He had pampered that troop, not just because it was his old company, but because he always needed at least one squadron of cavalry that was mounted as well as any enemy horsemen. And he had foreseen this crisis. He had hoped it would not happen, he had hoped that a miracle might take place and that his two thousand horses would all have the stamina of Bucephalus, but that miracle had not happened, and so it was time for the elite hussars to ride ahead.

Herault summoned the commander of the elite company to his side and gestured back down the struggling column. "You see?"

Captain Pailleterie, his blond pigtails and moustache looking almost white in the moonlight, nodded. "I see, my General, yes."

"So you know what to do."

Pailleterie drew his sabre and saluted Herault. "When can we expect you, my general?"

"Midday."

"I shall have a hot meal ready, " Pailleterie said.

Herault leaned across and embraced the Captain, who was only a year younger than himself. "Bonne chance, mon brave!»

"Who needs luck against a company of dozy Spaniards, eh?" Pailleterie asked, and then he pointed his sabre forward and the elite company rode on alone. And God help them, Herault thought, if any partisans still lingered on the road. "I wish I was going with you, " he called after the company, but they had already vanished. The best of the best, Herault's elite, was riding to snatch victory. «Onwards!» Herault ordered the rest of the cavalry, "onwards!»

The lucky ones of the three hundred infantrymen were dead. The unlucky had been captured. Some would be roasted over slow fires, some would be skinned alive, some would suffer still worse, and the only mercy for them was that, eventually, they would all die. Herault regretted their fate, but they had served their purpose, for the cavalry were loose in the hills and the partisans were far away.

And the remaining French infantry, all three thousand seven hundred of them, were following fast. The ruse had worked, and the back door of Castile lay ahead.