Blood's Campaign

by Angus Donald

  The English ball struck the town’s north wall a mile away, about ten yards to the left of the gatehouse, the crack it made audible, and a gout of dust flew up and a shower of masonry tumbled down from the strike point. It was not the first time it had been hit. Holcroft had the field glass to his eye. It was a fine shot. In a day, perhaps in two days, a breach would be punched through at that spot, if the gunners did their duty, slowly, methodically, and didn’t overheat their barrels.

  A second English cannon, a twelve-pounder, one of the two smaller pieces of the No. 2 Battery, rang out, the ball crashing into the wall four paces along and slightly lower than the first hit. They were trying to make an inverted T-shaped pattern of strikes on one section of the defences to the east of the gate – the most efficient way to bring down the wall. Holcroft saw that the damage done by the last strike, by the twelve-pound ball, was understandably less than the bigger gun, but it was not insignificant. At that range, the No. 2 Battery’s accuracy of fire was not bad, in fact, not bad at all.

  ‘Smart work, Claudius!’ he called out. A roly-poly, red-faced Ordnance officer, who was standing between the two nearest cannon, turned and gave him a grin and a wave of his chubby hand. ‘All part of the No. 2 Battery service, Captain,’ he called. ‘We aim to please!’ Then guffawed at his own feeble joke.

  Holcroft frowned for a moment, then gave a rather false-sounding chuckle. Lieutenant Claudius Barden, the Third Engineer of the Train, who had command of the No. 2 Battery today, was famous throughout the Ordnance for his poverty, his laziness, his good humour and unquenchable wit. Holcroft had been made aware by several friends of the famous Barden wit: he knew that half the Third Engineer’s utterances were designed to amuse – Holcroft’s problem was he could not tell which half. To avoid causing offence, or seeming to be what some people referred to bafflingly as a ‘cold fish’, he tended to smile or laugh in a restrained way at almost anything Barden said.

  Turning away from the junior officer, Holcroft swept the glass over to Joymount House, and watched the doll-like figures of the enemy on the twin roofs serving their guns. Two twenty-four-pounders, he noted. Demi-canon d’Espagne, the French called them. They were well defended from counter-battery fire by a wall of gabions, huge earth-filled wicker baskets that would soak up any incoming shots, four of which had been placed in two pairs in front of each cannon. The guns must have been the very devil to get up on that high roof, he thought. They must have been at it all night, and working even as they parlayed with us this morning. He felt a glow of rage at their perfidy.

  The two big guns, one on each roof, were a dozen yards apart and between them was a dark gap that fell away to the ground floor. On each roof, the Irish soldiers were swarming over the guns in a strange undisciplined manner, wielding rammers and sponges, some men approaching with the heavy balls carried on hurdles, others, standing idly by with bags of powder in their arms. He saw one eager man accidentally barge into another leaving them both sprawling on the lead-covered surface of the roof. He could tell that these men were unfamiliar with their big guns – perhaps they were more comfortable with Sakers, Falcons or other smaller fry. Perhaps they were raw conscripts who had never seen a cannon before in their lives. No, that could not be the case. They had hit the command tent with their first shot, and come very close with their second. There was at least one expert gunner at work – even if the bulk of the men were no better than bone-headed farmers. Holcroft swept his glass slowly across both of the roofs. There were two figures on the right-hand roof, two men in dark clothing, side by side, holding themselves aloof from the jostle of red-coated folk around the pieces.

  When Holcroft focused the glass on them, he hissed under his breath.

  One was tall, broad and bulky, strong-looking and dark. The other was small, slender, almost girlish. Although he had a dark, heavy cloak around his shoulders – on this warm August day! – and a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low over his eyes, Holcroft was able to detect a stray lock of red hair at the curve of his neck. The cloaked man was standing at an easel, a large canvas clamped in place with a paintbrush and palette in his hands – for all the world as if he were on some sightseeing tour of the countryside. Holcroft knew both of the men. The dark muscular one was Major Guillaume du Clos, a French artilleryman who had been trained to the highest levels in gunnery in Louis XIV’s elite Corps Royal d’Artillerie. He must be responsible for the accurate strike on the command tent. Yet Guillaume du Clos was more than a gunner, he was also the lieutenant, bodyguard and factotum of the second man, the painter, the spymaster known as Narrey – whom Holcroft had identified the year before, at no small cost in blood, as being Henri, Comte d’Erloncourt.

