True Soldier Gentlemen

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  All the while he thought of Miss MacAndrews. Williams did not yet feel confident enough to think of her as Jane. He wondered whether he would have the courage to ask her for a dance at tonight’s ball. What were the proper words? ‘Would you do me the honour’ . . . or perhaps ‘May I beg the privilege?’ Hamish was not sure, and had little experience of social occasions of this type. He had been to only a few since joining the regiment and had found each one desperately awkward, spending most of his time on the fringes of conversations. Once or twice Mrs Kidwell, the rotund and elderly wife of the quartermaster, had taken pity on him and either danced with him herself or led him to one of the free young ladies and made most of the arrangements.

  He doubted that he would ever feel comfortable in the social world. He dreamed of holding Miss MacAndrews, of whirling with her around the dance floor, seeing her looking up at him with warmth and affection. At the same time he knew that he was afraid even to speak to her. On the day when Captain MacAndrews’ family had arrived she had spoken only once to him. As they had talked with the Wickhams, more and more of the 106th’s officers had arrived to join them. When finally they moved off, most of the subalterns accompanied the mother and daughter, all struggling to be most of service and warmest of welcome. The hatboxes piled on top of the trunk he carried with Pringle had wobbled, threatening to fall, and Williams had somehow managed to keep hold of the handle and scoop the boxes up with his other hand. Miss MacAndrews had just for a moment looked at him, given him a brief but lavish smile and thanked him. Williams had managed no more than an incoherent grunt, immediately cursing himself for such absurd shyness.

  By the end of that day, Jane MacAndrews’ beauty and charm had become the chief talking point of the 106th. Most of the younger officers quickly decided that they were her devoted admirers. By the next day a measure of reflection had set in. Her father was an elderly and virtually penniless captain. For the moment he was acting commander of the half-battalion, but no one knew whether this would become permanent. Even then, if MacAndrews was gazetted major, the salary of that rank was scarcely a fortune.

  On the following day there was a note of renewed optimism. Mrs MacAndrews was an American, and obviously a great lady. Rumours spread of family plantations vast in extent and generous in profits. Later this enthusiasm dampened. The captain had evidently not been able to advance his career through access to such a fortune, and its existence was quickly dismissed by all but the most optimistic and romantically inclined. Miss MacAndrews could well be a most delightful companion, but only those of substantial personal means could afford to condesnd to seek her hand in marriage. Since she was the daughter of their current commander, any less formal arrangement would clearly need to be pursued with extreme caution. The young gentlemen still called at the MacAndrews’ cottage, but their ambitions were more limited, and a few returned to their pursuit of the daughters of the local gentry, however less favoured by looks.

  Williams scorned such thoughts. He loved Miss MacAndrews, and intended only ever to marry for love. He had no doubt that so perfectly beautiful a lady must be perfect in every other respect. For a moment he was resolved. He was to be a soldier, and intended to be an excellent and brave one. Surely he must have the courage to ask a young lady to dance. The confidence lasted for several minutes.

  Hanley blew a whistle to signal that the shooting was over and that each man should go and inspect their targets. Whistles were formally used only by the light infantry as a means of conveying orders. MacAndrews had given one to each of his grenadier officers and insisted that they learn to use them as well. The sharp tone could carry better over the noise of battle than shouted words.

  Williams walked forward to his target and was pleased to find six hits, including two bulls. Dobson nodded approvingly. The old soldier had managed only three hits, half as many as at fifty yards.

  ‘Eyes going,’ he said.

  The section formed up and then marched over to join the rest of the company. In another part of the field there were large canvas screens forty foot wide and six feet high supported by wooden frames. Hanley and a party of men had worked on these for long hours on the instructions of MacAndrews. His idea was to make a target the size of a company of enemy infantrymen. The other companies had already torn four of the screens to shreds, firing in concentrated volleys rather than shooting individually. The Grenadier Company directed its fire at the last remaining target. Pringle gave the orders and MacAndrews observed. They began at one hundred and fifty yards – long range for a smooth-bore musket – and then gradually closed the distance. MacAndrews had tried to drum into them the care needed when levelling a piece at each range. Over longer distances the heavy lead musket balls dropped, and so the men needed to point their firelocks higher than the target.

  The grenadiers were in two ranks. Then, at the order, the men of the second rank like Williams stepped to their right and forward a pace, closing the distance and allowing their muskets to project through the gaps between their front rank men. Volleys shattered the summer air. The noise was like the tearing of very heavy cloth, as a great cloud of smoke covered the front of the company. Hanley recorded the hits, marking them as accurately as he could on a quick sketch. The last volleys were fired at just fifty yards.

  Afterwards, MacAndrews took the officers and Williams to inspect the results. Hanley had totted up the total of hits for each volley. Pringle needed only a quick glance to provide average scores for the various ranges. The results were encouraging. Everyone knew that the Brown Bess was built to be sturdy rather than accurate. Even so almost two-fifths of the shots fired at the maximum range had hit the screen. At one hundred yards it had been nearly three-fifths, and at fifty yards the result was devastating. Between eight and nine out of ten shots had punched through the canvas, leaving it as ragged as the screens savaged by the other companies earlier in the day. At that range, it seemed difficult to miss. MacAndrews nodded his approval. They had done marginally better than the other companies.

