The King of Dunkirk

by Dominic Fielder

  The Great Moor, to the army’s left was impassable, and nightly every man was plagued by the thousands of biting insects that rose from it and drift in the off-shore breeze to feast on the warm blood of men and horses alike. The sick bill might have been light so far, but it was only a matter of time until disease spread.

  Then there was the siege itself. There were few entrenching tools. Civilians from Adinkerke and Furnes had spared what they could but the whole situation was an additional delay. Even when the parallels were completed, currently there was no sign of any siege pieces or the gunners to man them.

  To add insult to injury, the previous day, the French had taken to sailing small vessels armed with bow cannon and firing pot-shots of grape at the redcoats as they laboured; there was not one Royal Navy vessel in sight.

  Trevethan had witnessed the Duke apoplectic with rage. Murray had borne the brunt of it but when the worst had past, the Duke conveyed the full ire of his feelings in a strongly worded letter to the Minister for War, Henry Dundas. Trevethan had worried that his own engineering skills might not be up to the task; instead he was surrounded by high farce at every turn. At least he could do what he could about the water and digging equipment.

  Another dark thought furrowed the Major’s brow. He unfolded the sketch map that Krombach had made when they had reconnoitred the area six weeks before.

  Suddenly the French strategy made sense. “Clever…That’s what I’d do if I was in their shoes…”

  The Cornishman checked the map again and gazed south in the direction of Bergues. “Do you remember that farmer near Bergues, acted as our guide?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Think you can find him again?”

  “I think so, sir. Yes. Why?”

  Trevethan turned and walked towards his blue jacket, folded in a patch of thin grass. Krombach heard the clink of money and the flash of silver.

  “First thing in the morning, take yourself to Bergues. Find the farmer, hire him and learn a route across the moor.”

  Trevethan traced his finger over the map “Look, this is what the French are about. They are flooding the main canal to Furnes but I reckon they will also flood the canal from Bergues to Furnes. It will make this road,” he pointed to the one behind them, “from Teteghem to the ‘White house’ useless; cuts us off from the Hanoverians. We won’t be able to communicate with them or they with us, without a fifty-mile round trip. Take a couple of days, nothing much will be happening here but learn a route. Sketch it if you can. Understood?”

  Krombach nodded and returned to detailing the final touches to the church tower in the far distance, from where an enemy watched every move the besiegers made.

  Dunkirk: 25th August 1793

  Maurice Caillat, Representative en Mission to the Army of the North stood outside the door of the church, feeling completely powerless and loathing himself for not pressing the matter. It was his right to be present at the meeting and the Committee of Public Safety would not take such secret meetings of senior officers lightly. However, self-preservation and the kindly advice of one of the newly arrived generals suggested that now might not be the time for Caillat to assert his authority. Maurice Caillat and Nicolas Houchard had already got off to a bad start.

  The tower of St-Éloi afforded an incredible view of the British positions. An elegantly dressed general, slight of frame, stood back from the telescope and ushered General Houchard to view British soldiers working in the baking heat on the sandy plain that led from Teteghem towards the flooded canal. The telescope trained further left to see the line of works continuing towards the wall of the dunes.

  Houchard was at least a head taller than the other man, solid and muscular with long and lank black hair. The hands that wielded the telescope scarred with years of labouring as a private soldier, looked more like talons, fingers crowned by twisted and ridged finger-nails; his face had taken many by shocked surprise. On the left cheek a deep sabre-cut had been clumsily stitched, resulting in a taut paralysed mouth. On the right a searing bullet wound had smashed most of Houchard’s teeth, leaving a countenance which suggested a lopsided grin, from a man who found very little reason to laugh.

  To his men, Houchard was a ‘Sans Culottes’, the very embodiment of the revolution. He would cheat death again for his men and he expected unquestioning loyalty in return.

  Behind Houchard, elegantly dressed in a new blue General’s uniform, Joseph Souham had similarly risen through the ranks, an engineer and sapper but without the scars of battle, despite numerous brushes with the enemy. The engineer, who now commanded the city, shielded his eyes and scanned the defensive positions designed by Carnot before his recent recall to Paris.

