Rifles - Mark Urban [50]
Wellington’s Army had performed very well in a general action, the first of its kind since Talavera more than a year before. But whereas the losses at Talavera had been great, this was a more emphatic victory. British officers took pride in throwing back regiments that were veterans of France’s fabled triumphs in Italy or central Europe: the fields of Lodi, Marengo and Austerlitz where Napoleon had made his reputation. A company commander of the 95th walked about in the dusk of that September day gathering buttons from the coats of the French dead strewn across the hillside so that he might ascertain their regiments and therefore their pedigree. He was perfectly satisfied with what he found, writing home, ‘The 26th, 66th and 82nd are Bridge of Lodi boys, but of the heights of Busaco I daresay they will be less proud.’
EIGHT
The Corporal’s Stripes
September 1810–February 1811
It took from 28 September to 10 October for the Rifles to march down through the hilly Portuguese countryside to a little town called Arruda. It was a tortuous journey, attended by the usual hardships and more. Men with sore feet and empty bellies were drenched by daily downpours, one officer noting on the 8th, ‘This day’s march was about as miserable as I wish to see. Incessant rain all day. We got into a rascally hovel which we contrived to set fire to but soon put it out again.’
During the two-month withdrawal from the frontier, Wellington’s soldiers had become used to treating Portuguese property recklessly. It was their commander’s intention to fight in the style of Fabius, laying waste to the Portuguese hinterland so that the French would be unable to find food, or indeed people. Orders had been issued by the Portuguese authorities for the evacuation of all inhabitants, if necessary by force, from the path of Masséna’s army. Wellington’s rearguard daily raided abandoned houses for any food they could find, or indeed for firewood.
When they got to Arruda, the 95th took up a bivouac on a ridge overlooking the town. There they discovered one of the great secrets of the Napoleonic wars: that Wellington had ordered the construction of lines of fortifications stretching twenty-nine miles from the Atlantic coast in the west, in an arc through the hill country of the Peninsula behind Lisbon, to the River Tagus in the east. Arruda was close to the eastern end of this defence, being in a sector where there were twenty-three redoubts armed with ninety-six cannon. The whole programme, involving construction of scores of strongpoints, diversion of streams, emplacement of cannon and drilling of militia, had taken more than one year to accomplish, with a bill of £100,000 for the labour alone, and yet somehow it had remained unknown to the French.
The 95th’s task in this scheme was not to man some fort, a task that had been assigned to third-rate troops of the Portuguese militia. The Rifles would remain part of the reserve that would rush to any threatened point and also patrol no man’s land in this eastern part of the lines, so as to prevent French penetrations – be they for foraging or surprise attacks.
After such a miserable march, Captain O’Hare’s pleasure at finding Second Lieutenant George Simmons in charge of a roaring fire and a laid table can easily be imagined. Simmons had come up from Lisbon with a party of convalescents and quickly commandeered a suitable little house for the officers of his 3rd Company.
It took no time for natural scavengers such as the men of the 95th to start investigating the place in front of their position. ‘Never was a town more completely deserted than Arruda,’ one officer remarked. ‘The inhabitants, dreading the approach of the French,