Whose Business is to Die Read online

  WHOSE BUSINESS IS TO DIE

  WHOSE BUSINESS

  IS TO DIE

  Adrian Goldsworthy

  Weidenfeld & Nicolson

  LONDON

  Dedication

  For Thomas Atkins Esq., past, present and future

  How stands the glass around?

  For shame, ye take no care, my boys,

  How stands the glass around?

  Let mirth and wine abound,

  The trumpets sound!

  The colours they are flying boys,

  To fight, kill or wound,

  May we still be found,

  Contented with hard fare, my boys,

  On the cold, cold ground

  Why, soldiers, why,

  Should we be melancholy boys?

  Why, soldiers, why?

  Whose business ’tis to die!

  What, sighing? Fye!

  Damn fear, drink on, be jolly boys!

  ’Tis he, you or I,

  Cold, hot, wet or dry,

  We’re always bound to follow, boys,

  And scorn to fly.

  ’Tis but in vain;

  (I mean not to upbraid you boys),

  ’Tis but in vain,

  For soldiers to complain.

  Should next campaign,

  Send us to Him that made us, boys,

  We’re free from pain.

  But should we remain,

  A bottle and kind landlady

  Cures all again.

  • • •

  ‘Why, soldiers, why?’ was featured in the 1729 play The Patron, and was very popular during the Peninsular War. It was often called ‘Wolfe’s Song’ and may well have been sung by the army in the Quebec campaign of 1759. There was also a story that General Wolfe sang the song the day before he was killed at the moment of victory, but this is almost certainly apocryphal.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Cast of Characters

  Also by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Copyright

  1

  As soon as he saw the tree the officer knew that he had come the right way. The twisted shape was distinctive, its trunk shattered by some winter storm, and while once again he wondered why the farmer had let this one grow outside the walled orchard, that did not matter because he had not led the column astray. The colonel had found this route during the night, riding ahead of the army, and then sent him back to bring on the brigade so that they approached the open country through this stretch of shallow valleys and hills dotted with vineyards and gardens. Everything looked so different in daylight, and the slower pace of a marching column compared to three staff officers and a couple of dragoons on their own had made the trip seem far longer and fed his worry that he had made a mistake. That had set him thinking, trying to remember each change of direction and work out whether he had gone wrong. Yet there was the tree, and that meant that he was right and there was barely a quarter of a mile to go.

  ‘Well done, girl.’

  Lieutenant Hamish Williams patted his grey mare on the neck and then arched his stiff back. An inch or more over six foot, he was a big man and powerfully built, and this impression was reinforced because the horse was a short-necked, clumsy-looking beast of barely fifteen hands. Yet for all her ill-favoured looks, Francesca had proved a good purchase, for she had plenty of stamina and was showing herself to be uncommonly sure footed. His other horse, a chestnut gelding with the graceful lines of an Andalusian, was proving less good, and had already gone lame in its offside front leg.

  Williams reached inside his heavy boat-cloak and pulled out his watch. It was almost ten minutes past twelve on the morning of – and this took a few moments of calculation in his weary state – the twenty-fifth of March in the year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Eleven. The watch, like the horses and the new uniform he wore under his cloak, was one of his Lisbon purchases, part of those wild two days when he had spent more money than ever before in his life. The only thing he had failed to find was a good glass, to replace the one the French had taken last year. Intended to be mounted on a stand, it had been a clumsy, heavy weight to carry strapped to his pack, but the magnification was so wonderful that it had seemed worth it. More than that, it was a present – and one she could not really afford – from his mother when, much against her wishes, her only son had gone for a soldier. He still had not had the heart to write and say that it was lost.

  Williams looked back over his shoulder, but there was no sign of the leading company. If they did not appear in five minutes then he would have to ride back to find them, but he had not long left them and they should not have gone astray. He really ought not to have to wait long. Looping the reins over his left hand, Williams plucked off his oilskin-covered bicorne hat and ran his other hand through his fair hair, blinking as the fatigue washed over him. His chin felt as rough as sandpaper, although in truth only the closest observer would have seen that he had not shaved. Three years of campaigning in all weathers had given just the slightest dark tinge to his fair, freckled skin, although there were a few black flecks of powder encrusting his right cheek from where he had fired a musket more times than he could remember. Even so, with his bright blue eyes and fresh face, the lieutenant still resembled an overgrown schoolboy more than a veteran soldier.

  The infantry did not appear, and to stop himself from hurrying back to search for them and risking appearing nervous, he unclasped his cloak and rolled it up to fasten behind his saddle. He would have to remember to shake it out and dry it later on – or ask his soldier servant to do it. Having a servant was as much a new experience as possessing a watch and two horses, so such thoughts did not come naturally to him.

