Four Days in June

As Bowles was speaking, Macdonell had been turning over the earth at his feet with the end of a stick. Had drawn, in effect, his own small map of the country described. He stared at it and wondered. Will this indeed be our destiny? My destiny? Will it end there? Will I end? Will we prevail? He looked up. Threw down the stick. Rubbed the earth plan away into the ground with his boot.

‘Ah yes. The overalls. Quite. Well, all in good time, George.’

Bowles frowned. Could see what was coming.

‘You see, George, you shall have your overalls – just as soon as Smith has found my own valise. You shall have them then. As promised.’

Bowles smiled. ‘James, you quite outdo me. I swear we shall yet turn you from a heathen Highland savage into a Guards officer. I wonder whether you’ve not been taking lessons from Mackinnon.’

Macdonell too was smiling, thinking. If you but knew, dear boy. I was taking lessons in guile from my father’s ghillie when you were still in the womb.

Bowles continued: ‘Very well, James. I await your signal.’

He bowed – quite aware of the absurdity of his dress – in an exaggerated ballroom gesture, before leading his horse further into the temporary camp. Macdonell, catching the smile passing over Biddle’s face, straightened his own. Watched as his friend stumbled across the field. Could still hear his voice as, walking away, he passed the small, huddled groups of men: ‘Hughes. Hughes. Dammit. Where is my damned valise? Confound the man. Hughes.’

Macdonell covered his smile with a hand. ‘Colour Sar’nt. Be ready to stand the men to. I expect an order within the half-hour.’

So this was it. Merely the start of a gruelling march. And then not one, but two battles at the end.

‘Tea, sir?’ It was Miller, with the offer of a steaming brew in a dented tin mug.

‘Thank you, no. But thank you, Miller.’

Gooch appeared again. Eager. Shining. Agitated.

‘Colonel. Is it true, sir? Have the French really attacked?’

‘My dear Henry. If they have, they have not attacked us. They have not attacked here. Why don’t you go and find yourself some breakfast? You’re going to need it. I believe that Sar’nt Miller here knows the whereabouts of some good eggs and coffee.’

The sergeant nodded: ‘Sir.’

‘And don’t worry, Henry. You’ll find the French soon enough.’

Or they you, he thought. Better look out for that one. Over-keen. Might find himself on the wrong end of a bayonet. Macdonell sat down on a tree-stump by the low hedge at the roadside, looked at his men. His family. His life. A good life. A warrior’s life. What other life could there be for the son of a Highland chief? His was a family of warriors. Hadn’t his grandfather, Angus Macdonell of Invergarry, been slain by the English at Falkirk in 1746, fighting for the same Jacobite cause to which his brother Alasdair now drank bucolic and secret, sentimental toasts? Wasn’t his brother Lewis a captain in the 43rd? Hadn’t another brother, poor Somerled, named after the Lord of the Isles, perished from fever in the West Indies, an officer in His Majesty’s Navy? Why, even his late brother-in-law Jack Dowling had been a soldier. A Peninsular man like himself. Jack had died in Spain.

Two minutes’ rest, Macdonell decided. He pulled down the brim of his shako and closed his eyes. Of course he had not always been with the Guards, although his countrymen accounted for a good portion of their officers, as they did throughout the army. No. His first commission had been with the Highlanders. He still felt a keen attachment to his own regiment – the 78th – and to all those who went into battle wearing the kilt.

He recalled his days as a new lad of that great regiment. The thrill of donning for the first time the plaid; the feather bonnet. But for all their fine appearance they had seen little action and his real apprenticeship had been in the cavalry. For nine years he had served in the 17th Light Dragoons. Had learnt the skills of swordplay. No great need to learn. He had always been a fine fencer. Had won the praise of his tutor at Oxford for his prowess in the salle. The cavalry had taken him from Ostend to the West Indies. But the Highlanders had always held his attention, and when in 1804 the 78th had formed its second battalion he had transferred back as a major. Had had his portrait painted in Edinburgh to commemorate the event. How his brother, with his love of the pomp and swagger of Highland chieftainship, had loved him for it; and had envied him.

What years those had been. What soldiers to command. Ross-shire men mostly, and hardly an English speaker among them. He recalled the training ground at Hythe. The English drill sergeants, powerless to command the ‘Highland savages’ and his own gentle commands in his native Gaelic which had moulded the company into the fighting unit he had taken into battle. They would have followed him anywhere. To Hell itself. Had followed him within two years to Sicily. Into the French lines at Maida in that glorious charge which had brought him the Gold Medal, the army’s highest honour. He had addressed them afterwards, in Gaelic:

‘Tha mi a’creidsinn, a chairdean, gu bheil subh sgith.’

For the medal was not his, but theirs. And the following year they had gone with Macdonell to India. Discovering with him the mysteries of that beautiful and hellish continent. Returning home with them, he had marched into Edinburgh as their lieutenant-colonel.

