“But…why?”
“Well, firstly because it’s an order from His Majesty’s government and…Well damn it, that’s actually reason enough.”
“But…why?”
“To protect our supplies and ensure the arrival of our artillery for the summer siege of Dunkirk.
“But…our supplies don’t come through Ostend, sir. Everyone knows that. Even the French, I dare say. We have been using Antwerp since April; or doesn’t the War Ministry know that?”
“Of course, they know it man. Damn it, it’s an order and that’s all there is to it. It’s completely nonsensical but it’s still an order.”
Trevethan sat back and tried to digest the news.
“I thought I was supposed to stay here and learn from the master on how to conduct sieges.”
“The Austrian artillery is delayed. You will be gone ten days at the most. The heavy guns will be in place by then. And we know we are likely to be here for another six weeks at the least; plenty of time for you to cause another diplomatic incident.”
“Did I miss something?” Jackson asked innocently, knowing full well the latest gossip from Belvedere, despite only just having returned himself from Antwerp to oversee the stockpiling of supplies for the summer campaign.
“Just a frank exchange of views on the principles of engineering with the great Count Orlandini.”
“You threatened to knock his block off,” Murray spoke like a stern tutor.
“Technical term, sir. Engineerin’ parlez.”
“Be back here in ten days, Trevethan. That’s military speak for ‘Go away, behave yourself and make this silly order work’. Anyhow your friend General Boetslaar has been posted there by all accounts. So be thankful; you could be staying here and enjoying our company instead.”
“Yes, sir.” Trevethan smiled at the thought of a few days in the company of the Dutch General alongside whom he had fought in the dead of night at Willemstadt.
“And just so we are clear, you think the order is silly?” Trevethan smiled at the small victory, winking at Jackson, having recovered his sense of humour.
“No, it’s actually stupid but that is not for distribution outside of these walls. Ostend is completely indefensible. That is why we elected not to use it in the first place. The town is cut in two by a tidal estuary with no bridge to speak of. To make it worth securing we need to have Nieuport, Menin and Ypres covered. As good as Boetslaar is, he can’t be in three places at once. And I have yet to find another Dutch commander worthy of the name. Go there, dream up something for Boetslaar’s men to do and come back here. Then I can write to His Majesty and Dundas and tell them that Ostend is safe. By the time we do actually want to use it, the whole of the army will have moved north. This is politicking, pure and simple, not soldiering. You leave in an hour, understood?”
Trevethan stood and nodded his acceptance.
“Does the condemned man have time for a pipe?” Jackson asked
“Get out.” Murray shook his head and kept a straight face. Laughing at the whole ridiculousness of the situation would have made more sense.
Two weeks with little rain had made the soil rock hard. Worse still more than a foot below the surface, a bed of stone and shale made the task of digging arduous. Krombach spat on his hands and picked the axe up again. Three strikes at the same spot tore the ground up. He stepped back and Reifener shovelled the earth onto the grass edge which marked the front of the parallel. Other redcoats scoured the trench looking for rocks and stones to fill a dozen wicker gabions that marked the outline of the battery position. Between these, an earthen wall would soon be built. Before any of that could happen more earth would need to be broken up and dug out. Spades, shovels, mattocks and axes continued a steady rhythm.
“Gauner!” Krombach had spotted the sergeant and warned Reifener, who proceeded to turn around and look for him. “Don’t do that, you fool. What’s the point of me telling you; you know he’s on the war path.”
Gauner had been drinking heavily for the past two days, his mood blacker than ever. The men of the company knew that there needed to be little reason to draw his ire but now it was worse than ever. Company Sergeant Roner had kept Gauner on a short leash since Estreux. As far as the three knew, Gauner had not been able to make good on his threat to return and collect his share of the cambric that the company had unearthed. In failing to do that, Winckler had cancelled their deal at Gauner's refusal to pay the villagers the agreed pittance of compensation; the sergeant had seen a fortune snatched from his grasp. While he could do little now about Roner, Reifener was Winckler’s man. Krombach knew the sergeant well enough. He would single Reifener out and send a message to ‘Old Boots’.
