By the time that Trevethan reappeared three hours later, riding with his accustomed lack of grace, Jackson had made decent headway in his chores and felt better now that the Bergues matter was under a degree of control and more importantly, he had avoided going to oversee the matter himself. Riding with considerably more ease in the wake of the Cornish man’s horse was a heavy-set man dressed in an immaculate blue jacket of the Royal Artillery. The men dismounted, Congreve doffed his bicorne towards Jackson while the Cornishman clapped the artilleryman on the back in celebration and then winked at Jackson.
“Well, as of now you can call me Saint Stephen of Valenciennes, for we have produced a miracle; loaves and fishes, water into wine, that’s for beginners.”
Krombach’s drawing was unfolded and placed on the green baize of a card table in the Duke’s tent and York and Murray stood back as Trevethan bustled around, weighing down the corners. Major Congreve watched with a due deference to royalty that Trevethan had long since lost, if indeed it had ever been possessed at all. Satisfied with the arrangements, the Cornishman stood and drew breath.
“Right, we have lots of news and for once, all of it is good,” Trevethan beamed. The Duke remained rather stone-faced waiting to judge that matter for himself, so the engineer continued.
“Between the main gate and the hornworks is a timber palisade. It runs parallel to the wall but about twenty feet in front. It’s been covered by the glacis, here,” pointing to the earthen bank in the drawing. “Because it is set forward, we haven’t been able to damage it significantly. The palisade itself has artillery, here and here,” Trevethan added two heavy crosses in thick pencil onto the drawing. “There is a walkway under the walled palisade and the French are using that to support and supply the hornworks, a sort of umbilical cord. We are going to sever that; attack the hornworks and the main gates. With your approval of course, Your Highness,” Trevethan smiled.
York nodded politely, the faint sign of smile, in return. “When Trevethan, when?”
“The Austrians are moving a series of gabions into place tonight and Major Congreve advised placing a battery at the end of this section of the second parallel. From here the guns could sweep the walkway and drive off the defenders.”
York stretched forward and studied the plan and the spot selected by Congreve.
“Capital work, Congreve. Why hadn’t they placed guns here earlier?”
“It was not in the Count’s timetable. I’m not sure how many times I was told that this wasn’t how they did things at the siege of Belgrade. In the end we may have used your name a little in vain, M’ Lord in order to force the issue, but…” Trevethan replied.
“But?” Murray spoke, his voice sounding rather dubious.
“They will do it. Orlandini would rather wait two more weeks but they will do it. Once the gabions are in place, we will be able to mine the palisade. Once the palisade is clear, the hornworks will fall and the main walls can be mined. Count Orlandini tells me all of that can be done in five days. All being well we can attack on the 25th, if that is acceptable to Your Highness?”
York looked at Murray raised his eyebrows and did his best to conceal a broad grin.
“Every so often Trevethan you remind me of why I tolerate you. Murray, it seems we have an attack to plan.”
Valenciennes: 26th July 1793
The third parallel had been finished by working parties throughout the past four nights. The previous night it had been 2nd Battalion’s dubious honour to work without rest in order that the task could be completed on time. With the trench line just sixty yards from the crest of the glacis, the French had used the last of their reserves of howitzer shells to attack the workers at random intervals during the night.
Krombach had experienced one such attack, three projectiles straddling the part of the battalion’s position. He and the other redcoats around him flung themselves into the shallow trench for cover. For half an hour they listened, clutching muskets or entrenching tools, nerves taut by exhaustion and fear, waiting for the French to follow up the bombardment with an attack. But nothing came. Instead the darkness was pierced only by the cries of wounded men. The casualties were in Fourth Company, the ‘Unlucky Fourth’ with no captain to guide them, Thalberg having been killed while on duty with the Second. Resentment had grown between the two companies in the way that men blame one another from the merest slight when exhaustion strips away the shield that dark humour often provides.
