Beat the Drums Slowly (44 page)

‘Of course.’

‘Well, sir, it’s just that I would like to ask your permission to marry.’

‘Good God,’ said Pringle before he could stop himself.

‘Mrs Rawson and I have grown close. Annie … I mean Mrs Rawson, would like to have it done soon.’

‘Good God. I mean … I am sorry.’ Pringle thought of the prim and religious sergeant’s widow. ‘Of course, of course, if you are sure.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Congratulations, Dob.’ Williams was even more shocked than Pringle, and yet he found himself beaming like a fool and pumping the old veteran’s hand. His friends quickly followed his example.

‘Would you ask the captain for me, sir?’ asked Dobson. ‘Annie would prefer a chaplain, but God knows when we’ll see one of them.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Pringle thought that this should ensure an interesting encounter with the ship’s master.

‘Thank you, sir. Well, I had better go and tell Mrs Rawson the good news.’ He stiffened to attention, saluted, did a perfect about turn and marched away.

‘Well, well …’ said Pringle, for the only other things he could think of saying were profane in the extreme and he knew that Williams disliked such loose speech.

‘It seems a little sudden,’ ventured Hanley, although he guessed that life as a soldier’s widow was unlikely to be easy.

‘Often the way in the army.’ Pringle smiled. ‘Have you heard the old story? An officer met a pretty young woman just a few hours after a great battle. She was sobbing, and he told her how sorry he was that her husband had been killed. “Thank you,” she says, “but it’s not that. I have just this moment received a proposal from a sergeant, and it is not twenty minutes since I accepted a corporal.” ’ He roared with mirth.

‘They do seem most unlike in character …’ began Hanley, still finding the whole business odd.

‘Oh my good God!’ Pringle spoke over him, and his knuckles were white as he gripped the rail.

Hanley caught the movement first, and Williams followed his gaze and saw the shape moving through the waves. It was small and dark brown and he did not know what it was, until it was lifted on a swell. A horse was swimming towards them, its head held above the water. It was Bobbie. She was close enough for them to make out her empty eye socket. She was swimming fast, but as the wind caught the sails the
Corbridge
was moving still faster.

Pringle broke down, tears coming in floods, and for once it was not seasickness which forced him below deck to seek refuge in his cot.

The French guns opened fire ten minutes later. With the British withdrawal, the enemy’s gunners had flogged their teams to drag the cannon up to high ground overlooking the harbour. Williams and Hanley watched as the first shots provoked a flurry of movement on board the ships nearer the shore. Within minutes, several were moving.

‘Cut their cables,’ muttered the captain. ‘Daft buggers,’ he added.

They were too far away to see the details. Williams had a sense of panicked movement on masts and rigging. White sails dropped from spars as ships set every stitch of canvas in their rush to escape. He could see two ships moving fast at such an angle that they must surely hit each other. Then one seemed to gain, and he was willing to credit their captains with unusual skill, until he watched the ships shudder and knew that they had bumped. Behind them another pair of ships were hopelessly locked together.

‘Daft buggers,’ repeated the master.

Hanley pointed to another ship, its masts at unnatural angles, and its deck canted up to one side. ‘I think it’s run aground,’ he said.

‘’Course it’s bloody run aground,’ came the gruff comment from behind them.

Soon there were boats in the water, rowing hard, away from the foundered ships, carrying their crews and passengers. The French artillery were still firing, but perhaps because of the distance neither Hanley nor Williams saw any sign that their shot was actually hitting any of the ships.

‘Biggest balls-up since Yorktown.’ The expression had come into Williams’ mind from nowhere, and Hanley was surprised to hear his pious friend employ even such a mild vulgarity. The master of the
Corbridge
gave a brief snort of laughter.

The
Corbridge
was running ahead of the wind now, and the captain took them near an old ship of the line with its guns removed to serve as a transport. An officer on deck screamed vitriolic abuse at the master for cutting across them so recklessly. The
Corbridge
continued blithely on its way, rushing between a pair of sluggish old merchantmen whose hulls were long overdue to be cleaned.

