Beresford strode into the room as if he was eager to plan a campaign but his expression was grave. ‘Right, gentlemen. Are we all here? We have our uprising well enough but, I’m sorry to say, not in our support as expected.’
‘A Spanish counter-attack?’
‘I rather think not. Our informant tells us-’
‘Our spies.’
‘The employment of spies and similar is beneath my honour, sir, and will not find service with me. You will find in this city, however, parties who are quite without scruple in delating upon their countrymen.
‘Now, what I have learned this day is unsettling, if not alarming. Where before we looked to the rebels to rise up with us against the Spanish in the hope of independence, now they have completely reversed their allegiance and are in amicable alliance with their old foes to go against us.’
‘Good God! They stand to lose so much by going back to the old ways – why is it, with the golden prospect of free trade, that they turn their backs on us?’
‘Ah. The free trade we’ve all been trusting will be our shining gift. I believe Captain Kydd has discovered something that throws a quite different light on our assumptions. Sir?’
Kydd nodded. ‘I’m billeted with a merchant and have the full griff. What I’ve found out is that our talk of free trade is meaningless to them – the merchants, that is. It’s true that, before, they were liable for the quinta real, a royal tax of twenty per cent on all landed cargoes, and that all freights must under penalty be carried in Spanish bottoms. Naturally we assumed they’d jump at the chance of open trade under our protection, particularly as all Spanish ships were swept from the seas after Trafalgar.
‘What we didn’t count on was what they did in response to their situation. The colony had great need o’ modern manufactures and such, and as well the people were loud in their demands for foreign and luxury goods. So much so that the government took fright and settled with the big merchant houses. For a fat sum in bribery they promised not to notice discreet arrivals of shipping in a quiet bay set aside for it. This grew into quite a sizeable arrangement, with even foreign commercial agents invited to encourage their ships to call.’
He chuckled. ‘Who would have thought it? A government setting up a smuggling operation against itself!’
‘Quite. And the result?’ prompted Beresford.
‘Why, our notion of free trade is upsetting to a degree. The grand businesses having paid big sums for the privilege of landing cargo are not to be welcoming a system that places them at an equal standing to any johnny-come-lately, and as well upsets their cosy relations with the nobs in Government House. No, sir, nothing would suit them more than that the Spanish come back tomorrow.’
Beresford let it sink in around the table, then said, ‘This means we’ve lost the support of most of the middling sort, who cannot now be relied upon. And the common people are being stirred up by hotheads who claim that the only way to wipe away the shame of forty thousand capitulating to two is by a grand rising against us, but with what success I cannot say.’
‘Then what is the threat, sir?’
Beresford looked up with a grim smile. ‘We chose to bypass Montevideo to assault directly. Now we must pay for it. A leader there has stood up and declared that, with regular troops there being reinforced by irregulars in considerable numbers, he will march on Buenos Aires.’
There were shocked looks around the table. After so little time, an enemy had now become visible, a menace that could only continue to grow and threaten.
‘I don’t have to tell you that our choices are few indeed. Our prayer is, of course, that our expected reinforcements do arrive without delay. Therefore I’ve decided that, to this end, my strategy must be to keep the enemy confined to the north shore of the River Plate, which they term the Banda Oriental. As of this moment Captain Kydd is relieved of all duties to attend to it.’
The northern shore where the troops were concentrating was separated from the southern at the head where it joined a forty-mile width of impassable marshes through which six tributary water-courses meandered slowly to become the River Plate. It was an effective enough impediment: the only way the enemy could reach Buenos Aires was by sea and that was where they must be stopped.
To clear his head Kydd mounted the stone steps to the parapets and open sky. He looked out over the foreshore to the fretful grey-brown expanse of sea. All big ships and even the frigates were unable to sail up to administer a thundering barrage because of the impassable mud-flats but, more to the point, he had not a ship of any kind that was his to command.
The foreshore was in its usual rowdy disorder, sailors staggering out of grog shops, others fighting, and wafting above it all, the odour of mud, horses and putrid fish offal. It was a foreign land in quite a different sense from Cape Town and he would be glad when he was free to sail away in his dear L’Aurore. But he had been given a duty to perform and he would do all he could to discharge it.
But it was a damn near impossible thing to ask: to stop an entire army in its tracks? How in heaven’s name could a sea officer accomplish such a feat? He balled his fists helplessly.
What would Nelson have done?
He would not have been disheartened! Find an enterprising action – anything, as long as it was positive.
After a few moments’ concentration he had the solution. A miniature navy! If the muddy shallows would defeat a proper one he’d lay hands on everything under sail that could take the conditions and, with them, throw a blockade against the other shore.
Resolved, he clattered down the steps and bellowed for the duty master’s mate to bring the charts.
It was possible. At no point was the distance between the two shores narrower than thirty miles: any sally by a heavily laden enemy would be spotted in time and he could quickly bring up his forces to dispute the crossing. He gave a wry smile. In many ways it was a small-scale version of the invasion threat to England the year before. Would there be a miniature Trafalgar as well?
Beresford approved the plan and detailed an adjutant to assist him, for which he was grateful. As a young lieutenant Kydd’s first thought would have been to move fast to sweep the harbour clear of the right vessels and send them out immediately to face the enemy. As a somewhat wiser post-captain he was only too aware of the devil behind the details.
There was no question: the Navy did not have the necessary craft and therefore these would have to be found locally. But were the citizens of Buenos Aires the enemy, meaning he could simply take them as prize? If they were of local registry, it would amount to piracy if he seized vessels under the protection of the Crown. So they would have to be paid for – but how? And, much more importantly, under whose line of account?
Then there was the problem of manning them. Enlist rebels and the disaffected? Not if they were reported to be turning on the British. And letting loose a ‘press-gang’ on the riff-raff idling about the port was not practical, for where a big ship could absorb the unwilling or unable, in small craft every man must be relied on to pull his weight.
It had to be their own men therefore, which brought all kinds of other problems. It was not just that it would sap the already tiny numbers available to garrison the city – in view of the seriousness of the situation the commodore would certainly authorise a manning from the big ships – but that it would throw an unknown extra number on slender supplies that could no longer be guaranteed, to the detriment of them all.
And other matters: where were they to be quartered? In ships, crews stayed aboard, there was no need for living spaces, but these vessels would be little more than boats and unfit for extended habitation. If they were to maintain lengthy patrols there was the question of clothing and victuals of a kind that could be readily stowed, a dockyard of sorts with skilled hands for timely repairs, a reliable source of water in a city that carried its own about in carts . . . The complications went on and on.