Now, the moment had come. For more than two long months the allies had been beached around the rock of defiance that was Valenciennes. But sometime in the hours ahead, the city would be stormed or surrender. Gauner had told men around the camp-fire that if the town was stormed the rules of war no longer applied. Men could act as they please: plunder, rape, murder. All were permitted and the officers knew that to deny their own soldiers at that moment was an impossible folly. These were the rules of war, understood by both sides and such had been the way for centuries.
For Krombach, three nights of continual work had offered little respite from attempts at sleep in the choking heat of the day. The same dream haunted him. The Frenchman towering over him, raising his musket but this time there was no sword thrust to save him. Each time the musket came crashing down; each time he woke caked in sweat and unable to return to sleep. To his relief, by the late afternoon, 2nd Battalion had scrounged an early meal and then been marched to the second parallel. It was clear that at some point during the night, the Austrian sappers would be ready to ignite their mines and in the maelstrom that followed, the 1st Grenadiers along with the other grenadiers in 1st Division would lead the assault. To their left, Austrian infantry were deployed, clearly being readied for an assault on the main gate. To the right, a British Guard battalion, the 14th Line and the Hessian Chasseur battalion waited. They would attack the hornworks. Third Brigade was the reserve for the Hanoverian 1st Brigade. Pinsk and Reifener settled in next to Krombach and the three watched Austrian riflemen head out of the third parallel and begin to run towards the slope of the glacis.
“They are brave bastards,” Pinsk muttered, “I don’t think I would fancy that job.”
Krombach watched the riflemen, grey uniformed with wide-brimmed hats, sporting long plumes of black feathers. Tyrolean Jaegers, the best light troops of the Empire, had spread out to reduce the risk of canister fire sweeping away their number. They began a series of ragged exchanges of fire with French soldiers on the ramparts. After a short while, it had become obvious to the French that it was a battle that they were losing. The Austrian weapons had a better range and accuracy and the defenders had retreated to offer the jaegers no other targets. The army had watched the spectacle with interest and at the obvious withdrawal of the French wild cheering had broken out along the lines of the second and third parallels, each filled with expectant troops.
“How are they reloading those rifles?” Pinsk asked. “There was no flash, or smoke. What are those weapons?”
“They must be air guns,” Krombach mused.
At some point in the day when he and Trevethan had observed the French village of Teteghem, the Cornishman had told him of the Austrian weapon, wishing that he had some in order to give the British an advantage in the siege to come.
“Air guns? Are you making this stuff up?”
Gauner had been stood near by, sharing a private joke with the tall Danish sergeant, Krogh.
“What’s this Pinsk? What’s the fish-boy whispering in your ear now? I’ve told you about making a better class of friends, haven’t I, Corporal? Keeps secrets and thinks he is better than the likes of you and me.”
Krombach fixed Gauner with an angry look for just a moment and then decided that it was not a wise strategy. Instead, he turned away and watched the Austrian riflemen again, fascinated by their courage and hoping to find some inspiration of his own.
Away from the second parallel, Captain Brandt stood and watched the action in the evening sunlight. Lieutenant Schafer stood a few p
aces away from him, nervously running a thumb over the hilt of his sword and watching the musket duel with hypnotic interest. The day after Thalberg’s death, Neuberg had asked Brandt if Schafer was ready to command a company of his own. The lieutenant temporarily in charge of Thalberg’s Company, Dietmar Horn, was a close friend of Captain Ernst Volgraf. Promoting another ‘Volgraf man’ seemed a dangerous prospect but Brandt could not lie. Even if Company Sergeant Roner was transferred to support the young officer, Brandt could not be certain of Schafer’s judgement. Besides, there were no vacancies for senior sergeants in what was now Horn’s Company. Sending Roner would weaken Schafer’s confidence. Brandt was still dealing with the guilt of Thalberg dying while he had slept off the effects of a good meal. It should have been him. Brandt had wanted to write to Thalberg’s wife and try and find the words to explain but Neuberg forbade it. That task was the preserve of the colonel and the widow Thalberg did not need Brandt’s confession to add to her woes.