There had been tears, a lament for the pipes composed in his honour – ‘Colonel Macdonell’s Farewell to the 78th’ – when, four years ago now, he had transferred from the old regiment into the Guards. It had been inevitable. The brilliance of his military masters never ceased to amaze him. What officer, he often wondered, had put him and his Highlanders – the heroes of Maida, fighting men to the last – on garrison duty in the island of Jersey? Macdonell was a leader, a warrior. Not some clerk. His men had no alternative save to languish in their new role. But, for all his regimental loyalty, Macdonell had been damned if he would suffer the same fate. The exchange of a captaincy in the Coldstream with a callow youth who preferred the comforts of home to the rigours of campaign had cost him the not inconsiderable sum of £3,500. And, thanks to the Guards’ curious system of ‘double-ranking’, his new role still held the equivalent status of lieutenant-colonel in the eyes of the line regiments.

And so he had gone to Spain. Many of the officers and men he saw around him now, chattering, dozing in their weary little groups in this sodden Belgian field, Henry Wyndham, his second-in-command, George Bowles, Miller, the Graham brothers, Josh Dobinson, Motherly, Kite, Fuller, were those whom he had led for two years in the Peninsula. Led through a maelstrom of regimental battle honours – Salamanca, Vitoria, Nivelle, the Nive. They were good men. Not Highlanders, mind. But good, sound fighting men. English, mostly. A few Irish, like the Grahams – though not as many as filled the ranks of the line regiments. They were men like Dan Perkins, the son of a Yorkshire sutler, with a grip like iron and tenacity to match. Men like 27-year-old John Biddle from Worcestershire, his colour sergeant and trusted friend who, with nine years’ service behind him in the battalion, had taught Macdonell the ways of the regiment in the very direct manner that his brother officers never could. There were others, too. New men, brought in from the militia to make up numbers. But, thanks to the attentive ministrations of Battalion Sergeant-Major Baker, they had quickly been assimilated into the regimental family. Macdonell cared for them all with a paternal affection – strict yet compassionate. And they in return were prepared to do anything he ordered. He was their ‘chief’ now. They his ‘clan’. Their loyalty was unto death.

He opened his eyes. Looked at the men again. Thought to himself what a very different sight they presented this morning to the public image of a Horse Guards’ review. Their clothes were largely those with which they had been issued two years back, and their service was beginning to tell. They had not been home since the end of the Spanish war and their famous scarlet coats, once vivid, had faded to a dull brick-red, too often patched and made good. The long-awaited new uniforms had still not arrived, and when they at last met the French it would be like this. Macdonell himself had been fortunate enough to have ordered a new service coat from his tailor in St James’s. It had arrived only last week. Scarlet with blue facings, edged in gold lace and with two heavy gold bullion epaulettes. He had also managed to get a neat new shako direct from Oliphant’s. In effect, he thought, with his grey overalls still missing, forced into white kerseymere breeches and tassled hessian boots, he might look rather too smart. Too tempting a target, perhaps, for a French sharpshooter.

At least he knew that, if they could not parallel his own sartorial pose, his men would do everything else they could to make him proud. Would, if they had half a chance, whitewash their cross-belts to a parade-ground brilliance; polish their brass; hone their leather. More than this, though, they would make him proud of them as soldiers, doing what they were trained to do: kill Frenchmen. He knew that in the heat of battle, when lesser men were panicking, losing their minds if not their lives, his lads would still be standing firm. Two ranks of muskets, spitting smoke, flame and a three-quarter-inch round lead ball. And then, when they had stopped the enemy in his tracks, as they had so many times before, they would follow up with the bayonet. And as for him, thought Macdonell, well, if that Frog sniper hit his mark, then that would be his fate. He was in the business of death and knew that one day it would come looking for him. His duty was to lead from the front. If necessary to fall at the front – as he had seen so many of his brother officers fall, all too often and too closely, in Spain, Sicily and India. Merely duty.

He stood up slowly, straightened his shako and turned to Biddle, who was hovering, alert, close by. ‘What’s our strength, Colour Sar’nt?’

‘This morning, sir, one hundred and ninety-three men, sir, all told. Including that is yourself, sir, and the two colonels, Captain Moore, Captain Evelyn, Captain Elrington and the ensigns, sir – Mister Gooch and Mister Standen.’

In normal circumstances Macdonell’s command – No. 1 Company – consisted only of his own junior officers, Tom Sowerby and John Montagu, ten NCOs and some 100 guardsmen. Ten such companies formed the battalion – Second Battalion, 2nd Coldstream Guards, under Colonel Alexander Woodford. For the last year, however, while the battalion had been stationed here in the Low Countries, Macdonell had been its temporary commanding officer. It was perhaps on account of this responsibility, he supposed, together with his impressive service record, that he now found himself, for the duration of the campaign at least, moved to command of the battalion’s Light Company. And more than this, to the command too of the Light Company of the 3rd Scots Guards, who drew their recruits primarily from his native country. In all, nearly 200 men.

Good to be leading Scots again in what he believed would be the final conflict of these long and bloody wars. Of course they were not, most of them, Highlanders like him. Many originated from Edinburgh and Glasgow. A few were borderers. There were some, though, whom he knew to understand the old tongue. MacGregor, for instance – that big sergeant-major of the 3rd Guards, with the huge grin and hands like spades. Macdonell closed his eyes, and, leaning back against the hedge, attempted to catch a few moments’ rest. Good to lead Scots again. Back where he had started. Full circle.