Hanley tapped Williams on the shoulder. He said nothing, and simply pointed. Two ladies stood at the rail of the ship to starboard. One was tall and dark haired and held a bundle in her arms. The other was smaller, her red curls flowing in the wind, and she was waving.

Miss MacAndrews shouted something, but the words were lost and she looked equally uncomprehending when he called back greetings. He wished that he had his telescope, so that he could watch her for longer as the ships grew apart, but he would not run below and fetch it for that would mean losing sight of her now.

Williams was happy. Hanley sensed it, and could not help smiling as well.

‘Well, I suppose that we are going home,’ he said, even though he did not really have one.

Williams did not appear to be listening, intent only on the diminishing figure of the girl as they rapidly left the other ship behind.

‘I love you!’ he bellowed as loudly as he could.

‘I’m sure you do, lad,’ said the master gruffly. ‘Now you can both damned well get off my deck.’

Beat the Drums Slowly
is a novel, but like its predecessor,
True Soldier Gentlemen
, it is fiction firmly grounded in fact. The 106th is a fictional regiment, and so are all the characters associated with it, but I have tried to make the details of regimental life accurate, and the speech and behaviour of the characters reflect the reality of the period. All of the senior officers in the army are real, and I have done my best to portray them as faithfully as possible, at times in their own words.

Lord Paget commanded the British cavalry with considerable skill, both in the dramatic moments of the charges at Sahagun and Benevente, and also in the even more demanding business of forming the rearguard and skirmishing with the French. He may well have been the ablest cavalry general the British produced in this period. Soon afterwards, however, he eloped with the wife of one of Wellesley’s brothers, and this was the main reason why he did not serve again in the Peninsular War. By the time of Waterloo, Wellington and Paget – who had by now become the Earl of Uxbridge – had become more reconciled, and the latter received command of the cavalry in Belgium and led them with the same skill he had shown in Spain.

‘Black Jack’ Slade received much criticism and little praise for his part in leading Moore’s cavalry. On one occasion he was ordered to lead a charge, but stopped twice to adjust his stirrups and in the end the attack was led with great success by the colonel of the regiment involved. Unlike Lord Paget, and in spite of his limited ability, Slade would hold farther commands during the Peninsular War. Seniority and personal connections counted for a great deal in the British Army of that era.

Sir Edward Paget led the Reserve Division with both skill and hot-tempered determination. His conduct commanded wide respect and the contrast between the behaviour of the regiments in his division and most of the remainder of the army was striking. He returned to Portugal later in 1809, but was badly wounded and lost an arm during Wellesley’s victory at Oporto. When he eventually went back to command a division in Spain in 1812, he had the bad luck to be captured by a French cavalry patrol.

Thomas Graham is one of the most remarkable and appealing characters of the period, and the story of how he raised his own regiment and became a soldier at the advanced age of forty-three reads like a romance. His wife’s fragile beauty was captured in a portrait by Gainsborough. She died of consumption, while they were touring the Mediterranean on a yacht in 1793, and the mistreatment of her corpse prompted him to join the forces besieging Toulouse as a volunteer. It was there he met the young Lieutenant Colonel Moore, beginning a deep friendship, ended only by Moore’s death. Graham subsequently commanded the British forces in Cadiz, and won the Battle of Barossa in 1811. In the last years of the Peninsular War he was one of only a handful of men Wellington was willing to trust with independent commands.

Several of Sir John Moore’s staff, including the Honourable James Stanhope, who was the nephew of Pitt the Younger, and Colborne and Napier, went on to have distinguished military careers. All were devoted to his memory, as indeed were many other army officers. Stanhope’s sister, Lady Hester, was if anything an even more fervent admirer of the general. They did not become engaged, in spite of rumours to the contrary. In the years after his death Lady Hester travelled widely in the Middle East, defying most of the conventions restricting the activities of noblewomen. She died in Lebanon in 1839. A second brother, the Honourable Charles, was a major in the 50th Foot and was killed at Corunna.

