‘You seem surprised,’ John remarked icily.
‘Let us say your eagerness to press on to Amsterdam does not accord with your reputation; but I would not have you report back to your brother that I have been uncivil to you, or insubordinate to His Royal Highness of York.’
‘I am not a spy.’
‘I just said you were a sensible man, and a sensible man would believe otherwise.’ John said nothing. Essen’s lips twitched. ‘Whatever your role, my lord, I am pleased to find there are gentlemen in His Britannic Majesty’s army. I only hope there are men of action as well as men of honour.’
It was a rather back-handed compliment but John knew it was intended as an apology of sorts. He gave a stiff bow. ‘I trust we will rise to your expectations.’
‘I hope so,’ Essen said darkly. ‘And that before long, or General Brune will make another Zurich of us.’
****
Abercromby got his way, but only because the weather, rather than improving, got worse. John and his troops spent two nights encamped on the sand dunes surrounding Egmont-op-Zee, wet, cold and utterly wretched, until they were ordered to march into the town and join with General Abercromby’s division. Egmont, on the sea-front, offered little protection from the driving rain or the wind slicing off the waves like a salty blade; but at least John could finally change into dry clothes, shave off his three-day-accumulation of stubble, and enjoy some of the benefits of civilisation.
Sunday 6th October dawned dry but misty. News arrived after breakfast from the Duke of York’s new headquarters at Alkmaar that General Coote was ordered to take Limmen, General d’Oyly to take Ackersloot, and Essen’s Russians to take Bakkum. Abercromby’s division, however – and John’s brigade – would not be wanted until the next move had been decided, and Abercromby’s aide informed John there would probably be another military council after the three small towns had been taken.
The tolling of the church bells calling the people of Egmont to worship was soon drowned out by the rattle of musketry and the booming of cannons. Towards noon, news arrived that all three towns had fallen, the enemy falling back on Castricum and Beverwijk. It was not a moment too soon, for a crash of thunder preceded a torrent of rain so dense it was impossible even to see the towering dunes fringing the village to the landward side.
The gunfire, however, proceeded uninterrupted. Shortly after one o’clock John was sitting down to luncheon when Captain Chetham burst breathlessly into his quarters. ‘My lord, General Abercromby has sent word. The Russians require your assistance at Castricum.’
John was already strapping on his sword, but at Chetham’s words he looked up in astonishment. ‘Castricum? What in God’s name is Essen doing out there?’
Coote, d’Oyly and Essen had been given strict instructions to await further orders after taking Limmen, Ackersloot and Bakkum; assuming the others had obeyed orders, Essen would be miles from the nearest reinforcements. John shook his head. A few days ago, Essen’s reluctance to leave Schoorl had cost the British a decisive victory. Now his eagerness to press the enemy in their stronghold was going to put John and his men in danger.
John found his men arrayed a little way out of Egmont, just at the point where the dunes began their disorderly climb. The brigade had washed and shaved but their sodden uniforms were still caked with sand and mud. Many of them must have been thinking wistfully of their life as militiamen, quartered in the taverns and farmhouses of the county in which they had been born. John himself experienced a momentary vision, as though Mary were standing before him, the lace of her cap snatching in the wind. “Come home to me.” Her words echoed in his mind so clearly he glanced round, half-expecting to see her behind him, but Mary was in England and every mile between them ached like a wound. John dug his spurs into his horse’s flank. ‘Brigade! Prepare to march!’
It was seven miles from Egmont to the outskirts of Castricum. The brigade marched in column, mud spattering the men’s black boots as they passed down the waterlogged roads. Nothing moved but the grey herons peering impassively at the rain-ringed surface of the water channels cutting through the landscape. They flew off in a silent, ungainly fashion at the brigade’s approach. The men marched with their arms over their musket locks to keep them as dry as possible, but their cartridge boxes must have been soaked through and already livid patches of rust had begun to disfigure the burnished metal of the musket barrels.
On the outskirts of Binnen there was a thunder of hooves. Three Russian officers approached from the left. John recognised General Sedmoratski accompanied by two aides. The Russian general swept off his hat with a flourish that sent droplets of water flying into the air. ‘Milord! You are just in time!’
