Dennis Wheatley - The wanton princess

For a while he lay there in ecstatic happiness. The years seemed to have fallen from him. When he got up he felt a buoyancy that he had not known since the terrible day when she had betrayed him to the tipstaffs. She had made no mention of that, or that she had forgiven him for having killed John Beefy. But the time they had spent together had been so short—apart from their silent trip from ship to shore in the boat—not much more than twenty minutes. And every moment had been occupied by her telling him how she had got back to Europe, the urgency of their leaving Cadiz before Fournier found them and his giving her the information that she must take to Gibraltar.

Although he had ridden down from Boulogne by easy stages, he had been for thirty-one days almost continuously in the saddle; so the prospect of a few days' rest was an added joy and, after a hearty breakfast, he strolled round the little town.

It was a pleasant place in the centre of the sherry industry. As he was aware, several of the principal shippers were Englishmen; but the chivalrous Spaniards had left them at liberty to continue conducting their businesses, except for the restriction that they were no longer allowed to send cargoes to England. As a French officer Roger naturally avoided con­tact with them, but he met several of the Spanish growers. Members of both the Gonzalez and Domecq families took him round the great bodegas where the wine was stored and entertained him most hospitably.

Nevertheless, during the three days he spent in Jerez for most of the time his mind was on the miracle of Georgina being alive and wondering if she had succeeded in getting to Gibraltar. By the morning of the 27th he felt confident that all was well so, still in the highest spirits, he took horse for Seville.

Late in the afternoon he entered the ancient city and dismounted at the great building that housed the Board of the Indies. To his relief he learned that Villeneuve was still in Seville and, half an hour later, he was received by him at the Casa that the Spaniards had placed at the disposal of the Admiral and his staff.

The evenings were still warm enough to sit out in the sheltered patio of the Casa and there, seated beside a tinkling fountain, they held a long conference, during which Roger learned that Austria had declared war on France some three weeks before and that the Russians and Swedes had soon afterwards proclaimed their intention to join the Third Coali­tion against France. Villeneuve then said that he had not brought his fleet down to Cadiz for fear of further encounters with the English but because the last direct order he had received from the Emperor had enjoined him, should he meet serious opposition when sailing north, to retire into that port. He then spoke of the difficulties he would have to overcome before again putting to sea.

The Spaniards were politeness personified but unbelievably dilatory about carrying out their promises. Supply problems, which in France could be dealt with in a week, in Spain took a month. Admiral Gravina, who commanded the Spanish squadron in Cadiz, was a charming man but his ships were in a wretched condition and several, by French standards, unseaworthy. This made them so cumbersome to handle that they became a drag upon the remainder of the fleet and hampered its manoeuvres.

Another matter that gave Villeneuve grave concern was that both navies had been cooped up in port for so long that many of the Captains had had no opportunity to practise any but the most elementary evolutions. In fact the only one they could be relied on to carry out, without throwing the fleet into disorder, was to form line-of-battle; and that was a terrible disability when going into action against the English, who had been trained at a given signal to change formation with perfect precision.

He then lamented the fact that they were so far from Paris that time did not permit of his going there and attempting to dissuade the Emperor from staking everything on the autumn campaign; and Roger got the impression that, in spite of Napoleon's order, he might still not leave the port, later making the excuse that the Spanish fleet was unfit to sail and that without it he would find himself heavily outnumbered.

In spite of what Talleyrand had said about the Army becoming stale, it was Roger's view, too, that Napoleon would stand a greater chance of success if he waited until the Spring, because the worst-found ships in the Allied fleet would meet with less trouble in better weather. On the other hand, if they sailed in October rough weather would favour the British and, if caught in a bad storm, Villeneuve's fleet might well suffer the same fate as had the Spanish Armada.

It being Roger's object to do everything he could to bring about the destruction of the Allied Fleet, and the Admiral's reactions being much as Napoleon had anticipated, he did not scruple to use the spur he had been given. As tactfully as he could, he spoke to Villeneuve about the conversation he was supposed to have overheard and told him that if his fleet lingered in port until the weather became too bad for it to put to sea it was probable that he would be replaced by Admiral Rosily.

Having thanked him for the warning, the Admiral asked him to remain at the Casa as his guest until his negotiations with the Spaniards were completed; so Roger spent the fol­lowing two days seeing the sights of Seville. He found the huge Cathedral very impressive, but was much more inter­ested in the fascinating collection in one wing of the House of the Indies consisting of maps, gear and weapons used by Columbus and the great Conquistadors.

On the 30th Villeneuve told him that he now hoped to be able to sail from Cadiz in about a fortnight, then gave him a despatch for the Emperor containing detailed information upon the state of the fleet. At midday Roger again reluctantly mounted his horse and started on his long journey north. Anxious now to get back to Paris he covered longer daily stages than he had while coming south and reached Bayonne on October 9th.

Having stabled his horse at a good inn and sent his valise up to a room in it, he walked round to the Cavalry Barracks to gel the latest military news. The officers there made him welcome in their Mess and, to his astonishment, told him that the whole of the Grande Armee had left the coast towards the end of August; but nobody there yet knew if the Emperor had sent it to the Rhine with the intention of invading Austria or down into Italy where it was believed that the Austrians had taken the offensive.

Puzzling over the matter later, it seemed to Roger at first sight a crazy business for Napoleon to have sent him with orders for the Allied Fleet to clear the Channel in preparation for an invasion then, within a few days of having despatched him with them, withdrawn the troops who were to make the invasion should Villeneuve prove successful. But he knew the subtle mind of the Corsican far too well to believe that he had acted on impulse. Napoleon always had an alternative plan for every situation but if he did use it, invariably kept it to himself until the last moment.

That, given a reasonable chance of success, he would have invaded England Roger had no doubt at all. But evidently he had come to the conclusion that he could place no reliance on his Navy and, therefore, was using it only as a factor in a vast deception plan. By setting his Army in motion more than a week before the ill-prepared Austrians had even declared war, he had already stolen a march on them, and it would probably still be several weeks before his enemies learned that the Grande Armee had left the coast. If, before that, Villeneuve put to sea and the fact was reported by watching British frigates it would be assumed that he was about to launch the invasion. Reports of French troop movements towards the Rhine or Italy would be discounted as no more than the despatch of reinforcements. Then, one fine morning, the Austrians in one theatre or another would wake up to find the mightiest army in the world arrayed against them.