Rules of War

by Iain Gale

  Later, drowsing in the shadows thrown by the thin, pale light that crept beneath the door, Steel was roused by muffled voices which seemed to come from the fireplace. In the room below them someone was talking loudly and the noise was carrying up the chimney. It was an English voice, one that he did not recognize but from its tone he knew it must be an officer.

  ‘And I tell you, sir, that he is misguided. I am aware that you know that full well yourself. And you know too that should we continue to pursue this campaign in the Low Countries rather than in Spain where as we speak young Mordaunt’s father My Lord Peterborough directs his own campaign with half the army, then we are lost.’ Steel could place the voice now. It belonged to Major Charles Frampton, adjutant of his own regiment, Farquharson’s. Extracting himself from Mathilde’s arms, Steel rose from the bed and, naked and shivering, crouched down in the darkness and pressed his ear to the chimney to listen more closely. From his slurred delivery, Frampton appeared to be even more drunk than Williams. There was no denying though that his words sounded like dissent and Steel strained to hear more against the din of the dreadful musicians and the general hubbub from below. Such views were not of course, unusual among Marlborough’s officers. Everyone had his own opinion on how a campaign should be conducted. It was the same in all armies, although at present Steel was only too aware that there was a considerable movement which held the view that the war should be fought not here in Flanders, but in Spain. Hadn’t one such attempt to discredit the duke and do just that almost cost him his own life only two years ago? But Frampton? Surely the man could do no real harm. It still irked him that such men, whom in battle he would trust with his life, could be so openly disloyal to their commander. Particularly now, after such a glorious victory. Marlborough was hailed as a victor and Frampton’s addled wishes must be no more than the daydreams of a lost cause.

  Frampton again raised his voice: ‘I tell you, a civil war in the Netherlands could mean the end for all Marlborough’s grand intentions. The war would move in its entirety to Spain at last. You and I would gain by it and be with old friends. My Lord Peterborough is the commander we need. Not this damned Churchill.’

  Steel smiled at Frampton’s derogatory use of Marlborough’s family name.

  A second voice spoke now and told Frampton to shut up. Steel did not recognize the man, although he was certainly another officer, with a slight lisp, it seemed.

  ‘Frampton, you’d do best to keep a level tongue in your head. Even here.’

  ‘But I know that Mordaunt is with us. Stands to reason, he’s Peterborough’s son. And we might count on the support of Argyll. He has no great love for the captain-general and he’d rather be in Spain. More Catholics to kill.’

  Both men laughed. Steel wondered about Mordaunt. He knew that he had been forbidden by Marlborough from marrying his daughter. Surely though, the man was too brave a soldier to be swayed by personal bitterness. Argyll though seemed a more probable prospect.

  The second man was speaking again now. ‘In truth, I am convinced that civil war would spell our commander’s downfall. It falls to us to strike the spark. A few pamphlets ought to do it. It will need no more. This country is as volatile as a powder keg.’

  ‘But what shall it say, this pamphlet? How are we to damn Marlborough’s virtue? After such a victory?’

  ‘We have no need to worry about that. He may have routed the French from this land, but he has filled it with more soldiers. Our coats may be of a different colour, but we are soldiers all the same, and the people here, for all their smiles and thank yous, do not trust the military. Our pamphlet requires merely the information that during the campaign in Bavaria, before Blenheim, the duke made it his personal business to lay waste the entire country. Whole populations were driven out, their homes and farms burned to the ground. You need only draw on your worst imaginings and amplify them. Such things did happen, for all we know. But for our purposes who is to know that Marlborough himself did not plan them in detail? It is certain that once a thing is committed to print it is nigh on impossible to undo its truth in people’s minds. We do not sign the sheet, but say that it is from “a friend”. Marlborough and his generals and, I dare say the British as a whole, are not to be trusted. Believe me, Frampton, such a scheme will undermine the bold commander quicker than any army sent by King Louis. It will set Flamand against Walloon afresh and provoke a general revolt too against the British army. The Dutch may secede from the army and who knows what the Danes and Hessians will do? And we must not forget to play to their religion. Remember that the people of the southern Netherlands are Catholic. They abhor Calvinism and will thus resent any Dutch attempt to unify their country into the state that it was before the Reformation. Our task will be made doubly simple.’

