Flashman's Escape (19 page)

Chapter 19

With forged papers in the name of the engineer Lieutenant Moreau, I joined the escort that afternoon. There was a knot of mounted officers at the head of the column and I reported to their commander, a Major Lagarde. He looked a capable character, grey haired but his back was ramrod straight with the bearing of a soldier. He accepted my orders and, having noted the signature at the bottom, he simply invited me to join their group. I fell in with some of the other lieutenants behind and discretely examined my new companions.

Marmont had been ordered to send a draft of three hundred men to France and he must have searched for men who would be least useful in future combat. Examining the group of officers and the first section of men, I could see plenty of grey beards. Quite a number had been wounded too; I counted five men wearing eye patches marching in the first section and amongst the officers two had arms missing. I explained to my new companions that I was an engineer and was expecting to be ordered to join the
Grande Armée
going to
Russia when I got back to France. Many of the old hands looked at me with sympathy.

“You don’t know cold until you have been east of Berlin,” grumbled one grizzled captain. “Tears turn to ice in your eyes and the cold air freezes your lungs.”

“But,” objected the only young officer in the group, “the
Grande Armée
is marching in the summer; they will be back before the winter, once they have taught the Russians a lesson.”

The grizzled captain turned to me and nodded towards the young man. “Jerome’s uncle is a general who has pulled strings to get the lad on his staff.” He looked at the young man. “I hope your uncle has more sense than you and prepares for winter. You can always take things off but you cannot put them on if you do not have them.” He turned back to me. “Take my advice, lad, and take the warmest clothes you can find to Russia, whenever you travel.” Having been to Russia myself a few years previously I knew all too well that he was right, not that I could admit it then.

The junior officers chatted for the rest of the afternoon, mostly about what they were looking forward to in France, and I joined in. Major Lagarde was a dour, silent man, but he knew his business. He seemed to be constantly scanning the horizon and had a group of riders scouting ahead and on our flanks. He was clearly determined to bring as many of his men through the partisan territory as he could. By evening his scouts had found a plateau of ground on which to camp. The wagons were gathered together, perimeter fires set around the camp to illuminate anyone approaching, and the cannon, loaded with canister, were placed at intervals. Guards were set with a full fifty sentries at any one time. Many of the men might have been old, but they were also practised veterans and set up the camp with ease. I realised that this convoy would not be an easy nut for the partisans to crack as Lagarde was determined that they would put up stiff resistance. I pulled out my glass and studied the surrounding terrain but could see no obvious route to attack. Once the camp had been alerted there was little cover from the French volleys that would be poured into any assault.

I felt confident that there would be no partisan ambush that night but I still needed to find Grant if he was to give me protection when the partisans did appear. No one had mentioned his existence all afternoon. It was only as I walked with Lieutenant Jerome through the wagons that evening that I saw that one in the middle had four sentries around it.

“Are we carrying treasure back to France?” I asked confidentially, gesturing at the guards.

“No,” replied Jerome, glancing furtively about him. “We are not supposed to know, but it is a spy. A British spy that we are taking back to France for interrogation.”

I did not sleep well that night. Despite Lagarde’s precautions, every screech from an owl or bark from a fox had me wondering if it was some partisan signal. As the sun rose next morning and we prepared to get underway again, I desperately hoped that somehow the partisans had managed to spirit Grant away without his guards raising the alarm. But when I looked, the sentries around his wagon were alive and checking on their prisoner.

We set off again in what was to become a regular routine. But that morning I noticed that Lagarde rode down the column and when he reached Grant’s wagon he dismounted and went inside. He was with Grant for about an hour and when he rode to the front of the column to re-join us, he looked a troubled man. Over the next few days Lagarde spent several hours with Grant, as did some of his captains, but they kept their own counsel and none of the more junior lieutenants knew what was discussed.

We had passed through Valladolid and were on our way to Burgos when Jerome rode up alongside me one morning looking very pleased with himself. If there is one person you can rely on to tell you a secret, it is someone who should not know it in the first place. They are always desperate to prove that they are in the circle of knowledge.

“Moreau,” Jerome whispered. “I have news.”

“What is it?”

“The spy in the cart is a British officer called Grant.”

“So?” I asked.

“You have not heard of him? He is a famous British officer who has often been seen watching our positions. They say he knew more about where our army was than the marshal himself.”

“Pah, he probably just had a good guide,” I cried dismissively. I was irritated to know that Grant had acquired such an illustrious reputation.

“But you don’t understand. He is a British officer and he was captured wearing his British uniform, so he is not a spy.”

“Why does that matter?” I asked, not wanting to appear too knowledgeable on the difference between spies and officers.

“He is being taken to Paris, to the minister of war, for interrogation.” Jerome looked around him to check we were not being overheard. “You know what that means? It is torture for him but he is a prisoner of war. If the British find out, they might start torturing our prisoners of war. Major Lagarde says it is a dishonourable way to behave.”

“Well, I don’t see what he can do about it… unless he is willing to let this Grant escape.” For a brief moment the thought that the French would do my job for me filled me with hope, but it was soon dashed.

“He can’t do that. Some police from the ministry are waiting to collect the prisoner in Bayonne. The major would be arrested if he was found to have deliberately released him. But all the senior officers are upset about it; they say that they want nothing to do with the torture of a brave man.”

