Rifles - Mark Urban [112]
Marching down towards the border, they went in long stages in order to stay ahead of the French; they were frequently drenched by chilly autumn downpours and generally grumbled at their reversal of fortunes. The talk after the order ‘March at Ease’ often took a darker tone on this journey, as one Light Division officer vividly described in a letter:
The conversation among the men is interspersed with the most horrid oaths declaring what they will do with the fellow they lay hands on. What they intend to get in plunder, hoping they will stand a chance that they may split two at once. Then someone more expert at low wit than his companions draws a ludicrous picture of a Frenchman with a bayonet stuck in him or something of the kind … as they grow tired they begin to swear at the country and the inhabitants. As they get more so, at soldiering and commissaries and when they are nearly exhausted there is little said except now and then a faint dispute about the distance &c. But when they arrive, if they can get wine, all their troubles are instantly forgotten and songs and hoarse laughs resound through the place.
As the marches continued into November, the supply of booze – that essential lubricant for Wellington’s Army – began to break down, along with that of all other rations. The commissaries simply could not cope with the sudden reappearance of the main Army in the impoverished borderlands, for they had been buying much locally in more prosperous parts of Spain during the late campaigns. The hard marching had taken its toll in every sense. Lieutenant George Simmons, for example, had been obliged to put his sick brother Joseph on his pack mule and, having bought no new horse to replace the one lost in July, was himself walking. He had worn through the bottoms of his shoes, and as for many of his riflemen, each squelch into the mire brought his bare sole into contact with muddy road. By 16 November, matters were assuming a desperate aspect, Simmons noting in his journal: ‘Most of us walking barefooted, my shoes having no bottoms, as well as my friends’; my legs and feet much frost-bitten; could hardly crawl.’
It was under these trying conditions that the Craufurd system proved itself once again: its Standing Orders provided a means of regulating the marches and determining what to do with men who couldn’t keep up. For Wellington’s Army had begun to disintegrate: the failure to issue rations had combined with the weather and long marches, meaning that around five thousand British and Portuguese soldiers, straggling behind the divisions, were listed as missing. The Light Division remained one of the least affected by this phenomenon, which in others saw one in six or one in seven soldiers going absent without leave. The French picked up about two thousand of these men, while others eventually returned to their colours.
The French were still there, nipping at their bloody heels. Even a British Army in what the soldiers of the previous generation would have called a ‘flight forward’ could not outstrip the advanced guard of a French Army, so practised were Napoleon’s men in the business of marching, living off the land and pursuing an advantage.
On 17 November, the French caught up, falling upon the British rearguard (formed of course by the Light Division), as the Army made its way across the foaming waters of the Huebra at a place called San Munoz. Crossing a difficult obstacle like this river inevitably caused a blockage. ‘The road was covered with carcasses of all descriptions, and at every deep slough we found horses, mules, donkeys and bullocks mingled together, some dead, others dying, all mingled with baggage,’ wrote Simmons. Taking advantage of the exhaustion and congestion that morning, advanced French patrols of dragoons attacked the British waiting in the oak forests to cross the river.
The 95th’s baggage train fell into French hands at one point, a company of Rifles attacking through the trees to drive off the plundering dragoons. General Sir