Blood's Campaign Read online

  One of the brilliantly dressed aides snickered.

  Holcroft found he was unable to answer. For an awful moment, he contemplated telling Schomberg the truth. The truth was always the best course.

  He said: ‘Well, sir, you see, I was . . .’

  Barden interrupted him: ‘Captain Blood was suddenly taken ill, Your Grace. A stomach gripe. He left me in charge. The fault is all mine, sir. We sent a galloper to the park at first light, so the Ordnance should be arriving within the hour. We’ll have the guns going – ha-ha! – great guns in a very short while, sir.’

  Holcroft looked at Barden – if the Ordnance was on its way that was something at least. He saw the lieutenant wink at him. By God, the man truly thinks I’ve been debauching myself with some Irish trull. But Holcroft also felt a sense of gratitude. Barden’s lies had saved him from disgrace.

  ‘Indeed, sir? Taken ill, eh? You don’t look well, Blood, I must say. You look exhausted. And you do not appear to have changed your clothes from yesterday. So, are you recovered, Captain? Able to do your duty like a soldier?’

  ‘I am perfectly well, thank you, Your Grace.’

  ‘Very well. But I want this battery in action as soon as possible. And if Vallance gives you any more trouble, tell him I shall have him shot for treason. Make that breach practicable today, Blood. Today – you understand?’

  The General and his aides galloped away. And fifteen minutes later three lumbering wagons could be seen approaching down the muddy track that led to the artillery park. Holcroft left the unloading to his lieutenant, his gunners and matrosses and took out his shiny brass telescope. The breach was, in fact, nearly practicable already. A crumbling hole a dozen yards wide had been smashed in the town walls a little to the east of the town gate and while the enemy had made some efforts during the night to fill the gap with empty barrels, loose masonry and timber planks, Holcroft reckoned that another hour or two’s bombardment would give the General the avenue of attack he desired.

  He trained the glass on the roof of Joymount House and saw it was an ants’ nest of activity. Men with ropes and hand spikes were clustered round both guns and as he watched it became clear they were shifting their position. Slanting both the barrels of the cannon several degrees to the west, lowering the extreme elevation to their maximum depression.

  Why? Holcroft asked himself. Why move them? What is the new target?

  He trained the telescope along the line of the barrel of the right-hand gun and followed an imaginary flight of a cannon ball. That cannot be right.

  He checked again, performing the same exercise with the second twenty-four-pounder. There could be no mistaking it. The guns were being aimed at the town wall. More precisely, at the half-breach in the town wall that his No. 2 Battery had made the day before. For an insane moment, he wondered if the enemy battery was going to assist in the widening of the breach. That was absurd. Why would the enemy help the attackers? He noticed there were fresh soldiers on the walls, hundreds of Irish musket men on either side of the breach, keeping low beneath the parapet for the most part but their dark, broad-brimmed hats plainly visible from this high vantage point.

  Then he had it. They were preparing to resist the English assault on the breach. Repointing the guns so that their lethal fire would crash down from Joymount House and sweep through the breach; and the musket men on either side would add their weight of lead to the onslaught. He felt suddenly cold and sick. When Schomberg had his breach, and judged it practicable, he would send in his regiments and they would charge through the gap in the town walls and be met with the lacerating fire of the two twenty-four-pounders firing at point blank range. It would be carnage. Hundreds would be cut to pieces in the breach, or if the fire was well directed, blown out of it on to the bloody turf outside. It was not quite a trap – Schomberg would expect to bear heavy casualties in storming the breach. But it would be as horrific as a London shambles on a busy market day in the narrow gap in the walls through which the English and Dutch soldiers must attempt to pass.

  Holcroft lifted his telescope to the roof of the tall building. And a sly smile spread over his face. The two Frenchmen were back, with another two Irish officers, it seemed. The cloaked slender one – Narrey – was pointing out something to the Irishmen below them in the town. But Holcroft did not care what. He now had a legitimate reason to attack them with his mortar. As well as destroying his two enemies – how good those words sounded to his private ear – he would end the menace of the battery and save hundreds of his countrymen’s lives when the massed assault went in.

  ‘Claudius, if I could have a word . . .’

