by Angus Donald
Contents
Holcroft Blood’s Ireland
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Two
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Historical note
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
Part One
Chapter One
Sunday, August 25, 1689: 11 a.m.
Captain Holcroft Blood dipped his quill in the ink pot. He gently shook off a drop of excess ink and, with his left hand, he straightened the large sheet of paper in front of him so that its bottom edge was exactly in line with the metal rim of the small folding camp table at which he sat. He composed his thoughts as best as he could in his present disordered state of mind. Then wrote:
Carrickfergus encampment
Sunday, 25th August, 1689
Madam,
I have received the favour of your letter of the 17th Inst. in which you informed me of the situation regarding the sad state of the spoons in Mincing Lane . . .
He recharged his quill and continued.
I am most sensible of the importance of keeping all the silverware in good order for the honour of the household and I regret deeply that your distinguished guest Jongheer Markus van Dijk was unkind enough to take notice of its poor quality when he dined with you and Lady Churchill earlier this month. I am therefore perfectly content that you should purchase an entirely new canteen of silver, should you believe the decrepitude of our existing set truly demands it.
Holcroft wet the nib again, mentally girded up his loins, and scratched out:
As I believe I have informed you on several occasions, you have full permission, as my wife, to draw the appropriate sum from the goldsmith Richard Hoare at the sign of the Golden Bottle in Cheapside. However, as I am engaged in the business of the Ordnance in Ireland at present, indeed as I am in the midst of a siege of the town of Carrickfergus, a dozen miles north-east of Belfast, I do not believe that I should be required to sanction every minor household expense . . .
Holcroft paused, and stabbed the nib into the ink pot again. He knew he had struck the wrong note – he sounded petulant – but such was the peculiar nature of his mind that he could not bring himself to tear up the sheet and start again. He was sitting in the spacious command tent of the English Army in Ireland and, for once, he was quite alone with his thoughts and his letter to his wife. Yet that unusual and most welcome solitary state had not improved his temper.
He was, in truth, furious. But not with Elizabeth. His anger was directed at his commanding officer, General Frederich-Hermann von Schönberg, Master-General of the Ordnance, head of the English Army in Ireland and owner of this cool and comfortable canvas palace. The newly created Duke of Schomberg – the English could never pronounce his family name – was about to let a notorious French spy evade justice. Indeed, Schomberg was now parlaying with representatives of the town’s Irish governor, Charles MacCarthy, a parlay that was – to Holcroft’s fury – almost certain to lead to the spy’s escape.
The Irish governor and his men were supporters of James Stuart, the recently deposed Catholic monarch of the Three Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, and these men, known as Jacobites, maintained by force of arms that William of Orange, the Protestant prince who presently occupied the thrones jointly with his wife Mary, was a damned usurper. However, to Holcroft’s mind, these supporters of King James were little better than criminals. James had abdicated the thrones when he departed from England for France the year before – after a most inglorious coup known paradoxically as the Glorious Revolution. Holcroft had decided, as had millions of his fellow countrymen, that King William and Queen Mary were de facto – and also de jure – rulers of the Three Kingdoms. These Irishmen were therefore rebels.
This peace conference with them today in Carrickfergus would likely lead to a surrender of the town and the evacuation of all defenders. The rebels would be allowed to march out of Carrickfergus with arms and honour intact. And the French spy, a man known by the codename Narrey, would march out with them.
General Schomberg had initially demanded unconditional surrender from the defenders, an offer which had been considered for the longest time before being politely refused. Holcroft knew, as well as the duke did, that these Irishmen – more than five hundred militiamen – had been ordered to delay the English Army for as long as they could. He also knew that if they chose to be stubborn, the defenders could draw this siege out for weeks, or even months.
After initial success for James’s forces in the north, the Jacobites had been driven south when overwhelming numbers of King William’s troops – English, Welsh and Scots, as well as Dutchmen, Germans, Danes and soldiers from other northern European lands – had been gathered in England and dispatched across the Irish sea. The old town of Londonderry, or just plain Derry as some local people called it, which had been besieged for three months by the Jacobites had been recently relieved by Colonel Percy Kirke and his brutally efficient infantrymen – nicknamed ironically Kirke’s Lambs. The demoralised forces of James, many of whom were poorly trained conscripts, were retreating south.
All that prevented Schomberg from following on their heels to crush the rebellion once and for all was the defiance of this isolated Irish garrison. That was why the half-German general would most likely agree to almost anything the defenders of Carrickfergus asked. And both sides knew it. Schomberg dared not advance south to confront the main part of the Jacobite army if it meant leaving an enemy force behind him that could threaten his communication lines.
It was now late August, and autumn and winter were at hand. The fighting would grind to a halt in October or early November when the weather turned bad. The armies would go into their winter quarters to ride out the cold and rain in as much comfort as they could manage. If the Duke of Schomberg could not vanquish James before the Irish winter stalled the war, he might never beat him. The Stuart King was recruiting fresh men from all across Ireland to his banner. And Louis XIV of France, the most powerful monarch in Europe, who had already committed six thousand troops to the Jacobite cause, might raise another army and send them across the sea to bring aid to his fellow Catholics.
