Blood and Famine (Man of Conflict Series, Book 4) Read online

  They murmured their agreement, as they must, before raising their doubts.

  “Beg pardon, sir, but, how does one define major, in terms of transgressions, that is? Am I for example to ignore a leather stock that is poorly polished?”

  “A very good question, Captain Paisley! You will discover that we wear the leather stock only on the most formal of parades, and never in the field. A man in reserve with a dirty musket will be warned once and given fifty on a second occurrence, as an example; if it is his shoes that are unpolished then you will merely suggest to the sergeant that he should kick his backside, and that not too hard! In the mud of the field then uniform will be almost ignored; while a man has his musket and his sixty rounds to hand then to hell with polish and pipeclay! On return to depot, well, that is a different matter. You will not tolerate abuse of the civilian population, except the sack be formal; you will, however, wholly ignore the looting of enemy dead, and prisoners for that matter. Drunkenness will be discouraged while in the presence of the Frogs. Any man found deserting in the field will be shot out of hand; in reserve, of course, we may be more tolerant of the men’s little foibles – Absence without Leave is a far lesser crime.”

  The two captains left Septimus’ presence in a state of near shock, everything they thought they knew of soldiering turned upside-down.

  The battalion marched out on its way to Poole, the band playing bravely and the great bulk of women and children waving forlornly as they were turned out of the barracks. More than two hundred women and children saw their men going off to foreign parts and leaving them without homes or income. It was fortunate that the battalion was effectively new made, the bulk of its men fresh to the Colours and not having had the opportunity to pick up a wife; a battalion ten years in depot in England could leave two thousand in the street behind it.

  Marianne stood in her carriage with the children and her maid, waving and trying not to seem forlorn. They had decided that she would not take the children out to Portugal, to the dirt and disease Septimus had described; she knew that a hot clime had undermined her health in India and was aware that the risk to the family was unacceptable. It was easy to come to a rational decision, but it was hard to put it into effect.

  Major Perceval’s lady, hugely close to her time, sat in her chaise, two maids and Nurse to hand against sudden need.

  Septimus remained on his new charger by the carriage while he could, then trotted to the front of the column to set the pace, and be out of the dust.

  The Quartermaster had all in hand when they reached Poole, billeting arranged – there were more than enough pubs in Poole to house a battalion twice over. He had hired fishing boats to take the men out to the troopers, the quay at Poole being good for small ships only, and he had reserved the largest inshore berths for the merchantmen that would carry the horses and mules. The only thing missing was the troopships.

  “Perhaps the wind is foul, Mr Black, and they have been unable to make their westing from London or the Downs or wherever.”

  “All things are feasible, sir.”

  The next day brought fine weather but no ships. Septimus conferred with the Harbourmaster, found him quite remarkably willing to offer his assistance.

  “Best thing, colonel, sir, be for I to send a boat into Pompey, which be what we calls Portsmouth, as no doubt you knows, sir, wi’ a message for that old admiral chap there. Wind do be out of the west, more or less, and one of the lads can be inside the old ‘arbour there in four hours, maybe quicker, so long as ‘e claps everything on, like what I’s goin’ to tell ‘im to!”

  Septimus penned a very polite despatch to the Admiral Commanding at Portsmouth, begging him to use his semaphore to contact London and discover the whereabouts of the convoy due to take his battalion to the wars in Portugal. There was a strong likelihood that the ships were in Portsmouth, possibly waiting on their naval escort, perhaps simply idling while their captains made merry ashore. If the admiral was concerned to keep in well with the Army, then he would kick them into activity; if he had no love for Horse Guards then he would at best ignore the message, at worst be actively obstructive in response to it.

  The boat, a fast and sleek topsail schooner, certainly not for fishing and with very little hold space for any other commercial purpose, did not return that day.

  “Mr Black – rationing and funding for the men in billets in town here. How do we stand for the necessaries?”