  The lieutenant came strolling over; he had a smudge of dirt on his cheek and a wide sunny grin.

  ‘I am afraid that I shall have to leave you once more. I have to go and . . .’

  ‘Why, sir, you are a lusty fellow! I never knew you had it in you. At it like a rabbit all last night, and back again for second helpings this morning.’

  ‘No, no, you misunderstand . . .’ Holcroft tried to think how he could explain that he had spent the night setting up the hidden eight-inch Humpty just outside the walls. He was too tired to think straight – and Barden would no doubt make some silly joke out of whatever he said anyway.

  ‘Nevertheless, I must leave you again. Only for an hour or two. You will get the battery firing on the breach, won’t you? Uncle Frederick will have me shot if there is another delay. I can trust you to do that, Claudius, can’t I?’

  ‘Absolutely, sir. Happy to oblige you: what’s sauce for the goose, eh?’

  Holcroft had no idea what Barden meant by this last comment; he assumed some sort of jest, so he smiled warily, nodded and went off to find his horse.

  *

  ‘It needs another ounce of powder, sir, or you will not make that distance,’ Enoch Jackson said. ‘I reckon it’s at least three hundred and twenty yards.’

  ‘It’s no more than three hundred and ten, man, I measured it carefully by eye from the No. 2 Battery. Another ounce and we’ll sail over the top.’

  Enoch and Holcroft were crouched over the squat, round barrel of the mortar, like witches around a cauldron. Jackson was holding a small wooden ladle filled with black gunpowder, and it was clear to Holcroft that he was itching to add it to the half pound of explosive already packed inside.

  From behind them came the reassuring sounds of the No. 2 Battery firing, the crash of the four big cannon, one booming out every few minutes, followed by the thump and rumble of falling masonry as it hit the walls. The breach was nearly wide enough for it to be deemed suitable to attack – and Schomberg now could not complain about the No. 2 Battery’s efficiency. Claudius Barden was doing his duty.

  ‘Oh very well, said Holcroft grumpily, ‘you may have your last ounce, Enoch.’ This particular Humpty was fixed at an angle of forty-five degrees and fired a hollow iron spherical shell filled with black powder. Before the gun was discharged, the fuse in the shell must also be ignited, just moments before the main charge in the barrel was set off. The amount of powder in the propellant charge dictated how far and how high the shell would travel, the fuse in the bomb must be cut to the correct length so that it would explode the shell, scattering its lethal fragments of red-hot iron, just above the target. He and Jackson had already had an amicable disagreement about the length of fuse required to hit such a high target. If the missile landed without exploding, it could be easily rolled off the roof of Joymount House by a kick from a bold soldier, whereupon it would explode relatively harmlessly in the streets below. Holcroft had won that argument, so he was partially reconciled to submitting to Jackson’s expertise on the quantity of powder in the main charge.

  In truth, it was hardly an exact science, and a good deal more complicated than firing a cannon such as the ones they aimed to destroy. And in the back of Holcroft’s mind was the fate of the original Humpty Dumpty. A brilliant French architect called François Blondel had published an elaborate table that gave exa
ct weights of powder for a specific weight of mortar missile over a variety of distances, and Holcroft had studied the man’s works while in service in Louis XIV’s Corps Royal d’Artillerie; he had even memorised much of it. But he knew the quality of the black powder used could make an enormous difference, as could its composition of charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur. Then there was the wind and weather on the day of firing. So a mortar bombardment had always been, and would always be, in Holcroft’s view, a game of trial and much error.

  Holcroft calculated that they would have twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour at a push, to get it right. Once the position of the mortar was revealed it was only a matter of time before the enemy responded. Holcroft wished he had a company of Royal Fusiliers to protect the mortar, but the infantry arm of the Ordnance had been dispatched to Flanders. Anyway wishing was useless.

  The last ounce added, Holcroft beckoned forward two matrosses, who were carrying the shell suspended on two sturdy iron chains hanging from a long iron bar. Behind him Jackson was tending the linstock, a pole with a burning piece of match-cord at the end, which would be used to light the fuse of the iron missile and then fire the touch-hole on the mortar.

