Young Bloods Part 52

'Any time now,' a frightened ensign muttered close behind Arthur. 'Any time now.'

Arthur twisted round and shot the boy a withering glance. 'You, sir! Silence there!'

The ensign dropped his gaze towards his muddy boots.

A voice cried out from the ranks. 'Here they come!'

The first of the hors.e.m.e.n burst out of the mist. They wore unb.u.t.toned grey greatcoats over their green and red jackets, with high leather boots and oilskin-covered helmets.

'Dragoons,' muttered Fitzroy.

'Nothing that need cause us undue concern,' Arthur replied calmly. 'They're too light to take us on. Still, we might as well show them that we mean business. Have the men advance their bayonets.'

Captain Fitzroy called out the order and all along the brigade the front rank lowered their muskets to present the glinting points of their bayonets to the dragoons. The French had been momentarily startled by the suddenness with which they had encountered the redcoats. Now their commander recovered his wits and began to shout out a string of orders. As his men emerged from the mist they moved out each side of the track and formed up opposite the British line, two hundred yards away.

'Surely he's not going to charge?' said Fitzroy.

Arthur shook his head. 'Not unless the man's quite mad. No, he'll just want to fix us here while he sends word back to his general. We're safe for the moment.'

'And then?'

Arthur glanced sidelong at his adjutant, and friend.'Have faith, Richard. Once our lads give them a whiff of shot they'll bolt like rabbits.'

'And if they don't?'

'They will. Trust me.'

For a while the two sides confronted each other in silence. Then one of the dragoons called out, and several of his comrades jeered. The rest took up the cry and soon the whole enemy line was shouting and whistling in derision.

'What are they saying, sir?' asked one of the ensigns.

'De Lacy, do you not have any French?' Arthur smiled. He knew that De Lacy had abstained from learning almost as devoutly as Arthur now abstained from drink. 'I'd translate for you, but for the embarra.s.sment it would bring to us both. Just be content that it is nothing fit for the ear of a gentleman.'

Captain Coulter of the grenadier company came striding up towards his colonel. Coulter, despite his rough manner, knew enough of the enemy's language to take offence and his eyes were blazing with indignation.

'Colonel? Want me to take my boys forward a pace and give the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds a volley?'

'No, Coulter. Let them waste their breath.While they do us no harm, indulge them.'

'But, sir!'

Arthur raised a finger to quiet the man. 'I'll thank you to return to your post, Captain.'

Coulter bl.u.s.tered a moment, and blew hard before he turned back towards his men. Some of the redcoats had started to shout insults back at the enemy and Arthur rounded on them furiously.

'Shut your mouths! This is the b.l.o.o.d.y army, not a Dublin bawdy house! Sergeants, take their names!'

The soldiers fell silent at once and stared fixedly towards the dragoons as angry men with chevrons on their sleeves stormed down the line in search of miscreants. Arthur nodded with approval as one of the sergeants started screaming into a man's face and ended the harangue with a sharp punch to the man's nose. The head snapped back and a flush of blood poured down the man's chin. A hard but necessary lesson. Arthur was satisfied the man would keep his discipline the next time.

The catcalls abruptly ceased and Arthur quickly turned his attention towards the enemy. The dragoons were turning away and trotted off to his right, and formed up opposite the wood that protected his flank. Almost at once the first of the French infantry emerged from the thinning mist and marched directly for the centre of the British line. At the side of the column rode the enemy general and his staff officers, and they stopped as soon as they had a clear view of the ground. The French commander let his men close to within a hundred and fifty yards of the redcoats before he gave the order to halt. Further orders followed at once, and the officers at the head of the division began to marshal their men across the road until they had widened the column to company width.

Fitzroy glanced round at the British line, two men deep. 'Sir? Shall we pull in the flank companies?'

'Why?'

'To firm up our centre, sir. The men will not be able to hold when that column attacks.'

'They won't have to,' Arthur replied calmly. 'It won't come to that. There are perhaps five or six thousand men out there. But not more than a hundred of them will be able to bring their muskets to bear on us, Fitzroy. In return, every one of the men in the brigade will be able to fire. And we can reload much faster than they. I doubt they'll even get close enough to use the bayonet.'

Captain Fitzroy looked at his friend in surprise. The colonel seemed utterly sure of himself, as if the conclusion of the coming fight was foregone. There had been a hint of arrogance in the man's tone that had gone beyond his usual aristocratic haughtiness and there was an icy touch to the back of the captain's neck as he sensed that he, his friend and most of the redcoats standing so still and silent might well be dead before the morning was over.

'Arthur . . .'

'Quiet! I think the enemy is about to make his move.'

