The King of Dunkirk

by Dominic Fielder

  “Yes, yes, but not tonight, Monsieur Mayor. Whoever held me captive fled the moment that I informed them of my post. They could have done away with me but I am sure they feared certain capture by you and your man.”

  Grison seemed placated and slightly flushed with pride at the words of the man who represented the Committee of Public Safety itself.

  “Perhaps you would be so kind as to escort me to my lodgings. I must ensure that no documents have been disturbed. That would make the evening’s drama a more serious matter.” Caillat stood, somewhat unsteadily and followed the torchlight out into the darkness of the night.

  It was after one in the morning by the time that Caillat had returned to the safety of his room. September had dawned, no more than an hour old. Feeling for the envelope in his jacket, he carefully slid a knife along its edge, keen to examine it for the slightest evidence. There was nothing of note save for two diamonds. Enough to buy the freedom of a man he had imprisoned. Enough, he hoped, to spare him from a death sentence of his own.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Contact with the Cordon.

  Mont Cassel: 5th September 1793

  “You are due your seat at my table because of your rank so sit there, shut up and don’t think to question my orders.”

  Houchard locked Caillat in a stare that would have turned the Representative’s blood cold a few days before but now Caillat shuffled in to the room of waiting blue-coated officers, care worn by days of heavy thought on how to free Beauvais and the weight of further instructions signed by Robespierre but crafted by the hand of Genet.

  “Somebody gave you a good beating too, boy. Despite there not being a God any more, it seems a simple prayer can still be answered.” Houchard cracked a broken smile and men around the map table grinned uncomfortably.

  Houchard held power, for now. Despite his youth and the swollen bruised face which had blossomed black and purple, Caillat represented the Committee. Every word could be reported back to Paris. If Houchard failed, his meeting with the guillotine, the ‘National Razor’, would come and Caillat would be there to see it.

  In the pocket of his nankeen jacket, a handkerchief stained with dried blood was the reminder of the threat from Dunkirk hanging over the head of the Committee’s man. Nestled against it was the latest communique. When the General had finished, Caillat told himself he would seize the moment and deliver the stark warning from Paris.

  Houchard paced around the table and a dozen pairs of eyes watched his movement.

  “Listen up, men. This is my plan. I’m a simple man, so we will keep this simple, too.” Houchard smiled a lopsided smile and then continued.

  “Dumesny, your men are here at Bailleul, on our right. Screen the Austrians, they must not be allowed to rescue the redcoats.” Houchard looked up and found the face of officer to whom he had spoken, holding the man’s gaze for a second. Dumesny nodded the briefest of smiles in acceptance of the role before the General continued.

  “Vandamme, you are my right hook. Take Watou, Proven and Rousbrugge; cross the Yser and seize Ost-Cappel before the Hanoverians know what has hit them.” Houchard turned to face a man whose reputation was more brutal than his own.

  “I’m sorry I can only give you four thousand men, Dominique.”

  “It will do. I won’t let the bastards sleep until we are across the Yser and heading towards the sea.” Vandamme replied, cold steel eyes met the gaze of Houchard who nodded and returned to the map.

  “Hédouville and Jourdan, the centre; I will be with you. We will capture Houtkerke and Herzeele and make crossings over the Yser and attack Bambecque from three directions. Freytag is too stubborn to move, so he will end up with some French bayonets up his arse.” Laughter echoed around the room, to ease the tension as each man began to weigh up the orders given to him.

  “Landrin, Jourdan will need fourteen thousand men, you will take the remaining four thousand from Cassel and drive the redcoats from Wormhoudt. That cuts off these battalions west of the Bergues road, if you are quick.” Houchard pointed to four red crosses drawn on to the map. “Join up with Leclaire, who will attack out of Bergues, pinning the south of the canal. You should both be able to meet at Quaedypre.”

  Caillat watched more heads nod in agreement.

  “Souham, you need to attack tomorrow, the day after and the day after that. Keep the British pinned to that beach. Don’t let them withdraw. In two days, three at most, we will be in possession of Furnes and then York is lost. Your men are ready, Joseph?”

