Musket for a King

by Todd Shryock

  Musket for a King

  By Todd Shryock

  First edition 2017

  Prologue

  The events in this book are loosely based on the time of the Fifth Coalition, which was formed to fight against Napoleon and his allies in 1809. Austria led the battle against the French emperor, but many minor nations and their citizens were caught up in this titanic struggle for supremacy in Europe.

  Before German unification, what we today know as Germany was made up of Prussia and many small nations. Wurttemberg was one such nation, with its king pledging allegiance to Napoleon, trading men and supplies for political favors and the hope of adding territory. With the French dominating Europe and its army appearing unstoppable, it was also a choice of survival for these small countries, which allied themselves with whichever side appeared most likely to win. The King of Wurttemberg, Frederick I, was the son-in-law of King George III of England, the arch-enemy of Napoleon, but this did not stop Frederick from throwing his lot in with the French, probably because Napoleon’s troops overran his country in 1800.

  The French conquered most of Europe, and the monarchs greatly feared the revolutionary ideas Napoleon represented. The French war machine was often heavily stocked with Italians, Poles, Swiss and Germans.

  This is the story of one of those men, conscripted into an army to fight for an emperor to whom he owed no allegiance, marching far from a home he knew he would probably never again see.

  Chapter 1

  “There, how does that fit?” the man asked me.

  “Better,” I said, genuinely pleased that my regimental coat was no longer hanging off my shoulders like a tarp on a wagon.

  The man, a corporal serving as the regimental tailor for the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion, nodded, admiring his work. “You are a young man and there is still room to grow,” he said, adding, “assuming you live that long.”

  I looked at him, drawing the hint of a joking smile from his mouth. He slapped me on the shoulder. “All is in God’s hands,” he said, turning his attention to carefully stowing his needle and thread in a small wooden case with a brass latch. “The second is a good unit with many brave men willing to die for our king.”

  Our king, I thought. Our king who was elevated to that position by the Emperor Napoleon in exchange for soldiers -- soldiers like me. I looked at the coat. The dark green cloth was accented by sky blue cuffs, collar and a blue strip down the middle where the silver buttons were sewn. The tails in the back hung over white breeches. A black shako with a green turban wrapped around it completed my uniform. Was I really a soldier now? I must surely look the part, but I didn’t feel like a soldier. Not yet.

  “Where are you from?” the tailor asked, his own uniform a patchwork of slightly off-color patches. Apparently his best cloth was reserved for others. He continued to put his sewing supplies back in the regimental wagon while he awaited my answer.

  “Near Stuttgart,” I said. “To the northeast.”

  “Ah,” he said. “A lovely city.”

  “Never really saw much of it,” I said. I reported to a training depot just outside the city. Other than church spires and smoke from chimneys, I saw little else.

  The tailor glanced at me between shifting wooden boxes around to make sure his precious supplies were protected. “Volunteer?”

  I shrugged. “Sort of.”

  He laughed. “So the Kingdom of Wurttemburg volunteered you?”

  “My lord did,” I replied. “Someone said he got some money for sending enough of us who worked his lands to the military depot.”

  “Ah, yes, indeed,” the tailor said, who finished fussing with his box and turned to face me. For just a moment, the older man looked sympathetic, but it was quickly replaced by what looked like disgust. “The king needs soldiers, and the local lords often have boys to spare.” He took a long look at me. “And the boys get younger each year. How old are you?”

  I swallowed hard, embarrassed that I wasn’t older. “Nineteen.”

  “Huh,” he said. “You look younger.”

  I tried to stand up straighter to look taller. “I’m ready for the army though,” I lied.

  The tailor laughed hard, slapping at the side of the wagon for effect. “No one is ready for the army. No one is ready for war.” His eyes went distant and the laughter drained from his face. “Not this war,” he whispered. “Not this one.”

  The man suddenly straightened.

  “You there!” someone called from behind me.

  I turned to see a lieutenant in a bicorn hat pointing at me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Uniform, sir,” was all I could manage, my voice alternating between a squeak and a rasp. Fear made my heart pound and my knees start to quiver. Would he have me beaten? Was I supposed to be somewhere else?

  “Are you finished?” he demanded, glancing at the tailor, who nodded in respect -- and to acknowledge I was indeed finished.

  “Yes, sir, just finished sir.”

  “Then get back to your unit,” he demanded, glaring at me.

  “Uh, beg pardon, sir, but I’m just arrived from the depot a few hours ago and the man at the … ”

  “That way!” the lieutenant pointed toward a stand of trees just off the road past groups of men gathered around their morning fires. His voice made it clear that no more questions would be tolerated.

  I nodded in thanks to the tailor and started to quickly walk away when I realized my musket was still leaning against the wagon. Freezing in place, I wasn’t sure what to do. The lieutenant stood, his glare as angry as ever, between me and my weapon. “Pardon, sir,” I said as I slipped by him, expecting to be beaten for the oversight.

  The man didn’t hit me, but after grabbing my musket and turning for the camp, his boot struck my backside with such force it nearly sent me tumbling to the ground.

