These five secondary attacks, timed to begin simultaneously with the main attack, were not expected to succeed, but to distract the defenders’ attention from the breaches. The approach to these, from the camping grounds of the Light and 4th divisions, lay between the Rivillas river, with its spreading inundation, on the right, and a quarry cut in rising ground to the left. It was preconcerted that the 4th division was to keep nearest to the water, and, upon reaching the ditch dug round Badajos, to swerve to the right, and to assail the breaches in the curtain-wall, and in La Trinidad. The Light division was to strike westwards to attack the breach in the flank of the Santa Maria bastion. Each division was to provide an advance of five hundred men, accompanied by several parties carrying haybags and ladders. These were to facilitate not only the storming of the breaches, but the descent into the ditch, which was reported to be as much as fourteen feet deep. There was no lack of volunteers for the forlorn hope: the only difficulty lay in selecting from the eager crowd of warriors clamouring each one to be the first to assail the walls, the fittest persons for the task. The British army, hating the trench-work it had been forced to do, irked by the fire from Badajos, and depressed by the soggy condition of the ground, desired nothing better than to come to grips with the enemy. Nor had the army any objection to coming to grips with the Spanish residents, held within the walls. Since Talavera, when the Spanish General Cuesta had abandoned the British wounded left in his charge to the French (who, if the truth were but known, had treated them with far more consideration than their Spanish allies had done), Lord Wellington’s soldiers had added loathing to the contempt they already felt for the Spanish. If Badajos fell at the end of this third siege, the inhabitants need not look for mercy at the hands of its conquerors. Not only had Lord Wellington’s men a grudge against the Spaniards, but they were further incensed by the knowledge that the inhabitants of Badajos had yielded very tamely to the French. If a besieged city surrendered at discretion, it might look for clemency; God help it if it resisted to the end! for then, by all the rules of war, it belonged to the victors to sack and pillage as they chose.
The officers knew what kind of temper the men were in. “They’ll regret it, if they hold out,’ said Cadoux, in his soft finicking way, admiring a ring on his finger, anxiously smoothing a crease from his smart green pelisse. He flickered a glance, a whimsical, mocking glance, under his long lashes at Brigade-Major Smith. ‘I’m afraid it will be a very bloody business,” he sighed: ‘Do you think I should wear my new coat, Smith? It would be dreadful if it got spoiled. Isn’t it a damned bore, this horrid assault?’
Harry could not bear Daniel Cadoux. There was just the suggestion of a lisp in Cadoux’s speech. Harry said that he assumed it. He said that Cadoux, with his dandified dress, and his pretty jewellery, made him feel sick. He could not imagine why Cadoux had ever joined the army, much less the Rifles; or how it was that he could induce his men to follow him. ‘One of the Go-ons,’ said Harry contemptuously.
‘What’s that?’ inquired a very young subaltern, quite a Johnny Raw.
‘That, my boy,’ said Harry, ‘you’ll very soon discover for yourself.’ Relenting, he added: “The men say there are only two kinds of officers: the Go-ons, and the Come-ons!’ ‘Oh!’ said the very young subaltern, digesting it, and reflecting that there was no need to ask to which category the energetic, fiery young man before him belonged. No need at alclass="underline" Harry Smith, dining with some of his friends a few hours before the attack on the night of 6th April, was in tearing spirits, his eyes keen and sparkling as they always were when there was dangerous work to be done. ‘Come on!’ would shout Brigade-Major Smith presently. ‘Come on, you devils!’
4
A double ration of grog was served out to the men before the attack, but it would not have appeared, to a casual observer, necessary to hearten the troops with rum. All was bustle and high spirits in the camp, old warriors giving a last look to their rifles, and Josh Hetherington enlivening the occasion with a ventriloquial display as popular as it was scandalous. ‘Mankiller’ Palmer was adjuring Tom Crawley, sober for once, to kill a Frenchman for himself: a Peninsular catchword that would never grow stale; while Burke, who had volunteered for more forlorn hopes than anyone else, was alternately boasting of his past exploits, and exchanging good-natured abuse with a friend from the 52nd regiment. The army was not in Lord Wellington’s confidence, nor had his extensive plans for the capture of Badajos been communicated to the men, but in their usual inexplicable fashion they knew all about those plans, just as they had known a full day before most of their officers the date of the attack.
‘Queer, ain’t it?’ remarked Jack Molloy, refilling his glass from Harry’s bottle of wine. ‘Never known ’em wrong yet. I wish I knew where they get their information.’
‘Oh, orderlies and batmen!’ said Kincaid, who had just lounged in as though he had nothing to do and had not that instant returned from a perilous reconnaissance journey with his Colonel almost to the very edge of the glacis above the ditch outside Badajos. “They pick up the news, and pass it on. Hallo, Young Varmint! Where did you spring from?’ Mr William Havelock of the 43rd regiment, who was the gentleman addressed, made room on Harry’s portmanteau for Kincaid to sit down beside him. There was very little space in the tent, and what there was seemed to be full of legs. Kincaid picked his way over three pairs of these, accepted a cigarillo from his host, and lit it at the candle that was stuck into the neck of a bottle on the table.
‘Well, and how is our acting Adjutant?’ inquired Stewart. ‘Dined, Johnny?’ ‘If he hasn’t, he can’t dine here,’ said Harry. ‘He can’t even have any port, because-oh yes, he can! I’ve got a mug somewhere! Stretch out a hand and feel in that case behind you, Young Varmint! A beautiful mug from Lisbon-that’s it.’
‘Port? You haven’t got any port!’ said Kincaid, hope battling with suspicion in his face. ‘Don’t think to fob me off with any Portuguese stuff! I’ve been dining with the Colonel.’ ‘Exalted, aren’t you?’ said Molloy. ‘Don’t waste the port on him, Harry!’ ‘By God, it is port!’ exclaimed Kincaid. ‘Where the devil did you get it, Harry? Old Cameron gave me black strap!’
‘Elvas,’ replied Harry. ‘The Beau himself hasn’t any better.’
‘The Turk!’ said Kincaid, raising the Lisbon mug in a toast to the army’s most famous sutler. ‘I thought you must have got it by wicked plunder.’ ‘He probably did,’ said Molloy. ‘You haven’t got any money, have you, Harry? Not real money?’
No, Harry had no money, but he had borrowed three dollars from the Quartermaster, after the fashion of all hard-pressed officers who had several months’ pay owing to them. But the two skinny fowls which had formed the major part of the dinner had been almost certainly dishonestly come by, since they had been provided by his servant, who was an experienced campaigner.
‘That man of yours will be hanged one of these days,’ prophesied Stewart. ‘What’s the news, and where have you been, Johnny?’
‘No news, except that Leith’s fellows are going to try the river bastion.’ ‘We know that! Talk of forlorn hopes! The men say if the Light Bobs and the Enthusiastics can’t take the town, there are no troops that can. I suppose the hour’s been changed to suit the Pioneers. I thought all the ground in front of the river bastion was mined?’ ‘Captain Stewart will now move a vote of censure on his lordship’s plans,’ said Molloy, looking round for somewhere to throw the butt of his cigar. ‘Unless I can stub this out on Young Varmint’s boot, I shall have to get up and go.’