The captain watched another group of Austrian soldiers heading towards the third parallel just as Major Trevethan headed down the steep slope in the direction of 2nd Battalion’s position. The two men shook hands and chatted for a few moments. Brandt had noticed the Austrian air guns too and wondered on an engineer’s explanation of them. Trevethan merely shrugged his shoulders and watched.
“All I know of these weapons is the rumour that the inventor and his family live in the Emperor’s palace in Vienna and can never leave. Look at them using their ramrods furiously. There must be some sort of piston in the barrel and the ramrod presses it down and pressurises it. Like a steam pump I s’pose.”
Brandt shrugged, none the wiser for the Cornishman’s words. A silence followed and then Brandt explained about Thalberg, the attack on the lines and his own guilt for not being present. The Cornishman listened, nodding slowly. Behind them, around twenty thick set men had appeared on the road which led to Valenciennes. With silver helmets and breast-plates covering their chest and back they looked like relics of a bygone age but they strode down across the parallels and joined the Austrian Jaeger on the reverse slope of the glacis.
Waiting for them there was a large wagon, with ten tall earth-filled gabion baskets fixed to its front. The vehicle must have been tremendously heavy but the twenty men, engineers who had besieged Belgrade in the service of the Emperor, formed themselves into teams and began to push the wagon back to a spot that they had already begun to excavate. Meanwhile, the jaegers scanned the walls of the city, palisade or hornworks for any possible targets. Away to their left, the battery positioned by Major Congreve waited, poised to sweep the hornworks or palisade with deadly canister but no sign of resistance was met.
Trevethan broke the silence between the two men, pointing down at the engineers.
“See those men. They get paid four times as much as an ordinary soldier. In most sieges they suffer forty percent casualties. What makes them keep going? What incentive is money if there is a good chance you won’t live to see it? They are going to lay explosives tonight, under the cover of dark and by midnight all hell will be let loose. I helped come up with that plan, Captain. By morning hundreds of men on both sides may be dead… because of that plan. And if the town does fall, God help the poor souls left in there.”
Trevethan let out a heavy sigh.
“I wouldn’t be a Prince or General for all the gold in Spain. I’m sorry about your friend but he’s dead and we are alive. There isn’t a way to make sense of it so stop trying. Look after your men and yourself. I will see you tomorrow, God willin’.”
The Cornishman held out a hand and Brandt shook it and he watched the engineer tread heavily down the slope towards the third parallel.
Ferrand and six men slipped out of a small gate in the main east door, into the covered walkway that supplied the hornworks. The men carried boxes packed with the last reserves of gun-powder. Above them, the palisade was littered with bodies of the dead and dying. In the darkness Ferrand could hear the calls for help, water or a mother’s comforting embrace in the last moments of life. But no help would be coming. The men in the hornworks were pinned down by the deadly crossfire of cannon and skirmish fire. And in the walls above the ramparts were empty. Ferrand could not find enough men willing to serve the cannons. Even in the dark the Jaeger could find and kill. The word had spread among the defenders that the Austrians were demons with supernatural powers. For now, that was the least of his problems. As he edged along the side of the wooden palisade he saw a small rectangular pool of light and on reaching it looked down. A small wooden ladder descended past a candle in a pot, cut into the ledge of the shaft sunk deep into the soil. Suddenly there was movement and a head bobbed up, followed by a bucket of loose wet earth.
Ferrand knelt and whispered to the man. “How much longer do you think?”
On the other side of the palisade, the gabioned wagon was parked and the Frenchmen could hear the Austrian engineers working.
“We are ready sir. We think we have a chamber directly below them.
“Get your men out, you are being relieved.”
The man nodded, disappeared briefly and then reappeared scrambling up and out of the hole. More figures followed and trooped off towards the doorway.
Ferrand turned to the six men behind him, artillery-men who had volunteered for the task.
“Get the powder stored and then light the fuse.”
A corporal, the most senior of the men nodded. Ferrand was not certain whether the Austrians had brought their powder up the palisade. The counter-mine was the one chance to destroy the Allies plans for an attack and gain another few precious days. When Juliette had led the prisoners out, he had watched one of his own messengers ride unmolested through the Austrian lines. Even now Custine or whoever commanded the Army of the North could still appear and save them.
