Instead she was in a two-wheeled Oporto hackney with a leaking leather roof, cracked springs and a broken-down gelding between its shafts, and the carriage was going nowhere because the fleeing French army was stuck on the road to Amarante. Rain seethed on the roof, streaked the windows and dripped onto Kate’s lap and she did not care, she just hunched in the corner and wept.
The door was tugged open and Christopher put his head in. “There are going to be some bangs,” he told her, “but there’s no need to be alarmed.” He paused, decided he could not cope with her sobbing, so just closed the door. Then he jerked it open again. “They’re disabling the guns,” he explained, “that’s what the noise will be.”
Kate could not have cared less. She wondered what would become of her, and the awfulness of her prospects was so frightening that she burst into fresh tears just as the first guns were fired muzzle to muzzle.
On the morning after the fall of Oporto Marshal Soult had been woken to the appalling news that the Portuguese army had retaken Amarante and that the only bridge by which he could carry his guns, limbers, caissons, wagons and carriages back to the French fortresses in Spain was therefore in enemy hands. One or two hotheads had suggested fighting their way across the River Tamega, but scouts reported that the Portuguese were occupying Amarante in force, that the bridge had been mined and had a dozen guns now dominating its roadway, that it would take a day of bitter and bloody fighting to get across and even then there would probably be no bridge left for the Portuguese would doubtless blow it. And Soult did not have a day. Sir Arthur Wellesley would be advancing from Oporto so that left him only one option, which was to abandon all the army’s wheeled transport, every wagon, every limber, every caisson, every carriage, every mobile forge and every gun. They would all have to be left behind and twenty thousand men, five thousand camp followers, four thousand horses and almost as many mules must do their best to scramble over the mountains.
But Soult was not going to leave the enemy good French guns to turn against him, and so the weapons were each loaded with four pounds of powder, were double-shotted and placed muzzle to muzzle. Gunners struggled to keep their portfires alight in the rain and then, on a word of command, touched the two reed fuses and the powder flashed down to the overcharged chambers, the guns fired into each other, leaped back in a wrenching explosion of smoke and flames and then were left with ripped, torn barrels. Some of the gunners were weeping as they destroyed their weapons while others just cursed as they used knives and bayonets to rip open the powder bags that were left to spoil in the rain.
The infantry were ordered to empty their packs and haversacks of everything except food and ammunition. Some officers ordered inspections and insisted their men throw away the plunder of the campaign. Cutlery, candlesticks, plate, all had to be abandoned by the roadside as the army took to the hills. The horses, oxen and mules that hauled the guns, carriages and limbers were shot rather than be ceded to the enemy. The animals screamed and thrashed as they died. The wounded who could not walk were left in their wagons and given muskets so they could at least try to protect themselves against the Portuguese who would find them soon enough and then attempt to exact revenge on helpless men. Soult ordered the military chest, eleven great barrels of silver coins, put by the road so the men could help themselves to a handful apiece as they went past. The women hitched up their skirts, scooped up the coins, and walked with their men. The dragoons, hussars and chasseurs led their horses. Thousands of men and women were climbing into the barren hills, leaving behind wagons loaded with bottles of wine, with port, with crosses of gold stolen from churches and with ancestral paintings plundered from the walls of northern Portugal’s big houses. The French had thought they had conquered a country, that they were merely waiting for a few reinforcements to swell the ranks as they marched on Lisbon, and none understood why they were suddenly faced with disaster or why King Nicolas was leading them on a shambolic retreat through torrential rain.