Warriors: Extraordinary Tales from the Battlefield. Max Hastings

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СКАЧАТЬ creating the romance, faded from the story. Nothing further is known of her, and nowhere in his own writing does Smith allude to her again. As for Juana’s feelings, it is hard to escape an assumption that only despair, an absolute need for a protector, could have driven her to accept the hand of a heretic, a grave and terrible step for a Spanish woman of her time.

      The subsequent triumph of Harry and Juana’s union should not mask the fact that at the outset it was inauspicious. Rankers in Wellington’s army often had a woman companion in the field, with whom they might or might not go through some formal ceremony of marriage. Many such camp followers lived with two, three, even four ‘husbands’ before a campaign was over, as each in turn was killed. Yet officers, gentlemen, rarely emulated their men’s behaviour. They might somewhere maintain a Spanish or Portuguese mistress, but seldom took her on campaign. It is hard to believe that, outside the tightly-knit family of the Rifles, Wellington’s officers thought well of Smith’s misalliance.

      Yet as a breed, soldiers are sentimental men. The presence of a young woman, a child bride, beside the campfires of the Rifle Brigade moved Harry Smith’s brother officers to ecstasies. A cynic might suggest that their enthusiasm was reflexive, when from one month to the next they enjoyed the company of no other woman with the attributes of a lady. Objective observers asserted that young Mrs Smith was not conventionally pretty as Johnny Kincaid suggested, nor even handsome, being possessed of a dark, severe countenance. But all who met her testified to Juana’s remarkable personal grace; and to the brilliancy of her devotion to her husband and everything which pertained to him.

      As the army marched once more, and Smith with it, his new bride spent what passed for a honeymoon learning to ride a sidesaddle made for her by a horse-artilleryman. Her mount was an Andalusian thoroughbred named Tiny, which carried her to the end of the war and beyond. Her first battle as a soldier’s wife was that of Salamanca on 22 July 1812. Before the great clash began, much to Juana’s dismay Smith’s groom West led her to the rear. That night, thanking God for Harry’s safe deliverance, she slept on the battlefield amid the groans of the wounded. Next morning she accompanied her husband once more on the victorious British line of march. Each evening she joined him by the fireside, entrancing the Rifles’ little mess by dancing and singing to her own guitar. She lay down to sleep in a tiny tent specially made for her, beside her husband when he was not doing duty, anyway sharing the hardships of bare ground and bitter weather, hunger and thirst, without complaint save that she could not bear to see ‘Enrique’, as she always called Harry, suffer likewise. She talked freely to officers and men alike, which won their hearts, though she learned scarcely a word of English during the campaign. ‘Blackguards as many of the poor gallant fellows were,’ wrote Smith, in words that echoed his beloved Wellington’s view of his own soldiers, ‘there was not a man who would not have laid down his life to defend her.’

      The couple enjoyed a brief interlude of comfort during the British stay at Madrid in August and September. But the approach of a superior French army made retreat to Portugal inevitable. Smith’s little personal train, which included thirteen greyhounds, was swelled by the addition of a local priest who threw himself on the Rifleman’s mercy, asserting that he feared French retribution. The Rifles dubbed the man ‘Harry Smith’s confessor’, though in fact Smith’s poor Catholic wife suffered many snubs from her fellow-countryman for having wedded herself to a heretic.

      In those months, Juana and Harry Smith forged a partnership which remained undiminished in passion and mutual respect for almost half a century. Her prudent management of their slender purse and rickety little travelling household won his admiration. She seemed to care only for his survival and professional advancement. By the time they reached Cuidad Rodrigo on 19 November, after weeks of skirmishing with the French in their rear, at last they knew that they were safe for the winter. Many men were sick as well as hungry and weary. An existence exposed to the elements by day and night, without effective protective clothing, caused a host of combatants in the wars of Bonaparte to succumb to death without an enemy in sight. To be continually cold and wet was a soldier’s natural predicament. Only the hardiest prospered, Harry Smith with his relentless good cheer prominent among them.

