Four Days in June

by Iain Gale

  Hay rode straight at the hedge, with a jockey’s eye, and set his horse to jump. And then. Unthinkable. She pulled up. Stopped dead before the short, dense wall of gorse and elder. Turning her to try again, Hay, no longer laughing now, seemed just for an instant to sit straight up in the saddle. His eyes shone with surprise. Then with terror. The shot, from a cuirassier’s carbine, had caught him square in the chest. His horse began to run, shaken into panic. And then, with the flopping-headed, grotesquely supported body of the young ensign stone dead in the saddle, still clinging to the reins, she leapt the end of the hedge and crashed solidly, bloodily, into the astonished Saltoun. In an instant, the sudden silence which had descended on the battalion was broken as another shot rang out from the ranks of the light companies and the cuirassier too fell dead to the ground. Two corporals ran to disentangle the dead boy from their shaken commanding officer.

  Macdonell sat motionless. Took off his shako and mopped his dripping brow. Ran his hand across his face and through his hair. Rubbed at his eyes. ‘Why?’, he wondered. What cruel God had sentenced young Hay to this ridiculously unlucky death, in his first action? For all the killing Macdonell had seen, this surely came closest to a real tragedy. A truly senseless loss.

  The moment soon passed. Never ask why, he reminded himself. Never in battle. The only answer to that question lay in madness. For there was no answer. If you were going to die that day there was nothing you could do about it. Except fight.

  Macdonell replaced his hat, reined his horse round and shouted back into the wood. ‘Colour Sar’nt Biddle?’

  He took out his pocket watch. It was nearing eight-thirty, but the sun had not yet set. And there was still much for them to do before the day was out. Biddle was with him.

  ‘Colour Sar’nt. Stand the men easy. Five minutes’ rest. And take a roll-call, if you will. Have you any notion of our losses?’

  ‘Hard to say, sir. It was that dark in there. And those Frenchies don’t like to give you a moment to look. Mind, sir, I did see Beckey hit. Tarrant too, I think. We’ll go back in for the wounded, sir.’

  ‘I saw a few go down. That new lad. Stevens.’ He paused. Collected himself. ‘Well, let’s get on with it, Colour Sar’nt. Can’t delay.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. About the young Lord. Bloody waste, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.’

  ‘Just so, Colour Sar’nt. Although I do seem to recall you once telling me that there was no such thing as waste in war. Only winners and losers.’

  Biddle laughed. Nodded. ‘I’ll see to the men, sir.’

  ‘Four minutes, Colour Sar’nt. No more. Or I dare say that his good Highness, the Prince of Orange, will be wondering where the deuce we’ve all got to.’

  DAY THREE

  Saturday 17 June 1815

  TWELVE

  Quatre-Bras, 10 a.m. De Lancey

  Dawn had come up fast, casting its raw, unforgiving light over the bloody field. On the high ground, behind the angle of Quatre-Bras farm, De Lancey sat astride his horse and rubbed a hand wearily over his forehead and eyes. He had spent a restless, uncomfortable night, billeted with Wellington and the majority of the staff in a squalid little red-brick inn, the Roi d’Espagne, at the village of Genappe, two miles to the north. Fully awake by five and anxious to know both the full extent of the carnage and the state of the troops, he had risen quickly and ridden in Wellington’s wake to the site of yesterday’s action. Now, positioned at the centre of the Allied line, he put his spy-glass to his eye and looked down the road into the shallow valley beyond the crossroads.

  There on the left lay the farm of Gemioncourt, focus of the bitterest of the fighting. The landscape around it had changed in the twenty-four hours since he and Wellington had first stood here. There were curious new features. Small hillocks and mounds of blue, green and red. Shapes which had once been men. Occasionally one of them moved. For the wounded were still lying there, mingled with the dead. Among them he discerned the bent-over forms of a few peasants. Looters who, despite the continued presence of the two armies, felt it worth the risk to walk the field with the slow pace of avarice, stripping, tugging and cutting their precious booty from those who no longer had need of it. From time to time a single pistol shot sounded another death knell for any wounded wretch foolish enough not to give up his earthly possessions without a struggle. De Lancey watched as, closer to the Allied lines, blue-clad Horse Guards, the provost’s men, manoeuvred their mounts carefully among the barely alive and the corpses, intent on preventing such heathen practices. Watched as they drew their pistols to pronounce a cool summary execution on any looter unfortunate enough to cross their path.

