Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters (16 page)

With Craufurd back to his usual form, his many enemies among the regimental officers were soon seething against him. ‘Order upon orders of the most damnable nature were issued … by General Craufurd, the whole evidently compiled for no other reason than that of annoying the officers of his Division,’ wrote Leach in his journal at the end of July, exclaiming, ‘Oh! That such a scoundrel should have it in his power to exercise his tyrannical disposition for years with impunity.’

Thus far, Craufurd had been shielded from his enemies at Horse Guards by Wellington. In the late summer and early autumn of 1811, though, their relationship, hitherto professionally correct, began to break down. Matters took a turn for the worse when the French, after weeks of manoeuvre, finally succeeded in catching Picton’s division unsupported on the border and attacked it on 25 September at El Bodon.

Wellington immediately sent orders to several nearby divisions to concentrate in support of Picton, as his 3rd Division performed a fighting withdrawal under heavy enemy pressure. Craufurd chose to spend the night where he was, marching towards the main army early the following day. By the time the Light Division appeared, Picton had won laurels for his performance in steering his troops out of a tight situation, the danger having passed.

Seeing Craufurd approaching on horseback, Wellington called out, ‘I am glad to see you safe, Craufurd.’ Black Bob replied, ‘Oh! I was in no danger, I assure you,’ which drew the response from Wellington, ‘But I
was
, from your conduct.’ Craufurd turned and cantered off, but not before saying to one of his aides in a stage whisper, ‘He is damned crusty today.’

As the weather chilled and leaves fell, the armies prepared to go into winter quarters once more. Craufurd and Wellington were set to clash
again on matters of supply and the troops’ sufferings, as they took up cantonments in the barren border highlands. These hardships were to be intense, sufficiently harsh to raise a spectre that had so far barely troubled the Light Division: desertion to the enemy.

On 1 October 1811 the Right Wing of the 1st Battalion, 95th, marched into Aldea Velha, a little village just on the Spanish side of the frontier. Their arrival was attended by all of the usual barking of dogs, peering of children and gruff salutations. The men were footsore, having marched hundreds of miles in a few months. Dozens were sick again, the consequence of their recent brief return to the Guadiana and of the many agues that bedevilled those who went months at a time sleeping in the open.

That day was attended with some relief, though. Lord Wellington had decreed that the Army should enter winter quarters. In short, no further fighting was anticipated for the rest of the year. The Light Division, though, would be cast in its usual role as sentinel for the Army as a whole, keeping a wary eye on the French just a few miles away. Aldea Velha was close to the fighting grounds of the previous months, Fuentes d’Onoro and El Bodon. It was familiar territory; the men knew the itinerant wine and tobacco sellers and felt the Spanish villages were cleaner and a little more salubrious than those a few miles across the border in Portugal.

No sooner had they resigned themselves to the end of the campaign than the Commander of Forces began moving them about every day or two. He aimed to ensure that the Light Bobs could screen the frontier, allowing the remainder of the Army, many miles behind them, a comfortable repose.

With each of these changes, the arrangements of the Rifle companies were upset, and the soldiers would find themselves starting over again. The normal form of creating cantonments involved setting the soldiers about the local woods with axes and billhooks to cut down branches.
These were shaped and lashed together to produce rude dwellings, each of which sheltered a handful of men. The huts would be arranged in company lines with latrine trenches dug nearby and a cooking place too. As the burning sun of the late summer gave way to autumn with its perpetual murk, steady rains and, eventually, heavy frosts, efforts were made to get the troops into more permanent accommodation. This was arranged by the Light Division’s assistant quartermaster general, who would issue chits billeting troops on local villagers. These poor Spanish or Portuguese were not paid, but if they were canny, they could soon find ways of extracting money for providing food and drink or washing and mending clothes.

Officers were entitled to a slightly higher standard of accommodation, but in the impoverished villages of the uplands, this still might not amount to anything more than a single-storey dwelling, usually full of smoke from the open fire, with a couple of subalterns sharing a small room. The company messes were sadly depleted during the last months of campaigning and early autumn, due to battle casualties and many of the officers succumbing to agues, fevers and fluxes. Some took to their beds in the upland villages, succumbing as much to melancholy and boredom as to the actual symptoms of their complaint. Others retired to Lisbon or even Britain to recover their health. Quite of few of the 95th’s companies had come under the charge of a lieutenant, with perhaps one second lieutenant and a volunteer completing the mess.

