The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware (21 page)

‘And during this month or so?'

‘Doubtless I could make my way into Spain and there lie low. But since I must spend it in enemy-held territory, 'twould be unpatriotic of me not to take the opportunity of serving your lordship; so I'll go to Masséna's headquarters.'

‘Ah! There speaks the man I had supposed you to be.' Wellington stood up and patted Roger on the shoulder. ‘It remains then only for us to decide how you can be removed from here.'

‘This afternoon, Lady Mary Ware suggested that I
should be smuggled out in a big hamper; although, of course, knowing nothing of my secret activities, she could think of no place to which I could then be taken.'

After a moment's thought Wellington said, ‘I like it not. The agents watching the house might suspect you to be in the hamper. You are tall to pass as a woman, but could do so in darkness. And, if you left the Embassy on my arm, no policeman would dare challenge you.'

Roger laughed. ‘I'll count it an honour, my lord, to have you as my cavalier.'

Within an hour, final arrangements had been made. Roger signed a draft on Hoare's Bank for five thousand pounds which Mr. Lessor would discount, then do his best to win over the duenna. Next day the Minister was to inform the Portuguese authorities that, during the night, Roger had left the Legation without anyone being aware of how he had done so, and send a sum of money as compensation to the
guarda
whom Mary had wounded with her parasol. Lady Stuart who, fortunately, was a tall woman, provided Roger with female attire and unearthed from the attic a long-discarded wig. Tittering, the girls helped him to pad out his chest. At nine o'clock, he took an affectionate leave of them and expressed his gratitude to the Stuarts, Lord Wellington's carriage was driven up, his mounted escort called to attention and Roger, stooping to disguise his height, left the Legation on the General's arm.

Twenty minutes later, Roger's clothes and belongings were sent after him to Wellington's headquarters. After he had changed, he spent two hours in conference with the General. Masséna, having remained for a month before the lines of Torres Vedras and decided that they were too strong to justify an assault, had retired to the town of Santarém, some twenty miles north-east of Lisbon, and his army was encamped about it. The country between had then become a no-man's-land, on which
vedettes of British cavalry occasionally had brief encounters with troops of French, seeking, generally in vain, for hidden supplies left behind by the peasantry. Owing to Wellington's scorched-earth policy, it was almost uninhabited; but, here and there, Portuguese continued to live secretly in caves and barns, as postboxes through which news of enemy movements could swiftly be transmitted to the British. On a large-scale map, the General pointed out to Roger half a dozen of these hide-outs, and gave him the password by which their occupants would know him to be a friend.

Then he said:

‘Masséna will be certain to question you about the state of things in Lisbon. Without going into details, tell him the truth. That not only has my own army been greatly reinforced during the winter months but I have also embodied, trained and armed, many thousands of Portuguese, and I am very pleased with them. The first regiments I formed participated in our clash with Masséna at Busaco. They stood up well to the assault and had good reason to be proud of themselves.

‘It will then be for Masséna to take the decision to which the starving condition of his army is driving him nearer every day. Should he decide to gamble everything on an all-out attack, I'll let him come right up to our lines, then tear him to pieces with my artillery. If, on the other hand, he elects to fall back into Spain, I want to be ready to follow him with all possible speed and hope to trounce him thoroughly in the open field.'

Having promised to do his utmost to obtain this information, Roger was provided with a horse and one of the General's A.D.C.s who would see him through the lines and accompany him for the first few miles of his journey.

Well before dawn they were outside the lines. In a village not far distant the A.D.C. took him to a half
ruined church, in the crypt of which the priest, Father Joao, had concealed himself to act as one of the intelligence post-boxes. Two miles further on, they stopped at a small wood, in the centre of which a farmer named Leandro had dug himself a hide-out for the same purpose. After a third visit, this time to a cave occupied by several men, the A.D.C. left him.