Sir John Moore is still venerated by the British Army, especially by the regiments inheriting the traditions of the light infantry and rifle regiments – today principally The Rifles. In the popular consciousness, now that Charles Wolfe’s poem ‘The Burial of Sir John Moore’ is no longer a staple of the schoolroom, he tends to be overshadowed by the Duke of Wellington. Probably Moore’s greatest importance was as a trainer, most especially when he commanded a brigade of light infantry at Shorncliffe camp on the South Coast from 1803. A new system of drill was introduced, treating the individual soldier as more than an automaton, encouraging individual initiative, accuracy in shooting, and a reliance on personal pride and honour. This was a remarkably modern concept and in many basic principles is still reflected in the army today. Moore did not devise the system, but he was a serious and conscientious soldier, and did much to foster its success.

In 1808 many considered Moore to be the ablest British general – Wellesley certainly had a high opinion of him. Moore had served as a subordinate commander in Egypt, and in smaller operations in the Mediterranean. He assumed command in Portugal when Sir Hew Dalrymple, and his second-in-command Sir Harry Burrard, were recalled following the outrage at the Convention of Cintra. Wellesley, who although a lieutenant general had held the rank only for a matter of months and so was junior to Moore, had also signed this agreement and so also returned to London to answer charges. Cintra allowed the French army in Portugal to be evacuated to France in British ships, taking their weapons and loot with them. It did mean that the invaders were ejected from Portugal without farther bloodshed, but was generally seen as a poor outcome after the victory at Vimeiro. (I have taken one liberty by having Hanley quote Byron’s condemnation of the treaty several years before the publication of
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
.)

Moore had not arrived in time to be implicated in the negotiations at Cintra. He was the most senior officer left in Portugal – as well as the most prestigious – and therefore automatically took charge. There is considerable doubt that the government wanted this. He was seen as a Whig and they were Tories, and he was also an extremely vocal critic of corruption and incompetence in the army and in government in general.

From the very start, the government’s instructions to Moore were vague and confused. There was widespread enthusiasm for the Spanish patriots who had rebelled against the French invaders, and a complacent belief that the war was won. There was a sense that Moore would find something useful to do in support of the Spanish armies, but little idea of how he might achieve this. Naively, no one seems to have considered that Napoleon might not meekly accept the reverses in Spain. Instead the Emperor led over a quarter of a million of his best troops across the Pyrenees. The Allies were convinced for many months that the French had no more than eighty thousand men in all of Spain. The government of Spain and the administration of its army had been thoroughly dislocated by the removal of the royal family and the French occupation. It would have taken far more time than they had to organise an effective defence against the second, and far larger, French invasion. It would also have taken money and resources which simply did not exist. Napoleon and his marshals routed each of the Spanish field armies in quick succession. It was no mean achievement that many of these managed to salvage a nucleus of a new army from the survivors, but the desperate state of La Romana’s Army of Galicia at the end of 1808 is not exaggerated. The soldiers were lacking basic equipment, were seldom fed and almost never paid, and diseases such as typhus were rampant.

Moore and his army of 35,000 could not hope to fight the French on their own, and had not been in a position to take part in the early struggles. He was on the brink of withdrawing to Portugal on at least one occasion. The decision to advance was a bold one, encouraged by the captured dispatch which revealed that Marshal Soult’s corps was isolated and vulnerable. Moore failed to inflict serious loss on Soult, but he did draw Napoleon and the bulk of the French forces northwards. This prevented a rapid advance into the south of Spain and then into Portugal. Had this occurred so early in the war, it is possible that all serious resistance would have been permanently crushed. Instead the French effort shifted against Moore, and this gave time for the Spanish armies to reform and prepare defences in the rest of the peninsula.