The Fields of Death (32 page)
Read The Fields of Death Online
Authors: Simon Scarrow
‘Napoleon!’ Joseph crouched down beside him, supporting his shoulder. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘My stomach . . .’ Napoleon hissed through clenched teeth. ‘Christ, it hurts.’
His brother glanced up, but could see no one in the grounds around them. The imperial staff were keeping a discreet distance from their Emperor and the Spanish King.
‘I’ll get help,’ Joseph said, then looked down at his brother anxiously.
Napoleon nodded, gritting his teeth as he fought off another wave of burning agony from low down in his abdomen. ‘Go.’
He slumped back on to his elbows as Joseph hurried off in search of assistance. The pain in his stomach felt as if a heated iron bar had been pressed into his groin. It was not the first time that he had experienced the pain. Over the last year it had struck him down on several occasions - usually when he was exhausted by the demands placed on him by the endless calls on his time and strength.
‘What is wrong with me?’ he growled bitterly. Ten years before he could have endured such strains on his constitution without any complaint when he had campaigned in Italy. He had marched, eaten and slept in the open with his soldiers, even in the depths of winter. Many times they had forsaken sleep for days as they dashed to confront yet another Austrian army.
Napoleon closed his eyes and sank down on to the path, curling slightly on his side. ‘So many battles,’ he murmured wearily. ‘I am growing old.’
His heart felt heavy and he wondered at the process by which time had laid the years upon him so subtly that he had not really noticed their effects until recently. In the last two years he had grown heavy, fat even, and now there was this pain in his stomach. With a stab of fear Napoleon wondered if this was how his life might end, struck down by a common malady. He had always imagined he was most likely to die on the battlefield, like Desaix or Lannes. A death with some dignity. The thought of dying in agony from some ignoble sickness, before his life’s work was complete, terrified him.
He heard the sound of boots crunching on the gravel of a nearby path and blinked his eyes open.
‘This way!’ Joseph yelled. ‘Quickly, now.’
Napoleon rolled slowly on to his back and waited a moment before Joseph knelt beside him, breathing hard and looking anxious. Other men appeared around him.
‘Take me inside,’ Napoleon commanded.
‘I’ve sent for the doctor,’ Joseph panted. ‘He’s coming directly.’
‘Take me into the house,’ Napoleon replied firmly. ‘I don’t want to be seen lying out here like an invalid. Get me inside.’
For a moment Joseph looked as if he might protest; then he nodded. He rose up and turned to the servants he had fetched from the house. ‘Pick his majesty up. Gently as you can. Take him to the couch in his study.’
Napoleon felt their arms slip beneath his shoulders and legs and a moment later he was carefully hoisted off the ground. He grimaced. ‘Does the Empress know?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then don’t tell her. No need to cause her any concern. Let her enjoy the day.’
Joseph nodded.
‘Besides, I don’t want her to see me like this. Weak. If word of this got back to the Austrian court . . .’
‘I understand.’
The little party skirted round some neatly clipped bushes to keep out of sight of the Empress and her guests and made their way through the long glazed doors into Napoleon’s private study. Once he had been placed on the couch he dismissed all the others except Joseph as they waited for his personal surgeon to arrive.
‘Where the hell is he?’ Napoleon groaned.
‘He went for a ride. I’ve sent one of your staff officers after him.’
‘Damn the man.’
Joseph pulled up a small chair and sat beside his brother, and hesitantly patted his shoulder. ‘You need to rest. You look exhausted.’
‘I am exhausted.’ Napoleon breathed deeply, fighting the pain as it began to recede, very slowly. ‘But there’s so much for me to do. All the time.’
‘Indeed.’ Joseph nodded. ‘But you cannot do it all. No man can.’
‘No ordinary man.’
‘Ordinary or extraordinary, you are still just a man,’ Joseph countered. ‘And you must look after yourself. You have a duty to your people, and your family. They need you, Napoleon. Now more than ever.’
