Flashman's Escape Read online

  “Congratulations,” shouted Wellington to Grant as he rode up. “I must confess I had some doubts as to whether you could pull this off.”

  Grant glanced triumphantly at me before he replied: “Captain Flashman is not the only one who can pass through French lines.” Then he turned directly to me before adding, “And you will see that I have done it honourably in my British uniform.”

  Several of the spectators shifted uncomfortably at the implication that I lacked honour. Of course it was true: I would do whatever it took to protect my precious skin. I also tried to protect my reputation, but it would not have been seemly to call him out for a duel at his moment of triumph. More importantly, I already had discovered that he shot straight.

  “Perhaps the French sentries were too busy killing stray cattle to shoot at you,” I suggested with a very fixed smile.

  “Ah no,” insisted Grant blithely. “We did not lose a single head, did we, Leon?”

  “No, señor,” agreed the partisan as his eyes darted around the assembled company.

  “How much did you pay? Are there more cattle to be had?” asked Wellington, looking at the unexpected bounty.

  “I still have gold left, sir,” replied Grant, holding up a purse with some coins jingling in the bottom of it. “And I saw other cattle.”

  “That is good news indeed,” called Wellington. “But how much a head did you pay?” Wellington, whose mind rarely strayed far from how to equip and feed his army, was already considering a new source of supply. But Grant just looked confused for a moment and then turned enquiringly to the partisan.

  “We paid two guineas a head, Excellency,” the partisan stated calmly. “But the villagers have sold all of their surplus cattle and the French might not let us through as easily a second time.”

  Wellington beamed at him. “Well we must be satisfied with what we have, for it looks an exceptional haul.” Then he turned to Grant. “Come and show me your bounty and tell me about your adventures.” With that Grant rode off with the general, basking in his newfound credit.

  “He never struck me as smart enough to pull off something like this,” muttered Campbell. “I mean, getting through French lines, persuading all those farmers to sell grain and livestock, organising the herds and then getting it all back under the noses of the French. How the devil has he done it?”

  “Of course he is not smart enough,” I fumed. “Look at him riding now with Wellington – even if you included their horses, he would still not make the top three for wits. And now I am going to have to pay the whining toady fifty guineas.”

  As I seethed I watched the partisan called Leon helping to drive the cattle up the road towards Lisbon. He was constantly looking about him and seemed the one in charge, sending one of the cattle drovers back down the column to help with the sheep. That is the real brains behind this outfit, I thought and I resolved to find out how Grant had pulled this off.

  That night there were celebrations for Grant’s achievement in the officers’ mess. No civilians were invited and I had no intention of attending. Instead I roamed the local taverns until I found my quarry. Leon was sitting at a corner table of an inn with a couple of the drovers. I took a bottle of brandy to their table and, uninvited, sat down to join them.

  “It is Leon, isn’t it? You’re the man who came in with Grant, aren’t you? Here, let me pour you a drink.” While I could speak fluent Spanish, having been taught by my Spanish mother, I spoke to Leon in English, deliberately trying to exclude the drovers as I wanted to get Leon on his own. It worked: the other two men looked apprehensive as the British officer joined their table, speaking in a language they did not understand; they mumbled their excuses and left. Leon watched me with an amused half smile as I poured a very generous measure of brandy into his cup.

  “I think you know I am Leon. You are the British officer who was watching me very closely when we arrived. Did my captain not call you Flashman?”

  Well, that confirmed my suspicion that Leon was as sharp as a tack. We made small talk for a while. I told him that my cousin was the Marquesa de Astorga and that I had ridden with the partisans the previous autumn to take her back to her husband. I decided not to include in this account that the venomous marquis then tried to have me killed. I told him the creditable parts of my action at both the battle of Talavera and Busaco and how with a few hundred men of the Loyal Lusitanian Legion we had stopped a French marshal with over ten thousand soldiers. In return he told me… nothing. He slipped away from my questions like a greased eel and every time I found myself answering more of his. I kept topping up his glass and ordered a second bottle. But either he was tipping it away when I was not looking or he had the constitution of an ox. The brandy seemed to have no effect at all. Eventually my booze-soaked brain realised that I would have to try a different tack.

  “Lishun, old sport,” I slurred at him. “I have been ordered by General Wellington to find out how you got all those animals past the French lines. I have orders in my pocket that say you have to tell me.” I reached in my pocket and brought out the paper I knew was in there. It was in fact a laundry account from the officers’ mess, but it did have the regimental crest printed at the top and looked official.

  At first Leon just smiled at me. “I think,” he said at last, “that if your general wanted to know this thing, he would just ask my captain.” Then he picked up the document I had placed on the table and grinned. “I was taught English by an Irish monk in a monastery school. I cannot read all of this, but does that not say ‘six shirts’?” He passed the account back before continuing. “My captain warned me about you, Captain Flashman. He thinks you will try to find a way to get out of your wager and he ordered me to tell you nothing. But I have asked other people about you too. They say you are a brave man and that you were the Englishman who charged the French battery at Talavera with General Cuesta, something you did not tell me earlier.”

