‘The dispositions are flawed, Captain Vaughan?’
The old Welshman nodded and took us forward a few paces to stand upon a hummock, which gave a fine view over the entire field of battle. Ahead of us, the French and their English allies were advancing ever nearer; less than a mile away now, the pike-points gleaming in the morning sun. We could plainly see the emblems upon their flags, and hear the beating of their drums.
Taliesin Vaughan pointed toward the beach on our right. The tide was still far out, revealing a vast expense of firm, level sand. Upon it, on the flank of the Anglo-French army, a large body of cavalry was advancing, the fleur-de-lys standard at their head. Marshal Castelnau commanded them, Vaughan said: not in the league of the antichrist Cromwell or our own Prince Rupert, who was in disgrace and God alone knew where, but competent enough. Certainly competent enough to deal with what lay before him, at any rate. Opposite Castelnau’s horse, the Spanish cavalry was venturing rather less confidently along the sands. The reason for their reluctance was immediately apparent: every minute or two, flames roared along the sides of the three English frigates that lay closest inshore. As the smoke rolled back over the hulls, the shot from the ships’ guns struck the sand ahead of and alongside the Spaniards. One particularly fortunate shot felled three horses and their riders at once, steeds and men rolling in mutilated death-agony upon the beach. There could be only one outcome. A shrill trumpet note sounded the recall, and the Spanish cavalry withdrew back into the dunes, safe from the murderous broadsides of Cromwell’s navy.
At the time I felt outraged that the magnificent, chivalric cavalry should be denied their moment of glory by base-born gunners, safe within their hulls of oaks. I felt nothing but hatred for the Protector’s warships, which seemed an unfair and ungentlemanly distortion of the odds.
‘Will not the French cavalry, yonder, now simply outflank us?’ I asked Vaughan in despair.
‘You may well say that, Lieutenant Quinton,’ said the veteran in his nearly impenetrable Celtic brogue. ‘A good insight, that, for one so young and so raw. But even with the aid of their friends afloat, that they are unlikely to do while we hold this hill. They know our cavalry now lies somewhere behind us, but they do not know their strength or disposition, so they dare not attack while they believe they might be cut off and encircled. But should we lose this position, the French will gallop down the beach as easily as if they were upon a morning’s exercise, then fold up our line from the sea.’
I looked to my left, down our line. There were the elite Spanish infantry regiments, the veteran core at the very heart of the army; among them, the pitifully small force that was our royal army under the five regimental banners, one English – our own, that of the King’s Guard – one Scots and three Irish.
Vaughan followed my line of sight, and divined my thoughts. ‘The centre, Lieutenant. That’s where the work will be done. Our best troops, and Turenne’s opposite them. Further along, there – you see the Walloons and the Germans? Good for nothing. Pray God that Conde’s cavalry can keep the Marshal’s men from doing too much damage to them.’
In the far distance I could just make out the broad canal that formed as natural a boundary for the battlefield as did the sea to our right. Seaward of the canal, upon the rich Flemish meadows that stretched away from the sand-dunes, were the glinting helmets and banners of the Prince de Condé’s French cavalry, facing their brethren across the way in what was sure to be also the final battle of that kingdom’s civil wars, the Frondes. If they remember it at all, men now recollect the Battle of the Dunes as a fight between French and Spanish. But as I looked out over the two great armies that lined the sand-dunes north of Dunkirk, I could see full well that here was Europe in microcosm, settling old scores between and within nations. Nowhere was that more true than where I stood. For there, dead ahead and advancing ever nearer toward our great sand-hill, were the red coats, pikes, muskets and turtle helmets of the New Model Army: the invincible war machine that had killed my father and my king.
‘Time to take your stations, gentlemen,’ said Taliesin Vaughan. ‘And may God keep you.’
With that, the gruff old drunk turned and strode back to his company. Dick Norris and I faced each other, and he extended his hand.
‘God be with you, my friend,’ he said. We shook. ‘And Matt –’ His voice faltered. ‘If I should fall, take this ring –’ He removed it from his left middle finger: a simple golden band – ‘and place it in the hand of dear Alice.’
