Kings and Emperors

“I assume that sailors know how to ride, sirs?” he teased.

“It’ll come back to me,” Lewrie replied as he took the reins of a plain brown horse, hiked a booted leg, and swung up into the saddle.

Beauchamp led them on into the plain and the army encampment.

“Up yonder, sirs,” the Army officer said, pointing to the North. “There were steep hills, with deep gullies between, and a rough stone wall laid all along the tops of the hills, an incredibly strong position, yet…!” he enthused, “we went at them like lions, steep as it was, and threw them off and sent them swarming down into the plain, here. Three guns were captured, and an host of prisoners taken. But for a lack of cavalry, we could have pursued their broken ranks out onto the plain. The French had swarms of cavalry.”

“So, the French were beaten,” Lewrie stated with delight.

“Decisively, sir,” Beauchamp hooted. “Decisively! Now, they’re South of us, and to the East of us. There’s perhaps nine thousand under a chap named Loisin, coming West from Abrantes, and Delaborde still lurks down that way. The General fully expects that there will be a bigger battle to come, and soon. We’re told that we’re to be re-enforced with another four thousand men, when General Sir Harry Burrard and his convoy show up in the bay.”

“He’s senior to Wellesley,” Lewrie said. “He’ll take over?”

“God, I hope not, sir!” Beauchamp said, grimacing. “We’re doing just fine with Sir Arthur. General Burrard has not seen action since the Dutch expedition in Ninety-Eight, and made no grand show of his abilities, then. He’s over seventy years old!”

“Those are Portuguese carts and waggons yonder?” Westcott asked as they drew near a rather large conglomeration.

“Army Commissariat, Portuguese we’ve hired,” Beauchamp told him, “with solid silver shillings, not chits, too. The rest are Irish, if you can believe it. The General hired them before we sailed here. He told my Colonel that he’d learned in India that arrangements for a big commissary train are absolutely necessary. Not that Horse Guards will believe that, though.”

“Those casualties we saw last night,” Lewrie pressed. “Was it dearly won?”

“Oh no, sir!” Beauchamp said; he was irrepressibly cheerful. “We lost about four hundred and eighty, and the French lost nigh five hundred, plus the prisoners we took. Not bad at all, really. Aha! We’re coming to the Portuguese lines. Do keep a hand on your purses, sirs. They’re nowhere near so bad as Irish regiments, yet…! They are light infantry, called Caçadores. Quite good, really, under one of ours, Colonel Trant.”

“Their Portuguese officers ain’t up to snuff?” Lewrie asked as he took in the foreign troops, mostly uniformed in brown coats.

“From what I’ve heard, they’re miles better at their trade than the Spanish,” Beauchamp told him with a deprecating laugh, “but, over our long, good relations with Portugal, many British officers served in their army. Trant, now, sirs. He’s most capable and aggressive, but the General was heard to say that he’s a very good officer, but as drunken a dog as ever lived, hah hah! Uh-oh!” Beauchamp sobred quickly and put on a stern face as they rode deeper into the encampment, making a great display of pointing things out to Lewrie and Westcott.

There was a rider approaching with a pack of hounds scouting at his mount’s flanks and rear, a grim-visaged fellow wearing an un-adorned bicorne hat and a long-skirted dark grey coat, with only a gilt-edged belt at his waist, and a sword upon his left hip, to denote him as an officer of some kind.

Lt. Beauchamp doffed his hat to the fellow, and Lewrie thought it a good idea to do the same, and throw in a “Good morning to you, sir” for good measure, which earned him a scowl and a brisk nod of his head, which, admittedly, gave Lewrie a faint chill. The man was thin-lipped, haughty, his eyes cold and contempuous beneath a set of full brows, and that nose! It was a prominent hawk’s beak.

“Who was that?” Lewrie asked, turning to look astern from his saddle once they had passed.

“That was Sir Arthur Wellesley, sir,” Lt. Beauchamp said with a sigh of relief that he had escaped the Presence without a tongue-lashing for idling about, far from his battalion lines, and playing tour guide to a pair of idle sailors.

“A stern damned fellow,” Lt. Westcott commented in a low voice.

“Oh, indeed, sirs,” Beauchamp agreed with a shiver.

“He didn’t look particularly happy to see us,” Lewrie said.

“Well, we are taking a tour, sir,” Westcott said.

“It may be that he expected that General Burrard had come into the bay, and that you were part of the convoy escort, sir,” Beauchamp dared speculate. “That’s where he was riding, to the river mouth, to see if Burrard had arrived.”

“Well, no wonder he gave us the cold-eye,” Lewrie said. “In his place, I’d’ve stuck my tongue out at us, too.”

That tongue-in-cheek statement gave the young Army officer such a pause that he burst out laughing, amazed that a senior officer of a high rank could be so droll.

“What about Marshal Junot and the rest of his hundred thousand Frogs, though, Mister Beauchamp?” Lewrie asked, using the naval parlance. “When and if General Burrard arrives, you’ll have how many men against all of Junot’s?”

“Oh, about sixteen thousand British, two thousand Portuguese, altogether, sir,” Beauchamp told him, looking off to the far distance to do his sums in his head, “but, we’ve information that the bulk of Marshal Junot’s forces are still far South, round Lisbon and Torres Vedras … just miles away! We would have been much nearer to Torres Vedras ourselves, but for the word of General Burrard’s arrival here in Maceira Bay. The General marched us over to the coast to cover the landings, pick up the re-enforcements and more guns and cavalry, before resuming our march on Lisbon.”

“General Sir Hew Dalrymple’s coming, too,” Lewrie said with a scowl of dis-approval. “He’s to take supreme command over Wellesley and Burrard, God help you. He’s known as the Dowager.”

“That’s not good, either, I may take it, sir?” Beauchamp said with a visible wince.

“Not good at all, sir,” Lewrie gloomily told him.

They were in the middle of the British lines by then, surrounded by tents, and soldiers in all ma

Lewrie looked South to scan the prospects, taking in the plain that stretched from Óbidos and Roliça, and the line of hills that lay beyond, to the Sou’east.

“What’s beyond those hills?” he asked, pulling his telescope from a side pocket of his coat for a better look.

“Some scattered villages and hamlets, sir,” Lt. Beauchamp told him, squinting to recall them all. “There’s a Toledo, a Porto Novo on the coast, a wee place called Fentanell, and the village of Vimeiro. Some cavalry videttes have scouted down yonder, and I heard that it’s pretty broken country, and that the road’s horrid. But then, every road we’ve seen so far has been horrid. It’s getting on for tea time. Might you gentlemen care to partake at my regimental mess?”

“Thankee, no, Mister Beauchamp,” Lewrie said, shaking his head as he lowered his telescope, “but I think that Mister Westcott and I will return to our ship. We might have to shift Sapphire out of the way of the arriving convoy and its escort. I’m grateful for your taking the time to show us round.”