  He regarded the two Frenchmen standing together on the roof of Joymount House with a full measure of loathing – but no great surprise. He had long known that this murderous pair were in Ireland, that they had sailed over with James from France in March of this year, landing at the southern Irish port of Kinsale. And Schomberg’s own intelligencers had kindly provided him with a description of the only two French officers presently in Carrickfergus.

  Don’t move. Stay put. Please God, let the two of them remain on the roof.

  Aloud, Holcroft said, ‘Claudius, would you be so kind as to oblige me . . .’

  He stopped and turned, hearing a clatter of many hooves behind him.

  A spritely old gentleman in a blue velvet coat with gold trimmings rode up on a huge black horse. He was sporting an enormous grey hat with an orange plume and surrounded by a dozen similarly gorgeous younger officers. It was General Schomberg and these aristocratic cavaliers were his aides-de-camp.

  ‘Captain Blood, sir, have you heard this latest outrage? They’re shooting at me now! At me, personally! Their cannon flattened my tent. The effrontery . . .’

  Holcroft made a bow to the commander-in-chief. ‘I’m aware, Your Grace.’

  The Duke of Schomberg looked the Ordnance officer up and down, noting his filthy exterior. ‘Are you wounded, sir? You appear to be covered in gore.’

  ‘Not mine, sir. I regret to tell you that Major Richards was wounded when they fired upon your tent after the parlay. He is in the hospital at present.’

  ‘Was he? Is he? The poor chap. I suppose I’d better go and pay him a visit. So the Train is without its First Engineer. Well, you’d better take over his duties, Blood. You’ll have to step into his shoes, I’m afraid. Poor old Richards! I suppose I’d best get along and see how he’s doing. You’ll take over, yes?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Holcroft. He looked up at the general’s wrinkled face. He seemed particularly old today. Repeating himself in a bumbling manner.

  ‘I told Richards, so now I’d better tell you, Captain Blood. You are to concentrate all your fire, and a brisk warm fire, you understand me, on the North Gate – make me a breach, Captain Blood. One I could march a full company of grenadiers through without touching the sides. Hear me? You have sufficient guns here, I think. Those Catholic dogs had the temerity to waste my time this morning with a parlay – I suppose you heard about that. Well, we will see what they have to say when their walls are tumbling around their ears. I want No. 1 Battery over there to concentrate on the castle defences. Knock their venerable walls to rubble. And your No. 2 fellows here can make a breach for me in the town walls. Yes?’

  ‘Might I have permission, sir, to take a few pot shots at Joymount House? They have a pair of twenty-fours up there; those are the guns that bombarded your tent. I’d like to pay them out for that, and for Richards, sir, if I may.’

  ‘Joymount House, ah, Joymount . . .’ Schomberg squinted uncertainly at the enemy-held town. ‘That’s the tall building, is it? On the left, am I correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir, see the bronze gleam; they’ve two big guns up there on the roof.’

  The general was silent for a moment, squinting at the enemy-held town.

  ‘No, Mister Blood, you may not. Time is of the essence. Don’t waste it on revenge. Leave
them be up there. I want all your battery fire concentrated on the wall by the North Gate. Make me a breach – and I want it by tonight, if possible. Tomorrow morning at the latest. With a hole in their walls, and one or two in the castle, too, we’ll have ’em out o’ there in no time. Good day, sir.’

  As General Schomberg and his gaudy entourage cantered away, Holcroft pondered his predicament. He did not dare disobey a direct order from his commander, particularly as Claudius Barden had heard it as well – he must in good conscience concentrate all fire from the No. 2 Battery on the town walls and make a practicable breach as soon as possible. On the other hand, he did not want this opportunity – one perhaps that was never to be repeated – to go to waste. Please God, let the two of them remain on the roof!

