by Tom Anderson
HOCHE: No. For that is what separates us.
FOX: Perhaps. As it is, you will never see British troops invading Paris, so the question is moot.
HOCHE (laughs): I am glad you have such a high opinion of our prospects, Prime Minister!
FOX: I… do not. Rest assured that British troops will one day march through Paris. And it will burn.
(pause)
HOCHE: …what?
FOX: It is simply certain that you shall not see it, General.
HOCHE follows FOX’s gaze – his eyes widen – FOX raises the cigar so the audience may see the cord trailing from it, across the floor and vanishing into the cellar – the sparks travelling along it –
HOCHE: Merde!
*
From: “A Short Guide to Revolutionary French Regiments” by Pascal Dobin (1917)—
56e Légère: Originating chiefly from Gascony, founded 1796 by Henri Aubert (exec. 1798 by Robespierre for allegedly harbouring dissidents); battle honours include Saint-Dié, Karlsruhe, Pau, and theoretically Charing Cross… regiment dissolved 1807 due to every soldier being killed in the detonation of the magazines concealed beneath Ten Downing Street… colours never recovered from rubble…
Chapter #69: By Inferno’s Light
London’s burning, London’s burning,
Fetch the engines, fetch the engines,
Fire, fire! Fire, fire!
Pour on water! Pour on water!
- trad. English rhyme, dating from the First Great Fire of London (1666)
*
From: “Albion’s Peril: The Invasion of England” by Sir Hubert Pendleton (1951)—
Editor’s note: overly long asides have been excised
The Second Great Fire of London was… perhaps an inevitable consequence of the violent removal of Hoche from the French chain of command… the manner of his death and the ensuing confusion combined with the frustration and desire for revenge of his subordinates… Colonel Saissons assumed command over the remains of Hoche’s primary force, but proved inadequate in the role, having been overshadowed by the dynamic and dictatorial general who had chosen him for second-in-command… Saissons hesitated and sent runners to contact Brigade General Gabin at the Tower, asking him to take command, which delayed matters…
The exact circumstances of how the fire began has been hotly debated (no pun intended). Some analysts have argued that it was Fox’s own self-sacrifice that began the blaze, burning debris from Downing Street spreading the conflagration to neighbouring streets. Others have claimed that it was an act of revenge by Hoche’s troops for his death, pointing out parallels to acts in the Rape of Rome. Others still claim it was deliberate policy on the part of Saissons, or that it was the inadvertent result of a rocket fired by La Tempête or hot-shot from the bomb-ships. Whatever the cause, singular or plural, recent work by Douglas and Paolini (Trans. Jou. Eur. Hist. Analys., Volume III, 1944) strongly supports the idea that the blaze began before Gabin knew of Hoche’s death – though he may have heard the explosion and observed the resulting smoke cloud.
The fire was soon spreading and Gabin ordered the withdrawal of his forces from London, moving northwards toward peripheral towns and villages such as Islington and Hackney. Saissons dithered and ended up with his own troops stretched out in a long, badly-organised chain through several streets as they tried to join up with Gabin. In this state, they were vulnerable to attacks by enraged Londoners, including the first nascent British Kleinkriegers…
…of course the whole of this could have been avoided if Hoche had decided not to treat with Fox and had sent his troops in to arrest him. It has been suggested that this was because he did not have sufficient soldiers on the ground, as Modigliani’s Italians had yet to appear. Although some have tried to claim that the necessary following interpretation of events is simply British revanchist propaganda, a cooler-headed analysis by Lavochkin (Zhurnal Staryna, Volume XIV, 1947) concluded that there is at least some validity to the traditional reasoning. The traditional belief in question, of course, being that Britain was saved from total conquest and subjugation by the action of just three hundred men…
*
From: “The New Spartans”, play by John Armstrong Cleaver (1903), lines taken from second film adaptation (1951)—
MAJOR JOHN ASHCROFT: Ready, men, we… (checks telescope) My God! There’s… there’s thousands of them… they’re all along the horizon… I…
SERGEANT PAUL BLOUNT: (in a stage whisper) With all due respect sir, if you don’t clam up from that kind of talk, I’ll cut your [CENSORED] head off.
ASHCROFT is silent, still gawping as he looks through the spyglass. BLOUNT turns and addresses the nervous-looking troops.
BLOUNT: All right men! There’s three hundred of us and looks like, sir?
ASHCROFT (pale): Five thousand, six?
BLOUNT: ‘Fousands of ‘em, lads! Know what that means!
CORPORAL HUSSEY: Not fair odds, sir!
BLOUNT: Exactly, you damn Paddy traitor – there’s only twenty of them for each of us. Now you’re all just going to take your fair share and no fighting over it!
(Nervous laughter among troops)
BLOUNT: Come on, men. Those froggie [CENSORED] are heading for God’s own London town his very self. You’re Fifty-Second, aren’t you? I didn’t pick up the [CENSORED] Buffs by accident did I?
(Troops laugh more raucously)
HUSSEY: [CENSORED] the [CENSORED], bejasus! They can stop in Canterbury and beg confession from that [CENSORED] papist they call Archbishop these days!
