He drew on his cigar. ‘I did not speak of the horses and mules at Oporto, did I? The French abandoned them as they did everything else. As we had at Corunna – except that we destroyed all ours. Or, at least, we tried to. In truth we made a fearful thing of it. Poor creatures! But at Oporto they merely . . .’ Hervey’s French broke down.
Dr Sanchez inclined his head.
‘I mean, they just cut through the . . . tendon at the back of the hock, just a sabre slice, leaving the animal to limp about. What is a man who contrives such a brute method, as if he were merely slashing a sheaf of corn?’
‘Or who do murder and rape?’
Hervey shook his head. ‘They had treated the people very ill, certainly.’
Sanchez frowned, but with a look of sadness rather than censure. ‘I was thinking of my own city, Major Hervey.’
Hervey checked himself. Badajoz had changed hands several times in the course of five years of war, but he had no doubt what the physician meant. He lowered his eyes, and then looked back at him again. ‘I think Badajoz the most shameful thing in the whole time we were in the country. I confess I recall it often enough still. I’d seen on that march to Corunna what our soldiers were capable of when there was a reverse, if the officers were not attentive, but I’d never imagined such scenes as I witnessed here that night. Shameful, unspeakable.’
Sanchez looked at him intently. ‘So you were, indeed, here during the siege, Major Hervey?’
Hervey was puzzled by the manner of expression. What did he mean by ‘indeed’? ‘Yes, I was here.’
Sanchez said nothing for a moment. Then he brightened. ‘I was at Talavera, you know.’
Hervey brightened too. ‘Ah! There was a victory in the proper fashion! You were with General Cuesta?’
‘I was surgeon in the Duke of Albuquerque’s corps.’
‘Then we stood not half a mile distant from each other! As I recall, I confess I found it infernally hot.’
‘You recall it perfectly, Major Hervey,’ said Sanchez, with a most companionable smile.
Hervey was now thoroughly warmed – the fire, the food, the wine, but above all the fellow feeling. Here with him was, if not a cavalryman, then a man who had served with cavalry. It was not necessary for him to explain everything, now: the physician would understand so much.
Talavera! Hervey smiled and shook his head. What a battle to have shared! There was nothing like it till Waterloo!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHARGE, AND COUNTER-CHARGE
Talavera, 24 July 1809
The march to Talavera was not the happiest of times to recall, however. There had been celebrations enough after crossing the Douro – how the people of Porto had sung the praises of Sir Arthur Wellesley, and how the army had congratulated itself! But later had come reports, disappointing if not at first unsettling, that Soult’s army had not been destroyed, that it had got away into Galicia, albeit badly mauled; and then the 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.’