering each other. Steel glittered in the early light as bayonets were fixed, and after he’d told them what he expected the sergeant solemnly shook hands with each man, then sent him out.

A well-aimed shot crashed out in the silence and felled the first blandengue turning the corner. Return fire was ineffective: the disciplined Highlanders spaced their own to cover reloading, and the advance was halted.

The enemy recovered and spread out before making a first charge. This was stopped within yards, fleeing men stumbling over bodies sprawled in the street. Then they split their numbers, advancing down several streets simultaneously. The sergeant placed his men in pairs to confront them but now there was a tidal wave of attackers.

One went down, the other snatching up his musket, but the enemy saw their chance and closed with them. In a welter of blood, the exulting Spanish hacked and gouged at the bodies as they surged forward.

Pack drew in his outer guard and sent for field guns. These were positioned at street intersections; loaded with grape, they could quickly be wheeled round and fired down any street where the enemy were massing.

That night Beresford ordered a counter-attack. Three parties set out at four in the morning, one to steal along the riverbank while the other two circled around to drive in from the flank. This was, however, a city in a feverish state of alert, and very soon they were detected and found themselves fighting for their lives.

Soon the British had no alternative but to pull back and tighten their defences.

Then at eleven in the morning there came a defining moment. Colonel Pack, at the head of his advance guard, was trying to hold the line in the face of impossible numbers when the firing began to fall off; in less than an hour it had stopped completely. Into the silence came an eerie, distant thumping. It strengthened until a small group appeared at the end of the long avenue. An ornately dressed officer in a plumed hat was preceded by a soldier with a massive drum on which he kept up a steady double beat – ta ta boom, ta ta boom. Behind him, two soldiers supported a large white flag of truce.

‘Let’s hear him, then,’ Pack growled.

It was the Virrey Diputado Quintana, who had earlier met them at the gates of the city to proffer surrender.