BLOUNT: [CENSORED] right, Corporal. Men, half of you have got family on the River. Do you want these Jacobin blackguards raping and pillaging their way through London town?
(Men shout ‘NO!’)
BLOUNT: Can we kill them all before they do?
(Men shout ‘YES!’)
BLOUNT: [CENSORED] off, of course we can’t. But we can [CENSORED] well take down as many of them with us as we can. And every God[CENSORED] frog we put a ball in is one less frog who’ll try to rape your girl or slit your mother’s throat.
(Men look uncertain)
BLOUNT: I’m right sir, aren’t I?
ASHCROFT looks at him and swallows.
ASHCROFT: Of… of course Sergeant Blount is right, men! This is where we make a stand! This is where we draw the line! The die is cast, the Rubicon is crossed-
BLOUNT: Yes, sir, yes. Now shall we deploy in line?
ASHCROFT: --alea iacta est – what? Yes, yes, of course. (shouts to men) Do you want to live forever?!
(Men cheer and begin deploying into line – musket balls begin flying overhead)
ITALIAN TROOPS (distantly): Viva il Generale!
BLOUNT: Hear their froggie talk, men? Shut their mouths with your balls!
HUSSEY: Um, sarge, you might want to rephrase that…
BLOUNT: Shut up, you [CENSORED] mick! (to Men) PREEE-SENT!
ASHCROFT: Show them what the Fifty-Second are made of! Die well, men!
BLOUNT: And DIE HARD! (shouting) FIRE!
*
Excerpts from “Thermopylae-on-the-Downs”, poem by Sir George Tennyson (1857) –
Frenchmen to the left of them,
Frenchmen to the right of them,
Frenchmen in front of them,
Volleyed and thundered,
Stormed at with blade and gun,
‘Tween the Downs ‘neath the sun,
In the Gates of London,
Stood the three hundred.
Pans flashing with each ball,
A red-coated solid wall,
Their bright colours would not fall,
While the world wondered.
Held through the powder-smoke,
Their line could not be broke,
Each bayonet stroke,
Shattered and sundered.
Steam gun roared in the night,
Shell turned the dark to light,
All that could end the fight,
Of the three hu
ndred.
There they died hard and well,
There the great heroes fell,
There in the mouth of Hell,
While brash Hoche had blundered.
Oh what a stand they made!
Ne’er shall their glory fade!
Remember that stand they made!
Remember three hundred!
*
From: “Albion’s Peril: The Invasion of England” by Sir Hubert Pendleton (1951)—
The stand of Captain Ashcroft’s Men at the Battle of the North Downs is one of the most extraordinary tales of the Jacobin Wars, a conflict scarcely lacking in memorable stories. The courage of the three hundred (actually 317), a single company of the 52nd (West Kent) Regiment, ever after known as “The Diehards” for that very stand, is legendary and has formed a part of the British national mythos.[74] It was mere happenstance that they happened to be in the Valley of the Darent, the gap in the North Downs, when Modigliani approached it. They had fallen behind the main part of the 52nd as it moved, too slowly, to meet Modigliani in southern Kent, due to having to escort slow-moving supply carts. Their stand only worked, of course, because General Modigliani was using the Guerre d’éclair strategy, having crossed Kent in less than two days, and had outrun even Cugnot steam-driven artillery.
Not only did the “New Spartans” possibly save Britain from conquest by delaying Modigliani from meeting up with Hoche, but they also demonstrated how to beat the Guerre d’éclair. The French strategy relied on marching columns of trained men who could be called upon to use their muskets when required but whose main form of attack was simply panicking the enemy by their numbers, solid mass, and precise discipline. It had worked on British troops before, during the Seigneur Offensive. But the Three Hundred had decided to make their stand and die there, most of them having families in London and preferring to kill as many “French” (being unaware Modigliani’s men were Italian) as possible. They sought merely to force Modigliani to pay heavily for their defeat, and thus reduce the number of foes who could ravage London. The “New Spartans” had nothing to lose, so they made their stand even in the face of overwhelming numbers, something which Modigliani’s troops had never been faced with before. And this, combined with the speed of musketry of an elite British regiment like the 52nd – four rounds a minute – meant that even the veteran Italians broke and shattered against the killing wall.
Cavalry would have forced the British to form square and made them easy targets for massed musket fire. But Modigliani had no cavalry. It had been judged too difficult to bring horses along for the invasion, taking up too much capacity in the fleet. It had seemed a reasonable decision at the time for the planned attack on the Dutch coastal cities, considering the small percentage of cavalry in the French Republican Army and the fact that Boulanger would probably need it all for the invasion of Flanders, but now…
Modigliani had no choice but to wait for his artillery to catch up. He knew nonetheless that time was of the essence and that if he did not keep moving, he could be trapped from behind by one of the slower-moving British regiments, such as the remainder of the 52nd. So he continued hurling men into the meat grinder, lucky musket balls picking off a few of the Three Hundred with each pas-de-charge, but losing as many as five soldiers for every Briton killed. If his troops had indeed been, as the Three Hundred assumed, French, then they would probably have had the elite Tirailleur light company armed with rifles that could have picked off the musket-wielding British from outside their range. But Hoche had never got around to setting up an Italian Tirailleur corps, and so Modigliani was stuck.