For what remained of the morning Roger rode on through the desolate countryside, and it was not until he was nearing Santarém that he encountered a troop of French Chasseurs. On his hailing them in French, they galloped up to him and he asked their officer to be taken to the Marshal Prince d'Essling. His accent being perfect, the officer had no doubts about his nationality, and sent him with a sergeant and two troopers to Masséna's headquarters.

When he arrived it was getting on well into the afternoon. In a mansion in the centre of the town, he found the Marshal and his staff about to sit down to dinner. Masséna was then fifty-five; but evidently the strain of conducting his present campaign had aged him considerably, as Roger thought he looked very much older than when he had last seen him some two years earlier. His appearance was not improved by a black eye-patch he had to wear owing to an accident while on a shoot at Fontainbleau, in which Napoleon had shot him in one eye.

He was greatly surprised to see Roger and the more so because he was in civilian clothes, as he had assumed that Roger had brought him a despatch from the Emperor; but he at once invited him to join them at dinner and, sitting next to him while eating a meagre meal, Roger gave a slightly edited account of how he came to be in Santarém.

He described how the Emperor had sent him on a mission to Davoust in north Germany, how he had been
accused of a murder that he had not committed, and his only means of getting away had been to board an American vessel that was sailing for England. He then reverted to his old story, already known to several of the officers present, about his mother having been English, although he had been born in Strasbourg; how, on her death, he had been sent to be brought up by an aunt in Hampshire until, fired by the news of the Revolution, he had returned to France to enlist and how he had since revisited England several times on Napoleon's secret business, without any-one there realising that he had become a Colonel in the French Army. His English relatives believed that he spent a great part of his time travelling in the East, so had welcomed his recent return, but to maintain that fiction he had had to spend several months there. Then, when he felt that no-one would be surprised at his going abroad again, he had secured a passage to Lisbon as the easiest way of getting back to the Continent and his master.

Told with all Roger's flair as a raconteur, the story was highly plausible, so accepted by all those present without question.

After the meal, Masséna carried him off to his office and, as soon as they were seated, asked:

‘How long were you in Lisbon?'

‘It was the best part of a month,' Roger replied, ‘before I felt that I had been there long enough for my stay to be accounted an ordinary visit; and, before leaving, I laid a false trail by taking passage in a Portuguese ship bound for Madeira.'

‘Then you had ample time to assess the present strength there of the English?'

‘I did indeed,
mon Prince
. You may be sure I kept my eyes well open.'

‘Tell me, then, all you can about them.'

Roger obliged and spent the next half-hour giving particulars
of the very considerable army Wellington had under him.

When he had done, the Marshal said, ‘Tell me now about milord Wellington. What sort of a man is he, and how do his troops regard him?'

‘He is a tall man with blue eyes and a thin, very high-bridged nose. When he speaks it is with a very slight lisp. But he is not a great talker, although he can be convivial at times. At least, he used to be. When I first met him in India, we had a mutual friend—one William Hickey—and at his house, with several others, we were wont to punish the Bordeaux pretty heavily.

‘Milord Wellington, the Emperor and myself are of the same age: all born in '69. He comes of an Irish family, or rather an English one that has long been settled in Ireland. Such families form the aristocracy there. Not one such as we had in France before the Revolution, but, I am told, similar to that in the Southern States of America. They have big houses and are boundlessly hospitable, but lack elegance, being greatly given to country pursuits. They regard the native Irish much as the Americans do their Negro slaves; and, indeed, the poor wretches are little better off.

‘The Irish milords are also, by English standards, poor. The General was the sixth child of the Earl of Mornington. The Earl's passion was music, and he squandered his small fortune giving and financing concerts. His whole family thought of little else. Milord Wellington was devoted to his violin; but not long after he entered the Army he decided that his love of playing absorbed much too much of his time, so he burned his fiddle.

‘The eldest son, Richard, now the Marquess Wellesley, was the bright child of the family. Their father died when Arthur, that is the General, was twelve, and left his widow very badly off. Richard scraped enough money
together to send Arthur to Eton, but only for about two years.'

