Read True Soldier Gentlemen (Napoleonic War 1) Online
Authors: Adrian Goldsworthy
Tags: #Historical Fiction
True Soldier Gentlemen (Napoleonic War 1) (2 page)
A shot was fired, echoing off the houses. Hanley could not see where it had come from, did not see horse or man fall, but it jerked him from his reverie. Orders were shouted, and the French horsemen broke into a trot. It was also time for him to go. Madrid was tense today. The French had systematically removed Spain’s Royal Family, spiriting them away into captivity, but the attempt to take one of the young princes this morning had led to a riot. Hanley had already come a long way through the city and could sense the growing anger. People he had passed had called out ‘Today is the day!’ and ‘We strike soon!’, or simply muttered ‘Death to the French’.
The Englishman was leaving Madrid, but first he must say one last goodbye. Maria Pilar was a dancer with the ballet, a small, sad and very pretty girl who had been his model and then lover. ‘Mapi’ – her stage nickname whintol her friends used – had enjoyed cooking and cleaning for him, creating a home she had never had before. It had taken him a while to realise how important he was to the Spanish girl. Now he must tell her that he was going away and that she could not come. Mapi would not argue,
and in many ways he feared even more her mute acceptance of the parting, the quiet sorrow that he would see in her clear brown eyes. It was true that her prospects in Britain would be poor, but he knew that really he longed to be free of her cloying affection. Hanley did not especially like himself for this, and it was harder now to hide behind ideas about a creative soul needing to be free of all attachments.
His money had almost gone – buying a horse to take him north to the coast had taken much of it – and he could not stay in Madrid. The way things were going it would anyway not be healthy to stay there as an Englishman. So far his pretence of being an Irish exile had satisfied the Frenchmen he had met, but that was unlikely to last. Ironically enough Hanley’s only income now came from his half-pay as a junior officer in the British Army. His father had secured his commission when he was just ten, back in the days before such abuses were banned. Hanley had never seen his regiment, had never served a day with the army, and even now had no desire to do so. Hopefully he could find something better than this last resort when he returned to England. Still, in the unlikely event that his status was discovered, it would scarcely help to persuade the French that he was merely an artist, with scant interest in politics and in fact a strong sympathy towards France and her empire.
As Hanley threaded this way through the narrow alleys of Madrid he heard sporadic shots. Within half an hour he had passed half a dozen corpses. Four were French soldiers, very young and thin. One had tried to grow a pathetic moustache, but now lay stripped of all his uniform apart from a dirty white shirt which was covered in a mass of dark, almost black, blood from his cut throat. The fourth Frenchman was older, grey haired and fat. He still wore his officer’s uniform as he hung with his arms and legs nailed to the large timber gates at the back of a nobleman’s house. His jacket had been ripped open and his chest was a mass of congealed blood over which the flies buzzed thickly. Hanley could not tell whether the man had been dead before whoever had done this had fastened him to the gates. He was not sure he wanted
to know and so hurried on, rushing away from the sight as well as the stench, which made him gag. A little farther on were two Spaniards, one with a hole neatly in the centre of his forehead and the other with stab wounds in the belly. From now on the few live people he met said nothing, but hurried on their way.
Maria Pilar was not at her lodgings, nor at the house where one of her friends lived. Hanley spoke to the girl, a desperately thin, hollow-eyed creature whose racking coughs betrayed the sickness that would kill her before she was twenty. She seemed to look accusingly at him as she told him that Mapi had gone with a group to the Puerta del Sol to ‘show the French’. The sick girl said that she would have gone too, but that it had not been a good night. Surprising himself, Hanley gave her some of the few coins he had left. She hesitated for a long moment before taking them.
Hanley headed towards the grand square at the heart of Madrid. The streets were strangely empty, but the noise grew. A crowd was chanting and there were more gunshots. Then for a moment everything became silent.
In the Puerta del Sol Marshal Murat, Grand Duke of Berg and brother-in-law to the Emperor, confronted the angry crowd. As always his uniform was a riot of colour, for he took care to set off his good looks with a uniform outshining that gave her audiest hussar. Years before Murat had led the horsemen who had followed up Napoleon’s whiff of grapeshot with a vicious charge against the Paris mob and so saved the Directory. Now he repeated the exercise in another capital city.
