A Mild Case of Indigestion by Geoffrey Watson

Author:Geoffrey Watson [Watson, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B00BC2U3XO
Published: 2013-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

MacKay had expected to be much farther south by now. Indeed he would have been, had the French not been flooding along all the roads to the east. The Hornets wouldn’t have got as far as they had if El Martillo and his men hadn’t guided them along mule tracks and mountain paths parallel to the mountain valley road which followed the path of the river Tera on its way out of the Sierra de la Culebra to join the river Esla south of Benevente.

Even these side-tracks were no guarantee of easy passage. A French army was a hungry army and foraging for supplies was a way of life for them. Any side road off the main line of march was an irresistible attraction to squadrons of horse soldiers in their lust for food and loot.

The tiny hamlets and villages in the mountains might produce small amounts of food and fodder, but were mostly too poor to provide loot of any sort. French disappointment at the poor returns from their depredations, soon turned to rape, murder and destruction.

It was MacKay’s discovery of the burning remains of a village of twenty dwellings and the bodies of the men, women and children who had lived there that made him modify his plans. Hickson was given all the letters and documents from Rabuteau and briefed thoroughly about everything that was known of Soult’s intentions. He and Isabella and Garrett were guided out of the mountains and sent south to find Welbeloved, while MacKay and the rest of the Hornets stayed to help El Martillo and his men frustrate the French foragers.

The first priority was to observe all the tracks leading off the main highway into the foothills. The foraging parties were all horse soldiers at this stage of the advance. The best that could be done by the scattered observers, was to dash on ahead of the French horsemen and warn the isolated villages and hamlets that death and destruction in the form of French dragoons or chasseurs or other cavalry was on its way to visit them.

At least it gave time for the populations of the small communities to take what they could carry and disappear into the hills. The penalty visited by the disappointed French was the inevitable burning and destruction of the village, but the lives of the peasants were saved.

With the recruits that flocked to join El Martillo’s band after his capture of the town, his partisans now numbered over two hundred. Half of these had benefited from active service and the training that the Hornets had offered. If Soult was indeed leaving Galicia, they were probably enough to deny its reoccupation by anything less than an army.

At the moment, though, they were overstretched. El Martillo was using all his new recruits as lookouts and for raising the alarm with unsuspecting villagers. He had split his veterans into two groups. These were each shadowing the vanguard of the French army from the shelter of the hills bordering both sides of the road along the river valley.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.