SIX

Quatre-Bras, 11 a.m. De Lancey

He took a sip of coffee and winced. The brew, which he had accepted gratefully from George Scovell and of whose origins he had thought it best not to enquire, was stronger than that to which he was accustomed and uncommonly bitter. Still, it was fulfilling its purpose. Twice in the last hour he had felt his eyes begin to close. The strain of the previous evening and a profound lack of sleep were starting to tell. It had been 7 a.m. before he had despatched Magdalene, her groom and maid, to Antwerp. He was content at least with her safety, having already made provision for her to be cared for there by Captain Mitchell of the 25th, the Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General to the city. He took another sip of the thick brown liquid and rolled it around in his mouth. He knew of old, from so many mornings in the Peninsula, similarly heavy-lidded under a Spanish sun, that if only he could keep awake until midday he would be able to function till nightfall.

De Lancey had left Brussels at 8 that morning, reaching the Quatre-Bras farm close on 10 o’clock. He and Wellington had ridden hard down the main road from Brussels, their advance party composed only of Somerset, Müffling and a half-troop escort of Life Guards. The remainder of the Duke’s staff – some forty officers, including their friend d’Alava, had followed close behind. They had been greeted by a suitably aggressive picket of green-coated Nassauers, Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, his superior General Perponcher and the Prince of Orange, all still jubilant at having held off what purported to be a sizeable French force. Of that force, however, there was as yet little immediate evidence. In fact Saxe-Weimar and Perponcher had gone against Wellington’s express directive to collect on Nivelles. Securing the authority of the Prince of Orange’s Chief of Staff, the enigmatic and talented General Constant-Rebecque, and in the knowledge that they might be hopelessly outnumbered, they had decided to stand at the crossroads. Naturally the Peer had not thought it politic to mention the fact this morning. For it was just possible, thought De Lancey with wry amusement, that Rebecque’s direct disobedience of an order from the greatest military mind on Earth might have saved the entire campaign.

De Lancey sat astride his horse at the centre of the highest point of what would be, when the army finally arrived, the Allied line. Following Wellington’s example he was clad in a dark blue civilian top-coat, rather than the regulation red tunic. What need had either man for show? Wellington might wear red and gold for parades at the Horse Guards, but in battle he preferred the plain clothes which told his men that here was a man of sober mind and quiet sensibility. The sort of man whom they knew they could trust to win a battle.

Like Wellington too, and the entire General Staff, De Lancey wore a simple black bicorn hat, fore and aft. He had also, since the last years of the Peninsular campaign, taken to imitating Wellington’s habit of strapping a change of clothes to the back of his saddle, and, in place of a pistol holster, a pen and paper, with the addition of a bulging map case and a deep morocco leather document wallet. He reached into it now, pulled out a small field telescope and brought it to his eye.

This was good ground. He was aware that there was not a pronounced reverse slope – the Peer’s preferred defensive ground – behind which to shelter an army from the enemy’s gaze and cannon fire. But it was a good position all the same, its virtues evident on this still, fine morning. Via the small circular lens he traversed the field, moving slowly from the left, along the line of a wood and a lake, through the small village of Quatre-Bras itself, with its few whitewashed houses around the key road junction, to the mass of a larger wood, marked on his map as the Bois de Bossu.

To the left the ground was open, laid mostly to cereal crops, which now stood impressively high. So high, he thought, that within one such a field it might be possible to hide an entire battalion. In the distance, though, on rising ground stood a farm – Pireaumont. In the centre ground lay another, Gemioncourt, with its high walls an ideal strongpoint. It was imperative that they should seize both before the French. In the far distance, beyond the Bossu wood, De Lancey could make out a third and fourth defensive structure, the two farms of Pierrepont. These too should be occupied by the Belgians before it was too late. A voice from his side made him take the glass from his eye.

‘No Crapauds yet, De Lancey?’

It was Alexander Gordon, one of the Duke’s aides and a close friend of both men, along with Fitzroy Somerset, the latter’s hooked nose and angular features giving him the absurd appearance of a diminutive Wellington.

‘None, I’m afraid. That wood may be good cover, but it makes it damnably hard to see who we’re fighting.’

‘Well, I am beginning to wonder,’ said Gordon with a knowing smirk, ‘exactly where the Prince’s “French corps” might be.’

‘I did hear a little popping musketry,’ interjected Somerset.

‘Ours or theirs?’ asked Gordon.

‘I … I couldn’t really say.’

De Lancey smiled. ‘Muskets or not, I can feel them there. Our reports suggest an entire corps. Perhaps more. Reille or d’Erlon. Probably under Ney. Cavalry too. We’ve had sightings of lancers.’

Gordon shuddered. ‘Well, we’d better make damned sure that our own cavalry are here before they do attack.’

Somerset spoke again. ‘I believe that the Prince has told his Grace that one of his Dutch cavalry brigades is on its way from Nivelles, even now.’

Gordon, unimpressed, sighed and looked despairingly to De Lancey. ‘Where is Uxbridge and the English cavalry? Do we know?’