A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  He had seen French soldiers at the Battle of Vimeiro as they’d marched in dense columns into the fire from General Arthur Wellesley’s army, and learned how they’d form round a gilded eagle like ancient Roman legions. These soldiers didn’t display one of those, but did have pole-mounted flags hung vertically from cross-pieces.

  Company flags? he wondered; three full companies, that’d be round three hundred men? Well, damn!

  Whether they had been sheltering in the fort or behind it, whether they had been spurred to deploy at last by the sight of his barges rowing ashore, or by reports of Colonel Tarrant’s soldiers entering the town, he did not know, but, either way they presented a danger. And he had no shared signals to display to warn Tarrant of their presence!

  He looked to the left of the town, hoping to spot the 94th, or their colour party, but they must have advanced beyond the point where the road from the beach entered Tropea, and his view was now masked by two- or three-storey houses and buildings close to the shore, and the steeper cliffs above the way to the warehouses and quays.

  Dammit! He could do nothing, but could only hope that Tarrant was a wily and cautious soldier, and had put out his Light Company as skirmishers in advance of his march, and would be warned! Lewrie felt a rare helplessness, a frustration that he was not ashore himself with sword in hand! As satisfying as it had been to reduce that old fort, and glorying in the roar and power of his ship’s guns, there was nothing more that he could do but watch events unfold. A sea fight, hull-to-hull, was one thing, but this?

  “The starboard battery will now bear, sir,” Lieutenant Farley yelled up to him.

  “Very well, sir!” Lewrie snapped, slamming the tubes of his telescope shut and turning round to jump back down. “Engage the quays and those damned soldiers. Slow aimed fire, and warn Mister Rutland that grapeshot is not required, at present.”

  He made his way to the quarterdeck, then went up to the higher view on the poop, where he extended his telescope once more. The enemy soldiers had reached the quays and had deployed in company blocks, four ranks deep, to oppose Captain Whitehead’s and Lieutenant Greenleaf’s approaching barges, which had already threaded their way through the fishing boats anchored outer-most of the harbour.

  He had to grin, even so, as he saw men on those boats abandoning them like so many rats leaving a sinking ship as they suddenly realised that their boats, and their livelihoods, would be taken. Italian fishermen were pouring into their rowboats in a rush, some diving into the harbour waters, to row or swim for the nearest shore.

  “Mister Rutland, the upper-deck battery may engage!” Lieutenant Farley shouted down. “Aimed fire, by gun! Six-pounders will also open fire!”

  Once more, Vigilance awoke fresh thunder and clouds of powder smoke, and the roar of her 18-pounders and lighter 6-pounders echoed off the shore, loud enough to shake the bell towers in town, creating faint Bongs! from the nearest churches.

  “That’s the way!” Lewrie shouted as the smoke cleared, and he could see what that careful demi-broadside had wrought. “Oh, spot-on! Skin the bastards, lads!”

  Large, barn-like wooden doors of the warehouses were blown open or down, shot holes in the wooden buildings stood out starkly, and on the stone or brick warehouses there were deep indentations. The Piedmontese soldiers’ ranks had been ripped apart as heavy roundshot tore through the front ranks then the ones standing behind them, tearing off limbs, driving right through chests, and mangling bellies and taking off heads!

  Soldiers! Lewrie sneered; They never understand what a ship’s broadside can do! They just stand and suffer for their ignorance!

  The 6-pounders were quicker to load than the 18-pounders, and they got off second rounds whilst the heavier guns were still running out, again, and the enemy soldiers were slinking away from the gory remains of their comrades.

  “What the Devil?” Lewrie blurted as he saw something a little to the left of the quays. “Hold fire, Mister Farley! Cease fire!”

  It was smoke, gunsmoke, a sudden cloud of it rising above the houses as Colonel Tarrant’s 94th Foot deployed into two-deep ranks and engaged the enemy soldiers, taking the nearest-company block, what was left of it, under sudden, concentrated fire. A moment later and there was a rush of red-coated figures dashing forwards with bayonets glittering under the muzzles of their muskets, mouths open in a battle yell that could not carry out to Vigilance.

  “Huzzah for the army! Huzzah!” a Midshipman on the quarterdeck cried. “Go it! Get them all!”

