Fletcher nodded. ‘They’ll not be too happy, my Lord, if your men rape everything that moves and steal everything that doesn’t.’
‘We will trust to our soldiers’ good sense.’ The words were cynically said. ‘And now, Colonel, perhaps you can tell us about the breaches. Are they practical?’
‘No, sir, they are not.’ Fletcher’s Scottish accent was stronger again. ‘I can tell you a good deal, sir, most of it new.’ He turned the map round so that the General was looking at the two bastions from the point of view of an attacker. The Santa Maria was to the left, Trinidad to the right. Fletcher had marked the breaches. The Trinidad had lost half of its face, a gap nearly a hundred feet wide and the Engineer had penciled in his estimate of the height reduction. Twenty-five feet. The flank of the Santa Maria facing the Trinidad was equally badly hit. ‘The breaches, as you can see, my Lord, are now about twenty-five feet high. That’s a hell of a climb! That’s higher, if you’ll forgive me for pointing it out, than the unbreached wall at Ciudad Rodrigo!’ He leaned back as if he had made a scoring hit.
Wellington nodded. ‘We are all aware, Colonel, that Badajoz is appreciably bigger than Ciudad Rodrigo. Pray continue.’
‘My Lord.’ Fletcher leaned forward again. ‘Let me advert you to this.’ He grinned as he used one of Wellington’s favorite expressions. His broad finger settled on the ditch to the front of the Santa Maria. ‘They’ve blocked the ditch here, and here.’ The finger moved to the right of the Trinidad breach. ‘They’re boxing us in.’ His voice was serious now. He could twist the General’s tail from time to time, but only dared do it because he was a good Engineer, trusted by Wellington, and he saw it as his job to give his true point of view and not be a lickspittle. The finger tapped the ditch. ‘It seems they’ve put carts in the ditch, upturned carts, and lengths of umber. You don’t have to be a genius to work out that they plan to fire those obstacles. You can see what will happen, gentlemen. Our troops will be in the ditch, trying to climb a bloody great ramp, and there’ll be no escape from the grapeshot. They can’t go left and right into the darkness to regroup. They’ll be trapped, lit up, like rats in a bloody barrel.’
Wellington listened to the impassioned outburst. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Aye, my Lord, and there’s more.’
‘Go on.’
The finger stayed to the right of the Trinidad breach. ‘The French have dug another ditch here, in the bottom of the ditch, and flooded it. We’ll be jumping into water, deep water, and it looks as if they’re extending it. Round here.’ The finger traced a line back in front of both breaches.
Wellington’s eyes were on the map. ‘So the longer we wait, the more difficult it becomes?’
Fletcher sighed, but conceded the point. ‘Aye, there’s that.’
Wellington raised his eyes to the Engineer. ‘What do we. gain by time?’
‘I can lower the breaches.’
‘By how much?’
‘Ten feet.’
‘How long?’
‘A week.’
Wellington paused, then. ‘You mean two weeks.’
‘Aye, my Lord, perhaps.’
‘We do not have two weeks. We do not have one week. We must take the city. It must be soon.’ There was silence in the room. Outside the windows the guns hammered over the floodwaters. Wellington looked back to the map, reached over the table, and put a long finger on the huge space between the bastions. ‘There’s a ravelin there?’
‘Aye, my Lord, and still being built.’ The ravelin was sketched on the map; a masonry wedge, diamond shaped, that would break up an attack. If the French had been given time to finish it, before the siege guns had started firing, it would have been like a new bastion, built in the ditch, outflanking all attacks. As it was it formed a vast, flat-topped obstacle, surrounded by the ditch, smack between the two breaches.
Wellington looked up to Fletcher. ‘You seem very sure of this new information?’
‘Aye, my Lord, I am. We had a laddie on the glacis last night. He did a good job.’ The praise was grudging.