Straightening with a smile, he said, with what he hoped was winning confidence, “Very well, gentlemen, I shall help you. Your army will be relieved by boat, safely guarded by the Royal Navy.”
“Gott in Himmel!” Blücher spluttered. “Have you any idea of the size of a supply column? For a division of ten thousand—and we have one and a half with von Hohenlau—it’s two hundred wagons, five hundred men and a thousand horses, miles long. And how many more thousands to guard them? Pah! You’ll never do that with rowing boats, Mr Sailor!”
Kydd kept his temper. If nothing else, this army general was going to learn what it was to have command of the sea. “Sir, this we will do.” He bit his lip, then said firmly, “And you have my word on it.”
Kydd collected a wide-eyed Dillon from outside, and they were given a small room to work in where Kydd sat, letting his thoughts focus.
Time was critical: Heaven knew how long it would take to get a system in place and, from what Gürsten had told him, the army would by now be on its last rations.
First things first. “Mr Dillon, my compliments to Mr Bray and he is to detach a boat’s crew in my service, as I shall be staying here for a while to set up the resupply. As well, I shall require the master and the purser to attend on me.”
“The purser?”
“Is what I said.”
A hovering Gürsten was sent to the harbour-master to secure a large-scale chart, another official to the Customs house for a list of vessels in port, their tonnage and capacities. While they were gone Kydd started to sketch out some ideas.
By the time they were back he had a usable plan. Ships of modest tonnage would voyage from Königsberg out to sea to avoid French guns, then back inshore to the location of the besieged army to anchor. Boats to take their stores on to the beach, unloaded by many willing army hands, and return. Tyger to sail slowly offshore, a more than adequate deterrent.
As long as the Königsberg authorities had the wit to manage the assembling of supplies on the quayside in a timely manner, there should not be too much difficulty.
At length Dillon returned with the others.
Kydd nodded. “Gentlemen, please take a seat, we’ve much to do.”
The purser sat blinking and unsure, and the jovial master, Joyce, joined him, gingerly glancing up at the palace ornamentation. Gürsten came in, reporting that charts and lists would be sent along as soon as possible.
Kydd started by outlining the problem and his proposed response.
“Now I need detail. Loytn’nt … That is to say, Lieutenant Gürsten here will now tell us what rations and stores his army needs and we will shape our plans accordingly. We will start with bread. Sir?”
The young man concentrated. “Shall we take a per diem figure, to multiply later? Then that will be twenty-five thousand loaves, every day.”
“And meat?”
“If they are granted such, a half-pfund is the usual measure, so ten thousand pfunde allowing for waste. Er, the English I do not know.”
“The daily rate for seamen is two pounds o’ beef or one of pork,” Kydd said, adding, “unless it be a banyan day. So we’re saying that for every day for your sixteen thousand. And beer?”
“Essential for troops in the field without reliable water. Say two nösel each, which is to say a Dresden jar of, er, so big?” He mimed a container of about a quart in size. So that would be fifty thousand of those, and every day as well.
“Anything else?”
“We should provide oats, cheese, onions, sauerkraut, of course—the usual is to supply it by the ton …”
This was growing to an amazing amount—and it didn’t take into account the munitions of war that were needed: powder and shot, replacement muskets, blankets and so forth. Kydd tried to visualise the mountain of stores this translated to and found himself aghast. No wonder the Prussian general, with his thousands of horses and wagons, had been so scornful.
There were merchantmen to be had but not all would be suitable and some not fit for sea. Would there be enough? Anxiety tugged at him.
“Right. Assuming one-third more for general stores and munitions, and we have a sizeable problem. Shall we now figure the number of bottoms we’ll need?”
He drew up a pad and pencil. “Assume your usual coastal brig. A cargo volume of say sixty feet long, ten broad and a fathom or so deep. How much can she stow? Mr Harman, the dimensions of a standard loaf of bread, if you please.”
“Sir?”
