Beat the Drums Slowly by Adrian Goldsworthy

various French armies in Spain, giving strengths and positions. None was near enough to offer immediate support to Soult, and this was Moore’s chance. For a brief moment he would have an all too rare advantage in this campaign.
    ‘We will give the men another day’s rest,’ he said firmly. ‘The infantry have come a long way and have earned it. We’ll begin tomorrow evening, march through the night, and be at Marshal Soult on the twenty-fourth.’
    Graham waited, but Sir John did genuinely appear not to have marked the date. ‘Christmas Eve,’ he pointed out.
    Moore looked blank for a moment and then smiled, shaking his head. ‘Of course. I had quite forgot. Hah, my grandfather would not approve. He was a minister, you know.’ Graham nodded. ‘However, he was all in favour of smiting the ungodly, so I dare say would forgive us.’
    Moore wondered for a moment whether he had been indelicate. Graham had been caught up in the early days of France’s atheistic Revolution. Not long married, a Grand Tour of Europe had ended abruptly when his young bride succumbed to illness in the prime of her life and beauty. Returning home through France, he had been powerless to prevent a mob tearing open her coffin and desecrating her corpse in an alleged hunt for illegal weapons. Graham had turned soldier in the ebb tide of his life, waging relentless war against the Revolution and the Empire which followed it. Sir John knew all this, although the two friends had never spoken of it. He hoped that he had not awoken painful memories, and was relieved at the simple response.
    ‘Amen to that. So no plum pudding this year. Ah well, let us hope to see the New Year in well.’
    ‘Pray God we do,’ said Sir John, for both men knew how precarious their situation was. They might beat Soult, but the French would concentrate against them in time and they could not resist such great numbers. ‘Is Romana ready to move with us?’
    Graham nodded in confirmation. ‘He assures me that he is.’ The Marquis of La Romana commanded the only Spanish army near by. A year earlier Napoleon had sent him with the finest regiments of Spain’s army to garrison the coast of Denmark against British depredations. The Emperor already contemplated the conquest of his ally, and found this convenient pretext to reduce the force likely to oppose him. Then ally became occupier, and the old enemy a new friend. La Romana’s division – or at least more than half of his men – were taken off by the Royal Navy and carried back to fight the invader of their homeland. That had been months ago, and since then the regulars, their numbers bolstered by enthusiastic but poorly trained recruits, had been badly mauled by Napoleon’s veterans. ‘However, I doubt that even half his men have muskets,’ conceded Graham.
    ‘At least he is willing. The firelocks and cannon we brought for them have not yet arrived, I presume.’
    ‘As usual the transport is lacking. It took weeks for the Galician junta to help Sir David to obtain the animals and vehicles necessary to move his own division from Corunna.’
    ‘Were they willing?’ asked the general acidly.
    ‘Yes, I believe they were, but they had already given much of what they had to La Romana.’
    In May uprisings had erupted throughout Spain, in sudden anger at the French occupation, and the imposition of Joseph Bonaparte as king. They had been suppressed – Hanley had witnessed the brutality of the French reprisals in Madrid – but the news provoked a wave of fervent enthusiasm for Spain and the Spanish cause in Britain which had not yet died away. The government sent the expeditionary force to the Peninsula, which eventually ended up in Portugal. The French were defeated there in August, but it was not until October that Sir John’s army began to advance into Spain. The aim was to assist the Spanish in evicting the remaining French armies from their country. All of the ministers agreed upon this objective as a