A sharp cry rang out from the French column, and an instant later the drums boomed out from close behind the leading companies. An officer, his uniform trimmed with fabulously gaudy gold braid, drew his sword and swept it in an arc so that its point ended up in line with the heart of the British brigade.

Arthur had mounted his horse and with his staff officers around him and the colours raised behind him, fancied that the Frenchman's sword was pointing directly at him. He smiled, and muttered, 'Well, let them just try.'

At once the French column rippled forward, bayonets lowered below the grim faces of the men in the front rank. The pace was slow, as it had to be with the poor level of training that was a feature of most of the revolutionary army. Arthur was aware that what they lacked in training they made up for in spirit, and that was why they must be brought to a halt before they could charge home. At the same time, given the short supply of ammunition, every British volley had to count. That would mean holding fire to the last possible moment, in order to maximise the impact of the hail of British lead and ensure that every bullet had the best chance of finding its target. It would be a close-run thing, he decided. He drew a deep breath and cupped a hand to his mouth.

'On my order, brigade will prepare to fire! Front rank: make ready!'

All along the line the company commanders moved back behind their men and the dark barrels of the Brown Bess muskets swept forward and were trained on the head of the advancing enemy column. At the sight the leading Frenchmen seemed to pause for an instant before the officer gave a shrill cry of encouragement and flourished his glinting blade at the redcoats once again. The column lurched forward again, no more than a hundred yards away now.

Arthur forced himself to sit still and regard the oncoming enemy with no hint of an expression on his face. Inside he felt his pulse pounding with excitement and terror. And yet for all the tension and danger, he was surprised to find that he was supremely content and happy. Right now, there was no place on this earth that he would rather be. An image of Kitty Pakenham flashed into his mind and there was some small satisfaction that if he died today, the pain of his loss might be a small revenge on her for refusing to marry him. He dismissed the thought at once.

'c.o.c.k your weapons!'

A chorus of clicks sounded along the line as the men thumbed back the musket firing hammers; the sound almost drowned out by the crashing roll of the French drums beating out the pas de charge pas de charge. They were only eighty yards away now and Arthur could see the taut expressions on the faces of the leading men. Even as he watched, one of them raised his musket and fired at once. A flash, a puff of smoke and a whipping sound as the ball pa.s.sed some distance above Arthur's head. Beside him, Fitzroy flinched.

'Give the order, Arthur.'

'Not yet.'

The column tramped forwards, and now the redcoats could see the endless ma.s.s of blue uniforms stretching out behind until the enemy ranks were swallowed up by the mist. Arthur was thankful that the rest of them were hidden from his men's view. More shots were fired from the head of the column and the first casualty of the engagement gave a sharp cry and toppled back a short distance from Arthur.

'Steady lads!' he called out as calmly as possible. 'Hold your fire.'

When the enemy had closed another ten yards Fitzroy could no longer contain himself.

'For pity's sake, Arthur! Give the order.'

'Quiet, d.a.m.n you!' he hissed back. 'Control yourself, man!'

He waited a moment longer, then raised his arm stiffly. 'Ready!'

The cry echoed along the line. There was a brief moment of silence as even the French braced themselves for the first volley.

'Fire!'

In little more than a second, hundreds of firing hammers slammed down on to their firing pans and ignited the charges in the long musket barrels. Orange flashes spat out from the muzzles and a swirling white blanket engulfed the s.p.a.ce immediately in front of the British line. From his vantage point atop his horse, Arthur stood in his stirrups and saw the front ranks of the French column disintegrate as men were struck down in a broad swathe, and those behind stopped dead. By some miracle the heavily braided officer survived the volley, but his c.o.c.kaded hat was s.n.a.t.c.hed off his head and carried back ten paces before it struck the ground. For a moment he was too stunned to react; then he turned on his men and urged them on, over the bodies of their dead and injured comrades. Behind them the drums rattled out the advance and the column edged forwards.

No time had been wasted on the British side and as soon as the first volley was discharged the men in the front rank began to reload their muskets. They s.n.a.t.c.hed out a paper cartridge, biting the end off and saving a fraction of the powder for the firing pan before the rest went down the barrel, and was rammed home. Then the ball was inserted and packed down on top.The veterans were quickest and held their arms ready in less than twenty seconds.

'Rear rank ready!' Arthur called out, and waited for the order to be repeated down the line. 'Fire!'

The second volley crashed out and once again stopped the French column dead, no more than twenty-five yards away - so close that Arthur could see every detail as a ball struck a man in the face; his head snapping back amid a red haze. Arthur instantly dismissed the image and bellowed out his next order.

'Fire by companies!'

The shattering impact of the first two ma.s.sed volleys now gave way to rolling fire that rippled along the British line with almost no interval and the heavy musket b.a.l.l.s progressively shredded the foremost ranks of the enemy column. Only a handful of shots were fired in return and Arthur was glad to see no more than a score of his men were down.