“Come, come, sir,” Kydd snapped irritably. “You’ve twelve years in the service to tell you what a rack of soft tommy looks like.”
“Oh, yes. Er, your four-inch squared bread is eleven inches on the side.”
“You hear that, Mr Dillon? Get figuring and let’s see how many loaves a brig may take, while we talk about beef. Remind me, Mr Harman, how many pieces of meat do we find in one barrel?”
“In one puncheon we’ve a hundred and seventy pieces, sir.”
Kydd brought to mind the stout provision casks. “And what size are these?”
“Ah …?”
“Yes, Mr Joyce?” The sailing master had ultimate responsibility for stowage of provisions aboard a man-o’-war.
“I allows four foot f’r length an’ two and a half on the bilge.”
“So for y’r brig, let’s see … I make it sixteen alongwise, four across an’ three down. Say two hundred.”
“So. One puncheon holds …?”
“One cow. That’s my rule o’ thumb.”
“Thank you for that, Mr Harman.”
“O’ which we may say, of the fifteen hundred pounds of the beast we get seven hundred pounds as is usable.”
“Hmm. Therefore for our Prussian soldier we can find in each cask enough for fourteen hundred meals.”
“Aye, sir. So with two hundred, our brig is supplying near three hundred thousand—that’s eighteen days’ rations, I make it.”
And all in a single brig. It was looking much more possible.
“Twenty-five thousand.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr Dillon?”
“That’s how many loaves of bread can be carried.”
Kydd thought of the endless lines of mules and carts needed to load such an impossible number and shook his head in wonder. “I think we’re getting somewhere. Say we load the same number of puncheons for beer. That would be—”
“Seventy-two gallon for the Millbrook tertian we usually ships, sir.”
“Yields a hundred and fifty rations. Two hundred barrels on our brig makes our thirty thousand.”
“You’re in rattling good form, Mr Dillon. Gentlemen, what this is saying is that our resupply can be maintained with a convoy of some half-dozen brigs a week, or just one or two a day. I believe we can do it!”
After a Baltic convoy of some hundreds, each vessel many times bigger, this was easy.
“Well, now we know what’s required you may withdraw, Mr Harman. Have the charts arrived?”
Gürsten fetched them and stood back respectfully as Kydd and Joyce spread them out.
There were two: one of Pillau at the entrance to the river and the other a detailed study of the approaches to Königsberg.
The words were in German and the soundings were in klafters—but these were as near as maybe to fathoms so the charts were perfectly understandable.
But what they revealed brought a wash of shock and dismay.
“L’tenant Gürsten,” he said heavily. “You said your army extends to the sea. Do show me where.”
He leaned aside to let the young officer find the spot. “Here, sir.” It was a substantial length of the coast that should have proved an ideal landing place, were it not for one thing.
“Pray tell me, then, what the devil is this?” Kydd pointed to a long spit that paralleled the land some three to four miles offshore and ranging as far as the chart boundary in both directions.
“Oh, it’s of no account. A mere piece of sand a few hundred yards across only and going nowhere�
�of no military significance at all.”
“And this interior water it encloses?”
“This is the Frisches Haff, a brackish lagoon. The only entrance is at Pillau in our hands, so you need not fear—”
Kydd held up his hands wearily. “L’tenant. You don’t know it, but you’ve just killed any chance of saving your army.”
Gürsten looked appalled. “I—I had no idea … Is there anything …?”
“I fear that this is a matter between myself and the sailing master. We’ll call on you should we need anything further.”
He pulled the chart nearer and studied it intently, but there was no getting away from it. There would be no access to the army on the coast with that long spit barring the way the entire distance. Even if Pillau at the far northern end had an entrance, there were two very good reasons why their brigs could not sail inside down to the trapped army.
The first was obvious: the few soundings showed that no deep-laden ship could find depth of water to reach it in the near-tideless Baltic. The second was that the plan to sail out to sea to avoid the French artillery and in again to the locality of the besieged was no longer possible. Any approach inside the lagoon must inevitably pass close by the besieging enemy positions on the coast.