  De Lancey moved his glass slowly along the length of the Allied line. The positions of the forward units remained precisely as he had ordered them in the new day’s orders, written out the previous evening in the inn at Genappe. The troops were to stand their ground and place picquets to their front. The Nassauers and Brunswickers he had kept in the far wood. The Guards he had ordered to bivouac to the north of the crossroads, but they were to leave their light companies at the very front of the position, as a rearguard. Having done with the orders, he had written a short letter to Magdalene and despatched it to Antwerp. A simple note to ease her mind. He was well – unhurt. They had given the French a licking, but would fight another, greater battle very soon. She should not worry on his account. He was constantly by the Peer’s side. Victory, he assured her, would soon be theirs.

  But De Lancey knew in his heart that this was very far from the truth.

  Even before he had been dressed, Wellington had sent Alexander Gordon galloping off to find Blücher at Sombreffe. Gordon had found nothing but the French. Eventually, though, he had stumbled across General Ziethen at Tilly at the head of a rearguard, desperately organizing picquets to warn him of the approach of the French.

  It had been an hour since Gordon had returned with his findings. The Prussians had been soundly beaten. There were distressing details. Poor Henry Hardinge, their liaison officer, a genial guardsman, had been maimed. His hand, crushed by a stone thrown up by a roundshot, had been amputated on the field. The whole affair had been desperately bloody. The French too had suffered. But Napoleon’s army remained intact and a very real threat.

  Now the main body would rejoin the wing he had left at the crossroads. Then they would see a battle. And so the Prussian army, what was left of it, was falling back on Wavre. In truth De Lancey had not known where it was before looking at a map. And once he had found it, the dispiriting news of its distance from their position filled the assembled officers with a terrible gloom. No one spoke. Wellington had grasped the table. At length the oppressive atmosphere had forced De Lancey out into the morning light, to horse and to his present position. His present inaction.

  Blücher was retreating. With immediate Prussian help that morning, he thought, the Peer might yet have moved on to the offensive. Now, though, there was no alternative but for the British and their allies to pull back. If they remained here they would be dangerously exposed. Encircled. That, he realized, had ever been Bonaparte’s intention.

  Yesterday’s engagement had been precisely the confusing and unplanned affair he had feared. Not least because he had witnessed its opening. This morning Wellington had concluded that a mere despatch to Blücher would not do. Had deemed it necessary to discuss the situation face to face. And so, shortly after eleven o’clock, they had set off for Sombreffe. De Lancey, Wellington, Somerset, Dörnberg and much of the staff, accompanied by a half-troop of life guards. En route the Peer had acquainted him with the need to agree on a course of action. The need for Blü cher and himself to have absolute confidence in one another. But his words served only to amplify De Lancey’s concerns over what he knew had been his ridiculously over-optimistic predictions of the army’s estimated time of arrival at the crossroads. By the time they reached the Prussian picquets, De Lancey was consumed with worry. More than ever convinced that he had made a catastrophic blunder.<
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  Moreover, their journey had taken very nearly two hours.

  Passing with remarkable ease through the Prussian lines, they had found the General Staff established below a windmill, overlooking the field of battle. Hardinge had led them to the brow of the hill, where Blücher stood looking out across the two armies on the plain below. After a brief greeting they had climbed the mill steps and there, across a map laid on the old grinding stone, for almost an hour the two generals had spoken, interrupted from time to time by their staff. Bizarrely, they had conversed in French, for neither spoke the other’s language. There had been demands from the Prussians. In particular from Count von Gneisenau, whom De Lancey knew did not trust the British. Might there be, Gneisenau suggested in his irritating, half-mocking way, perhaps a division available to aid the Prussians? To De Lancey’s great relief Wellington had said nothing. But then. Just as they were leaving. Calamity.

