He took delivery of his uniforms and civilian garments from Stainer, bought a double-barrelled shotgun from Wheatley, a twelve-bore that would take a pistol ball as load if he should be in the way of big game ever, not that he had any great desire to do so, he could not imagine that shooting at an animal could be in any way as exciting as exchanging fire with an armed man.
He wore his civilian dress for the whole period, except twice when he attended the Assembly, the subscription dance held monthly and open only to the genteel and the respectable rich. His father had insisted that the family attend ever since it had first been intimated to him that an application for tickets would be favourably received; now, a son in respectable uniform – Regular, not Militia – was an even greater reason to be seen.
Septimus made little resistance to his father’s demands – to be an accepted merchant was a fine thing, to have a son a member of the lesser gentry by profession was a step up that the Old Man was entitled to be pleased about. Captain Howton had talked to Septimus about such things, had as well pointed out that he would wish to marry in a few years, should register himself, as it were, as a possible husband for a daughter of the squirearchy.
He recalled Howton’s words: “Lieutenants may not marry; captains can marry; majors should marry; colonels must marry.’ The rule is simple and inexorable - subalterns can rarely provide a wife with respectable quarters, and field officers have social responsibilities for which a hostess is essential - and a war is coming, with promotion much faster than in peacetime. War means one of two things to an officer, a soldier, that is: death or disability on the one hand, promotion on the other. You may be made-up on the field or buy into dead man’s shoes. A year of war and I shall almost certainly be a major, Septimus, and you can be captain then. You would want probably five more years of experience before seeking your majority, but it has been done in less. A long war and you could be a lieutenant-colonel in your thirties; or you could be a cripple; or you could be dead. Of ten chances, Septimus, two say retirement as sick or hurt and one is the graveyard, but seven say promotion, because the army grows in wartime. New regiments, expanded second battalions, all will need officers, all of whom will have their responsibilities. So be sure you are not forgotten in your home town, Septimus, let the mamas see your face and put your name on their lists of eligible young men.”
So Septimus dressed in full fig and went with his parents to dance and be seen.
Quite a few heads turned as they entered the Rooms – the bright scarlet of full dress drawing initial attention, the figure inside it holding the eye.
Septimus caught a glimpse of himself in a pier-glass as he entered, realised that he was really quite handsome in uniform. In an age when the average townsman stood little more than five foot three, he topped six foot and was strongly built, broader at shoulder than hip and the cut of his coat emphasizing the fact. His face was less round now, showed a determined jaw, and there was an alertness to the blue eyes; his lips were thin and firm, could be called cruel by the fanciful. His was not a face to be forgotten, that was for sure.
The master of ceremonies swept up to him, established his name, placed him in his encyclopaedic knowledge of the County and its worthies, simpered mightily and led him to a Miss Denham, in need of a partner and judged to be of appropriate status.
Miss Denham was young, nervous and rather flattered to be the first partner of the big soldier. They trod their half hour of the first pair of country dances, talking as they joined, enough to establish that each belonged to the upper crust of the merchant community, their fathers long known to each other. Miss Denham wondered that they should not have met before; Septimus was grimly aware of why they had not – erratic, non-inheriting younger sons were no company for the daughters of prudent men. He said only that he had been away a long time, learning to be a soldier.
The Honourable Lucasta Everholt graced the Assembly with her presence, chaperoned by a neighbouring mother with a hopeful unwed son, sixty thousands gleaming in his eyes. She was a pretty girl, Septimus noted, having hardly looked at her in their one close encounter. He made no attempt to join her in the dance, sure that he would be firmly rebuffed by the dame running escort on her – popular lore insisted that redcoats and heiresses had a fatal affinity, one for the other, and prudent mothers kept them well apart. She looked at him in puzzlement as they passed in the dance, unable to associate the farm labourer of a year or so before with the young officer of the evening. She sometimes dreamed of that half hour on the Downs, but could never be quite sure whether or not it was a nightmare; suffice it to say that she had determined that nothing similar would occur again, until she had a husband who, presumably, would have a right to take such liberties with her person. She was sure she had seen the tall young lieutenant but would not draw attention to herself by enquiring who he was. She made a point of attending the next Assembly and discovered there, by stretching her ears, that he was a Lieutenant Pearce, a merchant’s second son, once thought to be ‘unsteady’ but showing particularly well as a soldier. She wished him good fortune, sufficiently intelligent to know that war was coming and that bold young soldiers needed more than their fair share of luck when the cannon fired.
Man of Conflict Series
BOOK ONE
Chapter Five
May came and Septimus rode back to Bristol, Cooper sleek and well-fed behind him, the job-horse fat and resigned to being on the road again but not best pleased at the mule’s jealous nips at it for taking up its master.
Good weather attended the packet and Septimus reached the barracks three days before his time, to be welcomed with the news that an active war was now a certainty and that the battalion was to be posted foreign, they had been warned to look to their readiness. They had not, of course, been given any intimation of just where they might be sent – frozen Canada or boiling India were equally likely.