Seven hours later, as it grew dark, the steam-guns finally arrived and Modigliani quickly dealt with the vulnerable line of the approximately two hundred remaining Diehards, slaughtering them with canister. None were taken alive. The Italians were in no mood for mercy after their bloodbath and the Kentish Men did not ask for it. Their story only survives because Ashcroft had sent Baines, the drummer boy, to Sevenoaks to send a message on for reinforcements – which, with the meltdown elsewhere, never came.
Modigliani pressed on and his tired surviving men, perhaps six and a half thousand, finally beheld London.
And it was on fire.
Chapter #70: In Sad Affliction’s Darksome Night
We have also granted to all freemen of our kingdom, for us and our heirs forever, all the underwritten liberties, to be had and held by them and their heirs, of us and our heirs forever.
- Clause 1, Magna Carta (1215)
*
From: “Albion’s Peril: The Invasion of England” by Sir Hubert Pendleton (1951)—
The first of April, 1807, was one All Fools’ Day that threatened to make fools of all indeed. The fires of London guttered and smoked, but slowly burned out, quenched by tireless work by the fire brigades and Hoche’s remaining troops. Numerous Frenchmen had been caught up in the flames and burned to death, along with many more Londoners, but rather more of Hoche’s force had died in vicious back-alley battles with local mobs who accused them of starting the fire. Though he was not around to see it, once more Lazare Hoche was handed the blame for the rape of a city that he had not ordered.
By the time that day dawned, General Modigliani had arrived and took control in his inimitable way, cracking down harshly on the London mobs. Soon a flayed bravo hung from every pub sign. Modigliani had had the foresight to bring dragoons along, true dragoons, cavalrymen who could still fight effectively as infantry. The vicissitudes of the plan to invade the Netherlands, then England, meant that bringing horses along had not been an option – but Modigliani had always been one to take la maraude a step further even than his French tutors. London held some of the finest stables in London, and not all of their occupants were now charred meat. Brigade General Gabin, technically Hoche’s slight superior and a Frenchman to boot, abandoned strict Linnaean Racism in the face of the situation and declared he was taking his troops outside London to press the conquest. The truth was simply that he was terrified of Modigliani’s reputation; though the burning of London had been none of his doing, it would scarcely be out of character.
It was, however, one of Modigliani’s cavalry groups rather than Gabin’s infantry that perpetrated the crime of the century. That ground has, of course, been trod over and over again for the past century and a half, with countless speculative romances pondering if only. Suffice to say that the primary reasons for the lateness of the Royal Family’s departure from St James’s Palace[75] were indecision on the part of the King, and the fact that the head of the Life Guards, Colonel Andrew Howrey, insisted on gathering a full escort before they retreated. The former was largely noble in intent, King Henry agonising about abandoning the people of London to the French onslaught and (less altruistically) how it would appear if he were painted as a craven who bolted before the legions of the Administration. However, there was also the issue of Queen Diana,[76] who demanded that they make for Windsor and the hopeful safety of Windsor Castle. By contrast the envoys from Whitehall instead said that the King should join with the political and civil officials fleeing north along the Great North Road to Fort Rockingham.
The result of this delay and indecision was that the royal carriages had yet to leave St James’s as the catastrophic blast of Downing Street exploding echoed across London. The King then understandably but fatally decided to stay around to try to ascertain what had happened – what if the blast had been part of a battle, a French magazine going up? He did not want to be caught in flight if the French had been repulsed. On the other hand, he insisted that Queen Diana and Princess Augusta (four years old) continue on to Fort Rockingham, but the Queen repeated her pleas for Windsor, and in the end the rest of the Royal Family did not go to either refuge.
It was only when Colonel Howrey rode back to report the flames engulfing London that Henry was finally persuaded that it was time to go. All the same, he looked back all the way, tears streaming down his cheeks, as the dome of St Paul’s first blackened and then
fell in on itself. “My London,” he said quietly to himself, “My London… oh, how I leave my London!”
…
…the damage to the carriage wheel had been repaired quickly enough, but nonetheless the time had been lost, and at Tottenham the King’s carriage was intercepted by a group of Modigliani’s dragoon outriders. The Life Guards fought hard and bravely, but the Italians outnumbered them, for Howrey had never gained the reinforcements he wanted with the fires of London creating a mass confusion. The Guards all died then and there. All save Private Matthew Sedgwick, who would have not earned even a footnote in history were it not for the fact that some anonymous Italian dragoon misaimed his sabre and merely cuffed him with the guard, knocking out the young man. His body went unnoticed amid all the others, the blood on the road blurring all the red coats into one…
…the King’s carriage door was torn open by the dismounted dragoons. Before them sat King Henry IX of Great Britain and of Ireland, Emperor Henry of North America, and Elector Heinrich of Hanover. A young man, just thirty years old. Known for being a reformist, ‘King Radical’ even, a sympathiser with liberals, and thanks to his position on slavery, even a bleeding heart.