Rumours Of War

Colonel Graham stood upright. He knew the import, human and material, of that imperative: the sick would have to be left where they lay, ammunition and all manner of stores destroyed. It was a loathsome prospect for a soldier. He took a deep breath of resolution. ‘Then Paget’s cavalry shall have to buy the army time, since Bonaparte will not let us take it for nothing.’

The fog had lifted to reveal a full moon and a clear sky. Hervey and his new mare could at least see their way. At first Stella had spattered her belly with muddy snow, and then with every step she had broken through a thin layer of ice, until after an hour or so they came to the road by which Sir John Moore’s troops marched on Soult at Carrion, and for another hour after that they trudged never less than fetlock-deep through a freezing mire which the wretched infantry had churned. Hervey pitied them, for the icy mud must be slushing over the tops of their boots, so that they might as well be unshod.

‘Horse!’ he shouted constantly to clear a way. He knew they cursed him as he passed, but he galloped for their safety, and he could only trust they would soon know it.

Then there were bonnets and kilts.

‘Ninety-second?’ he called, pulling up.

‘Who skelpit thro dub and mire?’ came the broad Aberdeen challenge.

Hervey caught the sense, if not the meaning. He took it that here indeed were the Ninety-second. Before he left Sir John Moore’s headquarters he had asked to know the order of march. The highlanders were in General Hope’s brigade, the vanguard of the main column; he knew he had a clear gallop ahead just as soon as he could get by them.

They were halted, too; it would make it easier. He kicked on, past a good deal more Scotch banter.

‘Sic a night he taks the road in, as ne’er poor sinner was abroad in!’

There was laughter and jeering behind him.

‘Wot lest bogles catch ’e, Tam!’

More laughter and jeering. But soon it was oaths and curses as he kicked into a fast trot, spattering kilts and bonnets with muddy snow.

He thanked Providence he had a good horse under him – not that any who lashed out now with tongue or boot cared that he had mortgaged a year and a half’s pay to buy her. It took a while to overhaul the highlanders, but then the road was empty. He touched Stella’s flanks with his spurs, and they galloped hard for a quarter of an hour.

‘Halt! Parole?’

He threw all his weight back and pulled sharp on the curb.

‘Blenheim! Sir John Moore’s galloper!’

‘Pass, sir,’ replied the serjeant of the Forty-third’s rearguard.

The road was now a little wider; he put Stella into a fast trot.

In a couple of minutes they came on the rear ranks of the Rifles. ‘Where is General Craufurd?’ he called, checking the pace to not quite a walk.

‘Up at the front,’ growled the serjeant. ‘Where he always is.’

Hervey pushed by at a trot, urgent now, not caring about the protests and the curses. In five more minutes he was cantering clear ahead of them.

In a few more he saw the little bunch of riders that was Major-General ‘Black Bob’ Craufurd and his staff.

‘Galloper!’ he shouted. ‘Galloper for General Craufurd!’

An ADC turned to meet him.

‘Orders for General Craufurd from Sir John Moore!’ He took them from his cross-belt pouch and thrust his hand out.

The ADC took the envelope, reined back round and rode up to the general’s side.

The moon was bright, and with the aid of a small torch Craufurd began to read. In a few seconds more he turned in the saddle and threw up his hand.

‘Halt!’ he thundered.

Hervey would never forget the terrible shock of that order, and Craufurd’s utter repugnance in the words of command ‘About turn!’ They were relayed to the most junior officer at the rear of the brigade, each repetition with the greatest sense of abhorrence, of anger even.

It was daylight when the light brigade tramped back into Sahagun. It had been freezing even harder since they had turned about, and marching in the rutted wake of the rest of the infantry and the artillery had been a trial beyond reason for many of them, so that as they slid and stumbled on the icy cobbles their dismay was complete. The men who had swaggered out of the town the evening before, sure they would deal such a blow to the French that Bonaparte would be confounded, now skulked back like lashed dogs – but dogs that would snarl, and bite, should any even look at them.

Except the wives, wedded or not, and the children, who now ran to meet their men and pushed into the ranks to kiss and hug them. They did not care that they were sullen and in retreat, only happy that husbands and fathers were still alive.

Lieutenant-Colonel Lyndon Reynell, commanding the 6th Light Dragoons, learned the news of the withdrawal – retreat, as Stewart had it – from his brigadier shortly before three o’clock, woken from the first full night’s sleep he had expected to enjoy since the regiment had left Salamanca. General Stewart had been able to give him precious little intelligence of the enemy; he explained that Lord Paget had been unable to tell him much, and that he thought Sir John Moore withheld the worst. Nevertheless, Reynell grasped the import of the orders at once, for he knew the topography of north-east Spain from close study of the maps he had bought in London with considerable prescience and a good number of sovereigns. He assembled his officers at once.

Hervey, stood-down from his duties as galloper for the time being, relished the opportunity of hearing his colonel, for Reynell, the senior subalterns said, was a light dragoon to his fingertips; he understood instinctively the possibilities that time and space, the inflexible factors in a given situation, afforded. Hervey had not heard him speak more than half a dozen times. His orders came through the captains, and the regiment had been as much an association of troops and squadrons as a unity these past two months.

Lieutenant-Colonel Lyndon Reynell knew men, and he knew his men; he certainly knew his officers. They would carp, complain, protest, disparage. And in doing that they would undermine each other’s confidence in both Sir John Moore and in what they were about. He had been with the Duke of York when they had had to run for it in the depths of a German winter; he knew just what a regiment could become if ever the officers lost the will to do their duty. He would have none of that in the trial before them, and he had no doubt what the march would be. His own reputation was inextricably the regiment’s: no one would be able to say that the 6th Light Dragoons had conducted themselves in any manner but the best. But as he watched his officers now, crowding into what remained of a once cherished chapel, he knew he faced unhappy men. It was the early morning of Christmas Eve. He decided he would intrigue them.

‘A cold coming we shall have of it, at this time of year,’ he began, with a wry smile that said they might even take a perverse pleasure in their shared hardships.

And since Colonel Reynell was a son of the bishop’s palace, as well as veteran of half a dozen hard campaigns, he was allowed his whimsy. Some of the faces before him began to share the smile and the allusion.

‘Just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey, in. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter.’

All were smiling now, though not many could have known the words’ provenance. It was a grim pride in their misfortune. In solstitio brumali: they should by rights be in winter quarters.

Reynell, perceiving his officers to be now willing accomplices in the misfortune, would tell them the worst. ‘Well then, gentlemen, here is how I perceive our nativity and its twelve days. I hope no longer than twelve. But there is a French force now opposed to us large enough to destroy us. Certain, indeed, to destroy us. That much you may be assured of, else Sir John Moore would give battle at once. Therefore the army is to march to the sea by two routes, the principal to Corunna’ – he pointed on the map before them – ‘and the subsidiary to Vigo, which also General Romana’s Spaniards will take.’

He paused to let them take a good look at the map.