Septimus was swept up into the frantic last-minute preparations, the extra drills as they practised the battlefield evolutions, shifting from column of route to line, to square, back to line and then into company squares. He took his company to the butts daily, honing the unthinking, mechanical perfection demanded of the simple musket, pushing the men to a steady four rounds a minute, ignoring the aim, demanding only that the barrel be held level, horizontal. Above all he insisted on obedience, every man to respond to every order instantly, all as one, trusting him to have given the correct instruction, while he looked quiet and confident. Again and again he told them that they were the best, that they would always win because their enemies were inferior, badly trained, poorly equipped, lesser men; they came to believe him and made his words true by doing so.
Colonel Allington had a little influence; his sister’s husband was a major-general and his dead wife had been of good family. A very unfashionable regiment of Lowland Scots disembarked at Cork and the New Foresters boarded their transports and were carried slowly to Falmouth. Once in the West Country the transports swung to anchor in the Roads and the troops stayed aboard; over a fortnight more transports arrived and naval line-of-battle ships and frigates and smaller vessels appeared. Finally an ungainly pair of bomb ketches, colliers converted to carry a pair of heavy mortars apiece, waddled into formation behind the seventy four and waited with the rest.
On their second day in harbour it had been finally explained to Colonel Allington that the New Foresters were to form part of an expeditionary force and they were to have the honour of leading an onslaught upon Revolutionary France that would soon bring the traitors to heel and restore the Monarchy, to the general applause of the French people. They would have to wait, ‘a little while’, while the other components of the force were brought together.
Allington responded immediately – he discovered a farm on the outskirts of the port where all of the battalion animals could be pastured, officers’ chargers and mules already fretting after a week in the holds of the transports, and organised their movement. How much it cost in bribes he did not disc
lose but the dockyard cooperated, allowing each transport to tie up at the wharves in turn. The opportunity was taken to dump the wives and children at the same time, much to their distress, the West Country being home to none of them.
The men, however, remained on board, confined to smelly, inadequate quarters, without exercise, able to perform only the most limited drill and inevitably getting into squabbles with each other and with the sailors of the crew. A few of the other ranks had a little money and bought liquor from shore boats; some could swim and attempted to desert so that within the week it became necessary to row guard boats around the troopers, keep them under permanent picket. Those officers who cared were reduced to near despair while the socialisers fumed because Allington would not allow them ashore, forced them to stay with their men, or aboard ship at least.
They remained nearly a month at anchor, without explanation or detailed orders, finally sailed one morning, again without explanation. A lieutenant from the seventy four came aboard on their second afternoon at sea, delivered a very slim packet to Allington and its like to each of the other transports in company. Allington called his officers together that evening as they closed the coast of Brittany.
“We are to land at some fishing village, just us, the New Foresters, gentlemen. The remainder of the expedition will be eight miles to our south-east at St Brieuc, whose quays will take all except us. One frigate and one mortar ketch will escort us. We have seen some action recently while the other battalions have been garrisoned in England, so we are seen as the best choice for detached status. Our orders are brief, delightfully so – we will hold the village and seek out cavalry who are due to rendezvous with us – some sort of local insurgents, it would appear. They will raise the royal standard and the local men will flock to their colours, us to provide a disciplined core. I have been given no times, no place, no details of rationing – the people will greet us, with open arms, it would seem.”
There was a horrible silence.
Allington nodded, smiled ruefully.
“Just so, gentlemen. Major Adams, as second in command you will hold the village with the left five companies while I take the remainder out. Put the village into sufficient defensive order to allow use of the harbour facilities under fire.”
There was a quiet buzz of whispers as the less intelligent among them had the order explained – Adams was to make a safe withdrawal possible, was to secure their inevitable retreat.
“I shall march out on our second morning, if the cavalry have not come to us, and shall look to probe not more than fifteen miles out on the road to Rennes, hopefully less. In the absence of a map I do not know where or what the nearest town of any size is, but shall not pass further than the first we come to.”
“Quartermaster, ammunition to be held at quayside for immediate use; all other stores to remain aboard ship – it will be inconvenient, I know, but not so great a problem as trying to reload under fire. Sixty rounds, standard issue, to the left companies, eighty to those accompanying me. Bread and beef for three days. Requisition pack animals and carts when we land, if there are any, and if possible, no more than two mules to each company, loaded with ammunition only.”
“I have nothing else to tell you, gentlemen – not even the name of the village where we shall be landed.”
Howton gathered Smith, Septimus and his sergeants together.
“We march in the dawn, the day after tomorrow, if nothing supervenes. Keep the men together. No access to alcohol. Feed them before we march. Do not permit any straggling – if any are unwell leave them behind as a baggage party. Check the men’s boots, issue new if necessary. Don’t abuse friendly civilians – we will be coming back on the same road in all probabilities, do not want farmers with fowling pieces waiting for us behind hedges. Watch for landmarks and memorise the route back, look behind you at frequent intervals – a road can look very different going in the opposite direction. Refill water bottles at every clean stream, before the men piss in it! Sentries out whenever we stop, no matter how friendly and Royalist the people are. Questions?”
