Rules of War
Iain Gale
Jack Steel, first met in Man of Honour, is a splendid hero on a new and dangerous mission. Perfect for all fans of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe.MEET JACK STEEL - GENTLEMAN, SOLDIER, HERO.In the early eighteenth century, the British army led by John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, were the leaders of a wide-ranging and very successful alliance. Jack Steel, maverick gentleman, superb soldier, was in the middle of any fight.Ramilles 1706. One of the great victories of the British army, a signal battle honour for the regiments who were there. But for Captain Steel, standing at the head of his Grenadiers, sinking into the swampy ground, at odds with his Allied partners and receiving contradictory orders, it was hard to see the General, Lord Marlborough's grand stratagem.Even after victory, Steel finds himself mired in further difficulties. The Allies had thought that they were liberating the Low Countries but some preferred their previous masters, the French, who at least were Catholic, and some wanted independence from all powers, while others of his fellow officers wanted out of the war altogether.Far from the battle lines he enjoys, Jack Steel is sent undercover to discover and deal with the traitors. He needs to identify the loyal locals who would help a few British advance troops into the besieged city - a dangerous mission made deadly by his identification by an old enemy of his and the brilliant malevolence of the renegade French pirate who is in charge of Ostende.
IAIN GALE
Rules of War
For Alexander, Ruaridh and India
RULES OF WAR
Contents
Title Page (#u850bd5bf-4045-5f90-a988-19ed22577e73)Dedication (#u686b51ed-6ffc-5379-894d-8a53b51b6b5a)Chapter One (#u0f517ddd-ce7f-5c90-9690-9dbae886a73b)Chapter Two (#u395b93b0-3e6d-5c52-9130-2357a7085240)Chapter Three (#u3c4283dc-815b-543a-9473-ef4dd35e59a0)Chapter Four (#ue1ecc5e0-f26a-51b4-8250-d6b9be63d8e0)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Historical Note (#litres_trial_promo)By The Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
ONE (#ube8dd2cd-c03c-5bcf-a519-f7a2ac32a87f)
Captain Jack Steel, his right hand clenched tightly around the grip of his sword, stared into the morning mist. He paused, listening closely to the emptiness. Then, relaxing his hold on the sword hilt yet keeping it, still sheathed, close by his side, he took up the pace and walked on and waited for death. If it came to him it would be from the front. But the only noises Steel could hear as yet were close behind him. He could sense the presence of his men there although he could not see them, knew that they carried their muskets primed and their bayonets fixed. His men; a company of the finest infantry in all of Queen Anne’s army. The finest infantry in all the world: British Grenadiers.
Yet at this moment, not even the knowledge of their presence was of any real comfort to Steel. Such mists as this he knew could often be the soldier’s friend, shrouding whole armies from unwanted eyes as they advanced to spring a surprise attack. But, he knew too, from bitter experience, that this watery grey haze could also be a deadly foe. With every step now he felt the growing presence of the enemy; imagined the tall horsemen who would appear like ghosts from the enfolding shroud of grey, heard in his imagination the cruel hiss of their sabres as they slashed down towards him. Steel hoped to God that his mind was only chasing phantoms. His commanders had assured him that the French were still far away to their front and he was realistic enough to know that, whether or not this proved to be the case, at this precise moment the only people in whom he could place his faith were those very commanders, and the men who followed him to battle. Ignoring the knot of fear that gnawed at his stomach, Steel brushed away the horrors in his mind and pressed on.
It was approaching six-thirty on a cool May morning – Whitsunday – on a barren patch of high ground which straddled the border between the Spanish Netherlands and Dutch Brabant. This should have been by tradition a day of rest and godliness, but Jack Steel knew that this day would not see God’s work. They were moving west in the vanguard of the army and his orders left him in no doubt as to their purpose. ‘Halt before the village to your front and and take positions for assault.’
The trouble was that Steel had no earthly idea of where that village might be. Nor, for that matter, where he might find the enemy. And now he was starting to wish that the spectres in the mist would prove real. As far as Steel was concerned, battle could not come soon enough. He cussed to himself and spat out the wad of tobacco on which he had been chewing and eased the worn leather strap of the short-barrelled fusil which it was his unique privilege as an officer of Grenadiers to carry on his shoulder. The soft ground was caking his boots with mud and particularly to someone of Steel’s tall frame and muscular build, every step seemed heavier than the last.
The sound of raised voices made him look to his left. Instinctively, his right hand went across to the sword hilt and began to ease the newly greased blade from its scabbard. The red-coated figures of two of his men appeared through the swirling mist, apparently oblivious to their officer, one goading the other in some private joke. Steel relaxed and let the sword slide back. He was about to address them when from behind him another voice, its thick Geordie accent reassuringly familiar, muttered an order whose anger and purpose, though muted, were bitingly clear.
‘Quiet there, you two men. You’re both on sarn’t’s orders now. And don’t go thinking that I don’t know who you are.’
Steel turned to the rear and saw the large frame of his sergeant, the Geordie, Jacob Slaughter, his face boiling with rage. ‘God’s blood, Jacob! Wasn’t this meant to be a surprise attack? Advance to contact with the enemy were my orders, without a word spoken. What price now surprise? The French’ll have us for breakfast. Who the hell were those men? Are they ours? Do I know them?’
Slaughter shook his head. ‘New intake, sir. But they’ll give you no more trouble. On my word.’
‘I’m sure they won’t, Jacob. Not once you’ve finished with them. But it’s too late now for all that. They’ll learn soon enough from the French. Keep talking like that and they won’t see another dawn. It’s no fault of yours. This army’s not what it was.’
Steel knew himself to be right. This was not the same army that had carried its colours at bayonet-point deep into the French lines at Blenheim two years ago and sent the combined armies of France and Bavaria limping back to Alsace. The casualties it had incurred in that bloody campaign had been high and Steel’s unit, Colonel Sir James Farquharson’s Regiment of Foot, had been no exception. There had been other battles too since then and now, of the men with whom he had started this war four years ago, barely half remained, their fallen comrades replaced with green recruits, some of them fresh from Britain. The two garrulous soldiers were only too typical of that lack of experience. Steel shook his head as he paused for a moment and more men advanced past them. He watched one slip on the boggy ground and grope to retrieve his musket and the tall embroidered mitre cap which marked out the Grenadiers, however inexperienced, as a class of their own. And he knew that, for all the losses, the men he had about him now in the company, those who had managed to stay alive these past two years, were as good as he would ever find. Marlborough might have made the army, but this company belonged, heart and soul, to Jack Steel.
Steel wiped a weary hand over his eyes: ‘I tell you, Jacob. What this army needs is another victory. Another Blenheim. And Marlborough knows that as well as we do. That’s why we’re here, in this bloody fog.’
Two tall shapes approached them out of the mist. Two of Steel’s fellow officers, clad in the distinctive blue-trimmed scarlet coats of Farquharson’s regiment, one a lieutenant in his late twenties, the other an ensign of no more than nineteen. Unlike Steel, who chose to tie back his long brown hair with a black silk ribbon, both wore fashionable, full-bottomed brown wigs, falling to their shoulders.
The older of them spoke, breathlessly: ‘Jack, thank God! Impossible to make out a thing in this damned soup. Have you any idea at all where we are?’
‘Henry, for once I will admit that I’m almost as confounded as you. Although, I presume, as we have been travelling due west, that we must by now be approaching our allotted positions in the line.’
Lieutenant Henry Hansam reached into his coat pocket and producing an engraved silver snuff box, took a pinch before continuing. ‘Pray remind me, Jack, what exactly it is we are supposed to be doing in this infernal bog.’
Steel, raising an eyebrow, turned to Slaughter and winked. ‘Would you oblige the lieutenant, Sarn’t?’
Sergeant Slaughter smiled. He knew what Steel intended. They had survived together through the horrors of four years of war and enjoyed a friendship unique between an officer and his sergeant. Though frowned upon by the more orthodox elements among the officers, it was this which had earned their company its enviable reputation within the rank and file of the army and which ensured that fighting on the field of battle, Steel and his sergeant were the equal of anything the enemy might send against them. Slaughter knew that Steel enjoyed teasing the good-natured Hansam and relishing this chance to help him, he adopted the persona of a respectful corporal.
‘Well, if you remember, Mister Hansam, sir, the order came from the duke hisself. And we had it direct from Lord Orkney. Press the right flank, says he. You may as likely find the ground just a bit soft there. That’s what he says, sir.’
‘A bit soft? Soft? Christ almighty, Jack. We’re advancing through a damned marsh. The men are coated in mud. Heaven knows how many have lost their weapons. It’s madness.’
Steel smiled. He turned to the younger officer. ‘Williams, you heard Lieutenant Hansam. Run along and tell My Lord Orkney that he has committed us to, um … to madness. There’s a good fellow.’
The ensign smiled, but did not move.
Hansam frowned: ‘Damn it Jack. You know what I mean by it. No general in his right mind would have an army advance across a bog like this.’
Steel laughed, and patted his friend on the back. ‘Of course, Henry, you’re quite right. You and I know that our commander-in-chief, His Grace the Duke of Marlborough, is the most brilliant general of our age. Tell me truly that you would not follow him to the death. Tell me that there’s not a man of this army who would not do the same. Of course it is not logical to send infantry into battle through a marsh. But since when did Marlborough ever fight by the rules? Was that how we won at Blenheim? Or on the Schellenberg? Now where the devil is our company?’
Looking about him he tried to make out more men of their company of Grenadiers through the mist. They were the tallest men in the regiment and it was not hard to spot them. He was aware of two men to his right and left, their scarlet coats discernible even in this gloom. But beyond them there were only shapes and voices. Somewhere off to the left lay the remaining nine companies of the regiment, and beyond them the bulk of the allied army under Marlborough. As was the custom, it was the honour of the Grenadiers to advance on the extreme right of the battalion, and as Farquharson’s was posted on the far right of the line Steel’s company now found themselves at the outer limit of the army. But at this moment Steel felt as if they might as well be on another continent.
As the snuff began to irritate his nasal passages, Hansam sneezed and spoke through his handkerchief. ‘You’re right of course, Jack. But we’ve been advancing now for close on two hours through this damned fog. For all we know the entire French army could be no more than a few yards directly in front of us.’
Slaughter coughed, respectfully: ‘Oh no, sir. We had his lordship’s word that the French was well to our front. Other side of that village, sir.’
‘Village?’ Steel replied.
‘Aye, a village. Which, were it not for this fog, you would see plain as day directly over there.’ Guessing, he pointed.
‘The village of Autre-Eglise. Our objective.’
Hansam strained to peer through the fog: ‘Damned strange name.’
The younger officer, Tom Williams, the company’s ensign, who until now had remained silent, spoke up eagerly: ‘It means “other church” in French, sir.’
Hansam smiled at him: ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. I was aware of that. But thank you all the same.’
Steel spoke: ‘So where d’you suppose the first church might be, Tom?’
Hansam smiled, and seized the opportunity: ‘Why, Jack, in another village, to be sure. Autre, Autre-Eglise, perhaps.’
‘Very droll, Henry. Now I think we had better follow the men, d’you not. It wouldn’t do for them to find the French before we do, eh?’
As the officers moved away obliquely to their left and front to find their platoon and they all began to advance as fast as the ground permitted, Steel contemplated how life seemed constantly to bring one full circle. He had come through the slaughter of Blenheim two years ago and last year’s bloody adventure in Spain only to find himself back here again on Flanders soil, where his soldiering had begun and where the British army always seemed to be. Flanders – where, at a godforsaken place called Steenkirk, he had first tasted battle, as a seventeen-year-old ensign.
He had been fourteen years with the colours since then and naturally he knew why they were really here now. Of course, Marlborough needed a victory. Blenheim seemed an age ago and their Dutch allies were becoming restless. Last year had seen no northern triumphs, just an endless succession of marches and counter-marches. True, they had broken the massive French lines of fortification which traversed occupied Belgium. But there had been no opportunity then to exploit that success with a victory in the field. Now, Steel knew, here and in London, Marlborough’s enemies were again intriguing against him. The only answer was a victory. So, they were here to beat the French and if that meant crossing this filthy bog, then that was what they would do. Snapping back to the matter in hand, he grew aware now that, with every step forward they took, their line of battle was becoming increasingly ragged.
He turned to Slaughter: ‘Try to dress the line, Sarn’t – wherever it is. We can’t afford to lose any men before we’ve even found the enemy.’
‘Right you are, Mister Steel.’
Steel sighed: ‘And Jacob, do try to just address me as “sir”. At least allow me the appearance of being a captain.’
Steel, although promoted to captain after Blenheim by Marlborough himself, had not yet had the field promotion ratified by the high command at the Horse Guards. That had been two years ago and now he had almost given up hope. He could only presume that he was out of favour at court and he did not need to guess at the reason. He had a lover in London – if that were the right term for someone with whom you had fallen so surely out of love. Arabella Moore was a jealous mistress, ten years his senior and so dangerously close to the queen as to be able to deny him his captaincy. Doubtless Arabella had heard of the romance that Steel had forged in the days before Blenheim, a liaison with a pretty Bavarian girl who he had hoped might bring him lasting happiness. But now Louisa Weber was beyond his reach. On his return from Spain he had found her married to an officer in the Royals. Well, in truth, he too had not been over-faithful to her and so it was for the best. But it had not prevented Arabella’s jealousy, nor her continuing spite. Clearly, if she could not have him, then she was determined at least to block his advancement in the army.
What, Steel wondered, would he have to do to achieve on paper the promotion he had earned and now so urgently needed? The bounty from Blenheim and most of that he had gleaned in such danger in the previous year’s campaign had dwindled all too fast. Very soon he would again be in serious debt. Pursued yet again, no doubt for the endless round of an officer’s expenses and mess bills by their assiduous regimental adjutant, Major Frampton. He prayed that this coming fight might yield an opportunity for fortune and glory for, in his experience, one seldom came without the other. And neither could be achieved without that danger to which Steel was now so helplessly addicted. For, despite all his horrors of phantoms in the mist, he knew that it was the thrill of beating fate which made him a soldier; the knowledge that at any moment he could be killed or horribly mutilated and the unparalleled exhilaration which came after a battle, that delirious moment when you knew that you had cheated death, once again. There must now be an opportunity for him to impress again, to bring himself to the attention of Marlborough and even the queen herself. He would be gazetted captain.