Napoleon looked up at his brother with a calculating expression. ‘And I need you, more than ever. In Spain.’
The door to the study opened and the imperial surgeon came hurrying in, flushed from his ride. Joseph rose up and stood aside for him.
‘What happened to his majesty?’
‘I can speak for myself,’ Napoleon grumbled, easing himself up. ‘It’s my stomach.’
‘Again?’ The surgeon felt for his pulse, and while he counted he glanced over his Emperor. ‘Sire, you have not been heeding my advice. You need a rest. We have spoken of this. You must rest, before you work yourself into the grave.’
Napoleon frowned and glanced towards his brother and sniffed. ‘Doctors! Nothing but a pestilence.’
Joseph forced a smile, and Napoleon beckoned to him to come closer, suddenly taking his hand as Joseph reached the couch.
‘Swear to me that you’ll stay in Spain!’
‘What?’ Joseph tried to back away, but his brother’s grip was too tight.
‘Swear to me, now, that you will keep the crown. Swear to me!’ Napoleon stared intently at his brother. ‘I need your answer.’
Joseph lowered his head, and then nodded. ‘I will not give up the throne. There. You have my word.’
Napoleon breathed deeply.‘I thank you. And you have my word that I will do all that I can to help you defeat Wellington. You’ll see. A year from now, the British army will be broken. Besides, I doubt that the rest of Europe will care much about our affairs in Spain by then.’
‘Why not?’
Napoleon gave his brother’s hand a squeeze and then released it. ‘All in good time. Now, I must thank you, Joseph, and ask you to leave, so that I might rest.’
‘Hmph.’ The doctor snorted. ‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’
Joseph nodded and turned towards the door. Napoleon watched him leave, and then smiled contentedly to himself. As long as a Bonaparte remained on the throne in Madrid, then he could proceed with other plans. Perhaps the greatest plan of them all.
Chapter 20
Arthur
Albuera, 21 May 1811
Arthur reined his horse in as he and his small escort reached the top of the ridge above the town. Even though General Beresford and his army had fought their battle five days ago, the ground was still covered with the bodies of the dead. The camp followers of both sides, as well as the local peasants, had stripped most of the corpses of anything of value and now the battlefield was abandoned to a handful of allied patrols, and the predations of carrion, wild dogs and buzzing swarms of flies.
Somerset walked his mount forward, instinctively raising the back of his gloved hand towards his nose as the stench of corruption struck him. ‘Good God, what a sight,’ he muttered. ‘What a bloodbath.’
Arthur nodded distractedly. His eyes were covering the salient features of the battlefield as he tried to make sense of the reports he had received of the encounter. General Beresford had been sent south with a third of the army to take the fortress of Badajoz while Arthur and the main army set about the defences of Ciudad Rodrigo. The antique artillery of the nearby town of Elvas had been stripped to supply Beresford with a siege train but it had made little impression on French defences. Then news came that Marshal Soult was marching to relieve the garrison. Beresford had been obliged to abandon the siege and turn to face the threat. Outnumbered, he had chosen to fight a defensive battle of the kind Arthur had found so effective on previous occasions.
Only this time the French had succeeded in turning the allied flank. In the ensuing confusion battalion after battalion had been thrown into the fight piecemeal. It had been a decidedly chaotic and desperate affair and only the raw courage and professionalism of the common soldiers had prevented disaster. Even so, Beresford had suffered grievous losses, nearly five thousand men, most of whom had been British.
Arthur felt numbed by the sight that lay before him. Across the length of the ridge that had formed Beresford’s right flank, the trampled grass and rough heather was covered with the mottled flesh of the dead, still half clad in uniform after the looters had sated their appetite for the bloody harvest of the battlefield. He clicked his tongue and walked his horse on towards the point where the heaviest fighting had occurred. Here the bodies were heaped in places, possibly where some of the British battalions had been caught by the enemy’s lancers before they could form square. Small groups of men had clustered together to try to fight off the lancers before they were overwhelmed and cut down. Elsewhere, two long lines of men lay where they had been blasted by muskets and cannon. Arthur estimated that the best part of a battalion lay dead on the ground. Men who had held firm, steadily firing and reloading even as their comrades had been shot down either side of them, until they too were hit. Arthur regarded the scene with a great sadness weighing on his heart, but pride in these men too. They had served their country with unshakable dedication, and paid the supreme price.