  ‘Everyone ready?’ said Holcroft. The men nodded; Jackson gave a grunt.

  Holcroft flicked open his old brass pocket watch. It was half past eleven. He would give himself till noon, he thought. Then they must retire swiftly up the hill whether the attack had been successful or not.

  ‘In that case, tend the match, have a care . . .’ Jackson was already leaning forward with the linstock, ready to light the fuse.

  ‘Halt,’ said Holcroft. ‘Stand by, everyone. What is that noise?’

  Jackson took a step back. The two matrosses stood there gawping into the black mouth of the mortar, holding the iron bar that carried the bomb, ready to lower it into the barrel after the fuse had been lit.

  It was a low groaning noise, very loud, like a giant in terrible pain, but many voices, and there was a drumming noise accompanying it. It sounded, to Holcroft, very much like a regiment of cavalry at the charge.

  He stepped to the edge of the farmhouse wall, scrambled up a mound of rubble and looked at the town. A vast cloud of dust was rising beyond the breach. To his astonishment he saw a huge bullock, long horned, tawny brown with a white forehead, stumbling up the broken rocky slope of the inside of the breach. It was followed by a dozen other beasts, lowing in terror and surging forward as if making a desperate attempt to escape the town. In an instant, the whole breach was filled from side to side with jostling, bawling animals.

  Then the guns on the roof of Joymount House spoke.

  The first cannon blast crashed into the herd of cattle in the breach. Partridge, was Holcroft’s immediate thought. They had loaded the cannon with the kind of shell known as ‘partridge’, after the ammunition used to hunt wild birds. A score of bullocks were struck down by the hundreds of flying missiles sprayed out by the Joymount gun, which was firing thin metal canisters packed with musket balls point blank into the herd. From either side of the breach on the town walls, the Irish musketeers stood up and poured their fire into the stricken and terrified beasts, felling them by the score. The second gun on the roof roared, flaying the mound of dead and dying beasts that were filling the gap in the town’s defences with their dripping carcasses. And yet still more cattle were coming up behind.

  Holcroft was struck by the appalling genius of the enemy plan. He recalled Claudius Barden’s quip from the day before – ‘Once more unto the breach!’ – and remembered the rest of the line from Henry V: ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close up the wall with our English dead . . .’

  They were closing up the wall, and no error. Not, thank God, with English dead but with the slaughtered bodies of more than a hundred prime beef cattle.

  The guns bellowed again from the roof, spraying the dead and dying cattle jammed in the breach, lashing them with flying lead. They were mere dumb animals, but it pained Holcroft to see such horrible carnage. And his heart gave a little jump as he saw that the lead bullock – the one with the white forehead that had been first through the breach – had escaped the murderous fire and was galloping across the open ground towards the English trenches.

  The big guns fired twice more. The Irish soldiery on either side joyfully peppered the stricken beasts squashed into the narrow gap. Then all fell quiet. The breach in the wall was filled almost to the top with the twitching carcasses of the dying animals; a waterfall of blood flowing down the outer surface.

  Schomberg will not be pleased, Holcroft thought as he scrambled down the rubble to rejoin his comrades by the mortar.

  He will not be pleased at all.

  Chapter Four

  The same day: Noon

  From the roof of Joymount House, Henri watched the cattle being driven up to the breach and their massacre by the guns beside him with a dispassionate eye. His plan had worked surprisingly well. ‘I believe that will give us another day,’ he said, turning to Colonel MacCarthy, who was looming beside him.

  ‘Aye, maybe so. That mountain of dead flesh will take some shifting. It was monstrous cruel but – I have to hand it to you, monsieur – a fine ruse.’

  ‘Might I suggest, Colonel, that you reinforce the animal remains with barrels of rock or earth, or gabions if you prefer and a few baulks of timber to shore it up. Your men may now, I believe, work in complete safety behind their fleshly barricade. Also, if I may venture to say so, this might be a time to request another parlay. If they agree, perhaps we can even spin a second day out of this reversal of fortune for them.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps. I’ll go and see to it,’ said MacCarthy, and he turned away and summoning his lieutenant, he went into the tunnel that led to the ground.