‘General Sedmoratski!’ John brought his mount closer to the Russian general. ‘What has happened here? Why has General Essen attempted to assault Castricum?’
Sedmoratski was flushed and out of breath, and mopping ineffectually at his handsome, strong-boned face with a sodden handkerchief. ‘It was a trap, milord. Some prisoners we took this morning at Bakkum gave us false information that General Brune had failed to complete his fortifications at Castricum. General Essen expected no resistance. We held Castricum for an hour this morning, but the enemy sent in reinforcements and chased us from the town.’
‘Where is General Essen now?’ John said. Sedmoratski gestured at the half-flooded farmlands separating Binnen from the coast. ‘Have any other reinforcements arrived?’
‘General Abercromby reached us an hour ago from Egmont. General d’Oyly and General Hutchinson have been sent to support us outside the town gates, but I do not know if they have managed to reach General Essen.’
‘What do you wish us to do?’ John asked.
‘Continue to Castricum. Word is the French have sent their cavalry under General Brune himself.’ Sedmoratski gave John a taut look, and finished, ‘And hurry.’
The firing got louder and the mist got denser as they approached Castricum. What had been meant to be a simple manoeuvre pushing the British lines forwards had turned into a desperate battle in poor visibility. John and his men passed dozens of badly wounded men and several corpses. The grass here was flattened, the mud churned up by marching feet.
They made contact with General Hutchinson a half hour later. Hutchinson had been forced to retreat from the town and was regrouping when John found him. The young general’s coat was spattered with earth and blood; he looked exhausted, but explained the situation to John as succinctly as possible. The British and Russians had forced the enemy back onto Castricum, but General Abercromby was having trouble re-entering the town. ‘He’s had to retreat to the heights above Egmont. From there he has kept the enemy at bay, but they have three batteries outside Castricum and all our assaults have been repulsed.’ That explained the sound of heavy artillery John could hear over the constant fire of musketry. ‘The General has just sent me a message ordering me to strengthen the Russians on the left of the town. Last reports were the Russians had been forced back again. I am certain your brigade will not be de trop.’
‘Do we know where our allies are?’ John asked, peering into the mist. Hutchinson raised his eyes to the low-hanging clouds.
‘Be careful, my lord.’
So it was that John found himself once more leaving the flatland paths for the sodden sand that sucked at his horse’s hooves and layered itself across everything in a thin film. The dunes here were shallower than the massive, forest-fringed sand hills at Schoorl, but they still formed an impressive network of hills and valleys edged with dense scrub, and John wanted to keep well away from them. He had lost Hutchinson’s brigade to his left. They were close, but although it was only about four o’clock in the afternoon, the mist had already blotted out the sun, and it felt like dusk.
As the brigade approached the walls of Castricum the sound of firing grew louder. Reports brought back by the brigade’s skirmishing party suggested the Russians were very close, and John ordered each battalion to form a line in t
he expectation of meeting the Allies at any moment. The men took a few minutes to complete the manoeuvre, tired from their march and unnerved by the booming of cannons and the rattling of musketry in the gloom. John’s insides were in knots. He felt as though he was wearing a cold, wet blindfold, and every shadow looming out of the mist was a potential enemy.
The rain had eased, but the mist rising from the canals and the gun-smoke hanging over the fields combined so thickly that John did not see the Russians until they were a couple of hundred yards away. The green-coated troops were running in some disorder, their white breeches turned grey with mud. Hardly any of them carried muskets; some stumbled and fell, and were trampled by their colleagues following.
‘What on earth…?’ Colonel Cholmondeley muttered, moments before the Russians ran headlong into the 2nd Battalion of the 4th.
The confusion was instantaneous. John’s men stood their ground, but the Russians desperately tried to break their way through, shouting something chilling in their guttural language that John could not understand.
‘Damn you!’ Hodgson’s terrifying baritone rose above the chaos. He rode among the fleeing Russians, beating at them with the flat of his sword, but there were too many. ‘Get back, you dogs! Get back!’
