With Moore at Corunna Part 26

"I will consult the others," the man said. "Many of us, I know, will be glad to fight under an English officer, and agree to obey him implicitly."

"Very well, I will give you a quarter of an hour to decide."

Before that time had elapsed a dozen men came to the door with the princ.i.p.al spokesman.

"We have made up our minds, senor. We will follow you, and we will arm ourselves at Castro. It is a sin that the arms should be lying there idle with so many hands ready to use them."

"That is good," Terence said. "Now, my first order is that you wait until I have been gone an hour; then, that you form up in military order, four abreast; the men with guns in front, the others after them. You must go as soldiers, and not as a mob. You must march into Castro peacefully and quietly, not a man must straggle from the ranks. You must go to the authorities and demand the arms and ammunition; if they refuse to give them to you, march--always in regular order--to the magazine and burst it open; then distribute the muskets and a hundred rounds of ammunition to each man having one, take the rest of the stores in carts, and then march away along the road north until you come to the place where we are halted.

"Observe the most perfect order in Castro. If any man plunders or meddles in any way with the inhabitants and is reported to me, I shall know how to punish him. From the moment that you leave this place remember that you are soldiers of Portugal, and you must behave so as to be an honour to it as well as a defence. Now let us all shout 'Viva Portugal!'"

A great shout followed the words, and then Terence went indoors, and five minutes later started with his convoy, telling the three prisoners they could go where they liked.

CHAPTER XIV

AN INDEPENDENT COMMAND

As they left the village the Portuguese lieutenant burst into a sudden fit of laughter.

"What is it, Lieutenant?" Terence asked.

"I am laughing at the way in which you--who, as you tell me, have only been six months in the army--without hesitation organize what is really a rising against the authorities, you having already taken representatives of the Junta prisoners--"

"Yes; but you must remember that they took upon themselves to endeavour to forcibly possess themselves of the treasure in my charge."

"That is true enough; still, you did capture them. You treated them with considerable personal indignity, imprisoned them, and threatened their lives. Then you incite, say 2,500 ordenancas to break open magazines."

"No, no, Lieutenant, I did not incite them. You will remember they expressed a desire to march under my command to fight against the French. I simply pointed out to them that they had no arms, and asked if they could get any; and hearing that there were plenty lying useless a few miles away, suggested that those arms would do more good in their hands than stowed away in magazines. Upon their agreeing with me on this head, I advised them to proceed in a quiet and orderly way, and to have no rioting or disturbance of any sort. I said that if they, after arming themselves, came to me and still wished to follow me, I would undertake to command them. You see, everything depends upon the manner in which the thing is put."

"But you must remember, senor, that the Junta will naturally view the matter in the light in which their representatives will place it before them."

"I think it unlikely," Terence replied, "that they will have any opportunity of doing so. I took care that they were removed from the window before I met the deputies of the men. They will consequently be unaware of the arrangements made, and will, perhaps, go out as soon as we have left and try to persuade the men to follow and attack us. As it was possible that they might take this course, I took the precaution of sending out one of the muleteers, with instructions to mention casually to the men that I was leaving the three fellows behind me, and that it might be as well for them to confine them under a guard so as to prevent their going to Oporto at present and making mischief."

"I agree with you, senor, that they are certainly not likely to make any report as to the proceedings here."

"I fancy not; in fact I should not be at all surprised if at the present moment they are hanging from the windows of the house of the man they caused to be murdered. They will most richly deserve their fate, and it may save us some trouble. No doubt the Junta will hear some day that the ordenancas here rose, killed the three members of their committee, obtained arms at Castro, and marched into the mountains. The Junta will care nothing whatever for the killing of its three agents; plenty of men of the same kind can be found to do their work. That the mutineers afterwards fell in with a British officer, and placed themselves under his command, will not concern the Junta one way or the other, and they will certainly be a great deal more useful in that way than they would be in remaining unarmed here. They may even, when the French once get in motion, come to regard the affair altogether as satisfactory. If all the new levies were to act in exactly the same way, Portugal would be very materially benefited."

"But how are you going to feed them?"

"That is rather a serious question. I suppose they will have to be fed in the same way as other irregular bands. However, I shall consider myself fully justified in devoting a fifth of the money I am carrying to that purpose. I obtained from Villiers 5,000 to enable Romana to support the levies he is raising. Those levies will be for the most part unarmed, and therefore practically useless; and as these Portuguese will be at any rate fairly armed, and are likely to be of very much greater service than a horde of Galician peasants, a portion at least of the money can be very much more usefully employed in feeding them than were it all given to Romana, I have no doubt whatever that when I explain the circ.u.mstances to General Cradock, he will entirely approve of my appropriating a small portion of the money that Villiers has chosen to throw away on Romana. When you return I shall get you to carry a report from me to the general, stating what I have done. I have no doubt he will warmly approve of it."

On approaching Castro they made a detour to avoid the town.

"There may be more representatives of the Junta there," Terence said, "and we may have even more trouble with them than we had with the last. I don't want any more bother, especially as I have much greater interest in the money now than I had before. I have not a shadow of belief in those bands of Portuguese peasants, but I do think that, with the aid of my two troopers, I shall be able to lick these fellows into some sort of shape, and to annoy Soult, if I cannot stop him. I hope they will find a good supply of powder, besides the muskets and ammunition at Castro; we shall want it for blowing up bridges and work of that sort."