Ferrand shook the man’s hand and turned, following the line of dirty infantrymen who had acted as miners back through the east door. Ferrand turned and headed up a flight of stone steps and onto the buttress walls. Eight cannons stood unmanned in the darkness and Ferrand cursed. Movement caught his eye through the gaps in the stone crenellations and he turned to see figures fleeing back towards the glacis. Seconds later, there was a slow rumble and the foundations of the castle shook, then the night-sky erupted in violent red flame and the Governor dived into a doorway as the sky rained timber, earth and stone.
The palisade had gone and Trevethan’s prediction was proved correct.
All hell had broken loose.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The King of Valenciennes.
Valenciennes: 1st August 1793
The morning sun beat down as redcoats waiting for the parade. Krombach felt beads of sweat roll down his neck and run along the thick stock that cut into his neck. The 10th Regiment took its place in the line of soldiers that flanked the western road towards Cambrai. For two days the battalion had stayed in the third parallel. Their services were not needed during the night assault. The British and Hessians had captured the hornworks; the palisade had been occupied by the grenadiers and the Austrians had been within moments of forcing the main gate when the French had rallied. In the early hours a cease-fire had been called and in the negotiations that followed 2nd Battalion had stood ready to take up the mantle of a fresh attack, as Austrian heavy guns had been moved into new positions.
None of that was needed though.
The garrison had surrendered and now the Cambrai road had become a scene of celebration. Austrian grenadiers, whose bearskin headdresses made them look like giants, led the way. Even on campaign they maintained spotlessly white-coated uniforms but each soldier looked grizzled, fierce expressions even in triumph. Krombach, unshaven for five days, feeling more tramp than soldier, stood and watched with awe.
Then the British passed by, the Foot Guards followed by the 14th. The Hanoverians cheered fellow redcoats and the soldiers of the line battalion smiled back and nodded in appreciation.
Next, the
Hanoverian Grenadiers and the loudest cheer yet from the men around him, even though the battalion was meant to be stood at silent attention. From the corner of his eye, Krombach could see Pinsk craning his neck to glimpse his brother. Tomas had survived another battle but Krombach could not distinguish his tall friend in the massed ranks that passed him.
The rear most battalion was the green-coated Hessian Chasseurs. Even though the battalion had been at Valenciennes for only a fortnight an enmity had quickly grown between the two forces. The Hanoverians considered the Hessians mercenaries; the Hessians mocked the Hanoverians as fools for having to resort to a revolt to be paid. One of their officers tipped his hat in recognition to Captain Brandt, to which Brandt had responded with a similar gesture. The Chasseurs passed through the redcoats’ ranks to stony silence and on through a line of dark blue-coated Prussians, to open jeers; the Hessian Landgrave had sold his men’s services to the highest bidder and Prussia had been outbid by the wealth of Great Britain.
Behind the infantry, columns of allied cavalry followed; Austrian cuirassiers, British heavy dragoons; the splendour of the Hanoverian Guards. Once this fanfare was complete and men and horses had taken their position near the western gate, all eyes turned to the lone French tricolour on the western ramparts. Krombach could only guess that it must be close to midday, the appointed hour. Along the ranks, necks craned to the left, waiting and then suddenly, it happened. A solitary figure approached the flag and the colour was lowered. From inside the town, singing could be heard. The battle hymn of the Army of the North, The Marseilles, was being sung.
Out of sight of the young Hanoverian, the gates must have opened, the sounds of song became louder. Within a few minutes, he could see them, the beaten enemy, led by a tired looking man on a thin chestnut horse. Battalion after battalion marched past. Men worn beyond exhaustion after two months of indiscriminate allied bombardment; tattered colours carried aloft, all other weapons having been left behind. Only the officers had been permitted to retain their swords in the traditions of such matters. The Allies had won but all that Krombach wanted was a meal; a chance to wash and shave; then find a shaded spot to catch up on lost sleep.
The King of Dunkirk Page 16
