by Angus Donald
He turned in the saddle to survey the battlefield.
The once-green turf by the river was littered with the bodies of his own men and dead and wounded horses but the grey ranks were fully formed and were advancing at a slow pace, coming on towards him. He was done, though. His men had done their dying now. Over to the right, by the woods they had briefly sheltered in, yet more of William’s men were making the crossing, at least three full battalions. Cavalry too, beyond them. It looked like a general advance. The enemy smelt victory. As well they might. Hogan knew he was defeated. He looked left at the smoking, body-strewn rubble of Oldbridge and saw defeat there too. The elite redcoats of the King’s Foot Guards had been pushed back. The massed Jacobite cavalry had made their charge and were scattered. The Blue Guards, the few left alive, were in full possession of the field and many more of their comrades were fording the stream. Thousands upon thousands of them, or so it seemed to Hogan. An army of fresh, foreign troops coming to join in the joyous slaughter of his own poor countrymen.
They had tried with all their heart and soul to stop the enemy at the Boyne. They had given their lives for their King, and gallantly spilled their own blood.
And they had failed.
Chapter Seventeen
The same day: 1 p.m.
From the saddle, Henri d’Erloncourt surveyed the English flanking force with his telescope. They were a quarter of a mile distant, on the other side of the small wooded valley. Just seven or eight thousand men – that was his estimate – and they were forming a rough line of battle among the trees. A cavalry regiment, then one of infantry, then another horse battalion, and so on. But there were reinforcements coming up behind them, five battalions of infantry at least. He had seen the blocks of redcoats moving as one man across the green fields south of the Boyne when he had climbed into a tree earlier for a better view. The French Brigade would soon be facing about eleven thousand enemies – a very sizeable flanking force – a small army, in fact. Yet Henri, most unusually, was not the slightest part concerned for his own physical safety.
The enemy had crossed the river Boyne at the Rosnaree ford, some four miles south-west of Oldbridge, and they swung around to head back east along the line of the river, aiming to attack the Jacobite left flank. They were lining up no more than a long musket shot away. He could make out faces of the English scouts on the tree-lined lip of the valley with the aid of his glass.
Henri would have felt less relaxed about the situation but for two things. Firstly, there were thousands of crack troops of the French Brigade around him, moustachio-ed veteran cavalrymen and well-trained line infantry, all good Catholic Frenchmen, even if his six light guns, under the direction of Major du Clos, had been delayed and would not come up in less than two hours. He had also been informed by a passing galloper, that King James would be arriving at this remote place – Roughgrange, it was called – with the bulk of his army, perhaps another ten thousand, within the half hour.
The second reason for his nonchalance was that, although not wide, the valley between the two forces was steep banked and had a muddy stream running at the bottom between two man-deep ditches. The bed of the valley was also treacherously boggy – a place that no attacking force could negotiate with ease or safety. The enemy scouts clambering about on the far slope were discovering this uncomfortable fact for themselves.
Henri had been down there in the mire not a half hour ago – and he knew that the little valley was an impassable obstacle for both of the forces now facing each other: the French Brigade and the English enemy – who, he assumed from the standards, were commanded by General Meinhardt von Schomberg, eldest son of William of Orange’s tired and ageing warhorse.
Ridiculous, he thought. We can see them; they can see us, but there is no way either side can come to blows. Indeed, it is more than a little absurd.
It was also a triumph of his own secret plans, agreed with General Lauzun, to keep the French Brigade out of harm’s way if possible during the main battle.
He was savouring the impasse when he heard the pounding of hooves and, collapsing his glass, he turned to see Patrick Sarsfield cantering up.
The handsome young general, dashing in a bright green coat, to Henri’s eye, and with a gorgeous emerald plume in his hat, reined in a few yards away.
‘The King has come up, monsieur,’ said Sarsfield. ‘Half a mile that way, at the old farmhouse.’ He jerked his head northwards. ‘He’s asking after you.’
