The Last Cartridge
Battle of Fuente Ovejuna
7th September 1810
A Tale of the Napoleonic Wars
Based on a True Story
Crisis
by Richard "Rifleman" Rutherford-Moore
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The crisis came when the depot and guardroom caught fire - the almost surrounded and embattled French soldiers had not noticed smouldering cartridge papers falling down onto dry grass and catching fire. The fire had reached some straw and now a door frame was blazing. The cottage had burned up furiously and now the fire had leapt three houses and reached the depot, where the forage was stored. It had erupted into flame, driving back French and Spaniard alike from the fierce heat. French soldiers had defied the flames, and made sacks from greatcoats by tying up the sleeves, doing up the buttons and had filled them with musket cartridges, dragging them out into the street from the cellar to prevent them being burned and exploding like the crude oil lamps hanging from nails inside the guardroom had just done. The Spanish retreated from the heat into the village church and waited for the French to choose between being burnt alive or be shot down in the street. The young French soldier in the bell tower had reloaded his musket, drawn out the bayonet from the sheath attached to his shoulder-belt and clipped it into place, cocked the gun and pointed the muzzle at the top of the wooden stairwell, then waited; his back braced against the balcony balustrade, sniffing away his tears in silent terror and shame. He had watched, staring open-eyed at what had happened in the square to the lieutenant and cursed himself for not shouting sooner. When the Spanish came dashing up the wooden stairs, he would without doubt share the fate of his dead comrades. While he waited he silently mouthed the words of one of the few prayers he remembered from his schooldays. For the French it was now a desperate situation - caught without a strong point in the open streets around the square and with their ammunition supply lost, they could be hunted down like rats by the more numerous Spanish soldiers pouring into the village from the outskirts and forced to surrender or be killed. A message reached Billot by a terrified soldier who had lost his musket and whose uniform jacket was literally smouldering - the crisis of the battle had come. Billot quickly made a decision. He ordered two squads to quickly fall in and fix bayonets. He drew his sword and placed himself at their head, and for a moment held their gaze. "Pelaton! We will take the church! Premier escouade - through the doors and up the stairs; clear the bell tower! Deuxieme escouade - sweep through the church! The rest of you ..." - this to the three soldiers crouching for breath on all fours after evacuating the depot, and others now pouring out of the houses along the street as the fire reached them - "... give supporting fire, then follow on - bring the others, any cartridges, the wounded and all the filled water bottles you can carry. Ready? March! " No plan for failure had been made. It was not even admitted by Billot to be a possibility. To fail was to die. It was Arcola all over again. The Spanish had been firing out of the doors of the church, over a heap of pews and tables. Too late, they realised that they couldn't close the doors because of their barricade - faced with a bayonet charge by what appeared to them to be a horde of screaming wide-eyed red-faced devils led by a fierce moustachioed sword-waving demon, they ran back up and over themselves, crashed through the church and squeezed out through the sacristy doorway. Billot crashed into and through the improvised barricade at the main doors and felt the shock from his outstretched leg hitting the half-open doors go all the way up from boot to his throbbing hipbone. It had to be his wounded left one - of course. He paused to allow his men to shoulder their way through into the gloom of the interior - their muskets and bayonets were far more suited to this kind of work than his thin company officers sword would be. A few screams from Spanish soldiers who had not been quick enough to run out echoed from the low vaulted roof beams of the church. Robert, standing in the church doorway, glimpsed an officer at the bottom of the street holding up his sabre trying to rally the Spaniards, and a few of them had turned at his shout. He was a veteran soldier - he had not discharged his musket in the charge - and he now quickly cocked it and brought it up to his shoulder, taking aim. The musket fired; when the smoke cleared the Spanish officer and his men had disappeared. For the second time, Robert slammed a heavy wooden door in defiance and dropped the locking bar across it with a curse. Billot wiped away the streaming sweat from his temples with his jacket sleeve in the doorway - and for the first time wondered if he'd made the right decision to stay in Fuente Ovejuna. As he did so the fire in the depot reached the stored ammunition and the jars of oil in the cellar and the building erupted skywards in a terrific explosion. The Spanish troops nearby crammed into the narrow streets were showered with blazing oil, roof tiles, large pieces of building stone and blackened pieces of timber. They turned as one man and ran for their lives back up the street and out of the village. The church was now secure. Billot organised the defence of the church and sent two corporals back to pull out any remaining men from the village square into the church. They quickly returned, dragging