On the 17th May his lordship reviewed the Light division on the plain of Espeja, and seemed pleased with their appearance. The men had got new equipment, and although there was still a good deal of sickness thinning the ranks, the two lines drawn up for inspection made an impressive sight. The Light division, with three brigades of cavalry, was going to form the centre column of the march, and if anything had been needed (said critics from other divisions) to puff them up any further in their own conceit, it was supplied by the knowledge that with them would go Lord Wellington himself.
Nothing definite was known about the date of the army’s breaking up from its winter quarters. Marching-orders were daily expected, but did not arrive. It was rumoured that the pontoon-train was late in coming up. Meanwhile, old Douro had a bad cold, and the soldiers kicked their heels, cursed the Engineers, and fished for trout and roach in the teeming rivers.
His lordship’s good spirits had infected his army. There was no longer any talk of recapturing Madrid. Everyone realized that his lordship was setting out on a(much larger enterprise, and meant to chase the French over the Pyrenees. He would do it, too, swore his troops. ‘Come back next winter? Not us! We’ll be in Paris by then!’ said one optimist, lightheartedly packing up his greatcoat to be put in store, ‘Damme, what with not ’avin’ to lug our coats along with us like we always ’ave, and what with them new tents, to say nothing of changing them bastards of iron kettles for these ’ere tin ones, I don’t see as anything can stop us.”
‘Look high and fall in a cow-turd!’ retorted a prosaically-minded friend. ‘Likely we’ll freeze to death without our coats!’
7
‘All ready for the march? When do we rompé for it?” Harry’s friends inquired, trying to worm a little information out of him.
But Harry had never been less ready for a march. He was in the devil’s own temper, too, snapping at everyone. Harry had had six capital horses when the brigade moved to Guinaldo, but winter quarters to his stud, he admitted ruefully, was no holiday. He had killed the Andalusian he had bought at Alcala, swimming him through two rivers in the course of a very severe run when out with Stewart’s harriers; and of the remaining five only two were fit for work. ‘If I were to fall backwards I should break my nose!’ Harry said savagely. ‘No one had ever such fiendish ill-luck!’
‘I told you you were far too bruising a rider,’
said Stewart, from behind a cloud of cigar-smoke. ‘What’s the matter with Old Chap?’ ‘Picked up a nail in one hind foot. Won’t be fit to ride for months!’ ‘Careless fellow! I shan’t give you any more horses,’ Stewart said, quizzing him. But Harry flung away in a rage with the whole universe. His predicament was certainly bad enough to try the most even temper, and the condition of his stud was not all his own fault. An English mare, quite a reliable mount, had thrown out a ringbone; and Tiny, now Juana’s property, had pulled down the heavy bullock-manger in the stable, and seriously damaged his off fore-hoof. That left the Smiths with two horses between them, one a good charger, the other a thoroughbred mare, very showy, but inclined to be clumsy.
‘I suppose you think I’m going to mount you?’ said Vandeleur, trying to look severe. ‘Well, if you don’t, sir, I don’t know how I shall manage,’ replied Harry coolly. ‘Damn your impudence!’ said Vandeleur. ‘A pretty state for a Major of Brigade to be in! Well, well, I daresay I can let you have one of my horses now and then.’ Marching-orders, when they came at last, came without previous warning, at midnight on the 20th May. By dawn the whole division was assembled at the village of San Felices el Chico, and the scene resembled nothing so much as a social rout-party. Friends, whose respective quarters had lain too far apart to permit of their visiting each other, met with laughter, and back-slapping. Old jokes were remembered, and many questions asked. If a man had a fresh mule, it was remarked on; while all the most insignificant persons, such as Portuguese goat-herds, or someone’s sloe-eyed mistress, were inquired after.
The army was marching in three main columns, with Giron’s Galician force coming down from the north to join the six divisions under Graham, which were to cross the Douro in Portugal, heading for Braganza. These formed the left wing of the army. Hill, with three divisions, was on the right, marching towards the Tormes.
The Light division, with their old friends, Arentschildt’s German Hussars, passed Ciudad Rodrigo on the 22nd May, and camped on the Yeltes river. Everyone was in fine fettle; the new tents, one to twenty men, turned bivouacs into the most luxurious camps: a great improvement on a looped blanket stuck up on sticks, said the troops. They were marching over ground which they had last seen under leaden November skies, but nearly every one agreed that you would never recognize it. Remembering the bogs, the submerged stumps of trees against which they had stubbed then: blistered feet, the sleet, and the biting winds, the men looked about them as though they could scarcely believe their eyes. A blue sky, a warm sun, fields of green grass, were things they had never associated with this stretch of country. At San Munoz, the contrast seemed particularly marked. The river across which Juana had swum her horse had dwindled to a placid stream, its fords no more than knee-deep.
They halted there for a day. Jonathan Leach took his subalterns to fish for dace, and fried them afterwards in a shallow pan. Some of the men fished too, but most of them lazed on the river-bank, recalling the flurried skirmish of six months before, and contrasting their dreadful diet of acorns with their present well-filled canteens.
The Life Guards and the Blues joined the column that day, big fellows on glossy horses, all in the pink of condition. The tanned weather-beaten veterans privately thought them a fine-looking lot, but they naturally concealed their admiration, and roasted the newcomers. ‘Wait for a little duty and starvation, and then talk!’ they shouted at the resplendent troopers. ‘You’ve done nothing but come up the best time of the year in the grass season!’ ‘Gawd love me, if ever I see such a cursed set of green ’urn!’ remarked a Rifleman, lying on his stomach, with his head propped in his hands.
‘Keep your tongue within your teeth, laddie. Raw leather will stretch,’ said a bony Scot. ‘It’ll need to. Someone told them blurry ‘Yde Park soldiers the enemy was in the neighbour’ood, and now whenever they see a burro in their front they think they’ve come up with Johnny Crapaud’s rear-guard.’
The Household Cavalry, painfully conscious of their greenness, did indeed seem to expect to find a Frenchman behind every bush. They were all very zealous, but they would get over that, said the cynics. They spent a good deal of time cleaning their accoutrements, and they would get over that too.
‘But my dear fellow, really, my dear fellow, is it necessary for your men to look so-so damned out-at-elbow?’ one of their officers asked Kincaid. ‘Now, don’t think I’m criticizing! One knows what splendid troops you have, but upon my word, when I first saw them slouching along I-really, I was shocked!’
Kincaid, who was entertaining the officer to dinner in his tent, refilled his glass, and said: ‘My poor greenhorn, when my men saw your lot, all so pink and pretty and polished, they said “much bran, little meal.” I don’t, of course. I’m sure you’ll all be capital soldiers when you’ve cut your milk-teeth.’
‘Oh, come! That’s too bad!’ protested his guest, blushing and laughing. ‘Naturally, one hasn’t come out to Spain to teach you fellows your business, but one can’t help thinking-it does strike one that you’re damned careless! Not what I should call on the alert, don’t you know?’ ‘What the hades have we got to be alert about?’ inquired Kincaid, surprised. ‘Well, with the enemy in the neighbourhood-’