A voice brought him back to the present. Slaughter cocked his musket: ‘Rider, sir. Coming from our left.’
Again, instinctively, Steel’s hand closed around the grip of his sword and he made to draw the blade.
The cavalryman rode straight at them through the mist. Steel saw a scarlet coat, but knowing that the French too dressed many of their finest cavalry in red, did not relax his hold on the sword but drew it further from its sheath. Slaughter took aim. It was only at ten yards that they realized that the man had not yet drawn his sword and seconds later they saw the green cockade that he wore in his tricorne hat: the allied field recognition symbol for the campaign. Steel recognized him as a young cornet of English cavalry.
The man reined up, doffed his hat and spoke in clipped and haughty tones which marked his position as an aide-de-camp. ‘Cornet Hamilton, sir. Attached to the general staff. I carry orders from Lord Orkney for Colonel Farquharson. Can you direct me to him? Where is he?’
Steel smiled at him and indicated the mist: ‘You’re guess is as good as mine, Cornet. I think you’d be just as well to give them to me. Captain Steel – I command Farquharson’s Grenadier company.’
Hamilton frowned and weighed up his options. ‘Very well. Your regiment is to halt at once, Captain. You have advanced too far. The French are standing just beyond this ground. Ten battalions of them at least, as far as we can tell. You will halt and form your lines, here. No further.’
Steel nodded; ‘Thank you.’ He turned towards Williams who had appeared from the mist. ‘Mister Williams, go and find the colonel. Tell him to halt at once. Form lines here.’
As Williams hurried over to the left of the regiment, Hamilton replaced his hat and pulled round his horse. Steel watched him gallop away into the mist and losing sight of him, returned to the business in hand.
A hundred yards away to the left, Cornet Hamilton picked his way with care through the redcoated ranks who now stood at ease in their regiments scattered across the hillside. As he approached the rear formations the mist gradually became thinner until he eventually emerged on the crest of a ridge. From here, even through the clouds of grey, the entire allied army was laid out before him. He rode slowly along the front of a regiment of Dutch infantry and found a knot of mounted officers, some of whom were attempting through their telescopes to get a better view of the situation unfolding below them. Looking quickly and unobtrusively at their faces he found the man he was seeking and trotting up, reined in, saluted and whispered towards him.
Close by, but out of earshot, to the front and centre of the group, an upright figure in a red coat emblazoned with a garter star, his gold-trimmed hat crowning an expensive, full-bottomed wig, darted piercing emerald green eyes across the field. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, captain-general of the allied army, turned to speak to the man at his side, William Cadogan, his trusted quartermaster-general: ‘You know, William, I would that we had gone into Italy, as I had originally planned. But I do believe that we shall beat the French today. So I really must not protest at that prospect. All things told, you must agree that this is good ground. What say you, Field-Marshal Overkirk? Will it suit your Dutch?’
‘We will fight the French wherever we may, Your Grace. This is as good a position as I have seen to cross swords with them. My men will not let you down.’
‘I am certain of it, Field-Marshal. I have every faith in them.’ He turned back to Cadogan: ‘Is that not so, William? We rank our Dutch allies quite as highly as our own boys.’ Cadogan opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by a small, dark-haired man with a prominent nose who wore a modest, blue civilian-style coat and sat on a bay horse alongside the duke.
Mijnheer Sicco van Goslinga, the newly arrived Dutch field deputy to the general staff, had been deep in thought for some minutes. Now he was frowning. He shook his head: ‘I am sorry Your Grace, but I must protest at your opinion. It will not do to deploy on our right. You see the ground there is no more than marsh. With such hedges, ditches and marshes it would be madness to move infantry over such ground. You must agree, sir.’
Marlborough smiled back at him: ‘Thank you for your advice, Mijnheer. And I shall take note of it and if it should indeed be madness then I give you my word that should it fail I shall summon a physician.’
Cadogan suppressed the beginnings of a smile.
Marlborough quickly turned back to his left: ‘Hawkins? Have we intelligence from the right flank? Are Lord Orkney’s men in place?’
Colonel James Hawkins broke off from his conversation with Cornet Hamilton and nodded to Marlborough. ‘Aye, sir. I have it from the cornet here. They are this moment halted above the village. The right of your line is secure, Your Grace. Although Hamilton here tells me that we just stopped the infantry in time, or our lads would have been on the French already by now.’
Marlborough laughed. ‘They shall be at them soon enough, James. That will do for the moment.’
Half a mile away, to Marlborough’s right, another knot of officers stood before their men. Steel peered across the valley. At last the mist was lifting and the countryside was revealed to them. In the course of reforming the line, they had fallen back some fifty yards and found a small area of less boggy ground. Steel gazed now across acres of fields green with young corn, a rolling plateau of open country, quite without hedges or walls of any sort.
Hansam spoke: ‘This is good cavalry country, Jack. The horse’ll have a field day.’
‘I daresay they will, Henry, but it looks rotten bad for us. We’re to take that village and as far as I can see as soon as we step off you can bet that the French artillery will open up. And not so much as a ditch for cover. Nothing to stop a ball from carrying away four, six … ten files of infantry. I wonder that our guns will not do the same, ere long.’
Beyond the marshes which flanked the stream running below their position on a gentle hill beyond the waving corn, the entire Franco-Bavarian army stood before them, strung out on a front four miles long. White and blue uniforms as far as the eye could see, punctuated only by the red of the Irish mercenary regiments in French pay – the Wild Geese – and that of the cavalry of King Louis’ own bodyguard, the Gens d’ Armes. It was the whole might of France. Well, he thought, they had broken them at Blenheim and they could damn well do it again today.
Williams spoke: ‘Seems to me there’s more of them here than there were at Blenheim, sir.’
‘You may be right, Tom. King Louis has half a million men under arms, they say.’
‘But we shall best them again, sir. Of that I’m certain.’
Steel smiled and clapped the ensign on the back. ‘Aye. I’m as sure as you. Now, look to the men. Don’t have them standing-to for too long at a time. Stand them at ease a while.’
As Williams looked to his order, Steel gazed down at the ground. For the last few minutes he had been aware that his right leg was slowly sinking into the boggy field. He cursed and began to doubt Williams’ certainty. Not here too? The whole area was sodden. How did Marlborough intend them to advance on this? Struggling to keep his balance and desperate not to reveal his plight to the men, he reached down with both hands to ease his leg free from the mud into which it was disappearing and swore gently into the cool morning. He gave one last pull and with a squelch the tall black boot emerged from the boggy ground. Steel shook his leg, tried to remove some of the mud and looked over his right shoulder.
Slaughter was grinning, shaking his head. ‘You’re like me, sir. Must ’ave ate too big a breakfast. Don’t know when to stop. Always like that before a fight. Nerves, it is.’
‘Jacob, if I wanted your homespun wisdom on the subject of my diet I would ask for it. It’s the ground, man. D’you see? Too soft. Even here.’
Slaughter stamped his foot which came down hard on the earth. ‘Ground seems fine and firm here to me.’
Steel was in no mood to be teased. ‘Shut up, Jacob and dress the damned line.’ He paused, regaining his better humour. ‘We must make ourselves pretty for the enemy gunners.’
Steel turned back to the front and stared at the army before him. In the centre he saw a puff of smoke and an instant later a single cannon shot broke the silence. He watched as the ball arced from the French lines towards the allied centre. Hansam reached into his pocket and brought out the gold half-hunter that he had taken from the body of a dead Bavarian at Blenheim. One of the few timepieces among the officers of the regiment, while it could hardly be called accurate, it was now his most prized possession. He flicked it open.
‘One o’clock, precisely. You would not suppose that your Frenchman would be quite so exact. Do you not think, Jack? Sloppy fellow as a rule, you’d say. And you’d be damned right.’ Hansam replaced the watch in his pocket.
Steel smiled and shook his head. ‘Never underestimate your enemy, Henry. The French may seem to care more about their food and their women than their fighting, but you should remember. In the thick of it and at their best, they’re just as good as you or I.’
Hardly had the echo of the single French cannon died away than a battery of six English twelve-pounders in the centre of the allied line opened up in reply, sending a hail of round-shot into the enemy infantry. It seemed to Steel that the instant that they fired the French guns too opened up and he watched mesmerized as the balls criss-crossed in a mid-air ballet. There was a curious beauty to it. But all too fleeting, for the reality soon came upon them. He reckoned the range at around a thousand yards. Long, but not quite long enough to spare them from harm.
To his right Slaughter growled a command: ‘Steady.’
Steel watched the black dots of the six cannonballs grow larger as they drew ever closer. As always their progress seemed to be slowed down, until in the last fifty yards he lost them as their true speed became evident.
Slaughter growled again: ‘Steady now.’
The French gunners, aware of the boggy ground, had fired high for impact rather than attempting to bounce their cannonballs before the enemy for greater effect. Two of the roundshot flew over the heads of the company but four found their mark, crashing into the line of redcoats and cutting bloody paths through the ranks. One of them took the head off a grenadier and carried it open-mouthed into the rear ranks, mitre cap and all, gouting blood, before smashing into the front two ranks of a regiment to their rear. Just behind Steel a young private, one of the new intake, threw up his meagre breakfast. He heard Slaughter calling to the leading men of the files: ‘Close up. Close the ranks. Someone get rid of that body. You, Jenkins. Move that bloody mess.’
This was how it always began. Standing in line, bearing the cannon fire until they were at last given the command to attack. It was the proving ground; what transformed a man into a soldier. And Steel knew that there were no better soldiers at standing under fire than the British and no better men among them than the Grenadiers. This was how you learned your trade.
Steel looked to his left along the line of the entire regiment. In the centre he could see the two colours of shining silk waving in the breeze, one the blue and white saltire of Scotland, the other the colonel’s own colour with the Farquharson arms in the centre of a red ground, crowned with the motto Nemo Me Impune Lacessit: ‘No one provokes me unpunished’. They would prove those words again today, he thought. Before the colours, mounted on a black charger and flanked by the adjutant, Colonel Sir James Farquharson raised his sword high above his head.
His colonel had grown up in the past two years, thought Steel. Blooded on the field of Blenheim he had earned the respect of his battalion, including that of Steel. The arrogant, vain colonel had given way to a new man, a man hardened to the reality of battle, alive to the responsibilities of raising a regiment. Farquharson was aware at last that this regiment he had paid for, clothed, equipped and trained was no plaything, but a finely honed tool of war, an instrument to be cherished; nurtured. Yes, thought Steel, you deserve to be our colonel now old man, and we deserve you. As he watched, Sir James brought down the sword, its point levelled towards the enemy. Even above the gunfire, Steel caught the words of command. ‘’Tallion will advance … Advance.’
As Sir James finished the six drummers positioned directly behind the Grenadier company along with those on the left flank began to beat the regiment into the attack.
‘Rat tat dum, rat dum tidi dum. Rat ta dum, rat tum tidi dum.’ The unmistakable tattoo of the ‘British Grenadiers’.
Behind him, Steel sensed the men growing restless, swelling with pride and adrenalin. Now they would move on his command.
‘Grenadiers, with me. Let’s be at them, boys.’
Slaughter, his sergeant’s halberd with its gleaming axe-head poised at the diagonal above the end of file man, offered his own words of gentle encouragement. ‘Come on you lazy buggers! Get on. They won’t bloody wait. This is what we’re here for,’ ain’t it? Let’s get into them.’
As one the battalion stepped off. The slow march to attack, at a pace calculated to be just sufficient to preserve order in the ranks, yet as fast as possible on a field of battle. Hardly fast enough, thought Steel, and he waited for the French cannon to adjust their range for maximum effectiveness. There was the dreadful lull as they did so and then seconds later the balls came screaming in again. The drums were hammering harder now, urging the men on, their rhythm insistent even under the bombardment. Looking briefly to his left he saw the entire line of Orkney’s brigade swinging across the plain and down the hill towards the stream. We must cross that, thought Steel. Just get through those marshes and we will be fine. Just have to make it that far. Was that so much to ask? Dear God, he prayed, to no being in particular. Whatever you might be, grant me just that one wish. Get us across the stream and let us be at the French. And do not let me die. But if I must be hit then do for heaven’s sake please let me die. Do not let me be crippled. Let me live, for God’s sake, let me live to carry the battle to my enemies. Your enemies for all I know. The Queen’s enemies. Marlborough’s enemies. Let me live to kill the French. As he repeated the gruesome litany in his head, Steel realized that they had made it to the foot of the slope and were now on the edge of the marsh, close to the stream.
He turned to Williams: ‘Tom, for God’s sake, keep the men close together. Don’t let them become bogged down. You must keep formation.’
Slaughter’s voice too growled out the familiar words above the din of battle: ‘Close up. Right shoulders forward. Close your ranks, you buggers.’
Steel looked back to the front, into the rain of shot and mouthed his useless prayer. Although in his heart he knew that if this miserable Whitsunday were to be the moment he would die, it was ordained already and there was nothing any words could change about that. But he knew that he could fight and that if the fates let him reach the French lines he would do his damnedest to make sure that this day would surely not be his last.
TWO (#ube8dd2cd-c03c-5bcf-a519-f7a2ac32a87f)
There was a trick in battle to keep your body engaged in the matter in hand, while your mind became detached from the grim possibilities of every passing minute. It was a ploy that Steel knew well, and had used many times. But this morning, for some inexplicable reason, it had as yet eluded him. He was sweating hard now. His thick coat felt ever heavier about him and the gun slung over his back seemed to drag him down and slow his pace. While he was relieved that their own guns were laying down a heavy bombardment, there had been no respite from the French cannon fire and with almost every step that they took towards the enemy it seemed to Steel that another redcoated figure tumbled from their ranks in a ragged heap. Ahead of him and to the left, he could see, through the thick white smoke, the tall frame of George Hamilton, Earl of Orkney, conspicuous in the plate armour which covered the upper half of his body, advancing on foot at the head of the brigade. Here, thought Steel, was a soldier to reckon with. A man towards whose station any officer would aspire. Not only was Orkney a sound tactician, he was brave. And for Steel the latter counted just as much in battle as any technical or military skills. They had moved with surprising ease at first over the boggy ground and Steel wondered why he had doubted Marlborough’s judgement in choosing this terrain. Certainly their pace had slowed, and the stream had at one point seemed to be impassable. But they had come through that and managed to cut their way through the vicious hedge of chevaux de frise, a barrier of bayonets stuck into treetrunks, which the French defenders had laid across the path of their assault.