*
King James was standing in the over-warm kitchen of the house, leaning with his knuckles on the scrubbed oak table, and staring at a large map. There were men in uniform surrounding him, eating and drinking, chattering with each other, but the King was strangely silent, brooding.
‘Sire,’ said Henri, ‘I understand that you desire my counsel . . .’
‘Ah, there you are, d’Erloncourt. You’ve been up at the valley and seen the situation for yourself?’
‘Yes, sire. It is most regrettable. The French Brigade has as yet been unable to attack them and drive them back into the Boyne. Most unfortunate.’
‘So General Lauzun has informed me. Although I do not quite see why – with a little honest pluck and fortitude – the valley could not be traversed.’
‘The men and horses would be bogged down in the valley for too long, sire,’ said Henri. ‘Perhaps an hour or two. They would be at the mercy of the English troops above them. They would be needlessly slaughtered.’
‘That is what Lauzun said, too.’
A mud-spattered officer approached the table, he offered the King a scrap of paper. James read it and his already ghost-white face seemed to grow almost translucent. He threw the paper angrily aside and once more peered at the map. Tracing the Roughgrange valley with his finger, his hand stopped at a large area of bog, and looped further south.
‘Fresh news, sire?’ said Henri.
‘It appears Colonel Sarsfield is of the same mind as you,’ said the King without looking up. ‘Apparently even the enemy general agrees. Indeed Sarsfield reports that they are forming up their columns and moving off. Trying to get round, by the road here . . .’ He tapped the map a few miles to the south.
Another officer, a colonel but equally besmirched as the first aide, approached the table. He whispered in the King’s ear. The King stared at him, aghast. Now there were suddenly many more men in the kitchen. Henri was jostled by a captain with a bloody bandage on his arm. The noise suddenly swelled to a hubbub, a dozen men speaking at once. Some were arguing.
‘Silence, I will have silence,’ roared James. ‘You, sir, over there by the door, I will have your report now, if you please.’
Henri recognised a grey-haired, middle-aged major from the Earl of Antrim’s Regiment of Foot. He looked utterly exhausted.
‘I bear bad news, sire,’ the major said. ‘The enemy have crossed the Boyne at Oldbridge and have consolidated their beachhead. The Blue Guards were too strong for us, sire. We were forced to fall back.’
‘Tell me you made a counter-attack – surely you came back at them?’
‘Yes, sire, we attacked with our foot – all the battalions we had – and the cavalry were magnificent. They made a dozen charges. But we could not hold.’
‘I see. And now – tell me, sir. What is the situation now?’
‘The enemy have made four separate successful river crossings, sire: the Blue Guard still hold Oldbridge; at Grove Island ten English battalions have crossed over to the south bank; the Danish cavalry came over at Yellow Island in vast numbers . . .’ The major swallowed hard.
‘Tell me all of it, sir. I will know the worst.’
The man nodded. ‘Yes, sire. Indeed. Further to the east, sire, a little over a mile east from Oldbridge, General Ginkel’s cavalry – we think at least five or six regiments – have found a passable ford near the town of Drogheda. They came streaming across and easily brushed aside our mounted picquets. They say Dutch William himself has now come over the riv
er with them. We had to pull back, sire, all along the line. There is now fighting on the slopes of the Hill of Donore and in and around the graveyard of the church on the summit. The Earl of Tyrconnell is still up there, sire, and is holding his own with a mixed force of dismounted cavalry and dragoons, or so it was when he sent me here to you. But the rest of the army is in retreat. Some of the men are running in fear, sire.’
The King said nothing for a moment. He looked at Henri. His eyes were red and moist. The Frenchman was forced to drop his gaze. ‘And I am here,’ said James, sighing heavily, ‘a full four miles south-west from the main attack, with sixteen thousand men who can do nothing but shake their fists impotently at a smaller enemy force on the far side of an impassable valley.’
Bulling his way forward through the crush was General Lauzun, looking red-faced, hot and angry. The noise in the farmhouse kitchen had dropped to a few guilty whispers. Every man was straining to hear the King’s next words.
