alarming news that the Spanish were in no position to finish Soult off, so that the marshal and his army were left in the Galician fastness to lick their wounds, which, once healed, would mean they could fight another day.
Why had the commander-in-chief let Soult escape, some asked openly. Were they going to be marching up and down Spain again at the beck and call of the French, as they had with Moore? But at least Soult was no immediate threat: Sir Arthur Wellesley was able to march south to deal with Victor’s army, confident that Soult was unable to render his fellow marshal any assistance. It was, as Lieutenant Martyn pointed out, a taste of Bonaparte’s own strategy: strike one army a blow so hard as to send it reeling, concentrate everything then on the destruction of the second, and when that was done, turn back to defeat the first in detail.
But the march from the Douro was hard – harder than anything Hervey could recall. The army was not yet forged; these were the second battalions, the army England had never intended to send on campaign. Three leagues in the day was as much as the infantry could manage. And on ‘exterior lines’, rations were in too short supply. They were hungry all the time. They had been hungry for a month. They were losing horses at a sorry rate, and mules even.
The Sixth, at least, had been tempered by the first campaign and the retreat to Corunna. The NCOs knew how to make a biscuit last and salt beef stretch, although the weather was very different now – burning sun, not driving snow. Most of the officers had learned the hard way what served in the drill book and what did not. They were ‘roughed off ’ for the field, as Joseph Edmonds put it. As a consequence, the Sixth had not lost as many horses as the rest on the march to Talavera, and looked a deal better in the saddle.
Not all of them, however: Cornet Daly, for one. ‘Damned screw of a horse!’ he cursed, one scorching afternoon, jumping from the saddle and throwing the reins at his brown colt.
The subalterns had been riding together at the rear of the column. Lord George Irvine was in the habit of turning over the regiment to the serjeant-major and the quartermasters when no action threatened, and the officers had just halted for midday rest.
Beale-Browne, H Troop’s lieutenant, at once angered. ‘Mr Daly, you will not abuse your horse in that fashion!’
Cornet Daly threw up his hands in protest. ‘The damned vet’nary won’t do what’s needed, and the horse’s no damned good to me with a mouth like that!’
‘Mr Daly! That is no way to speak of the veterinary surgeon,’ snapped Beale-Browne, looking as pained as he was angry. ‘I would that you moderated your language at once. It is most offensive.’
Laming looked at Hervey as they found shade under a jungled willow. ‘I tell you, I never met such a blackguard. What does he complain of now?’
Hervey shook his head. ‘His colt has lampas. John Knight told him it’s because he’s a youngster, and the teeth are growing. But to see Daly’s hands I’d wager they’re as much the trouble. He jabs and pulls at the bit as if the animal had no mouth at all.’
‘And what is his complaint with John Knight?’
‘He wants to fire the mouth but John Knight disapproves.’
Laming looked scornful. ‘The insufferable conceit of the man! He gallops about the bogs of that country of his like some little Squire Western, and thinks himself superior to a man like John Knight. It is not to be borne!’
Hervey sighed. He kept Daly at arm’s length anyway, although there were moments when an apparent interest in horses made for conversation, except that with Daly the interest invariably tended to the animal’s celerity, to which he considered all else subordinate. Indeed, Daly was no one’s boon companion. Quilley and he were thick, observed Hervey, but their association seemed more the necessity of the troop and the fact that they had joined together – and that, without each other’s conversation, they would have been hard put to find any. They were, by common consent, an affront to the esteem of the regiment.
Daly snapped at his groom to bring his second charger.
Laming looked at Hervey again. ‘No doubt he berates the tenants so. No dragoon will want to do duty for him long. Odious man! I wonder that Warde has not placed him in arrest a dozen times.’
‘The colt’s barely three,’ said Hervey, shaking his head. ‘It’s too green an age to put a horse in hard work. The bones aren’t strong enough. Jessye’s four, and I wish she were two more.’
Laming clapped a hand on Hervey’s back. ‘You are an excellent fellow when it comes to horseflesh!’
Hervey frowned. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you in other respects!’
Laming raised an eyebrow. ‘It is not your fault, I suppose, that your Greek is elementary and your Latin very provincial.’
‘Hah! I have not found it deficient for any purpose yet. How is your German?’
‘The language of the Hun, Hervey, has no attraction for me.’
‘I believe they taught your Romans a lesson or two when it came to fighting?’
‘That is as may be. But I think it a very moderate achievement compared with the proper legacy of Rome.’
‘You would be professor, then, when this fighting ends?’
‘You would be parson?’
Hervey smiled. ‘I take your point.’
Laming’s second servant had brought a bottle of wine, the red of Estremadura, rough and warm but refreshing nonetheless, and infinitely to be preferred to the brackish water they had been forced to drink of late. The horses pulled at the parched couch grass as the two cornets sat with them, reins in hand. The sun was fierce, though not as bad as it sometimes was at this time of year, said their Spanish guides. The Sixth had lost twenty horses to the heat, and although the other regiments had lost many more, John Knight had been beside himself on a dozen occasions. The King’s Germans weren’t losing as many, he would thunder. Remounts were nigh impossible to come by. Why wouldn’t the officers regulate things better?
‘You know,’ began Laming, intent yet on Cornet Daly, who had still not off-saddled his colt, ‘I believe we cornets ought to speak as one to the senior subaltern.’
‘And what might that do?’
‘We should demand that we buy them out.’
Hervey was doubtful. He had heard of the practice, though never of any particular. He had no great objection: he probably stood to lose no money, if the regimental agents handled it well. ‘Would that not take an inordinate amount of time?’
‘I don’t see why. These things can all be arranged among gentlemen.’
Hervey raised an eyebrow.
Laming sighed. ‘I acknowledge the difficulty in that respect. But what say you?’
‘If it could be brought off without rancour, then I say yes.’
Laming nodded. ‘Very well, I shall speak to Martyn. He will have sound counsel. The sooner it’s done the better, for the further we march from Lisbon the harder it will be to induce either of them to sell.’
That evening, the regiment encamped a league to the east of Talavera among olive groves, finding an old well which, after they had dug it out by pick and shovel, yielded enough water for both men and horses, though the relays had to work for four hours before watering was complete, and another three to fill the buckets ready for morning stables. ‘Never did I know the back-breaking work that is a cavalry camp until this day’ wrote Hervey in his journal:
‘Sir! Will you come, please? Mr Daly’s horse is down and there’s a hell of a to-do about it!’ The orderly corporal sounded angry rather than perturbed.
Hervey sprang up and buckled on his sword. He had hoped for another half an hour with his journal before rounds as picketofficer. ‘Is the orderly quartermaster there?’
‘Yes, sir. He sent me.’
