Rifles - Mark Urban [122]
Andrew Barnard had taken over as the commander of the 1st/95th. He was thirsting for the step to colonel, but this fact, far from distracting him from the command of the battalion, made him bring to it a drive and energy that had been conspicuously lacking under Cameron. Barnard also did his best to restore harmony, dispensing, for example, with Kincaid’s services as adjudant. The new commanding officer was searching for any opportunity to demonstrate his skills, an impulse that would launch the Rifles into their last great adventure of the Peninsular War.
TWENTY
Vitoria
May–June 1813
The scene which greeted the marchers on 23 May 1813 was familiar enough. It was the same bit of godforsaken ridge overlooking the Huebra where they had reached their lowest ebb in the driving rain the previous November. It was very different now, though. The sun was shining and every man’s countenance had that well-fed look. ‘We encamped today in a most heavenly May morning with a very luxuriant vegetation all around on the very identical spot where the Light Division passed the dreary dismal night of 17th November last,’ wrote one officer.
Many of the riflemen felt glad to be campaigning again. There would be privations of course, but the months on the Beira frontier had dragged terribly. They did not see the point in sitting about while the job of kicking Johnny François out of Spain remained to be done. They trusted their luck in battle and hoped that the coming campaign would deliver plenty of plunder as well as some hard fighting.
The Light Division made its way down the slope to the Huebra ford, a long snake of marching men that stretched for a mile. At the rear were dozens of mules and other pack animals, the Portuguese boys who looked after the officers’ personal beasts of burden, and the ‘wives’ who had been acquired that winter. Riding at the head of the 43rd, Lieutenant Colonel William Napier, refreshed by a leave in London, found it hard to believe that the campaign of 1813 would see the French thrown out of Spain. They had already been trying for years and there were plenty of naysayers in England who felt that Wellington had been too cautious a general. Napier turned to one of his friends in the 95th and said, ‘Well, here we go again. We shall go so far and then have our arses kicked and come back again.’
Wellington’s successes had been such, though, that the ministry had poured additional troops into his army. The war band marching forward that May consisted of 81,000 troops, over 52,000 of whom were British, the remainder Portuguese.
Once this force was striking out to the north-east, heading for the French defensive line on the Duero, the Rifles were able to catch sight of the various battalions who were old campaigners and those who were the Johnny Newcomes. The 95th had become soldiers for whom personal appearance or regulation dress counted far less than prowess in combat. They were very struck, therefore, to see the two smart brigades of cavalry sent out to Wellington shortly before the campaign: one of hussars, three fine regiments of more than five hundred sabres each, the men resplendent in their pelisses and tall hats; the other new brigade of heavy Household Cavalry. The hussars had not seen any action since early 1809, when they had covered the retreat to Corunna skilfully. As for the Blues and Life Guards of the Household Cavalry, they had not campaigned for fifteen years. The contempt of the old sweats for these parade-ground soldiers showed itself in Leach’s private journal:
We cannot allow these gentry who have during the last five years been luxuriating in London to come under the head of ‘old Peninsular soldiers’ nor can we either consider the Dandy Hussar Regiments just arrived from campaigning at Brighton, Hampton