‘The first and major obstacle to both our troops and the French is the Esla. The cavalry will hold off the enemy there while the infantry cross and put as many miles as may be between themselves and their pursuers, and while the engineers demolish the bridges.’
All faces were at once lit by this prospect of action, even if in retreat.
‘Thereafter we shall serve the rearguards, ourselves on the northern route, to Corunna, that is, until embarkation, when it may be necessary for Sir John Moore to fight a general action in order that the army might break clean away. I need not add that there will be several smaller-scale affairs when our brigadiers judge it to be opportune to inflict a delay for a modest effort.’
The nodding of heads told Reynell that he had explained things well. Now was the time to make his principal point.
‘Gentlemen, the discipline and conduct of the regiment is in your hands. It will want the very surest of attention. I cannot give emphasis enough to this matter, for herein lies the reputation of the regiment and the safety of the army. I cannot think that our army has ever been given greater occasion to display its worth.’
Reynell paused for a moment to let his words sink deep, to take a firm root so that he would not have to repeat them in the days to come. He looked at each of the captains in turn: Edmonds, the army son with as much service as he himself; Lankester, the patrician, who took campaigning in his stride, as if it were the chase; Worsley, the quiet, bookish man with a fortune in sugar; Leonard, the red-haired Irish squire who went at all his fences flat out, as brave, or foolish, as they came; and Arthur, Viscount Dereham, whose mother wrote regularly to the Duke of York to have her son recalled to safety at the Horse Guards, but who refused all offers of preferment. A colonel ought not to have many fears on their account. But it did no harm to spell it all out.
‘Now, gentlemen, in the absence of specific orders, I want first to have all camp-followers sent to Corunna. I absolutely forbid that any of them should remain. This will be no place for them, and it would be a distraction to all our men, wed or not, to have a mind for their safety.’
According to the regulations, only six wives were allowed to accompany a troop on service, and these were chosen by lot on the night before embarkation. The Sixth had had so many wives tramp to Northfleet, however, that the captains had decided they would increase the number by half at their own expense, and so a total of forty-five ‘To Go’ tickets had been placed in the hats along with nearly a hundred ‘Not To Go’. However, with the fortunate forty-five, too, there were a dozen children. The wives had been tolerably useful as far as Escorial, but some of the more prudent ones had taken the colonel’s liberal allowance to pay their way back to Lisbon. But then some, like Private Flyn’s wife, had spent theirs before going too far back down the road, rejoining the baggage train and turning necessity into virtue by their protests. ‘If Dan falls, who’s to bury him? God save us!’ Biddy Flyn had preached all over camp. ‘Divil a vulture will ever dig a claw into him while there’s life in Biddy, his laful wife.’
It was more the pity, thought Colonel Reynell now, that none of the officers’ wives had come out. Lady Waldegrave, whose husband was a captain in the Fifteenth, had taken charge of her regiment’s two dozen women at Mayorga; she must by now be half-way to Oporto, he reckoned. And with her had gone some of the Fifteenth’s walking sick as escorts, needing only two able-bodied dragoons to accompany the party. But without an officer’s wife he would have to send a man he could trust; and he could ill afford to send away men he could trust.
‘I see nothing for it but to have Cowell go with them,’ he declared, calculating that he might spare an assistant surgeon on a rapid retreat.
The captains agreed.
‘And then, gentlemen, I shall have John Knight look at every horse’s foot with the farrier-major. We may have but a day in which to do any work.’
Veterinary Surgeon Knight was exalted in both mess and canteen. He had, by degrees, reduced the weight of the troop-horses’ shoes by some two ounces since coming to the Peninsula, and he had had the farriers extend the same weight of iron – fifteen – to provide more cover to the foot, the country being uncommonly stony. The Sixth’s horses had in consequence fared better than the others in Stewart’s brigade. And now, with the snow come, the concave fullered shoes, which Knight ordered narrower than the regulation, were paying handsome dividends for the farriers’ extra efforts. Reynell believed they might well steal a march on a flat-shod French regiment by this means alone.
‘Do you have any questions of me?’ He trusted they would not. Questions meant either that he had explained things ill, or that information was too scarce.
They all had questions, but they knew Reynell had not the answers. There was silence.
And then Edmonds spoke. ‘Colonel, there’s a deal of French dead lying outside the town since Lord Paget’s affair the other morning, and they have all been stripped bare by the Spanish. I know the ground is too hard to bury them, but are we to leave them thus?’
They had all witnessed the bodies, naked, the crows pecking at the eyes and the town dogs circling.
‘I have heard nothing,’ said Reynell, shaking his head. ‘The Fifteenth, I know, brought in their dead, but they are unburied still. I agree it is unchristian to leave them out so. But the ground . . .’
‘I was thinking not merely of that, Colonel,’ replied Edmonds, shaking his head in a cautionary sort of way. ‘Rather of the effect upon the French of seeing their dead lying stripped and unburied. They’re bound to exact revenge somewhere on prisoners or stragglers.’
Reynell frowned. He did not want to gainsay him, especially not in front of the assembled officers. ‘And yet it might be argued that seeing
There were no more questions.
‘Very well, gentlemen. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off
*
Hervey had exercised the galloper’s privilege of no other duty but the despatch, and had turned in, boots off, immediately after Colonel Reynell’s address. But his sleep did not extend far beyond an hour before he was roused by an orderly and told the major of brigade would see him.
He rose at once and began dressing. The fur crest of his Tarleton was still wet, and he rued that his cloak would not be dry in a week of Sundays in a warming room. But he thought he looked passing respectable nevertheless to present himself at brigade orderly room. He wondered how far the gallop would be this time. Stella would be tired; it would not do to push her too much.
‘General Stewart desires to thank you for your services,’ said the major of brigade, as Hervey entered the almoner’s store, which now served as the hussar brigade orderly room.
Hervey quickened. Would this mean he was to be personally commended, at this very moment? He sincerely wished he were better accoutred.
‘But regrettably those services are to be terminated,’ continued the brigade major. ‘The brigadier is made
There was nothing more to be said, evidently. Hervey nodded, muttered ‘thank you’, for want of conjuring anything more appropriate, and saluted.
They did, however, shake hands.
‘The general is well pleased, Mr Hervey. Lord Paget sent his best expressions of contentment at your recall of General Craufurd’s brigade last night. I dare say it will be noted favourably.’
Hervey did not know where these things were noted, but he trusted they were if the major of the hussar brigade said so. ‘Thank you again, sir,’ he said quietly, saluting once more and taking his leave.
And he left the brigadier’s headquarters pondering regretfully on the cost – two hundred guineas – of that favourable note.
*
Lord Paget, as well as Colonel Reynell, presumed that as soon as Soult realized he was not to face an attack he would go on to the offence. And as soon as he realized that Sir John Moore’s army was beginning a general withdrawal, he would conduct the most vigorous pursuit, not waiting for a junction with Bonaparte’s sixty thousand, who could then throw their irresistible weight into the fight a few days later. It was Paget’s intention to convince Soult, therefore, that Moore’s cavalry was twice its actual strength. That way the French might be the more circumspect, and thus slow, in pressing their attacks. If Sir John Moore’s army was obliged to fight Soult’s and