  Steel listened more closely. While Frampton might be nothing more than a garrulous drunk his companion seemed in deadly earnest, and now he was into his stride.

  ‘All that we need is a man to print and publish the sheets. But we must act fast. Marlborough will not want to stay here sitting on his arse for longer than he must. You and I will write the stuff. Money is no object, our friends in London have seen to that. Trust once broken is hard to repair, and what Marlborough needs now is the trust of these people. Without that his great ambitions have no whit of a chance. For all its glory, his great victory will be as naught. And when the time comes, there will be willing officers ready to take command under Peterborough. You and I, Frampton. Argyll, Mordaunt and whoever else has the soundness of mind to join us. And there will be many. By the time we’re done with him Churchill will wish the French were still masters here.’

  The voices faded; Steel returned to bed, turning over in his mind the implications of what he had overheard. He did not sleep.

  SIX

  The fortifications of Ostend could not be described as one of Marshal Vauban’s greatest triumphs, but they were enough. It was eight years now since the great French military engineer had come to the port with his teams of masons and scores of convicts pressed into service as labourers. He had built on top of the town’s existing defences, which between 1601 and 1604 had withstood more than three years of siege as the Dutch had held at bay the Spanish forces of Archduke Albert of Austria in one of the most infamous and gruesome engagements of close on eighty years of bloody wars.

  Steel stood on the gentle incline in the ground that rose to the west of the port, looking across the flats and prayed to himself that their current endeavour would neither take quite so long or be quite so sanguine an affair. Vauban himself, in his treatise, had prescribed forty-eight days for a successful siege, from the digging of the first trench line to the surrender of the garrison. Perhaps that would be long enough for them to break this fort of his.

  Ostend lay under a vast expanse of the clearest of blue skies and a wind was blowing inland across the Channel, tossing up white horses of spray in the blue-green sea and sending the sands drifting into the marram grass. It blew from England. And in a thought that crept unbidden into his idle mind, Steel realized that it was four years since he had touched that shore and he wondered now when, if ever, he might do so again. They had marched here a week ago, smelling the sea before they saw it; cresting the dunes and finding themselves on the coast at a place where the breezes whipped at their hair with a pleasant, cleansing saltiness.

  Out in the Channel Steel could make out the masts of more than a dozen ships, a British fleet under Admiral Fairborne, and behind them the greater bulk of other vessels including gunships which must soon bombard the port. And after that had been done, when in theory at least the place was reduced to a smouldering, corpse-strewn wreck, when the British navy had once again ruined its reputation by massacring civilians, then they would go in. He squinted in the sunlight and took in what he could of the defences that would have to be breached.

  Ostend had been designed specifically as a fortified naval base, surrounding the valuable port at the wide mouth of the harbour and as such was very diff
erent to the great string of Vauban’s inland forts which had occupied so much of Marlborough’s energies in the last year of campaigning in Flanders.

  The defences divided in two. To his right stood a single small star fort, the Fort of St Philip consisting of a single line of earthworks and within them a four-pointed stone wall, inclined gently in to allow the defenders maximum visibility and to expose the attackers to the greatest possible fire. Steel knew that the fort’s purpose was to guard the mouth of the river against seaborne invasion, covering the water with the dozen guns which protruded from its crenellations. He knew too that this little star fort would not be their objective, although it might prove a costly source of flanking fire during their assault. No – they were bound for the town itself. It rose to his left, a forbidding three levels of grass-covered slopes of compacted earth glacis, crowned with a solid masonry wall from which on this side alone he could see the great pentagonal towers of five bastions, each with interlocking fields of fire.

