[404] Soult so far managed to forget the whole business that he, two years later, sent the younger Lafitte to present to the Emperor the English flags captured at Albuera! [See St. Chamans, p. 133.]
[405] Most of this comes from Argenton’s confession to Wellesley on May 13. See Wellington Dispatches, iv. p. 339. He said that he slipped away from the gendarmes at the advice of Lafitte, who told him that his friends would come to no harm if the chief witness against them vanished.
[406] The extraordinary clemency shown to the conspirators by Soult, the providential escape of Argenton, the favours which the Marshal afterwards lavished on Lafitte, and the trouble which he took to hush up the whole matter, led many of his enemies to suspect that he himself had been in the plot, and had intended to combine his scheme for Portuguese kingship with a rising against Bonaparte at the head of his corps d’armée: Argenton’s confession made this impossible.
[407] For further details on Argenton’s fate, see the [Appendix].
[408] 1st Hussars, 8th Dragoons, 22nd Chasseurs and Hanoverian Chevaux-légers.
[409] For details of this fatiguing night march and its gropings in the dark see Tomkinson’s (16th Dragoons) Diary, pp. 4-5, and Hawker’s (14th Light Dragoons) Journal, p. 47.
[410] The Light Dragoons, says Hawker (Journal, p. 48), ‘finding ourselves opposed by a heavy column of cavalry, retired a little.’ Their total loss was one officer and two men wounded, and one man missing. On this slender foundation Le Noble founds the following romance (p. 240). ‘Le général Franceschi charge à la tête de sa division ceux qui l’attaquent en front, renverse la première ligne, et tandis qu’elle se rétablit, se retire, et fond avec 6 pièces et deux régiments sur la colonne qui le tournait par sa droite. L’ennemi est culbuté, la colonne recule, et le général se retire sur Oliveira avec quelques prisonniers.’ All this fuss produced four casualties in the two English regiments. See official report of casualties for May 10, 1809.
[411] Hawker, pp. 49-50. Tomkinson has words to much the same effect, ‘it was more like a field-day than an affair with the enemy: all the shots went over our heads, and no accident appeared to happen to any one’ (p. 6).
[412] The best account of this little skirmish is in the Journal of Fantin des Odoards of the 31st Léger (p. 230). Napier does not mention that the reason why Hill did not move in the afternoon was simply that he was already ‘contained,’ and engaged with a force of French infantry of nearly his own strength.
[413] Wellesley to Mackenzie [the latter had written that he dared not trust his Portuguese battalions], Wellington Dispatches, iv. p. 350.