Cannon fired, the metal canisters bursting open at their muzzles and spraying dozens of musket balls into the packed crowd. Infantrymen added their volleys, filling the square with echoing noise, black smoke and blood. Then the Guard Cavalry charged, swords and sabres thrusting and hacking as the crowd panicked and people started to run.
When Hanley turned into one of the larger side streets he collided with a fleeing man. He was short, thickset and wild eyed, and his flailing elbow struck the Englishman hard and winded him. Hanley struggled both to breathe and to stay upright. The
Spaniard’s red headscarf fell off and fluttered down beside him, but the man kept running, looking neither right nor left. Many more people came after him, their faces pale and blank. Some were women, but none were Mapi. Hanley leaned against a wall and let the fugitives flow past him. Behind them were others, coming a little more slowly. A few carried knives or ancient muskets, and one had a sword. This man was old, and his coat of yellow silk was rich in lace and had last been fashionable thirty years ago. There was blood on his right leg and he was limping along, supported by a plump friar. Two younger men walked behind the nobleman and his priest, both with fowling pieces, and they turned now and again to watch behind them. Suddenly one of the pair shouted and an instant later fired, flame and black smoke gouting from the muzzle of his firelock.
The French cavalry were silent as they galloped into the street. Their formation had long gone, but the Chasseurs came in a dense group led by a tall officer with a blond moustache. There was blood splattered on the chests of the horses and on the men’s legs. Their curved sabres chopped and thrust down with the precision of long practice. The officer beheaded the first of the nobleman’s attendants, riding a little past the retreating man before slicing back with massive force. A fountain of blood pumped up from the severed neck as the body pitched forward. His sergeant killed the other attendant with far less effort by a thrust of his sabre’s razor-sharp point into the man’s neck. He let the momentum of his horse free the blade from the clinging flesh, and it was just a few seconds before he dealt with the priest in the same way.
The nobleman managed to parry the officer’s first wild cut, but he screamed in pain as he had to put his weight on to his wounded leg. The Frenchman cut down again, severing the old man’s thin arm a few inches from the wrist. The nobleman’s sword dropped to the ground with his hand still grasping the hilt. Reining back, his horse’s hoofs skidding for a moment on the flagstones, the officer stood up in his stirrups and cut down again, almost chopping the old man’s head in two.
The Chasseurs flooded along the street, blood spraying as the
sabres rose and fell. There were no orders, and no words spoken, the horsemen merely grunting with effort as they drove steel into flesh and through bone. Even the screaming had stopped, and to Hanley that only made the scene more horrific. He stared for a moment, fascinated, as he saw the green-uniformed horsemen slowing down to give themselves time to kill.
Then Hanley turned and ran. He no longer knew what he was doing and just fled, his bag banging against his back with the motion. There were hoof-beats behind, closing with him as he ducked around a corner. He had enough control to turn again, sprinting for an alleyway. A man appeared there, wearing a dark waistcoat over a light brown shirt and raising a wide-mouthed blis buss. The muzzle looked massive and Hanley saw the man open his toothless mouth in a tight smile and threw himself forward, knowing the scream he heard now was his own. Then there was a massive detonation, the noise magnified in the narrow alleyway, and the sense of a force punching the air above him. He rolled as he fell, losing his bag, but turning over to look behind him. A horse was rearing in pain, one of its eyes destroyed, and its rider’s face was a mass of shattered bone and blood where he taken the full force of the scrap iron and nails fired from just a few feet away. The man could not scream, but made an unearthly moaning sound as his hands went up to clutch at his appalling wound. His sabre still hung from his wrist strap.
Hanley tried to dodge the feet that surged past him as a group of Spaniards ran from the alleyway to drag the man down. A few more had muskets or pistols and fired these at the Frenchmen now coming to help their comrade. At least some of the citizens of Madrid were fighting, and they would make these enemies know it. Hanley paused only to scoop up his valise, and then ran away.
He never found Mapi. There were bodies everywhere, and once he saw a thin black-haired girl lying on her face in the porch of a house, her skirts bunched up above her waist. He was shuddering, tears in his eyes, as he turned the young woman’s body over. She had clearly been raped, then a knife thrust between her bare breasts.
It was not Mapi, but Hanley wept for a woman he did not
know. Lifting her body, he carried it to a shrine to the Holy Mother set into a high wall. He covered the corpse with his coat, and made the sign of the cross, although he was neither a Catholic nor even a believer in God. Then there were more shots and shouting from near by.