  What to do? Making a breach was the correct approach, of course, tactically and strategically. With a hole in their walls and a couple of English regiments ready to pour through, the rebels would surely surrender – or, according to the rules of war, they’d face the slaughter of the whole garrison.

  Holcroft believed in following orders, indeed, he believed in order in general. Chaos was his enemy. But there was another part of his character that sometimes overrode that impulse: when an idea lodged in his head, he could be mulishly single-minded, even obsessive. He’d come here to bring Narrey to justice, or kill him. Now he had the chance to do just that.

  ‘You heard Uncle Frederick, Claudius. Wants a breach, soon as possible.’

  ‘Yes, sir! Once more unto the breach, eh, sir! Once more.’

  Holcroft ignored the lieutenant’s silly comment. ‘I’d like to borrow one of your master gunners for a few hours, if I may. And five strong matrosses too.’

  ‘Sir? Are you not staying with us, sir?’

  ‘No, Claudius, I am not. With Major Richards out of action I have to be here, there and everywhere. I must check on No. 1 Battery – make sure Lieutenant Field understands his duty, and there are other urgent matters, official, um, business . . .’ Holcroft found himself blushing at his blatant lies.

  He turned away from the lieutenant in shame and walked to the third gun along the line of the battery, a relatively light and elderly six-pounder piece called a Saker. In fact, it had a more particular name: she was known as Roaring Meg by those who served and loved her. He watched the master gunner, the gun’s captain, an old man, bald as one of his round shot, fire off the ancient cannon, covering his ears protectively, and admiring the fall of shot as the ball smashed into the wall halfway up, in the dead centre of the invisible T-target.

  He tapped the old man on the shoulder. ‘Enoch Jackson,’ he said. ‘Tell me: have any of the eight-inch Humpties been brought off the transports yet?’

  ‘They have, sir. There should be at least three of them unloaded by now in the artillery park; I saw a gun carriage, an’ a wagon-load of hollow-shot, too.’

  ‘Then give old Meg over to your deputy, Enoch, and you come with me.’

  Chapter Two

  The same day: 4 p.m.

  The Irish are no soldiers, Henri d’Erloncourt thought to himself, as he watched a man carrying a bag of black powder trip over a wooden bucket and knock into another fellow bearing a sponge on a long stick, leaving them sprawling on the warm lead roof of Joymount House. They’re bold enough when fired by their foul home-made spirits, but they’ve little discipline and less sense.

  Major Guillaume du Clos, commander of the rooftop battery, was berating the two tumbled men, bawling and hauling them back to their feet. On the far roof, the eastward one, the big Demi-canon roared out again, and Henri, flinching at the sound, watched the line of the shot as it arced through the blue sky and pounded into the English encampment on the hillside.

  It gave him great satisfaction to watch the twenty-four-pound ball soar over the nearest lines of trenches, land with a spray of dirt and pebbles and skip through a gap between the lines of grubby white tents and out of sight: he imagined it squelching into a knot of unwary marching Englishmen, ploughing bloodily into a squadron of their cavalry, or smashing a loaded artillery munitions wagon into a shower of broken kindling and spilled black powder. He knew that, in truth, they were not doing much more than disturbing the camp. But there was a moral satisfaction to the cannon assault that went far beyond its limited effectiveness. These two cannon, which had been firing at a relaxed rate of perhaps three or four times an hour, were the only ones in Carrickfergus that had the reach to hit the enemy. And over the course of the day Henri was sure that their impact would have been felt beyond the walls.

  Major du Clos had made a genuine attempt to strike at General Frederick von Schomberg personally that morning, to kill him and some of his senior officers, if at all possible – that would have tossed a massive paving stone in the pond! – and the intelligence he had received from the secret agent known as Agricola about the location of Schomberg’s command tent had been specific.