Gauner stalked past, unshaven and eyes rimmed red, knuckles clenched around the pace sticks clasped behind his back. Reifener watched him go, pausing too long. Gauner spun around.
“Work you idle bastards! You pair in particular!”
Krombach completed the third strike with his axe and withdrew the blade, waiting for Reifener to shovel away the broken earth.
“Don’t you ignore me Krombach, I told you to work.”
The youth looked up, trying his best not to sound petulant.
“But I am sergeant. Three strikes with the axe, like you told us.”
“That was two. I can count boy. Work through your break, the pair of you!”
Krombach cursed.
“I’m glad I followed your advice ‘Bastion. He’s been waiting all morning to do it, hasn’t he?”
The men were due ten-minute breaks in each hour; each shift lasting four hours.
“Yes, s’pose so. Think he wanted to wait until as close to the break as possible.”
A few minutes later a whistle sounded and the company fell out; a dozen men who had been singled out for punishment kept working. All the men were in Gauner’s section. The rest of 2nd Company sprawled on the grass, taking long gulps of water to slake thirsts borne from the work and the strong morning sunlight. Company Sergeant Roner and Lieutenant Schafer appeared and spoke to Gauner briefly. No doubt the sergeant was justifying his actions for each of the men working. Roner turned away with the merest shake of the head and when the company returned to work, Henry Pinsk found a reason to deviate from his place in the line and thrust his canteen into Reifener’s hands.
“Quick, take a swig; you too, ‘Bastion.”
The pair nodded in appreciation. The next break was fifty minutes away. The men swatted their way through another fifty minutes of digging, but now at a much slower pace and only picked up their speed when Gauner passed by or when the two officers appeared on the horizon. Krombach recognised the man with the wooden leg as the British Commissary General, Winckler's new boss. The other, a much stockier man, was the engineer that the friends had seen a few days ago. Both men were drawing from long white clay pipes and heading towards the line.
“Officers!” Krombach whispered.
The soldiers around them quickened their pace in response. Krombach struck the soil with three heavy blows, breaking up the surface and Reifener threw his weight into the spade. As he did it shifted sharply left with the resounding crunch of metal on stone, the wooden handle bowed under the weight of the soldier and then split with sharp crack. Reifener collapsed face down onto the wall of earth being thrown up at the face of the trench and when he finally pulled himself up, all that could be seen were two eyes, blinking heavily and a lop-sided grin. The rest of his face was a sea of brown soil and the redcoats collapsed in fits of laughter, to which Reifener played along, unknowingly observed by Sergeant Gauner.
“You clumsy bastard! You did that on purpose. Bring it here, you snivelling piece of filth!” Gauner exploded and the men around Reifener hurriedly returned to their digging.
Reifener clambered up out of the trench, now around two feet deep and hurried towards Gauner. He stood at attention or the closest that Reifener could manage with a face full of earth and tired hands holding the broken sections of spade. T
here was a pause and then Reifener held out the two broken sections, like a cat offering a dead mouse as a trophy to its owner.
“What do you expect me to do with that, you miserable whelp? The sooner I get you out of my Company the better; you’re useless, Reifener, you understand me, useless!”
Krombach watched. It was hard to see through the mask of caked earth but Reifener’s automatic reaction to most situations in life was a lop-sided grin and one was in the process of forming. Gauner took the handled section of the spade and examined it.
“Something ticking your ribs, Reifener? Something you find a little funny this morning, at Sergeant Gauner’s expense? Perhaps a little friend has had a word in your ear?”
“No, Sergeant.”