Now they were trampling on bramble thickets as they bridged the valley of the Petite Gheete, the stream which flowed directly in front of the village of Autre-Eglise and as they advanced French and Walloon sharpshooters took their toll on the redcoated ranks before dropping back towards the enemy lines. Most of them, he reckoned, were Walloons – French-speaking Netherlanders, and their loyalty and steadfastness he knew to rank as nothing compared to any French regulars, unquestioningly loyal to the Sun King. Even as he looked, an entire company of Walloon infantry turned and streamed back towards the French lines.
As they ran a cheer went up from the British line. One of the Grenadiers, Dan Cussiter, shouted after them: ‘Go on. Bugger off back to Paris before we kick your arses.’
The men, desperate in their terror to laugh at anything, cheered his bravado and Steel heard Slaughter’s booming voice. ‘That’s enough, there. You’ll be in Paris yourselves as soon as likely. But not if you don’t dress your ranks. There’ll be time for cheering soon enough, my lads.’
It was vital to preserve discipline now, lest the men, fired by the sight of the retreating infantry, should break ranks and give chase only to find themselves faced by what Steel knew to lie head up the slight hill: the full might of the French battle lines. As the Grenadiers began to find themselves on firm ground, Steel, gradually regaining his composure, shook his limbs and tried to settle his nerves. And as he did so he heard a command from the left: the unmistakable tones of Major Charles Frampton, the adjutant: ‘’Tallion halt. Form your ranks. Prepare to attack.’
The command was taken up by the other field officers and as one the men came to a stop. They were still a good hundred yards out from the French but Steel knew that this was only a temporary halt.
He looked back and found Slaughter. ‘We advance on the command, Sarn’t!’
A roundshot came crashing past his head and smashed into the ranks behind, disembowelling one of the Grenadiers, Donaldson, a bluff, pleasant lad from Edinburgh, and taking the leg off another, Ned Tite. As the man lay writhing on the ground, his screams unsettling his comrades, Steel motioned to Slaughter to have him hauled away. They could not stand here long, he thought, would not endure much of this pasting. As if in answer to his concern another command came from the centre of the line.
‘’Tallion will prepare to advance. Charge your bayonets.’ The steel-tipped muskets which till now had been carried either at the high port or snugly in the shoulder, were brought down until they were level with the ground.
‘’Tallion – Advance!’
Again the drums struck up, this time a less noisome rattle. More of a tap, but a sound which when recognized, Steel knew, would bring a chill to the hearts of any enemy of Queen Anne. Grimly, the battalion moved up the hill and still the shot crashed down among them like a scythe reaping the corn. As they came up against the first houses of the little village of Autre-Eglise, it became obvious that the French had not been idle. Every street, every alleyway had been fortified with anything that had come to hand. Domestic furniture mainly, taken from the abandoned houses; prized possessions pressed into more practical service. But though hastily erected, Steel could see that the barricades had been made with experienced hands. Chairs and tables had been lashed together and stuck through with swords and bayonets – anything which would make their passage more hazardous.
Behind the fortifications stood the French and as the Grenadiers broke like a wave upon the wooden wall, the white-coated ranks let go with a devastating volley. But it was not enough to stop the red tide. Steel, seeing an opportunity, placed his foot on a table leg and leapt on top of a barricade. Below him a dark-skinned French infantryman looked up and attempted to stick him with his bayonet, but Steel was too quick and, parrying aside the weapon with his sword, brought its razor-sharp blade humming down into the man’s head, cleaving in half his black tricorne and with it the head within.
Exultant, Steel turned back momentarily towards the redcoats: ‘With me, Grenadiers. We’re in, lads. Death to the French.’
Followed by a half-dozen of his men, Steel threw himself over the wall and landed in a knot of white-coated soldiers. Such was their surprise that two of them dropped their muskets and ran back into the village. Of the others three were engaged by Steel’s men. Matt Taylor, a corporal and the company apothecary, used the butt of his musket like a club and hammered it hard into a Frenchman’s jaw. Steel winced at the crack. He found himself face to face with the tallest of the group, a huge mustachioed hulk of a man, a sergeant who wielded his spontoon like a farmer’s scythe and stood grinning just beyond the reach of Steel’s blade. Steel began to fence with him, cutting at the wooden staff and carefully sidestepping the stabs and swings of the evil pointed head. Treating the man’s weapon as if it were a sword, Steel cut to the left and parried it away and then with one swift movement lunged in fencing-salle style and skewered the big Frenchman squarely through the heart. The man stopped in mid-swing, stared wildly at the tall British officer and then, blood spouting from his mouth, fell backwards, stone dead.
Retrieving his sword from the corpse, Steel looked around. To his left more Grenadiers had succeeded in storming the village and were steadily pushing back the French and Walloon lines. He turned to his men: ‘The village is ours. Well done, lads.’ He looked to Slaughter: ‘Stand the men easy for a moment, Sarn’t; and post a guard. They’ll be back. We can be sure of that.’
Slaughter threw him a grin. ‘That was a fine fight, sir. Did you see ’em run?’
‘They ran all right. But we must have suffered in the assault. What’s our strength?’
‘Hard to say, sir. I know that a score of the lads went down on the hill and I dare say we may have lost half as much again in the fight.’
‘Yes. I thought as much.’
Still, he thought, thirty per cent casualties was what you might expect in a frontal attack and of them perhaps a third again would have been fatal. Ten good men dead then from his company and the day still young. Who, he wondered, had gone down? Was Williams hit? Or Hansam? Steel wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and looked about. His fears were quelled as from a neighbouring street the young ensign approached him. There was a cut on his right arm, his sleeve was drenched in blood and his face was quite white.
‘Tom. Are you hit?’
‘It’s nothing, sir. A scratch. French officer. I sent him off, sir. Pity. Damned fine swordsman.’
He winced as the pain in his arm cut in and managed a weak smile which told Steel that his wound, though serious, was not life-threatening.
‘I’m sending you to the rear. Best get that wound dressed before an infection sets in. Don’t want you to lose that arm, eh?’
Williams nodded and began to walk towards the lines.
‘He’ll do well, sir, that one. General, likely as not.’
‘If he manages to stay alive long enough, Jacob.’
From their left a tall figure approached – a senior officer. There was no mistaking the chiselled features of Lord Orkney. There was blood on his breeches and he had lost his sash. Otherwise, thought Steel, the youthful, forty-year-old general appeared miraculously unhurt.
‘Sarn’t, stand the men to attention. Officer approaching.’
‘Officer approaching. Stand to there.’
The Grenadiers straightened up and shuffled into three lines.
Orkney nodded to Steel. ‘You did well, Captain.’
‘Thank you, My Lord. But it was my men’s doing. The Grenadiers, sir.’
Orkney peered into Steel’s face. ‘Captain Steel is it not? The hero of Blenheim? Well, whoever claims the glory, it was as well done today as then. We have the village and I do not intend to give it up lightly. I have left your colonel in the centre of the position. Take your Grenadiers and join with those of the First Guards and General Fergusson’s regiment. Place yourselves on the side of the village closest to the French lines. Have your men construct defences. When they come on again, as they are sure to do, we’ll give them a taste of their own style, eh?’
‘Indeed, My Lord. You may rely upon us.’
Orkney was about to compliment Steel further when both men noticed five horsemen approaching from the allied lines. All were dressed in the elaborate uniform of the general staff and all appeared to be aides. It was as unlikely a sight as either of them had ever seen on any battlefield.
‘What d’you make of this, Captain Steel? A group of young gentlemen about town and dressed for the court? By God! Do I see red heels? What the devil shall we make of it?’
‘I do not know, My Lord. But I hazard that we are about to discover.’
The horsemen reined in before Orkney and the two leading riders dismounted. Steel recognized one of them as Benjamin Harley, an aide-de-camp to Marlborough himself. The young man made an exaggeratedly low bow to Orkney and began to speak. His accent was disarmingly soft and quite out of character with the battle raging around them.
‘My Lord. You are to disengage the enemy forthwith and retire two hundred yards.’
Orkney’s bushy eyebrows arched high above widening eyes and his face took on the hue of his coat. For an instant he was speechless. Then, as the aide waited in silence, he found his voice. ‘Disengage? Retire? Are you quite mad, sir? We have the village. This ground is ours. And, God please you, so too will be the day. I shall not disengage, sir. No, sir. I shall not retire.’ He spat the words in contempt. ‘On whose authority have you this order?’
The aide smiled, smugly. ‘It comes direct on the Lord Marlborough’s authority My Lord. It is his express wish that you should disengage the enemy with all speed and return to your starting line.’
Orkney stared at him in disbelief. For an instant Steel wondered whether the general was about to strike the young aide. And in truth he too felt rising indignation. This was too much to take. The duke he trusted implicitly, would follow to the ends of the earth. But to take this order from a young aide, without proper explanation for what seemed utter folly? Orkney took a pace towards the aide.
Steel saw that the boy’s hand had fallen to his sword hilt. This was getting dangerous. Now was not the time for such an argument. He intervened: ‘Sir – if the order has come from the duke himself, d’you not think that it might be prudent to obey? No matter how galling.’
Orkney, his eyes ablaze with rage, turned on him: ‘Captain Steel, I do not need your advice. I … and you, Steel, have left good men lying dead and dying back there. Men who died to take this place. Will you betray them now? We do not retreat. How can you agree with this madness? We are the victors, dammit. We have taken our objective. We have this ground. I shall not surrender it, not even for My Lord Marlborough.’
‘Indeed I too will never betray any of my men, sir, dead or alive. But it is an order, My Lord.’
Orkney regained his composure and, turned again to the white-faced ensign. ‘What is its purpose then? According to the rules of engagement the duty of a commander is to win battles, not to yield at a whim whatever ground he gains. For what possible reason could My Lord Marlborough desire me to retreat?’
Steel noticed that the other aides had now dismounted. One of them, slightly older than Harley, moved forward to speak. ‘Excuse me. Lieutenant the Honourable Greville Bennett, My Lord. It is not a retreat, Lord Orkney. Merely a tactical withdrawal.’
Orkney smashed his fist into the palm of his left hand: ‘Tactical withdrawal?’ He spat the words. ‘Marlborough sends me five of his liverish boys to tell me this. To tell me to retreat. For it is a retreat, dammit, man. No less. Why, I should …’
Again Harley’s hand darted nervously to his sidearm. Steel was about to stand between them when from the mouth of a sidestreet two further horsemen appeared. One was unmistakable as William Cadogan, the Duke of Marlborough’s right-hand man and quartermaster-general. At his side rode another officer, slightly more portly than Cadogan and older. Steel recognized him at once; Colonel James Hawkins, attached to Marlborough’s staff and one of the duke’s oldest friends, had been instrumental in Steel’s advancement to date. He was as good a mentor as he had ever had, but one whom he had not seen these past few weeks.
Hawkins and Cadogan rode up to Orkney and both men dismounted. Cadogan greeted the seething general with a smile. ‘What ho, George. You look as if you may have gone beyond yourself for once. Hold up. Have you not had the duke’s instructions? You are to retire and regroup, My Lord.’
Orkney seemed to stagger. He shook his head. ‘Do not tell me, William, that what this … boy has said is truly the case. That I am indeed ordered to abandon this place. It is my victory, Cadogan. We have the ground. Look for yourself.’
‘I am afraid, George that it is quite so. You see, fact is, you are simply too good for us, and for the French. Fact is, your attack was never more than a diversion intended to draw away the marshal’s reserves from his centre.’
Orkney’s face became an even deeper shade of pink: ‘Diversion? My attack a diversion? I’ll give His Grace diversion, by God. Tell that to those men lying dead upon that plain and at the barricades. Tell them why they died, by God.’
Cadogan shook his head. He nodded and made to grasp Orkney’s shoulder, but the general recoiled. ‘I know, George, I know. But fact is the duke did not think it prudent to inform you, or any of his commanders …’
Orkney laughed: ‘Not prudent? God’s blood, William! When is it prudent then to attack at all?’
A French battery on the high ground behind the village, observing the group of officers standing in the square, had ranged them and now shot began to fall perilously close, crashing into the cobbles and sending up splinters of stone.
Cadogan spoke again, in a more official tone: ‘Lord Orkney, the clear truth of the matter is, you have no cavalry in support of you. Look beyond the village. His Grace has commanded all the horse to move to the centre there to engage the enemy and to rout him. And that will happen. Look for yourself. You are isolated – stay here and you will without doubt be outflanked. You must retire, my friend, and you must do so at once. I am truly sorry.’
Orkney rubbed at his wig with his hands and then at his rheumy eyes. Finally, staring at the aide he nodded. ‘Very well. I shall do as you ask. But only as you come direct from His Grace and at the personal request of Lord Cadogan here. Inform the duke that I intend to ride to him forthwith and if I find you to be at fault then I shall not hesitate to make you pay, so help me.’
As Cadogan smiled and clapped the general on the back, Hawkins, who had remained silent, walked up to Steel, smiling. ‘They’re old friends, Jack. I grant you it goes against everything we should do. But there is sense in it, brilliance even. No doubt they will settle it amicably over a glass of wine, once we have beaten Marshal Villeroi.’
‘Are we winning then, sir?’
‘Now, Jack, I would be a foolish man to say that, wouldn’t I? While you were up here taking this village, down there on the plain there has been a great cavalry battle. General Overkirk has turned the French horse. Now though comes the real crisis. If this next manoeuvre goes according to the duke’s plan then I do believe that very soon we might well be the victors. It’s as well that I found you, Jack, although you’d have got it by hand of an orderly just as well. The Guards are to remain here in the village until the last, to cover the withdrawal. You and the other companies of all the brigade’s Grenadiers under Lord Orkney’s command are needed forthwith in the centre where we intend to make a grand assault. Take your company and report to the Dutch. I’ll see Colonel Farquharson. You will be seconded to a Major van Cutzem of the Dutch infantry.’
‘You come here merely to deliver orders? Colonel Hawkins, I know you better than that.’
‘Indeed you do, Jack, and you are quite right. I have you in mind for a particular purpose. I can say no more of it as yet. I had not seen you for a fortnight and simply wanted to make sure that you still lived. Keep yourself safe this day, Jack, I shall have need of you ere long.’
Orkney had left to rejoin his staff and as Cadogan mounted up and Hawkins went to join him, he cast a glance back over his shoulder. ‘Oh, and Jack, I forgot to wish you good luck. Though it always seems to run with you.’
