The Year of the French (75 page)

A mile beyond the village we encountered a most unexpected sight, a body of some fifty French prisoners marching along under guard in the direction of Carrick. The officer in command, a Captain Millett as it proved, rode up to greet me. He explained that this was the rear guard of Humbert’s army, captured by Crauford as they attempted to destroy the bridge over the Shannon at Drumshanbo.

“Did you help capture them?” I asked.

But he laughed and said, “I am only a poor officer of militia. Crauford commands dragoons. He caught one of their generals, with a droll French name.” He scratched his chin. “Can you speak any French? Give a shout and ask their general’s name.”

I called out to the prisoners, and several of them answered, “Sarrizen.”

“Saracen, that’s it. Like a bloody Turk. The Saracen’s Head, like the signpost on the tavern.”

“Is he not with them?”

“He is with Billy Lake, and bloody glad to be with him. Ten minutes after Crauford fell upon him he was riding up and down with his hat stuck on the end of his sword in token of surrender. And this lot are bloody glad to be walking down a country road, swinging their arms in the sunlight. I wouldn’t like to be on the sharp end of Crauford’s sabre.”

They did not seem either glad or sorry, but only exhausted. I thought of the extraordinary march they had made, from Mayo into Longford. A few were swarthy southerners, but most could have exchanged coats with Millett’s men. The difference lay in their eyes, round and dark with fatigue.

“Where is Lake?” I asked. “I have orders for him from Lord Cornwallis.”

Millett stroked the neck of his horse. “You had best move quickly then, or you won’t be in for the kill. Crauford has been keeping a grip on the Frenchman’s tail, and now Lake has moved to close the gap. Infantry, cannon, the lot.”

“But where should I go?” I was beginning to see that battles are less tidy than a morning room in Carrick.

“Towards Cloone. Keep to this road and don’t turn at the cross. You should be able to see all of them from there; the town is on a hill. The enemy camped there last night. In the churchyard.” He looked towards one of his soldiers, a gangling boy who stood leaning on his musket. “Do you know what the savages did? They pulled up the bones from the graves.”

“What?” I asked. The grotesque words leaped at me from nowhere.

“The natives. The rebels. They used the bones of the dead for firewood. There are bones scattered across the churchyard, between the stones.”

An ugly incoherent image sought to shape itself in my mind.

“Savages,” Millett said. “Do you have another word for them? Damme if I do.”

I did not reply. Like animals in their den, I thought, the earth strewn with bones.

“That is my quarrel with this lot,” he said, nodding towards the French. “Putting muskets in the hands of those savages. I trust I am as tolerant as the next man, but I draw the line when it comes to savages. I was in Wexford. I saw what happened to the poor Protestants there.”

“What will happen to them now?” I asked, nodding toward the French, as he had done.

“These lads? They’ll be exchanged. Back they go to la belle France. They won’t be eager to visit this damned place again.”

“No,” I said. The air was cool, despite the autumn sun.

“I have all day to get them to Carrick,” he said, “but you’d best not waste any time.”

“No,” I said. “I have never seen a battle.”

“No more have I,” he said. “But I can live without the sight. Not that it will be much of a battle. According to Sarrizen, they are about ready to drop from fatigue.”

From beyond the hill, faint and fragile, came a sound like furniture being pulled across the floor of a distant room. We looked at each other.

“Yes,” he said. “That could be the artillery.” He half raised his hand and then lowered it. “Good luck to you, Mr. Wyndham.”

“And to you as well.”

“None needed here,” he said. “I shall be snug in Carrick, watching these lads eat their frogs.”

I never saw Millett again. His company was one of those which took part in the final operation in Killala and along the Belmullet road, earning there an unenviable reputation for severity towards the inhabitants. When I had gained the rise of the road I turned round to wave to him, but he did not see me.

Cloone, as he had told me, stands upon a high hill. As we rode towards it, the bursts of sound grew more frequent, and even my unpractised ear could now recognise it as cannon fire.