Gauner was still making an inspection of the handle when in one motion he drove it quickly back and then ploughed it forward, driving the bar of the handle into Reifener’s stomach. The boy doubled over instantly and fell to the ground; blows rained down on the arms and legs of Reifener who sobbed as each struck him. Krombach leaped from the trench but as Gauner raised the handle above his head, someone caught the shaft of the spade. Gauner’s face creased with rage and he dropped a hand in preparation to drive an elbow into the man behind him, when Krombach shouted.
“No Sergeant! An officer!”
The elbow froze in mid swing and the sergeant stood deathly still. Slowly he released his grip on the broken shaft of the spade and felt it being pulled away. He turned and came face to face with an ashen faced British major of Engineers.
“What in God’s name is going on here, Sergeant? A broken tool is no excuse for this sort of action. Where is your commanding officer?”
Gauner looked blankly at Major Trevethan. He knew little English himself and not enough to explain this away.
“Well answer me?” Trevethan dropped the wooden spade and then looked at the boy on the floor, brushing earth away from a tear-stained face.
“Are you lot Hanoverians?”
“Jawohl.”
“Does anyone of you speak English?” Trevethan spoken slowly, hoping that someone might respond and aware that the sergeant was probably hoping that no-one would. The best way to make such a matter disappear was to make it difficult to report.
“Yes, sir. I do. We are 10th Hanoverians, sir.”
Gauner rolled his eyes heavenward as Krombach answered.
“Ask your sergeant what was the meaning of this beating? Can you do that?”
Krombach nodded and took no small amount of pleasure in relaying the dressing down that Trevethan issued.
Within a few moments, Lieutenant Schafer had arrived and did his best to diffuse the situation. The action was no doubt a misunderstanding; the men were tired; the whole action was out of character for the sergeant. Krombach pulled Reifener to his feet.
“Come on Andreas, let’s get you something to drink.”
Gauner escaped with a dressing down from Trevethan, who barely satisfied with the result made to turn back up the slope to where Jackson was puffing away alternately on a pair of clay pipes. He heard the sergeant utter a deep oath and though he heard a name on the end of it: ‘Krombach’.
Trevethan turned back again.
“You boy, which battalion is this again?”
Krombach stopped and wheeled Reifener around to face the Major.
“10th Regiment. 2nd Battalion sir.”
“And your name?”
“Krombach, sir. Sebastian Krombach.”
Trevethan reached inside his jacket and then cursed himself. The drawing was on his desk in the Duke’s tent.
“Any other Krombachs in the battalion? Do you draw?”
“No others, sir? Draw, I don’t understand?”
“Sketch, you know. Did you draw a picture of that?” He turned and pointed at the walls of Valenciennes.
“Yes, sir, but I don’t understand?”
“That’s fine. You don’t have to, for now. You can sketch and speak a little English?”
“Yes, Major.”
“Good, then stay alive for the next ten days; do both a favour and stay out of your sergeant’s way.”
Trevethan smiled and loped up the slope smiling heartily at a bemused Brooks Jackson.
Gauner had watched the whole scene, while Lieutenant Schafer went through his best routine of dressing down the sergeant. When the break was over and the company returned to work, Gauner stopped Krombach in his way back to the trench.
“What was all that about, that last bit?”
“I genuinely have no idea, Sergeant.” Krombach kept walking, not even pausing to look back.
CHAPTER NINE
The Major’s Assistant.
Valenciennes: 14th June 1793
“I wish you would reconsider. You really are a most contrary woman!”
Governor Ferrand did his best to look cross but he and Juliette knew it was a sham. Sieges were about enduring; finding the small comforts of life and clinging on to them until death or normality won out. There were a series of crashes; the walls to the Governor’s office shed a fine sheen of mist that caught the morning light.
“I can’t protect you in here anymore, Juliette. It would pain me to see you…” he stopped.
The death toll in the town was more than a thousand; many were women and children who had been too frightened to leave when the allies finally encircled Valenciennes. They had been extra mouths to feed but many were the families of men from within the fortress walls; asking these citizens to leave under a flag of truce and take their chance with the mercy of the enemy forces might have sparked a rebellion. Valenciennes might fall, but to save France the defeat would have to cost the Austrians and British dearly. To that end, Ferrand had ordered his own guns to stay silent, hold their ammunition for when the time was close.
