Rumours Of War

Major Coa repeated the question in Portuguese.

‘Dois mil novecentos e treze, senhor.’

Hervey was even more astonished at the precision of the counting.

‘He says that there were more than four thousand,’ added the major, ‘but that ten years ago he was instructed to send two thousand coats to Gibraltar.’

Hervey shook the storekeeper’s hand and thanked him. ‘Please tell him, Major Coa, that I shall be sure to inform the Board of Ordnance of his devotion to duty at the first opportunity.’

He did not add that there was a senior officer from the Board in Lisbon at that very moment. Indeed, he preferred to forget that he was in Elvas without that officer’s leave, express or otherwise.

As they walked the curtain wall towards the first bastion, Dom Mateo expounded on the faithfulness of good Portuguese servants and the co-operation that subsisted between their two countries even after war with France was long over.

Hervey, deep in thought, said nothing but an occasional ‘just so’. Suddenly he stopped and seized Dom Mateo’s arm. ‘I have it, Dom Mateo! I have it! Or if it does not serve, then I believe nothing will.’

‘Have what, Hervey?’

‘I have your means: a ruse de guerre!’

Dom Mateo’s eyes lit up. ‘Tell me!’

‘What would the rebels do – the Spanish, even – if they were to be confronted by British troops?’

Dom Mateo looked at him quizzically. ‘That is the question to which we all await an answer, is it not?’

‘Yes, indeed. But what would be the effect?’

Dom Mateo frowned. Had he a ruse or not? ‘We suppose they would not dare risk an adventure against the might of the King of England. But, Hervey, the King of England has not yet sent these troops. Neither is it certain that if he does they will come to Elvas. The rebels may be deterred by the presence of the King’s troops, but they assuredly will not be by the mere threat.’

‘Just so. But what if they believed that English troops were already here?’

‘And how might they be induced to believe that?’

‘There are two thousand red coats in your stores!’

There were none in the world save those on the backs of His Majesty’s men, whether white or black or brown. There was no mistaking the British redcoat – ‘Thomas Lobster’. ‘The finest of all instruments,’ the duke had said of his infantry. Time and again in the Peninsula, Hervey had seen what a line of redcoats could do. With five hundred of them barring the road to Lisbon, no Miguelista, or Spanish regular for that matter, would even dare to challenge!

Dom Mateo stood stock still. ‘Hervey, you cannot be suggesting that my men pretend to be Englishmen?’

Hervey smiled wryly. ‘Perhaps not just Englishmen. There is the tartan cloth there too!’

‘It would be a dishonour! By the articles of war, any man captured would be hanged.’

‘He would be hanged for wearing the uniform of his enemy; I know of no such injunction against wearing that of an ally.’

‘Nevertheless it would be insupportable.’

Hervey looked at Major Coa.

The major bowed. ‘Senhor General, may I speak?’

Dom Mateo nodded.

‘Senhor General, there is a long and honoured tradition in our country of wearing English cloth. When we were delivered from the French by our allies, it was English serge with which our new army was clothed.’

‘Yes, yes, Major Coa, I know that full well. But it was blue cloth not red!’

The major stood properly to attention and drew himself up to his full height, a gesture to say that he spoke with all his dignity and judgement. ‘Senhor General, this leg is not my own.’ He rapped it twice with his knuckles. ‘But it serves me well.’

Dom Mateo smiled. The simple patriotism was affecting. And then he began to grin at the notion of humbugging his enemies. ‘Very well, gentlemen. What serves best my country shall serve. I shall command British troops. The King of England shall make me a marquess!’

He began rattling off instructions to Major Coa in Portuguese.

Hervey walked on along the ramparts, peering at the distant hills towards Spain. The finest of all instruments, British infantry: there was no doubting it, even had the duke not said so. No infantry could stand as they did. They volleyed in two ranks, not three, because they could load faster, and thereby could cover a wider front. No infantry could go with the bayonet like they did. None could take a breech so well. None could march as fast. But it was the lash that saw to it all in the end. He wondered if Sir John Moore would have called them the finest? Not on that march to Corunna he wouldn’t. Not until the very end, at least.

The dishonouring had begun soon enough, too – soon after Sahagun indeed. And the destruction at the castle of Benavente would ever stand in his memory as an affront to the name of men under discipline. But it was not long after the affair at the Esla that he saw it at first hand. While Paget and Stewart, and all their regiments, had conducted themselves in exemplary fashion, squaring up to many times their number, driving them back across the Esla, there were regiments of redcoats plundering their way west, so that Hervey and his fellows thought themselves nothing more than aiders and abetters in holding back the French.

The Sixth had scarcely begun the retirement to Astorga, in fact, when they came on the first wilful stragglers: a whole company lying drunk in the street, snow falling on red breasts and backs alike, with not a sign of their officers, and the camp-followers in no better state. Hervey and several others had dismounted and, with all the affronted pride in their profession, marched staunchly into the middle of them and demanded they stand to their arms. But they had soon realized the futility of it, the peril even, and had not Corporal Armstrong been so dextrous with his fists and the flat of his sword they might not have reached Astorga at all.

The trouble was, Sir John Moore would not let them square up to the French. All they wanted was the chance to rain a few blows on Bonaparte’s men, instead of scuttling away every time without so much as a volley or a run with the bayonet. This wasn’t fighting, they protested. This wasn’t what British soldiers did. But at least they would make a stand at Astorga, their officers said. Sir John Moore had promised them.

Astorga: that had been the place. That had been where a regular retrograde movement (as it was meant to be) turned into irrecoverable flight. Astorga: infamous memory! Hervey could scarcely bear to think the name, the place where Sir John Moore’s spirit was broken, as so many of his regiments’. And all because they could not fight a general action.

‘I am afraid it is not to be, gentlemen,’ explained Colonel Reynell to the Sixth’s officers craning to hear his words in yet another cloister. ‘Evidently there is neither the means nor the stomach for a fight.’

There were gasps of disbelief, mutterings of dissent, and many an exclamation of ‘Shame!’

‘General Romana, I understand – plucky don that he is – would have us contest the mountain passes west of here instead of hightailing it to the sea. But Sir John Moore will not have it. In short, gentlemen, it has become Sir John’s sole object to save the army. And we must allow that he is in a better position than are we to judge it.’

Still there was the sound of discontent.

Colonel Reynell had other things to occupy him, however. ‘You may know that the army has already been obliged to destroy the greater part of the ammunition and military stores for want of carriage. And for that reason too we shall be obliged to leave the sick once more.’

‘Shall we not at least fight a rearguard action here, Colonel?’ asked Sir Edward Lankester, sounding as if there were no sensible alternative.

‘We shall not, Sir Edward,’ replied Reynell. ‘I am afraid we shall be leading the field.’

Leading? The whole assembly was appalled.

‘The mountain roads west of here are too narrow for cavalry to be of any use, save for a very few as orderlies and such. It will fall to the Fifteenth alone to march with General Edward Paget’s rearguard division. Our business will be to get ourselves clear of the road to Villafranca as quickly as possible in order that the infantry and artillery might have free of it. I understand that Sir John may yet make a stand at Villafranca if the circumstances are favourable, for it would not be so easy for the French to outflank him there as here.’