  The Piedmontese had not affixed bayonets of their own, expecting to engage the Marines and sailors with musketry, so they were not ready for a spirited bayonet charge, and stood stunned and flat-footed too long. Some quicker off the mark simply dropped their muskets and ran for their lives, a few smarter soldiers quickly held their weapons aloft, muzzle down in sign of surrender, though that did not spare them all from a Redcoat with his blood up.

  That first company disappeared, swarmed over by Tarrant’s men, and the middle company could not wheel about to present a firm front with loaded muskets. Some shots were fired before the 94th slammed into them, too, and that company, still with gaping holes in their ranks, suffered the fate of the first.

  The last company block of Piedmontese did try to wheel about, but by then, realising that they were now out-numbered by at least three-to-one, simply broke and ran, shedding shakoes, muskets, cartridge boxes, and back packs, heading up the lanes into the upper town.

  “I think you can unload, swab out, and secure the guns, Mister Farley,” Lewrie said, leaning over the cross-deck hammock stanchions to call down to the quarterdeck. “It appears that Tropea is now ours.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Farley replied, beaming fit to bust.

  *   *   *

  It was hours later, though, that the troops could march back to the beach, re-board their boats, and return to their transports, laden with booty. It took hours before Vigilance’s Marines and armed sailors could finish up their duties ashore, as well.

  The ruins of the old fort and tower had to be gone through for papers, the search for information limited by the fact that very few of the ship’s people had any Italian, spoken or written. The warehouses had to be searched, as did the coastal trading vessels alongside the quays or anchored out, their ownership papers seized along with their manifests, and the vessels set alight to deprive the French of the means to stage another invasion attempt upon Sicily. Those fires made quite a show, and a welcome to the Piedmontese soldiers who had been out in the countryside to forage, loot, and collect taxes, As the last of Vigilance’s boats came alongside, enenmy soldiers could be seen in the upper part of Tropea, drawn back by the sounds of cannon fire and the great pillars of smoke.

  The work of searching the warehouses had been made difficult by the citizens of Tropea. Once the gunfire had ended, they had swarmed out of their houses’ basements and places of hiding and had rushed to loot the warehouses like so many starving wolves. With hand-carts and donkeys, even wheelbarrows, goods of all sorts had been carried away as if the occupying troops had kept every morsel of food, every bottle of wine in the town and its environs for themselves, starving Tropea’s people.

  “What was that bee swarm about, sir?” Lewrie asked Marine Captain Whitehead once he was back aboard, and had slaked his thirst at one of the scuttle-butts. “Was all the food in town in there?”

  “Lord, sir,” Captain Whitehead said, his eyebrows pumping as he chuckled. “What wasn’t in those warehouses! Food, of course, aye, dry pasta, flour, and grains by the sacks, piled to the roof beams, along with oceans of wine in barricoes, ankers, kegs, and pipes. The locals carried off a lot of that, but they seemed more interested in bolts of cloth, furniture, paintings, and sculpture. Linen, cotton, drapery material, silk, satin, as if the French are stripping every museum, fine house, and palace of their wealth.”

  “They do that everywhere they go,” Lewrie growled, “the greedy bastards. I heard they have special Commis
sioners who travel with the army whose job it is to steal the best and ship it back to Paris, so the art can be shown in the Louvre, or Napoleon’s palace.”

  “Wouldn’t have thought that this part of Italy would yield that much, sir,” Whitehead replied, “the best pickings would surely be in the larger cities, Naples, Rome, and the cities in the North. Why all that’s here in Tropea is beyond me. Oh, we fetched off cured hams and flour, coffee and cocoa beans, about ten pounds of tea, sacks of sugar, and lots of dried fruit for puddings and duffs. The crew can thank my Marines for that, later, hah!”

  “Most welcome, Captain Whitehead,” Lewrie said, “though, that is against the Articles of War, if one wanted t’get strict about it, looting a prize before it goes to the Prize Court.”

  “Well, sir,” Whitehead said with a sly look, “I doubt we could fetch warehouses and burned ships away to a Court. Our … foraging took place on land, and could be termed the spoils of war.”

  “Do I get a ham out of it?” Lewrie said, smiling back.