  The Peer had turned to Blücher and with smiling sincerity had assured him that by two o’clock he would have sufficient forces to be able to attack. De Lancey winced. He knew it to be impossible. The British and their allies were strung out from Nivelles to Quatre-Bras.

  Naturally, given that assurance, the old man had decided to stand and fight. Wellington’s parting words came back to him now with an awful clarity: ‘At four o’clock I shall be here.’

  De Lancey knew in truth that this could not, would not, be done. That Wellington’s promise to reinforce the Prussians had been founded on his own misplaced optimism. On his own well-intended deceit. He had in effect forced the Peer to break his word.

  The thought sat heavy on his conscience as he looked out again across the field of Quatre-Bras, taking in the pathetic rise and fall of the wounded. The piles of dead. What, he wondered, had his part been in the death that lay before him upon this field and across at Ligny? It was being said that the Prussians had lost 15,000 killed. How sensible a decision had it really been to stand and fight when the Allied army was in reality, as only he knew, hopelessly spread out across the Belgian countryside?

  By the time they had returned from Blü cher it had been half an hour after three. They had heard the battle long before they saw it. Almost as soon as leaving Sombreffe. Had ridden into the very heart of a savage cavalry action. Extricating himself from this immediate danger, Wellington had realized almost at once that he had not a hope of keeping his promise. That less than half of his army was yet assembled, and not one full brigade of cavalry. The reports had confirmed their peril. The first attacks had come in at two o’clock. The Prince of Orange (God help them) had assumed command. Unsurprisingly, the French had propelled the Belgians from their advanced positions. Shortly before their arrival, however, Picton’s men had begun to appear from the north. Quickly, together with the Hanoverians, the 32nd and the First and three battalions of Highlanders had formed a sound front line. But bad news came in equal measure. The road from Nivelles was blocked with baggage. The 3rd division would not be there for another hour at the least. The Brunswickers had been badly cut up and were now leaderless, their commander-in-chief, the Duke of Brunswick, having been mortally wounded by a musket ball through the stomach. The 69th, to their shame, had lost the King’s colour.

  By the end of the day the Allies had taken 5,000 casualties. The French, he was informed, a little fewer. While the Belgian light dragoons had done deadly work on the Crapauds, at any one moment there had been barely 2,000 Allied sabres on the field. By the time the battle had ended, further slaughter made impossible by the failing light, barely a third of the Allied army was anywhere in the vicinity of the field. Not once had they had sufficient men to stage anything like a full counter-attack. At last, towards seven o’clock, the Guards, arriving from Nivelles, had taken the woods.

  Whatever account he had sent to Magdalene, this was no victory. Oh, they had held the French. But by their inaction and lack of troops they had also allowed Blü cher to suffer horribly. De Lancey knew that they would never be forgiven that broken promise. He had heard already that Gneisenau was actually suggesting that the Prussians abandon the British and head east. Fortunately Blücher seemed to have prevailed. And so it was that now they too would have to pull back. It was not a retreat but a tactical withdrawal. All around him the army was beginning to retire, as the Duke had indicated, back along the same road down which it had so lately come. Company by company. Troop by troop. But now there were no skirling pipes, no fifes and drums, no bugles or flags. Just an exhausted river of humanity. Muttering, joking, groaning. Wondering where on earth in this godforsaken country old Nosey now had a mind to take them.

  De Lancey knew.

  Wellington was familiar with this ground. Had ridden it only last year, taking along with him a colonel of engineers, one James Carmichael Smyth. It was Smyth’s map that De Lancey now carried in his valise. It had arrived yesterday, at the height of the battle, being momentarily misplaced when the messenger’s horse had gone missing in a vegetable field. It had soon been recovered and Wellington had presented it to him shortly after the early-morning briefing. Before doing so the Peer had marked on it a line. It defined a ridge some ten miles to the north. A ridge punctuated by walled farms and bordered on both left and right by forest and rough ground. It was, as anyone could see, the perfect defensive position. The ridge straddled two roads whose junction formed a letter ‘A’ with, at its apex, the hamlet of Mont St Jean. Before it lay three farms, a château and a small cluster of houses at a crossroads with the ironic name of La Belle Alliance. For he was aware that by that evening they would be more than seven miles from their Prussian allies. Seven miles of the most difficult terrain the country had to offer. Yet here it was, seven miles from Wavre, that the Peer intended to stand. Here, to Mont St Jean, that Blü cher must bring the vital reinforcements. And it was to Mont St Jean that De Lancey knew he should already be making his way this morning. With him would go his staff, each of them charged with carefully guiding into its pre-allocated position every brigade of the army, directly as it arrived from the march.