  I had not mentioned it as I had been screaming in terror at the time, but if the story he had heard was more creditable then I was happy to stay silent while he continued.

  “I will tell you some of what you want to know. At night the French retreat to their camps surrounded by circles of watch fires. They hope that these will illuminate any partisans trying to attack. We know the French are hungry and some of my brothers have used cattle bells and sometimes real sheep and bullocks to tempt the French from their circles at night. At first the hungry soldiers would go to investigate but they never returned. The French always found them dead and mutilated the next morning. When we drove the herds through a big gap between their fire circles, the French must have heard, but none came to intercept us. They have learned now never to leave the circles at night. They will have thought it was a trick until they found the large number of hoof prints this morning.”

  I could easily picture the scene and the frustration that the French must have experienced as the sun rose. With their bellies groaning in hunger, they would have seen how close they had been to plentiful food. They would have felt even worse knowing that the supplies were now in the hands of the British. The French knew we were already well fed and comfortable behind stone forts, while they struggled to survive on land that Wellington had largely stripped of anything that could sustain them.

  Leon and I talked some more after that, but I would be a liar if I claimed I had a clear recollection of what he said. Despite my attempts to get him intoxicated, Leon seemed unaffected, while to me the room seemed as steady as a ship going around Cape Horn in a blow.

  I paid up my wager to Grant and for the rest of the time we spent behind the lines of Torres Vedras he toadied up to Wellington in a way that would sicken an arse-licking tick. As a result he became Wellington’s favourite forward observer. Time and again Grant and Leon went out on reconnaissance rides to see what the French were doing, and most times they came back with useful intelligence. While Grant made sure he got all the credit, I suspected that most of the conclusions drawn from what they had seen
were collated by Leon. When the French finally withdrew, you can be sure that Grant was on hand to report on their progress. In contrast I was summoned by Wellington for very different duties.

  “Ah, Flashman,” he greeted me as I stepped into his rooms. “I take it you have heard of the latest Spanish disaster?”

  “If you mean Gebora sir,” I replied, “then yes, I have.”

  The Spanish army had developed a knack of engineering catastrophic defeats from situations that, on paper at least, they should have won. At Gebora they had really excelled themselves. One of the few towns they still held in Spain was the frontier fortress of Badajoz. Marshal Soult had brought his French army to besiege the city. Despite having double the French force, the Spanish army commander sent to lift the siege had withdrawn his men across the large Guadiana River that ran next to Badajoz. The Spanish then occupied some nearby heights, thinking they would be safe. Soult had simply built a pontoon bridge, which was reported to the Spanish commander on the evening before the battle by his scouts. “I will look at it in the morning,” he was reported to have replied, but he did not get the chance. The small French force crossed the river that night while the unsuspecting twelve thousand Spanish troops slept, oblivious of the approaching danger. In the morning the French attacked, whereupon the Spanish cavalry promptly ran away. This left the Spanish infantry exposed to the French dragoons and hussars. The Spaniards managed to form two massive squares to protect themselves from the horsemen, but in doing so they made perfect targets for the French artillery. One of the survivors reported that French gun fire had turned his square first into an oval and then an unformed mass, which was forced to surrender. Spanish losses were thought to be five thousand men against an estimated four hundred casualties amongst the French.

  “Yes, that is their latest disaster,” replied Wellington and then, just in case he was tempting fate, he added, “Well, at least as far as I am aware. Sit down, Flashman,” he continued as he settled himself onto a settee by the fire. “Look, you will recall that I asked you to join my staff as liaison officer for the Spanish. You did great service while the independent government existed, but now things have moved on. This latest fiasco shows that little reliance can be placed on Spanish troops and so I really do not need you for liaison.” I had a sinking feeling that I knew the direction this conversation was heading and I was not wrong. “I know you, Flashman. You will not want to kick your heels around here with nothing to do. So I have spoken to Colborne and he would be delighted to have you in his division. He has a captaincy vacant in the Buffs, which is now yours. They are part of the new force I am sending under Beresford to relieve Badajoz.” He reached across and patted me on the shoulder. “I am sure the Buffs will be at the forefront of any action to secure the area, and I know that is where you would want to be.”

  Chapter 2

  As I walked up the hill towards the little stone church, I saw that the rest of my company had not gone inside it as I had expected. Instead they were gathered around the stone wall of the churchyard, staring at something inside.

  “What is it, Sergeant?” I called.

  “You had better see for yourself, sir,” the man shouted back.

  A couple of the soldiers were crossing themselves and there was a look of shock, disgust or naked curiosity on the faces of the others. When I finally got to the wall, I saw a scene of macabre devastation. All of the graves had been dug up; there were mounds of earth and deep holes all around the enclosure. Scattered amongst them were splinters of wood, presumably from where the coffins had been chopped up for firewood, and in the corner was a mound of old bones, some with bits of burial shroud still attached.