The probability was that Grant would refuse to escape anyway if they offered him the chance, I thought. Even the partisans would have to carry him away by force, but with two thousand dollars in gold at stake, they would not hesitate to do that. But there was precious little sign of any partisan rescue. Each night we either camped in a town or city with a French garrison or on a carefully selected site as the first night. We had not even seen a partisan, never mind been attacked. In fact we had seen very few Spanish in our travels, as word of our march seemed to travel faster in the local community than our scouts. Whenever we reached a village it was abandoned, the inhabitants hiding with food supplies and anything else of value.

If I was in any doubt of the fear and intimidation that the French inflicted on the Spanish population, I was reminded the day when we reached Burgos. As we marched through the centre of the city I looked up at the massive cathedral with its multitude of turrets and towers. It was a beautiful Gothic building, but the grisly sight above the main entrance was the thing that attracted my attention. A long beam had been fixed above the cathedral door and nailed to it were a dozen round blobs. When we got closer I realised that they were human heads. Visitors to the cathedral would look fearfully up at them and cross themselves as they hurried under this gruesome portal. We found out later that the heads belonged to captured partisans. The local commander, a fanatical Bonapartist called General Hugo, had the heads removed after his prisoners had been killed and nailed to the beam. In France all church property had been confiscated during the revolution and the general had no time for religion. He particularly hated the Spanish church as he rightly suspected that it helped partisan groups.

We found more of General Hugo’s handiwork on the outskirts of the city where the bodies of forty men were dangling from a huge gallows.

“The general has promised me that we will not be attacked in the vicinity of Burgos,” stated Lagarde with a hint of distaste as we rode past this spectacle. “He claims he has killed all the partisans and exacts reprisals if any of his men are attacked.”

“Most of these are too old to be partisans,” the grizzled veteran claimed of men little older than himself. But he was right, many were grey bearded; although examining closely I saw two young boys also suspended from the ropes. The officers I was with fell silent as they rode past. They must have experienced, and probably taken part in, atrocities of their own to subdue the Spanish population. But they took no joy from it. The rumours we had heard about General Hugo indicated that he was a man who relished his work. Whatever they had done before, I sensed that these proud French soldiers did not approve of the unnecessary killing of old men and young boys.

While the reluctance of the partisans to attack the column was understandable, it did not help me. We were soon two weeks into the journey and just a few days away from the French border. Grant always had four sentries guarding his wagon, and even if I could get inside and break him free from his shackles, the great booby would probably raise the alarm himself. I had to do something or I would end up in France and conscripted to the Russian campaign for real. It was time to make a break and return to the British lines. If I happened across partisans on the way, I would try to persuade them to attack the column. But unless they were a large group, they would stand little chance against Lagarde’s careful preparations and his elderly, but competent, soldiers.

Escaping the column turned out to be far simpler than I expected. The next day we were marching through a partly wooded valley. The column’s line of march stayed in the clear pasture and mounted officers were warned to stay away from the trees where we could be ambushed. Other officers were exercising their mounts by riding them up and down the column and I did the same. The difference was that I allowed my horse to ride slightly higher up the slope. When I got to the point where a finger of woodland scrub extended down in the valley I looked about. No other mounted officers were near and the nearest marching troops were a good distance away. I drew one of my pistols from my pocket and cocked it. I took a deep breath and then gave a shout of alarm. I pointed my pistol into the nearby woodland and fired. Several men shouted from the valley below, asking what it was, but I did not answer. I dropped my pistol back into my pocket and, drawing my sword, I charged into the woodland after my unseen prey.

You might think it was foolish to draw attention to my departure like that, but I knew my man. Lagarde was too experienced to allow his officers to charge off unsupported into woods that could be packed with partisans. He had given me orders to stay with the column, and if I was too headstrong to obey them then that was my lookout. I heard the shouting of orders to stand to, but there was no pursuit as my horse cantered into the trees. I got to the top of the slope and slowed to a walk, listening for any sign of action by the column. There was nothing, just the distant tramp of marching feet and a squealing cart wheel.

I wanted to be certain that the whole column was continuing without me; the last thing I needed was some chump like Jerome coming to find me. So when I came to a small escarpment that gave a view of the valley a quarter of a mile ahead of where I escaped, I settled down to wait. With my mount tied to some trees behind I crept forward with my telescope and lay on top of the little cliff. In a few minutes the first section of marching men appeared with the cannon and wagons following on behind. I could see several of the officers, including Jerome, riding along the column and scanning the hillside with their telescopes. I shrank back a little further and checked that the sun would not reflect off my glass. Soon the sixth wagon appeared, the one that I knew Grant was in.

“You poor, stupid bastard,” I murmured to myself as I watched him go by. I did not feel any guilt. The idea of getting him away from the French had been mad from the start, even if Grant had been willing to co-operate. It was the damn partisans who had let him down, I reflected. We were constantly hearing of how they raided French supply trains, but they had stayed well clear of this column despite the two-thousand-dollar reward.

Thought of the partisans reminded me of the need to change my uniform. I took out the British coat from where it was pushed at the bottom of my saddlebag and slipped off the French uniform. I swapped the contents of the pockets and pulled on the familiar red coat. I pushed the blue coat back into the saddlebag and prepared to remount. I had one foot in the stirrup when I felt the cold metal circle of a gun barrel press into the back of my neck.