Hanley fled, overwhelmed by fear and disgust at the horrors he had seen. The sound of gunfire followed him until he reached the very edge of the city. Some was regular, as the French firing squads methodically dispensed punishment. A few shots were fired by Spaniards, but the retribution was always terrible. Hanley was never to know, but the house where he had rented a room was stormed by a party of the Empress Dragoons. They cut down the lame doorman and ransacked the place, smashing whatever they did not steal. In Hanley’s room one of the soldiers found a sketch of Mapi, reclining in the nude on a couch. The Dragoon grinned appreciatively and stuffed the paper into his jacket before looking round for anything else worth taking.
No one tried to stop Hanley as he left the city, and he saw no more soldiers, for Madrid was a big place and the French still few in number. He drove his horse hard, till the beast’s flanks were white with sweat. It was breathing hard, and would not stay in a canter no matter what he did. He realised it was close to exhaustion and that he needed to give it some rest if it was to last out the journey. Fast as he had gone, the shock and horror of what he had seen stayed with him. A new hatred of the French fought with resentment of his own fate. His life had changed, his dreams collapsed, and he did not know whether the lover he had not loved was alive or dead. The failed artist was going home. He was escaping a war and going to join an army.
T
he battalion was in trouble, and Williams did not know how to extricate it. Everything had started so well, the ten companies deployed side by side in line. That was the fighting formation for attack or defence, with the thousand soldiers of the 106th Foot in two ranks so that all could fire their muskets. His grenadiers were in the place of honour on seen sight of the line, as befitted the biggest and, he was sure, the best soldiers in the regiment. On the far left were the light bobs, not yet sent forward as skirmishers. They were supposedly the best shots and the most agile men, although personally he was unconvinced about their claims to greater intelligence and initiative, most of all where their officers were concerned. Still, the Light Company was in its place and he could rely on them to do their duty.
The order came to advance and, since no enemy was close, or even likely to be close, Williams put the battalion into open column. They formed on the centre company – or actually Captain Mosley’s Number Four Company, which stood just to the right of the colours in the middle of the line – because that would take minutes off the manoeuvre. The grenadiers marched forward, wheeled twice and took up position at the head of the column. They were still in two ranks each of fifty men covering just over ninety feet of frontage. Behind them at half that distance was the identical line formed by Number One Company, then Number Two, and so on. The lights and Numbers Eight to Five had to turn about to take up station behind Four Company. The colour party with the battalion’s two flags stood in the centre between Four and Five Company. On his order the
battalion marched forward at a steady seventy-five paces a minute.
They came to a defile, so Williams put each of the individual companies into a narrow column of route to pass through it. Back in the open once more, they reverted to a battalion column with the companies at half-distance, then went into line again. Side by side the ten companies covered some three hundred yards of frontage. Ordered to resume the advance, he put them back into column again.
Williams thought the serried ranks of redcoats looked magnificent, and was pleased with his handling of the regiment. Then the enemy appeared.
‘French cavalry!’ yelled Lieutenant Truscott. ‘Over on the right front!’
Williams followed the pointed finger. Infantry in a column at half-distance like this were desperately vulnerable to horse-men. He heard the drumming of hoofs, knew he needed to form square, but could not remember how. It was easy from a denser column at quarter-distance – he could remember those diagrams as clearly as anything.
‘A whole regiment. Cuirassiers. Big blackguards in armour on massive horses!’ Truscott sounded almost enthusiastic as the regiment’s doom approached. ‘Come on, sir, make up your mind.’
‘We’re dished,’ chipped in young Derryck. ‘Bloody grenadiers,’ he added as an afterthought.
Truscott smiled as he drummed his fingers even more loudly on the oak table. ‘They are getting closer. You have one minute left.’
Hamish Williams hesitated, then he reached down and moved the blocks representing the Grenadier and Number One Company together to form a dense line four deep. The two ranks of grenadiers would be kneeling, bayonets fixed and the butts of their muskets braced against the ground so that the weapons pointed upwards. No horse would willingly commit suicide by charging a hedge of bayonet points. So as long as the redcoats remained steady – and Williams was utterly confident that they would – then they were safe against a charge from the front. The problem was the flanks, which were still wide open.
‘Thirty seconds. They are spurring into a gallop now. Their swords are about three feet long and they are all aiming at us, arm straight and wrist bent in the charge.’
‘Bloody grenadiers.’
