The first wagon stuck just a hundred yards beyond the place where the field tracks converged on the road. A carriage, trying to go round it on the soft verge, overturned. A gun swerved, skidded, and the two tons of metal slammed into the carriage, horses screaming, gunners falling beneath the metal, and the road was blocked. Oxen, horses, carriages, wagons, carts, cannon, howitzers, portable forges, ambulances and limbers, all were trapped between the road block and the British.
The wagons swarmed with people. Soldiers fleeing the city, drivers, camp-followers, all ran through the wagon park. Some began to slit the tarpaulins and drag boxes from the loads. Muskets fired as guards tried to protect the Emperor’s property, and then the guards realised that the Emperor had lost this property and whoever took it now might keep it. They joined the looters.
Thousands of French troops were streaming past the blocked wagons, trampling the crops and running eastwards. Generals rode with the cavalry, rehearsing the excuses they would make, while other men swerved into the wagons and searched desperately for wiveS and children.
King Joseph was in his carriage, fleeing towards the road block, and then there was the thunder of hooves, the sight of lifted sabres, and the first British cavalry, sent around the city, descended on the panicked, fleeing mob.
The King escaped only by abandoning his carriage. He scrambled from the right hand door as the British cavalry wrenched open the left. He abandoned his belongings and ran with his erstwhile subjects.
Women and children screamed. They did not know where their men were, only that the army had dissolved into a mob and they must run. Hundreds stayed in the baggage park, tearing the wagonloads down, not caring that the British cavalry were coming. Better to be rich for just a few minutes than eternally poor. From the city came the Spaniards, many with long knives ready for the slaughter.
Captain Saumier heard the shout for the army to go to Salvatierra and guessed that the city’s single eastern gate would already be cramming with desperate people. He shouted at the coachman to go for the north gate.
It was a sensible move. The narrow eastern streets were filled with carriages and wagons, with men shouting and women screaming in fear. Saumier would take La Marquesa through the northern gate and then turn east.
The wheels bounced on the cobbles, skidded at one corner, but the driver held the balance and cracked the long whip over the horses’ heads.
Saumier, his one good hand holding a pistol, leaned from the window and saw the city gate ahead. `Go on! Go on!’ His voice was loud over the harsh sound of the wheels and hooves, over the crack of the whip and the shouts of other fugitives. General Verigny had told.Captain Saumier to protect this woman, and Saumier, who thought her more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen, hoped that his protection would merit a reward.
The carriage slowed to pass the narrow gate, a soldier tried to jump onto the step and Saumier hit the man with the brass butt of his pistol. The man fell under the wheel, screaming, the carriage leaped into the air, jarred down, and then it was through the archway and rattling down the street of houses that lay outside the wall. The coachman turned the horses eastwards at a crossroads, shouted at them, cracked the whip again, and the carriage picked up speed as Saumier leaned back on the upholstered cushions and pushed his pistol into his belt.
La Marquesa, her maid nervous beside her, looked at him. `Where are we going?’
`Wherever we can, dear lady.’ Saumier was nervous. He could see the men running from the battle and could hear the heavy noise of the gun wheels coming from the plain. As the coach cleared the last houses of the northern suburb he leaned again from the window and was appalled by the chaos he saw. It was as if a whole army ran a panicked race. Then he heard the brakeshoes slap on the wheels, he lurched as the carriage slowed, and he looked ahead to see the-massive jam of wagons, guns and carriages that blocked the eastern road. `Go round! Go round!’