Free Send Me Safely Back Again by Adrian Goldsworthy

had never seen so many birds in one place.
    A shot rang out as a French infantryman put a ball into the head of a Spaniard whose innards were spilled on the ground by a great slash across his stomach. The man had been moaning softly, and Hanley thought he could see scars on the pinkish intestines where a vulture had pecked and ripped. The Frenchman jabbed at the bird with his bayonet and screamed in rage. The vultureflapped its wings and hopped back a few paces until the man lost interest. The birds were already getting fat. Soon they would be fatter. Half an hour ago a sudden musket shot sent clouds of the carrion fowl into the air. They were no longer so easily frightened.
    ‘Poor Robert. Well, he won’t have to flog that dog of a horse any more.’ They were passing another man in brown and blue, this one with half his face carried away. His horse stood dutifully beside him, cropping the thin grass as if nothing had happened.
    ‘Take the reins and lead him off,’ ordered the corporal of the hussars.
    They passed other Frenchmen. ‘Looks like Philippe has had his last woman.’
    There were far, far more Spanish. The dead lay in every posture. Hanley passed men whose faces remained fixed in a rictus of appalling horror, cut down as they fled. Others lay in clusters, shot or hacked down as they stood in a knot and fought to the end. They passed a battery, whose crews had all died around their four guns. There were the shattered corpses of French infantrymen in a swathe of blue ahead of the position to testify to their stubbornness. French gunners were lifting the dead off barrels and carriages, as they prepared to tow the trophies away.
    Blades had done most of the work. Half the prisoners marching with him had wounds to the head and shoulders from the French sabres. So had most of the dead. Severed hands and arms were dotted over the ground. So were heads. They passed half a dozen neatly decapitated men whose necks had been sliced evenly through above the collar.
    ‘That’ll be Sergeant Blanchard of the Tenth Chasseurs,’ said the lean-faced hussar in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Saw him do the same to the Russians at Friedland. He’s a wicked bastard.’
    Another trooper looked down approvingly. ‘Knows how to use a sabre, though.’
    ‘Use the point, lads, not the edge,’ said the corporal out of habit. ‘Always the point.’
    They moved on, and still there were more corpses in white, brown, grey and blue coats. In Portugal the peasants and the camp followers had stripped the dead within hours. This did not seem to be happening here, and Hanley wondered whether there were simply too many dead or whether the nearest villagers were too terrified to scavenge. Most of the corpses had their pockets turned out. Papers wafted on the air as the breeze scattered precious letters from mothers, and from wives who were now widows, but did not know it.
    Hanley felt alone. There were no officers with the group and the Spanish soldiers treated the foreigner with suspicion. They said little to each other, and nothing to him. It made it worse that as an officer he was permitted to keep his sword according to the usual conventions of war. The Spanish soldiers were unsure which side this tall man was on, with his ragged and unfamiliar uniform.
    The hussars took them to a much larger group of two hundred or so prisoners, and left them for the infantry to escort. They waited while other parties were brought in. Hanley tried to talk to the dozen or so officers in charge of the captives, but none of the Spaniards had seen him before.
    ‘Long live Napoleon and his invincible troops!’ More than half of the prisoners raised the shout when a French colonel trotted past with his escort of a few dragoons. None of the officers joined in the cry, and several looked bitter. The captives were afraid, standing within sight of thousands of dead or dying men dressed in uniforms like their own. They did not know what fate lay in store and were