  ‘Ah, better late than never,’ he said out loud as a rank of soldiers marched over the rise a couple of hundred yards behind him. ‘Earth has not anything to show more fair,’ he added, and then tried to remember where he had read the line. Not Shakespeare, of course, but someone modern. It was probably something a gentleman should know, although literary knowledge – indeed knowledge of any sort – was scarcely the boast of many good fellows, let alone the thrusters, in the army. Williams felt his want of education keenly, and wished one of his particular friends from his own regiment were here to ask. Pringle, Hanley or Truscott would no doubt have known – and would not mock him for his ignorance.

  There was an officer walking to the right of the front rank, and when his cloak parted for a moment it gave the briefest glimpse of his scarlet coat, but that was almost the only dash of colour. The men were a drab sight in their grey greatcoats, shoulders hunched and heads bowed as they walked. They had been marching for seven hours, with only the usual short rests every hour, and most of the time they had faced driving rain and a road churned to mud by the cavalry who had preceded them. Their trousers, which were almost any shade of brown, blue, grey or black rather than the regulation white, were uniformly red-brown from mud, and more mud was spattered on the long tails of their coats. Muskets
were carried down low at the slope, an affectation of the light bobs that he had always found less comfortable than slinging the firelock from his shoulder.

  Williams doubted anyone back home would see the little column as fair in any way, the dark figures marching across muddy fields on a grey day. Many Britons rarely thought about their soldiers, save perhaps to puff themselves up when news came of a victory, and there had been few of those for some time. If they saw them at all it was in the shining splendour of a parade or field day, or in coloured prints where neat lines of men directed by officers on prancing horses fired or charged through the smoke. The soldiers in those pictures were as immaculate as their formations, and fought their battles in picturesque landscapes with mountains rearing in the background. Williams had seen prints of Vimeiro and Talavera and had seen nothing that reminded him in any way of those grim fights.

  The officer watched the column come closer, and saw the head of the second company following on behind. He did not know these men, for he had arrived with the brigade only three days ago, but he knew plenty like them. Back in ’08 he had joined the army as a volunteer, a man considered a gentleman but without the influence to secure an officer’s commission or the money to purchase one. He had carried a musket, worn the uniform of a private soldier and done duty in the ranks while living with the officers. Those had been strange days, ending only when he survived Vimeiro and was rewarded with an ensign’s commission, and they had left him with a deep respect for the redcoat as well as an affection almost idolatrous in its intensity.

  ‘Anything to show more fair,’ he repeated under his breath. Was it Byron? It sounded sufficiently overblown for the aristocratic poet, but he did not think that was right. His taste stretched far more to the classics. Miss MacAndrews would know, and would tease him for not knowing. The thought of the girl brought back the familiar pangs of anger and despair. Keep occupied, he told himself, work until exhaustion blots out all feelings and thoughts. Think about poets or any other nonsense when there was nothing else to do.

  Well, whoever it was would no doubt have raised a perfumed nosegay to shield himself from the sight and the wet earthy smell of the approaching light infantrymen. They were small men in the main, many young but aged by wind and weather, trudging along, not wasting any effort on unnecessary movements or chatter, not even thinking very much about anything. Williams had been on plenty of marches like this one, had known the discomfort of the issue pack which always hung heavy and too low so that its straps burned into the shoulders and pulled at the chest. Just keep going, place one foot in front of the other, loosely in step, not for the look of it, but because it was unconscious habit and made it easier not to tread on the heels of the man in front.

  No one back home would ever see them like this, dirty and dishevelled, the locks of their muskets wrapped tightly round with rags to keep out the damp. Like the rest of the army they were bound to be infested with vermin from living in the fields or sleeping on filthy straw in dirty houses and barns. All too many of them would drink themselves senseless at every opportunity, duty and suffering alike forgotten for the moment.

  No one back home would ever see them standing in ranks as friends dropped around them, ripped to shreds by shot and shell, or watch as they went forward into the smoke, faces pale but determined not to let each other down. He had seen such men fight and win when all seemed lost and, if they were not pretty, then they were magnificent.

  Maybe it was better that Britons never saw them like this, he thought. No one at home had earned the right.

  ‘Morning,’ Williams called as the officer led the first company up to him. The man nodded in acknowledgement.

  Williams turned in the saddle and pointed. ‘Bear right at that tree, follow the wall of the orchard and then cross the stream and form in column at quarter-distance on the slope beyond it. An orderly dragoon is waiting there to mark the spot.’ The only response was another nod. Williams was new to the brigade and not yet one of the family.

  He nudged Francesca and set her trotting back past the column, before veering off up the side of the valley.

  ‘Goddamned dandies!’ Someone swore as he passed and he realised too late that he must have flicked mud up over the marching men. He regretted his lack of care and laughed at the thought of being dubbed a dandy. Any officer on a horse who was not from their own battalion was always treated with suspicion. Men might wonder what folly had been cooked up for them by the powers on high, but they would not wonder for long because there was nothing that they could do about it.