  ‘Monsieur, do you desire me to reposition the guns?’ said Major du Clos, at his elbow. ‘We could continue our bombardment of the English lines.’

  ‘Yes, Guillaume, give the orders. That big Irish bombardier, McCulloch, he can take charge. But you and I have earned ourselves a fine dinner after our exertions this morning. You will join me, will you not, my dear friend: I have a pair of roast capons and a fine vintage from a little village in Burgundy that I would like you to give me your opinion on.’

  They moved towards the tunnel.

  At that moment, out of the corner of his eye, Henri d’Erloncourt thought he saw a black object flying in the sky over his head. It disappeared into the streets beyond Joymount House and there was a muffled explosion from below.

  ‘It would seem that they are now bombarding the town itself,’ remarked Major du Clos. ‘Perhaps as revenge for our blocking of their breach with fresh beef.’

  ‘Such pettiness,’ sniffed Henri. ‘We shall take great care to avoid falling bombs as we make our way to the castle. I shall wait here, Major, while you brief McCulloch about the guns. Then we’ll repair to my quarters for dinner.’

  *

  ‘I told you it was too much powder, far too much,’ said Holcroft crossly to his master gunner. Enoch Jackson had the grace to look shamefaced. ‘Maybe the Devil or some black demon is watching over them – that Narrey bastard is uncanny lucky. Perhaps we might try a prayer before the next shot, sir. “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”’

  ‘One Corinthians 15:57,’ muttered Holcroft. ‘We haven’t got time for a bloody prayer meeting, Enoch. Nor for your silly quotations. Pass me that ladle, I’ll measure out the next myself. Get the men to bring up another filled bomb.’

  The next one fell short, exploding between the town walls and the bulk of Joymount House. Holcroft cursed. Enoch was wise enough to hold his tongue.

  As his master gunner began the slow process of reloading the mortar, Holcroft flicked open his watch. It was five minutes before noon, they had been firing for ten minutes. He had, he reckoned, two or three more shots before he would bring the wrath of the enemy down on his head. There was the filled breach
to be considered too. Schomberg would surely visit the No. 2 Battery to encourage them in their efforts to blast through the wall of dead cattle, and if he found once again that Holcroft was not there . . .

  He clambered up the pile of rubble by the corner of the farmhouse and pulled out his telescope. ‘You take over, Enoch,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Nothing fancy, go for the highest rate of fire. I’ll spot for you from up here.’

  He trained the telescope on the roof of Joymount House. The twenty-four-pounders were being moved again. No need to aim at the breach any more. Then to his joy he caught a glimpse of Narrey standing alone by the easel, tapping his chin with the wooden end of the paintbrush, on the right-hand roof before he moved out of sight towards the rear.

  Please, God, let him stay where he is, please, God, let him remain up there.

  He looked behind him to see what stage the reloading process had reached. Nearly there. ‘Tend the match,’ Jackson was saying to the matrosse now holding the linstock. ‘Have a care. Give fire! May the Lord guide our efforts.’

  It was a beautiful shot. The mortar coughed, spitting the missile in a high, elegant arc, a parabola, far over the burnt-out farmhouse, soaring over the town walls and dropping down, down until the hollow iron sphere exploded with a colossal bang exactly over the centre of the battery atop Joymount House.

  ‘Dead on, Enoch,’ shouted Holcroft. ‘Full on target. More of that, please.’

  At that moment, a musket cracked and a ball pinged from a piece of broken rubble beside his cheek, spattering him painfully with grains of brick dust. The Irish musketeers on the walls had, at last, taken notice of the mortar’s position.

  *

  There was a crack like the breaking of the world, a flash of white light and a red-hot fragment of the mortar shell slashed through the flesh of Henri’s upper arm and knocked him into the tunnel that connected the twin roofs. Dazed, but as yet feeling no pain, the Frenchman struggled to his feet clutching his blood-soaked left arm. He stared in amazement at the destruction that one falling missile had done to the roof and to the Irish soldiers manning the two twenty-four-pounders. At least a half dozen men had been killed or wounded, the lead roof was dappled with splashes and streaks of blood and a shell splinter had smashed the wheel of the nearest gun, which now leant drunkenly to one side. The screaming began almost immediately.