True Soldier Gentlemen (Napoleonic War 1) (9 page)

‘How are you enjoying commanding the company, Billy?’

‘Haven’t had to do much yet,’ replied Pringle. ‘Although I
rather suspect that is going to change. I only have to do a little this evening and Hanley is helping prepare the targets for tomorrow.’

‘I am sure you are doing a fine job.’

‘I am just keeping the place warm for MacAndrews. It is a good company.’

‘Are you sure he will come back? There were rumours a year ago that he might get his majority, until Toye purchased the vacancy.’ Major Toye commanded the left wing of the 106th, having come in from the Royal Fusiliers.

‘There are always rumours,’ said Pringle. He rather liked Wickham, although they were not close friends. The latter was married, for one thing, and when he did spend time with the other subalterns he had more enthusiasm for gaming than suited either Pringle’s taste or funds.

‘That’s true, but there were good ones that General Lepper wants to promote him if he can. So there may be a vacancy.’

‘Isn’t Brotherton senior?’ It was odd to think of the diminutive Brotherton taking command of the tall grenadiers.

‘It doesn’t have to go with seniority,’ suggested Wickham quietly.

‘Oh, I see. Have you got the gilt?’ Everyone knew that Wickham was associated with a rich and powerful man. The connection was old, and had been reinforced more recently when this same man married his wife’s elder sister. Still, in certain company the lieutenant would launch mournful attacks on the selfish and wicked conduct of this same man and his wife, of how they had ignored the spirit of their inheritance, and provided him with only niggardly support. Yet now it seemed they were obliging him with the money needed to purchase the captaincy of the Grenadier Company.

Wickham smiled.

W
illiams thought of Miss MacAndrews, picturing her gentle blue-grey eyes, which had looked into his for just one brief moment. He thought of her fair skin, her wide mouth and the smile which revealed her neat white teeth, and her flowing red hair – deciding that he would think of this as burnished copper, although he knew it did not do the magnificent colour justice. Then he pulled the trigger.

The flint sparked, igniting the powder in the pan, then setting off the main charge. The musket slammed back into his shoulder as a cloud of dirty white smoke obscured the target. There was the now familiar smell of bad eggs.

They were firing at circles of canvas three foot in diameter and placed a hundred yards away. At fifty yards Williams had hit the same target nine times out of ten, with more than half of the shots in the bull’s-eye itself. At this range all the flaws of the army’s smooth-bore muskets made accuracy much more chancy. Still, he was pleased with his shooting, especially since he had never once fired any weapon before joining the 106th. He knew that he must at the very least have been ose to the target.

Mechanically, he went into the motions of loading the last of the ten rounds he would fire at this range. He let go of the grip with his right hand, allowing the butt to fall to the ground. His fingers felt for the next cartridge from his open pouch, raised it to his lips and bit off the top of the paper that contained the ball. The taste was salty on his lips. Pringle had told him this was the saltpetre in it. Taking a pinch of the black powder, he poured it into the pan of his musket, flicking its cover open to do so, and
then closing it again. Then he straightened the musket, emptying the rest of the cartridge into the muzzle. He leaned forward and spat the lead ball down on top, drew his ramrod, reversed it so that the wider head pointed downwards, and thrust down just once. He plucked the ramrod out, spun it in his hand and slid it back into place in its holder beneath the muzzle. As he raised his Brown Bess he pulled the lock back to full cock, reassured by its definite click.

All the while he thought of Miss MacAndrews. Williams did not yet feel confident enough to think of her as Jane. He wondered whether he would have the courage to ask her for a dance at tonight’s ball. What were the proper words? ‘Would you do me the honour’ . . . or perhaps ‘May I beg the privilege?’ Hamish was not sure, and had little experience of social occasions of this type. He had been to only a few since joining the regiment and had found each one desperately awkward, spending most of his time on the fringes of conversations. Once or twice Mrs Kidwell, the rotund and elderly wife of the quartermaster, had taken pity on him and either danced with him herself or led him to one of the free young ladies and made most of the arrangements.