a half-conscious soldier along between them, one making a short report - "Anyone left out there is a dead man, mon capitaine !! They aren't in the mood to take prisoners !!" Morillo, sitting on his horse under the parasol by the cowshed received another report - the French, who were now massing there and fortifying it, had retaken the church. The French had waited until the Spanish troops had reached the square, then exploded a large mine in one of the nearby houses. Morillo turned away from the sweating officer standing by his horse's head and looked over towards the village. All he could see of the place now were a few outlying cottages beyond the olive groves. A rising plume of thick and dirty grey smoke obscured the rest of it. There must have been more than a single French company here - so far the Spanish casualties had been over two hundred and fifty, and every point of strength had been defended. A mine, now? When had they had the time to prepare that - was he being lured into a trap? Did the French expect reinforcements? If so, how close were they? Were - even now - more French troops, perhaps their dreaded Dragoons, edging around his flanks to get into his rear? This had all obviously been planned. And he was just sitting here, alone and unsupported - taking heavy casualties. If he saw that guerillero again he would have him shot. It had to stop, and soon. There was another report that there had been a terrific fire fight to the north, his soldiers had charged bravely and captured the house where the shooting was coming from, only to find it manned by their own men. Both sides had engaged each other for over thirty minutes, using up their valuable ammunition. Morillo finally lost patience; he furled the yellow parasol, turned to an aide and gave orders for straw, mattresses, hay bales, planking -anything that would burn - to be brought to the square. He also sent another officer with six of his cavalry troopers - all were mounted on mules, he noted - and ordered them to go and find his advance guard who were looking along the Cordoba high road for any signs of the French; and confirm that there were none to be seen along it. They had to be holding for reinforcements - why else stand and fight outnumbered twenty to one in a puny village miles from anywhere? Morillo added another order - one of his two infantry brigades would withdraw from the village, move south to regroup and meet the expected French moves up the Cordoba road. Morillo's order reached the Spanish infantry colonel just as he carefully placed his troops for an attack on the village. His men had carried past the wounded officer of the light-infantrymen with a bullet in his lower back, sitting uncomfortably on a musket supported by four of his men, his arms around their shoulders. He was only able to mumble something about an attack on the church before he had expired in delirium; had the attack gone forward at any time before then, Billot's men would have been massacred. The Spanish colonel eased himself up in his saddle and announced to the regiment's major and the two aides that the village was taken; they were to move off to a position to the south, join their brother regiment - wherever that was - and cover the Cordoba road. As the Spanish regiment moved off south, twenty-one exhausted soldiers with red-rimmed eyes and burning thirsts began piling up pews making firing platforms where possible in the church. Three more were in the bell tower windows, another looked out over the roof through another small window. Billot gave out water from a bucket. A unseen French soldier - one of the faubourg lot - smashed a small cabinet looking for the Sacrament, desperate as he was for drink. The soldier from the bell tower, climbing down in silent relief almost overwhelmed by his rescue; not a single Spaniard had thought to climb the steps up to the bell tower during their occupation of the church; had quenched his thirst in the holy water by the altar, giving rise to a moment of laughter as Billot sent him up to the top of the bell-tower, shouting "Back to your perch, my little lark - you'll be closer to God up there, my lad - you must now be an Invicincible! Put a word in for the rest of Us with the Holy Father when you get up there!" The young soldier, shamefaced, ran up the wooden steps to the bell tower, hoping what Billot said was true. [8]
Ammunition was now low; each man had a full cartridge box but there were hardly any cartridges in reserve. The Spanish were using British infantry muskets - the cartridges from them would not fit the French muskets. A few spare but fouled muskets belonging to them were cleaned out, the worn flints replaced by a corporal, loaded and stacked against the wall. Billot grasped one, saying "Here, give me one - I can still shoot as well as any of you!" and he picked up a handful of cartridges, pushing them into his waistcoat pockets. He quickly loaded it, ramming the ball down the barrel with practised ease, noting the thin light iron ramrod and the Crowned 'GR' stamped on the lock plate. He then clicked the bayonet into place from the sheath in a discarded British shoulder-belt sheath on the floor. He walked over to the main doors, now thoroughly barricaded. A few French soldiers lay as if sleeping out in the street, covered every now and then by the clouds of grey smoke from burning houses. Billot reckoned that the attack when it came would be from the right - the only street not blocked by blazing cottages and free from the billowing smokescreen.