‘I came here on your advice, Monsieur d’Erloncourt. You told me that William was planning an assault on my flank. What would you have me do?’
‘The Almighty has not favoured us, sire. The day is clearly theirs. And I am heartily sorry if my best counsel has not served you as well as I would have liked.’ Henri tried to sound meek. ‘Your safety is paramount, sire, and I believe you must withdraw from the field to fight another day. If you remember the successful strategy of the great Roman General Quintus Fabius Maximus . . .’
‘You want me to run away?’
‘The Comte d’Erloncourt is quite right.’ Lauzun had made it to the King’s side, puffing slightly. ‘Your safety is the most important thing, sire. I have given orders for General Sarsfield’s Horse and Colonel Maxwell’s dragoons to escort you to Dublin. The rest of the army must concentrate here at Duleek—’ Lauzun put his finger on the map at the village he had named five miles due south of Oldbridge, ‘we can regroup and fight them off to give Your Majesty time to get away south. Three roads meet at Duleek, including the road to Dublin, and its bridge is the only crossing of the River Nanny for miles. The enemy must come through there and, if we can hold him till nightfall, we stand a chance of withdrawing in an orderly fashion. Much of the army is still intact, sire, and can be preserved to fight again another day.’
‘You say that a large part of my army is intact, Monsieur Lauzun, and what you mean by that is that the French Brigade has not yet fought at all.’ James was clearly furious with the general. ‘Your men have not fired a single shot this ill-starred day. Very well – it is now time for them to show their courage. I wish you, General Lauzun, and you, Colonel d’Erloncourt, to conduct the rear guard. We shall withdraw to fight another day, yes. I shall return to Dublin. But you two gentlemen will hold the enemy here – at this place, Duleek. That is my command, gentlemen. I should like to see if your Brigade can actually fight.’
*
It had felt horribly wrong to quit the battlefield in the middle of a fight. But Hogan also knew it would have been the very summit of insanity to remain.
The rampant forces of William of Orange were over the river in three or four places and the Irish defences were shattered along the line and those men still unharmed were running for their lives. King James’s redcoats had fought like lions, trying to stem the tide of William’s legions coming across the shallow water. But it had been an impossible task and they were beaten.
It was not a pretty sight: terrified men were throwing away their pikes and muskets, their packs and ammunition pouches, even their coats and shoes, to allow them to run faster. They streamed through the open cornfields like panicked deer. Some sought false sanctuary in the old church atop the Hill of Donore, regrouping there under the Duke of Tyrconnell’s bullet-torn banners, but most were running due south, unimpeded – but hunted by roaming squadrons of Williamite cavalry – until exhaustion or the jubilant enemy horse claimed them.
‘Galloping’ Hogan and the rag-tag band of horsemen he had gathered on the slopes below Donore – forty-seven men, his own surviving raparees and the remains of the four squadrons of Tyrconnell’s Horse, plus a handful of stragglers from Sutherland’s and Parker’s regiments – had headed west instead.
Above them on the crest of the hill, the fighting was raging in and around the churchyard, among the very gravestones, and Hogan knew it was only a matter of time before Tyrconnell was overrun or forced to retreat further south. It was time, he decided, to seek out the little Frenchman – to keep his sacred word to him – and finally quit this place of death and horror for good.
Yet finding the left wing of the army had not been easy – the men were exhausted and frightened, their animals streaked with white sweat. At one point they narrowly avoided being trapped between a full regiment of yellow-jacketed Danish curassiers and an advancing column of fresh Brandenburger infantry. They had spurred their tired mounts across two trampled cornfields, leaping the hedges and ditches like reckless fox-hunters, with the sound of Danish trumpets right behind them. But on the western side of the hill they found a sunken road that hid even the tallest riders, and allowed them to follow the course of the river down to Roughgrange unseen.
Only in the large courtyard of the farmyard – surrounded by hundreds of his fellow soldiers, a great many of them officers – did Hogan begin to relax. There was discipline here; there were regiments of Frenchmen formed up in grey-white blocks outside the walls of the farm, and cavalry too. Fresh regiments of horse in bold bright colours, untouched as yet by the blood and filth of battle.