  “You do, indeed, sir!” Whitehead assured him.

  “Spoils of war it is, then,” Lewrie amiably agreed.

  “Hoy, the boat!” a Midshipman shouted, drawing Lewrie to the bulwarks. It was one of the twenty-nine-foot barges from Spaniel, the largest of the transports, bearing Colonel Tarrant, Major Gittings, and their orderlies, and what looked to be another small hoard of loot. Those two officers had sailed to Tropea on Spaniel so they could go ashore with their men, but, now that the raid was done, they were returning to their better quarters aboard Vigilance.

  Tarrant and Gittings made it up the ship’s side to the entry-port easily, though their loot had to come up in a cargo net, and the sacks gave off some metallic clinks and jangles when they landed on the deck.

  “Gifts of the Magi, Colonel Tarrant?” Lewrie japed as their orderlies and some off-watch hands carried the sacks below to the wardroom.

  “War relics, Captain Lewrie!” Tarrant jovially boasted. “Things to adorn the officers’ mess, and items to put in a place of honour in my home. The gentlemen who funded the creation of the regiment didn’t go so far as to bless us with a lavish silver service, just some few items. Well, we have a lavish set now!”

  “The enemy regiment’s service, is it?” Lewrie asked, curious to see it.

  “Not at all, sir,” Tarrant told him. “We found it in the warehouses, crated up. Pitchers, creamers, sugar bowls, tea and coffee services, candlesticks and candelabras, decorative vases and figurines, and tableware enough for thirty or more, we haven’t counted it yet.”

  “I didn’t see any of that,” Whitehead said.

  “Ah, but the Army got to it first, sir,” Tarrant drolly said. “A king’s ransom in coin-silver. Finders keepers, what?”

  “The question is, where did the enemy get such a trove?” Lewrie posed. “Were the crates marked for shipment to Paris or somewhere in France?”

  “No markings at all, Captain Lewrie,” Tarrant said, “and we did look. It was all we could do to lay hands on what we got, what with all the locals ripping boxes, crates, and barrels open and running out with what they took. They were everywhere, underfoot, fighting over what they wanted with each other, with my troops. It was like a mob back home when the first Spring vegetables show up at the greengrocers’.”

  “That makes as little sense as the artwork and the furniture,” Lewrie said, puzzled. “This part of Italy can’t have that many rich houses to loot.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser, sir,” Captain Whitehead agreed.

  “Oh well, I expect our hired spies can sort it out, eventually,” Lewrie decided. “Mister Farley?”

  “Aye, sir?” the First Officer, who had been listening to the conversation nearby, responded.

  “Pipe stations to raise anchor and make sail,” Lewrie ordered. “And have a signal hoisted to the transports to that effect.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Farley said.

  “Where to, might I ask, Captain Lewrie?” Colonel Tarrant said.

  “Right back to your old camp on Sicily, sir,” Lewrie told him. “But, I assure you that I’ll send one of the transports to Malta to pick up fresh supplies, and your regiment’s dependents, as soon as you are established ashore. Let’s go up to the poop deck, out of the way.”

  “Oh, Gittings and I brought away several pounds of sausages,” Tarrant said, once they were on the poop deck. “Salamis, and those spicy, peppery ones. I understand you’ve quite a store of sausages laid by for your cat. You’re welcome to some.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Lewrie said, “Chalky adores ’em, though the pepperoni is too spicy for his old tummy. I’ll relish those. Did you have any casualties, Colonel?”

  “We lost two men to musketry, and one to a bayonet,” Tarrant said, turning sobre, “and I’ve six down with light injuries. Our Surgeon is established in Spaniel, where there is more room for a surgery and for them to convalesce. They’ll be laid up for a time, but…,” he ended with a hopeful shrug. “It all went rather well, for a first try, and my soldiers are happy with their loot.”

  Enemy shakoes, hangers, coins, watches, pipes, and tobacco taken from the dead and wounded had gone aboard the transports, along with sausages, and the calfskin backpacks the French issued, whose straps didn’t half-strangle those wearing them like British-designed packs did, Tarrant explained, along with the difficulty of keeping his men sobre enough to re-enter the boats and scramble up the boarding nets, after prowling the warehouses for wine barrels to be broken open, or searching their rucksacks and new back packs for smuggled bottles and flasks.