  “Move it!” he yelled, causing me to move at a near run down the road away from him.

  As I moved through the mass of men in the camp, I was greeted by a cacophony of uniforms. Most were the dark blue of the line infantry, but there were cavalrymen in green grooming their horses and other horsemen in blue carrying large bundles of forage across their backs. I had no idea who these men were, for there was no time for such training at the depot. I had been given a uniform, a weapon and two weeks of training on marching in formation with the other recruits, overseen by a disinterested captain with one arm and a bad scar on his forehead that made us wonder if his head was stuffed with straw like some child’s doll, especially because he seemed incoherent at times and would often stare off into space without saying a word.

  The air of the camp was a mix of heavy smoke hanging low in the damp morning and the unmistakable smell of thousands of horses in close proximity to one another. At first, the smell burned your nostrils, but eventually you got used to it -- at least a little bit.

  I kept walking, occasionally glancing behind me to make sure the lieutenant wasn’t following, and began looking for infantry dressed like me, figuring that was the easiest way to find my new home. Seeing a man in a green coat with blue cuffs puffing on a clay pipe, I started to speak.

  “Don’t talk to me, seconder,” the man growled. “This area is reserved for the real men of the first light infantry battalion.”

  The man was in his late twenties with thin blond hair and a nose that was too long for his face. As he took another puff on his pipe, I realized my error. While his uniform was similar to mine, it lacked the blue trim around the buttons. I made a mental note of what the first battalion looked like and kept moving.

  I began to think I had missed the second battalion, for I was nearly out of the camp when I spotted a column starting to move down the road, so I increased my pace.

  As
I neared the rear of the column, a mounted officer -- a captain -- came up beside me.

  “Why aren’t you in line?”

  Is that all these officers do is yell, I wondered? “Just arrived from depot, sir.” I reached in my pocket to hand him my papers.

  He leaned over and yanked them from my hand, stuffing them into his coat. “Join the end of the line, now!”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, after I was already turning toward the column.

  He spurred his horse past me and trotted off past the end of the column and disappeared along the mass of men.

  I caught the end of the column, fell into line and matched my steps to the others. Marching was one of the few things I had any practice at in this whole army business.

  “You there!” a man with a pocked face and pug nose yelled from the side as he scurried back to my position. The stripes on his sleeve informed me I had just been introduced to one of the sergeants of the battalion.

  He quickly approached and grabbed me by the ear, forcing my head to the side as I cried out in pain. “Thought you’d join my column without me noticing, did you?”

  I tried to tell him I just arrived, but he pulled on my ear so hard I could barely speak.

  “I don’t tolerate skulkers in my company,” he said. “Now, you rascal, I’ll see you to the lash as soon as we have stopped.”

  Finally, the fear of the lash gave me enough impetus to speak through my pain. “New arrival, sergeant. Just here from the depot this morning, I swear it!”

  The sergeant yanked my head up to look at my face, his pale gray eyes like two jewels sitting in a dung heap. “Well, if it ain’t so,” he shoved my head to the side as we continued to keep step during the spectacle. “Where are your papers?”

  “I gave them to the captain.”

  The sergeant, carrying a black wooden stick that I first mistook for his musket, whacked me on the shin with it, causing me to stumble into the man in front of me, who shook me off and continued on. “New recruits are to report to the sergeant, not the captain!” he yelled, hitting me again with the stick. “There are rules in this army, and you will follow them. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sergeant,” I whispered between bouts of pain burning in my leg. “Sorry sergeant.”

  “Get back in line!”

  I quickly limped toward the back of the column, the sergeant walking uncomfortably close as he jammed the end of his walking stick into the dirt with each step, most likely looking for another opportunity to strike me. Increasing my speed, I wasn’t about to give it to him.

  As soon as I reached the column, I smartly fell into step with the other men.

  The sergeant marched beside me for a dozen steps, his eyes burning into the side of my head, grumbled something and moved on up the column, barking at men who dared lag even the slightest imperceivable measurement behind their row.

  The man beside me looked at me, but I didn’t dare meet his gaze for the sergeant was still in sight.

  “Niklas Weber,” he said, jutting out his right hand.

  I nervously looked at him, grabbed his hand and quickly withdrew to resume marching.

  “A bit nervous, are you?” Niklas asked.

  “With that monster about?” I said a little too loudly for comfort. “Of course I’m nervous.”

  The man -- a boy, really, as I got a better look at him -- chuckled. “Sergeant Zorn is the devil himself, he is.”

  Niklas was rather nondescript, neither handsome or ugly. He wouldn’t just fit into a crowd, he would be the crowd. I decided he would be the perfect thief, because no one would ever be able to describe him in a way that made him sound any different than every average person on the street.

  I lifted my head slightly to peer past the man in front of me as the column began to kick up large clouds of dust with its passing. The sergeant disappeared down the column somewhere, but his occasional barks could be heard, like those of a chained dog at night, crying out a warning to any who dared venture too close.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  Niklas shrugged. “To war. Where doesn’t really matter for us now, does it? Die here, die down the road, die tomorrow. No sense in keeping track, don’t you think?”