Steel smiled and nodded. Even as the French battery continued to fire, the shot coming in just above their heads and crashing into the walls of the surrounding houses, he strode across to where Slaughter and the men still stood at attention.
‘Stand down, Sarn’t.’
Hansam approached him, eager-eyed: ‘So, do we attack?’
Steel stared at the ground, and drew with his sword in the dirt. ‘No. We’re moving out.’
Slaughter spoke up: ‘After the French already, sir. Is the battle won then?’
‘Not exactly, Jacob. We’re to move backwards and to the left – not forward. We are to withdraw and proceed to the centre.’
Hansam shook his head, laughed and reached for his snuff box.
The sergeant spoke in disbelief: ‘What, after taking the village and climbing up that bloody hill? And with all those men dead?’
‘Those are our orders. We are seconded to a Dutch battalion. I’d take it as an honour if I were you, Sarn’t.’
Steel could see the logic in Marlborough’s strategy, although he could not condone the decision not to vouchsafe the plan to Orkney, and he sympathized with the general’s indignation. If you were to mount a convincing feint upon the enemy’s flank intended to draw out his reserves, what better way to do it than persuade your own men that it was in earnest? It was not fair – but then, thought Steel, what was fair in this new warfare in which every fight brought some new surprise. As much had been plain to him in Bavaria before Blenheim, and since then he had seen time and again evidence of a changing attitude which directed their actions in every theatre of the present conflict, from Flanders down to Spain and Portugal.
He stopped drawing maps in the dirt and looked up: ‘Move the men out, Sarn’t. Column of threes. And try to keep the files at a little distance. We don’t want to present too good a target to the French gunners.’
Slaughter, still seething at the inexplicable order to move back, took out his fury on the Grenadiers. ‘You heard the officer. Marching formation in threes. And look sharp about it. You there, Sullivan. Get in step, damn your eyes! I said move.’ To emphasize the need for haste he prodded another particularly slow Grenadier, whose stature made up for his lack of wit, with the haft of his halberd. ‘Come on Milligan, you lump of lard. We don’t want you to be late for the next dance, do we? Let’s give the Frenchies back their village now. Quick as you can, lads. Mustn’t keep ’em waiting.’
They marched off to the left and down a narrow street and out of the village, slightly to the south and west of the way they had come up, but still close enough to see the limp red mounds which were the bodies of their fallen comrades. Slaughter noticed the nervous glances cast towards the dead: ‘Eyes front now. Pick up the pace there, Tarling. The Frenchies won’t wait all day for us. You don’t want a bayonet up your arse, do you?’
As they made their way down the slope and towards the centre of the allied line Steel realized that they were marching in a dip in the ground and thus quite invisible to the enemy, even positioned as they were on the higher ground. There was no way in fact that the French could possibly know that Marlborough was moving the right wing into the centre or what he intended. Casting a glance to his left, up to the British lines, Steel saw that the regimental colours of every battalion in Orkney’s brigade were still in place with their escort on the ridge-line. On Marlborough’s instruction a token force had been left there quite deliberately so that to the untutored eye what remained on the crest would present the appearance of several battalions in close order. He realized too that it was quite brilliant. Steel knew in that moment that his confidence in the duke had not been misplaced and he knew too that soon Orkney would understand. Within minutes the duke would have a huge advantage of numbers in the centre of the battlefield. And then they would see what happened.
Ahead of them now Steel could see the flank of a Dutch battalion, blue-coated and poker-straight, standing quite still, despite the withering fire from the French cannon on the rising ground to their left. Steel spotted the officer and waved the men on.
Major Henk van Cutzem was very nearly Steel’s equal in height, with a shock of long blond hair which he wore tied back like Steel, although in his case such was its volume that most of those who did not know him took it for a full wig. He wore a slim, fair moustache and beneath it for an instant, Steel fancied that he caught the faintest shadow of a smile. He nodded in greeting.
‘Captain Steel?’ The Dutchman’s English was impeccable.
‘Major.’
‘Welcome. You may fall your men in on the right of our line.’
Steel bowed: ‘You do me an honour, Major. My thanks. But I should not like to unsettle your own Grenadiers.’
‘On the contrary, Captain Steel. The honour is ours. You come with a reputation. You are a hero, a veritable Achilles. They say that at Blenheim you led your company to rescue your regiment’s standard – from the French cavalry, no less. King Louis’ own bodyguard?’
Steel nodded.
‘You led infantry against cavalry to save the colour?’
‘I led Grenadiers, Major.’
‘Quite so, Captain. But this is not within the rules of war. It goes against all logic. Why did you do it?’
‘A question of honour. Couldn’t allow the French to get away with our colour.’
‘Quite so. Honour.’ He paused. ‘Do you believe in honour, Mister Steel?’
Steel winced at being called ‘Mister’, a lieutenant’s title. He felt sure that the Dutchman had not intended it callously, but nevertheless it reminded him sharply that his captaincy, won so hard at Blenheim, still remained merely a brevet rank.
‘I believe in it with all my heart, Major. Why else do we fight save for honour? The honour of our regiment. The honour of our country and that of our monarchy. The honour, surely, of ourselves?’
Van Cutzem nodded and smiled. ‘Of course, Captain. We fight for honour. Although I of course fight also to save my homeland from the French. Speaking of whom, I believe we are about to witness an example of honour at work.’
Opposite them, before the solid rank of motionless, white-coated French infantry, stood two officers. From such a distance Steel could not tell their rank. As he and the Dutchman watched both of the Frenchmen drew their swords. With a flourish they brought up the blades in the salute before lowering them alternately to the left and to the right. Then they replaced the swords in their scabbards and gave a formal bow towards Steel and the Major in turn. Steel nodded in return and smiled and was about to say something droll to van Cutzem when to his surprise the Dutchman took a pace forward and removed his hat. Bending over in an exaggerated bow which brought his fair hair almost in contact with the ground, van Cutzem swept his hand and hat before him with a flourish and straightened up.
Steel watched him closely, smiling at the polite salute. Van Cutzem turned and rejoined Steel. He noticed the smile: ‘You find something amusing, Captain?’
‘D’you really, honestly think it helps? All that? Surely we’re here to fight them? To kill the French. Of course we give them fair quarter. But why bother with the dramatics?’
‘You don’t ever make the formal salute? Never? I am surprised, Mister Steel. If you hold honour as dear as you say, then surely this must be part of your code also?’
‘I don’t believe in bowing to the enemy, Major. I’d sooner lick their boots.’
‘Then it is pride which you hold dear, not honour.’
Steel laughed. ‘Pride. Honour. Don’t play word games with me, Major. I know what I’m fighting for and so do you. But if you want to continue your little charade, then don’t mind me. It’s amusing to watch, a game, if you like. But it’s not war.’
Van Cutzem stared at him and his cheeks coloured. After a few moments he spoke, staring at the ground. ‘War? Do you know what war is, Steel? I’ll tell you what war is. War is three decades of misery and terror. War is a tale of horror told at a fireside by a maimed father, to his young son. A tale punctuated by sobbing and silence. It is a tale sometimes so painful that it can never be told.’ Van Cutzem, his rage now visible in his ice-blue eyes, stared hard into Steel’s face. ‘My grandfather was killed in cold blood, in front of his children. He was stripped and tied to a cross and roasted alive while his wife was raped and then had her throat slit. The children, my own father among them, were cast out into the fields to live like animals. Happily for me my father survived, although he lost a hand in the process. His sisters did not survive. We do not know their fate. That, Captain, is what war means in these parts.’ The Dutchman spoke quietly now: ‘That, Mister Steel, is why we use these “absurd” conventions and rules. That is why it is so important to obey such rules of war. We never want to descend into that hell again. We will do anything to avoid it. Anything. And so we fight the French. But it must never again come to that.’ His bitterness subsiding, van Cutzem lowered his eyes. ‘Please God that we shall never have to witness such things again. That is why, Captain Steel.’
Steel nodded: ‘I’m sorry, Major, truly. I should have thought. Forgive me if I have offended you. It was not intended.’
Of course, he longed to tell the major that he did understand only too well what he was talking about, that he had seen such atrocities. Committed not a hundred years ago, but ten. In Sweden and Russia and again, most hauntingly in his mind, only two years ago in Bavaria. The sights which informed his dreams and woke him, sweating hard, in many a cold night. Whole populations massacred, regardless of their age and sex. A village put to the sword. Women raped, children spitted like rabbits. This was not the stuff of history or folk myth, this was happening in their time. Even, for all he knew, as they spoke. They lived in an age of war and terror. He was tempted to tell van Cutzem, but half of him realized that the man would not, did not want to believe him. Why dispel his illusions of this courtly warfare? Steel knew that world to be coming to an end, just as Marlborough had forged a new army and was rewriting the rules of engagement. So as they participated in these great events they were making a modern era. And whenever it finally happened, tomorrow or five years hence, sometime within their own life span – if they were yet spared a French bullet – the old world would soon be gone for ever. Steel would allow the major his dream of chivalry. He knew the reality. Then his gaze settled on something over to the left. For an instant Steel doubted his own vision and his reason and wondered whether van Cutzem was not after all right and perhaps the age of chivalry had returned.
THREE (#ube8dd2cd-c03c-5bcf-a519-f7a2ac32a87f)
Looking across to his left, past the Dutch infantry in their serried dark-blue ranks, Steel beheld a sight which left him open-mouthed. On the plain below their position, formed up in a line which stretched between the villages of Taviers and Ramillies and the huge grass-covered mass of what Hansam had lately and with some authority informed him was an ancient Celtic burial mound, lay a hundred squadrons of allied cavalry: perhaps fifteen thousand men. The sunlight glinted off their drawn sabres and flashed on polished cuirasses and harnesses. Not even as a young ensign, while serving in the northern wars between Sweden and Russia, did Steel remember having witnessed such an awesome spectacle of military might.
Van Cutzem too was staring at the cavalry: ‘Now we shall see a fight. This is why Marlborough has brought the French to battle here. This must mean victory.’
Steel watched as the horsemen began to trot into position and felt the ground start to tremble. ‘I do believe you may be right, Major. But what are we to do? Do we attack Ramillies itself? Certainly our cavalry may defeat the French, but they cannot take a position which has been so heavily fortified by the enemy. We will have won the open ground but in all truth the field will not be ours.’
Van Cutzem shook his head: ‘That may be so, Captain. But our orders are to stand. We are to wait until the cavalry have attacked. My generals believe that the day will be resolved by a cavalry battle, not by the infantry. I’m sorry. My orders and yours too, are to stand here.’
Steel put a hand to his head: ‘And be shot to shreds by the French guns?’
‘If that is what it takes. Those are my orders, Mister Steel. And I am very much afraid that at the present time, as you find yourself under my command, you must obey them also.’ A horseman cantered up to the major and the rider, a Dutch dragoon, muttered a few words of Flemish. ‘And now excuse me, please. I am summoned by my brigadier. Perhaps we shall advance after all.’
Van Cutzem took his horse from the orderly who had been holding her, mounted and rode towards the rear of his regiment. Steel bit his lip and shook his head. First they had been pulled out of a hard-won foothold and now seemed destined to be left to the mercies of the French artillery. The first decision he had understood. But the second? Sometimes he wondered whether his own commanders were fully aware of any of the many wasted opportunities offered by a battlefield. His musings were interrupted by activity to the front as a body of men approached them.
Slaughter had seen them too: ‘Grenadiers. Stand to. Charge your muskets.’
Forty weapons were levelled towards the horsemen, bayonets fixed. Steel looked at the advancing troops and as they grew closer saw with relief from the green cockade in their hats that they were of the allied side.
‘At ease, men. They’re ours.’
As the ragged column neared them he began to hear snatches of broad Scots dialect. He also saw that, whoever they were, these men had been badly mauled. This bloody mess was, it seemed, what had once been a battalion or more of redcoats. And Scottish troops at that. But under whose command were they, he wondered.
Slaughter came to his side: ‘That’s not a sight I ever like to see, sir. Unsettles the men too. Poor buggers.’
A man passed them, a junior officer, perched on a makeshift seat made from a musket carried by two of his men, one of whom was sobbing. The officer’s left leg had been sheared clean away from the bone and his calf was hanging by the thinnest of tendons. To judge from the colour of his face he had lost a great deal of blood. He said nothing but stared with glazed eyes to his front, still in deep shock. Steel wondered how he would fare when the pain finally cut in. The longer the shock, they said, the worse the agony when it came. Slaughter cursed. Evidently they had been repulsed with some force. It impressed Steel that they were not in rout, but retreating in a controlled manner, their sergeants keeping them in line despite their evident exhaustion and distress. As Steel stood watching, one man – a big fellow with an almost bald head, walking at a fast pace – pushed past him, knocking against his arm with some force. The man did not apologize but carried on.
Steel, regaining his composure, shouted after him: ‘Mind your step, sir. Have a care. Even on a field of battle we yet have manners.’
The man turned and Steel saw, even through the mud and blood which had spattered across his once-white breeches, that he was an officer. He turned and walked back towards Steel and as he did so wiped a hand across his face, removing some of the dirt which cloaked his features. ‘And who might you be, sir?’
His accent was not unlike Steel’s own; soft and with a slight Scottish burr.
‘Captain Steel. Sir James Farquharson’s Regiment of Foot. I command the Grenadiers. Who, may I ask, might want to know?’
Again the man wiped his face and stared hard at Steel: ‘D’you not know me?’
‘I was not aware that I should, sir.’
The man smiled and Steel registered his confidence: ‘Well, you certainly are aware now, Captain Steel. Argyll is my name. I command those Scots regiments in Dutch service which for the last hour have been engaged with the enemy.’ He pointed towards the village which lay in the centre of the battlefield: ‘Over there. Against Ramillies. And now, I have had enough of playing with the French. The pleasantries are finished. I intend to take it.’ He paused, then looked at Steel again: ‘You recognize me now, I’ll wager.’
Steel blustered through his embarrassment. John Campbell, Duke of Argyll. Not only was the man a general. He was a general of Scottish troops and a close friend of Sir James Farquharson, his own colonel. In fact Steel had seen Argyll several times in the past campaign in conversation with Sir James. But on those occasions he had not been dressed in quite this manner. Now he looked to all the world like the meanest junior officer.