  “Is this all they have? It’s hardly worth beating, is it? No siege guns? Those ass-wipes in Paris wouldn’t even credit us with the victory if they saw the strength of the redcoats.”

  “That may be so but it would not be wise to utter those words in front of Citizen Caillat. Carnot had warned us of the man’s power.”

  Houchard pulled away from the telescope and drew up to his full height of well over six foot tall.

  “That whelp? I’ve squeezed out more troublesome turds!”

  Souham shrugged. “That’s as maybe but he has the ear of the Committee. A little prudence would not be a bad strategy.”

  Houchard fixed the engineer with a steely glare but Souham simply smiled and then stepped a few paces around the tower and turned his gaze out towards the crystal blue of the Channel, and the ships that jostled on the afternoon swell in the harbour. He recognised the Perseus, preparing to sail, a three-pounder cannon lashed to the deck near the bow of the squat vessel. No doubt Arnaud Mahieu was planning to rake the flanks of the British positions with grape-shot, where the Dunes receded and the right flank of the British lines had little protection. Carnot had been diligent in ensuring that Souham knew the important citizens of the town in order to cope with the days ahead. Houchard returned to the telescope, studying the men who struggled under the glare of the summer sun.

  “Carnot has promised more men; five corps will be ready soon. You can hold out here until I’m ready? Wear the British out. Do whatever you need to do. In ten days, meet me at Mont Cassel.” Houchard spoke, less a question, more a statement.

  “We will be fine. Perhaps I should keep Caillat here to inspect the defences? It might be best to keep him occupied here.”

  “Not a bad idea, perhaps the British could accidentally capture him? Either way, the less he is around me, the better; for both our sakes.” Houchard vented a hissed reply.

  Breaking the neck of Caillat would have been a much better option and not one that ‘Sans Culottes’ general had yet fully dismissed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Admiral without Portfolio.

  Rosendael: 31st August 1793

  The ships had been greeted with cheers of delirium from thousands of weary redcoats, bronzed by days of digging the positions from where an attack on Dunkirk would finally be launched. A frigate and merchantman had passed along the Dunkirk beaches and driven away French gunboats that had scuttled out of the midday sun and into harbour well before the sight of the vessels. A lookout from the Leughenaer, the tower at the heart of the harbour, had lit a fire and the thin pall of smoke served as a warning long before the vessel had arrived. One frigate was better than nothing but it was not the fleet that had been promised by London.

  The fortifications that ran from Rosendael to Teteghem had begun to finally resemble some sort of siege line and Krombach was pleased for the English engineer. He had returned from carrying messages for Trevethan, crossing the Great Moor on several occasions in the last few days, the last two without the help of a guide. That evening, after eating with Sergeant Major Winckler, the young Hanoverian had returned to the tent used by Trevethan, to find the Major deep in conversation with Commissary General Jackson. He halted, wondering whether to approach the two men or wait for the peals of laughter to recede; a pair of port bottl
es, perched on an upturned crate passing as a table, suggesting that the pair had found a way to temper the strain of the last few days. Trevethan spotted the hesitant younger man and beckoned him over.

  “Ah, here is my trusty lad. Find a chair and grab a glass. Have a drink.”

  Krombach hesitated but Trevethan was insistent.

  “Don’t be shy boy. Come on, make an anchor of your arse and set yourself down here.”

  Krombach swatted at a sand fly that hovered around his face and perched himself on a patch of thick grass that grew in patches around the hundreds of dirty canvas tents pitched in the wasteland of sand and scrub. The two men sat between the embers of a smoking fire, handfuls of thickly-knotted grass having been thrown on to it and Krombach coughed heavily as a sudden change in the light breeze blew thick clouds of black smoke into his face. Trevethan stood up and kicked at the contents of the fire then drew from a long-necked clay pipe, exhaling his own thin clouds of vapour into the pale of a clear evening sky tinged golden by the lowering sun.