Joyce raised troubled eyes to his. “Boats?” he murmured.
It made nonsense of all their calculations—boats full of rowers could carry little, nothing like the massive amounts needed, and would be terribly vulnerable to artillery fire.
“Camels?” the master ventured.
These were barrels open to the water, firmly lashed along the waterline of a vessel, then at the right moment baled out—a method of raising a ship up bodily to take shallow water. It could conceivably work but would make them slow and cumbersome and an unmissable target for the French guns. It was not a solution.
Kydd stared at the chart, willing some winning idea to strike but none came. The coldness of defeat began closing in.
“Mr Gürsten.” The officer hurried to his side. “This spit o’ land. What’s it like?”
“Ah, you will call it the ‘Vistula Spit’ on account of the ancient and debased natives by that name living there. It has very few settlements and stretches for fifty miles or more.”
“My meaning was, what is the nature of the ground thereabouts?”
“It’s still well wooded, for farming is hard in sand. I should say firm, suitable for troops on the march.”
“I see.” A glimmer of an answer was emerging. It would need much labour but there were hands to spare in the besieged army.
But first he had to see for himself.
His boat’s crew were by the jetty, Halgren’s bulk unmistakable. About them was a square of Prussian militia on guard. The subaltern screamed an order to bring them to quivering attention, then stamped about to salute him with his sword.
A few hours later Kydd’s boat under sail had passed out of the Frisches Haff entrance to the open sea and turned left down the coast, touching bottom at the right spot opposite von Hohenlau’s encampment out of sight across the lagoon.
Kydd trudged up the beach and found himself in a light wood, continuous for miles on both sides. Crossing to one tree he inspected it. A four-inch bole and, as was usual with Baltic timber, straight as a die. It would do.
He walked on into the wood. There was leaf litter but, underneath it, hard-packed sand. Further on, the trees thinned and there was the lagoon, and some few miles across he could see tents and banners, eddying wisps of cooking fires and what was probably a marching column.
Yes!
“I shall want to remove to Pillau to set up my headquarters,” he demanded on his return.
Soon he was installed on the top floor of a bastion in the Pillau Citadel, the star-shaped fort he’d seen. It commanded a formidable view down the length of the spit, a fine sight of the open sea to the right and the passage to Königsberg to the left.
Gürsten was set to produce a corps of runners, then was dispatched to make contact with General von Hohenlau, carrying a sheaf of written instructions for the resupply plan.
From Tyger Maynard, a master’s mate, was sent for to man the rudimentary signal mast, arriving with a determined Tysoe bearing Kydd’s necessaries and two wide-eyed ship’s boys for general duties.
Then it was down to work.
Eight coastal ships were selected and prepared. Cargo holds were cleared, dunnage battens laid and on the wharf the first stores appeared ready for loading, according to the priorities relayed back by Gürsten.
And at the spit the pioneer battalions set to in earnest.
They fell on the timber, lopping down trees by the hundreds in a swathe from the sea to the lagoon. Some were fastened together as rafts, others laid to form a wooden road across the spit—and, astonishingly, they were ready!
Kydd was there when the first brig anchored in the offshore shallows.
Right away it started discharging into a waiting raft on one side, and when that was loaded, turned to another on the other side while the first was hauled ashore. Waiting carts took the stores across the spit and a raft was again loaded.
In the lagoon there were pairs of ship’s boats manned by well-muscled Prussian sailors with a line each to the raft and a continuous relay was set up that rapidly had stores in a satisfactory flow. On their return the rafts carried a different cargo—wounded men, some ominously still, others writhing in pain, but mercifully on their way to Königsberg’s hospital.
Opposite the Prussian Army, they could not be touched by French guns and the flow of relief could go on unimpeded. Now there were only two things that could stop it: an enemy attack from the sea or the weather.