  Between Steel and the town lay a vast expanse of marshland, the Marais St Michel, across which there was, according to even the most sympathetic of local guides, no safe causeway. The only way in and out of Ostend, save by sea or the river, was via a single narrow road which ran along the coast, just behind the dunes of the broad, sandy beach. It entered the town by a solitary fortified gate, directly under one of the defensive bastions, and it was this at which he now stared directly. Since their arrival here a week ago it had not opened and he knew that it would not be opened again until they either took the town or abandoned the siege. It was the only way in and Steel realized that any man approaching along it would be the target for a hundred pairs of eyes and as many muskets. He looked up from the gate to where in the walls the cannon poked their wicked black muzzles from the embrasures and tried to imagine the terrible carnage which would ensue the moment that a formed unit of infantry attempted to advance along the road, let alone storm the walls.

  ‘Pretty-looking place, ain’t it. Don’t you think, Jack?’

  He had not noticed Hansam, standing at his side. ‘Hmm? Oh, yes. Pretty. Very pretty, Henry. Marshal Vauban’s inventiveness never ceases to surprise me. He is quite brilliant.’

  ‘Brilliant perhaps, but he is quite out of favour at the French court, they say. Virtually in exile.’

  ‘The French don’t know a genius when they have one. That man has done more for the French military than all King Louis’ swagger. Look, Henry. You notice how, with a simple geometrical design he is able to direct never less than eight cannon at the one place, sometimes as many as fourteen and at the same time ensure that no part of the defences is weakened or exposed. He creates areas into which no man can advance.’ He pointed to the right of the town. ‘Look. What d’you see there?’

  ‘I see three layers of defence. A glacis lined with infantrymen, more muskets behind on a tenaille and behind that the cannon at the parapet.’

  ‘Yes, but do you see how there are three distinct fields of fire? The man is a wonder, Henry. No less.’

  ‘Well,’ twill be up to us to undo the wonder. For we have to take this place.’

  Steel looked on and imagined again the blood and the smoke and the screams. Behind the parapets he could make out two buildings higher than the rest. The sloping roofs of powder magazines, filled with enough gunpowder and shot to keep Marlborough at bay for God knew how long. And there were sure to be more elsewhere in the town. He knew too, from having toured captured forts, that within those walls there would be tunnels and secret passages that would allow the garrison to move freely from wall to wall shielded from enemy fire. Knew about the freshwater wells which prevented an attacking force from poisoning the water and about the ingenious way in which the windows of the powder magazines allowed the air to circulate freely yet prevented the slightest spark from entering. He knew the thickness of the walls –five feet in some cases – and knew that at every corner a cylindrical masonry sentry box with a single gun slit would allow chosen marksmen to fire down on the enemy to pick off officers among the attackers.

  He spoke, without looking at Hansam: ‘Yes. It will be quite a task, Henry. Even with the help of our friends on the sea. I wonder whether the duke has anything else up his sleeve?’

  ‘I sincerely hope that he has. For I cannot see how we can take it by the usual means. For seven days our engineers have been digging and look what we have.’

  He pointed to where, directly in front of them, at the edge of the marshes, a long ditch, the Steene trench, snaked its way from the dunes on the left up to the little town to their right, from which the engineers had coined its name. Normally by this stage in the siege other, similar trenches would be edging towards the besieged town with further parallel works to the Steene trench. Into fortified bays cut at intervals into these trenches the allies would customarily drag their guns and thus bring the town or fort under fire. But here that had proved impossible, so wet was the ground. It was clear that, quite apart from Vauban’s skill, Ostend had its own natural defences.

  Looking down they could see hundreds of men, British and allied infantry, hacking away at the ground, extending the great trench. Others used shovels to fill large four-foot-high wicker gabions with the earth dug from the ditch.