'Keep it up lads!' Fitzroy was yelling close by, his voice tight with excitement. 'Keep it up!'

Over the acrid cloud of burned gunpowder, Arthur saw that the road ahead of him was heaped with blue-uniformed bodies. And still the enemy officer survived, even though a ball had creased his scalp and a sheet of blood flowed down his face and spattered the white facings on his uniform. He was screaming at his men to charge home, but as each wave of men struggled to clamber over the growing tangle of French bodies, they in turn were struck down and added to the obstacle. More than a hundred men were already dead and dying, and still they came on, shouting with foolhardy courage as they threw themselves at the muzzles of the redcoats' muskets. Arthur could only wonder at the suicidal valour of the revolutionaries. They had to be mad, he told himself. Only madness could make men take such punishment. And still they came on. Still they died, dozens at a time.

At last the charmed life of the French officer could no longer defy the terrible odds and two or three bullets struck him in the chest and hurled him back on to the ground. His sword spun a few feet to one side before the point embedded itself in the soft ground and it wavered from side to side for a moment. A groan rose up from the French ranks and suddenly they were no longer moving forward to take the place of their dead and injured comrades. As the withering British fire continued to strike them down, the French infantry began to back away, a step at a time at first, then more hurriedly until the column receded down the slope and then disintegrated into a formless ma.s.s along the fringes of the mist. The drums fell silent 'Cease fire!' Arthur called out. 'Cease fire, d.a.m.n you!'

It took a while for the order to be pa.s.sed along the line, and enforced by the sergeants, before the rattle of musketry died away. After the dreadful din of the volleys there was a sudden hush over the battlefield, broken by the groans and cries of the injured, who writhed feebly amid the bodies heaped a short distance in front of the British line. The thrill and excitement that had burned in Arthur's veins moments earlier turned to shame and disgust as he beheld the carnage through the thinning smoke. He had no idea it could look like this. So many brave fellows in their fine uniforms mangled and torn apart. He felt faint for an instant and tore his gaze away. Beyond the pile of bodies he could see the French general and his staff surveying the scene.Their shock was palpable, even at this distance. For a moment they were still. Then the general reached a hand up and doffed his cap at the British line, before turning his horse away and following his men back into the mist.

'Good G.o.d,' Fitzroy said quietly. 'We did it. We turned them back.'

'For now,' Arthur replied. 'They'll return. Next time you can be sure they'll use their artillery on us before throwing another column forward.' He turned his head and looked at the low ground behind the British line. 'If only we had a hill or fold in the land to shelter the men. That and another brigade or two, and some artillery of our own and we could hold them here indefinitely.'

'You're wishing for the moon, Arthur,' said Fitzroy bitterly. 'We're on our own. So we had better quit this place, before the Frogs can turf us off it.'

'Yes,' Arthur nodded, unable to hide his disappointment. 'Tell Coulter he's got the rearguard duty. Have the rest of the brigade form up on the road.We'll have to fall back towards headquarters. That's all we can do now. Still,' he mused as he stared at the dead enemy officer, sprawled on his back, 'it's been most instructive. Most instructive indeed.'

Fitzroy stared at him, then laughed.

The colonel stiffly drew himself up in the saddle. 'What's so confoundedly funny?'

'It's you, Arthur.' Fitzroy bit down on his hysteria, now that he could see that he had p.r.i.c.ked his friend's pride. 'I'm sorry. It's just that you have a peculiar way of reacting to events at times. "Most instructive." Why, Arthur, anyone would think you were on some school playing field, not a battlefield.'

The young colonel eyed him seriously for a moment. 'There's more truth in that than you know.'

Chapter 85.

The redcoats were pushed back relentlessly, across the Meuse, then across the Waal, where they finally had a line of defence that even the wild enthusiasm of the revolutionary armies could not overcome.There, the exhausted British soldiers sat in their camps and kept watch on the enemy across the wide expanse of the river.The main bulk of the French army then turned east, rolling up the Austrian forces and hurling them back across the Rhine as the tricolour rose above the city of Cologne. Despite news of such defeats the British could only feel relief that the weight of the enemy forces had been transferred to the hapless Austrians. It was strange, Arthur mused, that he felt it himself: a sense of satisfaction that their allies were being punished for their tardiness in fighting the French, and their wilful abandonment of the Duke of York and his men. At the same time, the wider situation looked hopeless for the allies, though they were allies only in name now. The diplomatic bickering over the financial aid Britain should contribute and the disagreements over the eventual spoils of war continued even though defeat followed defeat.

