Pistoleer: Roundway Down
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THE PISTOLEER
ROUNDWAY DOWN
(Book Seven of the Series)
By Skye Smith
Copyright (C) 2014-2015 Skye Smith
All rights reserved including all rights of authorship.
Cover Illustration is "Battle Scene - Pistoleer" by Edward Bird (1802)
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Revision 0 . . . . . ISBN: 978-1-927699-18-8
Cover Flap
The spring of 1643 was cold and damp, so deadly flu's ravaged the army camps. King Charles was secure in Oxford waiting for his wife Henrietta to march down from York with her invading army and their much needed supplies. Parliament's core army was immobile at Windsor due to a political deadlock over whether to storm the king or make peace with him.
Meanwhile the royalist flying armies were brutalizing the folk of the South West, of the Midlands, and of Lincolnshire. The locals scrambled to defend themselves with help from experienced officers such as Waller and Fairfax, but also from inexperienced militia officers such as Capt. O. Cromwell.
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The Pistoleer - Roundway Down by Skye Smith Copyright 2014-15
About The Author
Skye Smith is my pen name. In 1630 some of my Manchester Puritan ancestors sailed away to Massachusetts on one of Robert Rich's ships. The Pistoleer is a series of historical adventure novels set in Britain in the 1640's. I was encouraged to write them by fans of my Hoodsman series.
This is the seventh of the series, and you should read at least the first novel 'HellBurner' before you read this book because it sets the characters and scene for the entire series. The sequence of the books follows the timeline of the Republic of Great Britain. The chapter headings identify the dates and places.
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The Pistoleer - Roundway Down by Skye Smith Copyright 2014-15
Prologue
This adventure is as historically accurate as I could make it, however I have not included my endless references because the main character, Daniel Vanderus, is fictional. As a rule of thumb, if the character is a parliamentarian, or has a title, or has a military rank of captain or above, then they and their families are non-fictional. Otherwise the character is fictional.
In the 1640's England was still using the old Julian calendar rather than the new Gregorian one. I have used the same dates for battles as are used by popular Civil War timelines. They use old fashioned Julian dates, rather than the modern (add 10 days) Gregorian dates, but treat January 1 as the start of a new year rather than March 25 as was used in the 1640's. In the 1640's Christmas day still fell on December 25, but the shortest day of the year was December 11, not December 21.
Note that at the end of this book there is an Appendix which is organized like an FAQ. There you will find answers to dozens of questions such as:
- What was William Waller's connection to Robert Rich?
- Was there really so much looting and raping going on?
- Who were the Campdeners?
- Was the plague of 1643 Typhus?
However, the next few paragraphs will set the scene enough for you to begin reading the novel.
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The year 1643 began with Parliament's reformers split three ways between the "peace” party, the "war” party, and the "middle” party. The armies of the Stuart Regime had by then shown themselves to be brutal in battle, and vicious with anyone who would not bend to their will, especially womenfolk. Many of parliament's reformers were so fearful of how vicious the royalists were being, that their want of 'Reform' was being replaced by their want of peace. The common folk who had been pressed into the armies and the battles, and had suffered first hand the royalist's vicious lawlessness did not want only peace, but justice ... in kind.
This novel begins just after England had been invaded by her treasonous queen, Henrietta. Treasonous because she had stolen the Crown Jewels, pawned them in Holland, and then used the proceeds to buy munitions and to hire thousands of harden mercenaries from the continental wars. This army of foreign invaders landed on the coast of Yorkshire and then marched to York, but then bad weather and the threat of attack by General Fairfax's 'rebel' army kept them in York all winter and spring.
Meanwhile the core army that Parliament had raised (mostly from around London), were not pressing their advantage of infantry and supplies to storm Oxford and capture the king. Instead they waited at Windsor for the result of the endless peace negotiations with the king. Parliament's Lord General Essex had no great desire to directly attack the king, which suited the king because he was stalling until Henrietta's invading army could join him.
After a long hard winter came a wet spring and the march of smaller armies than those in Oxford and Windsor. The royalist army in Cornwall under General Hopton had called off the winter truce and began looting their way through Devon and Somerset, where they defeat every force sent to stop them. A royalist army was raised in Wales, and they put Gloucester under siege. Rupert, the foreign Devil Prince, led his flying army to loot Midlands, while his brother Maurice did the same to Wiltshire.
The royalist flying squads were being encouraged to loot the kingdom. From the royalist point of view, if someone didn't willingly offer their help to the king's cause, then they were a traitors and deserved to be looted, or worse. The regional associations of militias were trying to defend the folk, but the flying squads moved quickly and their raids came with little warning. The big losers in any war, no matter who wins, are always the women and children - and 1643 was a very, very hard year for women and children.