      The priest – ‘the padre’ as Smith called him – took over the cooking for their party. They found a billet in a little house, and the gallant captain resumed his habits of hare coursing or duck shooting every day. Thus Harry and Juana passed the army’s season in winter quarters, perfectly content in their own society, supporting each other in adversity in a fashion that must have contributed much to the welfare of both. It is realistic rather than cynical to emphasise Juana’s dependence upon the fluke of Harry Smith’s survival. If a chance bullet carried him away, as there was every prospect that it might, she would be bereft. The couple had no money. Juana’s claim upon Harry’s distant family was speculative. Her own people considered her an outcast. Her only course if Captain Smith perished would be to seek another protector in the ranks of Wellington’s army. And however much his fellow-Riflemen loved Juana, it must be questionable whether another of them would have married her. Her entire being, therefore, was subject to her husband’s welfare.

      Wellington’s army set out in high spirits on the 1813 spring march that led to triumph at Vittoria. The weather bloomed, supplies were plentiful. British soldiers shared an absolute confidence that they were now on the verge of decisive victory. Juana’s horse Tiny was lame. Instead she rode a strange mare which slipped on a bank, rolled on its rider, and broke a small bone in her foot. Terrified of being left behind, she insisted that a mule should be found to carry her. This prompted half the division’s officers to set forth in search of a suitable beast, which was duly found. She was back on her own horse a few days later. Smith passed 21 June, the day of Vittoria, as ever in the thick of the battle, hastening to and fro with orders for his brigade. His wife was horrified to hear that soldiers had seen his horse go down, her husband apparently killed. Ignoring imprecations to remain in the rear, she hastened onto the battlefield, from which the French were now in flight. Amid the chaos of dead and wounded men, shattered and abandoned vehicles, West, the Smiths’ groom, urged his mistress to load a horse with plunder, of which Vittoria produced the richest harvest of the campaign. Juana would have none of it: ‘Oh, West! Never mind money! Let us look for your master.’ After hours of searching, Smith himself at last heard Juana’s loud lamentations. He croaked a greeting to her in a voice stripped hoarse by shouting commands through the bloody day. ‘Thank God you are not killed, only badly wounded!’ his wife exclaimed. Harry growled, ‘Thank God, I am neither.’ His only mishap was that his horse had fallen under him, apparently stunned by concussion from the near passage of a cannonball. In sharp counterpoint to Marcellin Marbot, Smith bore a charmed life. Through constant engagements in the years ahead, he would never be wounded. Consider the odds against his survival, never mind against his escaping injury: late in life, he computed that he had been within reach of the enemy’s fire some three hundred times in battles, sieges and skirmishes. It was no more likely that Harry Smith should survive all these encounters than that a spun coin should fall on its head three hundred times consecutively.

      The only booty the Smiths gained from Vittoria was a smart little pug dog given to them by the Spanish mistress of a wounded French officer whom they assisted. ‘Vitty’, as they christened him, thereafter travelled with them to Waterloo and beyond.

      The next stages of the British march were bitter, through villages sacked and burned by the retreating enemy. In the house where the Smiths were billeted on the night of 25 June, their Navarese host said: ‘When you dine, I have some capital wine, as much as you and your servants like.’ With heavy emphasis, he invited the brigade-major to inspect his cellar. ‘He had upon his countenance a most sinister expression. I saw something exceedingly excited him; his look became fiend-like.’ Harry followed his host by candlelight into the cellar, where with a flourish the Spaniard pointed to the floor: ‘There lie four of the devils who thought to subjugate Spain!’ On the flags lay the bodies of four French dragoons, where their host had stabbed them after inciting them to drink themselves into insensibility. Smith recoiled in disgust: ‘My very frame quivered and my blood was frozen, to see the noble science of war and the honour and chivalry of СКАЧАТЬ