His betrothed in Bedford, this; they had been smitten with each other since the age of eight.
‘I have no token to give you, Dick, if I fall today,’ I said, deeply touched by his trust in both me and my prospects of survival. ‘But go tell my mother – tell her I did not disgrace the name of Quinton. Even if I do.’
He grinned. ‘I think we should have no fear of that. You Quintons are born with swords in your hands.’
* * *
The next hour was that strangest of all times in a battle: the immediate preliminary to slaughter. I stood, my sword indeed in my hand, watching the inexorable advance of the French army and above all that of their Ironside allies. Behind me and to my right were our own troops, then those of our Spanish allies. No man could leave the ranks now; many had to use the plot of sand where they stood as their place of easement. At intervals Vasey would pass up and down the lines, adjusting a man’s buckles here, giving a word of encouragement there. All along the great line of our army, drummers and trumpeters proclaimed our defiance, to be answered by the cacophonous echo of the French drums and trumpets opposite.
Then, a little before the distant church clocks of Dunkirk struck eight, the artillery fire began; most of it from the French side, for our guns were still getting into position. And with the cannonade came the singing. The Spanish, ever a religious people, began it first: from the regiments in the centre, and from that alongside us upon the crest of the sand-hill, rose a hymn of praise to the Virgin, the Gaude Maria Virgo, which remained firm and exultant even as small pockets of men in the ranks were mown down by enemy shot. The French regiments in the centre, now no more than six hundred yards from the Spanish line, sang lustily a Te Deum. But the most chilling sound of all arose from the regiments directly opposite us, drowning out the fire of the cannon. From the red coats of the New Model arose a deep bass growl, one familiar to me and all the lads who stood behind me. We had all heard it countless times in our parish churches. Worse, amidst all the French and Spanish accented Latin that resounded across the battlefield, these words were in our own tongue, in English. The great old hymn of Martin Luther: A Mighty Fortress is our God, A Sure Defence and Armour. The Ironsides sang lustily, their eyes seemingly directly upon us, the last cavalier army of all, their and Luther’s ‘ancient wicked foe’. It brought home to me more than anything else the terrible truth that whatever else happened here today, yet again Englishmen were about to kill Englishmen.
Of all the competing armies in that strange, sandy battlefield, only one had no song: the Royal army of Britain. What song could we have sung? Our godly red-coated foes opposite had a monopoly on hymns –
Then I heard it. Down in the ranks of one of the Irish regiments, a few hundred yards to our left, a bright tenor voice could be heard even above the massed choir of devout Spaniards. More and more of his regiment joined in with him, then those of the English and Scots regiments, until I heard the words coming from close behind me. I recognised the voice of Ned Mercer, and I recognised the words, too.
We be soldiers three
Pardona moy je vous an pree
Lately come forth of the low country
With never a penny of money.
A favourite drinking song of the common soldier. More and more of my men, and of Vaughan’s and Dick Norris’s alongside us, were joining in -
Here, good fellow, I'll drink to thee
Pardona moy je vous an pree
To all good fellows wherever they be
With never
a penny of money.
And so, at last, Matthew Quinton was swept along on the tide, and I bellowed as lustily and untunefully as the rest of them.
Here, good fellow, I'll sing you a song,
Sing for the brave and sing for the strong,
To all those living and those who are gone,
With never a penny of money!
I do not know, and the Duke of York did not know, if it was rage at our Cavalier impudence that prompted what happened next. In any event, it was clear that while most of the French line had halted some five hundred yards from their Spanish and British counterparts, the six regiments of the New Model were coming further forward – whether trusting in their own legend or out of a determination to be at Royalist throats without delay, I know not. In either event, they had come within musket range. A shouted order came along the line to Taliesin Vaughan, who duly relayed it to me.
‘Front rank three paces forward, to fire upon the command!’
English and Spanish musketeers stepped up to the brow of the sand-hill. Ned Mercer came level with me, and grinned. As he loaded his weapon, I cocked my pistol, extended my arm, and awaited the order.