  “It appears that the fires from those ships you set alight are spreading to the warehouses, sir,” Colonel Tarrant said, taking a pocket telescope from the rucksack on his hip for a better look. “The stone ones may survive, but the wooden ones will surely burn down, more’s the pity. They’re still rather full of goods that the locals might have used.”

  “Hmm, someone’s set fires in the fort, too, sir,” Lewrie noted after extending the tubes of his own telescope. “Some locals, I see civilians milling about over there. With muskets.”

  “Those won’t do the townsfolk much good,” Tarrant said with a frown. “Soon as those surviving soldiers, and the ones that were out in the country, come down to the lower town, I expect they’ll shoot anyone armed out-of-hand.”

  “You did not gather up the enemy arms, sir?” Lewrie asked.

  “We did, but we left them in a pile,” Tarrant told him. “Hah! We stripped the prisoners of their boots, trousers, and coats, and set that lot afire. Should have done the same with the muskets and cartridge pouches. That would have saved the people of Tropea a lot of grief … though I’m sure that what’s left of the garrison will be vindictive enough.”

  “Or thrown them off the quays into the harbour,” Lewrie added.

  “Ah, well, we’ll do that, next time, what?” Tarrant promised.

  “You’re right, though, Colonel,” Lewrie said, taking a longer look at the ruin they’d made. “For a first try, things did go well. About a dozen coasting vessels burned, about the same number of fishing boats? That’ll take pressure off Sicily, and force the French to move everything by road, which’ll be much slower than by sea. You and your troops should feel proud of a job well done.”

  “Ehm, what about those three fishing boats sailing out, sir?” Tarrant pointed out.

  “In case we can’t trust our Sicilian spies, I’d like to have a way to skulk along the coasts, for myself,” Lewrie told him with a grin.

  “Hands are at stations, sir,” Lieutenant Farley reported, “all ships have the signal hoisted and are ready to do the same.”

  “Very well, Mister Farley,” Lewrie said, “strike the signal to show Execute, and get us under way.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “I think he’s scared o’ Harriet,” Dasher said to Turnbow as they polished Lewrie’s shiny pewter service, drawing Lewrie’s attention from sealing yet another letter home. He leaned ba
ck in his desk chair to peer round into the dining coach where they were working, to see Chalky nose-to-nose with the rabbit, sniffing, crouched down with one paw up as if to slap. The rabbit made a short hop to one side, and Chalky went skyward, stiff-legged and backwards, two feet high, and a yard away with a startled Rrowr!

  He’ll get over that, soon, and then the fur will fly, Lewrie thought, sure that his cat would see the rabbit as large prey once the strangeness wore off.

  “Third Officer, Mister Greenleaf, SAH!” the Marine sentry bawled.

  ‘Oh, good,” Lewrie muttered, then shouted for him to enter. He rose from his desk to greet him as Greenleaf came into the cabins.

  “We think we’ve found a better place, sir,” Greenleaf said at once, unfolding a quickly done map of the coast and the bay. “Major Gittings and I went ashore, and it looks good.”

  He and Lewrie leaned over it as Greenleaf speared a finger at a spot a few miles West of the current anchorage and army camp, closer to the shelter of the peninsula, and the tiny fishing port of Milazzo.

  “Just below the fork in the roads that leads to Milazzo and Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto … however ya say that sobre, sir … there is a wide, sandy beach for the boats to land,” Lieutenant Greenleaf told him, “and behind the beach there’s a great, level area, some pasture, and some forest, none too thick. And, along the East side, there’s a low gully with a fresh-water stream that runs into the sea, sir.”

  “Closer to two villages,” Lewrie frowned. “That means even more pickpockets, petty thieves, and smuggled spirits. What did Gittings say about that?”

  “He and Colonel Tarrant thought they could cope, and keep their troops in check, sir,” Greenleaf said with a shrug. “That it would be no worse than what they’re dealing with already. The fresh water is welcome, and the fruits and vegetables will still be available from the locals. The Major said that at least there’d be no need for guards over the olive and fruit groves there, and that we might be able to cut some timber from the woods, for a fee, to make the camp a little more substantial, now that their dependents are coming.”