Steel stiffened to attention: ‘I am most dreadfully sorry, My Lord. I really did not know you. Your … your appearance. Your dress. I …’
Argyll laughed: ‘I am disappointed. But in truth I suspect that were I now to look in a glass I should not know myself. I imagine that I can hardly present a noble appearance. For the present however, such things are not important. What I am concerned with is prising the village of Ramillies away from the French. And I very much fear that we must go again.’ Steel saw a thought pass over his mind. ‘Steel, yes. Jack Steel, is it not? You are the officer, are you not, who saved Sir James’s colour at Blenheim?’
For the second time in two hours Steel had to admit that the honour was indeed his.
Argyll smiled broadly and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Then you are a brave man, Steel, and at this most pressing moment I need every brave man that I can find. Your command is where at present?’
Steel gesticulated to the Grenadiers who stood twenty paces to his rear. ‘We are detached to a Dutch command, My Lord, and await our orders to attack.’ He added: ‘Should they ever come. For the present I am commanded to stand here.’
‘Well, Captain Steel, your waiting just came to an end.’
A French cannonball, fired at an unseen target, flew past them. Steel watched as the younger Grenadiers flinched and those few remaining veterans pretended to ignore the ever-present danger. Slaughter stood leaning upon his halberd, keeping a careful watch over his charges.
Steel spoke: ‘I have my orders, sir.’
Campbell smiled at him. ‘I am your orders now, Steel. Come on, man. I’m not waiting here to die and I believe that you and I are cast in the same mould. The fight is over there, Captain Steel. You are a Scot, I perceive and Sir James Farquharson’s man, an officer of whom he speaks most highly. It’s men such as you and I that are fighting to build a new world. We are Britons, Steel, but do not forget that we are also Scots. We above all others protect the faith of our homeland. I take it, Steel, that like myself, you have never any greater wish than to see these French Papists and their Jacobite allies sent to hell?’
Steel was surprised at the passion of Argyll’s impromptu political rant. Although he did not share his bigotry, he did certainly believe in the concept of Union. Uncertain quite how to respond, he settled on diplomacy and merely nodded.
Argyll smiled: ‘I knew it. Now bring your men. We’ve a village to take.’
As the duke loped off towards his brigade, Steel turned grim-faced to Slaughter. ‘Sarn’t, it seems that we’re to attack the village. Form the men up. Battle order.’
‘You had an order then, sir? I thought that Major Cutzem wanted us to stay put.’
‘Firstly, it is my place to think, Sarn’t, not yours. Secondly, I think that we can assume that Major van Cutzem’s order simply did not reach us. Wouldn’t you say?’
Slaughter laughed: ‘Order, sir? I can’t mind any order from the major.’
‘You see. Let me do the thinking.’ Steel turned to the company: ‘Grenadiers. With me.’
Hansam walked towards him: ‘Is this wise, Jack? To disobey an order so blatantly? It is a court-martial offence.’
‘I accept full responsibility. I am the senior officer, Henry. Do not worry. You are exonerated. We must take the village. We cannot rely upon our masters to notice every ebb and flow of the situation on the ground. It seems that the duke is engaged in a great cavalry battle to our left wing. It’s up to men like you and I, Henry. You know that at the crisis it is ever not the generals but the men and the officers in the field – the captains, lieutenants and ensigns and not least the common soldier – who change the course of a battle.’
Hansam nodded: ‘Very well, Jack. But should we fail they will throw us to the dogs, for certain.’
Steel laughed and grasped his friend by both shoulders: ‘But we shall not fail, Henry, you and I. Poor Tom – that he should miss this for naught but a scratch.’
Slaughter had formed the company into the assault formation, doubling the ranks to extend the line and ensure that every man would be able to find a target when the moment came. ‘You heard the officer. Sling your fusils. Make ready your grenades.’
Instantly, sixty pairs of hands draped the thick leather slings of their weapons over right shoulders and fumbled with the straps of the big black leather bags which hung at their right hips. Each of them contained four hollow three-inch-diameter iron balls weighing some two pounds filled with gunpowder, stopped with a wooden plug and topped with a fuse of hemp dipped in saltpetre: grenades. Slaughter barked another command and the company moved to the left with Steel and Hansam at their front.
They had gone hardly twenty yards when from Steel’s left came a shout. ‘Hello! I say, wait there, Captain Steel. What are you doing? I have orders here to advance. Do not leave. You attack with us.’
Steel raised his hand and Slaughter barked the command to halt.
Major van Cutzem rode up to the head of the assault column. ‘Captain Steel. Where are you going? Have you new orders. From whom?’
‘I have, Major. Directly from Lord Argyll who commands a brigade in Dutch service. I am ordered to attack Ramillies.’
‘But Lord Argyll does not command you. I do. And I have orders to attack Ramillies – with you.’
‘I take my orders from Lord Argyll, Major.’
Van Cutzem narrowed his eyes: ‘This is an outrage. I shall complain to the highest authority. I shall have you court-martialled.’
‘Perhaps so, major. But before that I shall have taken Ramillies. And then I really don’t think that it will matter. Do you?’
The Major scowled at Steel. ‘You may assist your Lord Argyll to take the village, Captain Steel. But you will see that it will be a Dutchman to whom Ramillies falls. I shall take the village, sir. And without your assistance.’
Without a further word, van Cutzem reined his horse around and galloped back to his regiment.
As Sergeant Slaughter goaded the redcoats into action, Hansam looked at Steel and shook his head. ‘Really Jack. You go too far. He is Dutch, Jack. You know the Dutch. They do exactly what they say they will do. He will have you cashiered for this.’
Steel laughed: ‘Not if we take Ramillies and all become heroes, Henry.’
Emerging from the slight dip in the ground in which they had been sheltering, they saw before them the village of Ramillies. Around a high-spired church were clustered a few dozen houses of nondescript, vernacular design. It was clear that between these the French had constructed sturdy barriers from anything that had come to hand. If anything, thought Steel, they looked more impenetrable than those around Autre-Eglise. Argyll was right. The only way to take this place short of reducing it by bombardment, would be with a frontal assault led by Grenadiers.
Behind the barricades the village appeared to be teeming with white-coated French infantry, among whom Steel thought he could discern flashes of light blue, which must mean they were reinforced by Bavarians.
Hansam was at his side: ‘How many d’you think, Jack? Five battalions? Ten?’
‘Hard to say. God knows, they’re so packed in there. It seems that King Louis’ marshals haven’t learnt anything from Blenheim, eh?’
It was impossible to say how many French and Bavarian infantry battalions there might be in the village, so densely were they packed. It reminded Steel with chilling closeness of that bloody Bavarian plain, and the little village which had given its name to the battle. There, down by the stream whose waters by the end of the day had flowed red with French blood, the enemy had filled Blenheim so full of men that when the allied assault had come they had not been able to manoeuvre or to fight. Perhaps, he wondered, the same fate might befall them today? Either that or they would hold the village and it would be the attackers, including Steel and his Grenadiers, who would be the ones to suffer and die on the barricades.
Marching on, towards the village, they soon found that they were walking past and often, from necessity, on top of the bodies of the redcoats who had fallen earlier in the day attempting to take Ramillies. It was not a sight calculated to raise the spirit of an assault force. Particularly when any of those who were not actually dead reached out and grasped with desperate hands at the ankles and calves of those who now went in to the attack. Twice Steel watched as one of his company stamped upon the face of a wounded man in an attempt to shake him off and saw Slaughter move to help by using the wooden shaft of his halberd.
Now the French artillery had got their distance and the roundshot began to fall a short way to the front. Within seconds though the red-hot metal was tearing its way into the ranks. They must advance as the book commanded: ‘As slow as foot can fall’. He knew that his men could deliver their assault at a run, but this way they would keep the equilibrium of the other battalions. To his left he saw Argyll, on foot at the head of the brigade, turning occasionally to shout encouragement and urging his officers to keep pace with him. At thirty yards out a puff of white smoke rippled along the line of the village defences and seconds later the musketballs ripped into the bodies of Steel’s men, tossing them back like puppets in a dance of death. Instinctively they lowered their heads against the storm and pressed on. At the same time the French artillery on the ridge overlooking Ramillies opened up with canister shot, each projectile spraying out a deadly hail of tight-packed iron balls into the face of the oncoming infantry.
It seemed to Steel as if his whole world were collapsing; his command ebbing away in a sea of blood. He looked around and saw to his front the distant figure of the Duke of Argyll. The general was almost at the barricades now and the Grenadiers of his leading battalion, Borthwick’s, Steel thought, were up with him. Close by to his left Henry Hansam was screaming obscenities towards the French lines as he pushed on towards the village. Ten yards out now and closing.
Steel cast a glance to his rear and gave the command which he hoped would be heard: ‘Uncap your fuses.’
He saw Slaughter, his halberd pointing at an angle towards the enemy, yelling at the men, repeating his order and pushing them on. Looking back to his front, feet moving automatically one after another, he saw the village grow closer. The French line spat out another deadly volley but Steel remained unscathed. He heard Hansam cry out and saw him grasp his arm. He smiled at Steel, mouthed that it was only a scratch and walked on. Five yards out. Three.
This was it. Steel half-turned his head to the rear and shouted at the top of his voice: ‘Halt! Blow your matches!’
The company came to a stop as the Frenchmen, seeing with horror what was about to happen, rushed through the motions of ramming home their musketballs. It was too late.
Steel smiled and shouted the final command: ‘Throw … grenades.’
With an easy motion the company hurled their bombs in an overhead action, full-toss directly into the French line. The fuses had been cut to perfection and no sooner had the grenades landed among the tightly-packed enemy than they began to explode. Steel watched awestruck as the shards of metal casing ploughed through the French, mangling flesh and bone and sending men and parts of what had been men in all directions. Looking to the left he could see that the Grenadiers in the centre of the brigade had met with similar success. As the smoke began to clear he saw Argyll climb atop one of the barricades, sword in hand. Steel watched as the duke was struck first by one musketball, then another, but miraculously did not seem to be harmed.
‘Grenadiers. With me.’
There was no time for the bayonet now and Steel’s men knew it. Forgetting the slung fusils across their backs, each of them reached to his side for the short infantry sword carried for just such an assault as this. Then, baying for blood, they climbed the parapet and crashed down upon what was left of the decimated French defenders. Directly in front of him a dark-skinned French infantryman, his off-white coat covered with blood, sank to his knees and begged for his life. Steel walked past him but hardly had he passed than he heard the familiar hiss as behind him a Grenadier drew his sword up into the man’s chin and through the teeth. This was no time for mercy. In his immediate vicinity most of the defenders appeared to be in flight. Ahead and slightly to the right, up a narrow street Steel could see the church and before it a mass of redcoated infantry, standing in two lines, facing him: it looked like the best part of two companies. Their coats were trimmed with yellow and above their heads floated a silken colour. A red cross on a white ground – English. As he watched, from a street to the left of the redcoats there emerged another body of men. They wore dark blue coats and Steel recognized them as Dutch. At their head he could see quite plainly now the figure of Major van Cutzem. How the devil the man had managed to reach the centre of the village before Argyll and Steel, God only knew, but there he was, code of chivarly and all. But Steel’s annoyance turned to amusement as he realized that the Dutch officer’s moment of glory was about to be stolen by the fact that the village had already been occupied by a regiment of English foot.
He called to Slaughter: ‘Best watch this, Jacob. It would seem that our friend Major van Cutzem is a little late. He hasn’t taken the village. He’s been beaten to it. Now we’ll see some sport.’
The sergeant peered down the street towards where the two units were standing opposite one another beside the church. His laugh turned to a gasp of horror. ‘Christ almighty. It’s not a bloody argument he’s in for, sir. Look at that standard. They’re not Englishmen, Mister Steel. Those men are Irish.’
Steel looked again at the device on the colour. He had missed something. But there was no mistaking it now. A red cross on a white ground, and there, in its centre, a gold harp. This was no St George’s Cross, but the flag of an Irish regiment.
‘We’ve got to warn him, Jacob.’
But his words were lost. It was over in an instant.
As they watched the densely-packed Irish infantry opened up against the bemused Dutch with a well-timed and precise volley. For a moment the street was obscured in white smoke. When it cleared Steel felt sick to the stomach. The Irish volley had ripped into the uncertain Dutch at such close range that hardly a musketball had not found its mark. Fully three score of the Dutch infantry lay dead and dying on the cobbles and there at their head Steel could see the unmistakable, blond-haired figure of Major van Cutzem.
Slaughter spat on the cobbles: ‘Poor bugger. He can’t have realized.’
‘So much for bloody chivalry.’
The Irish gave out a cheer, but they did not pursue the retreating Dutch survivors. This was impressive stuff. They looked as if they meant to stand and if the allies were to secure this place, Steel knew he would have to take the fight to them.
‘Tarling, Hancock, Mackay. Each of you find ten men and follow me. Sarn’t Slaughter, find the others, and Mister Hansam. Tell them we have business at the church.’
With the thirty men following close behind, Steel moved quickly up the street towards the red-clad infantry, who held their fire. He could see the colour more clearly. A white ground bearing a red cross; yellow facings and a red cross – Irish Jacobites. He knew these men now: Clare’s regiment. Dragoons originally, now converted to a regiment of foot. Their commander was the exiled Viscount Clare, Charles O’Brien. Steel had known O’Brien once, in what seemed now a previous life, before the Jacobites had charmed the young Irishman across to their ranks with talk of the right of kings and divine monarchy. Then they had both been younger. Two impressionable ensigns of foot, fighting the French in a place called Neerwinden where the river fed down to the sea and where King William’s British army had run from the French with its tail between its legs and left six thousand men dead on the field. How far they had come since then, he thought. And what quirk of fate, he wondered, had brought Clare to face him here.
At forty yards out from the Irishmen, Steel halted the Grenadiers. There were around thirty up with him now. It was hardly a fair fight. Thirty against nigh on a hundred men. Perhaps it might be more prudent to wait for assistance. But then, Steel was not noted for his caution.
‘Grenadiers, uncap your fuses.’ They would do it the hard way.
Slaughter looked at him quizzically. ‘Do we attack, sir?’
‘What else can we do? Have the men light their bombs.’
Slaughter had barely opened his mouth to deliver the command when with a great shout, from a small street to the right, Argyll and the best part of two companies of his vengeful Scots infantry burst out and crashed into the flank of the Irishmen.
‘Bugger the grenades, Sarn’t.’ He raised his voice. ‘Unsling your fusils. Company, fix bayonets.’
