He blew out the candle and went back into the night where the waves broke white at the city’s edge and the great sails boomed like guns in the wet dark. Father Salvador Montseny, killer, priest, and patriot, had just ensured the salvation of Spain.

IT HAD all begun so well.

In the moonlit darkness the River Guadiana lay beneath the South Essex Light Company like a misted streak of molten silver pouring slow and massive between black hills. Fort Joseph, named for Napoleon’s brother who was the French puppet on the throne of Spain, was on the hill closest to the company, while Fort Josephine, named after the emperor’s discarded wife, lay at the top of a long slope on the far bank. Fort Joseph was in Portugal, Josephine was in Spain, and between the two forts was a bridge.

Six light companies had been sent from Lisbon under the command of Brigadier General Sir Barnaby Moon. A coming man, Brigadier Moon, a young thruster, an officer destined for higher things, and this was his first independent command. If he got this right, if the bridge was broken, then Sir Barnaby could look to a future as shining as the river that slid between the darkened hills.

And it had all begun so well. The six companies had been ferried across the Tagus in a misted dawn, then had marched across southern Portugal, which was supposedly French-held territory, but the partisans had assured the British that the French had withdrawn their few garrisons and so it proved. Now, just four days after leaving Lisbon, they had reached the river and the bridge. Dawn was close. The British troops were on the Guadiana’s western bank where Fort Joseph had been built on a hill beside the river, and in the last of the night’s darkness the ramparts of the fort were outlined by the glow of fires behind the firestep. The encroaching dawn was dimming that glow, but every now and then the silhouette of a man showed in one of the fort’s embrasures.