“Enemy approaching. Fix bayonets then ‘Make ready’.”
The company had loaded weapons a mile away from the village. Now the redcoats around him silently worked to prepare themselves. Von Bomm’s mind was racing. The wall offered cover and a perfect firing position but if the French moved into the farmhouse, his line of men would be horribly exposed and if the enemy had a lookout even half awake, he would have spotted the potential of an ambush. He turned to his sergeant, a tall elegant silver-haired guardsman from the 1st Hanoverian Guards battalion who hailed from the Luneberg Heath
“Sergeant Keithen, take twelve men. Seize the farm house. Make sure we are not outflanked. Unless you are attacked, do not fire until I give the word.”
Keithen nodded and moved away, touching the shoulders of a dozen men, who rose and silently followed him towards the farmhouse. With that decision made, von Bomm checked the view from the wall again. The northern road was twenty yards beyond the Church and at least one hundred yards from the wall. French infantry were there now, firing and reloading. Perhaps they would slip north and avoid the road to Bergues. That was not his concern. Between the farmhouse and the end house of the village there was a clear view of the gently sloping farmland. If the French moved another thirty yards along the street, the grenadiers struggling with the cannon would be clearly visible.
“Pinsk,” von Bomm whispered to the towering grenadier who was doing his best to remain concealed, “Move as quickly as you can. Tell Sergeant Hahn and his men to find some cover. If the French see them, the game is up!”
The grenadier gave a wounded look which suggested that he would be missing out on the action but loped off in an ungainly run with all the grace of a newly born foal. Whoever was in the bell-tower of the church had clearly managed to peel their eyes away from the unfolding drama and spotted the danger from the line of grenadiers. Von Bomm could see arms being waved but below but there was no sign of acknowledgment from the ground.
In an instant the narrow street was alive with the enemy, a line began to form while other men stood behind it, working hard to reload their weapons; a sergeant paced around, bludgeoning men back to their place in the line. As they did so, other blue-coats ran past them and stopped in the grounds of the church. Von Bomm knew now what the enemy was doing. One formation would hold the road, fire two or three rounds and then fall back. The other would form up and become a solid blue wall. There was much to admire in the enemy’s defence. Turning and fleeing or surrendering were easier options but the French were making the redcoats pay. And those redcoats were the men of 1st Grenadiers.
“Wait for the French to form close order, on my command we are going to fire one volley and then charge.”
He repeated the instruction to the right and left of him. Faces either side of the blonde-haired captain nodded, some with apprehensive smiles.
Two more rounds of ragged musketry followed, close by and then the sound of orders. Frenchmen began to assemble into a three-ranked line five yards from the low wall blocking the road, flanks butted firm against the wall of the farm-house and the church. He could hear French voices as weary soldiers dragged themselves down the road. Around him redcoats pressed hard against the wall, knowing that if just one soldier was to stray from the road and cross the wall into the field, their ambush would be revealed and fifty men would face a hundred or more of the enemy.
Von Bomm heard a succession of orders and threats, voices above the din of battle. More musketry rang out, balls whizzing over the heads of the hidden skirmishers; 1st Battalion was close by. His men might as easily be killed in the crossfire of Hanoverian musket ball as the end of a French bayonet. Then the percussion of another volley rolled over the redcoats, followed by heavy white smoke. The French were reloading and in close order. Now was the time.
“Skirmishers, Stand.”
“Present.” von Bomm paused checking left and right. He raised his drawn sword and brought it down swiftly.
“Fire.”
“Skirmishers...Charge!”
Von Bomm straddled the wall, landed on the road and burst through the wall of smoke. French soldiers lay dead and wounded. Those left were attempting to fix bayonets. Von Bomm leapt at a blue-coat, stabbing the man in the stomach with the full weight of his blade; musket balls whipped around him. The grenadier line, eighty yards away, were still firing and so were Sergeant Keithen’s men. The Hanoverian officer roared with the rage of battle, wrenched back the bloodied blade and stepped over the dying infantryman. He could see his counterpart who had been calmly giving orders.
