Chasseur à Cheval (Napoleonic Horseman Book 1)

by Griff Hosker

  I sprang from his back. “That’s a good horse. He just needs a careful rider.”

  Albert began to get some colour back into his cheeks and he laughed. “Well you can ride I’ll say that for you. Let us go to the practice range. Pierre, put Killer back in his stall.”

  Jean looked at Albert, “Killer?”

  This was the first time I had met Pierre. He was a few years older than me but he always had a retort or a quip. “Aye the lads nicknamed him that. He seemed to fit the bill till you came along!” He grabbed the halter and led the horse back to the stalls.

  As we neared the range Jean said, “I hope they all get to use the same weapon Albert. No trick guns eh?”

  Albert laughed. “It will be a fair test.”

  The weapon was a musketoon. I had never fired one before but a gun was a gun. Albert gave the weapon to a tall man next to him. “Claude, you go first.” Claude looked to be an experienced soldier and was much older than Pierre had been.

  The targets were a hundred yards away and I suspected it was a long range for such a weapon. The trooper grinned at me as he carefully loaded his weapon. Claude seemed at ease with the weapon. He loaded and fired. It was not a bad shot and it hit the target. Grinning he handed the weapon to me. I cleaned the pan and went to the musket balls. I discarded four before I found the one which was the roundest. I carefully measured the powder and then I lay on the ground.

  Claude said, “I didn’t lie on the ground.”

  Without looking up I said, “The more fool you.”

  With my arms supported by the ground I looked down the barrel. There was a very crude sight at the end and I lined it up. I took a breath and then fired. The smoke obscured my vision. When I stood and looked at the target, Jean clapped me on the back, “Dead centre!”

  Albert gave me a grudging smile, “In the cavalry we cannot always lie down.”

  Jean said, “In the cavalry you know your own gun. This is yours is it not, Claude?” A shamefaced Claude nodded and took his gun back.

  Pierre had joined us and he had two sabres. “And now Jean let us see what he is like with a sword. I will be honest with you…”

  “That will be a first.”

  “I will be honest with you; Pierre is the best swordsman in the squadron.”

  “Good then this is a fair test.”

  I chose my sword and felt it. It was not as balanced as the ones I had used with the count and Jean but it was not a butcher’s knife. I faced Pierre. He had not seen me shoot and he had a confident look about him. That was his first mistake. He thought he could beat me. He was smaller than I was but that could prove to be an advantage with the curved cavalry sabres we were using. I was taking nothing for granted and I did what I had been taught to do. I assessed my opponent to find his weakness.

  We touched blades and I saw in his eyes that he would try to disarm me. He gave a flick of his wrist to try to throw the sword from my grip. I knocked his blade away. He shrugged. His first ploy had failed. He was a fast fencer. He tried tricks to defeat me instead of technique. Having seen the way he fought I knew how to beat him. After he had tried to get inside my guard twice I feinted to the right, spun to my left and had the tip of my blade pointed at his middle before he knew what was happening. His face showed his shock but he smiled and held out his hand. “Very good.”

  Jean clapped me on the back and Albert said, “Well you were right Jean. So do you still wish to join?”

  I looked at Jean and we both nodded.

  Albert took us to the colonel. Colonel Armande was a professional soldier. Although he had aristocratic blood in his veins he had been one of the younger sons and joined the cavalry as a lieutenant when he was just sixteen. He had only ever known the Chevau-Légers and the regiment was his life. He recognised Jean as soon as he entered.

  “Ah, Bartiaux, how has life treated you?”

  “Well sir.”

  “And the count how is he?”

  “He is dead sir.” Jean left it at that and the silence which followed was eloquent.

  “I see and I understand that you would now like to rejoin the regiment along with this young man.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The colonel stroked his waxed grey moustache. “You were always a good trooper and I was sorry to see you leave us. You would by now have had a number of promotions. I am delighted to have you rejoin us. And as for this young man… I enjoyed his performance on Killer.” The colonel had been watching. He smiled. “I like a good horseman. Sergeant Major, how did he do with the shooting and the fencing?”

  “He defeated our two best men.”

  The colonel’s eyebrows came up a notch. “Really? Then I think we can accept you both. Sadly we have lost a number of officers… well we all know the reason and we can do little about that. As I am short of them I would like you to accept a commission as a sous lieutenant.” I saw Albert’s face fall. “And you sergeant major will become a lieutenant. I need all the officers I can muster. See the quartermaster for your uniforms and then Trooper Macgregor you can join your troop while I brief my two new officers.”

  And with that I joined the French Army. The times were difficult ones, I know that. Had I have tried to join a couple of years earlier then I would have been rejected but the regiment had lost so many officers and men that they were in danger of not being able to muster more than a handful of men. There was a war with Britain and the Low Countries and this regiment was as close to the border as any. They would have to fight and fight soon. I discovered all of this within an hour of joining. Pierre was garrulous.