‘Eton? What is that?' Masséna enquired.

‘It is England's most famous public school, and for many generations a large part of the nobility have been educated there. On leaving Eton, Arthur's mother took him with her to Brussels. While there, I gather, the tutoring he received was patchy and indifferent. He was then sent on his own to an academy at Angers, where little was taught except riding, fencing and dancing. But the young nobles who studied there were made free of the great houses, such as those of the Ducs de Brissac and de Praslin. It was in such society that he acquired his polish and unfailing good manners.'

‘Bah!' Masséna exclaimed, and turned to spit into a spittoon. ‘And that while youngsters like myself were leading a dog's life, half-starved and beaten, as cabin boys. But proceed.'

Roger smiled. ‘Your Highness will have even more cause to disapprove of the next few years in milord's career. At eighteen, his brother bought him a commission in the 73rd; a Highland regiment. But he did not remain in it for long. Through influence he got himself transferred from regiment to regiment, with a step up each time. He rose from Ensign to Lieutenant-Colonel in seven years, and during the whole of this time neither saw active service nor spent more than a week or two on a barrack square. He lived in Dublin, as an A.D.C. to the Lord Lieutenant and sat in the Irish Parliament.'

The frown on Masséna's sallow face deepened. ‘Such a system is iniquitous. But how, after such a poor education and those years of idleness did he ever become a successful General?'

‘It was, I think, the campaign of '94 that made him. You will recall that the English invaded the Low Countries. Milord took his regiment on that expedition.
I've no need to remind Your Highness how hopelessly incompetent as a General is their Duke of York. Ill-directed, administered by idle nitwits, constantly short of supplies and with the troops totally uncared for, the army floundered about for a while, then retreated into Holland. The winter there that year was terrible. The troops were in rags, starving and dying from intense cold.'

‘Enough! Enough! We have been suffering similar hardships here. My men are dying daily by the hundred. But not from lack of thought for them. 'Tis this accursed country and the myriad of brigands who prevent all but a trickle of supplies from reaching me. Ah, well. Go on now.'

‘It was, I am told, this disastrous campaign that led to milord Wellington's becoming what he is today. He realised that success in war depended on healthy, well-fed troops. A great part of his time is spent in ensuring that his men lack for nothing. In consequence they adore him, are always in a condition to fight well, and when called on to make an extra effort never fail him.

‘All through his youth his income was insufficient for him to support his position. In '96 his debts became so burdensome that, to escape his creditors, he went to India. There fortune favoured him. In the meantime his clever brother, Richard, had risen to a high position in the Government. In '98 he arrived in Calcutta as Governor General. It was he who fought the Mysore war against Tippoo Sahib. Wellington treated his Sepoy troops with the same fatherly care as his British regiments. Although still a junior commander he was responsible for the success of the campaign and, afterwards, won high praise for his administration of the conquered territory. There followed the Mahratta war, in which he achieved striking victories at Assaye and Argaou. Richard had already been rewarded by being raised in the peerage to Marquess Wellesley. In 1804 the General received his knighthood
and returned to England. In 1807 he commanded the troops in the successful operation against Copenhagen. In 1808 he was sent to Portugal and Your Highness will he aware of his activities while in the Peninsula.'

‘I am. Only too well. And of the new tactics he was introduced, which have so bedevilled us. Victor was the first of our Marshals to encounter them. At Talavera he twice sent his massed columns against the British line, only to be repulsed with terrible loss. Both King Joseph and Jourdan urged him to break off the battle, but he insisted on a third assault, only to meet with a shattering defeat. The fire power of those redcoats in line is devastating, and Wellington's other innovation of having his battalions form squares when about to be attacked by cavalry would break the heart of even Murat.'

Masséna then asked what Roger intended to do, to which he replied, ‘My obvious duty is to report back to the Emperor as soon as possible. But I confess, even though I speak fluent Spanish and some Portuguese, I dread the thought of attempting to make my way through the murderous brigands who infest this country.'