  “I have a few surprises for the British. We are ready.”

  “Good, good.”

  Caillat watched Houchard press his weight onto the table, which creaked into response to the giant scarred white knuckles that bore down on it.

  “Berthellemy has copies of each of your orders. We start tomorrow just after dawn. An order from him over the next two or three days is as good as if it came from me.”

  At the side of the table, a tall figure with a slightly plump face glowed at the mention of his name and began sorting efficiently to hand out copies of orders that he had spent the previous hours drafting.

  “If there are no questions, get your ugly faces out of my sight. Those of you who live, I will look forward to seeing on the beaches of Dunkirk, when we auction off the possessions of the Princes and Dukes that will fall into our grasp.”

  Houchard nodded towards a sentry who flung the door open and warm September light flooded into the humid room. There was a storm brewing, Caillat could feel the oppressive heat sapping him. He rose to speak to Houchard but again, Souham stepped in between the two men with just the faintest shake of his head. The oppressive heat of the day and the weight of the letter from Paris seemed to push him back into his chair too easily. The General already knew that failure to capture the Duke of York and his army would mean a recall to face the Committee. Even so, Caillat needed to find the strength to tell Houchard as much but for now such bravery deserted him.

  Wormhoudt: 6th September 1793

  The orders made little sense and Colonel Franke had tried his best to pass them off with a casual indifference. Mont Cassel had not been scouted and cavalry support would not arrive until ten in the morning at the earliest. Another prong of the attack was being delivered by a force further east but there were no obvious plans to co-ordinate matters.

  “Perhaps the General is comforted by the fact that you will be leading the attacking, Erich?”

  The Field-Marshal had publicly berated Franke after the church parade of the previous Sunday week on the insolence of the young officer who had delivered a report to his headquarters. The assembled officers chuckled at the gallows humour of their Colonel. Only Baumann remained stony-faced. His eyes were fixed on von Bomm, seemingly blaming him for Freytag’s instructions to the battalion.

  First Grenadiers were to be a reconnaissance in force; rumours had reached the Hanoverian commander that Mont Cassel had been abandoned by the French. If true and the hilltop town could be seized and held, the Hanoverian position would be immeasurably strengthened. Erich von Bomm had borne the butt of the jibes from his fellow officers with sanguine good grace but an hour later such feelings had disappeared into the heavy morning mist that shrouded the town of Wormhoudt. The humidity of the previous day had continued into a suffocating night and dawn had brought little relief.

  The instructions to his skirmishers had been simple. The men would work in pairs, in a skirmish line either side of the road, each pair in visual contact with the men either side of them. As the mist evaporated the challenge of maintaining contact would be solved, the last few mornings it had all but vanished within an hour of sunrise, but the threat of the enemy would not dissolve with the morning light. One long blast from von Bomm’s whistle and the skirmishers were to close ranks and prepare for cavalry. Three short blasts and the screen were to retire in an orderly manner to the security of the battalion, three hundred yards behind.

  Von Bomm tugged at the silk neckerchief arou
nd his throat; a band of sweat had already formed and the pit of his stomach growled despite the breakfast of charred bacon and an over-cooked egg which Pinsk had brought him. He had scanned the terrain countless times over the last two weeks, the folds and depressions, knots of trees and hedges, the killing grounds where his men could defend if the enemy attacked. It had never crossed the Lieutenant’s mind that the battalion might be asked to assault the hilltop town. In the golden haze into which the skirmishers marched, crossing fields slick with heavy dew which soaked through the weakened leather of those men who still wore their regulation boots, the landmarks had gone.

  Twisting his head left and right, von Bomm checked the progress of the line. He could see five pairs of men to either side, at best sixty yards either side; if enemy cavalry appeared, the screen would be cut to ribbons before it had time to react. The only advantage was the distance that sound carried. They would hear the French before they saw them. Behind them, the grenadiers had been ordered to march as silently as possible. Water bottles had been secured, packs discarded. Those would be delivered with the baggage once Cassel had been seized. The two battalion guns brought up the rear of the column and despite the efforts to muffle their sound, von Bomm could hear the rumble of the carriages and occasional bellow from the oxen of one of the local farmers that had been pressed into service to pull the two light cannons.