  Jean, or Sous Lieutenant Bartiaux as I had to address him, came to see how I was settling in. “It seems Robbie, that we are down to one squadron. When I was in the regiment we had four. Many of the officers who defected to the royalists took some of the men with them. I would not be an officer otherwise. You are to be in my troop. Here.” He handed me a handful of coins.

  “What are these?”

  “The quartermaster took the horses off our hands. This is your share. I know that we did not get their worth but it is in lieu of payment from the count eh? And I am afraid that from now on I am no longer Jean, but Sous lieutenant Bartiaux.”

  I grinned, “That’s alright sir. I shall just have to get promoted.”

  He smiled back at me. “That may come sooner rather than later. We go to war. We have come at a propitious time. It seems we go north to fight the British and the Dutch. War brings rapid promotion for all.” He nodded to my small box of treasures given to me by my mother on her deathbed. I always kept the box close to me and it had been in my saddlebags until we sold the horses. “The troopers here are good men and would not steal but you have temptation in that box.” He took out a canvas belt. “I have two of these. This is my gift to you.”

  “What is it?”

  “There are many pockets in the belt. You put in your treasures and wear it around your body. It goes under your garments and uniform. You will be sure that, so long as you are alive, then your treasures are safe.”

  “And if I am dead?”

  “Then you care not and, if you are lucky, your comrades share the treasure amongst them and remember you with a drink.” He saw my look and added, “Life is harsh and in the cavalry you may be alive one moment and dead the next; live life to the full, Robbie. It is what your mother would have wished.”

  He was right of course. That had been my mother’s intention as Madame Lefondre had told me.

  I had no time to get used to my new surroundings or to spend any of my newly acquired money. We headed north. I also discovered, as I trotted next to Pierre and we looked at our new standard, that we had had our name changed to the 17th Chasseurs à Cheval. Pierre had shrugged. “We have the same uniform, the same weapons and the same horses. The name makes no difference to us. We do what we always do.”

  I liked Pierre. He and I got on well. Although a little older than me he had some similarities in terms of background. He had been brought up on a l
arge estate and had practised his fencing with the son of the aristocrat. His former master had left the country early on which explained Pierre joining the cavalry.

  “Where will we be going then?”

  “It will probably be north into the Low Countries. Our job is to find the enemy and then the infantry fight them.”

  I was disappointed. “Don’t we fight then? I thought it would be all cavalry charges and the like.”

  Pierre laughed. “When I fenced with you that was the first time this year I have had my weapon out of its scabbard. I have never fired my weapon in anger yet and this,” he patted the horse pistol on his saddle, “only ever gets cleaned. We rarely get to fire them. This is not a glorious regiment but we get paid and the officers aren’t as bad as some. Now that Albert has been promoted it is even better. He knows what the score is and we will all be much safer now.”

  The journey north was a new experience to me. We were on campaign and we were given a flimsy piece of canvas which two men shared. I shared mine with Louis, a dour, brooding and almost silent Frenchman, from Alsace. I did not learn much from him. I think in all the time I knew him he never said more than a dozen words. He was the opposite of Pierre. We cooked our own food in sections of five tents. Luckily I was with Pierre and the others I knew so my silent companion was not a problem. When we reached our camp area we lit our fires and tended to our horses. Once that was done we cooked. The time of year meant that the camp soon became a muddy morass which sucked at your boots. Our breeches were splattered with mud and were soon brown rather than green.

  I also learned picket duty. We all had a two hour watch each night. If you were lucky you were the first or you were the last. If you were unlucky then you were in the middle watch. You would just have managed to get off to a lumpy sleep and the sergeant would wake you and you would either freeze in the cold night air or try to find shelter from the incessant rain of those parts. Campaigning was anything but glorious, even for the cavalry.

  We soon caught up with the main body of the army. But life became no better. I was shocked. They looked to be a rabble in blue. Some men had no shoes. Some appeared to have blue jackets which had been hastily dyed. They ran alarmingly in the rain leaving them a sort of streaky grey. There was little sense of order and organisation. I could see no ranks and none of the officers rode horses. The officers looked to be young men who had also been drafted. Some carried muskets and most had no swords.

  Pierre leaned over to me when I asked him about them, “These poor sods have just been drafted. If you had not joined then you would have been drafted into the infantry. You made a wise decision.” He was wrong of course. If I had stayed at home then I would have likely as not ended up on the guillotine. “I bet they have never even fired their weapons yet.”

  As we rode in the fields next to the road they all cheered the flag we carried and shouted, “Vive La France!” They waved their guns in the air. They were enthusiastic but I wondered how they would stand up against the British. My mother had told me how the British army had managed to defeat a passionate and enthusiastic Highland army by their discipline and drills. This looked to be an ill equipped Highland Army. I wondered how I would stand up to such discipline. In the chasseurs it appeared to be quite casual. You said sir and sergeant but it did not seem important to the likes of Albert and the colonel.