The Grenadiers carefully replaced their bombs in the leather pouches and with a swift motion twisted the new-fangled socket bayonets on to the muzzles of their fusils.
‘With me. Charge!’
With his own gun still slung across his back and his great sword raised high above his head, Steel began to run towards the mêlée at the end of the street. Argyll’s men had come round the side and front of the Irish line and partly blocked their view of Steel, who seized the chance. Reaching the line he threw himself into the crush and connected with an ensign of Irish dragoons who extended his sword-arm and lunged at Steel’s chest. He parried away the cut with ease and dealt the boy a blow with the hilt of his sword which knocked him out cold and sent him to the ground.
Steel hissed at Slaughter: ‘By God, Jacob. I wouldn’t like to be one of Clare’s men. You know Argyll believes them to be the devil’s soldiers.’
He saw the duke wielding a Highland broadsword almost as heavy as his own. His face was frozen in a rictus of fury and he was chopping his way through a forest of Irishmen, severing limbs and heads as he went.
Argyll caught sight of Steel: ‘Steel, by God. What luck this? A whole regiment of heathens. Papists. Heretics!’ Possessed by his fervour, he ran headlong into a group of three Irish dragoons spitting one on his sword and punching another full in the face with his gloved fist before slitting his throat.
Steel looked at Slaughter and knew what was required. Both men ran to help Argyll who was now locked in a duel with the remaining dragoon and had not seen a fourth come round behind him. Steel fell upon the man and with a savage uppercut of his blade, sliced the back of his head. To his left four more dragoons appeared, intent apparently on saving their comrade engaged with Argyll. Steel could see now that the man was an officer and then recognized him as O’Brien himself. He had been a noted swordsman when they had fought under the same colours and Steel could see that he had not lost his touch. Every blow that Argyll aimed towards him, O’Brien met with an expert parry. As the dragoons hurried to rescue their commander, Steel and Slaughter turned to face them and he noticed that they had been joined by a half-dozen of the Grenadiers.
Slaughter hissed at them. ‘You took your bloody time. Corporal Taylor, Mulligan, you others there, with me. The rest of you, with Captain Steel.’
Steel squared up to one of the dragoons and feinting to the left with a blow of his sword dealt him a tremendous kick in the groin which felled him to the ground. As each Grenadier found a man in turn, Steel noticed that Argyll had been joined by more of his own men, including one of his sergeants, a huge, barrel-chested brute armed with what looked like a captured cavalry sabre. He and the duke were fighting O’Brien together now yet still it seemed as if the Irishman was more than capable of beating them off. Steel cut to the right to parry a thrust from a dragoon’s bayonet and on the return stroke pierced the man through the stomach. Slaughter had dispatched another of the enemy and for an instant the two men stood uncertain of who to take on next. At that moment a clatter of hooves on cobbles announced the arrival of a party of redcoated English dragoons.
At their head rode a young cornet of horse wearing a broad grin. He was shouting like an excited schoolboy. ‘The field is ours. The field is ours. The French are retreating, the day is ours, my boys.’
A single shot broke against the noise of steel on steel as Slaughter, who had unslung his fusil from his back, fired into the air. With the cornet’s words, it was enough. Grenadiers and Irishmen alike broke apart in their individual combats and stood at the en-garde, uncertain of what to do.
O’Brien disengaged from Argyll who, along with the big redcoat sergeant slowly backed away. Taking care still not to quite drop his guard, the Irishman gently raised the tip of his sword until it was pointing skywards and as the general stood motionless, his own blade still held out before him, the young Jacobite reversed his hand so that the blade now pointed directly towards the ground. Argyll watched for a moment and then, as Steel looked on, gave a barely perceptible nod towards the sergeant who, with a great lunge of the sort one might execute in a fencing salle, sprang towards O’Brien and buried his blade deep in his heart. The Irishman’s soft, green eyes expressed his utter surprise, then as they glazed over, he dropped his sword, grasped at the blade in his chest and fell to the ground. Steel was lost for words. The sergeant straightened up, withdrew the long blade and turned to Argyll.
‘Good work, McKellar. That’s a sovereign for you.’ He turned to address his regiment: ‘Each one of you men shall have a sovereign for every Papist officer slain today.’
The sergeant saluted his commander with his bloody blade and walked away to discuss the good news with the men and tally their scores.
Steel turned on Argyll: ‘You murdered him. Your Grace, Clare was surrendering. He was offering you his sword.’
‘That man was a Papist and a traitor and he suffered for it. I told you, Steel. I fight not only for my queen and my country. I fight for a greater Britain, for a nation free from such perverse unbelievers. I fight for truth, Steel. For truth. For freedom and against superstition. If you would care to discuss the matter further, I await your pleasure.’
Turning, Argyll walked away from Steel and the others, pausing only to clean his sword blade on the white coat of a dead French soldier.
Steel watched him go in silence and looked down at the body of the Irishman. Around him the Grenadiers were taking the surrender of Clare’s dragoons and he realized that the cannon seemed to have stopped firing. From beyond the town came the rolling noise of musketry and a confused cacophony which he recognized as the sound of one army in full flight and another in pursuit. It seemed that the cornet had been right. The battle was won. He shook his head, and said to no one in particular, ‘If that’s freedom and truth, then I want no part of it.’
He thought of his younger brother, Alexander, a Jacobite who had left the family five years back. His whereabouts were currently unknown although Steel presumed that his allegiance, like that of poor, dead Clare, lay still with the old king and the old monarchy. He thought how easily it might have been Alexander rather than O’Brien who had met his end on the sergeant’s blade. He shivered and realized that one day he might meet him himself on a field of battle. He prayed that it would not be and called down a silent blessing on his brother, wherever he now was. Was it too much to hope that perhaps one day they would be reunited in a Scotland where all might be treated equally and where principle and religious bigotry did not divide families?
Slaughter was at his side. ‘You’re right there, sir. Though I know there’s some among our own lads that’d agree with the duke.’
‘I dare say there are. We’re all fighting for different things, Jacob; praying to different gods. But from what I can see, sometimes there’s no difference between Argyll’s idea of a new world and the blind bloody hatred I thought we might have left behind when Her Majesty came to the throne.’ He looked across to where the body of van Cutzem lay, among those of his men, face down in the bloody dirt. ‘I met a man on this field today who believed that war could be civilized with artificial rules and politeness. I told him that he was wrong and now he’s dead. And he was wrong, Jacob. The only way that we’re going to make a world worth living in, apart from kicking fat King Louis off his throne, is to start realizing that all war is brutal and nasty. It’s kill or be killed. The only winner is the man who gets in the first volley. Clare knew that.’ He pointed after Argyll. ‘And that man knows it too. But we shouldn’t hate like he does. That’s not war. We all have principles, our own codes of war. And we’re all after glory, Jacob. All of us, you, me, Mister Hansam, Mister Williams. Glory and honour. Those are the only two things that matter in this life. Those and life itself. But we’re soldiers, we’re paid to take life. So they’re all that we have left. Rob us of them and you make us no better than common murderers.’
Night came. As far as the eye could see around them dead bodies littered the ground. And most of them wore the white coat of France. They shone pale and motionless in the moonlight. Occasionally a heavy groan would reveal some still with a trace of life. But within minutes the scavenging peasants who roamed the battlefield had found the man and all was silent again.
The heat of the day had gradually given way to night and following orders from Lord Orkney, the regiment, with the Grenadiers in the vanguard, had pressed on in the pursuit. Their passage had been marked by a constant drumming – specific instructions from the high command to drive the enemy before them in fear. The noise had begun to irritate Steel, who was chewing on a large cud of tobacco as he rode, in a vain attempt to salve a headache. Tom Williams, his wound dressed and his arm in a sling, had rejoined them and was fired by the victory.
For miles in the wake of the retreating French army the dead and wounded lay along the road. Steel’s men watched impassively as the French cried out for succour. Occasionally a kindly Grenadier would stop to give them some water. But for the most part they chose to ignore the cries. Hadn’t they suffered enough themselves at the hands of the French in Ramillies? They had left too many good men back on that field to admit thoughts of compassion. Not quite yet. Besides, they had been ordered to advance immediately by their commander. Such was the haste of the enemy’s flight that many had left their possessions back on the field and knew that they would not see them again.
The French army being dispersed, many regiments had separated and drifted into leaderless groups. At times, as Steel’s men advanced through the darkness they would see isolated figures running ahead of them on the road, who at the sound of their approach would dart away into the open country. The French were everywhere, and yet nowhere. They were merely individual fugitives and deserters from an army that had effectively ceased to exist. The pursuit was bloody and relentless and if the British did not quite wear the countenances of murderers, then neither were they all gentlemen.
Hansam rode up to join Steel: ‘It was a great victory, Jack. You may be certain that the bells will be rung in London and Lord Marlborough’s health drunk throughout the land.’
Steel said nothing.
They had halted for a moment in their hurried march towards the west on a rise in the ground above the village of Meldert, near on fifteen miles from the battlefield. Now the day was breaking about them. But this morning the dawn mingled with another glow which the company watched with interest and curiosity. It came from the northwest from the direction of the town of Louvain, a key crossing-place on the defence line of the River Dyle, which lay some seven miles off. While most of the men were puzzled at its source, offering a variety of opinions, Steel was in no doubt. He had seen similar sights too many times before.
Hansam too saw the glow: ‘Fires, Jack? Have the French reformed, d’you think?’
Williams was standing beside them now: ‘What d’you suppose it is, sir? Another battle? Have our cavalry caught up with the French rearguard?’
Steel shook his head. ‘No, Tom. The French haven’t the stomach for another fight just yet. And our cavalry as I hear, are too far to the south. No, that is the sign of an army that has given up the fight. The French are burning their supplies lest they should fall into our hands. That’s the funeral pyre of Villeroi’s army.’
Slaughter and two of the men, Mackay and Cussiter were standing watching the glow as they shared a piece of dried sausage one of them had found in a Frenchman’s haversack. Cussiter spoke as he chewed: ‘Did you see them surrendering? They just laid down their arms like so many fat poltroons and gave themselves up to us. Call themselves soldiers, indeed.’
Mackay nodded: ‘Did you see ’em, Sarge? I couldn’t see nothing but the seats of their breeches.’
Slaughter shook his head: ‘You’d best make what you can of it for now. You can be sure you’ll see more of them just as soon as King Louis can send them back. The French ain’t finished yet.’
Cussiter spat into the fire: ‘It was the cavalry that decided it, weren’t it, Sarge. Never seen such horses. Crashed into the French like a blade goin’ through the corn.’ He gesticulated with his hand, as if to sever Mackay’s head.
Mackay backed away and laughed: ‘Cavalry or whoever it might ’a been, it was the general as won that battle an’ that’s the truth. It was Marlborough. Our own good Corporal John.’
Now Slaughter spat at the fire, making it hiss as the fatty gristle hit the flames. ‘’Tweren’t cavalry. ’Tweren’t even Marlborough, though he’s as good a general as ever I served under. What won that battle was the men. Plain and simple, lads.’ Twere you and me won that battle and don’t you ever bloody forget it.’
* * *
Steel, dismounted now, wandered among the men, nodding greetings to those he recognized in the gloom. He scratched at the filthy rag wrapped around his neck and dreamed of a bath. At least as the victors there were such pleasures to look forward to. They would advance, he presumed, to Brussels. It seemed the clear objective. Where after that though, he wondered?
He found Slaughter standing on his own, staring into the embers. ‘So, Jacob, tell me where you think we’re bound after this great day?’
‘Well, sir. If I were the great duke his self, I would want to catch the rest of the Frenchies. So I would make for Brussels and by that cut them off.’
‘By God Jacob, we’ll make a general of you yet.’ He saw Williams: ‘D’you hear that Tom? General His Grace the Duke of Slaughter here would have us march on Brussels and catch the enemy running for home.’
Williams laughed. ‘That would be a fine thing, sir.’
Slaughter grinned: ‘Thank you indeed, sir. But I think I’ll stick to being a sergeant and let His Grace make the decisions.
‘Nevertheless, I think you may be right, Sarn’t. But I also believe that Marlborough intends us to push the French from the Netherlands once and for all and to do that he will have to take the remaining forts. Everything from Malines and Ghent to Bruges, Oudenarde and Antwerp. They will be our next objectives.’
‘Not more ’sieging, sir?’
‘I believe so. And I know how you enjoy it, Jacob.’
Slaughter spat into the flames. The Grenadiers that could hear him laughed. Brave as he was in battle, the sergeant was known for his enjoyment of home comforts and in particular, on the right occasion and with due propriety, of pretty women. And if there was one thing he was unlikely to find in the siege lines around a fortress it was a willing harlot. And then there was the question of his extreme dislike of enclosed, dark spaces, and there were always enough of those in a siege. It was the reason he had joined up in the first place, to be away from what life he might have had in the new coal mines around his native Durham. Slaughter cursed and spat again.
Steel, gazing into the fire, could not help but recall the words of Colonel Hawkins in Ramillies: ‘I shall have need of you ere long.’ But how long, he wondered, would that be?
Had he only known it he could have had that answer quicker than he thought. For barely four hours later, less than half a mile away from Steel, close to the village of Meldert, a man was waking up with a mind filled with such thoughts. Having spent the night wrapped in his cloak by the roadside, James Hawkins was attempting to drink a cup of coffee. Attempting, because his servant, Jagger, had sworn to him that it was real coffee and he did not wish to hurt his feelings. But to Hawkins it smelt more like the swillings of a Flemish alehouse. Still, it was something, more than was to be had by most. Orkney, he knew, had not eaten for a day and perhaps Marlborough too. He had not woken in the brightest of spirits. But with the recollection of how complete their victory had been his aches and tiredness had gone. Now, as he drank, his mind raced with the prospect in hand. They must surely exploit this initiative over the French, but subtly and with no little care. Looking about him through the dawn, he saw a few yards off the distinctive figure of Marlborough, together with a few servants and several of the general staff. Hawkins handed the half-empty cup to Jagger and then, seeing how crestfallen the poor wretch looked, decided to keep the brew and went to join them.
Adam Cardonnel, Marlborough’s personal secretary, was speaking animatedly and waving a piece of paper. ‘Everything is yours, Your Grace. We have taken eighty standards; fifty cannon, tents, baggage, the food still hot together with muskets without number and prisoners by the score. Lord Hay’s dragoons alone have captured two entire battalions of French foot. The Walloons are coming over to us by the hour. We are hard pressed to keep them safe, My Lord. The Danes would have revenge upon them for their treatment in Italy last month.’