Although Lake had moved forward, Cloone was held by a regiment. The churchyard was crowded with uniformed men. I had to dismount to make my way past them to the church, where a knot of officers stood facing south. I attempted to introduce myself and explain my errand, but they paid not the slightest attention. One of the officers, a major, held a brass spyglass to his eye.

In the very far distance, great masses of men were spread out in a manner which made no sense to me at all. Some were in motion, clumps of horsemen and infantry moving forward in straggling lines. A dense, solid body of men stood motionless on the slopes of a hill. The cannon looked no larger than slivers of black wood. As I stared at them they spoke again. Smoke hung about them. To the left of the hill, distant from it by a mile, lay clumped together the cabins of a village, like children’s toys. The cannon spoke again, and before the noise had quite died away a body of horsemen rode towards the hill. Beyond hill and village, red bog stretched away towards the horizon.

One of the officers was a young man of my own age, with a smooth, pale face and features delicate as a girl’s. I seized him by the arm and asked him what was happening. He turned towards me impatiently, his eyes so full of the scene that he scarce saw me. But I kept my grip upon his arm and repeated the question. I think that when he understood me at last he welcomed the chance to display his superior knowledge.

“That’s Humbert down there,” he said, pointing to the base of the hill. “He contrived to seize the hill before we forced him to turn and fight us. A few minutes ago he shifted his main strength to the eastern slope so that he could meet our cavalry.” The cannon spoke again, this time a more ragged sound. “That will be the last barrage, unless we want to blow off Crauford’s head.”

“Then those are Crauford’s dragoons?” I asked.

“Crauford’s or Lord Roden’s. Who can tell at this distance?”

Now a body of our infantry also moved forward towards the hill, at a kind of slow trot, on a line at right angles to the village.

“And the rebels? Where are they?”

“Why, with Humbert, I should think. Down there, perhaps, holding the road that leads from the hill to the village. I believe that General Lake is in the village. He rode off in that direction.”

“Rebels perched upon a slope,” the major said without lowering his glass. “Lake must think he’s back in Wexford. At Vinegar Hill.”

“I wonder if this one will take him as long,” my lieutenant said, and the major laughed.

“He should have more confidence now,” the major said. “Since then he has won the races at Castlebar.”

“Perhaps Lord Cornwallis has confidence in him,” I said. “I am carrying his despatch.”

The major turned towards me. “Who the devil are you?”

“Lord Cornwallis’s aide,” I said, feeling unaccountably prim. “I am carrying a despatch for General Lake. Requesting him to engage the enemy.”

“Are you indeed? Lake has anticipated his orders. Today will not be a second Castlebar. Cornwallis doesn’t lose battles. The cavalry he sent up from Carrick are behind those hills, holding the Granard road.”

“Perhaps I should ride down into the village,” I said.

“By all means, young man. It is safe enough from all that I can tell. Matters will be settled between the hill and the bog.”

“What is the name of the village?” I asked.

He paused for a moment, screwing his eyes half shut. “Damme if I know. Does anyone know what it’s called? The Irish must know. That is a Longford regiment over there,” he said, pointing with his glass.

A battle fought upon British soil, and we did not then know what name to give it. Ballinamuck. Years later, in India, I asked an Irish officer serving with the company what the word meant. He was insulted by the suggestion that he might understand the language.

“He lost one battle,” I said.

“What?”

“Lord Cornwallis. At Yorktown. He lost the American colonies. He has described it to me. When he sent his sword to Washington, he had the bands play ‘The World Turned Upside Down.’ ”

“That was different,” the major said and resumed his inspection of the battle. It was amazing how closely the scene resembled those engravings of battle plans, which had always seemed to me improbably neat and spruce, with their lines and arcs to indicate the positions of infantry and cavalry, and triangles to represent parks of artillery. Our cavalry and infantry were still at the advance, and now a second regiment of horse moved forward from the village. Its line of attack was upon the right flank of our infantry, as Crauford was placed upon the left, and if the lieutenant was correct in his surmise it would drive against the rebels holding the road. There were no lines of retreat open to Humbert unless he chose to scramble up the hill or fall back onto the soft, wet bogland. It was as though a map had been unfurled before me, the colours blurred and indistinct, but the lines and contours sharp. The excitement which I had felt earlier in the day rose within me again. No one, I believe, has ever witnessed his first battle under more agreeable circumstances, and it was therefore with feelings of sharp and pleasurable anticipation that I bade farewell to my new-found friends at Cloone and rode down towards the village of Ballinamuck.