All of this sickness and leave allowed George Simmons, for example, to command the 5th Company for several months from October, despite being a newly made lieutenant, and to receive an acting captain’s pay for his trouble. It also resulted in Major O’Hare often being in acting command of the battalion. Colonel Beckwith had gone home to England, having come down with bouts of Guadiana fever near the end of the preceding campaign.

Neither O’Hare, nor the hardier types like Leach or Kincaid who remained in the mountains, were ready to let the misery of their situation overwhelm them. In each village where they went, they would soon discover the smoky bothy that passed for a
cantina
, and bring it alive each night with songs and dances. ‘A Spanish peasant girl has an address about her which I have never met with in the same class of any other country,’ wrote one of them, ‘and she at once enters into society with an ease and confidence of one who has been accustomed to it all her life.’ They would while away their afternoons and evenings drink
ing the wine of Duero or Rueda, dancing boleros, fandangos and waltzes. Holding their black-eyed Spanish girls close during these assemblies, they parted at the end of the evening with a friendly goodbye. Sometimes they would pay a few local musicians to provide the music; on other occasions Willie Johnston would saw away on his fiddle or the officers would sing lustily into the night.

There were other amusements too – shooting wildfowl or coursing hares on the surrounding uplands, for example. Some of the officers also kept menageries in their quarters. It became quite normal to see colourful characters like Leach or Johnston strolling down the lanes with a pet wolf, badger or some other beast on a lead. Others also began getting plays together, determined to stage some productions a little more ambitious than those of the previous winter.

An important change in the equilibirum of the 95th occurred on 21 August, when half of the 3rd Battalion – four companies comprising its Right Wing, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Barnard – joined the Light Division. These men had been fighting in southern Spain with another expeditionary force, and had been blooded during the Battle of Barossa early in 1811, drawing widespread praise for their conduct. Barnard, the son of an Anglo-Irish family that was both wealthy and politically well connected, was unusual in that he quickly impressed the 95th despite being a latecomer to the regiment. Although Barnard was senior to O’Hare, in command of the 1st Battalion, Army and regimental protocol dictated that he could not immediately take command of it. However, the colonel would eventually emerge as the man with the unusual skills needed to fill the void left by Beckwith.

General Craufurd kept them busy these days with marches, firing practice and manoeuvring. The floggings and harangues went on too. As October passed, Craufurd was becoming increasingly concerned with the supply shortage in his remote station. The Army had established depots on the coast, and in some inland towns too, and its commissaries were charged with bringing the food up by wagon or river to places where it could be transferred to the Light Division’s own train of mules. The constant shortages of hard money, combined with the difficulties of sending victuals to the end of this long supply chain, lead to considerable crimping by the commissaries and hardship in the 95th.

‘We suffered dreadfully through want, and I underwent more priva
tions than at any other place in Spain, except Dough Boy Hill,’ wrote Costello, comparing the dying months of 1811 to the miserable autumn of his first campaign. ‘We had to make up for the deficiency of bread with roasted or boiled chestnuts … we eventually had to make an incursion deep into the mountains, to press the
alcaldes
of the different villages to supply us.’ These ‘incursions’ took the form of a company or two of riflemen presenting themselves to the mayor, or
alcalde
, asking him to hand over a certain quantity of food, issuing him with a receipt, to be redeemed at a later date by the Commissary General, and marching off with their gains. Since the locals had considerable experience of these pieces of paper – finding that they were generally worthless when issued by their own or the French Army – these foraging trips soon turned into ill-tempered affairs in which the peasants tried to conceal as much of their food as possible.

One evening, returning from an inspection of the outposts, General Craufurd rode straight into a scene of near-riot in one village. A Spanish woman was pursuing a corporal and private of the 95th, shouting to all and sundry that they were thieves. Craufurd apprehended the men, discovering that they had been driven by hunger to steal bread. His prejudice against the 95th once more came into play, as he told the riflemen that their regiment ‘committed more crimes than the whole of the British Army’. The corporal was broken to the ranks and awarded 150 lashes, the other man 200. They were duly paraded for punishment the next day.

Craufurd told the assembled soldiers, ‘You think because you are riflemen, and more exposed to the enemy’s fire than other regiments, that you are to rob the inhabitants with impunity, but while I command you, you shall not.’ He turned to the broken corporal and ordered him ‘Strip, sir!’ As he was bound and readied for punishment, the soldier looked across imploringly:

‘General Craufurd, I hope you will forgive me.’

‘No sir, your crime is too great.’

With a sickening crack, the first lash was laid on. The corporal called out to Craufurd that they had been together in Buenos Aires in 1807: ‘I shared my last biscuit with you. You then told me you would never forget my kindness to you. It is now in your power, sir, for you know we have been short of rations for some time.’