From the duke’s left Cadogan spoke up, quietly: ‘By my reckoning, sir, the French have lost near on thirteen thousand men, but some put it at near double that number, if we include the deserters and turncoats.’
Cardonnel spoke again: ‘My Lord, we have even taken their famous negro kettle drummer of the Bavarian Horse Guards. Have I your permission to dispatch the man to the queen in London, sir? He would make her an elegant servant and a true prize.’
Marlborough smiled and nodded: ‘Indeed, Adam. Send the blackamoor to the queen. That was a fine thought. Though in truth, I’d have liked to keep him as one of my own servants.’
The company laughed, glad of the lightness at last in the duke’s voice. Like Hawkins, Marlborough had passed a restless night, having had only his cloak for a cover. He had slept badly and for company in his rustic bed had had only the tiresomely enthusiastic and over-opinionated van Goslinga who punctuated the night with anecdotes of the battle. Happily though, one of the footmen had found some chocolate in the French generals’ supplies and Marlborough now cradled the hot, richly aromatic liquid in the silver-mounted cup made from a coconut which he always carried in his personal baggage. As the laughter subsided, Cadogan spoke again.
‘Our own losses are light, Your Grace. Two colonels only killed and two score other officers and but a thousand men dead in all. It is a triumph. They will praise you throughout the realm, Your Grace. Your enemies in London had thought that the only news they would hear these few months would be from My Lord Peterborough in Spain. But now you have proved them wrong once again.’
Marlborough smiled and took a sip of chocolate, which he had not offered to any of his generals. They did not expect it, such was his reputation for parsimony. For, if Mar-lborough was renowned for his care in his treatment of the soldiery he took equal pains to keep certain things purely to himself.
Hawkins sipped again at his own acrid brew and winced and looked with envy at the steaming cup in the commander-in-chief’s hands.
Marlborough put it down and spoke: ‘My Lord Peterborough may indeed prosper in his Spanish campaign, for it is there that his friends the Tories believe this war is to be won. But we know better, gentlemen. We know that if we beat the French here, in Flanders, then we shall send a shock through that misguided nation deeper than anything Peterborough may achieve. Perhaps now those in London will do as I ask and replace him with Lord Galway.’ He picked up the cup, took another sip and continued: ‘Their losses are not as great as they were after Blenheim, gentlemen. But I fancy that the effect is ten times as tumultuous.’
He looked at each of them in turn. ‘But what now? Eh? What will the Sun King send against me now I wonder? We have the summer ahead of us and a campaign to conduct, at our leisure. We must make best use of that which God has provided.’
A grunt from behind the duke made him turn. Lord Orkney stood with his arms folded. He was shaking his head. ‘The French are fools, Marlborough. What have they done? They have retreated behind the Dyle and then abandoned that position where they might have held us at bay.’
Marlborough looked at him, blank-faced. ‘The French, My Lord Orkney, are no longer an army. They do have a line of defence, but they have nothing with which to defend it. Marshal Villeroi is beaten. We have but one objective. Now we must drive deep into the area of fortresses still held by the French and keep what army they may assemble from out-marching our flank and making the sea. God save us if they should, even in their parlous state, see our weakness there and flank us. We should be cut off from our only supply route with England. It is absolutely imperative that we isolate and if necessary besiege the port of Antwerp. But first we must take Ghent and Oudenarde.’
Cadogan interjected: ‘And Ostend and Dunkirk also, Your Grace, d’you not think? Do not forget those ports. They harbour privateers in French employ. Neglect them and whatever port we use for our supplies will be harried and taken. Believe me sir. I have direct experience.’
Marlborough laughed: ‘Yes, William. I am aware of your run-in with the privateers. But at least they let you away with your life. We shall have to see how it goes before we begin to besiege a port.’ The company laughed. All save van Goslinga who, not understanding the good-natured jibe, stared blankly.
Marlborough too was staring now, into the middle-distance. He set his chin in his hand and after a while spoke again. ‘William, I do believe that you are right.’
Orkney spoke up: ‘We’ll need the best of the army for that, Your Grace. Lord Argyll and his finest. And Lord Mordaunt too.’
At last Hawkins spoke his mind: ‘We’ll need more than good tactical officers, sir. If we are to take Ostend and Dunkirk against privateers we will need guile and stealth by the measure. Might I suggest one more officer whom we might find most useful?’
Marlborough looked intrigued: ‘Hmm? Yes, James?’
‘Captain Steel, Your Grace. That is, acting Captain Steel. Of Sir James Farquharson’s regiment. You will remember him from Blenheim, sir. He carried out a … most delicate task for us. You promoted him brevet rank. His elevation is not yet ratified.’
‘Indeed, Hawkins? Not yet? Of course, Captain Steel. By all means. Why did not I think of him sooner? Yes. He has wit as well as bravery, as I recollect. We shall as you say need every bit of guile we can muster. I hazard that in the taking of these places we shall not be dealing with your ordinary enemy. Privateers, mercenaries, and who will the French leave to command them, d’you think? You can be sure that Marshal Villeroi will have taken the cream of his own officers hobbling back to Versailles to plead their case to King Louis. No, we shall be dealing with the dregs. Passed-over officers left in charge of seemingly impregnable fortresses. Well, we shall show them that they are not so impregnable, eh, gentlemen? And now, if you would, allow me a moment. My head aches and I must write the news of our victory to the queen. William, take yourself off after the cavalry and ensure that the pursuit continues. My Lord Orkney, pray do the same with the foot. Force the march if you will. We must press them hard and take the Dyle by tonight. We cannot afford to rest. You know that the fate of all Europe hangs in the balance.’
FOUR (#ube8dd2cd-c03c-5bcf-a519-f7a2ac32a87f)
Steel stood quite still in the middle of the street and gazed at the windows of the houses up ahead. The single shot had come from somewhere in there, ringing out clear and long against this cool May morning, shocking the company to an abrupt halt. Behind him the men crouched apprehensively, eyes darting around. They were entering Wippendries, a small village a few miles north of Brussels.
‘See where it came from, Sarn’t?’
‘Couldn’t say for certain, sir. Third house on the left at a guess.’
There was an uproar at the rear of the column: ‘Shit!’
‘Quiet, that man there!’
‘But Sarge. The bullet went through my bloody hat. Ruined it. Look.’
It was Tarling. The musketball had indeed hit his tall Grenadier’s mitre cap, obliterating the white embroidered thistle in the centre and leaving a scorched hole trimmed with filigree fragments of gold wire.
Slaughter stared at the punctured hat: ‘Well, you’re bloody lucky it didn’t go through your brain then, Tarling, aren’t you.’
Steel spoke: ‘Sarn’t, you and four men, come with me. The rest of you stay with Lieutenant Hansam. And keep your bloody heads down.’ As he spoke another shot cracked out, the ball whizzing past Steel’s ear. ‘Christ. That was a bit close. Taylor, Cussiter, Mackay, come on. With me. Fix bayonets, and leave your hats behind.’
Moving fast and keeping low the four men moved along the left side of the street. Another shot rang out, ricocheting off the cobbles and glancing up at one of the houses. They paused. Slaughter tucked in close beside Steel: ‘They’re lousy shots, sir. Don’t you think?’
‘Probably conscripts. Though if that’s the case then why the hell are they bothering to shoot at us and not legging it back to Paris?’
‘Perhaps they don’t really want to hit us. Just scare us off.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why would they do that? What have they got to gain? This bloody village? The French army’s gone home. We’re chasing them back to Paris.’
It was two days now since the battle and in all that time Steel and his men, like the rest of the army, had hardly been allowed to rest. Marlborough intended to push the French back as far as they would go and their orders were to advance in forced marches to the northwest until otherwise instructed. Slaughter ducked instinctively as another musketball sang high over their heads.
‘Perhaps that’s it, sir. Perhaps they’re not even soldiers at all, just civilians. Scared, like.’
The ball that had missed Slaughter and Steel hit the cobbles behind them and sent shards of stone up into the calf of Private Mackay who screamed and clutched at his bleeding leg.
Steel raised his eyes: ‘There now. Are you satisfied? You and your damned theories. What does it matter who they are? They’re bloody shooting at us, Jacob.’ He unslung the fusil from his back and, knowing it to be loaded already, cocked the hammer. ‘Mackay, stay there. The rest of you come with me. Second house along. Through the door. Charge!’
As the musket discharged again above their heads the Grenadiers kicked at the door of the house and it gave way. Inside the darkness took them by surprise. The shutters were closed and there was no other light source.
Steel shouted: ‘Open a window!’
Tarling obliged and they moved through the interior quickly as Steel had taught them, one man moving to every opening, waiting and listening before getting into the rooms. One by one they called out:
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘No one here, sir.’
‘Upstairs then. Look out.’
From the top of the wooden stairs there was a crack of musketry and a flash of flame as the gun fired again. Aimed at Steel, the bullet flew hopelessly wide of the mark and embedded itself in the far wall of the hall.
He called out: ‘Now!’
Together Steel and Slaughter rushed the stairs and threw themselves on the figure at the top. It was hard to see anything in the shuttered house.
‘Get him downstairs, Sarn’t. I want this one alive.’
They half-pushed, half-dragged the sniper down the wooden staircase and threw him to the floor, where he lay motionless and whimpering, covered by the bayonets of Cussiter and Tarling. He was slightly built and dressed in pale buff-coloured breeches and a nondescript waistcoat.
Slaughter smiled: ‘What did I say, sir? Civilians.’
Steel yelled: ‘On your feet!’
The figure did not move. But they could hear his soft sobbing now. Steel bent down and turned him over. ‘It’sa boy. No more than a lad. Can’t be more than ten. No wonder he couldn’t hit us.’ Pulling the boy to his feet he waved away the bayonets and turned to the would-be assassin. ‘You idiot. What did you think you were doing? We could have killed you.’ The boy looked at him, not understanding the foreign tongue. Steel gave up. ‘Bloody hell, Jacob. We’re looking after children now.’
With Slaughter carrying the boy’s antiquated and inaccurate fowling piece, they moved to the door and pulled it open to the blinding brightness of the day.
But it was not the light that stopped them in their tracks. Steel found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. It was never a pleasant experience, in particular when as now the man with his finger on the trigger was clearly very angry. He was some inches shorter than Steel and was dressed in a brown woollen coat and a tattered round-brimmed hat. Behind him stood another two dozen men, similarly armed and all in civilian dress. The man addressed Steel in a guttural Flemish that he did not understand.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t speak your language.’
The man tried again and pressed the musket unpleasantly close to Steel’s face. Steel, unable to take his eyes off the weapon, whispered to Slaughter, ‘Any sign of the rest of the company?’
‘End of the street, sir. Formed in two lines. Facing this way.’
Steel tried the man again: ‘I don’t know who you are but I am a British officer and those are my men at the end of the street. If you shoot me forty muskets will bring you down.’ The man looked puzzled and spoke again, this time in French. This was better.
‘They think we’re French, sir.’
‘Yes Sarn’t. I can see that.’
‘Mijnheer, we are British, not French. We mean you no harm. We have beaten the French in a big battle.’
The man looked suspicious. ‘English?’
‘Yes, English. Friends. Please …’
The man smiled and backed off, but still did not lower the gun. Without moving his eyes from Steel’s, he spoke again and pointed at his chest: ‘Jan.’
From the rear of the group another man pushed forward. ‘You are Englishmen?’
‘Yes. We are British. Scots. Ecossais. Thank God, you speak English.’
‘Yes, I speak good English. You will not harm us?’
‘No. We have beaten the French in a great battle. We are pushing them out of your country.’
The man thought about Steel’s reply, then smiled and nodded. ‘Then you are welcome, sir. I am sorry. My people are nervous. We have seen so much horror here. Too many soldiers. French soldiers. Yesterday they came again. Many were injured. Some died. And some of them took our food. They killed two men who tried to stop them.’
French deserters. Steel knew what would happen now. He’d seen enough of this before. In Russia, Bavaria, Spain, and here in Flanders. Break an army, rob it of cohesion and officers and what were you left with? Nothing more than a rabble, and a murderous, rapacious rabble at that, devoid of any principles or morals. There was nothing more dangerous in this world than a leaderless army.
The taller villager spoke to the man with the gun and at last it was lowered. Steel smiled and nodded in thanks.
‘You have beaten the French? Yes, we heard. The French are beaten. But you see we still cannot believe it. Any men with guns. I’m sorry. We are very happy. For many years we have had French soldiers here. We are ruled by the Spanish and their French friends. Your battle will bring us freedom. We thank you for that, sir.’
As the man spoke, another villager had been translating and Steel saw that the entire group of men was smiling now.
‘Sarn’t. Have the company stand down. I don’t think we need worry.’
‘You are welcome, Captain. Please excuse us. We are peasants and to us many soldiers look the same. We have to be careful. But look, we have armed ourselves. And,’ he added proudly, ‘Iamanofficer. Like you.’
He smiled, his face full of hope, and Steel, humouring him, responded with a respectful nod. ‘Well your men have no need to worry about the French any more. They are beaten. They won’t be back quickly. Where are we exactly?’
‘You are in Wippendries. We are only a small village, but you are welcome to share what we have.’
Steel surveyed the militia, took in their assortment of weapons and their ages. A single platoon of French regulars would have accounted for the lot of them in five minutes. But clearly, they had spirit and Steel knew that sometimes, on the battlefield, that could mean the difference between life and death for any troops – farmhands and guardsmen included.
The man spoke again: ‘You are welcome to stay in our village, Captain. We would be honoured. Perhaps we can make up for shooting at you.’
Steel laughed. ‘Perhaps. Don’t give it another thought.’
You silly bugger, he thought. You don’t know how close you and your bunch of brave, stupid yokels came to death. If that shot had hit Tarling instead of his cap, we’d have had you quicker than any French bastards.
‘We’ll stay the night if we may. It will be a good chance for a rest. We’ve been forcing the march to catch the French.’
‘That is good to hear, Captain. We hate the French. For too long they have been our masters here. Like you, if we see any French, we kill them.’