  “Best way to keep the flies away. Only thing we seem to have in abundance around ‘ere.” Jackson laughed and then shooed away another insect that had landed on the calf of his left leg, but not before a small smear of blood had been drawn.

  “Bastard!” hissed Jackson, “how much longer do we have to endure this? If we stay here until winter, no doubt woodworm will set in on the other one!”

  Krombach looked with some mild fascination at the carvings of the giant shark on the wooden peg that Jackson used for his right leg.

  “Lost it swimmin’ in Havana bay when I was your age or less; best thing that ever happened to me.” Jackson grinned. “Spent three months recovering in private rooms paid for by the ship’s captain and bedded more women than I can care to remember.”

  “Enough of your sailor’s yarns, you’ll bore the boy half to death. Here, drink this. Helps dull the pain of his conversation and the thousand midge bites.”

  Trevethan had found a rather dirty looking glass and filled it full of dark red port before slumping back down in his chair. Across the British lines, either side of the swollen canal, other camp fires smoked heavily to give the men some relief from the biting terror that set upon them each dusk. Krombach sipped at the port, feeling it sooth his dry mouth but knowing that his head would suffer in the morning if he drank more than this glassful. The three men sat in silence and Krombach was uncomfortable in the presence of two senior officers but neither of the older men spoke, both were content to puff on their pipes and drink their fill and only when Trevethan had emptied his own glass did he turn to Krombach.

  “We shall be busy over the next few days, I hope.” The Cornish engineer leaned forward and kicked some of the grass into the middle of the fire.

  “Why, sir?”

  “Siege guns are expected. Finally. Or so says our new Admiral.”

  “Admiral?”

  “Yes m’boy. Admiral McBride has joined us as of three hours ago.” Trevethan spoke with ill-disguised sourness.

  “The ships today, were those his? Is the fleet arriving?”

  News of the fleet was on the lips of every redcoat; the navy would bombard the town and the redcoats would carry the attack. It made perfect sense. But nothing had gone to plan so far.

  “No. I wish that they were. The Minister of War, a friend of the Commissary here, saw fit to remove the Admiral’s fleet and scatter it to the four winds on God knows what tasks. However, we do also have three hundred Irish navvies to help manoeuvre the siege guns.” Trevethan drew on his pipe for sustenance and exhaled a stream of smoke and then looked away at the trench lines in contemplation.

  “Have the guns finally arrived then, Major?”

  “Lord, heavens no, boy. Now we have an Admiral with no fleet to keep good company with the artillery officer with no guns. But at least you and I have three hundred keen Irishmen to help haul them into position when they do.”

  “And when is that going to be?”

  Trevethan scratched his head to consider how best to answer his subordinate. It was difficult to understand how the army had been in place for a week and so little had been achieved.

  “Two days, perhaps three, according to the Admiral,” Jackson intervened. “And I’m sure Dundas has his reasons, whatever they are.” He aimed a wry smile at Trevethan who shook his head in disbelief.

  “You know, when Valenciennes fell, Belvedere and I were rummaging around looking for maps when the Duke arrived. The Frenchies hailed ‘im the King of Valenciennes, right there and then. Bloody odd moment and that’s no lie. I wonder if the people of Dunkirk will feel the same when we have battered their town from land and sea? The King of Dunkirk? Might not be anything left to be the King of,” Trevethan mused, staring deep into the empty glass.

  “Let’s just get the business done, eh? A step near home for all of us.” Jackson replied.

  Tomorrow, September would dawn. In truth, Dunkirk was no nearer being in British hands. The heat of summer would soon fade and the prospect of autumn or a winter in the scrub land between the dunes and the Great Moor filled each man with dread.

  Quesnoy: 31st August 1793

  The afternoon bombardment had slowed. Somewhere in the centre of Quesnoy a dozen houses burned but there were no signs of the garrison’s morale weakening. None had chosen to leave the strongly positioned fort; no messages for ‘parlez’ or signs of citizens leaving the town to escape the ravages of the siege. Prince Hohenlohe surveyed the angular silhouettes of the walls from his telescope and then returned to the map, where Colonel Mack’s detailed pins had been replaced by a series of blunted pencil marks. Quesnoy was surrounded; the Prussians were doing their best to cut off the roads to Lille but without adequate man-power; the British were still chasing the elusive and rather pointless trophy of Dunkirk.

