Authors: Iain Gale
‘Come on. On men. With me. Run. Into them. Charge.’
Thirty Frenchmen brought up their weapons. Two of them fired, one hitting at point blank the face of a British Grenadier who sank in a bloody mess, his eyes and nose blown away by the blast. But the other men of the Grenadiers Rouge were a split second too late. With a great leap, Steel threw himself at the low wall and crashed over it into two of the French infantry, sending their muskets pointing skywards. He heard the crash of gunfire and saw the smoke as more than twenty of the guns discharged into the air over their heads. Now the redcoats were upon them and in that crush of man against man, Steel knew that here as before, only two things would count. Your skill with a blade – sword or bayonet – and sheer bloody brute strength. He chose the latter, pretending to adopt the
en garde
position with a French officer. The man looked at him and grinned, before saluting. Steel recognized him as the officer he had seen at Schellenberg. The man who had commanded in Sattelberg.
Well, by God, no such cold-blooded murderer of women and children would take his salute. Steel growled at him:
‘You heathen bastard.’
And instead of playing out the steps of a formal combat, he lunged and caught the man off guard with a single thrust of his blade that slid past his thigh, sending Steel cannoning into him with the full weight of his body. The Frenchman careered back into his men, but recovered surprisingly quickly and came at Steel in a rush. It was all the Lieutenant could do to parry his blade. But the officer followed through with the hilt and caught Steel a heavy blow on the chin with the curved brass, sending him flying back into Slaughter and two other Grenadiers who were locked in a desperate struggle with three of the French. Steel sank on to one knee. His head reeled. He moved his jaw and looked up and saw the French officer raising his sword – not the usual rapier, but a heavy cavalry sword designed for chopping deep into flesh. Steel raised his own blade high above his head and took the full force of the downward cut on its glistening length. The Frenchman’s sword cut a jagged notch in the cutting edge, but did not break the blade.
The man was good, thought Steel. As good as Jennings. But as good as himself? The image of the Major reminded him of his purpose. He had more than a battle to win. Much as he despised this Frenchman, Steel realized that now was not the time to become involved in a long and drawn out sword fight. But again the French officer came at him. A huge uppercut this time which Steel only avoided by jumping back and arching his spine so that the blade sang past his chest. In return he side-stepped and made a feint attack on the officer’s left side and switched his blade across to the right, catching him off guard and nicking his shoulder. To the left and right he saw that his men were now using their
muskets as clubs and drawing their hangars from their scabbards.
Unable to leave the mêlée, Steel’s only choice was to attack again, but as he prepared to move, a huge French Grenadier joined his commander and thrust his bayonet towards Steel’s stomach. Steel cut it away, and in a return of the same move parried the officer’s sword that was heading for his chest. This was getting a bit too hot for his liking. Taking a half-step back, Steel watched as Slaughter, reduced to using his short sword, deftly knocked a Frenchman’s gun from his hand and cut him deep in the forearm. A noise from the rear and right disturbed him. For a moment he thought it must be more French, but the French officer had also heard it and as Steel instinctively half-turned his head towards the noise, Claude Malbec too was distracted by the sight of the scores of red-coated reinforcements who had poured into the square.
The French officer realized in an instant that, whatever the rules of engagement decreed and no matter how much he might be relishing this encounter with the tall British officer, it was now time to withdraw. When Steel glanced back, his adversary had gone. The big Grenadier made another bayonet lunge, but this time his height worked against him and in over-reaching he exposed himself. Steel thrust fast and hard, up into the flesh below the man’s chin and pushed his blade until it protruded through the back of his neck. The Frenchman fell, gurgling blood, and Steel drew out the sticky blade.
There were men in red coats all around them now. Dutchmen by the sound of them, whose comrades were evidently advancing along two neighbouring streets to join the attack. These, thought Steel, were not Cutts’ men, but fresh troops from the centre of the army. And that could mean only one thing, Marlborough had carried the field. Steel knew
that if they pressed hard now they could take the greater part of the village. Perhaps force a surrender. The French officer might have evaded him, but now he had other, more vital business to attend to. He turned to Williams and pointed, breathless, off to the left.