Es docompany was represented by a wooden block some three inches long. They were white, but painted on each side were seven miniature redcoats standing at the present, staring blankly forward as if they did not have a care in the world. They wore the old-fashioned cocked hats long since replaced by the shako, and there were plenty of chips on the paintwork as testimony to heavy usage. Someone had drawn in a pair of glasses on the centre grenadier to make him look like Lieutenant Pringle. The latter was stretched out on his bed, using Williams’ heavy brass telescope to peer out of the window. It was an immensely heavy piece, designed to be held on a stand, so Pringle was resting it on the headboard of the bed.
Pringle looked up for a moment. ‘Am I about to be called upon to lay down my life for King and Country once again?’ he said wearily.
Truscott ignored him. ‘Come on, man, what do you do?’ he demanded of Williams once again.
‘Only it will be the eighth time this afternoon,’ continued Pringle, who was now looking back through the telescope. His glasses were on the top of his head and he adjusted the brass eyepiece to sharpen the focus. ‘I only ask because if I’d known I would have got Jenkins to do a better job of polishing my boots. Seems a shame to die looking shabby.’
‘Why change the habit of a lifetime?’ chipped in Anstey, one of four officers playing cards at the other end of the long table from the wooden blocks representing the battalion. There were appreciative guffaws from his companions. The game was progressing slowly, but they were already well into the second bottle of claret so it was clear that their time had not been entirely wasted. Thin clouds of cigar smoke also attested to their comfortable leisure.
Williams had a sudden revelation. He could do it if he broke each company into two platoons. Quarter-distance meant that
there was room for the platoons to wheel outwards and form the sides of the square. They would be only two deep, which was very thin, but if they timed their volleys just right then they could stop a squadron in its tracks. Williams started to move the blocks, but each was a solid company piece so he was going to have to explain what he meant.
‘Time’s up,’ said Truscott. Derryck helpfully jabbed at the blocks with a toasting fork, scattering the painted battalion. Truscott leaned against the back of his chair and complacently crossed his legs. His lean, intelligent face showed little trace of amusement and considerable disappointment. ‘It seems that once again we all have an opportunity to find out the answer to the great question, courtesy of our young gentlemen. Well, I suppose some of the battalion might survive. Be hard for the French to kill everyone.’ He paused, frowning. ‘Their arms would get tired for a start. Anyway, they are usually pretty decent about taking prisoners.’
‘Bloody grenadiers.’ Williams glared at the young ensign, who grinned back cheerfully. Derryck’s own attempts at manoeuvring the blocks had produced an even more rapid and spectacular disaster. Neither of the other ensigns had managed much better.
‘Nobody survived when you were in charge.’
‘I do like to be thorough,’ said Derryck. He was just sixteen, but was no more than five foot two inches tall and thin as a rake in spite of the vast quantities of food he devoured whenever he got the chance. He looked about twelve, and managed to give off an air of innocence utterly out of keeping with his character. Williams liked him. Most people did.
‘I fear doing just a little better than Mr Derryck is not quite sufficient,’ put in Truscott. ‘Thhair egiment expects somewhat more than the survival of one hundred men out of a thousand. Especially before any of them have had a chance to fire a shot. His Majesty’s government has invested considerable money in raising, feeding and training this battalion. Think of all those poor rich people having to pay their taxes.’
The lieutenant could see that the young gentlemen were
unmoved by the plight of the wealthy. He could not blame them. None of the officers of the regiment was titled, and only the new colonel had any real claim to wealth. The 106th Foot was the most junior regiment of the line and was not fashionable. Truscott’s own family’s moderate income was stretched very thin to support seven children. He reached for a battered copy of the drill manual approved for the entire army by the Duke of York. It was written by General Dundas and detailed the manoeuvres to be performed by a battalion on parade and in the field. He flung the book at Williams, who instinctively swayed back and only just caught it.
‘Both of you study “Old Pivot”. You know, study – something Billy never had to do at his pitiful place of education.’
‘Too true,’ said Pringle, without taking his eye from the telescope. ‘It wasted valuable time when a fellow could be dining and drinking.’
‘And whoring, no doubt,’ said Anstey.
‘An Oxford gentleman does not speak of such things in polite conversation.’
Anstey scoffed at this statement so out of keeping with Billy Pringle’s normal talk. Most of the others laughed, although Williams just looked solemn. Truscott shook his head.
‘What the Church lost in you, Billy! Still, sending you to Magdalen was probably a bad idea.’