  However, at least Hohenlohe now understood a little of why the British had been offered Dunkirk as a war prize. Whatever the outcome of the war, the Austrian Netherlands were no longer of interest to the Empire. They were an asset to be traded away. Great Britain had been offered her prize; the Prussians would be offered Alsace; even the Stadtholder might be offered his own kingdom, for a price.

  The fighting in Flanders would count for little. The province was to be offered to France, along with part of the Austrian Netherlands, to soothe her losses to the greedy British and Prussians. Such largess would once again unite the imperial households of France and Austria and keep Great Britain out of continental affairs. Austria would ask for nothing, other than control of Bavaria, a small price for European peace. It was the genius of Thugut to set a series of trades that would leave the Empire greater and more secure in the long run.

  Tomorrow, September would dawn; the terms of the peace were being finessed and yet the war was not won. Hohenlohe cast one last look at the map. A series of grubby blue-pencilled crosses marked the French cordon, but the Army of the North had disappeared. Perhaps it had been withdrawn to Paris. It mattered little: victory was within Austria’s grasp.

  Late afternoon heat radiated through heavy canvas. Deep inside the tent, Juliette, Countess of Marboré, slouched in a canvas chair. Cherry red riding boots, supple despite their newness, rested on a cylindrical leather box which contained an elaborate shako in the style worn by the Esterhàzy Hussars. To the casual observer, nothing of her life before remained. Indeed, a battered wooden trunk that held the remnants of that life, was covered with clothing from the new one.

  The chair, boots, camp-bed, dresses and jewellery along with a dozen marriage proposals and several more of a less decent nature were the fruits of a month in the camp of Prince Josias. She had asked for nothing but each day saw new gifts, coquetry from the elite of Austrian society. A thin bead of condensation ran down a wine glass on a table that she had carefully placed to block the open flap of the tent, jolted by the rumble of guns pounding Quesnoy.

  There was a sense of guilt at being safe. She had endured six weeks inside Valenciennes. Then the
allies had bombarded day and night. The scenes at the church, which had been converted into a hospital, had been pitiful. Whatever Hell was, it couldn’t be worse than that hospital. But Juliette had stayed until almost the very end.

  With an effort, Juliette returned to the letter. She knew the words by heart but studied them again, checking the strength of her own deductions.

  Heavily creased parchment was covered in rather simple handwriting that had taken three weeks to reach her. The writer was a man who Julian Beauvais had said could be trusted; that was guarantee enough. She knew little of the gruff Dunkirk smuggler Arnaud Mahieu, aside from brief meetings in the environs of Dumouriez’ camp but could imagine the delight Mahieu would have taken in the phrasing of the letter.

  But the letter itself offered another subtle message; an unwritten pact.

  Communication with both Carnot and Mahieu had been part of Juliette’s price for quitting Valenciennes. Ferrand had agreed to the plan, not that Juliette had left him with much choice. Her act of leading out the remaining women and children, had spared countless lives. The prospect of the storming of the fortress city had been all too real. Ferrand had talked the scheme through with her, finessing parts of it, knowing that any future action to rescue Beauvais needed to succeed without the prospect of his input. Death or captivity were to be his likely companions in those hours ahead.

  The messenger that had slipped out through the gates of Valenciennes and avoided the allied cordon had carried her messages alongside those of Ferrand. Once obligations of duty to the Governor of Valenciennes had been served, the rider had turned north.

  The message to Carnot had been straightforward. Juliette reiterated her own innocence and that of Beauvais in the dealings of Dumouriez. She knew that Carnot would expect such a statement and be moved little by it. But it gave her a motive for the act of patriotism to follow. Carnot was a realist, an opportunist too: the latter part of the message would interest him more.