The Soldier Brat (Man of Conflict Series, Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  The prisoners out of the way, the next stage was to identify and put a guard on every piece of government-owned property in the town – privately owned goods and chattels must remain untouched in a town that had properly surrendered itself, but all public property was prize and must be valued by the British government and its captors paid for it. The first need was to lay hands on the goods before the navy could get ashore – too fond by half of prize money, the navy, and with no notion of fair shares for the army; they would take all the ships in harbour but Allington intended they should have a very thin time of it when they came on shore. Prize money was rare for soldiers, could only really be expected at events like the taking of an island where there was no means of getting the valuables away before the soldiers arrived; the men would get their shares, perhaps as much as a year’s pay, some eight or even ten pounds apiece; the officer commanding a company might look to get one hundred times as much – Masters might have been able to buy his promotion with his share, had he lived.

  Man of Conflict Series

  BOOK ONE

  Chapter Eight

  Over the next weeks all was busy – the harbour filled with transports and stores as the navy took over dockyard facilities for its smaller vessels which would cruise out of St Jeanne; a company of artillerymen landed with four vast, long-barrelled iron twenty-four pound coastal guns; a spare, desiccated little man, a functionary from Jamaica, landed to be Acting-Governor, pending an official appointment from London, and brought the news that the New Foresters were to be the garrison of St Jeanne, a reward for their labours in taking the island.

  Allington was quite pleased – a return to Jamaica would rapidly have been followed by another expedition and St Jeanne had been expensive in terms of bodies. The battalion could parade only four hundred and fifty men, not all of them fit for a hard campaign; the marching through rain forest and canefields had revivified the fluxes and fevers and the surgeon’s hands were full again. Their losses in battle had been relatively slight, fewer than fifty men dead or incapacitated, but sickness was like to cost them four times as many before it had run its course.

  They decided to set up a camp on the higher ground inland, like the hill stations of India, a place for the men to relax and regain their health, the companies to rotate between duty at St Jeanne and in the new fort they were to build on the coast road and then rest in the hills.

  The captured artillery was to be used to defend the town, they decided – two of the twelve pound guns at the old fort in town, now to be Government House, four at the new fortification to be set at the crossroads where inland track and coastal road met to prevent any future invasion by those routes. The two field guns would be based at the new fort where they could be used as necessary, primarily against disorder in the town, it was expected.

  Groups of slaves were requisitioned from each of the plantations within easy walking distance of the town, it being the slack time before harvest, and were set to work in the quarry and at the crossroads. Blocks of limestone were dry laid to form a solid wall two feet thick, proof against field guns, valueless against siege artillery; gun platforms were constructed, only four feet high but sufficient to elevate the twelve pound cannon just enough that their grape or canister could sweep the approaches clear of attacking infantry. Barrack huts inside the wall were constructed of timber, their roofs carefully tiled against the rainy season, walls fairly flimsy to keep them a little cooler; storerooms were built dry, vermin proof and strong enough to keep casual thieves away; cisterns were made to hold a week’s supply of water. It was Lilliputian in concept, but the island was too small to warrant major expenditure either by defender or attacker – no train of eighteen or twenty four pound cannon would be landed to make a breach in these walls.

  The men made their own shelters in the hills, at a camp overlooking one of the fertile valleys but cool and windswept up on the higher slope. Many of the private soldiers had worked part or all of an apprenticeship to the building trades and most farm labourers had lent a hand at raising or reroofing a barn or byre before joining the battalion for their own good and personal reasons. They improvised tools and built first a sick ward, then huts for the surgeon and his people and finally comfortable shanties for themselves and their mates; shares of rum rations, guard duties taken over, boots polished and belts pipeclayed for them, and they extended their services to the less handy of their colleagues in arms, rapidly creating a camp of neat lines of more or less similar huts sufficient to shelter two full companies at a time. As one company marched out so they handed over to the next, arranging informally who slept where, and took responsibility for the maintenance of their quarters; even the most feckless of the men played their full part in this, the alternative being informal other ranks justice – immediate, indignant and applied by a dozen pairs of boots, something that was very rarely risked and never twice by the same man.

  For half a year Septimus was unremittingly busy. He was sole officer of his company, mounted every guard himself, took each parade and inspection, supervised drill and training, tasted the men’s rations, dealt out justice and kept the company books. In his spare time he played his part in the mess, a senior subaltern with all the responsibilities he felt that to entail – he was present whenever they entertained the navy, government functionaries, the General Commanding once, the occasional French civilian who could be persuaded to fraternise, acting to an extent as a host and rather pleased to be treated with some deference by his peers. He found that he liked being respected, especially at so young an age – had he stayed in Winchester he would have been a very junior clerk still in counting house or attorney’s chambers, a boy in his father’s house; he began to count his blessings.

  The last convoy before the rains brought a number of changes to Septimus.

