Rifles - Mark Urban [139]
Among the rank and file, these arrangements went rather further. A roaring contraband trade grew up, with deals being done almost nightly at the outposts: the French bought cheap but delicious brandy on behalf of les Goddams whereas the riflemen provided food and tobacco for Johnny. ‘We frequently went into each other’s picket houses,’ Costello recollected. ‘This state of things at our outposts was too subversive of discipline to be tolerated by those in command, and it was only done on the sly, upon a reliance of mutual honour.’ In the soldiers’ case, this code of behaviour meant keeping the officers in the dark, and Costello himself cheerfully admitted to deceiving Gairdner on these occasions.
Sergeant Robert Fairfoot was able to join in these barters because Costello had managed to stop him deserting. Taking some of his Vitoria windfall, Costello gave Fairfoot £31 to replace the stolen pay. Such were the bonds between old comrades.
Arcangues, just behind the Bassussarry ridge, was turned into a kind of strongpoint during the last week of November and first of December. The chateau, church and surrounding walled enclosures had been barricaded and put into a state of defence by the 43rd and 95th. The officers made their mess in the chateau, where their host was happy to sell them many a fine bottle from the cellars.
Although the French footslogger anticipated the end of the Napoleonic system, there were still plenty, from Marshal Soult downwards, who insisted that they should do their duty in defending the sacred soil of their country. To this end, he was determined to launch an offensive against the new British lines, and it began on 9 December. An attack by General Clausel, leading two divisions onto the Bassussarry ridge and Arcangues, was ordered for the next day.
The night before the French attack there had been heavy, driving rain. It was still coming down early the following morning as the French columns were mustered and moved forwards. Everything was slowing down in the mud, particularly the artillery, which, in places, was sinking up to its axles on the tracks. The French general ordered his men to press on in any case and a first wave of skirmishers was within a hundred yards of the British pickets by 9 a.m.
On the ridge some of the mounted Light Division staff officers were trotting along with their brigadiers. The fighting elsewhere the previous day made them alive to the possibility of an attack and their battalions had been stood to arms in the valley behind them at dawn, but the day was wearing on and nothing seemed imminent. Both brigadiers – Kempt and Colborne – stood their men down. The formed regiments began returning to their billets, the pickets remaining on the ridge, hunched under their coats, trying to stay dry. Colborne’s brigade major, Smith, and the divisional staff officer, Charlie Beckwith (another Rifles officer, and nephew of Colonel Sidney Beckwith), were both worried, though. They could see parties of Frenchmen moving about in the woods to their front. ‘The enemy are going to attack us,’ said Smith. Colborne replied, ‘No, they are only going to resume their ordinary posts in our front.’ Smith became agitated: ‘I prayed him to allow me to order my Brigade under arms. At last he consented.’
Some Frenchers, led by officers, walked right up to some pickets of the 43rd: ‘The French soldiers