  Hanley was impressed, and more than a little horrifid at the thought of such devastation. He was also puzzled. ‘Assuming a hundred men in a French company, wouldn’t we kill them all before we got to fire the closer volleys?’

  ‘Your screens are very fine, William, but real Frenchmen are not square, and there will be gaps,’ commented Pringle.

  ‘Do not the French also get to fire back?’ asked Williams.

  ‘Aye, they are allowed to,’ responded the captain, prompting smiles from the others.

  To Hanley that suggested only mutual annihilation. Williams was trying to imagine the chaos as men fell all around him. Redman looked pale, but obviously felt a demonstration of confidence was in order. ‘But we are better trained. I have heard the French never practise with real powder and ball.’

  ‘So they say,’ confirmed MacAndrews. ‘But plenty of them have seen a lot of real fighting.’ He waited for a while, wondering whether they would see the implication.

  ‘I would guess a target that fires back is a little distracting,’ said Pringle.

  Good, thought MacAndrews, they were getting there. ‘In America,’ he began, ‘the Yankees used to say that we always fired high. It was true as well, I have seen the treetops peppered with hundreds of balls, the leaves sheared off and branches shattered. The strange thing was that if you looked behind our positions it was exactly the same. Both sides seemed to have taken a profound dislike to the enemy’s woodland.

  ‘Men do strange things in battle. It’s like,’ he struggled for a moment for words, ‘nothing you can quite imagine until you have seen it. The noise, the smoke . . .’ He wondered about speaking of the blood, the screams and the stench, but decided that was too much. Mere words could not prepare anyone for such things.

  ‘Soldiers are just men, not machines. We train them to make them keep doing their job even with all that is going on and with their comrades falling beside them. They are still men. They are nervous, and the line between courage and panic
is thinner than paper. I have known men not notice that their musket has mis-fired, and keep on loading it with round after round even though the whole thing is so jammed up that it is never going to fire.’

  The captain paused. He had always been inclined to make his officers think, but in the last days his talks had been more frequent and extended to the other companies.

  ‘So what do we do, sir?’ asked Hanley with genuine curiosity. A clever man, he liked to feel that anything could be understood, and any problem solved. At the same time he found the calmness with which they discussed the destruction of other human beings disturbing. He thought with a chill that he was now trapped in a profession whose purpose was death. Would he become as callous as those French horsemen who slaughtered the crowd in Madrid? Yet here in England everything seemed unreal. Each morning he was still surprised to wake up and find himself to be a soldier, a man who destroyed instead of creating. He barely heard MacAndrews continue.

  ‘First thing to do is to stay calm. Or at least look calm. The men look to each other. It’s their fellows who reassure them, but before even that they look to us. As officers you need to show no fear, and to look as if you have no doubt of victory. That is why you are there. What else?’

  ‘Try to gain an advantage,’ suggested Pringle.

  ‘If you can. You are there to think, not to fight, although you may have to do that as well. Still, sometimes there are just two lines of men facing each other in an open field and no one has an edge.’

  ‘Get close,’ put in Williams, surprising himself with how confident he sounded. ‘So close we can’t miss.’

  ‘You’d be surprised how easy it is to miss – but yes, Mr Williams, you are right. Never fire at more than fifty yards unless you have no choice. Better yet, close to half that. If the enemy are already firing at you long before you get there then let ’em. The odds are they’ll be missing. Firing too much and too soon is a sign of bad soldiers.’

  ‘Can we not get the men to aim more carefully?’ said Redman, feeling rather left out and slightly annoyed that the volunteer had beaten him to a suggestion and, still worse, been praised.

  ‘It’s hard when the others are firing all around you,’ said Williams, feeling that for once he knew more about a matter than the officers. It had astounded him just how loud the company volleys had been, and it must have been worse for the front rank with the second rank’s muskets just inches from their heads. No wonder Dobson was a little deaf.

  ‘True, but Mr Redman has a point. Get close and tell the men to aim low. Aim at the knees and you will probably hit the chest.’

  ‘Or we can always give the French trees a good pasting,’ said Pringle. ‘Destroy French horticulture to defend the forests of Old England.’

  MacAndrews did not mind the flippancy. Quiet by nature and made more reserved by years of disappointment, he disliked making speeches, but wanted these men to learn. The sergeants had already dismissed the company for their meal. There would be more drill later this afternoon, but he had decided to let everyone finish early. The officers would then have time to preen themselves for this evening’s ball. For a moment he almost regretted his family’s arrival, for that would mean that he must attend. He wanted to spend time with them, with Esther especially, but would have preferred a more private occasion. There was also so much work to do. Deep in thought, he strode ahead at a rapid pace on the path back to the village. Very soon he left the others behind.

  ‘It is going to be glorious,’ said Redman. Eager anticipation for once revealed the boy he still was. ‘The Hansons shall be there I am sure.’ He was convinced Miss Emily favoured him.

