A Flag of Truce

by David Donachie

  ‘Steady, John-boy,’ O’Hagan said. ‘Do not let memory dishearten you.’

  ‘You guessed?’

  ‘Sure, John, and I am saying a prayer for your father’s soul this very minute, though I would not want these heathens around us to o’erhear it.’

  Steps led up to the raised area from which the mayors of the town had been wont to make announcements ever since it was built and Pearce had a sudden notion of the longevity of the place. La Rochelle was certain to have been a Roman settlement; perhaps there had been an Oration Platform here before, which now performed the same function for Rafin, a place from which to harangue the citizenry, as well as being the spot from which he could watch the imposition of what passed for justice. Inside the doors of the Hotel de Ville the hallway was dark in comparison to the bright exterior sunlight, but there lay yet another reminder of the fate of his own father: a large table with three long stripes of coloured cloth rising from floor to ceiling behind it, a copy of which he had seen in the Conciergerie prison in Paris.

  The soldiers who had escorted them, without, it had to be said, much in the way of military bearing, dropped back and took up station as sentries. One was so much a civilian in uniform he immediately took out an onion and began to peel and eat it. The officers were different, better dressed with more of a swagger about them, which had Pearce wondering what their rank had been in Bourbon times. With Rafin, they arranged themselves along the back of the long table, this while Pearce, and Michael holding aloft the white flag behind him, heard, then saw the crowd of people who had been following come in to witness what was about to take place, their loud voices of condemnation echoing off the stone walls.

  The representative himself took centre stage in front of a high-backed chair, stood for a moment and looked around him as if to underline his authority, before he sat down, the rest of the committee, who had been waiting for him to do so, following suit, the crowd immediately silenced by the simple act of him raising his right hand.

  ‘These fellows you wish to burden us with, Lieutenant, who are they?’

  For the third time Pearce rattled off his story, knowing what he was engaged in was pure theatre. Rafin wanted to be seen to be consulting the citizens of the town, by allowing them to hear what this interloper had to say. He would deliberate as if their opinion counted for something, but it was a farce; there was only one person to make a decision in La Rochelle and the cockade in his hat, his black garments and his wide tricolour sash were the badges of the authority to do that. If he ordered John Pearce and Michael O’Hagan out to face the guillotine, in total contravention of the laws of war, that too would be obeyed.

  ‘Sailors from ports such as Lorient and Brest.’ He declined to mention Rochefort, it was too close. ‘Five thousand in number.’

  ‘And why would you bring them here?’

  The temptation to sigh, to let this bastard know that he had realised his game, had to be fought. The possible outcomes were too serious for him to indulge in the same measure of performance.

  ‘The port has been taken over by the British Fleet.’

  That had Rafin sitting forward, his face angry and shocked, this matched by what Pearce listened to behind him, yet they must have heard of it by now. Hood’s marines had been ashore for a month.

  ‘Traitors,’ Rafin spat. ‘They will pay a heavy price.’

  That was another lure to be avoided, the desire to tell him not to count his chickens. ‘Then you will be pleased to know these are the officers and men who refused to serve under the Bourbon flag.’

  ‘Citizens then, not subjects!’ Rafin cried, his eyes producing a joyous look as that was taken up by his cheering audience.

  ‘They wish to be landed on this coast. Lord Hood, who commands at Toulon—’

  ‘For now!’

  ‘Lord Hood agreed to release four of the major vessels to transport them to the Atlantic ports, where they could disembark and go back to their families.’

  ‘Then why do you not take them to these ports, Lieutenant? La Rochelle is not a base for these kinds of ships.’

  ‘You will appreciate, monsieur—’

  ‘Citizen Rafin will do.’

  ‘You will appreciate, citizen, that while the British government has no desire to hold in Toulon such a quantity of sailors who refuse to serve, it also has no desire to immediately return them to a position from which they could act to threaten our own ships. The vessels are sound and require only refitting with cannon, wood, water and victuals to be fully ready for service.’