  Williams reined in at the top of the slope and looked back, pulling down the tip of his hat as he squinted into the distance. The last of the four companies at the head of the brigade was just beneath him. About three furlongs beyond them was the dark mass of another, larger column. He wished he had his old telescope, but did not bother to fish out the cheap replacement from his saddlebags. He did not need to see the slightly greater detail this would offer. Everyone was where they should be and now he needed to report this to his commander.

  Riding back the way he had come, Williams took care to pass the marching men at a safe distance. Even so he half heard a flurry of comments, and was pretty sure that he caught a cry of ‘Missed us this time, yer booger!’ in a North Country accent. A good officer knew when not to hear things. He could tell that the men were in good spirits, and guessed that they realised the march was almost over. They always seemed to know, even before the formal orders had reached their officers.

  They would be happy at the prospect of halting, hoping for the chance to rest – veterans like these could make themselves comfortable very quickly. They might be called upon to fight, for the French were close, but that was something they could worry about if and when they were sent forward. At least the rain had stopped. Only a fool or a cavalryman wanted to fight when it was wet. Just a few drops of water seeping into the frizzen pan of a musket turned gunpowder into a dirty sludge no flint would spark into life. So the light infantrymen were glad it was dry – their very lives might well depend on it.

  Tired, uncomfortable in their sodden greatcoats, these men were nonetheless indeed in good spirits, and Williams knew that the same enthusiasm spread throughout the entire army. For once, for the first time in years, they were advancing and the French were going back. At this rate there would soon be scarcely a French soldier left in Portugal, save for the prisoners crammed in the transport ships off Lisbon. Spain was another matter, but at long last the inexorable advance of Napoleon’s legions seemed to have slowed and then stopped. They were retreating for a change, and Williams had enough grim memories of the long retreat to Corunna to know how rapidly confidence faded into despair, and just how easily an army of brave soldiers could fall apart.

  Five minutes later the grey mare cantered up the last slope and Williams joined two other officers sitting on horseback overlooking the wide plain.

  ‘The Light Companies are up, sir,’ he reported. ‘The Sixty-sixth are half an hour’s march away and the guns just behind them.’

  Lieutenant Colonel Colborne nodded. He was a slim, handsome man in his early thirties. At six foot he was just a little shorter than Williams and in many ways he was a slighter version of the Welshman, his darkly fair hair flecked with grey.

  ‘Look, sir, they are moving.’ Captain Dunbar was pointing at the French column formed little more than half a mile away on the old highway running east towards the Spanish border. Beyond it was Campo Major, its medieval walls showing the scars of cannon strikes. Its defences were old, in poor repair, and not designed to deal with the assault of a modern army, and yet an elderly Portuguese officer and a garrison of volunteers had held it for a week before being forced to surrender. ‘They deserved a better fate,’ Colborne had said, but no aid could reach here until several days too late. Now three divisions of infantry and a strong force of cavalry had come to take the place back, less than a week after its fall.

  ‘Perhaps seven or eight hundred horse and
two or three battalions of foot,’ Dunbar said, ‘so two thousand all told?’ The French were formed with cavalry in the lead, then a darker, denser mass of infantry, and more cavalry bringing up the rear.

  The colonel nodded. ‘That is my estimate.’

  ‘Cannot blame them for not wanting to make a fight of it in that old ruin,’ Dunbar added.

  When they had all arrived, the British and Portuguese would number more than eighteen thousand men, and so the French column was lost, but only if enough of the Allies arrived in time. For the moment they could almost match the enemy numbers, but not with a balanced force. Williams saw the colonel lower his glass and glance at the two regiments of redcoated heavy dragoons formed up to their left. Beyond them, almost a mile away, there was a dark smear moving slowly over the rolling ground, following the path of a little river. The colonel did not need to use his telescope to know that these were the British light dragoons and the Portuguese cavalry – everyone said that Colborne had the best eyesight in the army.

  Until last summer the lieutenant colonel had commanded only the second battalion of his own regiment, the 66th Foot, one of four battalions in the brigade. Then the divisional commander had moved to higher things, and their brigade commander had in turn moved up to lead the whole division. Colborne’s rank as lieutenant colonel had been gazetted before that of the men leading the other three battalions, so overnight he had jumped to lead the brigade. The post was not permanent, but in the last seven months no general had appeared from Britain to take over. A few days ago Williams had arrived to replace his aide-de-camp, who had got his step to major and gone back to his own corps. The Welshman was now acting ADC to an acting brigade commander and had no idea how long this would last.

  In the meantime Colborne kept his two staff officers busy. Dunbar as brigade major was given the greater responsibilities, but often both men found themselves trailing along behind the colonel, who slept little and employed every hour of the day to the fullest extent.