The man, tall and elegant with a thick moustache and several days’ growth of stubble around it, spotted von Bomm and within seconds the redcoat was ducking as a hiss of the Frenchman’s sabre cut through the air to his left. Von Bomm stepped inside the blow and drove the hilt of his sword into the jaw of the French captain. The Frenchman toppled back over a dead body, and before he could regain his footing, the King’s German delivered a punch with his left hand, hard across the bridge of the Frenchman’s nose gushing blood at the shock of the impact. Von Bomm stepped onto the sword arm of the stricken officer and held his sabre to the man’s throat.
“Yield, sir!”
The Frenchman locked eyes onto his foe and slowly nodded. Around him the men of ‘Bon Consul’ lost the will to continue with a lost cause and the fighting petered out like the passing of a sudden rain storm.
Rexpoede had fallen.
Quesnoy: 21st August 1793
The fortress looked impenetrable. Each time Prince Hohenlohe had studied a fort built by Vauban, he marvelled at the masterpieces of warfare; Quesnoy was no different. It may have cut a squat, even ugly, silhouette on the horizon, but to the Prince the solid angular walls on the far side of the canal anchored into the landscape and possessed a deadly beauty.
He trained the telescope across to his left to see the positions being dug by gangs of white uniformed Hungarian soldiers. Orlandini had proposed a modest siege plan and Hohenlohe had agreed with the assessment. Quesnoy would take time, not a direct assault. Starvation of the garrison, while an unpleasant thought, was a legitimate tactic and one that preserved the lives of his men. Leaving the telescope on its heavy tripod, he traipsed a weary tread the short distance to his tent, where a small table contained a map dotted with brightly coloured pins, that had once been the possession of Colonel Mack.
The prince had tried his best to keep the detail of which Mack had been fond and of which Prince Josias had pressed him on many occasions but such minutia disinterested him. To the side of the map, folded dispatches awaited inspection, the upper most from the Duke of York. A tired frame, feeling all his seventy years, eased into a chair plumped with cushions. An attentive orderly brought a glass of wine which Hohenlohe accepted with the slightest nod of appreciation. He pointed a weary finger in the direction of the dispatches on the table and the orderly retrieved them.
Hanoverian troops were to hold a cordon of villages along the Yser, their left flank resting on the village of Proven. Austrian forces held the cordon from Poperinghe to Ypres. From their respective positions, both armies could monitor the movements of the enemy from Mont Cassel.
The British distraction with Dunkirk made no sense to Hohenlohe. He knew that Thugut had some scheme related to the matter but that made little difference to him. The Allies were wasting time. The next move should have been to invest Lille. There was little sense in charging at Paris, half-cocked and leaving the enemy in Lille and Quesnoy to harass supply lines and communications. Valenciennes had fallen; Quesnoy would too; Lille was the final key. Then the French could hide no longer. The Army of the North would be forced to stand and be beaten in an afternoon. Dunkirk was a waste of time and resources and the Prince had half a mind to write to the Duke of York and tell him. But the afternoon’s heat had sapped the Austrian Chief of Staff’s energy. He scarcely felt the glass slip through his fingers as he slid into a peaceful slumber.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
; Freytag.
Bambeque: 25th August 1793
The four-mile ride from Wormhoudt to the Hanoverian headquarters at Bambeque had taken a little over half an hour but von Bomm was keen to see the task done and return to his men. Weeks earlier his extended stay as a staff officer had been a welcome distraction but now his duties as officer of the day for the 1st Grenadiers battalion found him making an unwanted trip. His battalion, busily turning the village of Wormhoudt into a defendable position, stood ready to move at a moment’s notice.
The enemy had attacked the village of Esquelbecq the day before and von Bomm’s skirmishers and half the men of 1st Grenadiers had marched two miles west to aid their stricken colleagues in the 2nd Grenadier battalion. The Hanoverian counter-attack had thrown back three times their number but it had been a close call. Von Bomm should have been with his men; he had no intention of spending a moment longer in the presence of Field Marshal Freytag than was necessary.
