Flashman in the Peninsula by Robert Brightwell Read Free Book Online

other conversation around the table stilled and all looked at him expectantly. I was clearly not the only one seeking confidence in our mission. None of us expected the response we got.
    ‘Hanging some British soldiers,’ he barked and glared around the room as though daring anyone to challenge him.
    There was a stunned and puzzled silence for a moment until the padre hesitantly spoke up, ‘Surely you mean French soldiers, Sir Arthur?’
    ‘No,’ he stated firmly. ‘When the British army retreated to Corunna, units got separated from the main force and even on the edges of the main company they looted, murdered and raped with the same enthusiasm as the French. That cannot be allowed to happen again and I will hang every last one of them if I have to.’
    ‘But sir,’ exclaimed one of the colonels who had been at Corunna, ‘the veterans from the last expedition are our most experienced troops.’
    ‘I don’t care,’ snapped Wellesley. ‘Don’t you see; the French are under massive pressure because the Portuguese and Spanish people hate them for their brutality and kill the French every chance that they get. There is no central government in either country worth a damn,’ he added, glancing at Downie who had evidently been trying to persuade him otherwise. ‘It is the people’s views that count and if we go around behaving like the French then they will hate us too. The very people we are here to liberate will make our position untenable. On the other hand if we show that we are better, pay for supplies instead of stealing them, if women and property are safe where we dominate, they will support us and redouble their efforts to throw out the French.’
    ‘But our men are the scrapings of jails, poorhouses and the desperate,’ protested another officer. ‘You cannot expect them to behave like gentlemen.’
    ‘Nor do I,’ said Wellesley firmly. ‘I know that they are the scum of the earth but discipline, supported by hangings and floggings as necessary, must make sure that they behave better than the French. And I look to all of you,’ and here his gaze swept around the table looking us each in the eye, ‘to make sure that this is what happens.’
    At the time I admit that I thought he was mad if he thought he could stop an army looting a captured city. I had been with him at Gawilghur in India when British and Indian troops had sacked the place. The rape and slaughter there had made a Viking raid look like a Baptist tea dance. I was right about that too for at Spanish cities like Badajoz, when the British and Portuguese army stormed into the streets, they behaved like animals. But I could also see that having the populace on our side would be worth a hundred thousand men. At the end of the day we did not need to behave perfectly, just better than the French, whose army supply system was largely based on plunder. Mind you, it still sounded a tall order; after all, taking myself as an example, even some of the ‘gentlemen’ did not always behave as such.

Chapter 4
     
    Lisbon, when we finally arrived, looked a bright colourful place from a mile or two out to sea with its red tiled roofs and whitewashed walls. But as we got closer to the harbour the poverty, dirt and then the smell became all too apparent. It was a strange place, the capital of large and once powerful country, but now empty of most of the people of influence. Just two years before, as the French first arrived, all the wealthy merchants, the court and most of the government had sailed to Brazil, a Portuguese dominion. The people who were left were generally those too poor to purchase their passage to the New World, and others who had moved to the city after being made destitute from the French pillaging of the countryside. We sailed into the mouth of the river Tagus and past the Tower of Belém to dock by the Black Horse Square. The citizens were gathered in crowds to welcome the return of their British allies, doubtless wondering if our