‘Tom. Take your platoon and flush out every house along that street. I want any officers you find taken alive. Whoever they are. But keep on your guard and if they look as if they mean to try anything, kill them. Offer them no parole.’
He knew for certain now that he would find Jennings here somewhere and he did not mean to give him even the faintest chance of escape.
Aubrey Jennings sat in the little bedroom at the front of the house in a street on the westernmost side of the village and poured himself another large glass of the cognac looted by his newly acquired Sergeant. He had stationed the man, whose name he had discovered was Saunders, with two more of the deserters on the stairs and was waiting for the fighting to end. The Sergeant was a reasonable man. Perhaps, thought Jennings, when I return to London, when a grateful nation bestows on me the honours that are surely my right and I attain my Colonelcy. Perhaps I shall take the wretch into my regiment. He would make a passable Sergeant-Major.
The allied attack had come as something of a surprise to him. But still there was no need for consternation. What hope would Cutts’ 12,000, or whatever was now left of them, have against more than twice their number within such a heavily defended position? And the fight on the rest of the field he knew to be going well for Tallard. Jennings had just embarked on toasting his own health when the door opened and Sergeant Saunders entered.
‘Major. I think you’d better come and have a look. Things
is going pretty bad out there. I reckon the Frenchies have been licked.’
‘Now Sarn’t. Don’t get so flustered. I’m sure that you must be mistaken.’
‘There’s no mistake, Sir. They’re running away all over the bloody field. And it looks like we’re surrounded. There’s bloody redcoats everywhere. What shall we do, Sir?’
Jennings thought for a moment. He stood up and straightened his coat and sword and then picked up the two beautifully engraved silver-mounted pistols which he had plundered earlier that day from the body of an officer of French dragoons. One of them he thrust into his belt. The other he kept in his hand, cocking the lock.
‘Sergeant. You know it’s at times like these that only an officer can see the way forward. The solution is really very simple.’
The Sergeant smiled, newly confident again of the old faith that he had once placed in his officers. And then the trusting smile turned to a frown. Jennings levelled the pistol and very gently applied pressure from his finger to the superbly tuned trigger. The man slumped to the floor, a black, smoking hole showing where the ball had entered his head.
There was only one solution now, thought Jennings, as he carefully reloaded the smoking pistol and rammed home a new charge. He would wait here until the battle appeared to be drawing to a close, shoot anyone unlucky enough to find him and then quietly slip away in the ensuing confusion. A horse would be easy to come by. He was dressed in the uniform of a British Major. A Major in what appeared now to be the victorious army. He still had the incriminating papers with which to destroy Marlborough and food enough for several days. With the French defeated no one would question his passage through the allied lines and back up to
the coast. He had no reason to doubt that the Sergeant had not been right. He could hear English voices in the street below now.
The end would not be long in coming. He reached for the half-full glass of cognac and as he drank he stared at the lifeless body of Sergeant Saunders and the line of gore where the blown-away back of his head had slid down the door. Pity, he thought. Man would have made a good Sergeant-Major. No matter. There would still be plenty of willing volunteers when the time came.
Tom Williams knew now that had found his true calling. Moving through the village, from east to west, he directed his platoon of Grenadiers with the skill of a seasoned veteran as they kicked open the doors of the houses that lay on Blenheim’s perimeter. They had cleared four houses now and taken more than twenty-five Frenchmen prisoner. These men had no fight left in them, but it had not all been easy work. The first dwelling had been still smouldering from the effect of a cannon-shell. Inside he had stumbled over the charred remains of a dead Frenchman. Two more, their flesh half-burnt from their bodies, they had left screaming in agony, unable to offer help, and reluctant to administer the
coup de
grâce
. At the second house he had met stiff resistance and the little knot of sour-faced monsewers had only been subdued by language of bayonet and musket butt. The third house though had been filled with dispirited enemy infantry who had been only too happy to surrender. This was the soldiering that he had dreamt of. The stuff of boyhood tales which, when his father had announced that he was purchased into the foot, had fired his mind with such ideas as his family would never know. To them he was a hopeless case. But if they could only see him now they might think again.