The Church of St Omer had suffered the fate of many throughout France. If Saint Audomar, who had brought Christianity to northern France and in whose honour the building had been named, had risen from his tomb of some eleven centuries, he would have wept, as much for the ramshackle state of the altar as the fact that Hanoverian soldiers were working to ready the Church to be used for a Lutheran service of thanksgiving that evening. While redcoats laboured in the dim and dank confines of the building, two others stood watch in the belfry having broken the stone slates that shuttered the tower to gain an unrestricted view of the countryside. The men had positioned themselves to find as much shelter from the baking August day, even though it was a little after ten in the morning.
The lookouts had spotted the approaching rider a mile before he arrived in the town and watched as von Bomm was greeted by the guard which patrolled the main road and then directed towards the village priest’s house. The small detached building, abandoned sometime the previous summer, stood on the far side of a tree-lined avenue where a line of redcoats looked like busy ants as they transferred the comforts of the campaign as befitting a Field Marshal.
Von Bomm dismounted, made an enquiry to the whereabouts of Freytag, and then joined the snaking queue of men carrying chairs, trunks and other baggage into a narrow flagstone passageway. He knocked at a blacked door from behind which he could hear raised voices; the door swung open almost immediately.
“I gave orders that we were not to be interrupted!”
The grenadier officer found himself looking at a rather annoyed looking thin-lipped man, whose long hair thinned at the crown and the black of his middle years was giving way to silver. General Wallmoden blinked heavily adjusting to the dimness of the passageway and then recognised von Bomm from the younger man’s extended stay at headquarters during the previous months. Wallmoden jerked his head left and right, studying the unending line of redcoats that von Bomm was now blocking, the passageway being barely wide enough for two encumbered people to pass.
“Ah…” Wallmoden searched for the grenadier’s name.
“Von Bomm, sir. I carry reports from von Diepenbroick and Colonel Franke.”
“Yes. Yes of course, that’s it. Well you had better come in; you are rather getting in the way.”
Wallmoden stood back and von Bomm ducked into a small room containing three other men. The portly man, constrained by his uniform, von Bomm recognised as the Field Marshal, but there was little evidence of the acidic superiority that had been in evidence when von Bomm had brought Freytag to witness the events in Halle. Instead, Freytag’s eyes bore heavy circles, the flesh around his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, stained dark brown with tiredness and his chin was sprouting fine wisps of silver hairs. A corpulent finger tapped a slow rhythm on a sketch map as a much younger man, a British Guards officer, who von Bomm also recognised, scowled at the intruder. Behind him, a balding man dressed in the uniform of the Colonel in Chief of the Hanoverian Foot Guards, peered over the shoulder of Freytag. Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge and brother to the Duke of York, smiled at von Bomm before returning to concentrate on the map. Freytag motioned von Bomm to find somewhere to stand and wait and then returned his gaze at the map.
“Continue, if you please.”
Lieutenant Simon Henson-Jefferies, dispatched by Colonel Murray that morning to be Aide-de-Camp to Field Marshal Freytag, cleared his throat and continued his resume of the British positions.
“As I was saying sir, we drove the enemy from Teteghem and the siege works should soon begin in earnest. We hold the connecting road here which links your men to the Duke.”
Henson-Jefferies traced his path along a narrow pencil line that led from Teteghem to a place called the ‘White House’ marked as just over a mile from the French stronghold at Bergues.
Freytag nodded grunting at the map.
“And this is the only road to the Duke?”
“Other than the long route through Furnes sir, yes. From here to the Duke’s position is ten miles at most using the ‘White House’ road. Otherwise it’s twenty-five miles around the moor.”
“Can the moor not be crossed?” Wallmoden asked looking concerned at the frailty of the link between the two armies.
“Not easily, sir, certainly not by a great body of men or horses. We have lost two scouts in two days trying to find a crossing. The locals are afraid to help us for fear of reprisals, I imagine.”
Freytag grunted again, waved Henson-Jefferies away with the slightest of gestures and waved von Bomm forward.
“Reports sir.” Von Bomm stood to attention and nodded a crisp bow.