  The screen travelled along the undulated farmland for another ten minutes, the sense of foreboding that von Bomm felt worsened. In a fruitless attempt to stifle his unease, he fiddled with his pocket watch; a few minutes before seven. The landscape ahead was revealing itself under the blanket of cloud which retreated slowly up the hillside of Mont Cassel ahead of them. Both flanks of the screen could now be seen, he watched Sergeant Keithen motion left and right for skirmishers to tighten up the line, where men had drifted over the two miles that the march had covered.

  The movement of horses to their front pierced the mist. Cavalry had been promised at some point but the sound was clearly to their front. The screen was deployed along an open field on the edge of a lip of gently rising ground. Small copses were clustered on the borders of the farmland but the nearest was five hundred yards to the immediate left. The men on the right of the line would never make that ground, even if the skirmishers on the left could and that was not certain.

  Four hundred yards and closing, French hussars burst from the cloud wall that smothered Mont Cassel and into the morning light of the plains below.

  Von Bomm turned his head to see the close order infantry columns of the grenadiers begin to snake into a solid line, ready to discourage the enemy light horse from a foolhardy frontal attack. But the hussars were already closing ranks. They had their sights set on a much easier kill. The screen had lost contact with the column over the course of the mornings advance. Finding cover from the terrain or the battalion was no longer an option. Von Bomm blew a sharp blast on the whistle around his neck and prayed that his men would be ready to meet the enemy before the horsemen were upon them.

  Teteghem: 6th September 1793

  Dreaming came in fitful streams. Maren was just a shadow, her features unclear; Krombach felt the fear that he could no longer remember her and by that same token she could no longer recall him. Then there was shouting, and the realisation that he was no longer dreaming. He sat upright in a shirt soaked with sweat from the stifling night that had given way to the already humid air of dawn. A pair of sand flies rose in weary circles, engorged from the welt of bloody bites around his calves and ankles, to find other hosts to prey on. Before Krombach had a chance to register this new string of bites that added to the dozens that ravaged his own body, he was already running. Without thinking he grabbed at his Brown Bess musket and stumbled bare footed towards the gabion wall of the redoubt that marked the position of the siege guns.

  There was a slight rise of a sand bar ahead of him and he was carried along in a wave of thick set Gaelic speaking voices. Men of Donegal, County Clare and Sligo, whose accents he found impenetrable on the occasions that they spoke English, had been sent as navvies, labour for building the engineering of war. Under the direction of Major Trevethan minor miracles had been brought about in five long days. The siege line had at last begun to resemble a feature that even Count Orlandini might have grudgingly approved. Half of the heavy guns had arrived, the balance, another sixteen, would be in place before the day was out and by the following morning, the bombardment of Dunkirk would begin in earnest.

  The French had come to destroy those hours of toil but the Irishmen would have some say in that matter.

  He struggled for purchase in the shifting sand to crest the steep bar and then a scene of absolute chaos opened before his eyes. Dozens of men were locked in desperate battles of grim hand-to-hand combat. The navvies had armed themselves with anything that might make a weapon: axes, hand spikes from siege guns, clubs and cudgels carried for their own protection. Where those were not an option, clenched fists backed up by muscular physiques borne of hard labour, carried a fighting rage which was legendary throughout the centuries. The French skirmish line which had crested the redoubt had lost any semblance of order as the deadly wave of crazed Irishmen crashed into them.

  If the French battalion commander had hoped that the labourers would not fight, he was sadly mistaken. A sea of blue jacketed Frenchmen fought navvies in their own thick blue work-shirts and heavily patched ragged trousers. Krombach became vaguely aware of being the only redcoat in the midst of this maelstrom but searched across the mass of writhing bodies for Trevethan. Then he saw the Cornishman, stabbing away with a short sword, protecting the nearest of the guns from a pair of French soldiers in their attempts to reach it and ‘spike’ the weapon by forcing something as simple as a nail into the touch-hole. Krombach levelled his musket and weaved through the mass of bodies towards the Major.