With Tyger’s sturdy silhouette to seaward, there was vanishingly little likelihood of the first, and with summer approaching its height, the balmy breezes threatened nothing more than cloudless radiance.
It could only be reckoned a success. A workmanlike solution to a military problem in the best traditions of the service … but Kydd felt restless. It had all been too easy, too straightforward.
He fell exhausted into his cot at the citadel and did not wake until morning. Reassured that all was as it should be, his apprehension eased. He had done it. The army was relieved and he had performed what had been asked of him—but then he realised that this was only the first part, the establishing of a resupply route. What had been requested was the guarding of same.
Dart and Stoat were still with him but their value lay in inshore defence against daring strikes by privateers and such. Tyger had to be there to provide an unanswerable deterrent against whatever else could be brought against them, such as a determined swarm of the vermin.
There was nothing for it but to remain until Tyger was relieved. That shouldn’t be long—his was a first-rank fighting frigate and the job could just as easily be done by a light frigate or ship-sloop. Three or four days to get word to Russell and, with a fair westerly, less to detach one of his force. If he was lucky, a week and he’d be on his way.
He should be making an appearance in Tyger but he’d been led to believe that an entertainment had been planned for this day in his honour and it would be churlish to absent himself. Besides, he knew Bray would be relishing his time in temporary command.
The reception at the Grand Palace was to be followed by an orchestral concert.
In his star and ribbon and full-dress uniform, Kydd cut an impressive figure as, with Gürsten at his side, he entered the glittering room, remembering to render obeisance to King Friedrich Wilhelm, then award bows of recognition this way and that. In a short while he was surrounded by admiring officers and ladies and the evening swept on in a swirl of gaiety and noise.
Yet underlying the exhilaration and animation he could detect a darker element lurking. Not two score miles away Napoleon Bonaparte and his legions were lying in encampment. Nothing stood between them and that host but Bennigsen and the Russians.
CHAPTER 18
UNUSUALLY, K
YDD WOKE LATE but didn’t hurry in his dressing. He’d return to Tyger some time after their dog-watch leisure-time and let the inevitable waiting paperwork slide to the next day. Meanwhile he and Dillon could walk off the previous night’s excesses in the old city with Gürsten.
Königsberg was an agreeable place and they spent some hours in leisurely exploration of the old Hohenzollern capital. However, when they returned they were urgently hustled to the war room.
“There have been developments—not good. Come!” Blücher snapped, stamping towards an inner room.
He slammed the door and pointed to a map. “Bonaparte—he manoeuvres to deceive us.”
Kydd looked down at the pencilled wavy line going to the southeast separating the two armies.
“We have spies. They say that in the rear, concealed from us, there have been large-scale movements across here by Davout and Soult. To the east!” Before Kydd could say anything, Blücher continued, “This means we’re to be outflanked. Bennigsen’s stand is for nothing. He must pull back and face about. His orders now no longer have meaning. Von Hohenlau’s role to stay in position and threaten Bonaparte’s rear is absurd and I won’t be bound by it.”
Blücher stood back, arms folded. He fixed Kydd with a steely glare. “His Imperial Majesty concurs that our forces must be restored to us. Von Kydd, I request you will take off Generalleutnant von Hohenlau, his men, stores, horses and guns.”
Kydd was taken aback. This was an entirely different proposition from a resupply exercise, and even with his limited military experience he knew that a successful formal withdrawal involved great complexities and risks—flanks and rear shortening lines in a co-ordinated sequence to prevent a retreat turning into a rout, the gradual taking up of field guns in such a way that the enemy could not gain advantage, the preserving of as much impedimenta as could be retrieved. It was a dangerous and fraught time.
As if answering Kydd’s unspoken questions, Blücher growled, “I undertake to bring our army to the edge of the sea, no worry to you, Kapitan. Then you—your ships—will take them on board and away. Can you do it?”
This was far more than a handful of coastal brigs could handle. And when the French saw what was going on they would throw everything at them …
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