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The Pistoleer - Roundway Down by Skye Smith Copyright 2014-15
Table of Contents
Title Page
Cover Flap
About the Author
Prologue
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - The Taking of Lowestoft in March 1643
Chapter 2 - At the Swan Inn in Lowestoft in March 1643
Chapter 3 - Questioning Royalists in Lowestoft in March 1643
Chapter 4 - The Weapons Cache at Lowestoft in March 1643
Chapter 5 - Securing Lowestoft in March 1643
Chapter 6 - Sneak Attack in Lowestoft in March 1643
Chapter 7 - Landing at Lyme, Dorset in March 1643
Chapter 8 - The Defenses of Bristol in March 1643
Chapter 9 - The Ruse to Catch Rupert in Bristol in March 1643
Chapter 10 - The March to Malmesbury in March 1643
Chapter 11 - The Siege of Malmesbury in March 1643
Chapter 12 - The False March on Cirencester in March 1643
Chapter 13 - Marching by Night to Cross the Severn in March 1643
Chapter 14 - The End of the Welsh Army in Highnam in March 1643
Chapter 15 - The Dragon of Bristol in Chepstow in March 1643
Chapter 16 - Escaping from a Trap at Chepstow in March 1643
Chapter 17 - Talk of Bermuda in Wellenhay in April 1643
Chapter 18 - Trouble in the Lincolnshire Fens in April 1643
Chapter 19 - Campdeners seize Crowland in April 1643
Chapter 20 - With Oliver in Cambridge in April 1643
Chapter 21 - With Courtesans in London in April 1643
Chapter 22 - The Plague in Reading in April 1643
Chapter 23 - The Surrender of Reading in April 1643
Chapter 24 - Training Green Dragoons in Thame in June 1643
Chapter 25 - Ambushed by the Devil in Chalgrove Field in June 1643
Chapter 26 - The Clan arrives in Lyme, Dorset in June 1643
Chapter 27 - The Battle of Lansdown Hill near Bath in July 1643
Chapter 28 - With Robert Blake in Bristol in July 1643
Chapter 29 - Trapping General Hopton in Devizes in July 1643
Chapter 30 - The Storming of Devizes in July 1643
Chapter 31 - The Battle of Roundway Down near Devizes in July 1643
Chapter 32 - Appendix FAQ
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The Pistoleer - Roundway Down by Skye Smith Copyright 2014-15
Chapter 1 - The Taking of Lowestoft in March 1643
One man of the eight in the shore party leaped into the shallow surf and waded to the beach with the bow line of the longboat. With each swell he pulled on the line until the bow hit sand, and two other men dropped down into the shallows to lift the bow and push it further up the beach. Only then did the rest of the party scrambled over the bow onto dry land. With eight backs heaving, they hauled the longboat up above the high tide mark.
The tallest of the men, Daniel, took a good look up and down the beach and then cast his stare along the rise behind the beach. There was no one in sight. So far so good. He waved to the small ship, the Friesburn Four, which had brought them to this lonely stretch of coast. Almost immediately the ship turned towards deeper water to wait for more signals.
Daniel shivered, but not because of the North Sea fog. He was wearing a boiled-rawhide vest with a sheepskin lining, which was warm enough, but it also meant that he wasn’t wearing his steel chest armour. Already he was regretting that decision, for now that his feet were on solid gound he was feeling naked against the very real possibility of an ambush by musketeers.
On the ship, of course, it had seemed a logical decision to leave the steel armour behind. The town up the beach, Lowestoft, was solidly controlled by royalists so the harbour was forbidden them. Instead they had to land a longboat through the shore break. During such a landing there was a very real danger of capsizing and being thrown into the water, in which case the steel armour would do its best to drown you. On the other hand, the sheepskin lining of the vest would float a man for a precious few minutes. That decision had been made at sea, but now they were on land. The boiled leather and the sheepskin would slow a musket ball, but not deflect it or stop it.
"Stop thinkin' so much and get a move on," Mick hissed as he grabbed Daniel's elbow and pushed him away from the longboat and towards the closest bushes. Mick was the master of the Freisburn Four, but he had refused to be left behind on the ship. There was no way of leaving Mick out of an adventure which may include the chance of a good fight, and why would you? In a scrap he was worth any three men.
The two Yarmouth fishermen they had brought along as guides had already crossed the beach to the sparse cover of the bushes. They were wiry men with faces aged by years of working in the raw North Sea wind. "The northern battery is on that hillock to the south of us," fisherman Nate growled once they caught up to him. "The watch there will be the first to spot a troop o' riders comin’ down the Yarmouth Road."
It should have been difficult to find two fishermen willing to guide them on such a dangerous venture, but back in Yarmouth the only thing that had been difficult had been choosing the best two out of the forty who volunteered. Earlier this month the staunchly royalist gentlemen of Lowestoft, led by a merchant and ship owner by the name of Thomas Allen, had raided Yarmouth's harbour and had captured and towed away a half dozen of the towns newest fishing boats. All were ships of the size and quality needed to fish for cod off Iceland. The Yarmouth fishermen wanted those ships back, and if they had to cut a few throats to do so, then so be it.
The other four men were Wellenhay clansmen like Daniel and Mick. As a shore party they looked more like pirates on a raid than Fen's cottagers. Mick looked more like a pirate than any of them, for he did not share the tall, fair, easy good looks of his clansmen. He was shorter and darker and had lost his looks to his love of alehouse brawls. Mick and his clansmen were armed to the teeth, literally, for they had all been carrying their powder flasks hung from their teeth to keep them high and dry out of the water.