  ‘I can’t help feeling, Henry, that all this might be in vain. There is simply no means by which we can conduct this siege by any normal procedure.’

  A respectful cough from behind was followed by the sound of Sergeant Slaughter’s voice:

  ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir. But the men have been asking me if you know when we might be going to attack and, erm, how we are supposed to do so, seeing as the whole place is a stinking, sodden marsh.’ As if to prove his point, the sergeant swatted a large mosquito which had settled on his face.

  Steel nodded and spoke with uncharacteristic terseness: ‘Yes, Jacob. I am quite aware of the men’s impatience. And believe me, I share it. But in truth I simply do not know the answer to either question.’ He pointed out to sea where the fleet bobbed just outside the range of the French guns. ‘See out there. Out there lie our bombships. Great vessels crammed with mortars which when we do attack or shortly before, will fire everything they have into that poor town. Perhaps that’s how we’ll do it, Sarn’t.’ He smiled, cynically: ‘Or perhaps we could just do as the Turks like to do and fire some French heads into the town. Perhaps that would do the trick.’

  Slaughter had scarcely seen his officer more animated and realized that the men’s frustration at this lack of action was nothing as compared to Steel’s. He was not surprised at this restlessness. There was nothing worse for a soldier than boredom. It gave you time to think. And for most of the men that was something to be avoided. After Brussels, rather than pushing west, the brigade had camped at a small village called Aarsele, some fifteen miles west of Ghent, and had waited for Marlborough and the remainder of the army for ten days. The men had grown restless and impatient. The locals had been pleasant enough, and less ready he thought to murder the French than previously. They were merely content, it seemed, to be alive.

  Steel, as he allowed himself a rare few days’ rest, could not help but agree with them. As they had waited, other units had arrived bringing with them news that all Brabant seemed to be falling to Marlborough. After Brussels other towns, garrisoned mainly by native Belgians formerly loyal to France had opened their gates. Aalst, Gavere, Ghent and Bruges had surrendered, along with Malines and Oudenarde which they had thought they would have to invest. At last Antwerp’s governor had opened the great city to the triumphant allies.

  Finally, as they reached the middle days of June and the weather had grown noticeably warmer, they had struck camp and marched north, led once again by the duke, through Lichterwelde and Torhout, up to the sea. Now the men were hungry for action. But again they did little more than sit and wait.

  Since then too, other, more curious things had started to go wrong. Throughout their march, Marlborough’s ruthless policy of ensuring the
death penalty for looters within the army had been respected for the most part and the farmers had been paid for their produce. Watching them arrive at the camp in the morning and set out their stalls before leaving satisfied with their takings had been a pleasant way to pass the time. In the last two weeks though that had changed. To the west of their present camp the rotting bodies of two redcoats, neither thankfully from Farquharson’s, left hanging from the gallows for the three days since their execution, testified to the breakdown of the system and the punishment which would be meted out to others who did not obey.

  As yet, within Steel’s brigade at least, no one else had chanced their life for so much as a scrawny chicken. Yet even so, there had been a distinct change in recent days in the demeanour of the local farmers. In fact for the past two days none of them had come to the camp and there were no fresh rations. Last night and again this evening the company would be forced to rely upon stale rations and what beef and pork had been salted down in barrels. They had sent out a party under Hansam and another under Williams, furnished with heavy purses, in search of supplies, but both had returned empty-handed, Hansam with the news that as they had entered the village the peasants had run into their houses and closed the doors, Williams saying that they had been jeered at on the road by farm labourers and that the village appeared to be shuttered and barred. Steel wondered what to make of it. How very different it was, he thought, from the reception they had enjoyed in Brussels. And that could not be explained by urban sophistication. Something had happened to unsettle the local populace, to turn them so roundly against the redcoats. It was not good for morale. Neither of course was the lack of fresh food. He hoped to God they would fight soon. He had scarcely ever seen the men so preoccupied.