  ‘The first of which we cannot provide.’ As Pearce nodded, Rafin looked over his shoulder and invited comments from the crowd. The cry of ‘who is going to feed them?’ was the first to emerge from the overall clamour.

  ‘The ships are well provisioned. The men coming ashore will be given access to their stores and for the short period they are in the town I doubt they will be a burden.’

  ‘Five thousand sailors—’ a voice shouted, only to be interrupted by John Pearce shouting even louder: ‘Five thousand revolutionary sailors.’

  The military officer sitting next to Rafin leant forward and whispered in his ear, which had the representative nodding slowly. The crowd now observed a hushed silence, waiting for the outcome of the conversation.

  ‘It has been put to me,’ Rafin said finally, ‘by General Westermann here, that a fighting sailor is only a sea-going soldier. He has suggested these men could serve to help in the trouble we have to contain the pestilence of the Vendée renegades.’

  That brought forth a loud and rippling murmur, but it was hard to tell if it was positive or negative.

  ‘What about the ships, citizen?’ called another voice, posing the question Pearce dreaded.

  ‘They will be left at anchor here, but stripped of the means to sail,’ he replied.

  The same voice called out. ‘The anchorage is not safe.’

  ‘You may sail them to Rochefort, which is close by, or perhaps the admiral commanding there will send a store ship and crews. Whatever, my ship will be well on its way and safe from any retaliation. I do not think my flag of truce has any validity at sea.’

  ‘How we doin’, John-boy?’ asked Michael, as Rafin and his general had another whispered discussion. ‘Cause I don’t see how I can get to that bugger behind the table if we’s in trouble.’

  ‘I don’t know, my friend. I think it is in the balance.’

  Rafin stopped whispering and looked at Pearce for what seemed an age, building up the tension before he made his decision. ‘General Westermann cares nothing for your charges. You cannot fight the renegades in the marshes of the Vendée with ships. You may do with them what you wish. My soldiers will escort you back to your boat and you may tell your commanding officer that the sailors can be landed from noon.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Common seamen first, officers last.’

  Having no idea why Rafin had said that, Pearce just nodded.

  A couple of scruffy and disinterested National Guardsmen escorted Pearce and Michael back to their boat. Again Pearce looked at the shipping, noticing that a pair of the best-equipped vessels were now full of men, carrying out tasks that were commensurate with getting their vessels to sea. The decks were alive with crewmen and the rigging was full of men lashing on spars and sails, in total contrast to the way they had been moribund when he had come ashore.

  ‘Michael, you need a piss.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘In the harbour and take your time.’

  Without another question O’Hagan peeled off to the edge of the quay, in a way that had the most alert of their escorts twitching his musket, but seeing him undo the flap on his ducks and turning his back, the fellow just grinned, stopped and waited, indicating to his companion to do likewise. While Michael did a passable job of taking his time, Pearce was counting guns and the numbers of men, information which would be of great interest to Henry Digby.

  The procession of dozens of boats, some from t
he ships themselves, others from the port, went back and forth all day, taking out batches of sailors, with Digby, watching from his own quarterdeck, once more blessing the weather, for though there was a swell, there were no breakers to make the task of entering the harbour difficult. With each boat went the ship’s stores, some to feed the sailors, other articles demanded by the soldiers to supply an army that seemed to lack most of the necessities of campaigning, despite the profusion of food that Pearce had seen that morning.

  ‘We shall be away from here tomorrow, Mr Pearce, with luck. Have you made the necessary preparations for the last act?

  ‘I have, sir, though I thought it too obvious to fetch them on deck. They can be seen from the higher elevation of the larger ships.’

  The incendiary devices were down below, canvas pouches filled with tow and a charge of powder, which would be soaked in turpentine then set alight, the falls from the sails laying across them. Nothing went up like dry tarred rope, and soon the rigging would be well alight. The flames would have to work harder with the wood, but the deck was dry, as were the inner bulwarks, so Digby reckoned them to be ablaze quickly, and as he pointed out to Pearce, nothing consumed a vessel like fire.

