With Moore at Corunna by G. A. Henty (ebooks children's books free txt) 📖

10,000 men who were to land there under the command of Sir David Baird.

The English general's difficulties were indeed overwhelming. He had soldiers who, although but recently raised, had shown themselves good fighters; but he was altogether without even transport sufficient for the officers. With an ample supply of money, an experienced staff, and a well-organized commissariat, the difficulties might have been overcome, but Sir John Moore was practically without money. His staff had no experience whatever, and the commissariat and transport officers were alike ignorant of the work they were called upon to perform. He was unacquainted with the views of the Spanish government, and uninformed as to the numbers, composition, and situation of the Spanish armies with whom he was to act, or with those of the enemy. He had a winter march of 300 miles before he could join Sir David Baird, who would have 200 miles to march from Corunna to join him, and there was then a distance of another 300 miles to be traversed before he reached the Ebro, which was designated as the centre of his operations.

And all this had to be done while a great French army was already pouring in through the passes of the Pyrenees. No more tremendous, or, it may be said, impossible, task was ever assigned to an English commander; and to add to the absurdity of their scheme, the British government sent off Sir David Baird without instructions, and even without money. The Duke of York had vainly protested against the plan of the ministry, and had pointed out that nothing short of an army of 60,000 men, fully equipped with all necessaries for war--money, transport, and artillery--could achieve success of any kind.

Upon the day Terence rejoined, news came from the engineers in advance that the assurances Sir John Moore had received that the road by which the army was to travel was perfectly practicable for artillery and baggage-waggons, were wholly false, and it was probable that the artillery and cavalry would have to make a long circuit to the south.

It was too late now to change the route for the rest of the army. Nearly half the force had already started on the road to Almeida, and the supplies for their subsistence had been collected at that town. Therefore it was necessary that the main body of the infantry should travel by that road, while three thousand were to act as a guard for the artillery and cavalry on the other route.

CHAPTER VII THE ADVANCE

"It is enough to drive Sir John out of his senses," the colonel said, as the news was discussed after mess. "These people must be the champion liars of the world. Not content with doing nothing themselves, they seem to delight in inventing lies to prevent our doing anything for them. Who ever heard of an army marching, without artillery and cavalry, one way, while these arms travelled by a different road entirely, and that not for a march of twenty miles, but for a march of three hundred? One battery is to go with us. But what will be the use of six guns against an enemy with sixty? Every day the baggage is being cut down owing to these blackguard Portuguese breaking their engagements to furnish waggons, and we shall have to march pretty nearly as we stand, and to take with us nothing beyond one change of clothes."

Loud exclamations of discontent ran round the table. It was bad enough that in the midst of a campaign waggons should break down and baggage be left behind, but that troops should start upon a campaign with scarcely the necessaries of life had caused general anger in the army; and no order would have been more willingly obeyed than one to march upon Lisbon, shoot every public official, establish a state of siege, and rule by martial law, seizing for the use of the army every draught animal, waggon, and carriage that could be found in the city, or swept in from the country round. The colonel had not exaggerated matters. The number of tents to be taken were altogether insufficient for the regiment, even with the utmost crowding possible. The officers' baggage had been cut down to twenty pounds a head--an amount scarcely sufficient for a single change of clothes and boots. Even the amount of ammunition to be taken would be insufficient to refill the soldiers' pouches after the supply they carried was exhausted.

The paucity of baggage would not have mattered so much had the march begun at the commencement of summer, instead of just as winter was setting in. In the former case, men could have slept in the open air, and a solitary blanket and one change of clothes would have sufficed; but with the wet season at hand, to be followed by winter cold, the grievance was a very serious one. Terence had already learned that the brigade was to march in two days, and that the great bulk of the baggage was to be stored at Torres Vedras, which was to be occupied on their leaving by some of the troops that would remain in Portugal.

"Faith, it is an evil look-out, Terence," O'Grady, who was sitting next to him, said, pathetically. "Sorra a drop of whisky is there in the camp, and now we sha'n't be able to have even a drink of their bastely spirits, onless we can buy it at the towns; and as Anstruther's division has gone on ahead of us, it is likely that every drop has been drunk up."

"It will be all the better for you, O'Grady. Daly tells me that your arm is not fully healed yet. I know that you would not like to be left behind when we have once started."

"That is true enough, but a drop of the cratur hurts no one."

"I beg your pardon, O'Grady, it is very bad for anything like a wound. The doctor told me, when I was chatting with him before dinner, that he really did not think that you could go, for you would not obey his orders to give up spirits altogether."

"Well, I own that it has been smarting a good deal the last few days," O'Grady admitted, reluctantly, "though I have not said as much to the doctor. I don't know that you are not about right, Terence; but faith, after being kept upon bastely slops by O'Flaherty, it was not in human nature to drink nothing but water when one gets a chance. At any rate, I am not likely to find any great temptation after we have started."