“How long do we have, Henri?” Juliette’s words cut across his thoughts.
He gave an involuntary smile. Everyone else called him Sir, or Governor Ferrand; his family had always called him Jean. Juliette had told him that one of his middle names, Henri, suited him more and used it whenever they were alone. The governor was not in love with her, she was thirty years his junior. It had become something more patriarchal, as if caring for another’s fate could make sense of the current madness.
“A month, two maybe; we have food for that and fresh water. Disease will be a problem. We need to have some luck on that front.
Another muffled explosion detonated somewhere in the city. Explosive shell, not hard round shot this time.
“Will the walls hold that long?”
“They were built a hundred years before my time. I’m not old enough to vouch for them but yes, they will hold; even from those heavy guns of the Austrians. I’d rather they fire at the walls day and night, rather than lob those damned shells.”
“And will the army come to break the siege?”
Ferrand rested his unshaven chin on a hand and scratched at grey whiskers that had sprouted in thick patches.
“I don’t know, I don’t know at all. We cannot get a message out and Paris cannot get one in. The Assembly may well have decided that we are expendable. Nonetheless it is our duty to resist and we shall. It is my duty to save the lives of those I can. Every extra mouth that is unnecessary must go; please go to the Austrians or the British while there is time.”
“Look at me, Henri. Look at me,” Juliette spoke softly, “is what I am doing necessary?”
Ferrand turned his head, lost in thought, and gazed at the woman sat in front of him. With no make-up, blonde hair tied in a tight headscarf, her frame was covered by a sail-cloth yellow apron, smeared with dark-brown dried blood.
“It is. And I thank you for it. France thanks you, no doubt.”
For two weeks Juliette had tended to the sick and wounded, twelve hours a day, sometimes longer. To the soldiers around her, it had added to her mystique as a heroine of the revolution.
“I’m not doing it for France, Henri. I’m doing it to repay them an
d you.”
“And our friend, Monsieur Caillat?”
“He is sweet and a little in love with me, I think.”
“He is dangerous. Once he is out of here, he will return to his revolutionary ways, no doubt. I have lived quite long enough. But you…When the time comes, promise me you will leave; before they storm the city. All the women and children will have to go then. I will not have that on my conscience.”
“Yes, Henri,” Juliette smiled. “But only when the time is right. Until then we both have work to do. And we won’t talk of this again. It does bore me so, Governor Ferrand.” Juliette smiled and stood.
“Sometimes, I wish I was a younger man.” He returned the smile.
Juliette leaned forward and kissed his cheek.
“You are perfect, just the way you are, Henri. Now I must return to the hospital. I fear I am late for my shift.”
“Be careful of Caillat.”
“Yes Papa.” Juliette smiled, heading for the door.
Caillat had interviewed Juliette the afternoon that she had been returned to the city by the Hanoverian officers. Perhaps he had always doubted her identity. The whispers had reached his ears the moment that she was seen by the troops. Besides, she had stopped dyeing her hair, black was so unbecoming. Instead Juliette told Caillat the truth, at least as much as she dared.
Ferrand was innocent; he had been tricked into believing that she was the niece of his friend, Colonel Courtois. As for Courtois, he knew nothing of the deception; Juliette had forged his signature in the letter of introduction.
Those were lies. But they were wrapped within the urgency that she felt in pleading for the life of Captain Jean Beauvais.
Yes, the pair had been lovers but their relationship had cooled before Beauvais’ arrest.
Another lie and one necessary to pique Caillat's obvious ardour.
Maurice Caillat, investigator, Representative en Mission, recorded each answer on a broad sheaf of paper.
“Are you loyal to the revolution now?”
“Yes”
“Then why run?”
The King of Dunkirk Page 12