A sorry business indeed, Arthur reflected, as he made the morning inspection of his brigade, stretched out along the Waal in a series of small forts and redoubts. His men looked tired and filthy. Despite not having had to march anywhere in the last two months, they were on constant alert for any attempt by the French to cross the Waal and had been called out of their tents and bunkers every time the alarm had been sounded by a nervous sentry. Supplies of food were sporadic and even when they did turn up the measures were always short, or the meat and biscuits were rotting and barely edible. The men of the Royal Waggon Corps were having a fine war of it, skimming off the best supplies and selling them on the black markets in The Hague and Amsterdam. Meanwhile, Arthur and his men went hungry. Most of his officers saw to it that they were well fed, but he endured what his men endured and made sure they knew it.The result was trust and loyalty - a rare commodity amongst the regiments strung out along the bank of the Waal.

As Arthur rode up to the fort commanded by Captain Fitzroy, a pair of sentries rose from the small fire beside the gate and stood to attention. Arthur saluted as he pa.s.sed between them. Inside the gate the fort was a sea of mud. To one side a soldier, stripped to the waist, was busy hacking strips of flesh from a slaughtered horse and tossing the hunks of meat into wooden tubs. Nearby others were stoking up the fires under some steaming cauldrons. None of them acknowledged the arrival of their commanding officer and for a moment Arthur considered riding across to them to demand the respect he was due. In normal circ.u.mstances he might well make this a disciplinary matter. Indeed, he should insist on proper procedure under all circ.u.mstances. But today, the cold, grey and wet sapped the spirit of them all, and Arthur could well understand how some armies fell to pieces in such circ.u.mstances, if left to endure them for too long. So he ignored them and guided his mount across the sucking quagmire to the timber-framed bunkers that had been erected backing on to the rampart. They served as Fitzroy's accommodation and headquarters for the two companies of the garrison. Arthur dismounted, squelching down into the mud, and hitched the reins to the rail outside the bunkers. Pushing aside the leather curtain that hung across the entrance, he ducked inside.

An elderly sergeant was working at a small desk by the light of a lantern and he instantly rose and stood to attention as he saw the colonel.

'Where's Captain Fitzroy?'

'Outside the fort, sir.' The sergeant gestured to the side opposite the main gate. 'Playing cricket.'

Arthur laughed. 'Doing what?'

'Playing cricket, sir. Officers' and sergeants' eleven versus corporals and privates.'

Arthur stared at the man for a moment and then shook his head. 'Cricket . . . Hardly the season for it.'

'That's just what I told 'im, sir.'

'I see.Very well then, you can get back to your work, Sergeant.'

'Sir.'

Arthur turned round and left the bunker, striding up on to the rampart and along the walkway towards the far side where a small fortified sallyport protruded. To his left the rampart dipped down towards the greasy-looking current of the Waal, swirling lazily past the fort. A quarter of a mile away, on the far bank, was a French observation post, a flimsy-looking timber tower upon which stood a French soldier wrapped in a coat. As Arthur looked the man raised his hat and waved it in greeting.

'd.a.m.n impudence!'Arthur muttered, refusing to respond as he quickened his pace. From ahead there was a sudden cry and then a chorus of cheers. As he reached the corner of the fort Arthur could see some men in red jackets scattered over a rough patch of fenced pasture. In one corner a few cattle looked on as they grazed. Captain Fitzroy was talking earnestly to a young ensign, a cricket bat held in his hands as if it was a felling axe. To one side, stood a corporal, grinning as he casually tossed a ball in one hand.

'I'm telling you,' Fitzroy said loudly,'that was clearly a no-ball.'

The ensign shook his head. 'Sorry, sir, the ball was properly bowled.You're out.'

'd.a.m.n it, sir! The man's arm was not straight when he bowled.'

'The ball was good. And, if I may presume to say, it is bad form to argue with the umpire. Now if you would be so good as to leave the field, sir?'

Fitzroy glared back and seemed to be on the verge of exploding with rage when he caught sight of his colonel making his way along the rampart to the sallyport.

'Very well, d.a.m.n you.' Fitzroy flipped the bat over and held it, handle first to the umpire. 'But you've not heard the last of this, Partridge.'

He strode across the field towards a pile of coats and s.n.a.t.c.hed one up as he hurried on to the fort and met his commander just as Arthur emerged through the sallyport.

'Morning, sir.' Fitzroy saluted as he struggled into his greatcoat.

'Good morning.' Arthur nodded. 'What's the meaning of this?'

'The cricket? Just thought it would do some good for morale. Keep some of the men occupied for a day. There's not much else to do.'

'No.' Arthur admitted, with a weary look at the flat landscape.

'I should think the Netherlands in winter is as close as a man can get to a vision of purgatory.'

Fitzroy chuckled. 'You're not wrong there, sir.'