  But General Schomberg was not dead – tant pis; Henri had seen him riding across the skyline in the centre of a pack of bright-garbed aides-de-camp not an hour ago. Nevertheless, it was worthwhile, he thought, to keep up the pressure on the English – to kill or maim as many as they could, to demoralise them – even though the outcome of this contest was in no doubt. Carrickfergus must fall eventually – and King James knew this as well as Henri d’Erloncourt.

  The God-ordained ruler of England, Scotland and Ireland would not be bringing his small army of wild, half-trained Irish militiamen and raffish mounted Catholic gentry north to lift the siege here because it would mean facing the might of the disciplined professional English soldiers in open battle. That would be madness. That was exactly what General Schomberg most desired and what Henri feared most. If the Jacobite forces fought a pitched battle, they would most likely be beaten, and the campaign could be over in a single afternoon. No, Henri had decided, they must emulate that great Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus of the Punic Wars. They must avoid battle at all costs, attack the supply lines, hit the enemy and run. By this clever strategy Fabius had even beaten the great Hannibal himself – and saved Rome.

  Not that Henri sought a great victory for King James – indeed he did not seek one, at least not immediately. The Comte d’Erloncourt served King Louis XIV, first and foremost, and thereafter his loyalties lay with the Holy Roman Catholic Church. He was here in Ireland to further France’s interests, for no other reason, and it was in France’s interest that this war be prolonged as much as possible.

  An intact and potentially dangerous Jacobite army in Ireland, one that continued to refuse battle, Fabian style, meant that Dutch William was forced to expend his resources here on this damp Celtic island rather than in the Low Countries, where Louis XIV had more important designs. A nice, long drawn-out war was what Henri desired. That was the goal he was striving towards.

  And he had identified just the men to help him achieve his ends. They were known as raparees, after the half-pikes, the heavy spears or, in Irish, ropairí, that many of them carried. Some were no better than bandits, attacking Protestant and Catholic alike without discrimination. Killing and stealing at will. Others were more disciplined and operated like first-class light cavalry, as scouts and raiders, gathering forage and garnering intelligence for the main army. These were the men who would bleed the Williamite forces to death. These were the men who could keep the war here bubbling away for years.

  Henri became aware that Major du Clos was at his side.

  ‘The English are starting to make a breach, monsieur le comte,’ he said. ‘Look yonder, to the east of the gate.’

  Henri pulled a long telescope from his pocket, opened it and rested it on the horizontal top clamp of the easel in front of him. He trained the glass on the town wall and followed the top line until he came to a crumbled dip slightly to the right of the gatehouse and a cloud of dust above it. As he watched, a ball cracked into the far side and the curtain of thick, mortared stone gave a shudder.

  ‘How long, would you say, before
the breach is practicable, Guillaume?’

  ‘Not today,’ du Clos replied. ‘They will cease at nightfall and bring up more powder and ball during the night, and then continue bombardment at dawn. I’d say by noon tomorrow it will be wide enough to permit an assault.’

  ‘Noon, then. Yet maybe there is a way we can slow them down.’

  ‘You desire me to fire at the enemy battery, monsieur?’

  Henri thought about his lieutenant’s suggestion for a few moments. There were several factors to consider. ‘You believe you could destroy it from here?’

  ‘With this rabble of peasants? Unlikely – unless we were very, very lucky.’

  Du Clos might have added that the clever Gentlemen of the English Ordnance had created an excellent fortified gun platform for their No. 2 Battery, defended by banks of earth on either side, guarded by half a dozen gabions in front as well as a rock-hard packed-earth slope called a glacis designed to bounce balls harmlessly over the heads of the crews. But he held his tongue.

  ‘No, then. We will continue as before harassing the encampment till dusk. Every Englishman we kill will improve our negotiating position at the end.’

  ‘Yes, indeed!’ Major du Clos turned away, and made to leave.

  ‘One more thing, Guillaume,’ said Henri. ‘A technical question. Could these two noisy cannon be brought to bear on walls or a town gate, if necessary? Could they be depressed sufficiently to hit them with case shot, for example?’

  ‘They could, monsieur. It might take a little time to reposition them, but certainly the guns could be fired on the gates. Do you wish me to redeploy?’