Around him a small cluster of staff officers nervously glanced at their watches and some adjusted them to synchronise with their general. Arthur clambered up on to an upturned gunner’s tub to peer out of the embrasure. Ahead of him the trenches zig-zagged across the bare ground, scored by heavy iron shot. Only a handful of heads and hats bobbed up occasionally as the engineers risked a quick glance towards the fort. The men of the assault party, and the brigade assigned to follow them up if they succeeded in clearing the breach, remained out of sight, crouched down in the churned mud at the bottom of the closest length of trench. Arthur raised his telescope and scrutinised the defences the small force would have to overcome. There was perhaps a hundred yards of open ground to be crossed before the men would reach the base of the hillock upon which the fort stood. Then they would have to clamber up the slope, negotiating the abattis that had been placed at all angles to break up any assault. Then there was the fort itself, protected by thick walls twenty feet high. Expending the last of the ammunition, the siege batteries had succeeded in battering a small gap that ran most of the way down the wall. Arthur estimated that the breach was perhaps ten feet wide. Barely enough to be considered practicable for an assault, yet there was no choice in the matter. Arthur was running out of time. A few days from now Marmont would join forces with Soult and the combined French army could arrive before the walls of Badajoz in less than a week.

‘Let us hope that your men succeed this time, señor.’

Arthur turned to the neatly uniformed Spanish officer standing at his shoulder. General Alava was a slight man with a ready smile who had been assigned by the junta in Cadiz to act as Arthur’s liaison officer. Although Alava had only been on Arthur’s staff for a brief time he had already begun to win Arthur’s respect by offering a considered opinion when he was asked for one. He was also honest about the shortcomings of those who commanded the Spanish armies and the politicians who were supposed to pay and supply their soldiers. In short, General Alava was exactly the sort of man Arthur required to mediate between himself and the Spanish authorities, who promised so much and delivered so little. It was a great pity, Arthur mused, that the patriotic fervour of the common soldiers and people of Spain was so ill served by many of their leaders.