Flashman's Escape (6 page)

Chapter 6

Hervey was already overseeing the dispersal of the company into the buildings when I reached the village. “Leave your horse here,” I told him as I dismounted and tied my mount to a broken roof beam. “The French will try to pick off officers and on horseback you will be a sitting duck. Get yourself a long arm too,” I said, holding up my musket, “to make things harder for them.”

I looked around for Price-Thomas, but the boy had already disappeared into the buildings, armed with just his sword. The wolfhound was still waiting patiently for me, though. “Come on, Boney,” I called. “You can sniff out the French for me.” With that I plunged into the tangle of roofless buildings.

Having been bivouacked in the village for nearly a month, I knew its layout well. I could hear my men shouting ahead of me and so I thought the alley I was in must have been cleared of the French. Hervey charged off down another abandoned street and Boney and I were left alone for a moment in the stone maze. I could hear Hervey encouraging the men forward as he pushed through the streets and I added my own voice to the throng. “Come on, men, press on,” I yelled, without moving forward myself a single inch.

I had no intention of blundering into a French assault. This was, I thought, an ideal fighting environment for a man with no particular wish to meet the enemy. For with my command divided and unable to see each other, they would simply assume I was with another group. Mind you, it would not do to fall back too far, as I would have to emerge at least in the centre of the village when we had recaptured it.

The village was divided into two halves, with the Seville-to-Badajoz road running through the middle. From the sound of things the British were at least up to the road and so I pressed cautiously on. I had remembered a small roofless house on the main street. It was one of the few with a stone staircase which led up to a window on the first floor. I could leave Boney to guard the door, and while there were no floorboards left, I could perch at the top of the stairs and shoot through the window. Given the ruins of the town, the French were unlikely to be looking up at first-floor openings.

Eventually I reached the doorway and inside found a grim reminder of the battle underway. There were no windows on the ground floor but the light through the open roof revealed two dead British soldiers lying on the floor. They were not from my regiment and must have been part of the original force holding the village. I slung my own musket over my shoulder and picked up one of theirs. There was powder in the frizzen; it was loaded and so was the other. Having commanded Boney to guard the door, I climbed the stairs with my three firearms.

Peering through the window, I saw that the main road formed part of the front line in the battle for the village. I saw some redcoats in houses on the other side of the street but equally I saw three French men try to cross to get into our side. I snatched up one of my muskets and fired at the group, but there was a crackle of fire from many of the surrounding houses. While the men went down I had no idea if I had hit them. Muskets were notoriously inaccurate, particularly with fast-moving targets. This was proved a moment later when three French dragoons rode their horses full tilt down the street. I blazed away at them, as did others, but they all escaped unscathed. I had no cartridge box up the stairs with me and so crouched with my third and final musket, searching for a target.

Boney gave a short bark he normally used to welcome people. I looked down, expecting to see some of my company in the space below, but instead there was a figure in a greatcoat and a red dress.

“What in Christ’s name are you doing here?” I asked Lucy.

“They killed my Bill. I want to kill one of them,” she stated calmly with an icy and resolute expression on her face. Lucy had lived with the British for two years and had got used to many of our ways. She even spoke English with a country accent. But at that moment I realised that with her eye-for-an-eye, blood-feud attitude, she was still a Spaniard at heart.

“You bloody fool. You will get yourself killed as well if you are not careful.” I looked at her standing defenceless in the room below. I was going to give her one of my pistols, but then had a better idea. “Can you load a musket?” I asked, only to receive a very rude expression in Spanish by way of a reply. “I speak your language, remember,” I told her, grinning.

“I have been loading guns since I was a girl,” she told me. “I was faster than my Bill; we once had a contest to fire three shots.”

She certainly handled the two guns I passed back down the stairs confidently. She had already picked up a cartridge box from one of the dead soldiers. In a moment she was spitting the ball down the barrel like an old hand. She could definitely reload faster than me. She had passed me the first reloaded weapon and was just reaching for the second gun when suddenly everything happened at once: Boney snarled, a shot whined away off the stonework just above my head and Lucy screamed.

It was a dismounted French dragoon who had burst through the door. One part of my brain realised that the charge of horsemen we had seen earlier must have been a ruse to get us to reveal our positions. Now they were hunting us down and I had to kill this bastard before one of his mates joined the fight. Boney was already on him, snapping jaws aiming for the man’s throat. The dragoon tried to fend him off with his still-smoking carbine barrel while I swung my newly loaded weapon round to fire. But Lucy was in the way. She had snatched up the unloaded musket and with an animal shriek she plunged the bayonet deep into the Frenchman’s chest.

Blood gushed from the dragoon’s mouth as he swung round to stare in disbelief at the musket, now buried up to the bayonet socket in his body. Then he looked at the woman he knew had just killed him. Lucy was sobbing and trying to pull the gun free but it was jammed in his ribs. As the Frenchman’s legs collapsed, he slipped down the wall, dragging the musket from her hands.

“Get back away from the door,” I yelled at Lucy. “There might be more so take this.” I passed her my spare loaded musket. She took it, but already her bottom lip was starting to tremble at the shock of the last few seconds.

Boney, having sniffed the dying man, looked through the door. He did not growl and so I realised there was no one else outside. For a second I started to relax a little, and then the dog’s head cocked as we both heard a new sound. It came from the south. I climbed back to the top of the stone staircase and craned my neck around the gable to identify the source. What I saw was enough to make my blood run cold.

From my higher vantage point I could see over the top of most of the outer buildings of the village and down the side of the ridge occupied by our army. The noise I had heard was the crackle of a new musketry duel. As I stared I could see thousands of French troops pouring from woods to the south and up the unoccupied end of the ridge. They were led by three huge French columns that were already over the southernmost knoll on the ridge crest. Like three battering rams, they were heading towards the Spanish troops at the end of our line, which were hastily realigning themselves to face this new and unexpected threat.

