Read Sharpe 12 - Sharpe's Battle for Free Online Page B

suspect that most of them are patriotic to Spain and are probably willing to fight against the French, but undoubtedly a handful of them will be afrancesados, though in that regard
    I'd suspect the officers before the men.“ An afrancesado was a Spaniard who supported the French and almost all such traitors came from the educated classes. Hogan slapped a horsefly that had settled on his horse's neck. ”It's all right, Jeremiah, just a hungry fly,“ he explained to his startled horse, then turned back to Wellington. ”I don't know why they've been sent here, my
    Lord, but I am sure of two things. First, it will be a diplomatic impossibility to get rid of them, and second we have to assume that it's the
    French who want them here. King Ferdinand, I've no doubt, was gulled into writing the letter. I hear he's not very clever, my Lord."
    “But you are, Hogan. It's why I put up with you. So what do we do? Put them to latrine digging?”
    Hogan shook his head. “If you employ the King of Spain's household guard on menial tasks, my Lord, it will be construed as an insult to our Spanish allies as well as to His Catholic Majesty.”
    “Damn His Catholic Majesty,” Wellington growled, then stared balefully towards the trench-like grave where the French dead were now being unceremoniously laid in a long, white, naked row. “And the junta?” he asked. “What of the junta?”
    The junta in Cadiz was the regency council that ruled unoccupied Spain in their King's absence. Of its patriotism there could be no doubt, but the same could not be said of its efficiency. The junta was notorious for its internal squabbles and touchy pride, and few matters had touched that pride more directly than the discreet request that Arthur Wellesley, Viscount Wellington, be made Generalisimo of all Spain's armies. Wellington was already the General
    Marshal of Portugal's army and commander of the British forces in Portugal, and no man of sense denied he was the best general on the allied side, not least because he was the only one who consistently won battles, and no one denied that it made sense for all the armies opposing the French in Spain and
    Portugal to be under a unified command, but nevertheless, despite the acknowledged sense of the proposal, the junta was reluctant to grant
    Wellington any such powers. Spain's armies, they protested, must be led by a
    Spaniard, and if no Spaniard had yet proved capable of winning a campaign against the French, then that was no matter; better a defeated Spaniard than a victorious foreigner.
    “The junta, my Lord,” Hogan answered carefully, “will think this is the thin end of a very broad wedge. They'll think this is a British plot to take over the Spanish armies piecemeal, and they'll watch like hawks, my Lord, to see how you treat the Real Companïa Irlandesa.”
    “The hawk,” Wellington said with a sour twist, “being Don Luis.”
    “Precisely, my Lord,” Hogan said. General Don Luis Valverde was the junta's official observer with the British and Portuguese armies and the man whose recommendation was needed if the Spanish were ever to appoint Wellington as their Generalisimo. It was an approval that was highly unlikely, for General
    Valverde was a man in whom all the junta's great pride and none of its small sense was concentrated.
    “God damn it,” Wellington said, thinking of Valverde. “Well, Hogan? You're paid to advise me, so earn your damned pay.”
    Hogan paused to collect his thoughts. “I fear we have to welcome Lord Kiely and his men,” he said after a few seconds, “even while we distrust them, and so it seems to me, my Lord, that we must do our best to make them uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that they either go back to Madrid or else march down to Cadiz.”
    “We drive them out?” Wellington said. “How?”
    "Partly, my Lord, by bivouacking them so close to the French that those guardsmen who wish to desert will find it easy. At the same time, my Lord, we say that we