  ‘Thank the Lord we stripped most of their powder out at Toulon. I would not want to be near four capital ships when their magazines went up.’

  ‘The General Westermann I mentioned has demanded what remains of that be carried ashore.’

  ‘He is welcome to it, Mr Pearce, it is little enough.’

  ‘I spoke with some of the local boatmen, sir, when I took in the first draft. They are not all rabid Jacobins, and I have been told about this revolt these soldiers are fighting.’

  ‘And?’ asked Digby, with the clear indication that it had nothing to do with him.

  ‘It seems a bloody affair, with no quarter being given on either side.’

  ‘You sound as if you regret that, Mr Pearce. The French are our enemies, so let them reduce their numbers by all means possible.’

  ‘I do believe those fighting in the marshes to the north are as one with the men of Toulon.’

  ‘I sense sympathy, do I not?’

  ‘I think these sailors we are putting ashore will soon be put against them.’

  ‘It is all very well such people saying they wish to restore a King to his throne and the papist church to its stolen property, but how much nuisance have we suffered from French kings and a clergy rich enough to subsidise their warlike ambitions?’

  Digby had not heard, as Pearce had, the boatmen’s tales, of villages burnt, women ravished before being disembowelled, babies skewered on bayonets, men tortured over roaring fires. There was another side, of course, for those same sources had told him that no soldier of the revolution was safe from retribution. Many had been caught and treated in a like fashion, and the conflict had descended into a contest in butchery. The addition of so many men might just tip the balance against the rebellion, but when he made that point Digby dismissed it.

  ‘Most of them will run, Mr Pearce, for a French tar is no different to his British counterpart in that article. Devious, quick to take a chance, adept at avoiding detection. I doubt your General Westermann will still command a fifth of those he expects to have before a day or two is out.’

  ‘Attention, Mariette,’ called a voice from a boat, which had all aboard aware of where it came from. Not one of the men they had escorted would ever refer to the ship by anything other than its French name. Pearce went to the side, to hear an invitation from Moreau that he, Digby and Mr Lutyens should come to dine that night with the officers of the French squadron, who would be going at last light.

  ‘Perhaps they mean to take us hostage, Mr Pearce.’

  ‘Not with Mr Neame manning our guns. I have told you, sir, he knows very well how to employ them.’

  All the French officers, to the number of a dozen, had donned their best uniforms for the occasion, and the main cabin of Apollon, albeit that its stern lights were boarded over, had been cleared to set up a decent table. As they ate and drank, Pearce was left to wonder how they had managed to save such provisions and wines, but it transpired they had bought most of what was being consumed from the citizens of Algeciras and it was now time to see off the last of that provender. It could not be called a jolly affair, but, if you excused the glutton Forcet, it was polite. Most of those present had been sous-officers in the old royal navy, their increase in rank coming from the decimation of that service by the flight of émigré senior officers. So they knew their manners, and the subject of what would happen to the ships was not discussed until Moreau was seeing them over the side, his words addressed to Pearce.

  ‘It is not something I wish to admit, but positions reversed I would be bound to follow the same course.’

  ‘Would it help, Captain Moreau, if I were to say there is not a man aboard HMS Faron who is looking forward to what must be done.’

  ‘Surely you mean Mariette, my friend,’ said Moreau with a grin, but it was an expression which came and went quickly as he patted his own bulwark. ‘We have a sentiment about ships, do we not? Foolish. We would see them blown to pieces in battle yet to surrender them…’

  ‘You will be ashore in an hour, monsieur,’ Pearce replied, to cover Moreau’s sad thoughts.

