The Spanish Bride

6

By April, four of the invalided Generals had returned to the Peninsula; and Murray, to the army’s profound relief, was back in his old position of Quartermaster-General. The cavalry’s elegant commander, Stapleton Cotton, was still in England, plaguing the life out of Lord Bathurst, said the irreverent headquarters Staff, to get him a peerage; but no one doubted that he would rejoin the army in time for the coming campaign. Whether he came back with or without a peerage, he would be bound, thought his officers, to bring a wagon-load of smart new uniforms, for he was a great Count, and was said to be worth, when fully accoutred, man and horse, not a penny less than five hundred pounds. With the return of General Picton to his division, Pakenham was appointed to command the 6th division during General Clinton’s continued absence. He was felt to have done very well by the Fighting 3rd, and the men were sorry to see him go. On the other hand, they were accustomed to old Picton, and they liked him, roughness and all; and when he arrived amongst them, looking as disreputable as ever in a travesty of a uniform and a large beaver hat, they surprised themselves and him by raising a cheer for him.

Nothing was now talked of in the army but the prospect of a move. The news of Napoleon’s Russian debacle had reached the Peninsula; and Wellington, who had written the year before, ‘I shudder when I reflect upon the enormity of the task which I have undertaken’; and in November had thought the prospects of a successful campaign extremely bleak, was talking now, in the best of spirits, of putting himself in fortune’s way as soon as possible. But he was not going to entrust the Spanish forces under him with any separate or important task. In fact, he meant to employ as few Spanish regiments on the campaign as he dared. ‘I have never known the Spaniards do anything, much less do anything well,’ said his lordship acidly.

At the beginning of the winter, the three French armies confronting the Allies were cantoned over an enormous stretch of country, Soult, with the Army of the South, occupying Toledo, Avila, and a part of La Mancha; and the Anny of Portugal forming a triangle between Palencia and Valladolid, with Zamora as its apex. Between these two armies, King Joseph’s Army of the Centre was spread; but in March, news of considerable troop movements was brought to Wellington’s headquarters by guerrilleros and Intelligence-officers. King Joseph had got rid of Soult at last, who went off in February to assist his Emperor in forming a new Army of Germany. He took all his Andalusian plunder with him, including a complete gallery of Murillos; and Joseph began to draw in the Army of the South, till it lay between Madrid and the Douro.

The French had passed an uncomfortable winter, worried by guerrilleros, who attacked them rather in the manner of tiresome wasps; and by native insurrections. In the north, in Navarre and Santander, a horribly dangerous part of the country, the insurrections had been serious enough to cause them a great deal of trouble, for not only was the guerrilla chief Longa a real fighter, but the British Admiral, Sir Home Popham, was pouring munitions and stores into the country for his support. Clausel was sent north to overcome this menace, and his departure laid open the plains of León to the Allied advance. When King Joseph removed his headquarters to Valladolid, Suchet, much harried by the English force on the Mediterranean, lost touch with him. It was no wonder that Lord Wellington was in good spirits. Some of his battalions were greatly under strength, of course, but between British and Portuguese he expected to march with over sixty thousand bayonets, and eight thousand sabres. Counting the artillery, the Engineers, his new mounted Staff Corps, and all other departments of the army, he could put a force of eighty-one thousand men in the field, and most of them tried troops, too.

In May, the news that the headquarters servants were busy packing up his lordship’s claret put the army on tiptoe with expectation. Eight showy grey stallions were brought up from Lisbon to Frenada, to draw his lordship’s travelling carriage. They were a present to him from the Prince Regent, and the first time they were harnessed to the carriage one of them got astride the pole, another reared up, and fell over backwards, and the whole eight behaved as though they had never been in harness before. It was the loudly expressed opinion of his lordship’s sweating grooms that his six old mules would do the work very much better, but after a good deal of training, the greys began to go quite well, and would certainly make a fine show on his lordship’s progress through Spain.

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!’