There were none and the sergeants went off to attempt to ready the men, to stir them out of their month long lethargy.
“The colonel intends to commandeer a horse from the village if he can. I will march with the company and would recommend you two gentlemen to do the same.”
Later, leaning on the rail, Howton expanded on the situation for Septimus’ benefit; Smith had chosen to retire to the mess cabin.
“Listen to the men, Septimus, they know. All you will hear is the one comment. ‘It’s a cock-up!’ They know that too much is being left unsaid, because it is unknown. They have heard that we have no maps and no times for a rendezvous and they expect to see no friendly Frogs at all. Some Frog princeling has told some politician in Whitehall just how much his people love him – that’s why he has run away from France, of course. The politician thinks he might be right, or has been nudged into action by the King or his advisers and wants to keep them happy, so he has sent a first expedition to test the water. Horse Guards and the Admiralty don’t believe a word of it but can’t refuse, so they have sent a single ad hoc brigade of infantry, battalions that have never worked together under a general who knows none of them. No artillery. No British cavalry. One seventy four and half a dozen of smaller vessels under a rear-admiral. All very half-hearted – they don’t expect us to win so they have arranged it to seem no more than a raid, a pin-prick to test the Frogs, to see how quickly and efficiently they react to invasion. We are not expected to take any towns or hold any land, Septimus, we are here to make a demonstration, so, come the need, we shall fight like hell, and then – run like buggery!”
The fishing village lay in an inlet that provided shelter from the westerlies and was just big enough for four transports and two warships to lie, anchored bows and stern, but none could tie up at the tiny quay. Ships boats and requisitioned fishing smacks took them slowly ashore, thankful they were not attempting to land horses as well; as Allington had foreseen, the afternoon was well advanced before the battalion was on land and organised.
The frigate had a broadside of sixteen twelve pound long guns that could drive off any French field guns that came within range of the port, and the pair of eleven inch mortars on the bomb ketch could destroy any trenches or artillery emplacements sited within a mile of the inlet and forbid the track leading inland to any attackers. The village could be held for a week at least until the French brought in heavy siege guns and set them up in the hills under cover of darkness.
French speakers, one from the navy, the other a Jersey man who had fled an impending paternity into the New Foresters, and still, to the amaze of all, thought he had the better of the bargain, talked with the villagers and found them uninterested in either King or Revolution. The Bretons had quite enough to get on with, wringing a living from the Bay and their stony fields, without bothering with such fripperies as politics and uprisings. They were inclined to resent the English invasion, at first, but changed their mind when they were offered gold and silver coins for their fish and lobsters – real money, not the new, untrustworthy paper. The most they would admit was that they had heard of a rising, an insurrection, somewhere, but nowhere near them, they were thankful to say.
The five companies marched, Allington alone on horseback; the Light Company led, as was its function, and the other four tramped in its dust early on a bright, cloud-free summer morning.
“Hot by noon, roasting after. Best we make our mileage early, Septimus. Gives us time to set ourselves at our resting point, wherever it may be, as well.”
Once out of the valley behind the little port they found themselves up on moorland, bare of all except a few sheep and a shepherd hastily chivvying them out of the reach of hungry soldiers. The moorland was open country, patchily covered with gorse but with wide open expanses of turf; the patches of golden bloom were strikingly attractive and moved Septimus to comment that the landscape was similar to that of the heathla
nds outside Christchurch. Howton agreed, distinctly unhappy.
“Cavalry country, Septimus – shallow dales, no more than twenty or thirty feet deep with gentle slopes and no cover for us. A squadron of cavalry could lay up unseen until less than a quarter of a mile away, could force us to form square on one of the open stretches of grassland, and then even a pair of galloper guns, little four pounders, could cut us up with canister and either weaken the square or force us into open order, and then the sabres would rip us to pieces. Bad terrain for a lone half-battalion of infantry with neither horse nor guns to back us.”
Two hours on the moors, six miles or so, and the track dipped into a broad, shallow valley, wheat fields a fortnight from harvest on the south facing slopes, barley on the rest already showing stubble; high along the slopes on either side was a much darker cereal, one that Septimus had never seen before.
“Rye, my boy. Black bread – peasant food. Said to be dangerous, too – whole villages go mad sometimes from eating it, so they say. Poor food, but it grows on the colder, weaker land where wheat won’t prosper. Quite a big stream down the middle of the valley. There goes the colonel’s orderly, look, running to Captain Taylor with the Light Company – he will probably be ordered to stay on this side of the stream because it’s a very useful little obstacle to any attacker. Four foot, or so, the banks, rocky and difficult to scale carrying pack and musket – it would slow us in retreat and be awkward for horse or foot chasing us. As well, there is a path along the bank on this side and I can see a trickle of smoke a mile or so towards the coast, a bakehouse, perhaps. A village or maybe a small town – the colonel will not wish to pass it by, there is a good chance that our allies, if such there actually be, will be there, or, at least, there will be word of them.”
The Soldier Brat (Man of Conflict Series, Book 1) Page 8