Hogan and his men dismounted and began to care for their mounts, keeping together in a corner by the old brewhouse, where there was a series of butts filled with rainwater. Hogan dug out his mare’s nosebag and allowed the old girl to eat properly for the first time that day. He found her brush and worked the worst of the mud from her flanks in slow, steady strokes – loosening the girth but leaving the saddle in place. He had told his men that they must be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
A shadow fell across his horse’s neck and he looked up to see Patrick Sarsfield, in brilliant green velvet, looking down at him from the back of a magnificent black stallion.
‘Still alive then, Hogan?’ Sarsfield said, touching his plumed hat in salute.
‘No, not at all. ’Tis a terrible shame, Paddy, but my poor torn body lies yonder by the cursed riverbank with all the others. Dead as a stone. What you see before you is a revenant, just a particularly handsome shade, that’s all.’
Sarsfield laughed, a loud explosion of mirth, unworthy of the raparee’s feeble joke and in truth no more than an involuntary release of his anxiety.
‘What news from the field?’ he said finally. ‘Is Tyrconnell still fighting?’
‘The duke was up there on the hill when I made my departure,’ said Hogan. ‘By the church. But he won’t be there now. Dutch Billy’s men were swarming up there, thick as the lice on one of your mistresses, Paddy.’
Sarsfield found this less amusing. ‘He’ll pull back to Duleek,’ he said. ‘That’s where we are all heading now. You too, Mick, if you’ve any sense.’
‘What has the King in mind?’ Hogan asked. ‘He’s here, I take it?’
‘He’s here. But I’ve orders to escort him back to Dublin. Maxwell’s coming too, to keep the man safe. We’re leaving now – any minute, in fact.’
‘So it is finished here? Truly – we are properly beaten?’
‘The King is quitting the field. Will you ride along with us then, Mick?’
Before Hogan could answer, he heard a querulous voice call out his name.
‘There you are, at last. I’ve been waiting for you! You’ve delayed me, sir!’
Henri d’Erloncourt stamped across the courtyard, looking furious.
‘I believe my instructions were perfectly clear. Well, you’re here now. We must make the best of it. We ride in ten minutes, Captain Hogan, ten minutes! You will escort the guns and myself to Duleek. Be sure your men are ready.’
‘Luck to you, Mick,’ Sarsfield said.
‘And to you, Paddy,’ said Hogan with a heavy sigh. ‘And to you.’
Chapter Eighteen
The same day: 4 p.m.
Holcroft Blood put his shoulder to the wheel and heaved. The four-wheeled ammunition wagon was stuck fast, the iron rim of the big spoked wheel caught between vice-like stones in the riverbed. He was no weakling but he couldn’t budge it an inch. The cold brown water of the Boyne came up to his thighs, and two paces away he could see the corpse of a Blue Guard, completely submerged, entangled in a tree root and staring blank-eyed up into eternity.
‘Get Joe Cully down here, Sergeant, right now – and half a dozen of the men. They can leave their muskets and kit on the riverbank. Lively now!’
The two cannon that Holcroft had brought down from the artillery park behind the crest of the hill – a light three-pounder Falcon and Roaring Meg – and their teams of horses and men were safe and dry on the south bank. But the ammunition wagon, without which the two small cannon were no more than useless metal tubes, was stuck fast. The driver, enthusiastically whipping the six-horse team across the river had, it seemed, driven the wheel into a deep crevice on the stony riverbed.
After hauling fruitlessly for several minutes, with Holcroft and several other private soldiers of the fourth company of Tiffin’s Foot giving their aid, Joe Cully had dropped face down in the water and levered a huge boulder out of the riverbed by main strength, freeing the wheel at last. The wagon’s horses had responded to the driver’s calls immediately and a few moments later the heavy ammunition cart – its vital contents mercifully dry – was creaking and groaning up on to the bank, then trundling south after the two cannon teams.