Under Wellington's Command: A Tale of the Peninsular WarHenty, G. A. (George Alfred)
General
Under Wellington's Command: A Tale of the Peninsular War
Henty, G. A. (George Alfred)
Historical fiction; Peninsular War, 1807-1814 -- Juvenile fiction
Then taking out a copy of his report, he gave in much fuller detail
than in the report, itself, an account of the movements of the
various columns and flying parties, during the first ten days; and
then, more briefly, their operations between Burgos and Valladolid,
ending up by saying:
"You see, colonel, there was really nothing out of the way in all
this. We had the advantage of having a great number of men who knew
the country intimately; and the cutting of all their communications,
the exaggerated reports brought to them by the peasants, and the
maintenance of our posts round Salamanca and Zamora while we were
operating near Burgos and Valladolid, impressed the commanders of
these towns with such an idea of our strength, and such uneasiness
as to their communications that, after the reverse to their column,
none of them ever ventured to attack us in earnest."
"That is no doubt true," the colonel said, "but to have done all
this when--with the reinforcements sent up, and the very strong
garrison at four of the towns, to say nothing of the division of
Burgos--they had forty thousand men disposable, is a task that
wanted a head well screwed on. I can see how you did it; but that
would be a very different thing to doing it, oneself.
"However, you have taught us a great deal of the geography of the
country between the frontier and Burgos, and it ought to be useful.
If I had received an order, this afternoon, to march with the
regiment to Tordesillas, for example, I should have known no more
where the place stood, or by what road I was to go to it, than if
they had ordered me to march to Jericho. Now I should be able to go
straight for it, by the shortest line. I should cross the roads at
points at which we were not likely to be attacked, and throw out
strong parties to protect our flanks till we had passed; and should
feel that I was not stumbling along in the dark, and just trusting
to luck."
"Now, colonel, we must be off to our own quarters," Terence said.
"We have been too long away now and, if I had not known that
Herrara and the majors were to be trusted to do their work--and in
fact they did it well, without my assistance, all the time I was
away prisoner--I could not have left them, as I did, half an hour
after they had encamped."
The next morning Terence received a copy of the orders of the day
of the division, at present, under General Crawford's command;
together with the general orders of the whole army, from
headquarters. In the latter, to which Terence first turned, was a
paragraph:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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