Schomberg had to winkle the rebels out of Carrickfergus fast. If that meant allowing all defenders – including Narrey – to march away unharmed, so be it.
Holcroft understood all this – yet he was still furious with his commander. He had come to Ireland with the express intention of finding Narrey and bringing him to justice – or, if that could not be arranged, then dispatching him speedily to Hell. He had petitioned the duke, begged him, in truth, to be allowed to accompany the Royal Train of Artillery as Second Engineer. And Schomberg had at last agreed to the appointment. But now, just when Holcroft had his enemy trapped and at his mercy, the general was about to let him go scot f
ree.
Holcroft let out a long, heavy breath. He tried to concentrate.
I am very pleased to hear the buddleias are blooming and you may certainly invite a dozen of your friends around for a tea-drinking party in the garden, should you so wish to honour them. Unfortunately, I am unable to tell you very much about the flowers here in this northern part of Ireland, since much of the lands about these parts have been devastated by war. Indeed, the Jacobites have burnt all the surroundings of Carrickfergus almost to the ground to deny us cover, and so the landscape in this region is now very ashy and bleak . . .
The white canvas flap of the tent opened and a lean and dirty officer walked in.
‘Blood,’ he said, by way of greeting.
Holcroft’s response was equally laconic. ‘Richards,’ he replied.
Jacob Richards was dressed in the same blue Ordnance coat that Holcroft wore, with the distinctive yellow turned-back sleeves. But his coat, his once-white breeches and black leather boots were all slathered with sticky grey mud. He had a scarlet sash around his waist, as Holcroft did, but he was, in fact, his superior officer – a major and the First Engineer of the Royal Train of Artillery.
Richards went over to the oak sideboard at the rear of the tent and poured himself a glass of wine from the crystal decanter. General Schomberg, affectionately nicknamed Uncle Frederick, liked to campaign with all the comforts, as befitted a man past the age of seventy, and the officers of his inner circle were permitted to make free of these home comforts too, within reason.
Richards took a sip of his wine. He watched Holcroft’s broad back as he scratched away at his letter for a few moments. ‘Parlay’s concluded,’ he said.
Holcroft put the quill in its stand and turned to look at the First Engineer.
‘They surrendered?’
‘No, MacCarthy’s man defied us. He said: “I don’t think we’re done with you gentlemen yet!” That’s what he said. They’re laughing at us. Wasting time.’
A slow grin began to spread over Holcroft’s large, sun-browned face.
‘So you still have a chance of a crack at your Frog spy.’ Richards gave Holcroft the tiniest of smiles. ‘Schomberg’s incandescent. He wants the assault renewed immediately. Full barrage on the town walls and on the castle itself. But I’m done in, Blood. I’ve been supervising the gun placements and the digging of the assault trenches all night. The No. 1 Battery is in good order, ready to reduce the castle. No. 2 is bedded in and primed to start on the town gate. So – off you go. Take command. Make Uncle Frederick happy by knocking some bloody great holes in their walls. When I’ve drunk up this glass, I’m heading for my bed.’
Holcroft stood up and opened his mouth to express his joy . . .
And the world exploded into chaos.
*
A twenty-four-pound iron ball – blasted from a ‘Spanish’ cannon with a twelve-foot barrel by fifteen pounds of black powder – makes a formidable missile. The cannon ball ripped through half a dozen guy ropes, punched through the side of the heavy canvas command tent, clipped the edge of Holcroft’s writing table, smashing it to matchwood, bounced once then, without slowing, chopped through the central tent pole, a mast-like column of pine, and crashed into the centre of the solid oak sideboard, where Richards was standing at his muddy ease with his well-earned glass of claret. The ball disintegrated the ancient piece of furniture into a storm of kindling and shards of sharp flying oak and then tore a ragged hole in the rear wall of the tent and disappeared.
The powerful wind-wash of the ball’s passage knocked Holcroft to the ground and, dizzy and disorientated, he struggled out of the wreckage of the writing table to regain his feet in the gently collapsing tent. Even slightly deafened, and suddenly swaddled in dream-like white canvas, he could hear the sound of Richards’ agonised screams. But he could see nothing. Holcroft fought his way free of the sheets of cloth, dragging a clasp knife from his coat pocket, opening it and cutting through the tough material, tearing long holes in the cloth to allow him to see what had happened to his friend. And when he had finally slashed and ripped his way to the First Engineer on the far side of the ruined tent, and had cleared the heavy sheets of canvas, guy ropes, leather straps, and oak splinters away from Richards’ prone body, it was clear that the officer was grievously wounded. His coat had been blown away from his right shoulder, leaving a raw seeping wound at the top of his white arm. His lean unshaven face was also slathered in blood. The bottom lobe of his left ear had been neatly chopped off by a spinning sliver of wood. Worst of all, a three-foot-long, needle-pointed spike of oak had transfixed his lower left thigh, just above the knee, pinning him to the floor.