Freytag cast a weary glance towards Wallmoden who began opening the dispatches, reading each aloud. Major-General von Diepenbroick’s detailed account of the previous day’s action at Esquelbecq. Von Bomm listened to the words, a few phrases to sum up the brief counterattack that he had taken part in. Four of his men had died in the skirmishing. He had letters to write to the fallen men’s families as soon as he had the chance. When he broke from his train of thought, he realised that the four men were looking at him.
“Did you witness this action? How am I supposed to run an army when I’m sent halfwits and idiots!”
Freytag spoke to the room at large; Henson-Jefferies sniggered and stopped only when Prince Adolphus gave a stern sideways glance. Von Bomm gathered his thoughts.
“My apologies, sir, I was…Yes I fought there yesterday. I command the skirmisher company in 1st Grenadiers and we were sent to…”
“Skirmisher Company. What are you talking about? Every grenadier battalion has four companies the last time I looked on my roster.”
“Colonel Franke has formed a skirmish company with men from each of the four companies, Sir.” Von Bomm spoke slowly, suddenly afraid that he was betraying a confidence.
“Huh!” Freytag snorted disapprovingly then looking at the uniform of von Bomm. “1st Grenadiers, eh? Which battalion are you from?”
“10th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, Sir.”
“Makes sense! That’s the fool Neuberg isn’t it? Bloody modernisers!”
Von Bomm held his tongue.
Wallmoden stepped in. “You did well, captain. It says here three thousand French infantry. Second Battalion and two companies of 1st. Eight hundred grenadiers at most. Impressive work.”
“Thank you, General. It was a close call, we are stretched a bit thinly…” The words came out before von Bomm had considered the impact of them.
“Of course, we are spread thinly. It’s a cordon defence, you imbecile. I have thirteen thousand men to cover more than twenty miles. If you think you can do better boy, you can sit in this chair and carry the worries of the world and I shall prance about on a horse all day, without a care on the world. Get out of my sight!”
Von Bomm stood shocked by the onslaught, then bowed to the Field Marshal, Wallmoden and Prince Adolphus and turned past the smirking Henson-Jefferies before being stopped in his tracks by another bellow.
“Wait! Wait! I’ve something far more usefu
l for you to do. You can contemplate the strength of our defences and no doubt come up with your own brilliant plan on improving them when you ride them now. Take a message to the senior officers, from Rousbrugge all the way around to Steene. There is to be a service of thanksgiving here tonight and senior officers are expected to attend. Do you think you might be able to carry out such a task?” Freytag’s acidic nature had clearly been roused.
Von Bomm nodded curtly. “Yes, Sir!”
There would be no quick return to Wormhoudt.
Teteghem: 25th August 1793
“He’s a crafty bastard and that’s no word of a lie.” Trevethan took off his bicorne and itched at a sand-fly bite on the back of his head, feeling beads of perspiration run around his fingers as he disturbed tufts of sand-encrusted black hair.
“Who is, sir?” Krombach asked, shielding his eyes from the radiating white heat of the sand which swirled into his face on the faintest of breezes.
“Whoever is watching us in that tower, pulling the strings. He’s flooding the canal. Clever, very clever. Denies us drinking water, splits the army in two and floods the surrounding area to boot.”
Trevethan replaced his bicorne and dragged the rolled sleeve of his shirt across a forehead thick with sweat. He had made a series of markings on a spot in the canal the previous evening, to calculate the rise and fall of the water with the tide, but there had been no significant fall, only a steady rise which matched the incoming tide. To their left the high banks of dunes, twenty or more feet high acted as a wind-break to the sea beyond. Ahead on both sides of the canal, lines of soldiers, most stripped the waist were busy clawing at the sand with musket butts and large flat stones, trying to build defensive positions.
The siege was not going well; in fact, little of note had gone right. The best that could be said was that the army was in place with almost no loss of life. After that, there were more problems than Trevethan currently had solutions for. Sea water had tainted the fresh water canal that ran from Dunkirk to Furnes; supplies of drinking water were being hauled from Furnes a dozen miles away. A short-term solution that was straining Jackson’s resources to near breaking point.
The King of Dunkirk Page 20