  “We should find eight pence per day, per man, sir… Very strangely, however, the Mayor and Burgesses of Poole have volunteered to take the cost to themselves, sir. Very nearly thirty-five pounds a day, when one includes the band and fodder for the baggage train. And five pounds more for the officers and their horses! I smell dirty work, sir!”

  Septimus did not understand. The gentlemen were showing patriotic and he was most grateful to them.

  “With respect, sir, no! Many things it may be, but patriotism it ain’t. Not in Poole, sir! There’s black business afoot, sir, and us getting in the way of it. The Harbourmaster wants us out of the way and the Mayor wants us grateful and blind!”

  Septimus thought Black was being very unkind to the poor men.

  “Not ‘poor’, sir, that’s for sure. I would say, sir, that they are running across to the entrepot in Jersey. The call for French wines is very great, sir. Every wine merchant in this country sells his clarets and Burgundies and his white wines out of Alsace as well, and they cannot be lawfully traded from the French, not when we are at war. The wine ships are to be seen in the harbour at Jersey every day, they tell me, and the runners load quite openly and generally speaking come into harbour in England and offload across the quays – one would not want to shake up good wines by taking them across beaches at night! The bribes are all paid quite correctly in London and to the Revenue men in the ports, but they do not want to puff off their activities to the Army and to the unknowing who might be inclined to intervene. They would have to go all the way to Downing Street, quite possibly, sir, to make all right again. Better to get the Army out of the way as quickly as possible; they will be sending an official complaint to Horse Guards, sir, that they should not be using Poole as a trooping port, it being very inconvenient to them. No doubt they will receive a letter of apology in response – the generals all drink wine as well!”

  “Oh! Are you quite sure?”

  “Very, sir!”

  “Well… I wondered about that fast boat they sent to Portsmouth. Will that be a wine carrier, think you?”

  “Too small, sir, too little capacity. More like to be a guinea-boat, sir. In the Channel they are oared galleys, but further west, where they must cross a wider, exposed stretch of sea, they are fast sailing boats.”

  “Guinea-boats? I do not know the term.”

  “Gold carriers, sir. In England a gold guinea will fetch the better part of twenty-five shillings in paper or silver, the premium being more than twenty per centum. In France the paper currency is far more debased and gold will fetch a premium of at least forty per centum. So, sir, the smugglers will typically pay out nearly thirteen thousand pounds in paper in England to buy ten thousand in guineas. They take them across the Channel and they can buy silver bars worth fourteen thousand guineas in English banknotes, or brandy and wines and silks that will sell for even more. It is, obviously, illegal, but they are so fast as to be almost uncatchable without information to pick them up loading in England. The smugglers pay higher bribes than the Revenue men can afford, so there are very few informers. Add to that, an informer who is caught by the Gentlemen of the Coast will certainly die, and often unpleasantly to serve as an example; there are rumours of their sort being burned alive, sir.”

  “And you say that a man as worthy as the Mayor of Poole is in league with that sort?”

  “He is probably one of their leaders, sir!”

  Septimus was saddened to hear this – he had hoped for better of the merchant community from which he was sprung. After a while it occurred to him to wonde
r how it came about that Black knew so much about the business; then he decided not to ask.

  The schooner appeared in harbour next day and delivered a note to Septimus from the Port-Admiral of Portsmouth.

  The troopers had been delayed by the need to make repairs to one of the escorting ships which had discovered rot in some important part of the hull and had been unable to sail on time. All was now in hand and the convoy might be expected on the following day.

  Septimus informed Black who shook his head sadly.

  “Duplicity, I fear me, sir. To repair a ship’s hull is no matter for an overnight stay in the dockyard. If nothing else, sir, she must be emptied of the bulk of her stores, and possibly her guns as well, in order to expose those parts in need of work. A ship docked for such an affair will not be sailing for a month or more. No, sir, I suspect that the officers had all chosen to go off to the races at Epsom for the week and the Admiral quite probably with them and needing to find an excuse for the ships staying at anchor. Still, sir, I shall have all ready to load for tomorrow.”

