Lord George had no choice but to follow him, unless he wished to impale the Sixth on the infantry’s bayonets.
Elley and the remnants of the Twenty-third hurtled into the leading brigade of chasseurs with such momentum that the French line parted rather than meet them. But as the dragoons ran on to the second line, the first closed round them, pincers-like.
Lord George did not hesitate. With a furlong to run, he lofted his sabre and shouted, ‘Charge!’
The collision was appalling – exactly as Lord George meant it to be. Horses fell; riders disappeared beneath kicking hooves and dead flesh. Hervey all but closed his eyes as they ran in. He couldn’t use his sword for want of a man to strike at: all was confusion. But the French were thrown over by the shock of it; that was certain. He could hear the bugle – ‘rally’. Every sense told him to disengage.
He looked for his coverman, reining round to leave the hacking mass. Then he saw Laming, and three chasseurs at him.
He dug in his spurs harder than ever before. Jessye almost leapt the distance. His sabre struck powerfully – Cut Two – and the nearest chasseur lost his rein-arm at the shoulder.
His coverman swooped past and sliced at another, severing the sword-wrist.
Laming, with but one chasseur to deal, could now drop his guard. He brought up the blade like lightning – Cut Three – cleaving the man’s jaw from below.
Hervey circled, tight. ‘Are you well, Laming?’
Laming nodded. ‘Thank you. I really am most greatly obliged – to you both.’
Three men lay irrecoverably wounded at their feet, with nothing to staunch the copious flow of blood. Hundreds of others lay dead or mutilated not yards away. Yet Cornet Laming insisted on the proper courtesies. Hervey smiled by return.
They had surely confounded Joseph Bonaparte now? If only the commander-in-chief had been there! He would heap laurels on the Sixth, for sure! After all, the word had been that this was the battle in which he would raise himself to the peerage. And his cavalry had served him well – if, as ever, unobserved.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A BACKWARDS STEP
Badajoz, 3 September 1809
A month and more had passed – a month in the saddle, a march away from the French rather than towards Joseph Bonaparte’s capital. And this after decisive victory in the field! It had not been as the army hoped. But unlike the retreat to Corunna, the regiments’ self-esteem, and therefore their discipline, had not diminished. The army had not run before the French, as they had believed they were doing eight months before: Talavera was a famous victory; every man felt it. They had the measure of the French now. The infantry knew they could stand and volley, and throw back the columns which had marched all over Europe. The cavalry knew they were more than a match for twice their number – if chastened rather by the disarray of Anson’s brigade and Sir Arthur Wellesley’s rebuke in consequence (but what was wrong with high spirits, they asked?). The French artillery was the problem. Sir Arthur Wellesley had not the weight or the number of guns to pitch against them, and little prospect of acquiring more. And their Spanish allies were . . . at best unpredictable.
But Hervey and the other officers of the 6th Light Dragoons knew there were the makings of a successful strategy to evict the French from the Peninsula. Major Joseph Edmonds had told them. ‘Think of it,’ he had said one evening at mess. ‘They cannot merely sit on all those bayonets of theirs; this ain’t the sort of country. Bonaparte – major or minor – has got to defeat Wellesley, not just parry him. As long as the Spaniards can tie down French troops at Madrid and places, Wellesley can draw the rest on to ground of his own choosing. And I can’t see, from what I observed at Talavera, that they could overthrow him thence.’
‘And he will have the Portuguese, Edmonds; let us not forget that,’ Lord George had added.
They had all agreed: the Portuguese would be worthier allies. To all intents and purposes they were British troops – British-armed, British-dressed, British-drilled, British-led. They could fight. They seemed to want to fight. The mess had even raised their glasses to them: ‘A toast – His Majesty’s Lusitanians!’
And so, in spite of a retrograde march as long as Sir John Moore’s to Corunna, Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army was unbowed. They were not running for the sea; they were seeking favourable ground, and there they would bloody the French, just as they had done at Talavera.