  ‘I am sure it will be a most pleasant distraction,’ was as far as Pringle was willing to go, and neither he nor Hanley showed any desire to discuss the subject further. Redman hurried away to find Hatch, leaving the other three strolling along in silence. Williams trailed a little, for he had decided now that he dared not request a dance from Miss MacAndrews and was busy despising himself.

  8

  Pringle, Hanley and Williams stuck together after arriving at Mr Fotheringham’s house. Most of the seventy or so guests were already there, but their arrival was not so late as to cause either offence or excessive attention. They slid into the crowd, and were soon joined by Truscott. Together they watched their younger colleagues as they flirted, made too much noise, and generally made asses of themselves. At times their enthusiasm almost drowned the orchestra, which it was said their host had brought down from London.

  Mr Fotheringham had retired to the county after a career in government, buying the Old Hall on the edge of the village. He had only a single daughter, a quite sartlingly severe woman who seemed far older than her twenty-three years. No doubt in time she would nevertheless find a husband, drawn by the family fortune if nothing else. She was already much in demand this evening, something which came as a relief to Pringle and the others, who felt absolved from the courtesy of asking the host’s daughter for a dance.

  The four drifted over to a table and began to take some food, where they were joined by a Yeomanry officer named Thompson, who seemed sensible enough by the low standards of Britain’s volunteer cavalry. His splendidly braided blue jacket was tight fitting, and rather outshone their own red tunics. Truscott had met him before, and swiftly made the introductions. Servants quickly found them and refilled their glasses, although Williams had in fact taken little of his wine. For courtesy’s sake, he would sip at the glass every few moments, trying to take as little as possible.

  ‘Fourteenth-century?’ Hanley had almost to shout to be heard over the music and general hubbub. The main hall was certainly a grand and high-roofed structure, with the musicians seated way above in a minstrel’s gallery.

  Pringle nodded to a rotund matron trailing two daughters behind her. ‘No, sixteenth.’ He winked at Hanley. ‘She looks Tudor to me.’ Whether or not she heard, the mother passed the group by, looking for more likely dance partners for her offspring. Still, their presence had been noted, and no doubt she would return if spaces remained in the girls’ commitments.

  Billy Pringle was hoping not to dance or drink too much this evening. He liked both things exceedingly, and even more he liked and thought of women for most of his waking hours. By now the fear that he had made love to Jenny Dobson had receded. She paid him no particular attention when they had passed each other earlier that day and her father’s demeanour towards him had not changed in any way. He was almost certain that his partner had been someone else. In spite of this, the fear made him cautious. Too young and indeed not really sufficiently wealthy or well placed to contemplate a serious courtship, and anyway not especially intrigued by any of the local belles, he felt that there was not one of them with whom he had to dance. There was pleasure in simply looking at the young ladies, most of whom appeared at their finest on such an occasion. Dancing permitted an intimacy and contact which might raise his ardour too far. If he then drank too much, he might leave in such a mood that another encounter with a more available woman was likely. Pringle wanted to remain in enough control to make certain that this time it would not be with any girl who was inappropriate. Moderation in both drink and passion was now his goal. Then he noticed a tall dark-haired girl with elegant carriage and an excellent figure and felt his restraint weaken. He gestured to a servant to fill his glass.

  Truscott liked observing, even more than he enjoyed dancing. He had tried to point things out to Williams, but the latter was too nervous to converse freely, and after a while the lieutenant turned his attention to Hanley. The artist in the latter had already appreciated the scene, and the flickering shadows cast by the chandeliers. Truscott drew his attention to the patterns formed by the people, the wider dance already started before the partners took to the floor.

  ‘We are just in the middle,’ he said, indicating the older officers who had retired to the even darker corners in the hope of remaining inconspicuous.

  Hanley smiled, and part of him pictured the
scene as a cartoon. He had never attempted such a thing, concentrating on the pursuit of the highest art, but one of his friends in Madrid had been a devotee of Hogarth, and had always been asking him to explain some of the more English references and objects in his collection of prints. Military life might well offer fruitful subjects. That took his mind back to the musketry drills, and from there it was but a small leap to the shots and death that haunted his memory. He changed the subject.

  ‘Our friend appears to be the perfect audience.’ He gestured at Williams, juggling a nearly full glass and an overburdened plate and with an expression of solemn interest as Thompson spoke to him of horses. The subject was clearly his great passion and he needed no more encouragement to continue at considerable length. Truscott suspected that Williams could hear little and understood even less, for his background had clearly not permitted the keeping of a stable. Thompson took his nods for agreement, and became more and more convinced that the volunteer was an excellent judge of horseflesh.

  It was nearly time for the dancing to begin, and since there were decidedly more ladies than men at the gathering, efforts to remain inconspicuous were doomed to failure. One by one the recalcitrant groups were hunted down, usually by a mama intent upon finding suitable partners for her daughters. The arrival of the MacAndrews saved them for the moment, as they hurried to greet their commander and his family.