"Look to your right, soldiers!" he bellowed, coughing; "They'll be coming soon! Fire at their centre, and make every Spanish wife a widow!" He pointed at six men loading weapons in the aisle - "You two - Durkin and Hayer! You - James - and You two Ransommes! Stand here by me. When we fire, follow me - we will sally out through this door and cut what's left to pieces! They won't stand! Be ready!"
A shout from the bell tower made each man look out onto the square, musket levelled. Spanish soldiers were running towards them with muskets and followed by other soldiers with armfuls of straw and some with bedding and furniture. A French musket boomed, and a soldier fell on his face skidding across the cobbles. Every other musket then seemed to fire at once, and the scene disappeared in a cloud of dirty grey gun-smoke.
Billot watched and listened; he heard metal ramrods clattering down gun barrels, screams from wounded men, shouts from outside. Splinters of glass and plaster flew from windows and walls, the candles in the chandelier above shattering and the waxen pieces falling like sleet as bullets whipped in through the open cavities, striking the stone walls inside and dropping spent on the paved floor of the church. He saw in a split-second moment of silence a bullet glance from the heavy iron door knocker with a hollow thud. It flew past him, plucking the sleeve of his habit like a small child wanting attention.
A truss of hay flew in through the doorway over the barricade, already alight, and then a mattress blocked out most of the light coming in. Billot shouted "A moi! Croisez la Baionette! Charge!" As the door flew open, Billot ran straight into a soldier who gaped at him wide-eyed, his arms full of straw. A moment later, and Billot stepped over his body, firing off his musket at close-range into a press of soldiers trying to back away from him. To his right and left, French soldiers stabbed in the short methodical bayonet exercise that Billot had seen in Vienna taught as a gymnastic exercise to the Imperial Guard, for amusement; a deadly dance of death. He had taught it to the men in his company.
This was not the Billot his men knew - like a crazed animal he stabbed and cursed and shouted and swung his musket into dark faces and uniformed bodies cutting and stamping his way through them until he felt sick and light-headed and there were suddenly no more enemy soldiers left around him. His arms felt like lead weights. Bullets began to whip and sing about his ears. A French soldier grunted by his side and fell to the cobbles, dropping his musket as he fell.
"Back! Back!"
Billot screamed, as more Spanish soldiers appeared from around the street corners -
"Back into the church!"
He reloaded the musket, blood smearing his hands from the bayonet point, and raised it to his shoulder. As he fired at a group of running soldiers, he felt a bullet strike him with a blow to his stomach like a fist, partly spinning him around, sending the cartridges falling from his pockets. He dropped the musket and staggered, reaching out behind him for the doorway. A soldier caught him and dragged him through, kicking the door shut with his foot. Another soldier dropped the bar, and then jammed a heavy table behind it
Billot came to his senses with a start, lying on the floor blinking his eyes. His mouth was bone dry. His tongue cleaved to the top of his mouth. He had lost his shako and he couldn't see anything, but firing was still going on around him; his ears were ringing with it. The ceiling of the church was now invisible under a thickening pall of swirling rising gun-smoke. A chain hung out of it, slowly swinging - the chandelier lay next to him on the floor. It had just fallen with a crash and the sound had - rather incongruously - woken him out of his trance. As he tried to sit up, he remembered; a bullet had struck him almost exactly as before on the hip, this time on the other side of his body. Someone had torn open his surtout and exposed the wound.
Damnation, he thought – for the rest of my life I'll be a cursed cripple!
He dabbed at the blood with his shirt. The bullet had apparently passed right through the hipbone, and he was bleeding badly from the jagged wound at the rear, which he could hardly reach. Gathering and tearing up his shirt lap, he tried to fix it in place across the wound with his sword belt. He then with difficulty tried to struggle to his feet. He couldn't do it, maybe the ball had broken his pelvis as he couldn't move his right leg. He shouted for help, and a soldier at the doorway with a singed beard whirled and looked down in surprise - he had thought his captain was dead! Between the two of them, the wounded and bleeding officer got to his feet, using the soldier's musket as an impromptu crutch. He wiped the sweat from his eyes with a forearm, pushed the musket and the soldier back into the door space, telling him to reload.
Billot whipped out his sword, winced with pain, unbalanced, and almost fell over. He ended up braced against the cool church wall, eyes screwed shut, teeth clenched in a mouth dry as dust. Somehow, he had to keep control of the desperate defence. Dragging his injured leg, he hobbled forward to the barricade.
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