While ordinarily Steel would have agreed, he found himself thinking again of Argyll’s outburst in Ramillies and couldn’t help but wonder that there was so much hatred in this campaign, of a sort he had not seen these past seven years. Not since the bloody carnage in the north when he had watched with horribly detached interest as the Swedes and Russians had bled each other dry. This was a new and unexpected twist to the war. He knew that the French had been an occupying power here in the Netherlands, but till now he had not been aware of just how much they had been resented. He should have been cheered, he knew, by the news that the Belgians were his allies, but instinctively, something told him that this was going to complicate the conduct of the campaign. And Steel did not like complications – especially when they involved civilians.
Some six miles to the southwest, similar local hospitality was being extended to another allied soldier, albeit on a grander scale. The Duke of Marlborough stood, surrounded by his immediate military family and a small bodyguard of dragoons in the great hall of the ancient Château de Beaulieu, five miles north of Brussels. Despite the lavish reception which had been laid on in his honour, the commander-in-chief was not happy.
‘I should not be here, William. This is not a general’s work and I am no politician. My place is out in the field, chasing the French, following up our victory. We cannot be complacent.’
William Cadogan, quartermaster-general, laid a friendly hand upon the duke’s shoulder. ‘Your Grace, you must be patient. The French this day have quit the capital. We shall enter Brussels tomorrow. We should rejoice. But before we can possess the city we have pressing business here. It is an affair of state and you are the de facto representative of Her Majesty. It is your duty.’
Marlborough sighed and rubbed at his temples. ‘Yes, yes. I know. How my head does ache so. I have written to the duchess about it. I hope for a cure – the queen too. They suggest …’
Hawkins interjected: ‘I am sorry, Your Grace, but Cadogan is right. You must attend. You are rightly perceived as the victor and these men would laud you as a conqueror, as the liberator of their country. It falls to you, like it or not, to meet with these politicians. All are gathered here. The magistrates have come from Brussels together with the Estates of Brabant. Not only this, My Lord, but the entire Spanish government here in the Netherlands have declared against Louis and pledged themselves to Charles III, our candidate for the throne of Spain. The fate of Europe is in your hands. You must now treat with them. Now, your Grace.’
Marlborough glared at him with steely green eyes. ‘Oh, James. I do so wish you were not always so very right.’
Van Goslinga had re-entered the great hall now and smiled insipidly at the duke. Marlborough hissed, under his breath: ‘That man again. That odious little man.’
Not hearing the comment, the Dutch liaison officer smiled ingratiatingly. ‘Your Grace, the deputies and magistrates would meet with you now, if you please.’
Together, Hawkins, Marlborough and Cadogan were shown through into the grand salon of the castle. The painted and gilded walls were hung with vividly coloured Brussels tapestries depicting scenes of courtly life in the Middle Ages and portraits of the Dukes of Brabant. In the centre of the room stood a long table and around it sat some twenty middle-aged and elderly men in full wigs. Hawkins noticed that, while those on the right had the pale complexion of northerners, those seated to the left were more swarthy and sported moustaches. All were dressed in sombre black coats. It looked to the duke and Hawkins something like a meeting of physicians, but where in the centre of the table there should have been a cadaver ready for dissection there lay sheaves of paper and charters sealed with red wax and on top of them the swords of the deputies and the Spanish officials, their hilts pointing deliberately in the direction of the victorious British general.
As Marlborough entered the men rose as one and made low bows over the table. The duke returned their greeting. The man nearest to him, a short, pale Dutchman with a small white goatee beard, spoke in mannered English.
‘We are a proud people, Your Grace. For four hundred years we have resisted French tyranny. For two hundred years we have been ruled by the Hapsburgs. Since 1515 by the Spanish. Under Spain our people were massacred for their refusal to accept the Catholic doctrine. We fought them for eighty years, until 1648. For the last thirty years we have been fighting against the French King Louis. The French bombarded our city of Brussels for three days in 1695. They reduced it to nothing – only the town hall survived. But from the ashes we have built the city you see today. We are survivors, My Lord Duke, and with your help we have thrown off the yoke of French rule. We pledge allegiance now to Charles III and ask you to acknowledge a new united Belgian state.’
Marlborough bowed. ‘Thank you, mijnheer. I am a general, not a statesman. But I will accept your declaration and communicate it to my queen in England. I am aware of your country’s long agony under King Louis. I believe that our late victory has truly brought that to an end. I assure you that there will not be the least change in regard to religion. I intend to recall the ancient charter well known as the “Joyous Entry of Brabant”. I assure you that my men will be kept in firm control. They will not plunder or devastate your land or take your goods and they will pay due respect to your people. If they do not then they shall suffer for it. Any man – be he common soldier or officer – found stealing so much as a cherry from one of your orchards shall pay with his life. It will be death without mercy, gentlemen. Although I trust that I know my men well enough to say that I shall not need to implement such a penalty.’
As one the deputies, magistrates and Spaniards rose to their feet and applauded Marlborough.
The Duke smiled and as he did so inclined his head to the side in a whisper: ‘I pray to God, Hawkins, that we can stay true to our word.’
‘Oh, you need have no fear of that, sir. The men’ll do whatever you desire them to. The punishment is only for show. They wouldn’t dare.’
Steel leaned against the wall of the house and, gazing into the farmyard, watched the man, Baynes, a wily country boy from the Scottish borders, near the town of Jedburgh. He was wrestling with two wiry yellow legs, attempting to avoid the claws as he manoeuvred them into his haversack.
Unaware that he was being observed, Baynes was muttering half to himself and half to the chicken which, still alive, he was determined to conceal. ‘C’mon you little bugger. One more push. Just one wee heave and in you go. Get your bloody head in there.’ The bird, its head covered by cloth, panicked and nipped the Grenadier on the forefinger. ‘Ow! Ye little bugger, I’ll give you something to nip about. I was only going to eat yer legs but now I’ll boil the lot of you. Get in there will you.’
‘Having trouble, Baynes?’
The man froze and slowly turned towards Steel: ‘Ah. Yes. I can explain, sir. It was fair game, sir. I just found her walking about. And you yourself, sir, heard the good man telling us that we were to share anything in the village.’
Steel raised his eyebrows. ‘So you, Baynes, being a kindly sort of a man, thought, “Now wouldn’t that be a fine mascot for the regiment? I’ll just take her to Colonel Farquharson and the adjutant and save her from the pot.” Am I right?’
‘How you do it sir, I don’t know. Quite right, Captain Steel, sir. Right you are again.’
‘By rights, I should have you hanged, Baynes. In Bavaria you would most certainly have been hanged. There the duke decreed that anyone found stealing anything would be subject to punishment by death.’
Baynes was shaking now. ‘Stealing? me, sir? No sir. Not stealing. Not me.’
‘Yes, Baynes. Stealing … Now put the bloody chicken back where you found it and we’ll say no more. Now get back to the company and wait. And don’t worry – I’ll find you some rations.’
Three hours later, his belly full of roast chicken, Steel was awoken by a cry and then another. No light pierced the pitch-black of the night, but he did not need to see to know that something was not right. Reaching for his sword, he leapt to his feet and not bothering with his coat, despite the cold of the night, buckled the belt around his shirt.
‘Sarn’t?’ He sensed, rather than saw in the darkness, Slaughter’s large frame at his side.
‘Came from over there, sir. Edge of the village.’ Another cry. Higher in tone now and unmistakable as that of a man in agony.
‘Come on. Alarm. Company to arms!’
Around him in the darkness the Grenadiers began to rise and fumbled for their weapons. Quickly, as another cry rent the air, Steel and Slaughter, followed by the night-watch picquet, made their way through the silent streets towards it.
They turned down a narrow alley and emerged in a small square on the edge of the village. In the centre stood a cherry tree and around it were gathered some twenty of the village militia. All were armed, some with captured French-pattern muskets, but most with swords or knives. For a moment they seemed not to have noticed Steel and his men. And when they did, they smiled and nodded. Jan, their self-appointed officer walked forward. In his hand he held a short knife.
‘Ah, Captain Steel. Welcome. I am sorry that we did not invite you to our evening entertainment. I thought that your men were too tired. And we did not know we would have such sport tonight.’
Steel felt no offence at their lack of hospitality. This was not the sort of sport he cared for. Tied to the tree was a man in the uniform of a French officer. Another man was standing behind him, held fast by two villagers. The faces of both men were frozen in terror and Steel could see why. Beneath the flickering torchlight he counted six dead bodies lying sprawled on the cobbles. They too wore white uniforms and were covered in blood. None of the dead seemed to have had any weapons and the two officers had long since lost their swords. Clearly this was a party of lost and desperate Frenchmen who, looking for food, had had the misfortune to stumble into Wippendries. It had been a fatal mistake. From the positions of the bodies, the cuts they bore and the agonized expressions etched deep into the visible faces, he could see that this had been no struggle, but a careful massacre.
Jan jerked his thumb back to the French officer who, Steel now saw, bore bloody cuts on his arms and legs. ‘He makes too much noise,’ he laughed. ‘So now we are going to cut out his tongue. Then perhaps we will take his sight. Who knows?’
He moved towards the French officer, who stared at Steel with terrified eyes and muttered protests. Jan grabbed the back of the Frenchman’s head with his left hand to hold it still, while his right came up with the gleaming butcher’s blade.
Steel moved. He switched his sword from the right hand to the left and, taking a step forward, pulled Jan round to face him and landed a punch squarely on his jaw, knocking him to the ground. Another of the militia turned to attack him but Slaughter was there first. He jabbed the butt of his musket into the second man’s stomach, winding him and knocking him to his knees before following up with a swift swipe to the head which laid him senseless. One of the villagers raised a musket and fired. The ball struck one of the Grenadiers on the coat, passing harmlessly through the tail. Two more of the Dutchmen rushed towards the redcoats and overpowered Tarling who was thrown to the ground. One of the villagers raised his hand to strike with a shining cleaver but Cussiter had seen it and felled him with a shot that hit him in the temple. The other man sprang away and as Tarling struggled to his feet, Steel waved his men forward.
‘Grenadiers. To me.’
From behind him Slaughter and fifteen redcoats moved across the square and in one movement levelled their muskets, bayonets fixed, directly at the mob.
‘Drop your weapons! Oh Christ, you don’t bloody understand.’
He signed to them and one by one the men let their swords and muskets clatter to the ground. Jan was getting to his feet now, rubbing his jaw. He turned on Steel.
‘My God! What are you doing? Don’t you hate the French?’
‘What was I doing? You ask me? You’re no officer. You’re a bunch of barbarians.’
‘No, it is they who are the barbarians. They steal from us and rape our women. Well now its our turn.’
Steel shook his head and turned to Williams who had arrived with another ten men. ‘And there I was, Tom, threatening to hang Baynes for stealing a chicken – from these vermin. I don’t care how hard their lives have been under the French, they can’t do this. These men are French soldiers, officers too. They have nothing to do with the government. They’re a retreating army. And they’re hungry. There are rules, articles of war. Cut him loose, poor bugger.’ He turned back to Jan. ‘If you wore a uniform I’d bloody well put you on trial. Or better still hang you right here for what you’ve done.’
The villager, still holding his jaw, shook his head. ‘You do not know what it is like. Your people have not suffered like mine. Believe me, Captain, I am not alone. All over Brabant this is happening. Right now. And you cannot stop us.’
Steel looked at Slaughter: ‘Take their weapons, Sarn’t, and lock them up for the night.’ He looked about and spotted a grain store at the entrance to the village. ‘There. That’ll do. And post sentries. I don’t want my throat cut. We’ll bury these poor bastards in the morning.’ He motioned to Jan: ‘And don’t forget this one. Tom, you escort your fellow officer. Keep an eye on him.’
As the Grenadiers began to herd the villagers to their makeshift jail, Steel walked over to the wounded French officer, who had been cut free and was inspecting his wounds. ‘Are you badly hurt?’
‘They’re not deep. They were only playing with me. The real stuff hadn’t begun.’ He shuddered. ‘I don’t know how to thank you, Captain.’ He bowed to Steel: ‘Chef de Bataillon Jean D’Alembord at your service. I am in your debt, sir.’
‘You fought at Ramillies?’
‘Indeed. I have the honour to command in the Regiment du Roi.’
‘You were routed by our dragoons.’
D’Alembord shrugged. ‘And now, to our disgrace, our great army is no more. I do not even know where the rest of my regiment may be.’
‘I am sure that you will find them in time. In France perhaps. For the present though, you are my prisoner, Commandant. I trust that we can agree on your parole?’
There was a noise from behind them, hooves and a clatter of hobnailed shoes ringing on the cobbles. Steel called across the square: ‘Alarm. Grenadiers. To me.’
A score of his men came running from the prisoners and reached him while the newcomers were still hidden in the shadows of the street. Steel heard them before he saw their faces or their coats.
‘Hold, there!’
The voice was English and he recognized it instantly. Into the square rode the Duke of Argyll, followed on foot by his sergeant, a young captain and a half-company of Scots infantry. Argyll galloped hard across the square, his sword drawn, straight for Steel. ‘Hold hard, sir. Who are you?’ He checked his impetus and pulled hard on the horse’s reins. ‘Why, it’s Captain Steel.’
His surprise turned to astonishment as he surveyed the scene. Saw the dead French infantry, the ground awash with their blood. He grinned at Steel. ‘By God, sir. You have done well. Six dead and two more to go? You surprise me, Steel. I had taken you for a weaker man.’
He turned to the sergeant who had followed up with the rest of the redcoats. ‘You see, McKellar. You must not judge a man by first appearances. Well done, sir.’
Steel shook his head: ‘You mistake me, My Lord. I am not the author of this murder. This is the work of the village militia. It is torture, sir. No more than torture and murder, done in cold blood. If we had not come upon them when we did the commandant here and his lieutenant would have also suffered horribly.’
Argyll’s grin fell away. ‘Torture? Murder? By God, sir. I was not mistaken then. You are a friend of the French.’
Slaughter had arrived back from the barn and, seeing Argyll, snapped to attention next to Steel. ‘That’s all the men locked away, sir. Under guard. Their officer too, sir.’
Argyll squinted: ‘What? Who’s locked away? What officer?’
Slaughter turned directly to the question: ‘Why the village militia, Your Honour. Them that did this. We have them under guard, sir.’
‘Then you will damn well remove your guard, sergeant. Forthwith.’
Slaughter smiled: ‘Now that, Your Honour, I cannot do as Captain Steel himself has ordered me to place them under guard.’
Argyll, his face puce, turned to Steel: ‘Captain Steel, I will not have this rank insubordination in my brigade. Place this man on a charge and then see to the release of your prisoners. My God man, they’re on our side!’
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