The French had suffered grievously in turn, and small piles and rough lines of blue-coated bodies marked their position on the battlefield. Soult’s losses were even greater than Beresford’s, and it was the French marshal who had first baulked at the carnage being wrought in the thick banks of powder smoke drifting across the ridge. Soult had called off the attack and retreated back towards Madrid.
‘And Beresford calls this a victory?’ Somerset mused as he stared round the battlefield.
‘It is a victory of sorts. He fought off Soult and forced the French to give up their attempt to relieve Badajoz. However,’ Arthur paused and gestured towards the bodies littering the surrounding area,‘another such victory would ruin us.’
Beresford’s army was camped a short distance outside Elvas. The general had fallen back beyond Badajoz to give his men time to recover from their ordeal at Albuera. Only a token force remained outside Badajoz to continue the siege, digging a handful of approach trenches. The motley collection of cannon fired occasional shots at the sturdy defences of San Cristobal, the outlying fort that dominated Badajoz from the high ground on the far side of the Guadiana river. A distant tricolour rippled in lazy defiance above the walls of the fort.
Of all the forts that guarded the routes leading from Portugal into Spain, Badajoz was the most formidable by some margin, Arthur reflected as he rode past. Protected on two sides by the wide Guadiana and one of its tributaries, the city was surrounded by a massive curtain wall, with powerful bastions at regular intervals. On a rock, in one corner of the city, the citadel was defended by yet another tough wall. The choice facing the British was whether to reduce San Cristobal and then use that as a platform to bombard the city, or to attempt to breach the walls from the other side, and then assault the defences. Either would be a costly affair. Casting his eye over the fort across the river, Arthur considered that it was all but impregnable and decided that he must instruct Beresford to abandon his designs on San Cristobal and concentrate his efforts directly on Badajoz.
The subdued spirits of the men of Beresford’s column were readily apparent. The pickets covering the approaches to the camp made little effort to patrol their ground, but sat in the shade, muskets leaning against the trunks of the nearest tree. Further on, the tents and shelters sprawled across the rolling hills in makeshift clusters, rather than the neat lines that Arthur insisted on. The men, stripped down to shirtsleeves, patched trousers and felt caps, were resting in small groups as they talked quietly or slept. The lively ambience of a normal camp was absent.
As some of the men spied the new arrivals a handful stood up.
‘Why, it’s Nosey!’ a voice cried out.‘It’s Nosey! He’s ’ere! Hurrah for old Nosey!’
Scores more of the men rose to their feet and most of them cheered. Others, Arthur noted sadly, did nothing but stare as their commander in chief and his escort rode through the camp.
Arthur sensed Somerset stiffening by his side. The aide cleared his throat. ‘Er, want me to shut them up, my lord?’
‘No. It’s not necessary. If it pleases them, then it serves my purpose, for the present.’
‘Yes, sir.’
They rode on through the camp, accompanied by a ripple of cheers so that by the time they reached the farmhouse that served as Beresford’s headquarters several officers had stirred to witness his approach. Arthur’s heart sank a little further as he saw that some still wore the bloodied and dirty uniforms they had on the day of the battle. None the less, they made an effort to stand to attention as he rode up and dismounted, handing the reins over to one of Beresford’s grooms.
‘Good day, gentlemen.’ Arthur touched the brim of his hat and the officers saluted in return. There was a brief silence as Arthur glanced round, and then he continued in a neutral tone. ‘It would seem to me that you could use a change of clothes, and in some cases a shave, gentlemen. Please see to it before I have the honour of dining with you tonight.’Arthur nodded towards a face he recognised.‘Major Templeton, where is General Beresford?’
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