Hervey had rediscovered the invigorating sense of being clean. Not clean-shaven (for that he was most days), nor clean-bodied (once a week there had been, as a rule, opportunity to strip-bathe in a bucket), nor even clean-vested (for he had managed that several times in the last month). It was, however, the three in combination that had eluded them ever since leaving Lisbon. At Badajoz, the day before, the cavalry had gone into billets – and not bad billets, although it was ever the regimental maxim that a modest billet was better than a good bivouac. With that respite from the march came the opportunity for thorough ablutions, and for ‘interior economy’, as the business of putting the regiment’s administration in order was known. The walls of Badajoz were washed on the northern side by the Guadiana, and bathing in that wide, gentle river, with soap, and clean linen to change into (and the prospect of regular bread and meat), made every dragoon think himself a new man – a new man capable again of the greatest exertion, whereas but a day ago he had thought himself capable only of sleep.
Not that any dragoon expected great exertion. No walls they had seen since first coming to the Peninsula compared with Badajoz’s – not even at Elvas. The ditches, moats, ramparts and bastions, the river on the north side, the Rivellas stream on the east, were a picture of impregnability. The French would not attack here. No one ought to.
Hervey, like the rest, was enjoying this new sense of liberty, and, the officers’ duties being done for the day until evening stables, he felt able at last to address himself to a deficiency which had troubled him for the month past. In his billet, a comfortable house near the walls, he picked up his pen, hesitated for a moment while trying to decide whose letter should be first, and then began to write.My dear Dan,I cannot know if this letter will arrive before my last (on 27th July) wherein I told you of the day’s skirmishing with the French before the city of Talavera de la Reina. Hereafter I shall number these so that you may tell at once when there is an interruption in my reports. Since that letter, as well you may have read in the newspapers, we have fought a general action, which is to be called Talavera, and they say that more men fought here than at Blenheim! Think of that, Dan, for your own cadet has seen a battle as great as that. They say that Sir Arthur Wellesley will be made an Earl! I send you herewith a fair copy of my journal for the day, which I was able to set down within forty-eight hours of the end of the action, for the army was greatly knocked up on account of the fighting, and there was some rest. General Craufurd came up from Portugal with the Lt Brigade which they say made a most prodigious march as fast almost as cavalry, and they were received with great cheering all across the field, the like of which I never heard. And it was as well that they did for the Army has lost five and a half thousand. It was the most dreadful business, and the collecting of the wounded and burying the dead fair wore us out. The ground was so hard we could not dig, and so many dead we had to place in dried beds of winter torrents and cover as best we could, while many more and the horses were gathered in heaps and burned, a dreadful thing to do, but there was no other course for the sun was very hot. I confess the smell was intolerable. And many of the wounded, British and French, for both were treated the same, perished while lying in the blazing sun, in want of water, dressing, and shelter.The excitement of battle over, we all felt severe stomach cramps. But for some bread and peaches we had nothing for most two days. We cursed the commissaries greatly, but it was not all their fault, for bread had been baked for the Army before the battle, but the Spaniards had broken into the stores and made off with it, and many of these left the field altogether. Early next morning about 25 of the Spanish deserters, all dressed in white and accompanied by priests, were marched up in front of the Army and shot. One was a young lad, and he dropped before the party fired, but it was no use, for after a volley at 10 paces distant had been given by about 50 men, the whole party ran forward, and firing through heads, necks, breasts, &c, completed their grisly work.Since then we have been much about the country between Talavera and the Portuguese border, for Marshal Soult has marched from the north of the country where he had been reinforced since the battle at Oporto, and has collected an army of fifty thousand, which greatly threatens our lines of communication with Portugal since General Joseph Bonaparte has not been besieged in Madrid as it had been thought after the battle, and is able to fasten the Spanish of General Cuesta at Talavera, so that in dividing our forces we should be very materially at risk, and especially so now that it is certain that Soult has fifty thousand not twenty as was first supposed. We have marched up and down but now we are where Sir Arthur Wellesley intends staying. It is said that we should have marched on to Elvas, which is not many miles westwards of here, but that abandoning altogether Spanish soil was too hard a thing for the commander in chief after such a victory as Talavera . . .