"Well, you had better begin to-night, O'Grady. I am going to get away as soon as I can, and if you will take my advice you will come too."

"What! and us to march in two days? It is not to be thought of. You mane well, Terence, but a lad like you must not take to lecturing your supayrior officer. Shure, and don't I know what to do for meself better than any other?"

Terence saw that it was useless to endeavour to persuade him to move, and presently went round to Dr. Daly and said, quietly:

"Doctor, O'Grady tells me that his arm has been hurting him a good deal more during the last two days. I expect they will make a night of it this evening, and again to-morrow, and if he once begins, nothing will stop him until they break up. Could not you do anything?"

"I will talk to him like a father, Terence. You are a good boy to have told me; I might have gone away without thinking of it."

"Don't mention my name, Doctor."

The doctor nodded, and Terence went away and took a vacant seat at some distance from him. Presently the doctor got up and went round to O'Grady. The supply of claret had just been finished, and bottles of spirits had been placed upon the table. O'Grady stretched out his hand to one near him, but the doctor quietly removed it.

"Not for you, O'Grady," he said; "you have had more than sufficient wine already. I have been doubting whether you are fit to go on with the regiment; and, by the powers, if you touch spirits to-night or to-morrow, I will put your name down in the list of those who are to be left behind as unfit for service!"

"Sure you are joking, Doctor?"

"Never was more earnest in my life, O'Grady. You don't want to be left behind, I suppose, in some filthy Portuguese town, while we march on, and that is what it will come to if your wound inflames. I told you this morning that it was not doing as well as it ought to, and that you must cut off liquor altogether. I have had my eye upon you, and you have taken down more than a bottle of wine already. I don't think I ought to let you go with us, even as it is; but, by the piper that played before Moses, if you don't go off to your quarters, without touching a drop more, I will have you left behind!"

"You are mighty hard on a poor fellow, and must have a heart of stone to treat a man, who has lost his arm and wants a bit of comfort, in such fashion. Faith, I would not do it to a dog."

"There would be no occasion, O'Grady; a dog has got sense."

"And I haven't? Thank ye for the compliment. I will appeal to the colonel. Colonel, the doctor says if I drink a drop of spirits to-night or to-morrow he will put me down in the black list. Now, I ask you, do the regulations justify his using such a threat as that?"

"I think they do," the colonel said, with a laugh. "I think that his order is good and sensible, and I endorse it. You know yourself that spirits are bad for you, with an arm only just healed up. Now, behave like a raisonable fellow, and go off to your quarters. You know well enough that if you stop here you won't be able to keep from it."

"Faith, if the two of you are against me I have nothing more to say. It is mighty hard that after having lost an arm in the service of my country I should be treated like a child and sent off to bed."

"I am going, too, O'Grady," Terence, who had gone back to his original place, now said. "There is no occasion to go to bed. I have a box of good cigars in my tent, and we can sit there and chat as long as you like."

But O'Grady's dignity was ruffled.

"Thank you, Mr O'Connor," he said, stiffly; "but with your lave I will do as I said."

"That is the best thing," the doctor said. "You have not had a long night's rest since you rejoined. I am going myself, and I see that some of the others are getting up, too, and it would be a good thing if all would do so, for, with such work as we have got before us, the more sleep we get, while we can, the better."

As nearly half the officers now rose from their seats, O'Grady was mollified, and as he went out he said:

"I think, after all, Terence, I will try one of those cigars of yours."

On the 14th of October Fane's brigade left Torres Vedras.

[Illustration: 'I AM TOLD THAT YOU WISH TO SPEAK TO ME, GENERAL.']

A number of the troops had been stationed along the line of route to be followed, and these had started simultaneously with the departure of Fane's brigade from Torres Vedras. The discontent as to the reduction of baggage ceased as soon as the troops were in motion. They were going to invade Spain, and ignorant as the soldiers were of the real state of affairs, none doubted but that success would attend them there. Among the officers better acquainted with the state of things there was no such feeling of confidence, but they hoped that they should at least give as good an account of themselves as before, against any French force of anything like equal strength they might encounter. O'Grady, influenced by the doctor's threats, which he knew the latter would be firm enough to carry out, had obeyed his orders, and had confided to Terence, when the regiment formed up at daybreak for the march, that his arm felt much better.

"I don't say that the doctor may not have been right, Terence, but he need not have threatened me in that way, at all, at all."

"I don't know," Terence replied. "I feel pretty sure that if he hadn't, you would not have knocked off spirits. Well, it is a glorious morning for starting, but I am afraid the fine weather won't