  The Harbourmaster was also ready for the morning and had put together a positive flotilla of small boats and little barges to assist the loading. The officers’ horses took far the longest to move from shore to ship, despite the efficiency of the sailors aboard the transport. The mules and pack ponies of the baggage train were stolid animals, little concerned with their own dignity and not too upset to be put into belly slings and hoisted into the air and on board ship; the blood horses of the officers, many of them uncut stallions, were a different matter.

  The officers’ riding stock, more than a hundred of them, had to be persuaded into the small barges that took them out to the transport and then, blindfolded, fought and kicked out as they were lifted aboard. Once on the ship it took three or four experienced grooms to each to get them down the sloping companionways and into their stalls below decks. It was a painfully slow process, and had to be done with extreme care, for the horses might be a month in their stall if the weather turned against the convoy and could easily die if subjected to the least knock or injury that made them vulnerable to misfortune.

  It was apparently impossible to purchase riding stock in Portugal – the incursions of the French coupled with the increased demands of the Portuguese army had exhausted native resources. Septimus had chosen to purchase three chargers and Major Perceval in the nature of things had four; every other officer had a pair and most had brought a packhorse along as well.

  The Quartermaster, Captain Black, had tried his best to lay hands on more mules, but they were simply not to be found in Southern England. He had heard that the animals were used in the mines of the North Country, but had not been able to locate any for sale. He had considered bringing donkeys along, but they were really too small for his purposes and pack-ponies were not as strong and enduring in their nature. He knew that if he could not supply his own train of animals then he would be forced to rely upon the Portuguese ox-cart and he was reliably assured that those contraptions were good for no more than ten miles a day. If he had to use oxcarts then the baggage train would fall behind the battalion, which would demand that a company be detached as guard while they were en route, weakening the battalion in any advance.

  “We need a Royal Corps of Mules, sir. It is the sole practical answer to the problem.”

  “We have the Prince of Wales and his brothers, Captain Black.”

  Black ignored so disrespectful a comment – he was a very loyal man. Like most QMs he had been promoted from the ranks in the American War and tended to retain the simple certainties of the Sergeant in many ways.

  They sailed in the afternoon of the second day, Harbourmaster and Mayor together waving their farewells from the quayside.

  The battalion was spread across four converted merchantmen, jam-packed together, nearly three hundred men to each with band and grooms and servants included. The escort was sufficiently strong, they felt, comprising as flagship an aged two-decker of fifty guns, a Fourth-Rate who was to sail on to Canton after delivering them, there to pick up the following year’s tea-convoy and bring them home; in addition there was a pair of frigates and a ship-sloop and three gunbrigs, most of which were to join the Mediterranean fleet.

  Septimus felt a degree of pride when he was informed that one of the frigates and the sloop was of Danish provenance, recently added to the fleet.

  They tacked down into the Western Approaches, struggling against the prevailing Westerly to make their southing and work clear of the Bay of Biscay. The Navy showed impatient but the troop carriers were hired vessels, keeping their own crews and merchant-service masters, and would not clap on sail to the risk of their masts and rigging; they crawled and protected their owners’ property, particularly at night when they preferred sleep to hard sailing. They picked up the pilot for Lisbon after twenty days at sea, comforting themselves that it was not uncommon to spend twice as long.

  There was no sensible way of exercising or parading troops at sea so Septimus had dipped into his own pocket to supply the best way of keeping them amused. There had been an official issue of rum every morning and the evening saw a cauldron of naval cocoa shared out and a quarter of gin to every man together with a free ration of hard tack. The naval biscuit was not very exciting food, but dipped in a jack of hot cocoa or soaked in gin the men found it a palatable treat. There was just enough alcohol to keep the men a little less than sober but not quite fighting-drunk; it created a hazy holiday atmosphere in fact. Septimus was very pleased with his initiative.

