“Afternoon, Captain Lewrie,” Mountjoy said, getting to his feet to come shake hands. “A wet day, even for a sailor, hey?”
“Hallo, Mountjoy. Aye, so wet I could paint you a water colour,” Lewrie rejoined, “Mister Deacon, how d’ye keep?”
“Main-well, Captain Lewrie, sir,” Deacon replied, nodding and beginning to rise ’til Lewrie waved him to stay comfortable.
“So, what’s so important, then?” Lewrie asked, going towards the fireplace. There wasn’t much of a fire laid, more for atmosphere than anything else, but he wished it was roaring—if only to dry his clothes out.
“Of late, we’ve received some disturbing, possibly some very bad information,” Mountjoy hesitantly began, looking towards General Drummond for permission to speak first.
“Tell him, sir,” Drummond gruffly said with a nod as he came to join them with his own fresh cup of tea. “It was your people who first alerted us.”
“Very well, sir,” Mountjoy said, then turned to Lewrie as he took a seat near the meagre fire. “Our source in Paris—”
“That bitch,” Lewrie growled. “Charité, again?”
“Yes, sir, that … bitch,” Mountjoy said with a wince, and another look to General Drummond. “Captain Lewrie and our agent in Paris have crossed swords, as it were, in the past, do you see. She has sent word that the Emperor Napoleon will not let Spain go quite so easily, and is sending massive re-enforcements over the borders to re-conquer what was recently lost, some sixty thousand, doubling his numbers North of the Ebro River. What’s worse, Napoleon himself is coming South with another hundred thousand, with his best marshals … Lannes, Soult, Ney, Victor and LeFebre, to erase any resistance in Spain, for good. And, might I conjure everyone in this room to ignore Captain Lewrie’s out-burst and forget that our agent’s name was ever uttered?” Mountjoy added, casting a stern look in Lewrie’s direction.
“Sorry … heat of the moment,” Lewrie said, abashed, busying himself with his offered tea, cream and sugar. “Damn my eyes, ‘Old Boney’s’ takin’ the field himself?” he blurted again, suddenly realising the import of that move. “Christ, Moore and his army’ll just be trampled in the rush! Is she … is this confirmed?”
“We’ve agents in Northern Spain, and it is confirmed, sir,” Mountjoy told him, rather severely. “The report from Paris, for once, comes behind the times. The Spanish General, Blake, moved to block the French advance, but his army was nigh-massacred at Durango, and we have it on solid terms that Napoleon is already at Vitoria.”
“See here on the map, sirs,” Drummond said, finishing his tea and leading them to his massive map of Iberia. “We don’t know whether Moore and Baird have united their forces or not, round here at Salamanca, as they had planned. If Napoleon is already at Vitoria, he’ll most likely march on Burgos, next, then right on South to re-take the capital, Madrid. He could, however, move from Burgos to Valladolid to face Moore, first, depending on how threatening he imagines a British army is to him.”
“He may not think much of us, even after Roliça and Vimeiro, are you saying, sir?” Mister Deacon asked sharply.
“Napoleon doesn’t think much of the Spanish, even after the defeat at Bailén, either,” General Drummond gravelled back, appearing miffed by the slur on his service’s record against the French. “It is hoped that he considers Moore a side-show to his need to seize Madrid, and thrash what forces the Spanish have in the field. Way off here,” Drummond said, sweeping a hand to the East, over near Zaragoza, “the Spanish Generals Castaños and Palafax, we believe, managed to extract their armies from the disaster at Durango, and might be able to operate against the French supply lines. A damned desolate and forbidding place for the French to be, in the mountains of central Spain in Midwinter, with nothing coming from France to succour them. Should they make the attempt, successful or not, they might draw Napoleon away just long enough for Moore and Baird to retreat back into Portugal. I sincerely hope that they do so, soonest.”
“Though there’s no way to get a rider to warn them, or order them to retreat,” Lewrie said in a grave tone.
“No, Captain Lewrie, there is not,” Drummond bleakly agreed. “Sir John Moore is senior to me, and Supreme Commander in Portugal and Spain, so I can but advise. Since Moore departed Lisbon I have not heard one word from him.”
“What are these marks, at Lugo and Léon, sir?” Deacon asked.
“Those?” Drummond said with a faint sneer on his face. “Those are two more Spanish armies, one under a General Barclay at Lugo in central Galicia, already defeated and licking their wounds by the way, and the other represents an army under a General de la Romana at Léon.”
“It would seem that they are in as good a position to interdict the French supplies as Castaños and Palafax in the East,” Deacon commented.
“Hah!” Drummond said with a derisive toss of his head. “I’ll lay you any odds that they won’t, sir. Barclay’s army, as I said, has been trounced and mauled quite badly, and Romana, so the junta in Madrid informs me, may have, ehm … inflated his numbers just to look good to them. They do that, you know, perhaps to continue receiving the soldiers’ pay! Our military attaché in Madrid writes me that it’s a safe bet that if a Spanish general reports thirty thousand men on hand, he’s more like to only have ten or twelve, and half of them are without proper arms.
“An example, if you will, gentlemen,” Drummond sourly went on. “This year, the returns upon the Spanish cavalry reported a bit over eleven thousand troops … yet they had only a little more than nine thousand mounts! God only knows why my predecessor, General Sir Hew Dalrymple, put so much faith in Spanish promises, for I surely don’t. Neither does London. Moore and Baird were warned not to attach themselves to Spanish armies, or expect too much from them.”
“Anything from Lisbon, Mountjoy?” Lewrie asked the spy-master.
“Hand wringing and fretting, mostly,” Mountjoy told him, “viewing with alarm. They don’t know much more than we do, having gotten the same despatches that we have, and hopefully sending it on to the Army.”
“Napoleon will go after Moore, first,” Lewrie said after a long peer at the large map.
“How come you to that, sir?” General Drummond snapped.
“I’ve met the bastard twice, sir, and he’s all for honour and glory … his, mind,” Lewrie said with a wry smile. “As you say, he’s a very low opinion of Spanish armies, and can trounce them any day of the week. He surely knows Moore’s reputation, though, and is anxious to avenge how a British army embarassed him at Roliça and Vimeiro, and Marshal Junot’s ouster from Portugal. We made him look weak and bad, and that preenin’ coxcomb can’t abide that. He’ll go for Moore with all he’s got.”
“He’s more than enough troops to re-take Madrid and take on Moore, both,” Mountjoy pointed out. “He’ll give that task to another of his Marshals, but, you may be right, Captain Lewrie. The honour of defeating a British army in the field will glitter before him like the biblical Star in the East.”
“One would hope that Sir John is in contact with the Spanish at Lugo and Léon, then,” Deacon said, “and has been informed that the French are in force, and hunting him, before he blunders into them.”
“Amen,” Lewrie seconded. “Ehm, given all this new information, why am I here, then?”
“If given sufficient warning, there is a possibility that Sir John won’t have to retreat over the mountains back into Portugal, but may be able to move from Salamanca, where he expected to link up with General Baird, to Valladolid before the French get there, and get on some halfway passable roads to the Galician ports of either Vigo or Corunna, and be extracted by sea, Captain Lewrie,” General Drummond told him. “I am formulating orders for General Fox on Sicily, and to our garrison at Malta, to send as many troop transports as they have to Gibraltar. I am also sending requests to Admiral Cotton, and Admiral de Courcy off Galicia, to ready themselves for an evacuation. As soon as we have a reasonable number of transports assembled here, along with sufficient escorts, I would wish that you take charge of them and sail to join Admiral deCourcy and place yourself and your transports at his disposal.”