He doubted that he would ever feel comfortable in the social world. He dreamed of holding Miss MacAndrews, of whirling with her around the dance floor, seeing her looking up at him with warmth and affection. At the same time he knew that he was afraid even to speak to her. On the day when Captain MacAndrews’ family had arrived she had spoken only once to him. As they had talked with the Wickhams, more and more of the 106th’s officers had arrived to join them. When finally they moved off, most of the subalterns accompanied the mother and daughter, all struggling to be most of service and warmest of welcome. The hatboxes piled on top of the trunk he carried with Pringle had wobbled, threatening to fall, and Williams had somehow managed to keep hold of the handle and scoop the boxes up with his other hand. Miss MacAndrews had just for a moment looked at him, given him a brief but lavish smile and thanked him. Williams had managed no more than an incoherent
grunt, immediately cursing himself for such absurd shyness.

By the end of that day, Jane MacAndrews’ beauty and charm had become the chief talking point of the 106th. Most of the younger officers quickly decided that they were her devoted admirers. By the next day a measure of reflection had set in. Her father was an elderly and virtually penniless captain. For the moment he was acting commander of the half-battalion, but no one knew whether this would become permanent. Even then, if MacAndrews was gazetted major, the salary of that rank was scarcely a fortune.

On the following day there was a note of renewed optimism. Mrs MacAndrews was an American, and obviously a great lady. Rumours spread of family plantations vast in extent and generous in profits. Later this enthusiasm dampened. The captain had evidently not been able to advance his career through access to such a fortune, and its existence was quickly dismissed by all but the most optimistic and romantically inclined. Miss MacAndrews could well be a most delightful companion, but only those of substantial personal means could afford to condesnd to seek her hand in marriage. Since she was the daughter of their current commander, any less formal arrangement would clearly need to be pursued with extreme caution. The young gentlemen still called at the MacAndrews’ cottage, but their ambitions were more limited, and a few returned to their pursuit of the daughters of the local gentry, however less favoured by looks.

Williams scorned such thoughts. He loved Miss MacAndrews, and intended only ever to marry for love. He had no doubt that so perfectly beautiful a lady must be perfect in every other respect. For a moment he was resolved. He was to be a soldier, and intended to be an excellent and brave one. Surely he must have the courage to ask a young lady to dance. The confidence lasted for several minutes.

Hanley blew a whistle to signal that the shooting was over and that each man should go and inspect their targets. Whistles were formally used only by the light infantry as a means of conveying orders. MacAndrews had given one to each of his grenadier
officers and insisted that they learn to use them as well. The sharp tone could carry better over the noise of battle than shouted words.

Williams walked forward to his target and was pleased to find six hits, including two bulls. Dobson nodded approvingly. The old soldier had managed only three hits, half as many as at fifty yards.

‘Eyes going,’ he said.

The section formed up and then marched over to join the rest of the company. In another part of the field there were large canvas screens forty foot wide and six feet high supported by wooden frames. Hanley and a party of men had worked on these for long hours on the instructions of MacAndrews. His idea was to make a target the size of a company of enemy infantrymen. The other companies had already torn four of the screens to shreds, firing in concentrated volleys rather than shooting individually. The Grenadier Company directed its fire at the last remaining target. Pringle gave the orders and MacAndrews observed. They began at one hundred and fifty yards – long range for a smooth-bore musket – and then gradually closed the distance. MacAndrews had tried to drum into them the care needed when levelling a piece at each range. Over longer distances the heavy lead musket balls dropped, and so the men needed to point their firelocks higher than the target.

The grenadiers were in two ranks. Then, at the order, the men of the second rank like Williams stepped to their right and forward a pace, closing the distance and allowing their muskets to project through the gaps between their front rank men. Volleys shattered the summer air. The noise was like the tearing of very heavy cloth, as a great cloud of smoke covered the front of the company. Hanley recorded the hits, marking them as accurately as he could on a quick sketch. The last volleys were fired at just fifty yards.

Afterwards, MacAndrews took the officers and Williams to inspect the results. Hanley had totted up the total of hits for each volley. Pringle needed only a quick glance to provide average scores for the various ranges. The results were encouraging. Everyone knew that the Brown Bess was built to be sturdy rather
than accurate. Even so almost two-fifths of the shots fired at the maximum range had hit the screen. At one hundred yards it had been nearly three-fifths, and at fifty yards the result was devastating. Between eight and nine out of ten shots had punched through the canvas, leaving it as ragged as the screens savaged by the other companies earlier in the day. At that range, it seemed difficult to miss. MacAndrews nodded his approval. They had done marginally better than the other companies.

Hanley was impressed, and more than a little horrifid at the thought of such devastation. He was also puzzled. ‘Assuming a hundred men in a French company, wouldn’t we kill them all before we got to fire the closer volleys?’