  You could see the puzzled looks on their faces as we rode along the side of the roads. They equated horses with the aristocrats. Added to that was the fact that we appeared to be comfortable and we were riding to war while they were trudging in the mud. They did not know of the work we all had to do each day with our horses and our equipment. One advantage the infantry had was that they had so little equipment it would not need much care. We had to look after our own and the horses.

  We did, however, have swords and all of us had a musketoon. When I saw the infantry muskets I realised that even though I had not been happy with the weapon when I first handled it, it was better than the infantry musket. The range of both weapons was abysmal. I longed for the fine muskets of my father’s estate. Even the powder we had was poor. We had already experienced many misfires when we practised. The ammunition was of uneven quality too. I wished I had brought my moulds from the chateau to make musket balls. When you made your own you knew their quality. The ones we had were rarely round and therefore rarely accurate.

  I looked to the north and the land of our enemies and thought about the life I would soon be leading. I would be fighting soldiers who were more experienced and led by officers who knew what they were doing. Our regiment was well led but I would see the infantry officers and knew that they had neither knowledge nor experience, just courage.

  Chapter 3

  We camped, that night, close to Liege. It was the beginning of many uncomfortable nights until my body adjusted to the rigours of the campaign. I had to learn how to be on duty for fours hours a night and then still ride for ten hours a day. The hard life at Breteuil stood me in good stead. The next morning Jean and the sergeant took us out on our first patrol. There were twenty men in our troop which was the smallest in the regiment. I didn’t mind that for it meant that I knew my comrades well. Claude had been promoted to sergeant and we had to salute the new Sergeant Claude Alain. He took our smiles in good part. Until the day before our arrival he had been one of the boys but the new regiment meant that many men had to be promoted.

  We were the only cavalry available and we were spread very thinly. We headed towards the coast. We had seen no signs of the British or the Dutch but they were likely to be nearer to the coast. Anyone we met would be an enemy. There were Austrians as well as Brunswickers and Hanoverians and they were all looking to bring the rabble that was the French Army to battle.

  The flat land we were travelling through made scouting difficult. The roads were lined with hedgerows and they twisted and turned this way and that. It was after just such a twist that we encountered the enemy for the first time. I was in the middle of the small column and the first I knew was when there was the pop of muskets. I heard Sergeant Alain shout, “Draw sabres! Forward!”

  I drew my weapon and kicked hard into Killer’s sides. I had not renamed the beast for he didn’t seem to mind his name. He responded instantly. As I turned the corner I saw the red uniforms of the British cavalry disappearing along the road. There were two men lying on the ground. One was dead but the other was wounded. We galloped for a couple of hundred yards but it was unlikely that we would be able to catch the rest of the horsemen. The trumpeter sounded recall and we gathered around the two soldiers. They were English. Jean waved me over, “Trooper Macgregor come and question this man.” I dismounted and gave my reins to Pierre.

  “Sir. What do I ask him?”

  “Find out all you can. Your English will be better than mine and he might tell you more than he would me. We need to know where their army is.”

  I saw that he had been struck in the leg with a sabre and he was bleeding. I tore the shirt from his dead companion into strips and bound his wound. He was staring at the horsemen around him. I suspected he was worried for his life. “What is your name?”

  He almost jumped into the air and I suppressed a smile. “You’re Scottish! What are you doing in a French uniform?”

  “No I am half Scottish and half French and as you can see from the uniform I am fighting for my French half. What is your name and what is your unit?”

  “Trooper Davy Brown of the 7th Queen’s Own Hussars.” He did not sound like my mother. Some of his words were hard to understand but I managed to decipher them.

  “Where is your regiment?”

  He looked confused as he pointed west. ”Near Charleroi.”

  “Are there any infantry there?”

  He suddenly seemed to realise that I was not a fellow Briton but an enemy. “Bugger off frog!” I had never come across that swear word before but his meaning was obvious. He spat at me. I did not blame him. I could understand his emotions. To him I was a t
raitor.

  I stood. “They are close to Charleroi, sir.”

  “Damn that means they are threatening our lines of communication. Put him on his horse and let us return to the colonel. He needs to know this.” We tied the prisoner’s hands and mounted him on a horse. Louis led him.

  As we rode back Pierre asked, “You speak good English.”

  I nodded. “I am half Scottish and my mother only ever spoke English to me.”

  “That is handy; especially as we will be fighting the English.”

  I looked at the trooper we had captured. His horse was not in good condition and I noticed that his uniform was a red hue. It was tighter fitting than ours. On his head he wore a helmet. It looked like it could take a blow. Our mirliton caps, a sort of early shako, would crumple when struck by anything. The turban which surrounded ours could, at least, be used as a sort of scarf in the cold. On the whole I preferred our uniform. The green uniforms afforded us more chance of avoiding detection as we could blend into vegetation. He did however have a look of grim determination about him, even when captured which I found I admired. He had not given up just because he had been captured. I was lulled into a false sense of security by our first encounter with the English. I thought all our enemies would be as easy to defeat. The next few would not be as successful.