  They kept to their best uniforms for the journey to the shore, with Pearce in the prow of the boat, his flag of truce prominent. Rafin was there waiting, with his military friends and his escort of musket-bearing, ill-disciplined National Guards, their bayonets glinting in the light of the sinking sun. He landed first and stood aside to let the others come ashore, introducing each one as he did so. Once they were all landed, and as Pearce moved to say a last farewell, Rafin barked out an order.

  ‘Seize them!’

  The officers were suddenly surrounded by sharp and pointed bayonets, in what must have been a prearranged instruction. Rafin’s pallid face was alight with fury, and he spat saliva through those drooping moustaches as he cursed them.

  ‘Traitors, scum, cowards, do you not think we do not know what you did? You surrendered your ships to the enemy. You have no honour and if I have my way you will soon have no heads to trouble you with notions of it.’

  Pearce saw then, standing close by, a knot of French sailors, and he guessed they were the men who had tried to take the vessels off Marseilles. They had come ashore and denounced the four captains and their eight lieutenants, which in the France of the likes of Rafin was as good as a death sentence.

  ‘Monsieur, I protest,’ Pearce yelled over the cries of the same complaint from those arrested. ‘These men are your supporters.’

  ‘Citizen!’ screamed Rafin, in a voice that must have been heard on the other side of the harbour.

  ‘These men did their duty.’

  ‘They did not. They are rats, only they stayed aboard their ship instead of deserting them. Well, they are now going to the Hotel de Ville, and tomorrow they will face me and my court of revolutionary justice. Let us hear them try and explain how they chose to surrender rather than die, chose to help you take back their ships when they should have been prepared to see them sunk.’

  ‘Five thousand men would have drowned.’

  Rafin was in a passion, spitting venom in near incoherence. ‘What does the Revolution care if five thousand die, or fifty thousand? The world must be changed. Traitors like these cannot be left to think they can indulge in betrayal and live. Like the swine of Versailles and the scum who bled the poor, they will see what justice is.’

  ‘Citizen, I am begging you.’

  Rafin suddenly laughed. ‘I have a notion to respect your truce flag for one more day, monsieur. Perhaps you would like to come ashore again tomorrow and witness the way Madame Guillotine deals with traitors.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Mr Pearce, we cannot interfere in these matters. Much as I have sympathy for the officers we dined with this afternoon they are no longer our responsibility, and I am forced to remind you of
what you told me regarding those vessels preparing for sea. We may very well out-gun them. However, they are numerous, we are not.’

  Henry Digby must have been well aware he was fighting a losing battle; it was not only Pearce who profoundly disagreed with him but also Lutyens and Neame, though their protest was silent; the former said nothing, merely fixing his superior with a pained eye, and the latter was looking at the deck planking of his cabin in an attitude which indicated deep sorrow.

  ‘Besides, I would remind you of our need to get away from this shore as soon as possible. This weather cannot last.’

  ‘The men threatened are innocent, sir, you know that. Their death will be for the purpose of a gesture to satisfy the blood lust of that sod Rafin.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I think it behoves us to make some kind of gesture in response.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘Mr Neame,’ said Pearce.

  The old master lifted his head slowly and looked at his captain, the reluctance to actually speak obvious, but Digby was looking at him in a way that brooked a response, so after a long hiatus it came. ‘When we first anchored, sir, them French warships each had over fifteen hundred souls aboard.’

  ‘I am aware of that, Mr Neame.’

  ‘Well, if’n you had placed a mark on her waterline before they was shipped ashore, you would see clear how much they has risen in the water.’ The first glimmer of what was coming appeared on Digby’s face, but he had the good grace to let Neame make his point. ‘And since they was cleared of cannon and shot at Toulon, and the crew took ashore what stores she still carried, I reckon that her draught is nothing like as much as it would be for a normal seventy-four in full commission. I would suggest they would need ballast before setting sail, for they are as high floating as a ship laid up in ordinary off Chatham Dockyard. If the soundings I have for the entrance to La Rochelle are accurate, then there’s enough to sail them in or close to on a high tide. It be touch and go whether they’d actually make the harbour.’