The men carried a strange assortment of weapons, for each man had his own favourites, but all of them carried at least two pistols ... one normal single shot pistol, and one wide-muzzled dragon pistol loaded with bird shot, slaked-lime-grit and other nasties. None of them carried a sword. Rough skirmishers such as they had no great use for the most precious of gentlemen's weapons.
Rough men lacked the fencing skills needed to defeat gentlemen who were well practiced in swordplay. And as costly as good swords were, they were not much good for anything else but slashing at folk. Not that slashing at folk was uncommon these days. Ever since the battle for Edgehill the royalist gentlemen had been using their swords quite freely on any camp followers or cottager who refused their bidding.
It was Frisian blood which ran through the veins of these Fens clansmen, and the Frisians of the North Sea coasts had chosen axes over swords back before the times of the Vikings. Not that they carried huge old fashioned battle axes. These days they carried the haches preferred by French pistoleers. A hache head was a mix of three different weapons in one - an axe blade, a spear point, and a hook. A similar head mounted on a pole rather than on an axe handle would be called a halberd pike, but the shorter handled hache was lighter, more compact, and more versatile.
The eight men set off in search of Lowestoft's northern battery of cannons, but it was slow work due to the need to keep to the natural cover of the bushes. If they were seen by the battery watch, they would lose the element of surprise, and possibly their lives. Even after finding the battery, it took them another half hour of crawling and listening and crawling and listening to reach the actual earthworks. The earthworks and the big guns had been placed there almost a hundred years ago by King Henry the Cock to protect Lowestoft from the Spanish navy. A few years ago the original rusting guns had been replaced, but the fishermen guides swore that the new guns had never been fired in anger.
In the time it took them advance from beach to earthwork dyke they had not heard nor seen anyone. They took a moment to rest and refresh the flash pans of their pistols, but then as one they leaped up and scrambled over the dyke. This was the dangerous part. If they were expected, they would be shot down as soon as they were atop the dyke. They all crouched low, and stayed low even as they leaped down into the dark shadows inside the dyke.
"Where's the effin' cannons?" Mick hissed. He had his killing pistol in his right hand and his dragon in his left, both cocked, and he was waving them back and forth as he moved from shadow to shadow. The other men joined him in his search of the shadows. No guns, no watchers, no supplies. Meanwhile Daniel was running to keep up with the fishermen who were legging it towards a low stone cottage just inland from the dyke. Of course. The watchers would live in the cottage, and that is where the supplies would be kept under lock and key.
Nate reached the cottage door first and lifted one foot so that his speed would be stopped by the door. He kept going and ended up on his back on the floor of the doorway. The door had been on the latch but not barred or locked. Frantically he spun around on his back trying to find and pick up at least one of the pistols he had dropped.
"Calm down, Nate," Daniel told him as he stepped over him, "the place is empty." He stepped back outside and gave his clansmen the signal to secure the area. The northern battery was theirs. But so what? There was nothing and nobody here. They had been sent by ship to make a beach landing and capture the battery so that the main force could march along the Yarmouth Road and reach the outskirts of Lowestoft before being seen. It was nearly midd
ay, which meant that the main force would still be a few miles north of Lowestoft.
Mick walked over to where Daniel was standing, silent, lost in thought. "Mission accomplished then," Mick told him with a sarcastic snicker. He motioned to the cottage roof. "Here, boost me up so I can take a good look all around."
Daniel shrugged at him and pointed to the ladder laying down along the cottage wall. He helped raise it up and then held it steady while Mick climbed it to reach the thatch and then crawled higher over the thatch until he could take a peek over the peak. Daniel joined him there a moment later. Each man reached into his side bag and each man pulled out the scroll pipe that contained his Dutch made kijker, his spectacle-lens-looker. Each adjusted the length of the sliding pipes until they could focus at a distance, and then they began to search out the lay of the land.
It was not just the dykes protecting this battery that were man-made, but also the hillock on which it stood. They knew this because all around them stretched a low, flat plain that would be used as a grazing common when it wasn't flooded by winter rains and tides. Inland across a stretch of this common was a ridge and a natural hill on which was built the town's navigation tower and light. The Yarmouth road must be up on that ridge but they couldn't see it from here. They had chosen the wrong guides in Yarmouth. They should have chosen herdsmen or carters, not fishermen.
One at a time they slid down the thatch and then scrambled down the swaying ladder. Once on the ground they called in their men. They had a problem. How could they get across a few hundred yards of open common to the inland ridge without being seen? And not just do it, but do it quickly? Mick began discussing it with the men.
"We've no choice," Daniel interrupted. "This is a royalist town which means it is ruled by rich gentlemen, which means their chosen way of fighting will be as cavalryers. We are on foot. We can't risk being caught out on that open ground by cavalry, so we must walk along yon drainage ditch. At least the ditch will be a barrier we can use to counter any mounted attack."