  “Track of what?” I asked.

  “Where we are on some general’s map,” he replied, shifting the weight of his musket on his shoulder. “What’s more important is where we are in the day.”

  “In the day?”

  “Indeed. Are we at stopping time? Eating time? Fucking time? That’s what matters.”

  “Ain’t no fucking time around this battalion,” added a swarthy looking youth to the right of Niklas. “Hardly see any women.”

  “That’s because you’re so ugly, Italy, they all run off when they see us coming,” Niklas retorted.

  “I heard we’re headed to Vienna,” the other youth said. “Should be plenty of women there.”

  Niklas laughed again. “Not interested in you, though maybe some of your Italian sisters will be there.”

  The other lad leaned forward to look toward me. “I’m not Italian, don’t believe him,” he said. “They call me Italy sometimes because of my dark complexion that drives the ladies crazy. My name is Simon.”

  “Henri,” I said, still glancing nervously around for any sign of the stout little devil disguised as a sergeant.

  Niklas coughed, wiping the dust from his mouth. “Fucking dirt. Hate being at the back.”

  “When do we eat?” I asked. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday at one of the depots.”

  “We eat when they give us food, which isn’t very often,” Niklas said. “If you have a chance to grab anything when we’re out, do it. Just bring back enough to share.”

  “Out? You mean we get to go to town?”

  Niklas and several other soldiers around him laughed. “Town? No,” Niklas said. “Out skirmishing and killing whitecoats.”

  “Whitecoats?”

  The men directly in front of me began shaking their heads in disbelief.

  “Austrians. The enemy.” Niklas said, amused at my naiveté.

  “The enemy today,” Simon added. “Tomorrow, we could be friends again. My brother fought against the French not five years ago, but now we march under the emperor’s command.”

  “Have you ever seen him?” I asked excitedly. I had heard stories of the great French Emperor Napoleon and saw the shame of the Prussians as they fled before him a few years ago, but never imagined I might serve under him.

  “Once, riding down the road while we marched,” Niklas said. “He was in a carriage, surrounded by guards, so you couldn’t see much, but I saw him look out the window as he passed.”

  “That wasn’t his face, it was the ass of his mistress pushed up against the window,” Simon said, causing several men to laugh. “Couldn’t you tell by the moustache?” More laughter ensued. I laughed along, but didn’t understand the joke.

  A song broke out somewhere in front of us and spread until the whole column was swept up in its patriotic fervor. I knew the first few lines, having heard men sing it near my home, but listened intently to the rest, making an effort to memorize it. Another song followed that one, and another after that, ending only when the voices were too hoarse to continue. While I didn’t know the songs, they certainly brightened my spirits for a while and made me forget how hungry I was.

  After that, we marched in silence for some time, with only the steady cadence of our cartridge boxes bouncing on our hips and the jangling of packs keeping us company.

  The countryside -- wherever we were -- was beautiful. Gentle rolling hills were dappled with farms, with fields of yellow and green splashed out around them. I suspected there were farm animals hidden in ravines and in the copses scattered about, the general population knowing full well that a hungry army would strip the land clean as it passed, leaving nothing behind. These lands had seen battle for many generations, and the lessons were learned the hard way.

  “Sergeant,” someone
called out as we marched through a section of road with woods on either side. “Permission to fall out to take care of business.”

  The sergeant stomped more than marched, but he certainly did it in step. His head turned slightly to the side, just enough to reveal his scowl. “Like marching with a bunch of little girls. Permission denied.”

  The man sighed.

  The sergeant flashed across in front of me, grabbing the soldier by the collar, a flurry of insults out of his mouth before I even realized what was happening. The words were coming so fast and furious, I could hardly keep up.

  “ ... don’t you ever … ” “ ...rip your ass right off of you … ” “ ... I should tear … ” “ ... this army is not for women … ” “ ... do you understand?”

  I kept my eyes front, making sure to stay in step as the sergeant practically dragged the man along, lest I draw attention to myself.

  When the sergeant had drawn enough blood from the man’s face and cast a large enough cloud of fear around the rest of us, he dropped to the back of the column and began yelling at our backs.

  “This is a professional army serving our king, and you will act the part of soldiers,” he hissed. “There is zero tolerance for insubordination. When an order is given, it is instantly obeyed. You do not express an opinion, because you do not have opinions, you have muskets. Your purpose in this world is to kill the enemies as designated by our king. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sergeant!” we yelled in unison, never failing to keep step with one another.

  He marched behind us for some time, creating a great deal of discomfort. I could feel his eyes burning into my head, waiting for me to glance to either side, waiting for me to fall out of step. But I wouldn’t give him the pleasure. I may not be a good soldier yet, but I am a good marcher if nothing else. Left-right-left. Left-right-left. Stare at the man in front of me, fixating on a tiny freckle just above his tall collar. Stare at it until you believe your gaze is what made it appear. Left-right-left. Left-right-left.

  Finally, after he was sure there was no more disobedience coming from the back of the column, the sergeant moved his storm forward, lashing out at anyone he felt was on the edge of imperfection.