The gunner Colonel pulled paper towards him. ‘Yesterday, my Lord, one thousand one hundred and fourteen twenty-four-pounders, six hundred and three eighteen-pounders.’
He gave the figures in a flat monotone. ‘One gun burst, sir.’
‘Burst?’
The Colonel turned the paper over. ‘Twenty-four-pounder in Number Three, my Lord, high-shot half-way down the bore. We lost three men, six wounded.’
Wellington grunted. It was astonishing, Hogan always thought, how the General dominated a room by his presence. Perhaps it was the blue eyes that seemed so knowing, or the stillness of the face round the strong, hooked nose. Most of the officers in this room were older than the Viscount Wellington, yet all of them, with the possible exception of Fletcher, seemed in awe of him. The General wrote the figures on his small piece of paper, the pencil squeaking. He looked back to the gunner. ‘Powder?’
‘Plenty, sir. Eighty barrels arrived yesterday. We can keep firing for another month.’
‘We’ll bloody need to. Sorry, my Lord.’ Fletcher was hatching marks on his map.
A trace of a smile flicked the corners of Wellington’s mouth. ‘Colonel?’
‘My Lord?’ Fletcher affected surprise. He looked up from the map, but kept his pen poised as though he was being interrupted.
‘I can see you’re not prepared for the meeting.’ Wellington gave a small nod to the Scotsman and turned to Hogan. ‘Major? Any reports?’
Hogan turned his notebook back two pages. ‘Two deserters, my Lord, both Germans, both from the Hesse-Darmstadt Regiment. They confirm that the Germans are garrisoning the castle.’ Hogan raised his eyebrows. ‘They say morale is high, my Lord.’
‘Then why desert?’
‘A brother of one, my Lord, is with the KGL.’
‘Ah. You’re sending them there?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The King’s German Legion would welcome the recruits.
‘Anything else?’ Wellington liked to keep the morning conferences brisk.
Hogan nodded. ‘They confirm, sir, that the French are devoid of round shot, but claim plenty of canister and grape. We already knew that.’ He hurried on, forestalling a complaint of repetition from the General. ‘They also say the city is terrified of a massacre.’
‘Then they should plead for a surrender.’ “The city, my Lord, is partly pro-French.’ It was true. Spanish civilians had been seen on the walls, firing muskets at the trenches sapping forward towards the fort at the dam. ‘They are hoping for our defeat. ‘
‘But.’ Wellington’s voice was scornful.’ They hope to avoid reprisals if we win. Is that right?”
Hogan shrugged. ‘Yes, sir.’ It was, the Irishman thought, a vain hope. If Wellington had his way, and he would, the assault would be soon and the way into the city hard. If they did win through the breach, and Hogan acknowledged the possibility that they might not, then the troops would lose all vestiges of discipline. It had always been so. Soldiers who were forced to fight through the terror of a narrow breach claimed the right to possess the fortress and all within it. The Irish remembered Drogheda and Wexford, the towns sacked by Cromwell and his English troops, and the stories were still told of the victors’ atrocities. Stories of women and children herded into a church that was fired, the English celebrating while the Irish burned, and Hogan thought of Teresa and her child, Sharpe’s child. His thoughts snapped back to the meeting as Wellington dictated a fast order to an aide-decamp. The order forbade any looting inside the city, but it was given, Hogan thought, without much conviction. Fletcher listened to the order and then, once again, pounded the map with his fist.
‘Bomb them.’
‘Ah! Colonel Fletcher is with us.’ Wellington turned to him.
Fletcher smiled. ‘I say bomb them, my Lord. Smoke them out! They’ll give up.’
‘And how long, pray, before they give up?’
Fletcher shrugged. He knew it could take weeks for the squat howitzers to reduce enough of Badajoz to smoking rubble, to burn the food supplies and thus force a surrender. ‘A month, my Lord?’
‘Two, more like, perhaps three. And let me advert you, Colonel, to the notion, imperfectly understood though it may be within the walls, that the Spanish are our allies. If we indiscriminately bomb them with shells it is possible, you will grant me, that our allies will be displeased.’