  Only when he had made the ground, did he realise that his musket was unloaded, his ammunition pouch and bayonet were wrapped in the folds of the horse blanket he had slept on. There was no option but to reverse his grip on the Brown Bess and use the brute force of the brass-plated butt. Without breaking stride, he did just that and rammed the weapon into the left shoulder of the nearest enemy soldier with whom Trevethan sparred. The blue-coat crumpled under the weight of the impact and Trevethan took his chance to lunge at the exposed throat of the wounded man, spraying the cold cast-iron barrel in jets of bright red, arterial blood. The redcoat had tumbled forward against one of the wicker gabions and as he regained his footing, watched as Trevethan feinted left, parried the musket of the remaining Frenchman and drove his straight sword deep into his opponent’s chest. The man fell, in contortions of agony and Trevethan struck again, aiming at the heart of his stricken foe. Only then did he nod thanks towards Krombach without even seeming to recognise the young Hanoverian, his eyes wide with blood lust.

  Muskets crackled as the melee continued. Along the position of the battery, blue-jacketed British gunners fought to repel the enemy. Their uniforms, usually distinctive against the redcoats of the infantry, added to the morass of hues of blue that struggled for control in the redoubt. One of these gunners, ashen faced and near death, had crawled under the wheel of the heavy gun, trying to staunch the bleeding from a wound that had drenched his tunic and the groin of his white linen trousers with a rich claret.

  Krombach drew breath, looking left and right. More Irishmen were flooding the trench line and even in the few short moments he had been present, it felt as if the French had been checked with the ferocity of the unplanned counter-attack. Seizing that moment, he dived under the cannon and tugged at the ammunition pouch of the dying man. Krombach tore at the buckles and whitened leather straps. Unable to shift the gunner’s weight sufficiently, he grabbed a handful of cartridges and struggled back out to load a ball into the musket barrel as quickly as his trembling hands would allow. There was no field drill, the voice of Gauner barking out the rigid steps of drill regulations were gone. Load and f
ire were all that mattered. Beside him Trevethan worked on loading his pistol. Only then with his own weapon loaded, did he register any personal recognition of Krombach.

  “Good to see you m’boy. And a good effort with that one,” Trevethan pointed at the dead Frenchman who had fallen at the wheel of the gun, the river of blood from his neck staining the sand a swollen, dark ruby.

  “Keep this gun protected, I’m going to find men to load it!”

  Krombach nodded and took a few paces back, resting his musket on the right wheel and waiting for a target to appear. Beyond the gabions a French infantry battalion was approaching, one hundred and fifty yards away, a second battalion beyond that. The sapping march through the sand had slowed the enemy that had burst out of Dunkirk in the early dawn light.

  Suddenly two more blue-coats scrambled over the lowest point of the gabion wall, where the barrel of unloaded cannon stared across at the buildings of Dunkirk. Another figure levelled a musket at Krombach, to cover the advance of his comrades. A small cloud of white smoke filled the aperture in the gabion wall and the cannon wheel vibrated as the musket ball clattered through the spokes and span harmlessly away. Krombach threw himself to his left, narrowly avoiding the wooden trail of the artillery piece and came face to face with one of the two men who had just entered the redoubt. Without even shouldering the musket, Krombach fired, felt the kick of the Brown Bess jar in his right hip and was then blinded momentarily by the smoke from his own weapon.

  There was no time to reload. The second Frenchman had circled around the other side of the gun and launched himself at the Hanoverian, intent on impaling Krombach at the point of his bayonet. In the final step, the blue-coat’s left foot landed on the shins of one of the men killed by Trevethan. The point of the bayonet fell away to the left and momentum threw the soldier off balance.

  Seizing the initiative, Krombach drove the butt of the musket with his right hand, hard into the Frenchman’s ribs and followed that with a second blow into the spine of the now prostrate enemy. Suddenly more blue-coats were around the gun, but now these were British artillerymen, cursing at the detritus of war that had accumulated around the heavy field piece. Krombach returned to where the salvaged cartridges lay and began to reload, taking his place on the wall of the gabion but keen to keep out of the way of the gunners and behind the field piece when the firing began.