  While young Price-Thomas watched in silent fascination, his lieutenant was more vocal in his outrage. “Why on earth would they do such a thing?” asked Hervey, looking appalled. “There are much easier ways to get fire wood; there are plenty of trees still around here.”

  “They were searching for gold, sir,” answered the sergeant. “I saw the same in Oporto. The Spanish and Portuguese often bury people wearing gold rings and jewellery, and the French dig up the bodies to steal it.”

  “The desecrating barbarians,” exclaimed Hervey.

  But it turned out that this was only the start of the savagery we were to witness in that small village. I guessed that it must have been home to around a hundred people before the French arrived, but there was no one left now, at least not alive. Every house had been torn apart by the French in the search for food. Then they must have turned their attention to the few inhabitants they had found, to reveal any hidden supplies. We found the bodies of three of the villagers hanged from a tree near the church. Two now blackened corpses still dangled from the ropes while the third had rotted so that its remains rested in a heap below a now vacant hoop of cord. They, it turned out, might have been the lucky ones.

  In the centre of the village we found two more blackened corpses, one small enough to be a child’s. These had not been hanged in the conventional sense but suspended from a high beam by ropes tied around their wrists. Underneath both fires had been lit and the heat had caused the muscles to contract so that the bodies were twisted into grotesque shapes. It was hard to tell from their blackened remains if they had been male or female but it was clear that they had died slowly and in agony. There were murmurs of outrage as the men gathered around the scene, interrupted only by the spatter of vomit as Lieutenant Hervey leaned over the far side of his horse.

  “How could Christian men do that?” asked a pale-faced private.

  “They were searching for food,” I replied. “Most villages around here would have hidden food for their own survival, expecting the French to search the houses. The soldiers must have thought that burning these poor souls would persuade either them or other villagers to reveal the cache.” I paused, staring at the awful scene, before adding, “Of course they might not have been the first French troops to raid the village. Other French soldiers could have already taken any cache, meaning that there was nothing left to give.”

  There was silence for a while as those watching imagined the horror of that inquisition. I had seen that the company was naturally divided into two groups. There were what I judged to be the old hands; they gazed at the scene with nothing more than curiosity. These men had seen such atrocities before, either at Oporto or elsewhere. If they had been on the retreat to Corunna, they may have even carried out some of their own. The other, newer men were reinforcements; they had arrived over the winter while the regiment was in Lisbon. Not accepted into the group of veterans, they tended to look to Sergeant Evans for leadership. These men looked on the scene with horror on their faces, clearly wondering what kind of men they would be fighting.

  I felt pretty disgusted about it myself, particularly over what seemed to be a child’s body. I had been left hungry and thirsty before, especially when on the run in India, but never bad enough to do anything like that. Mind you, since then I have been left adrift with others in a lifeboat at sea. Extreme starvation and dehydration is a terrible thing. I had hallucinations and came close to cannibalism before I was rescued.

  Hervey interrupted any further reflection on the scene by shouting, “I want them buried, and those poor devils hanging from the tree.” He turned to the sergeant. “Bury them at once, d’ye hear?”

  “The ground is frozen hard, sir, and we have no spades.”

  “I don’t care. I want them buried!” Hervey was nearly shrieking now, his face filled with revulsion at the bodies slowly swinging in the wind. The sergeant turned an enquiring face to me, to see if I was willing to countermand the order.

  “Cut them down and put them in the open graves in the churchyard,” I told him. “Tip the other bones in as well and then cover them with those piles of dirt. You won’t need to dig then.”

  I left them to it while I went into the little church. It was stripped bare inside, with a black scorch mark in the middle of the floor where previous occupants had burnt a fire to keep
warm. There were stone steps in the short tower which served as a lookout and a chimney for the smoke. I went up the turret before the redcoats started to build their own fire. The countryside looked as bleak up there as it did at ground level. I wondered how many more devastated villages like this there were spread across it. Two more companies of the battalion could be seen making their way past on either side of the village some distance away. They would have a long march to find another stone building like the church, as I could see no more from my high vantage point. I hoped wherever Grant was that night he was camping out in the freezing wind, but I doubted it. I still resented my change in circumstances, but at least with the French withdrawing as fast as they could, there seemed little chance of imminent battle.

  I turned and went back down the stairs into the body of the church. As I had hoped, some men were already starting a fire in the hearth left by the French. The space was filling with the men, women and children of the company. We had brought our own cooking kettle and rations and it seemed that dinner would soon be on the way. An infantry company at its full complement was a hundred men but that was rarely achieved. There had been around eighty men in the companies at Talavera two years ago but now the average size of a company in the Buffs was just over seventy men. While Evans kept them organised they seemed a sullen lot, with little of the banter that I had known in other units. Mind you, Hervey did not help with his high-handed way of dealing with the men.

  They had managed completely without officers for a while during the retreat to the lines and perhaps wondered why they needed Hervey and me at all. The major had hinted that some of the ‘casualties’ on the retreat might actually have been desertions. Back then morale in the army had been low, and while running to the French would not have been appealing, there was another option.