‘Front rank –’ Vaughan paused – ‘give fire!’
I squeezed my trigger. I exulted in the force of the recoil and the acrid smoke. I had fired my first shot in battle.
Chapter Nine
Whether I killed a man, I know not. I blinked and coughed violently as the smoke of our muskets rolled back over me, burning my eyes and lungs. And when my streaming eyes were clear enough to see, I beheld a fearsome sight. Our volley seemed to have had no effect at all. The Roundheads were upon their hands and knees, scrambling up the steep slope in front of us, seemingly oblivious to whatever we could rain upon them from the summit of the sand hill. Their other regiments were moving round the sides of the hill to face the inaccessible slopes. They could not climb them, but from beneath they could fire into our flanks –
‘Reload, Matt!’ cried Norris.
I was suddenly aware of our second rank moving up to replace the first. Ned Mercer winked at me, just before he levelled his musket and gave fire. Ashamed of my loss of concentration, I fumbled with powder, ball and pistol. Ready at last, I brought up my weapon once more and fired it wildly downward through the smoke, toward the Ironsides who had to be there, crawling relentlessly like armour-clad amphibians up the sand toward the summit of the hill.
Thus for the first time I experienced the phenomenon that so many of my Quinton forebears down the centuries must have known too. There comes a moment in a battle when conscious thought departs and a warrior enters into a strange kind of waking dream: a place at once frenzied and yet with a strange calm to it. I lost track of time, and of my thoughts. All around me was noise and chaos, yet the sound I recall most clearly is that of my own breathing. I was aware that the enemy had opened fire upon our flanks; off to my left, men were falling. I could hear the thunder of horses, far closer than they had been, and knew that it could only be the French cavalry, threatening our position from seaward. Through our musket smoke, I sometimes glimpsed the Roundheads on the slope below. Their casualties were terrible, but still they came on, climbing the vast sand hill. They were barely feet away – one of them looked up, seemed to look straight at me, then a ball exploded into his throat and the man’s blood gushed upon the sand. I realised in stupefaction that I had fired the shot, and had not even been aware of doing so.
I had killed a man. Some old soldiers will tell you that at their first killing, they felt guilt, or exaltation, or even pleasure. I felt nothing. I looked upon the man’s bloodied body, but in an instant it was lost to sight, surrounded by the wave of soldiers who took his place and by the smoke from our next volley.
‘Fall back!’ – I think it was Vaughan’s shout that relayed the order – and slowly, our line began to shuffle backward upon the sand summit.
I saw Vasey, a few feet to my right. ‘Sergeant!’ I cried. ‘Why do we retire?’
‘Too much fire from the flanks, sir! And look there –’
He pointed to the position we had just vacated, on the scarp of the great dune. There, the first line of the New Model’s musketeers had formed up. They were already priming, loading, ramming – and firing.
Aymer Vasey took a short step backward. I looked at him and saw him stare in stupefaction at his breastplate, then bring up his hands to the small hole that had appeared in it. A red-black trickle began to run down his armour. With that he fell forward, his blank eyes staring toward me as his head struck the sand. Vasey, a good and honest man who had done his best to turn me into a soldier -
‘God and the Commonwealth!’
The cry from our foes drew me back from the terrible sight of my sergeant’s corpse. The Ironside front rankers had reversed their muskets. Up with them now were some of their pikemen, and although we still greatly outnumbered them upon our tiny patch of the sand hill, they were plainly intent upon a charge. I saw Dick Norris a few feet away from me, and he already had his sword drawn. I tucked my pistol into my belt and did the same, then turned to my men. Some were still staring at Vasey’s corpse. Some were attending the others who had been struck by our enemy’s volley: three were dead, including a youth no older than myself whose lower face had been entirely shot away, leaving but bloody skeins of flesh and bone, and at least the same number were wounded.
‘Stand fast, men!’ I cried. ‘For God and the King!’
The response was feeble compared to the shouts of the Puritans but a few yards from us. And now they came. One ran at me, screaming, his bandolier bouncing off his chest, his musket-butt raised above his head. Through all these years, through the terror I felt, I remember my exact thought. You cannot be so stupid. You must have a third arm, with a concealed weapon. No man can be so stupid.
