Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters by Mark Urban Read Free Book Online Page A

were sure enough of one thing: that while neither side intended to attack the other and while life remained as miserable as it was there, night alarms and other symptoms of the presence of an enemy could safely be dispensed with. By calling out to their French opposite numbers and using sign language, they evolved a system of signals to ensure a quiet stay. As one officer wrote, ‘So far from a single shot being exchanged, our men and the French had the best possible understanding; and it frequently happened that the officers of both parties took off their hats and saluted each other across the river.’
    This system was suspended several days later, when the 95th received orders to march almost a hundred miles south-east to thetown of Campo Maior. With this movement, the campaigning season would effectively end, Wellesley deciding to abandon any further diversion on behalf of the Spanish and concentrate instead on solving the supply and other problems that debilitated his army while readying them for the defence of Portugal. Napoleon’s attempts to take over Spain and Portugal had triggered such widespread resistance that a quarter of a million French troops were being tied down. Britain was doing its best to exacerbate these difficulties by landing expeditionary forces in Portugal and southern Spain, at the extremes of the Iberian Peninsula furthest from the French border. In this way they hoped to stiffen local resistance while forcing Napoleon’s commanders to extend deeper and deeper into guerrilla-infested country.
    The march down to Campo Maior required the riflemen to traverse some high mountains – known as the Sierra de Guadalupe – all the time under the eye of Black Bob Craufurd. Captain Jonathan Leach wrote in his diary on 27 August,
    The Division paraded at six this evening when we got volleys of abuse and blasphemous language from that infernal scoundrel Brigadier Robert Craufurd, who, after flogging half a dozen men for some very frivolous offences committed on our late harassing marches, we were dismissed. Lay down to sleep at nine o’clock but not without offering hearty prayers for the discomfiture of our cursed commander.
     
    Eight days later, the 2nd Company commander noted the flogging of a soldier from one of the other Light Brigade battalions and another ‘long harangue from General Craufurd’.
    As the battalion snaked its way down one of the steep mountain tracks leading from the sierra to the river plain that was their destination, Second Lieutenant George Simmons marched towards his brigadier, just off the road and in full flow, heaping scorn and abuse upon the head of the provost marshal. Before Simmons knew it, he’d been collared by Craufurd, taken out of the line of march, and, in one of the brigadier’s squeaking furies, told to arrest the provost marshal, the man who himself was meant to be the brigade’s enforcer of military discipline. Taking some riflemen to assist, Simmons found himself escorting the provost marshal, several soldiers already under arrest in his charge as well as some baggage. As for Craufurd, he galloped off to the head of the column.
    A little further down the road, as it sloped steeply downhill, two ofthe mules, pulling one of the carts, decided to stop. After pushing, pulling and cajoling but all to no avail, one of the riflemen detached the sling from his weapon, got astride one of the beasts, and smacked it about the rump with the leather strap. The animals stampeded down the precipitous road, throwing the rifleman clear. Simmons and the others watched dumbstruck as the cart bounced about the narrow track, gathering speed until eventually the inevitable happened and it was hurled over a precipice, dashed to pieces on rocks below. It had been carrying Brigadier Craufurd’s personal supply of wine and other delicacies.
    Simmons found Craufurd that evening in a commandeered house at the end of their march:
    He had a party at dinner, and was expecting his