I cursed as things fell into place. Now I understood why Soult’s attack on the village had seemed so weak. It was merely a distraction, and our giant, one-eyed pinhead of a commander had sent half of his army to block it, while leaving some of his weakest forces to resist the real assault.

“We need to get out of here,” I told Lucy, running down the stairs. Everything I knew about the Spanish regular forces told me that the units facing the French attack would crumble in a matter of moments and then there would be a rout along the ridge crest.

After a cautious look down the alley, we emerged from the house. As we reached the next narrow street I stopped and bellowed, “Buffs, fall back on the battalion.”

A head emerged from the window of a house overlooking the main street. “What is happening, sir?” asked Sergeant Evans.

“The French are attacking along the ridge from the south. This is not their real attack. Get the men back to the regiment.”

“Yes, sir, I will extrude the men immediately.”

With that he ducked back into the house and started shouting at others inside, but I was already on my way. I reached my horse and, dropping the musket, jumped up into the saddle. Lucy reached up for me to pull her up onto the horse behind me but I hesitated.

“Wait,” I called as I quickly thought through the options of what I was going to do next.

Anticipating the disaster that normally resulted from Spanish involvement in any battle, the safest course would be to turn the horse north and ride for the Guadiana River. Once across that pontoon bridge I would be relatively safe. Lucy was a fine woman, but she would undoubtedly slow the horse down. On the other hand I was fond of her. Did I really want her to fall into the hands of some hairy French hussar? I thought I would risk taking her.

But then, as I looked up and saw the British regiments realigning themselves to face the new threat, another thought occurred. If the British managed to fight their way clear in an orderly withdrawal then my desertion would see me ruined and my hard-won reputation lost. There was also the risk that the pontoon bridge might have been washed away again and French cavalry would be sweeping the countryside looking for prisoners. The allies still had a numerical advantage and lots of strong regiments. If we could not win the battle, I thought we should still be able to fight our way clear. Perhaps the safest course of action would be to stay with the army after all and I would keep my reputation intact.

I reached down a hand and pushed out a foot so Lucy could climb up behind me. I could see that Major King was already riding his horse up the slope to join a knot of officers on the top of the ridge and I urged my horse up the hill to join them.

“Get off when we reach the top and get to the baggage train,” I shouted over my shoulder at Lucy. “Tell them to prepare to head north when the Spanish break.”

“What will you do?”

“I have to re-join the battalion, but I imagine that we will be fighting a rear-guard action and following you shortly.”

The horse reached the crest and I stopped to let Lucy slide off before I approached the group of officers. There was Major King, Brigadier Colborne, Captain Varley, one of Colborne’s staff officers, Ben D’Urban and, towering over them all, the vast frame of Beresford.

“How do we know that is the main attack?” I heard Beresford say. “For all we know that is the diversion to draw troops away from the village.”

“But they are turning our line,” declared Colborne. “We cannot expect the Spanish to hold them for long.”

Beresford opened his mouth to say something but I got in first. “Excuse me, sir, but I could see the French attack from a rooftop in the village. The French have committed several thousand infantry to the southern attack. I also saw cavalry and artillery coming forward in support.”

Beresford glared at me with his one eye. “When I want your bloody opinion, Captain, I will ask for it,” he told me rudely before turning his attention to the others. “We will wait until it is clear which the main attack is before we respond. Gentlemen, good day.” With that the great dithering giant rode away followed by Ben D’Urban, who glanced apologetically at me over his shoulder.

“Are you sure it is their main attack?” asked Colborne.

“Yes, sir,” I replied, wary now of venturing another fuller opinion.

“I think you are right,” replied Colborne. “I will speak to General Stewart and see if he cannot persuade Beresford. In the meantime get the men out of the village and regroup up on the ridge top.”

I rode back down the slope towards the village to get my men. They were streaming out of the village now, with Hervey and Price-Thomas organising them into ranks. I saw that the Portuguese division on the other side of the village was sending in more defenders to replace those withdrawn.

“Come on, men,” I called. “We are re-joining the battalion and then the whole brigade is reforming on the ridge top.”

“Are we going to help those brave Spanish troops, sir?” asked Hervey.

I caught the eye of Sergeant Evans who, like me, grinned at the thought of the Spanish standing long enough for us to join them. “I think it is more likely that we will be fighting a rear guard action after the Spanish have retired from the field.”

“Retired,” scoffed the sergeant at my choice of word. “They won’t be retirin
g–
they will be running. They will be perambulating as fast as their little legs can carry them in a minute.”

“Well, they seem to be doing well at the moment,” stated Hervey defensively.

To humour him I pulled out my glass to see just how much of a shambles the Spanish line was. “Good God,” I breathed as the scene swam into focus. The French had come over the southern knoll in their three columns. Seeing the Spaniards in front of them, they had not wasted time forming line and instead looked to use the columns to smash their way along the ridge top. But to my astonishment the Spaniards were holding them, and doing it well. The Spanish were deployed in lines so they could bring all their guns to bear, unlike the French, who could only fire from the outer ranks. The Spanish also had some artillery pieces in their line which must have been firing canister into the tightly packed French ranks with devastating effect. But in turn the French had now got cannon on the summit of the southern knoll, which were firing to support their troops. The Spanish were taking severe punishment, but standing firm and giving it back with interest. It was probably the finest moment for the Spanish army in the whole war. It was just unfortunate that things would probably have been better if they had run. But I did not know that then and so I turned to the others and admitted, “They
are
holding the French and doing it handsomely.”