John could hear a dull rumble, like thunder preceding a storm. ‘What has happened? Where is their commander?’ he called out to Chetham, but the aide was staring at something beyond the furred caps of the Russian soldiers, his eyes round and his mouth hanging open. John followed Chetham’s gaze, and saw for the first time what the Russians were running from.
A dark shadow moved across the field and resolved itself into a line of horses – hundreds of horses, the cuirasses of their riders winking as they hammered across the muddy soil. John could see the clumps of earth thrown up by the hooves; he heard an officer bark out an order in French, then the rasp of metal against leather as hundreds of curved swords left their scabbards.
Cavalry.
His ears whistled. He pulled at his horse’s reins so abruptly it staggered, and turned to shout at Cholmondeley, who was nearest. ‘Brigade! Form square!’
The last time his men had performed that manoeuvre had been on Barham Down, before the Prince of Wales. The memory of that warm, blue-skied day raced through his mind – the smell of fresh grass, the bright yellow of the cowslips, the peace. They had had all the time in the world to form their square. Now, they had seconds at most – and even as John heard the frantic efforts of his men to follow his orders, he knew it was too late.
The French cavalry thundered into the flank of the militia-trained 4th with the force of an earthquake.
John heard Colonel McMurdo of the 31st shout, ‘Give fire!’
Tiny bursts of light broke the gloom. Probably only about half the muskets went off in the damp, and the French cavalry were already among the 4th. Fear rose off the scarlet ranks like a tangible thing. The routed Russians had shaken them, and the sight of their colleagues being cut down by the enemy cavalry had destroyed any courage they had left.
‘Keep the line!’ Colonel Hodgson bellowed, throwing his horse forwards with a kick of his spurs, but panic was already spreading. The enemy broke easily through the thin ranks, bringing their swords down with fatal effect. They aimed for the officers: they knew what they were doing. Colonel Dickson, riding along the broken line trying to encourage his men, was sliced from his horse by an enemy sabre.
Even the most seasoned troops could not have withstood the power of the charge, but these were not seasoned troops. Many of them still wore their militia uniforms. As the bodies began to litter the ground, John knew many of them would never wear anything else.
‘Brigade!’ John shouted. ‘Stand firm! Stand firm!’
It was useless. He could barely hear his own voice above the chaos.
‘We must fall back, my lord,’ Hodgson urged. The officer’s face dripped with moisture from the rain; his eyes were round with fear, something John had never thought to see in the seasoned veteran’s face. John exchanged a helpless look with Hodgson then raised his sword.
‘Fall back!’ he shouted, forcing his voice to carry until it cracked. ‘Form square to the rear!’ To Chetham: ‘Go to General Hutchinson and get help. Quickly.’
Chetham sped off. The brigade moved more slowly than John would have liked, half-paralysed with terror. John followed the alarmingly unstable ranks as they moved to the rear, picking their way over the bodies of their fallen colleagues – so many bodies. John tried not to look at them.
‘Form square!’ Hodgson bellowed the refrain. ‘Form square, good God, unless you want to die!’
The cavalry were coming for another charge, but the enemy infantry were also approaching. John could hear the tramp of their feet before he saw their columns piercing through the mist, silhouetted against Castricum’s grey walls. Unlike his brigade, these were seasoned troops. He watched in horrified fascination as the great-coated figures fanned out into line in a fluid, organic movement, then gave fire. Flame burst through the mist in an explosion of noise, and then all John could hear was shouting – cries of fury from the French, screams of terror and pain as more of his men suffered and died.
‘Prepare to give fire!’ John cried.
The front ranks of the squares dropped to their knees and those standing behind fumbled with their muskets.
‘Load!’ John shouted into the darkness. ‘Present and fire!’
A ragged volley answered him. Before his brigade managed to load another shot the enemy fired a second time. The 3rd Battalion of the 4th presented and fired, but the enemy responded and yet more of John’s men dropped. John watched it all as though from a distance. He could see the fear on his men’s faces, and taste their despair as their muskets misfired with powder that had grown damper and damper all day.