He led two of his men to the closed door of a house on the corner of a street on the extreme west of the village. Through an arched passage that ran beneath the village they could see out on to the meadows that led down to the Danube. The grass was choked with the bodies of dead French dragoons and British redcoats, killed in the first attack that morning. Williams turned to Corporal Taylor.
‘Taylor. I think I’ll manage this one. I’ll take a couple of men. You keep going with the prisoners. Take them back to Mister Steel.’
He kicked at the door and was surprised to find it locked. One of the Grenadiers put his musket to it and it gave way. Inside the house appeared to be deserted. Not a sound came from within the cool gloom and the table, still laid for breakfast, had not been touched for days. As they watched, a rat jumped from a chair and ran out into the street. Williams turned.
‘No one here McCance. I’ll check the upper floors. You carry on. Have a look in that passageway.’
With his sword drawn, Williams began to climb the stairs. The house was clearly uninhabited and the owners had left in a hurry. He wondered what he might find in the upper floors. Steel had told him of the rich pickings to be had – quite legally it seemed – in abandoned dwellings. Once apparently, in Russia, he had found a pot of golden crowns that had bought dinner for the entire regiment. And on another occasion enough lace to make three petticoats for his mistress.
But it was neither gold nor lace that greeted Tom Williams as he opened the door at the top of the stairs.
There, sitting on the bed in his shirtsleeves, with one hand clutching a glass of brandy and the other a cocked pistol, was Aubrey Jennings. He was barely recognizable as the dandy of the regiment. His face was gaunt and covered in soot from
the powder. On the floor close by lay two bodies. One looked like a British redcoat. The other was that of a French captain. Both men were dead.
It was hard to know who was the more surprised, Jennings or Williams. For an instant it seemed as if Jennings might squeeze the trigger. But regaining his senses, he carefully eased back the hammer and laid the gun on the table.
‘I say. What a relief. I thought you might be another fellow bent on killing me. I was captured, d’you see? This Frenchie would have killed me. But the brave fellow here came to my rescue only to be slain himself. I had given myself up for dead. And now of all people, you come to save me. Tom, isn’t it? Welcome, Tom. A glass of cognac?’
Williams was speechless. His mind could not encompass the situation. The last time he had seen Jennings had been when the man had been attempting to kill him. Yet now here he was, a known rapist, greeting him in terms of the most fulsome friendship.
‘I. I don’t quite understand, Major. I thought …’
‘Quite so. I am well aware of what you thought, Tom. But let me explain. I am truly sorry for the hurt I may have caused you on our last encounter. I trust you are recovered. Truth is there was no alternative. You see, Tom, I am a British spy. I answer to the Duke of Marlborough alone and no one else.’
‘But the village. Miss Louisa. Mister Steel said that you … you.’
‘Well Mister Steel was wrong, Tom. Mister Steel did not know the truth about me. Few men do. Yet, while you have been toiling on the battlefield I have been in here fighting this war from the inside. It is because of the information which I feed the Duke that we have won this day, Tom.’
He rose from the bed. Williams, still unsure, took a pace back and held his sword steady.
‘Come now, Tom. Put down your sword. But I can see that you are still uncertain. What say you that we find Colonel Farquharson and then I shall take you to Marlborough. How pleased he will be to see me. And when I tell him it was you who found me, who knows what rewards, eh Tom? Promotion so soon in one so young? It has happened before. But, come. I need a weapon. These French pistols are all very well. But they disgrace an English officer. Now give me your sword. Can’t you see that I’m anxious to get to the fight. You can’t keep all the glory for yourself, you know. Your sword, Tom, and we’ll be off.’
Without thinking, and carried away by the dream of promotion, Williams offered Jennings the thin weapon, and advanced towards the back of the room, holding it towards him by the blade. Jennings took the grip in his outstretched hand and smiled: