It's Not Indigestion I'll Eat What I Like Read online

  He looked thoughtfully towards the spot, half a mile ahead, where the road rose gently over what might be described as a very wide col, between the northern hills and an isolated outcrop which formed a small knoll; topped by a dozen chestnut and oak trees; its steep southern slope having its feet washed by the river.

  They turned to see what he was looking at. “Thomas! Do yew take yor squad and find out how defensible is that small hill. Juanita! Por favor, look and see whether it is possible to ford the river close to the hill where it ought to be shallower.”

  The two squads cantered off while he led his own men and the wagons on past the knoll to inspect the approaches between the road and the river in the direction from which the French would be coming.

  Where the road rose over the col, the river was about half a mile distant with the knoll in between. A mile farther on they ran alongside each other and had bounded a long, pointed, strip of river bank, crowded with shrubs and dotted with larger trees. The riverbank itself was lined with clumps of alders and willows and the river flowed deep and wide before it was forced out and round the rocky foundation of the knoll.

  Welbeloved sent the wagons back along the road while he explored the strip of land. A dozen or more substantial trees were scattered about its length, but it was mostly composed of thickish scrub, bushes and fresh grass that in normal times would be feeding livestock.

  As was to be expected, there was a path running along the river bank, inside the lines of water-loving trees. Light infantry would be at home fighting here, but line infantry and cavalry would have their movements restricted by the shrubs and would prefer to use the road and more open land to the north of it.

  Back at the knoll, the river wound round it and back toward the road. Atkins reported that it was defensible against four times their numbers of infantry; more if they didn’t attack en masse. Cavalry could reach the top but not against fire from the Fergusons.

  A rather wet Juanita reported that where the river flowed round and away from the knoll it became wider and shallower. The deepest part was only four feet for two or three yards by the far bank. The current was fast flowing there; difficult, but quite fordable for the horses.

  Welbeloved relaxed and gathered them all around him. He felt that he had all the elements at hand to do damage to the enemy with the minimum amount of risk to his recruits. He would dearly love to take some of the horses away from the French. If he were successful it would be worth several weeks of training to these putative Hornet officers.

  Atkins and ten of the poorer marksmen were sent to make contact with Peterkin. Bailey and five men were sent with the girls to get the wagons across the river. The wagon teams in four feet of rapidly moving water would need all the assistance they could get.

  Another dozen men set out to clear the path along the riverbank. It was mostly wide enough to take three or four horsemen, but five or six large bushes along the way narrowed the path and they had to be removed.

  Everyone else looked to improve the area around the hill to provide themselves with secure positions to repel the French. The mature trees around the top would give cover for the horses. They formed a pretty and peaceful glade which had enough grass growing to keep the animals interested and out of mischief.

  Peterkin and his partner came cantering back in time to take up their positions with the rest of them. They reported that they had last seen the hussars five miles away. The foot soldiers were no longer in sight behind them and Sergeant Major Atkins was planning to wait until they were within two miles before starting the action. Everyone settled down to wait.

  The Hornets and the girls had done this sort of thing many times now and occupied themselves with fussing about their positions and the distances to various minor landmarks that would give them an accurate guide to the range of targets close to them.

  The recruits; most of whom had seen no actions on land and not many on board ship; were fidgeting for a variety of reasons. Excitement and anticipation for the younger ones perhaps? Nervousness and even fear in some of them, mostly fear of showing fear with all these imperturbable Spanish girls among them.

  Sergeant Major Thomas Atkins was two miles along the road. There was a half mile clear stretch in front of him. His party of ‘quality’ novices was behind him and they were all hidden by a dip in the road from anything in front. His only concern was that these new boys should not do anything stupid that would reflect on him.

  He was immensely proud of his achievements in reaching his present rank with little or no education to boast of and a childhood of such dire poverty that his puny frame had almost caused his rejection by the recruiting sergeant at Chatham. It was only the immediate return, as a bribe, of his King’s Shilling that had got him admitted at all.

  His food from then on, though cheap, boring and without much variety, was nourishing and by previous comparisons, astonishingly plentiful. In two years he had grown six inches and was half as heavy again.

  Now he was nearly as big as his idol, Hamish MacKay, who was quietly helping him with his reading and writing, to assist him in his ambition to join him in the ranks of commission officers.

  His reaction to all these officers joining his beloved Hornets had been fatalistic. After all, if the unit were to grow from sixty to five hundred, it would need a lot more officers.

  After the first day, when he had seen how lacking in essential skills they were, he determined that he would do his utmost to achieve the rejection of all who could not come up to basic Hornet standards. He could not bear the thought of being under the command of anyone less competent than himself. It could be a matter of life or death in this dangerous business.

  He glanced round at the riders behind him. They were the poorest marksmen and therefore automatically at the top of his list of rejects. That didn’t matter for their present role. He had given very precise instructions about what was required of them. All they had to do was act as tempting—no, irresistible bait.

  Half a mile away, the hussars crowded into sight and he growled at his squad to be ready. They followed him at the trot over the rise and into sight of the enemy, then halted in obedience to his raised arm. He was delighted to see that the hussars had copied him and that one of them had a field telescope trained on him.

  He waved his arms extravagantly and the squad turned and cantered out of sight, back along the road. They had moved far enough into view to suggest that they were only a small group of undistinguished, drably dressed horsemen, possibly a party of the hated guerrilleros.

  If he were in command of the hussars, he would be wary of a trap and would send a dozen men forward to find out more, with the rest of the squadron following at a fast trot.

  Six hundred yards along the long stretch, he looked back to see the first of the gallopers come into sight and stop. All they would see was a small group of men looking like partisans, cantering briskly away.

  As he watched, hand signals were exchanged and they started again to canter in pursuit, no doubt merely keeping his squad in view for the moment while they waited for the main body to make up their ground and join in.

  The road here was following the river quite closely and at the next bend, Atkins slowed the men down to a fast trot, moving back to a canter as soon as the French came into sight again. By the time he reached the knoll he wanted the hussars back to full strength.

  The leaders of their vanguard duly obliged by slowing their pace when they saw how much ground they had gained. They too wanted the support of their main body, if not for the same reason.

  Atkins took the lead, signalling to the squad to get into pairs, then he plunged into the narrow path along the side of the river. Slowing down to get into two lines delayed the squad even further and their leading pursuers were now only fifty yards behind. They also slowed, looking for trickery and their main body caught up.

  The officer in charge quickly read the lie of the land and realised that there was a good chance of trapping the fleeing men in the triangle between the road, river and the rising hill ahead. Rapid orders sent a dozen men chasing down the path, another ten trotting as a screen along the side of the road to guard against a breakout. The commander himself led the rest in a fast canter past them to try and head off their chase at the base of the hill.

  Where the path reached that point it was far too steep for a horse to climb, but it curved sharply to the right and rose for fifty yards until there was a suitable track up to the top. For the whole of that distance the path widened enough for four or five horses abreast.

  Welbeloved had lined the slope overlooking this killing ground with Cholmondeley, the four riflemen, six muskets and the six girls. The French came rushing into range and gave a shout of triumph on seeing their prey, struggling one by one to get their horses up the steep slope of the knoll.

  They drew their sabres and charged forward. The range was only twenty yards, firing downhill. Well over half were smashed out of their saddles by the first volley. The survivors had only ten to fifteen seconds to get over the terrible shock and try to escape. It was not enough. The Fergusons and the breechloaders competed to be first and no one survived the second volley.

  The muskets and the Bakers were left to cover against further attack and the seven Fergusons hurried to help with the defence of other parts of their ‘fortress’.

  They were too late to take part in repelling the first assault. There were forty hussars who had ridden straight along the road. When they reached the top of the col ridge they could see the clouds of powder smoke made by the attack on their comrades. They could also see the last of the horses struggling up the slope to their left.

  With hardly a pause, their commander set the whole squadron to charge along the ridge and up the gentle slope towards the summit, whe
re the waiting horses were the only visible signs of the enemy. There was a relatively clear stretch of two hundred yards of gentle slope before the hill rose more steeply towards the summit.

  Welbeloved’s quarterdeck bellow rang round the defenders. “Pick yor targets and shoot at fifty yards! Hornets only. Take officers and sergeants as soon as yew can kill! Try and miss the horses!”

  Evans shot the commander at one hundred and fifty yards. By one hundred yards all the identifiable officers and sergeants were down. At fifty yards, the Fergusons had reloaded and the hussars were full of confidence, having hardly noticed, in the heat of the charge, the nine or ten shots that had taken their leaders.

  When the final volley came, it was as ragged as was to be expected from thirty, individually aimed shots, but it shattered the charge, bringing down men and horses alike. Those at the rear who had been shielded by their comrades, pulled their horses round and fled, but there were less than a dozen to provided targets for Cholmondeley and the girls when they threw themselves down just after the last devastating volley.

  The survivors fled back along the road towards the safety of their infantry and Welbeloved trained his glass on the road to see how far they had advanced. He allowed himself a mild oath at the sight of a second squadron of hussars just halting half a mile away, to receive the eight or nine fleeing refugees. He could only assume that they had abandoned their duty as rearguard and been summoned forward to help hunt for partisans.

  It was a complication he hadn’t anticipated. He had hoped to deal with the initial squadron and be off across the river with captured horses and kit, before the infantry could approach the knoll. Now the initiative was back with the French. If these hussars could pin him down for another hour, there would be overwhelming numbers of foot soldiers ready to swamp his small unit.

  He bellowed his orders again and everyone rushed out to round up as many loose horses as they could before the French came back. The new boys hadn’t been as clinically lethal as the Hornets and two or three wounded beasts were still struggling pitifully. They were despatched quickly but the several wounded hussars couldn’t be treated so ruthlessly and were carried into the shelter of the trees.

  Three sharp blasts on Welbeloved’s whistle brought everyone hurrying back when he spotted the squadron beginning to move. Only the horses in the glade were visible when the double line of hussars trotted warily into view along the road over the col. They stopped in a straggling line facing the hill at a distance that they considered safe. Indeed, at two hundred and fifty yards from the carnage at the bottom of the hill, they knew they were unlikely to be bothered by shots from a standard musket.

  The French muskets carried by the recruits were better than standard however. In addition to the new breech loading mechanism, their barrels had been carefully and meticulously rebored to .70 inch gauge and all the balls had been cast to be an almost perfect fit. They weren’t quite as accurate as the rifles, but in the hands of an expert or natural marksman like Cholmondeley; at two hundred yards a disabling hit could almost be guaranteed.

  Unfortunately, less than half of the recruits were yet good enough for that, but a horse and rider made a large target and there were also twenty-three rifles on the hill.

  Welbeloved watched them through his glass. The officer in charge could see the pile of bodies at the base of the hill and had certainly been told of the deadliness of the defenders at close quarters. In any event, he was not interested in charging headlong uphill against an enemy he couldn’t see, when five hundred foot soldiers were well on their way to support him.

  His telescope was again trained down the road. No infantry could be seen on the road itself and the dust cloud he could see, possibly two miles distant, was surely not big enough to be sent up by the feet of five hundred men?

  Then he remembered that it had been raining yesterday. Not heavily to be sure, but enough to lessen the cumulus cloud of dust that would certainly rise in the hot, dry summer. The dust haze that he could see might mean the foot soldiers arriving within the hour. Even if he was wrong he had to act as if one hour was the deadline.

  Now he was certain that the hussar commander was playing for time. One of his lieutenants was walking his horse slowly forward with a piece of white cloth tied rather inappropriately round his raised sabre. If they thought that they had cornered a band of partisans, then that was a remarkably brave thing to do. Guerrilla bands were not noted for strict adherence to the niceties of military conduct.

  Never mind. He could be just as tricky as the hussar commander. He turned to Atkins. “Thomas, while the Frogs are wasting time trying to keep us here, take the twenty best shots from the recruits. Send ten of them under Juanita to larboard and take the others with yew to starboard. See if yew can all creep through the scrub up to the road.

  I will keep yon hopeful talking and then send him back. Once he rejoins, the Fergusons will engage the hussars in front of us. Yew and Juanita should feel free to join in at that moment. It would be as well to try and outflank each end of their line before shooting. There are likely seventy of them and I don’t want any of them able to interfere when we withdraw over the river.”

  He scanned the road again. “The infantry are not yet in sight. We’ll have no more than half an hour once they appear. Try and capture as many horses as yew can. We need every one.”

  Atkins saluted. “Keep ‘em talking, Sir. It’s going to take twenty minutes to get as far as the road. There’s none of the recruits up to our standards as yet.” He stood up and called for the men he wanted to make their way up to the horses. From there it would be easier to descend the sides of the hill unobserved.

  What the French made of the sudden eruption of twenty men from what they had thought of as bare hillside was impossible to guess. The lieutenant with the white flag was certainly puzzled because he reined in at the point on the col where the hill started to rise more steeply. He sat his horse, eyeing the slope before him, showing every sign of unease.

  He nearly started out of his saddle when Welbeloved rose to his feet, only twenty feet in front of him. Recovering, he stared curiously at the uniform before starting his prepared speech in a poor, but understandable spanish; presumably the reason he had been selected as a herald.

  “Are you the leader of these bandits? I am to talk only to the leader.”

  Welbeloved smiled reassuringly, replying in the same tongue. “Carry on and say what you have to, Son. I’m listening.”

  Looking nervously around at the thickly scattered bodies of hussars and horses, he gave his message. “Now that we are in position to stop you escaping, my Colonel is prepared to be as lenient as he can if you put down your weapons and surrender before our infantry arrive. Leave it until they get here and you will all be shot.”

  Welbeloved looked pained. “That’s not very friendly, my boy. Your commander is being aggressive and we have already demonstrated that we can defend ourselves against aggression. All the dead lying about you are wearing your pretty uniforms.” He paused, having finally caught sight of the stealthy movement on the flanks that told him that Atkins’s pincer movement was almost in position. His voice became harsher.

  “Go back, young man. Tell your commander that he has made a terrible mistake. He is about to learn about the consequences of attacking the Frelons Bruns.”

  The man’s eyes bulged. “The English Frelons? The bandits that the Emperor has decreed must be shot on sight?” He turned abruptly and cantered back to report that they had cornered the infamous Hornets.

  Welbeloved raised his voice. “Wait ‘til he gets back, then fire in pairs. Take the officers first. Evans! Take the commander! What’s the range, Dai?”

  “Two fifty yards, Sir and not a breath of wind there is.” Evans bawled loud enough for all to hear.

  Welbeloved settled back into position. “Select yor targets!” He watched the lieutenant pull his horse to a stop in the centre of the lines of cavalrymen. “Fire when ready!”