Where was everyone else? No help could be expected from the Russians, but flashes of fire all along the distant sand hills towards Egmont told John that the rest of Abercromby’s division was not far off. More men had fallen; the ranks closed up over the dead and wounded. Just as John began to think he, too, would die on this strip of scrub-covered sand, trapped between barren fields and the sea, Chetham reappeared. He leaned over his horse’s neck and gasped, unable to say anything but to point at a line of red-coated soldiers approaching from the left. They fired and the enemy paused, slowed for a moment in its onslaught.
‘General Hutchinson,’ Chetham managed. ‘Lord Paget’s cavalry coming.’
Relief flooded John’s veins so fast he felt dizzy, but then the enemy fired again. A few yards away from him, Colonel Hodgson gasped and fell off his horse. John looked down at him in consternation, then raised his sword and shouted, ‘Brigade! Prime and load!’
Fingers slippery with rain fumbled in cartridge boxes for sodden paper-wrapped charges. Ramrods flashed up and down barrels with a metallic whistling sound. John raised his sword. ‘Make ready! Give fi—’
A rumble of enemy musketry interrupted him. John felt a shock to his shoulder as though he had been whipped. His sword flew out of his hand and his horse staggered back. Beside him Chetham started forwards with a cry. John wondered what Chetham was shouting about, until he saw his coat half-ripped from his shoulders and the blood seeping through his shirt. Only then did he feel the pain, surging down his arm as though his blood flowed full of knives.
Chapter Twenty-five
November 1799
‘Fools!’ Essen’s staccato French echoed about the Horse Guards council chamber. He must have spoken loudly enough to be heard in the street, where London’s citizens went up and down Whitehall about their business. ‘Fools, all of you. The Austrians have betrayed us in Switzerland, and you have ruined us with your incompetence. God help Russia, for nobody else can!’
John rubbed his thumb over the stem of his wineglass. He glanced down the table at the other generals. This was the first meeting they had held since returning from Holland bereft of victory. General Pulteney was still in
Holland, overseeing the evacuation of the army, but John had landed at Yarmouth at the end of October and made his way to London, where he and the other generals had been summoned immediately to council with the Duke of York. John had not had time to unpack; he had barely had a moment to see his wife. He wished heartily he were elsewhere, for the atmosphere of defeat was almost as stifling as Essen’s bitterness.
‘General Essen,’ Abercromby said. ‘The campaign in Switzerland was over before we struck a single blow in Holland. The outcome of our campaign would not have averted General Suvorov’s defeat. You cannot hold the British Government responsible for what happened at Zurich.’
‘Responsible!’ Essen spluttered. ‘What do you know of responsibility? Eight thousand Russian troops have been wasted – 8,000 troops that might have saved Suvorov! Now they will moulder away on your godforsaken islands of Jersey and Guernsey until your government decides what to do with them. Well, they are your responsibility now – prisoners in all but name!’
‘You forget yourself!’ Abercromby snapped. ‘Had you followed orders on the 6th of October—’
‘Had you marched to our aid on the 19th of September,’ Essen interrupted, ‘we would, perhaps, be celebrating the capture of Amsterdam. As for your orders, I have always had to interpret them as best I could.’
Across the table the Duke of York poured himself another glass of claret. John, too, helped himself, wincing as his wounded arm throbbed with the effort. The shot he had received outside Castricum had proven to be nothing but a spent ball, but although the stitches had long ago been removed the wound remained tender, a pulsing reminder of the disappointment of the Dutch campaign.
The battle for Castricum had continued long into the night. Although the French and Dutch had retreated to Beverwijk, Abercromby decided not to pursue them in the face of worsening weather and increasingly stretched lines of supply. The day after the assault on Castricum the British and Russians had marched 30 miles back to their old positions behind the Zijpe canal. Lashed by wind and rain, trapped by the enemy, and with marsh fever spreading through the ranks, the only viable strategy had been to negotiate. General Brune had eventually permitted the entire Allied army to evacuate Holland unmolested, on condition that the British government release 8,000 French prisoners of war. The memory made John reach again for the decanter.
Earl of Shadows Page 27