But he was. This veteran – for his face was that of a man of forty or fifty – must have seen in front of him only a frightened boy, and discounted the blade he held in front of him. The frightened boy summoned up the countless lessons in swordplay he had received from his uncle, ever since the day when, aged five, a sword was first placed in his hand as a means of assuaging his grief upon the death of his father. The frightened boy waited for the Ironside to pull the musket directly behind his head ready to sweep it down onto his skull, then proved conclusively that this fanatic, at least, did not have a side of iron. My grandfather’s sword went in deeply, and out again, its point scraping the inside of the man’s breastplate. I saw his eyes screw up in astonishment, then I withdrew my bloodied blade and his corpse fell away.
All around me, my men were fighting for their lives. Sand, smoke and blood mingled as one with the screams of the dying and the battle-frenzied. Man on man, we cavaliers could give as good as we got, but there were too few of us and too many of our inexorable foe. Still they came on over the brim of the sand-hill, Cromwell’s godly elite. I turned and deflected an attack from an onrushing pikeman, who avoided my blade only a moment before Ned Mercer’s half-pike speared him in the mouth. As I turned again, breathless, I saw a gap in the Ironside tide, and through it glimpsed the beach beneath the sand-hill. The French cavalry were charging, galloping majestically across the sand, their swords and lances pointed at the Spanish behind us. Which could mean only one thing, if Taliesin Vaughan was right; they believed this hill was about to fall.
There was a scream close by – a familiar scream, from happy days at play – I turned and saw Dick Norris clutching his stomach. Opposite him stood a Roundhead with a bloodied half-pike, ready to thrust again into the guts of my friend. Without a thought, I ran headlong at the man. Intent upon his kill, he neglected his flank and only saw my attack when it was too late. I swung my sword down and across, viciously slashing into the man’s shoulder at the neckline. His blood streamed out in a fountain, covering my sword arm.
Certain he was dead, I ran to Dick. Four of his men had formed a guard around him, but I could see at once that it was too late. Not even both
his hands could stop his entrails spilling out over the great wound. ‘Remember the ring, Matt,’ he gasped, ‘to Alice – oh Jesu –’
And with that he was gone, his inert body falling forward into my arms
I had no time to mourn. I laid good, honest Dick Norris onto the sand of Flanders, then turned again to confront the enemy. I was aware, now, that they called one name above all others, more often even than God or Cromwell, and that name was ‘Lockhart’. I had heard that name in the camp at Ypres: Cromwell’s general, Sir William Lockhart, a Scot and a turncoat. So it was his regiment we faced. His regiment that was now driving us, slowly but inevitably, off the great sand-hill.
An officer came at me, brandishing a vicious-looking hanger with a saw-backed blade. He stabbed competently, forcing me onto the back foot, but there was little finesse to his attack. I parried easily, my steel striking his. Evidently surprised by my resistance and my competence, he backed away. I feinted left, struck to the right, and cut him sharply across the sword arm.
He looked at me with something like an intermingling of rage and astonishment. ‘Reprobate filth!’ he screamed. Somehow it still seemed shocking to hear my own language upon the lips of my foe, there on a foreign field.
He came at me again, blood-lust in his eyes, and I braced for his onslaught. But his single-minded intent to avenge himself upon this upstart young cavalier was his undoing. He neglected his flank, and saw not Ned Mercer’s half-pike thrust sharply toward him. Mercer struck with such force that I saw the point bury itself into my enemy’s left side, then emerge again on the right, bearing upon it a ghastly pudding-like mass of flesh and bloody gore.
Mercer nodded grimly. ‘Ten shillings’ worth, that –’
They were his last words. An Ironside musket-butt struck the side of his face with such force that his cheek shattered, the eye popping from its socket. As the body of poor Ned Mercer fell to the ground, I lunged forward to impale his killer. But the man was gone, lost in the melée of Cavaliers and Roundheads who were fighting hand-to-hand all around me.
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