STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 063
The Celebrated Major Grant
9. Tales of Secret Service (24)
The Celebrated Major Grant
These documents took one back at once to one of the most daring escapes of a British prisoner which can be found in the annals of the Napoleonic Wars—an escape carried out with an almost absurd nonchalance and readiness of wit. The tale was known to Napier, who thought it so curious that he spared four pages for it in a chapter of his fourth volume. And Mr. John Buchan made an excellent story out of it in one of his volumes of miscellaneous adventures, with confirmatory detail out of his fertile imagination, and an exciting account of Grant’s dealings with Spanish guerrilleros, who sought to rescue him, and were refused his permission to carry him off.
What really happened I can give from the memoirs of Colquhoun Grant’s brother-in-law, Sir James McGrigor, who devoted a chapter to the exploits of his evasive and resourceful relative.
Colquhoun Grant, of the IIth Foot, was one of four officers whom Wellington employed on special reconnoitring and Intelligence duties. They were all good horsemen, good linguists in Spanish, French, and Portuguese, and noted for resourcefulness and cool heads. Whenever the French were on the move it was their duty to hang about the advancing army, on its flank sometimes, not infrequently in its rear, and to report to headquarters all important developments. These officers were Colquhoun Grant, Waters of the Portuguese Staff, Leith Hay of the 29th Foot, and Charles Somers Cocks of the 16th Light Dragoons. The pitcher that goes often to the well ends by being broken, and all these gallant Intelligence officers came to their day of ill-luck; it was impossible to foresee all possible dangers. Waters was captured on the Coa in April 1811, Leith Hay near Toledo in April 1813, Somers Cocks was killed in action (not while scouting) at Burgos in October 1812. Of Colquhoun Grant’s extraordinary capture and escape this screed must suffice to tell the tale.
When Marmont made his unlucky incursion into Portugal in April 1812, thinking to draw Wellington off from the siege of Badajoz, he miscalculated his times, and while he was raiding Guarda and Castello Branco, Badajoz fell. The British General started off at once to waylay the Marshal before he could get back to Spain, and nearly succeeded in his plan. For the details of his enveloping scheme it was necessary to know exactly how the French lay, and Grant had been sent ahead, to locate the position of each of Marmont’s divisions, even before Wellington started from Badajoz.
Now, in Spain, as Grant maintained, he would never have been captured. He was known all up and down the frontier of Estremadura and Leon, welcome in every village, and a household word for ingenuity and daring. “He was proficient in their provincial dialects, intimately acquainted with their songs, their music, and their domestic habits. He was an enthusiastic admirer of the Spanish character, well read in their literature, and he even danced their national dances most admirably. He was such a favourite with priests and peasantry, his name was so widespread, and the devotion felt to him so strong, that far in the rear of the French posts he slept secure. His knowledge of the enemy’s army was exact. He knew not only the regiments, but the character of every superior officer, almost of every chef de bataillon.” In his personal habits he was a stoic, sleeping frequently in the field under any chance shelter, and occasionally in the hills with no shelter at all, in any kind of weather, secure of being passed on ultimately from one padre or peasant to another.
Now, on April 10, 1812, Marmont lay, quite unsuspecting the vicinity of Wellington, at Sabugal, while the British army was advancing by forced marches, and had its leading divisions at Castello Branco. Grant was watching the passes over the Sierra de Estrella between the two armies, in the neighbourhood of Idanha Nova and Penamacor, intent on discovering whether the enemy, after his raid on and evacuation of Castello Branco, was about to retreat to Salamanca, or to sit down to the siege of Almeida or Ciudad Rodrigo, while keeping a covering force in his front at Sabugal. As chance would have it, two French scouting parties were sweeping the country-side for provisions, on each flank of the point of view from which Grant was watching the road to Sabugal, from the cover of a thin belt of wood. He was accompanied by a Spanish peasant named Leon, his guide on many excursions along the neighbouring frontier, but less versed in the countryside of the Upper Beira.
By ill-luck a French officer, using his telescope to search the hill-sides along the road, caught a glimpse of Grant’s red coat among the trees, and detached a party of dragoons to cut him off. Grant and his companion rode away to escape them, under cover of the wood, and did so for the moment. But being cut off from the road, they descended unwittingly into the midst of the other French scouting party, which was working along the hill-sides a mile or two away, and, being fired on from several directions, had to cast their horses loose and to try to escape among some inclosures on steep ground. Pursued by small parties of infantry, they were ultimately run down and surrounded. Grant’s companion was shot, he himself taken prisoner and conducted to Marmont’s headquarters at Sabugal. The Marshal was interested to discover what the presence of a British staff officer among these lonely hills might mean, more especially when he discovered that the captive was the celebrated Major Grant.
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