The general halted the punishment and then, his voice trembling with emotion, asked, ‘Why does a brave soldier like you commit these
crimes?’ He turned around and left, trying to escape the 95th’s gaze before his composure broke down completely.

Craufurd’s spirits had sunk very low in his lousy billet. He wrote home to Fanny, ‘I am labouring under a fit of the blue devils.’ They had discussed plans for her to spend the winter with him in Portugal, but these had been abandoned as impractical, with him telling her at last, ‘This … disposes a person who is separated from all he loves to uncomfortable feelings and reflections.’

For some of the soldiers enduring hunger, continued hard marches and barbarous punishments, the autumn gloom brought them to a crisis. Private Joseph Almond was one such. He had been in the 95th for more than eleven years, ever since it was founded, and in the Army for more than seventeen. He had campaigned around the world – Almond need not prove his courage to any man – and twice he had been busted back from corporal. As a soldier again, he had to put up with all the petty tribulations, from extra duties to being short-changed on rations. In sum, Almond was worn out. He was reaching his late thirties, and driving his body through the endless marches was becoming harder and harder for him. The veterans often tried to keep themselves going by easing their aches with booze and tobacco. Quite a few of the broken-down older non-commissioned officers had been sent home ‘to recruit’ when the 9th and 10th Companies had been dissolved a year before. Such avenues were generally closed to the ranker, however.

Almond had taken advantage of the paymaster, using him as a bank to pay for his comforts and running up a small debt of nine shillings in the process. That, though, would be set against pay arrears, so he still had
£
40 or
£
50 due to him. If anything happened to Almond, that money would go to his mother back in Chester, for like most of the rankers, he was not married. Really, he had nothing to show for his life: neither wife, children nor any kind of rank. It was clear to him as it was to all of them that a French ball or some fever could put paid to this execrable existence at any moment.

Private Almond did not have the option of retiring on leave to Lisbon or even Britain to recover his health, as many of the officers had done. Headquarters was putting the squeeze on skulkers in the hospitals again, with a new order to send NCOs who had got themselves comfy jobs there, like Esau Jackson, back to their regiments. In any case, Almond was not a coward and could not allow himself to be
taunted as such by his messmates – he had taken his part in all the fights. A different idea had entered his mind: desertion.

The Light Division had little experience of desertion until that autumn. Three men had absconded from the 1st/95th within a year of its landing: one found his way back sheepishly to the regiment; another, it was widely believed, died serving the French. A private of the 43rd had tried desertion back in the summer of 1810 when the regiment was on outpost duty on the frontier. He was caught and sentenced to death for his trouble. Another fellow, John Davy of the 52nd, had headed off not long after that, living off the land for almost a year before he was discovered and arrested. Davy was sentenced to death by firing squad, a singular punishment reserved for deserters, since even murderers got the noose. There had been quite a few Germans from the Brunswick Jagers executed after that – such was their propensity for desertion that they were turned out of the Light Division after a few weeks.

It was a risky business, no doubt. But when the British outposts were only a rifle shot from the French ones, it might be attempted rather more safely than before. The Light Division had been positioned close to the French-held fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, and this very proximity gauranteed that if they headed in the right direction they would find Johnny François quickly enough. The riflemen knew quite well that some soldiers had made it across to the French side and now served Napoleon.

At the Coa bridge, in July 1810, just after the fighting, the Rifles had an unsettling experience. One of the party sent forward by the French to help clear the wounded had looked up and taunted them in the clearest Irish brogue: ‘Well, Rifles, you will remember the 24th of July. We came to muster you this morning.’ A soldier of the 95th replied, ‘We have thinned your ranks pretty well, and if we had been allowed to keep on firing we should have thinned them a little more.’ The Irishman told them that he much preferred the French service to the British, which he had deserted some time before, and then helped carry off one of his new comrades. ‘If he had stayed until the time had expired, he would doubtless have had a ball from some of our rifles for his pert language,’ one of O’Hare’s men later remarked.

So all of them knew that desertion was possible and all of them had also heard enough about the French service to know that its officers looked after the men and were forbidden to flog them. The case of Allan Cummings may also have persuaded them that they might just
get away with it, even if caught. Cummings, one of several Scottish brothers in the battalion, was a talented musician in the regimental band who had decamped while the Rifles were in the lines of Torres Vedras. He had signed up with the French, impressing them in turn with his bandsman’s skills, but eventually quit their ranks too, ending up back in the custody of the 95th and facing the death penalty. Colonel Beckwith was so determined not to lose his talents that he appealed to Headquarters and saved Cummings from the firing squad.