Pringle looked back at him for a moment. ‘A scriptural joke. Is that the best Clare College can come up with?’ He resumed his intent observation through the window. ‘Now if they had let me study Molly Hackett at Oxford I would have been the most avid of students.’
‘Who is Molly Hackett?’ asked young Derryck rather nervously.
Truscott had no wish to discuss Mrs Wickham’s maid with the pink-cheeked ensign. ‘She is not Sir David Dundas, and he alone should consume your attention at present,’ he said sharply.
‘She is an indiscreet young lady,’ Pringle replied, ignoring his fellow lieutenant. ‘Very, very indiscreet, who has not closed the shutters on the window of her chamber.’ He clearly had the
attention of Derryck, and several of the other officers were listening more intently. Williams blushed, realised that he had done so, and the consciousness of this only made things worse. He thought Truscott had noticed.
‘I strongly suspect that Mr Williams’ good mother did not present him with such a fine telescope in order to allow you to spy upon innocent young girls,’ said the lieutenant.
‘Nonsense, I have no doubt she would thank me for keeping temptation away from her son. It is an excellent glass and no doubt will aid her boy in smiting the King’s enemies. We do not want him distracted from that task, so I will look after the thing until those enemies appear.’
‘Damnation to them all!’ cried Derryck, his voice cracking midway through and rather ruining the effect of this statement of patriotic zeal. The others ignored him anyway.
Williams found himself staring at the scattered blocks. He tried to imagine the wreckage of a battalion caught unformed by enemy cavalry. The war with France Now if tbeen going on for more than half of his lifetime. Tens, probably even hundreds, of thousands had died in those years, but he was still new to the army and had never been in a battle. Nor had any of the other subalterns, even confident men like Truscott and Pringle. There were no battle honours on the colours of the 106th.
It was so hard to picture the carnage, to think of these men he knew sprawled on the ground, their bodies slashed and stabbed by the enemy’s blades. In the pictures of famous battles the dead were always decorously draped over the landscape, their wounds tiny or even invisible. Yet the limbless and scarred beggars who prowled the streets still wearing ragged red coats or sailors’ pigtails hinted at the true horrors of battle. How many would die quickly and with only brief pain, and how many would lie screaming in dreadful agony? Williams wondered whether the others had similar thoughts, but could see no sign of it.
Somehow it was difficult to believe that similar violence could possibly touch Truscott in his immaculate uniform or the ever cheerful Derryck. They were soldiers, but their world was one
of neatness and precision and there seemed almost no place for bloodshed and chaos. Williams frowned as he realised that even now he assumed that he would himself come through unscathed. Why should he be special and invulnerable? His foot brushed against something and he looked down, noticing that the block marked Gren. Coy had fallen on the floor. Williams picked it up. For a moment he stared at the little figure with the inked-in glasses.
‘Sorry, Billy,’ he muttered, and then put it back on the table. He began reassembling the shattered battalion. The little painted soldiers looked unmoved by their recent ordeal.
Truscott noticed the gesture. ‘Don’t worry, my dear fellow. Grenadiers are too stupid to die.’
Williams felt a rush of anger, wondering whether Truscott had thought he was concerned about his own life. The idea that anyone would consider him so selfish or indeed so lacking in courage horrified him. Yet to deny such a thought openly would surely reinforce the impression. Truscott’s face betrayed no particular emotion, and he was already saying something to Derryck. Williams hesitated, and then was saved from the decision by a knock on the door.
Lieutenant Brotherton came in accompanied by an unknown officer. The man was tall, his face dark from the sun, and he had short black hair. That was odd because all the other officers in the room wore their hair long, tied with a black ribbon and coloured white with powder. The newcomer’s jacket was creased and looked a little too small for him, his dark red sash was untidily wrapped around his waist, and his top boots and breeches were splashed with mud. Behind him two soldiers carried a trunk, although for all their emphasised effort it appeared to be fairly light.
‘Gentlemen, I would like to present the newest addition to our happy family.’ Brotherton gave a sweeping gesture towards his companion. ‘This is Mr Hanley, of the Grenadier Company. Put that in the corner there.’ He spoke to the two redcoats. ‘Thank you.’ The men left. ‘Now, if you will forgive me, I will leave you
to introduce yourselves. I must resume my work – the life of an acting adjutant is one of unending toil and sorrow.’ Brotherton departed amid jeers.