  There was but one provision. If Blü cher was unable to provide them with even a single corps in support, then Wellington had stated that he was prepared to abandon this new position. If Blücher did not come across, they would sacrifice Brussels to the French.

  De Lancey looked to his right. A few paces away, his officers had now stopped talking among themselves and begun to look towards him; patting their restless mounts as, sensing the feelings of their riders, the horses showed their own impatience and anticipation. One moment more, he thought. Almost said it aloud. Allow me but one moment to gather my thoughts.

  He closed his eyeglass and returned it to the leather holster on his saddle. But he continued to stare out across the ghastly field, and suddenly felt quite alone. A universe away from any sense of belonging. Away from anywhere he could call ‘home’. Away from the army. Away from the pretty house in Brussels. From Dunglass and from Edinburgh. Away from his childhood homes in Yorkshire and London. He was overcome by a sudden craving for that security. By a yearning to visit his mother once again in her little house in Colchester and by a sudden pang of loss for his dear, sweet father, dead these past seventeen years. And it occurred to him now how fast his own life had gone. Seemed hardly a moment since he had left Harrow for the light dragoons. For Holland, Madras, Calcutta, where he had first encountered Wellington. June 1797. A supper party thrown by Will Hickey to honour the King’s birthday. He recalled the imposing presence of this man not eight years his senior and yet so impressively confident. Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Wellesley, commanding officer, 33rd Foot. And so, by fate, their careers had marched hand in hand. Through Portugal and Spain they had soldiered together. Friends, though never equals. Through six bitter years of campaigning. Through the hell of Talavera, Bussaco, Fuentes, Badajoz and Salamanca, they had pushed the French back beyond their borders. And as his own glory had increased, so Wellington had faithfully ensured that De Lancey too received his share. At last, in th
e victory honours came his reward. A knighthood.

  Yet now even the Peninsula, for all its memories, all its nightmares, seemed to De Lancey, as he looked with tired eyes across the bloody landscape, so distant as to be unreal. He was alone. And yet he would never be alone again. He put his hand in his pocket and grasped the little, round pebble. Felt its smooth, cold purity. As soft and cool as her pale, downy skin.

  ‘De Lancey?’

  He dropped the stone quickly, felt it fall back into his pocket. ‘Your Grace?’

  He had not noticed Wellington riding up. Wondered if he had seen his consternation. Wondered just how aware he was that it was he, his comrade of two decades and countless campaigns, who must bear the blame for yesterday’s débâcle. For their losses. For the Prussians’ defeat as they waited and suffered at Ligny for the promised British reinforcements which he had known could never arrive in time. Wondered, too, when such was the surrounding cacophany of marching feet and hooves and jangling harness that a rebuke would have gone unnoticed, whether now at length the Peer would reveal the extent of his anger. Waited for the thunder.

  ‘De Lancey.’ Wellington spoke with a calm, soft voice. ‘Surely, you are late? Why do you delay? It will not do for you to arrive in the rear of the army. You are Quartermaster General, are you not? It is to you that the army looks for its direction. Its dispositions. You have the map?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Well then, be off man. Outride the army. You and I have no time to ponder such scenes as this.’ Then, in a quieter voice. ‘This is no time for regret, William. Make yourself of the moment. Do not lose an instant.’

  And, pulling gently on Copenhagen’s reins, he turned the horse and was gone as silently as he had arrived. There was no reproach. No words of accusation. No thunder, thought De Lancey. Merely this: ‘No time for regret.’ That and a look of such piercing, accusatory directness as he had never, in twenty years of friendship, seen in the General’s eyes. He knew.