"I wish I could go with you," Herrara said.

"I really don't see why you should not. I would take the blame on my own shoulders. One of your troopers could carry my report to the general, and I will say that under the circ.u.mstances I have taken upon myself to retain you with me in order to a.s.sist me in drilling and organizing this band, conceiving that your services with me would be very much more useful than with your regiment. You see, you were placed under my orders, so that no blame can fall upon you for obeying them, and at any rate you certainly will be doing vastly better service to the country than if you were stationed at Lisbon, with no prospect of an advance for a long time to come. Still, of course, I will not retain you against your will."

"I should like it of all things," Herrara said; "but do you really think that the general would approve?"

"I have not the least doubt that he would, and at any rate if he did not he would only blame me, and not you. Your help would certainly be invaluable to me, and so would that of your men. They are all picked soldiers, and if we divided the force up into twelve companies, they would very soon teach them as much drill as is necessary for work like this. Each trooper would command one of the companies, my two orderlies would act as field officers; you would be colonel, and I should be political officer in command."

Herrara burst into a fit of laughter.

"You are the strangest fellow I ever met, senor. Here is a very serious business, and you take it as easily as if it were a game of play. However, it does seem to me that we might do some good service. At any rate I am quite willing to obey your orders. It would be an adventure to talk of all one's life."

"That is right," Terence said; "and there will be some credit to be gained, too. Indeed, we can safely say that our band will be very much better organized than nineteen out of twenty of the irregular bands."

The track they followed was a very bad one, and the point at which they regained the main road was eight miles north of Castro. There was a small village here, and they at once halted. Although they had travelled slowly they knew that the men could not come along for some time, as they were not to start until an hour after them, and would be detained for some considerable time at Castro. It was indeed nearly three hours before a column marching in good order was seen coming along the road.

"That is a good sign," Terence said; "they have obeyed orders strictly; whether they have got the arms I cannot tell yet. The men at the head of the column have certainly muskets, but as the armed men were to go in front that is no proof."

However, as the column approached, it could be seen that at any rate a very considerable number were armed.

"We had better form them up as they come, Herrara. If the head of the column stops it will stop them all, and then there will be confusion."

The road through the village was wide. When a hundred ranks had pa.s.sed they were halted, faced round, and marched forward, and so they continued until the village was filled with a dense ma.s.s of men, twenty deep. Terence observed with satisfaction that they had with them six bullock carts filled with ammunition-cases, spare muskets, and powder-barrels. The men who had first spoken to Terence had headed the column, and these had stopped by his side as the others marched in.

"You have succeeded, I see," he said. "I hope that you were enabled to accomplish it without violence."

"They were too much surprised to offer much resistance. Five fellows, who said they were the committee appointed by the Junta, came to us and told us that unless we dispersed at once we should be severely punished. We told them that we had come out of our homes at the orders of the Junta, but that as the Junta had not supplied us with arms we had come for them, as we were not going to fight the French with nothing but sticks. They then threatened us again, and we told them that if they hindered us from defending the country we should hang them at once; and as they saw we meant it, they went quietly off to their houses. Then we broke down the door of the magazine. We found four thousand muskets there. Each man took one, and we left the remainder and enough ammunition for them, and have brought the rest here, together with a hundred spare muskets.

"We have observed excellent order, and no one was hurt or alarmed. The only men who left the ranks were a score who went round to the bakers' shops by my orders, and bought up all the bread in the place. We found a bag with a thousand dollars at the quarters of Cortingos."

"What became of him and his two a.s.sociates?"

"They had the impudence to come out and harangue us when you had gone; but we tied them up to the branch of a tree, so there is an end of them."

"And a very fitting end, too," Terence said. "What have you done with the money?"

"The bag is in that cart, senor."

"You had better appoint four of your number as treasurers. I would rather not touch it. You must be as careful as you can, and spend it only on the barest necessaries of life. We shall have few opportunities of buying things in the mountains, but when we do come upon them they must be paid for. Of course, we shall go no farther to-night. How many men have you?"

"About two thousand five hundred, senor."

"They must be told off into twelve companies. That will be two hundred and ten to each company. I shall appoint one of these soldiers to each company to drill and command it. I propose that each company shall elect its other officers. Lieutenant Herrara will, under my orders, command the regiment. The two English soldiers with me will each take command of six companies. The first thing to be done is to tell off the men into companies."

"This we will at once do. After that they can be marched just outside the village, and each company will then fall out and elect its officers. When that is done the men will be quartered in the village. I have set apart one room in each house for the inhabitants, and the men must pack as tightly as they can into the others; and of course the sheds and stables must also be utilized."

With the a.s.sistance of the troopers the work of dividing the force up into companies was accomplished in an hour. Herrara then called his men to him.

"You will each take the command of a company," he said, "and drill them and teach them the use of their arms. This force is now under the command of this British officer. Acting under his orders, I take the command of the force under him. So long as we are out you will each act as captains of your companies, and your British comrades will act as field officers, each taking the command of six companies. We are going to hinder the advance of the French, and to cut their communications with Spain. It will be a glorious and most honourable duty, and I rely most implicitly on your doing your best to make the men under your command fit to meet the enemy. Captain Juan Sanches, you will take the first company;" and so he allotted to each his command.