‘Your screens are very fine, William, but real Frenchmen are not square, and there will be gaps,’ commented Pringle.

‘Do not the French also get to fire back?’ asked Williams.

‘Aye, they are allowed to,’ responded the captain, prompting smiles from the others.

To Hanley that suggested only mutual annihilation. Williams was trying to imagine the chaos as men fell all around him. Redman looked pale, but obviously felt a demonstration of confidence was in order. ‘But we are better trained. I have heard the French never practise with real powder and ball.’

‘So they say,’ confirmed MacAndrews. ‘But plenty of them have seen a lot of real fighting.’ He waited for a while, wondering whether they would see the implication.

‘I would guess a target that fires back is a little distracting,’ said Pringle.

Good, thought MacAndrews, they were getting there. ‘In America,’ he began, ‘the Yankees used to say that we always fired high. It was true as well, I have seen the treetops peppered with hundreds of balls, the leaves sheared off and branches shattered. The strange thing was that if you looked behind our positions it was exactly the same. Both sides seemed to have taken a profound dislike to the enemy’s woodland.

‘Men do strange things in battle. It’s like,’ he struggled for a moment for words, ‘nothing you can quite imagine until you
have seen it. The noise, the smoke . . .’ He wondered about speaking of the blood, the screams and the stench, but decided that was too much. Mere words could not prepare anyone for such things.

‘Soldiers are just men, not machines. We train them to make them keep doing their job even with all that is going on and with their comrades falling beside them. They are still men. They are nervous, and the line between courage and panic is thinner than paper. I have known men not notice that their musket has mis-fired, and keep on loading it with round after round even though the whole thing is so jammed up that it is never going to fire.’

The captain paused. He had always been inclined to make his officers think, but in the last days his talks had been more frequent and extended to the other companies.

‘So what do we do, sir?’ asked Hanley with genuine curiosity. A clever man, he liked to feel that anything could be understood, and any problem solved. At the same time he found the calmness with which they discussed the destruction of other human beings disturbing. He thought with a chill that he was now trapped in a profession whose purpose was death. Would he become as callous as those French horsemen who slaughtered the crowd in Madrid? Yet here in England everything seemed unreal. Each morning he was still surprised to wake up and find himself to be a soldier, a man who destroyed instead of creating. He barely heard MacAndrews continue.

‘First thing to do is to stay calm. Or at least look calm. The men look to each other. It’s their fellows who reassure them, but before even that they look to us. As officers you need to show no fear, and to look as if you have no doubt of victory. That is why you are there. What else?’

‘Try to gain an advantage,’ suggested Pringle.

‘If you can. You are there to think, not to fight, although you may have to do that as well. Still, sometimes there are just two lines of men facing each other in an open field and no one has an edge.’

‘Get close,’ put in Williams, surprising himself with how confident he sounded. ‘So close we can’t miss.’

‘You’d be surprised how easy it is to miss – but yes, Mr Williams, you are right. Never fire at more than fifty yards unless you have no choice. Better yet, close to half that. If the enemy are already firing at you long before you get there then let ’em. The odds are they’ll be missing. Firing too much and too soon is a sign of bad soldiers.’

‘Can we not get the men to aim more carefully?’ said Redman, feeling rather left out and slightly annoyed that the volunteer had beaten him to a suggestion and, still worse, been praised.

‘It’s hard when the others are firing all around you,’ said Williams, feeling that for once he knew more about a matter than the officers. It had astounded him just how loud the company volleys had been, and it must have been worse for the front rank with the second rank’s muskets just inches from their heads. No wonder Dobson was a little deaf.

‘True, but Mr Redman has a point. Get close and tell the men to aim low. Aim at the knees and you will probably hit the chest.’

‘Or we can always give the French trees a good pasting,’ said Pringle. ‘Destroy French horticulture to defend the forests of Old England.’

MacAndrews did not mind the flippancy. Quiet by nature and made more reserved by years of disappointment, he disliked making speeches, but wanted these men to learn. The sergeants had already dismissed the company for their meal. There would be more drill later this afternoon, but he had decided to let everyone finish early. The officers would then have time to preen themselves for this evening’s ball. For a moment he almost regretted his family’s arrival, for that would mean that he must attend. He wanted to spend time with them, with Esther especially, but would have preferred a more private occasion. There was also so much work to do. Deep in thought, he strode ahead at a rapid pace on the path back to the village. Very soon he left the others behind.