Holcroft hesitated only for a moment as he looked down at Jacob Richards and the monstrous shard of oak sticking up from his leg. Then he grasped the end of the shard in one large hand and with a jerk withdrew it from the wound.
Richards was moaning and muttering something over and over in his pain. Holcroft heard the words: ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum . . .’ and realised the man was praying. He had not known that Richards was a Catholic.
At that moment another ball screamed past, twenty yards to Holcroft’s left. The first shot had not been random, then. The enemy was targeting this command tent. They were targeting Schomberg himself. Holcroft had no time to think about that now. He bent down and gathered the muttering officer in his arms. He looked about to get his bearings in the suddenly bright sunlight, seeing the endless rows of other grubby tents, the campfires, the long lines of deep trench-works that surrounded Carrickfergus, and the red-coated soldiery staring out at him from these muddy ditches, their heads at boot height, their mouths agape. As he stood in the puddled remains of the command tent, a big man with a limp, bloody form in his arms, he spotted the regimental flag of a famous guards unit, which gave him his orientation. Then, cradling Richards to his chest, he began to run.
*
Two hours later, his arms and chest still stained with Richards’ blood and mud, Holcroft stepped down on to the No. 2 Battery gun platform. He had left Richards at the mercy of the brandy-soaked barber-surgeon in the hospital tent – a man who refused to guarantee the wounded officer’s survival but who had promised to transport him to Belfast Castle as soon as possible where he could be cared for in comfort. Now Holcroft was even more angry than before.
He looked down at the town of Carrickfergus a little over a mile away: it was a roughly hexagonal shape pressed against the shoreline with a flattened front in the north making a seventh side, where the main gate stood. This portal was protected by a fortified gatehouse with twin square stone towers. An eighteen-foot wall, manned here and there by tiny figures in red coats and black hats, ran around the outside punctuated by six bastions, right-angled outcroppings of the wall that would give the defenders the opportunity to fire upon any infantry assaulting the length of wall between one bastion and the next. On the southern side of the town, the Norman castle – a high square donjon, two round towers at the gate and a twenty-foot-high curtain wall – stood on a small peninsula which jutted into Belfast Lough. A quay reached out from the rear of the castle into the sea like a stone arm and curled around to the west, designed to shelter shipping from the weather.
The wide main street of the town ran from the North Gate three hundred yards southwards towards the castle gate towers, with prosperous-looking houses on either side of the wide street. Holcroft could see a lone old man and a heavily laden donkey making their slow way down the thoroughfare. And now a galloping green-coated fellow on a black horse coming up from the castle and heading for the North Gate, a messenger, no doubt. There was little else stirring on this bright Sunday morning. To the right of the main road was the familiar cross shape of a church – St Nicholas’s, he had been told in the intelligence briefings, which he had been asked, if possible, not to damage with his cannon fire. On the left side of the road was a tall, opulent building, a minor palace even, which he had heard was called Joymount House,
the residence of the local Protestant magnate Lord Donegall, abandoned at the approach of war.
Joymount House was a squared off U-shape, with the two arms pointing north towards the English encampment. At three storeys high, it was the tallest structure in Carrickfergus, with the exception of the church spire, and the enemy had taken full advantage of its elevation. Holcroft saw a flash of sunlight on brass and a puff of grey smoke on the right-hand roof, and a moment later he heard the boom of a heavy cannon – a twenty-four-pounder to his educated ear. He thought he could make out the line of flight, away to his right, the ball landing near a knot of gentlemen by the deflated command tent, kicking up a spray of dirt, and bounding away between two lesser tents.
He could see that there was a corresponding cannon-shape on the left-hand roof of Joymount House and a group of men tending to it. So . . . the enemy had managed to place an attacking battery up there. This was the unit that had been responsible for wounding poor Richards. And it had been no accident of war. It had been a deliberate targeting of General Schomberg’s tent and of his staff. But how did they know which tent to aim at? Holcroft asked himself.
The answer was plain. Schomberg’s intelligencers had their spies in Carrickfergus – and the enemy must have theirs in the English camp, too. Holcroft tucked that piece of information away to be chewed over later. There were more immediate challenges at hand. He hauled out a small, polished brass field glass from one of his deep Ordnance coat pockets, to get a better view of the enemy position and, as he did so, he could hear the ritual chant of the nearest English gun of his own No. 2 Battery crew a few yards to his left.
‘. . . Prime the piece . . . Tend the match . . . Have a care . . . Give fire!’
Holcroft loved the ritual words. Exactly the same every time a piece was fired. He found great comfort in their structure and familiarity.
The English gun – one of four of the Train’s big cannon that made up the No. 2 Battery – thundered, spewing out flame and smoke and a twenty-four-pound ball, and the heavy carriage rumbled back a yard on its massive iron-bound wheels. The half-dozen Ordnance men serving that particular piece, gunners, engineers and matrosses – the lowliest of gun folk, only semi-trained, who did the heavy lifting of balls and powder – had stood well clear at the shouted command, ‘Have a care!’ from the gun captain and they now swarmed forward again to begin the complicated reloading process.