  A commission arrived in the colonel’s dispatches, recording that the King’s trusty and well-beloved Septimus held captain’s rank in the New Foresters, dating from the taking of the island, the brevet confirmed without purchase. Septimus found it mildly funny that he, who could easily afford to purchase, should be given the distinction that several others in the battalion would willingly have risked dying for, that had in fact killed Masters – but he found that he had no objection at all to receiving it. There arrived as well a lieutenant and an ensign appointed to the company, both come from the Second Battalion at Christchurch and bringing with them a draft of a hundred men. The battalion needed two hundred and fifty men, had expected twenty and was deeply appreciative of so many – no matter that the bulk were gaol-delivery men, convicts released to serve overseas, they would come to be soldiers very soon and, having already been exposed to the filth of the gaols, were less likely to take sick and die.

  The convoy brought mails as well, a bulky packet from brother George containing legal papers as well as a letter. The typhoid fever had made one of its periodic visitations to Winchester, had taken its tax of old and young and vulnerable. George had lost his older son, George, but gave thanks to God that his daughter and other son had been spared, luckier far than so many other families! Their parents, he grieved to record, had both succumbed, within a day of each other, Father seeming to have survived the crisis till hearing of his beloved helpmeet’s death; Sister Agatha, married to her rector, had visited too many of the sick in her parish – she, too, had gone. The rest of the family remained hale, they had suffered far less than many another – among the poor the toll had been frightful, so much so that there was now a shortage of hands in the area and wages had risen some fifty per centum, as much as fifteen shillings a week now for an unskilled labourer. The firm prospered – the local harvest was expected to be very poor, in part because of the shortage of men, so the price of corn must soon rise and they had a very respectable tonnage of futures safe bought, gold in their hands. The Chronicle had recorded Septimus’ glory and his promotion in the field, had made much of him being twice distinguished for gallantry at so early an age – the family had swelled in pride for him
– the news had come a month before the fever struck, he would be glad to know, and Father had been almost beside himself with joy, had talked of little else. George had, by the way, decided not to move from his own house to Father’s and had rented the place out, having first put it into Septimus’ name – he would need a house of his own, one day, and this would keep his connection with Winchester and the firm, so was really a business transaction, not a gift at all. Cook, with whom Septimus had always been a favourite, had been so long with the family as to have a right to a place, had joined George’s household for the while, until Septimus set up his own establishment.

  Septimus wept, briefly and privately, and accepted that they were gone, his parents were no more – and that he had inherited his twenty per cent of the annual profits of the firm. He was well-off now, had probably one of the largest private incomes in the battalion, could easily transfer to a more fashionable and expensive regiment in England. A few minutes of thought decided him that the New Foresters was his home, was where he belonged – he was a soldier, not a social butterfly.

  The arrival of Lieutenant Marks and Ensign Hunt brought Septimus’ busy existence to a close – he immediately began to train the two young men into his ways and passed the bulk of the routine across to them, much as Howton had done for him. The pair fell in with Septimus’ instructions without query, knowing before they met him that he was a fighting soldier of some renown in the regiment and being very rapidly acquainted with the mess gossip, facts and rumours about the big captain, the hard man, ‘Stroppy Seppy’, the men fairly affectionately called him. The tale of Lieutenant Smith was laid out before them by the most junior of the mess, given in awful exaggeration but told approvingly. There would have been a horrible scandal eventually, the regiment’s name blackened and every officer tarred with the same brush – the Eighty Second, for example, were still known as ‘The Sheep-Shaggers’ from an unfortunate court-martial in the American War - but Septimus had forestalled it, dealt with the matter privately, never an official word escaping, they were not even sure that the colonel knew all about it. The two, awestruck, did their duty and more and Septimus found himself with free time.

  “Cooper – this tent is hot and sticky and cramped – would it be possible to hire a small house in town? I know Major Howton has done so.”

  “Certainly, sir – now that a quarter of an hour’s walk will be no problem to us, it can be easily done, sir.” Cooper, batman and personal retainer, had adopted a somewhat more refined mode of diction, appropriate he felt to a putative gentleman’s gentleman. “If I could suggest, sir, a housekeeper? Young, sir?”

  “Cooper! You are quite disgusting!”

  “Yes, sir.” Cooper grinned proudly, “I try my best, sir.”

  “You do very well – yes, a housekeeper would be an excellent idea, though I am not myself too sure how to go about finding one on St Jeanne.”

  “Easy, sir. There have been enquiries made, hopeful-like, from them who might have done the job.”

  Thinking about it, Septimus realised that he was unattached, young and well-off – he was bound to have attracted attention from the more commercially-minded young ladies. He fished ten guineas out of his pocket.

  “Sufficient for a start, Cooper?”

  “Money’s short on the island at the moment, sir, most of the plantations losing last year’s harvest, the money paid in France but not getting back to them. Three in gold a month should set us up, sir.”

