by Iain Gale
The siege of Ostend was in fact broken by a storming party of fifty British Grenadiers at the head of a Dutch force who took the port after a heavy bombardment lasting three days principally by two bombketches, rather than my single afternoon, which reduced much of the town to rubble or as one contemporary put it: ‘a heap of rubbish’. While the British lost only five hundred men, the loss of life among the civilian population of Ostend surely ranks with the similar treatment meted out to Copenhagen a century later as one of the more ignominious episodes in the history of the Royal navy.
I have taken some licence with the pamphleteering activities of Frampton and Stapleton. Although not without reason. I have merely condensed the events of the following year, in which Marlborough’s popularity was gradually eroded by the fact that the Dutch government imposed by the allies upon the Brabant estates gradually incurred the enmity of the people, who detested the Calvinism of their heavy-handed neighbours even more than they hated the despotism of the French, who at least were Catholic. There was also a Belgian underground movement and I have reason to believe that it used the old medieval title, although perhaps it was not quite as nationalistic as I have painted it.
Marlborough, despite his general popularity, particularly among the rank and file, was constantly subject to attack in the press and officers in the army continued to intrigue against him. The author of numerous scurrilous attacks on Marlborough, one John Tutchin, was arrested for libel, flogged and died of his wounds in the Queen’s Bench prison in September 1707. Although Marlborough was privately accused of being responsible for his death, no charges were ever brought.
Ostend today is a changed place. Not only was it reduced to rubble by the British in 1706, but also suffered severely during the two world wars. It is possible though to still trace the course of some of Vauban’s impressive fortifications. Many of the street names are also new and I apologize for any inconsistencies.
For those with a mind to see more of Vauban’s works there is no better starting place than with the superb models now kept in the Musee de l’Armee in Paris. For surviving examples the pas de Calais offers Gravelines, Fort d’Ambleteuse, and at Calais itself Fort Nieulay, while nearby the citadel of Lille retains much of the original atmosphere. Standing on a ravelin, climbing a counterscarp or walking through a gate into a defensive ditch one can, with a little imagination, manage to conjure up something of Steel’s Ostend.
With Ostend secure, Marlborough now had a permanent base for the entry of supplies and reinforcements into Flanders. This in turn strengthened his continuing pressure on the government and the Queen that the war must be won in the northern theatre rather than in Spain as was contended by Peterborough. Compared to the big four victories of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet, Ostend is now largely forgotten. In this it is characteristic of the many bitterly-contested smaller actions which Marlborough fought henceforth until the end of the war over the next six years, actions in which the British Grenadiers as they came to be known would distinguish themselves particularly in their bravery and daring. As Trevelyan put it: ‘losing more men in a hundred forgotten assaults and sallies … than they ever lost in the four famous battles of the war.’ And, although they do not know it yet, it is through these forgotten victories that Steel and his company must now march on the road to a final peace.
By the Same Author
Four Days in June
Jack Steel Series
Man of Honour
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008
Copyright © Iain Gale 2008
Iain Gale asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental
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ePub edition September 2008 ISBN-9780007283415
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