  The officers, naturally enough, had formed their own mess on the largest of the ships and mostly were roaring drunk by the end of the second day and stayed that way until landfall was called. They enjoyed their holiday too.

  Septimus relaxed to an extent but thought himself obliged to remain at least capable of sitting at the table in his quarters and showing the visage of a serious-minded gentleman, hard at work; besides that, he did not like alcohol that much.

  The convoy south was unmolested, as most such were; troopships were occasionally lost to the weather but the French navy and privateers had very little to say to them. Northern waters were far more hazardous with a mixture of Danish gunboats and French and Dutch private men of war and the occasional French naval ship out on business as well, but the combination of blockade and escort protected the convoys to Wellington’s forces.

  Lisbon still smelt, possibly a little more strongly for all of the soldiers and their horses passing through. Disembarkation was a slow process but less difficult than at Poole, the harbour being one of the greatest in Europe and the ships all able to tie up to a stone quay. There had been no casualties among the horses but a pair of officers who thought to mount their chargers in the first few minutes after they landed were well kicked; the animals required time to get used to land and fresh air again.

  There were no mules to be found and they were reduced to ox-carts, each accompanied by its owner, generally speaking a small and underfed Portuguese of apparent middle-age. Septimus accompanied Black to the fields outside of the city where the baggage trains assembled. He was appalled.

  “They are mediaeval, Mr Black! This is something out of the Crusades, not a part of modern times at all!”

  The oxen were mostly heavily horned, the tips capped with leather so that they could not injure each other. They were smaller than the English beast, not so high at the shoulder as the few remaining plough teams Septimus had seen on the heaviest clay lands in Hampshire, and they certainly weighed far less. They were draught animals, used for pulling over distance on the roads, so he supposed it to be logical that they should have a different shape.

  The carts themselves belonged firmly to olden times. They were made wholly of wood, with no metal in their construction, less than six feet long and without sides, a flat timber platform attached to a pole with a yoke for two oxen and sat on a thick axle which was pegged onto solid timber wheels. Axle and wheels turned together, held by a pair of wooden bracket
s. The wheels were perhaps three feet in diameter, made of heavy boards, tongued and grooved and secured by battens which were fixed by more wooden pegs. Everything was rough finished, had never seen a plane, brought more or less flat by strokes of an adze. There was no grease to spare and the axles creaked and groaned and the bed of the cart rattled. Six or eight stakes were fixed to the edges of the bed and the loads could be roped to them.

  “Two miles an hour, sir. Ten miles a day, at most. One cart to carry their forage for half a week for every four with a load, sir. If you intend to be on the road for a week, sir, then you need half as many forage carts as you have load carriers – to take one hundred loads for sixty or seventy miles needs one hundred and fifty carts. The men are poor and not very strong for being badly fed all their lives, sir. They do not like to stray far from their homes, sir.”

  “We must try to build up our mule train, Mr Black.”

  “It may be possible to hire some as we pass through the country, sir. But very few, I suspect. I am told the land is much impoverished by the fighting across it.”

  Orders arrived that they were to march along the valley of the Tagus towards the army which was in slow retreat from Spain following the victory at Talavera.

  The staff officer who brought the instructions told Septimus that the Spanish army under General Cuesta was wholly untrustworthy, was so badly led as to be useless and had probably wholly disintegrated under his hopeless command.

  “Most of the men will have taken themselves and their muskets into the hills where they will fight in small bands. The bulk of the officers will have gone home to make their peace with the French and betray their country. Not all, perhaps, but most of the Spanish grandees are no more than greedy traitors, strangers to honour and courage both; never trust a word said by a Spanish officer without first checking. If they say they have a thousand men waiting to join a battle, then go and count them and discover which way they are pointing. The bulk of the Spanish hate the French, but most of them, led by their priests, hate the English too. The Portuguese are a different matter; they are coming to the Colours and are turning themselves into an army. Of course, their Royal family and the great bulk of their aristocracy and senior officers have run away to Brazil, much to the benefit of the ordinary people of the country!”