The next day was a punishing march over a stony track, which tore at boots and shoes until they were in ribbons. Redcoat uniforms were now ragged and hidden under peasant cloaks, tarpaulin, anything to give warmth from the cutting winds. Only their weapons were gleaming and ready.
That night there was reprieve: unbelievably a village, with houses, barns, sheds and huts where a soldier might lie down and be fed.
With hot food in their bellies, spirits rose and men at the ragged end of endurance burst their bonds of discipline and found coarse wine and fierce brandy, then rampaged unstoppably through the streets and alleys, roaring and shouting their cares away.
No bellowed commands, dire threats or pleading made any difference: crowds of soldiers continued their drunken frenzy until in the early hours they collapsed in exhaustion, bodies in the street still clutching bottles, some frozen to death where they fell, a chaos of wild disorder and indiscipline.
The morning brought news of the French hard on their heels. It was imperative to get back on the road or be taken. Moore threw out his rearguard and, by heroic efforts, prepared his troops for the march.
Then, from the direction of Vigo, an apparition from another world appeared: an absurdly young naval officer, his face pale and pinched, with what resembled a well-seasoned marine.
‘Um, would you kindly take me to General Moore?’ the lad enquired of an outrider, struck dumb by the sight.
‘Sah, let me,’ the marine said firmly. ‘You, m’ man. Tell us where’s the headquarters company, smartly now!’
Moore was ready on his mount, his eyes roving over the slowly assembling line of march.
‘Er, sir. I’ve news for you.’
Unbelieving, Moore looked down at the little party on their domestic ponies. ‘Who the devil are you, sir?’ he managed at last. ‘Explain yourself!’
‘Sir, I’m sent by Captain Sir Thomas Kydd in charge of your embarkation,’ he stammered. ‘He begs to inform you that the port of Vigo is not to be used and you should go to Corunna instead.’
‘Why the … Who is this insolent scoundrel who dares tell me my orders? I shall do no such thing and am appalled at such impudence. Packwood, what’s going on? I demand to know!’
Packwood took them aside. In a few minutes he had the essentials and returned to the impatient commander-in-chief.
‘Sir, it appears that these are genuine envoys of the authority concerned with our taking off, and-’
‘How do you know?’ Moore barked.
Packwood gave a tiny smile. ‘Because, sir, I once took passage in their vessel, the good ship Tyger, and do recognise them.’
‘Go on.’
‘For mysterious sea reasons, it seems Vigo at this time has a fatal flaw in the embarking exercise in that we might well find ourselves trapped while Bonaparte surrounds us and puts us under punishment with his artillery. I believe we should listen to them, sir.’
‘Confound it!’ Moore exploded. ‘I refuse to change the line of march of a whole army on the say-so of any sailor boy who comes along, Packwood. Give me reasons why I should, quickly, man!’
‘I doubt that Captain Kydd would put these men to hazard unless he had very good reason and-’
‘If it was so critical to our survival, why did he send damned juniors like this and not his best officer to speak with me? Hey? Answer me that!’
‘Sir, I can tell you, there’s never a superfluity of officers on board a frigate, but I suspect his main trust is that, through this young man, his reasons will be sufficiently compelling in themselves not to require a high officer to absent himself from his place of duty.’
Moore simmered, considering. ‘Corunna straight ahead, through God’s own purgatory of the Cantabrian mountains. Vigo, ahead a handful of miles and turn left for the sea – into the Montes de Leon, as bad.’
He frowned for a long moment, then snapped, ‘We’ve no time for debate, the French press us sorely. We march – now. Packwood, you’ve until the crossroads to Vigo to persuade me, else we ignore this lunacy.’
The column stepped out, the weather cold and driven but without the sapping snow or rain.
Packwood and the sailors fell back, conferring.
The colonel was quick and astute, and soon caught on to the nightmare of a fleet trapped by a contrary wind under the relentless pounding of Bonaparte’s guns.
He cantered back to the commander-in-chief. ‘Sir, I have the elements and they are truly unanswerable.’ Going over the points he could evoke only an ill-tempered grunt.
‘Sir. There is a final consideration that makes all other considerations moot.’
‘What?’
‘Captain Kydd allows that the transports have already sailed for Corunna, sir. If none are at Vigo we stand to be invested and destroyed. We therefore have no alternative but Corunna.’
Moore glanced at him once and unexpectedly smiled. ‘As I always wanted, Colonel.’
‘Sir?’ Packwood said. Then he understood: Moore was now taking the idea as his own.
‘Corunna. A far better place to defend as we board. Have you ever given thought to what it must be to suffer under fire as our ships are loaded? Here we can keep ’em at bay while we safely embark our troops, guns and stores. The nabobs in Lisbon haven’t the wits to see this and you’ve given me all the reasons I need to go to Corunna.’
‘So …’
‘Let Staff know, there’s a good chap. It’ll be hard going very shortly.’
Chapter 72
The foothills were bleak and rugged, but the mountains were savage and cruel. Only the certain knowledge that Napoleon Bonaparte himself was on their heels kept the toiling soldiers on the crumbling stone tracks, the desolate passes, the edge of precipices for hours on end.
Rowan, bowed down under the winter blast, trudged along manfully ahead of Dodd: they’d been relieved of their ponies and, with the French so close behind, there was no other option. Packwood had given orders that saw them on the ration list but there was little else he could do for them.
The adventure of the mission had turned by degrees into a trial of endurance. They’d found their objective, they’d succeeded in what Captain Kydd had asked of them, but they’d strayed into a species of hell. This was now a nightmare.
Days of trudging, endless miles always the same, a ragged column wending its way up into the mountains, little sound except the stolid tramp of so many thousands, spread out for miles on the march.
The soldiers were in fearful condition, shabby, frayed, tattered – by now also filthy and unshaven and, as Rowan had quickly found at the campfire, alive with lice and other vermin. They said little, staring into the embers and chewing dried beef strips and biscuit, slurping their grog and occasionally cursing in a low monotone.
The pain of muscles relaxing at the end of the day was only exceeded by the agony of driving them into motion the next day, and shoulders wrung with the day-long weight of a haversack. Rowan didn’t realise until he had to go to Sergeant Dodd’s pack that he’d been quietly extracting some of his gear and adding it to his own to carry.
Dodd said little on the march, but at the end of a long day he cracked jokes and spun yarns from the seven seas that kept Rowan for a little while out of that purgatory on earth.
Then it was the struggle between exhaustion and the sapping cold from rain, snow and hail for a precious few hours of sleep … and in the pre-dawn misery it was a start all over again.
Unbelievably there were women on the march, some with children, babies in their arms even, keeping with their men, no matter the cold and wet, yet at the end of the day caring for them and their brood in a pitiable bid for normality in the fiendish conditions.
As they reached higher altitudes the bitter cold seeped through any attempt at clothing and Rowan’s increasing distress brought on a hopeless homesickness: childish tears formed and his head bent in an extremity of enduring.