The regiments tramped on, mile after mile, the stony road treacherous and painful as the thin snow carpeted it. Mule carts creaked and slowed as the beasts bent under the onslaught, their bodies twitching in the bone-chilling cold.
Soldiers bore their lot as they had to, their uniforms now streaked with white, the metal of their muskets burning cold to the touch, their knapsacks almost comical lumps of white, their feet trudging on, one in front of the other, their only hope and dream the hot meal and grog at day’s end.
Officers at the front rode their horses, heads down with shapeless mufflers over their faces in a vain attempt to ease the bite of the weather. The more canny soldiers marched in the lee of the beasts and snatched shelter.
The snow got thicker and then the most unexpected of weather phenomena: silent stabs of light to the east spread across the sky in a paroxysm of harsh strokes against lurid sheet lightning, all near hidden in the increasingly dense snow.
Packwood rode with Moore. Neither spoke.
Mile after mile they progressed, the familiar massed crunch and jingle of men on the march now muffled by the whirling snowflakes – and then from ahead a random series of shots, in the smothering snowfall sounding more like harmless plops than gunshots.
Moore instantly halted the column. ‘See what that was, Packwood.’
He urged his horse forward past the halted column to the empty road ahead and intercepted a dragoon officer on his way back to report. In the fearful conditions they’d surprised a French forward post whose picquets had been dealt with immediately while a squadron of Hussars had ridden off to locate the main force.
Packwood waited patiently in the driving snow for the reconnaissance team to return – it was far more important for Moore to be in receipt of this intelligence than the mere knowledge that the French were abroad.
Within the hour a galloper reined in. ‘Sir. From prisoners – General Debelle and eight hundred horse and guns lie across the road three miles ahead, heading south.’
Towards them.
Packwood cantered back with the news and Moore moved at once. Giving his orders in decisive sequence he resumed the march, his van now a spearhead for punching through the French, relying on the confusion in their ranks at confronting the British here, of all places, in this hell on earth.
When they made contact with the enemy the fighting was brutal and swift, close quarters and bloody. At first the usual French skirmishers, thrown out ahead, had not been able to make out the vague shapes in the snow flurries and kept calling an anxious ‘Qui vive?’ to the British forward sections, who kept their silence as they moved unflinchingly forward.
The skirmishers hesitated, holding their fire, and in the dim light and freezing cold of the snowstorm the British were through and fell on the main French positions, roaring their regimental battle-cries and laying about them until the terrified French, not knowing where the feared Highlanders had come from, retreated in disorder, allowing Moore’s main column to follow. His cavalry fanned out to fall on the confused formations. The clash and impact on the running foe brought terror-shrieks, hopeless bravery and dying screams as the action faded into the distance.
They were through, but Packwood was only too aware that the French would regroup and follow, whatever the conditions. Their location was now known and Bonaparte would stop at nothing to bring about an overwhelming and conclusive engagement. Their only chance was to stay ahead of the military genius whose capability for rapid marches to discomfit his enemies was well known – the terrible battle of Eylau had been fought not so long ago in weather worse than this.
Moore did not need reminding. The fighting retreat continued but now the best and most powerful battalions would be concentrated as a rearguard – and any who fell out of the line of march would be left by the roadside for the French.
Grim and sparing in humour, the general whipped the column back into marching order and set off to the north and the Vigo road, to put some miles between themselves and the gathering foe before they halted for the night.
Mercifully the snow stopped, but as the men tried to bivouac it was, if anything, worse. Liquid mud, a few degrees above freezing, was everywhere in pools and mires and the few miserable fires that could be started did little to ease their spirits. As darkness fell on the lonely desert moor, Packwood could think of no more bleak existence.
They started out before dawn, unspeaking and sullen. It had got around that Vigo was their destination, but the more knowing let out that to reach it there was no longer the easy going of this high plateau but range after range of mountains, effectively doubling the distance, with steep tracks up their flanks and dangerous precipices waiting for them going down.
They trudged on.
At the midday halt, a cold easterly wind blustering and freezing, a rider brought dispatches – and a prize worth more than gold.
Somewhere to the south an arrogant French officer had demanded rooms in a pousada and had been murdered by peasants. He’d been comprehensively plundered but a plain sabretache had been left, found by a curious Spanish militia officer. In it were papers of some kind that he couldn’t read, but would it be of interest to the ingles courier passing through?
Packwood’s eyes glowed – for this was nothing less than a dispatch from Bonaparte’s headquarters to Marshal Soult in the north.
It was detailed and exhaustive, an operational directive to Soult that would enable Bonaparte to spring a lethal trap on the Englishman Moore and his contemptible army.
While Bonaparte closed in from the south, Soult was to spare neither himself nor his brigades in lunging across the north in a pincer movement to bring Moore at last to bay in a converging annihilation, an engulfing tide that nothing could withstand. Even the Imperial Guard had been called out of Madrid in merciless pursuit of the single-minded objective to extirpate the British intruders.
It was a masterful plan – the directive spelled out in full how it was to be done, even going so far as to include a helpful map showing all French positions, their character and commander.
Moore now had possession of what amounted to Bonaparte’s actual plan of campaign.
How to proceed was another matter.
Into the night Moore and his generals gave careful consideration to what must be done.
One thing was paramount: it had now turned into a race against time, a desperate march to escape the jaws of the trap. Any battle, however necessary, any delay of any kind, would play into the enemy’s hands. This had to be a forced march like no other: hundreds of miles across rivers and mountains, with the penalty for lagging being the snapping shut of the trap and another slaughtering triumph for Napoleon Bonaparte.
Before dawn all had been decided.
‘Packwood. I rely on you, sir. Do see that my orders are obeyed no matter how distressing the case. We have no other recourse and we march at midday.’
It was mind-numbing. The baggage train, the impedimenta and kit of an army of some twenty thousand was to be abandoned. Men would be permitted only that which they could carry on their person, the march made in quick time with no allowance made for stragglers.
Camp followers? There were many women, useful if not vital to the domestics of the march, most standing by their menfolk in the ranks, some whose men had been lost to disease or the enemy and knew no other life. These in mercy could not be left to the French, and if they could keep with the march, they would stay on rations.
Released draught animals would be put to the hauling of guns and the few vehicles carrying the bare minimum of provisions; essentially lines of communication and supply would now no longer exist.
Moore’s army stepped off at noon precisely, making good speed, each man with his inner thoughts knowing the alternative. That night they made bivouac in old sheep fields, the ordure mixed into the mud a trial. No heavy tents or carts to sleep under – the hours passed in a misery of wet and cold.