  St Jeanne returned rapidly to its normal state of being a torpid backwater and the battalion grew fat in idleness, drilling in the hills, parading in town, keeping up its musketry skills but returning to a peacetime existence. A slow trickle of men died – fevers, pox, cheap rum, the rare quarrel, stabbing and hanging – never many, not always one a week even, but enough to slowly whittle away their effectiveness. After a year on the island they could only muster five hundred men; with detachments, sick and tradesmen to account for could parade no more than four hundred, would be much reduced as a fighting battalion – when the word came that they were to return to Jamaica they were not best pleased to stir from their comfortable existence.

  “We are to be replaced by a regiment of men of colour, gentlemen,” Colonel Allington announced. “A West Indies Regiment, recruited locally but officered from England. Just who those officers are to be is unclear, by the way, I cannot imagine commissions in such a regiment to be sold easily, or at all, in the normal way of things – militia officers made regular, perhaps, and deserving sergeants given their step to serve overseas, and some existing – and undeserving - subalterns given an alternative to an unsatisfactory existence in their current regiment, I suspect. Be that as it may, the sepoys of India are the inspiration, I am told, since they have enjoyed considerable success in the field, are well respected soldiers, and the same is looked for here.”

  Howton commented that the slaves in the West Indies had a history of frequent revolts, many of which had enjoyed a degree of success, as could be seen in Haiti at the current moment – they were evidently of warrior stock and knew how to fight.

  “Quite so, Major Howton. Whether they are of the stuff of disciplined soldiers is another matter, but we shall see when they land here this month.”

  A long council of the senior subalterns and two field officers resulted in a timetable for the activities needed prior to handover and embarkation; the services of every literate in the battalion would be required to count every musket ball, flint, bootlace and biscuit before progressing to larger matters. Every item of official issue would have to be accounted for – number, condition, whereabouts – and unofficial perquisites would have to be destroyed, packed for transport or disposed of quietly by the mess sergeants. There would barely be sufficient hours available in the month before they sailed and the transports could not be relied upon to be late.

  They settled in to work, had all ready on the appointed day and were pleasantly surprised to see a small convoy enter harbour on the morning’s tide. The West Indies Regiment disembarked in good order, the men smart, attentive to orders and looking like soldiers, which was more than could be said for their officers who appeared without exception to be drunk, aged or simply stupidly incompetent. A half dozen of British sergeants appeared to do the actual work, were clearly already in the habit of standing as buffer between the men and their nominal commanders.

  “If they get into battle, Septimus, there will undoubtedly be a number of very rapid promotions,” Howton commented. “Most of those officers will catch a bullet in the back at a very early stage, and quite right, too!”

  Septimus sniffed, made no comment – he did not approve of shooting bad officers, could hardly say so without being accused of hypocrisy, was unwilling to draw any attention at all to the fact that the undesirable tended not to survive close action – it was not how things ought to be.

  Jamaica was hot, sweaty and irresolute: there had to be action, that was indisputable, but what form the action should take was clear to none of the senior men on station.

  Haiti was wracked by slave revolt; as a result it would probably not be difficult to defeat the French garrison, but it might well be almost impossible to get the slaves back to work. The conquest of Haiti would not, it seemed, meet the government’s desire to come cheaply into the possession of rich sugar fields.

  Martinique was more than rich enough to meet the politicians’ needs, but possessed a massively fortified harbour at St Pierre; the reduction of the island would demand a blockading fleet, at least two strong divisions of infantry and a siege train of great guns, none of which, unfortunately, was present in the West Indies.

  All that was left was to assault more of the small islands, most of which had been reinforced over the last year with extra cannon, more muskets and powder and a few more men. The militias had been trained up and their enthusiasm strengthened by the application of Revolutionary Fervour to a few families – the threat of the guillotine for wife and children bolstered men’s figh
ting spirit quite remarkably.

  The New Foresters settled into their barracks and watched as a battalion of Welshmen was shipped off to try one of the islands, Grenada, they thought. Four months later they stared in silence as the Welsh came home again, short a third of their men and half of their officers, a bloody battle having been followed by a slow retreat through swamps to a barely held beach and evacuation, the casualties dying as their wounds rotted, the untouched dropping to ague and dysentery. Many of those who walked off the transports shook with fever and a substantial number could not walk at all. There was nothing to say to the survivors, no solace that could be offered, for they had been defeated, they had failed in a minor campaign and their name was disgraced.

  Days after the return of the Welsh Septimus was called to Allington’s presence, one of the rare formal interviews.

  “Mr Pearce, I have a despatch here from Horse Guards bidding me send ‘an experienced captain’, a sergeant and a small platoon back to depot. It seems from what they say that all foreign battalions are in the receipt of the same, certainly all those which have experienced combat, and the aim is to improve training for the extra men being brought to the colours. I suspect that the fear of invasion is playing no small part in this desire to improve the effectiveness of the troops at Home. I have discussed the matter thoroughly with Major Howton and our choice is you.”