FROM
THE MEMOIR OF EVENTS
,
WRITTEN BY MALCOLM ELLIOTT
 IN OCTOBER, 1798

Of that wretched half hour at Ballinamuck I propose to say little. I am told that Humbert and the other French discussed it at length in Dublin, where they were entertained, and doubtless their account has been recorded for posterity. Even if I wished to describe the disaster I could not, for it was swift, and my recollection of it fragmentary and confused. I marvel at the clarity and precision which military historians command, for my experience of battle is of a bloody tumult in which men butcher each other like beasts, and minds are distracted by their screams and by the hideous objects into which, dying, they are transformed.

We were midway between Cloone and Ballinamuck when they fell upon us, and our march became a rout, lacking in all order. We turned and stood at Ballinamuck because we had no choice, and because Humbert welcomed the advantage given to him by the hill. It is a point of pride with generals that they obey the precepts of their trade, taking advantage of high ground and the rest of it. The French and perhaps a third of the Irish, myself among them, he placed upon the gentle slope of the hill, and the other Irish, under Teeling’s command, he placed athwart the road which led from the hill to the village. He made a brave show of barking out orders, and telling us what we should do and where we should stand, but his mood seemed to me one of savage despair. Of artillery we had now but two small curricle guns, and these he left upon the road to be worked by gunners named Magee and Casey. I think it likely that he intended that the Irish should take the first shock of the British as they moved upon us from the direction of the village. His fury, for I can call it nothing less, was directed not towards the British but towards his allies, and even Teeling he addressed with a brusque contempt.

In fact, however, we were attacked first by Crauford’s dragoons, coming down upon us in a line lying at an angle to the village, and riding up the slopes with fearful shouts, their long sabres slashing the air. Humbert had barely time to turn about before they were upon us. They were driven off a short distance, however, by MacDonnell and his pikemen. I could see MacDonnell among the English riders, his theatrical plume flapping. And yet I drew no pride from his courage. I felt only fear, a thin nerve beating against the numbness of my brain. By this time we had already taken losses from their artillery.
Taken losses:
a fine grey phrase. Grapeshot and chain shot ripped chests and bellies open, chests sodden with blood, and bowels spilled open from bellies. A man knelt beside me on the grass, his spread hands holding bowels which oozed between his red fingers.

Humbert ordered me to move the Ballina men to the support of MacDonnell, who had now fallen back. Patches of grass were already slippery with blood, and in our haste we stepped over wounded men, who clawed at our knees. MacDonnell turned to look at me: his eyes were wide and staring and his mouth slack. I had supposed from the vigour of his defence that his fox hunter’s bravado was sustaining him, thinking him childish to the last, but saw now that he was terrified. “Holy Mary Mother of God pray for me,” he said, and then, his voice twisting to a scream, he shouted out a string of obscenities in Irish.

The British infantry had begun their advance upon us, walking steadily through the long grasses, their muskets held out before them. I turned my head to look at Crauford’s cavalry, which stood poised ready to sweep forward a second time. Magee fired off our two curricle guns, and I saw several of the British stumble and fall. Teeling was sitting his horse beside the guns, his drawn sword in his hand. He now made a gesture with the sword, as if asking whether he should move his men up from the road to join us upon the hill. Humbert motioned him to remain in position. Humbert had dismounted, and was standing with his legs spread wide apart, his hands on his hips. He moved his head constantly, as though looking for something which he could not find. As if in answer to the curricles, the English now let off a volley of musket fire which was answered by the French. Of the Irish, not one in ten had a musket. The others were armed with pikes, and thus far had done nothing but wait upon our ground for the grapeshot and the musket balls. Some were retching, leaning forward with hand pressed to knee.

Crauford was taking no more chances. He held his dragoons as the infantry came towards us, reloading as they walked, and then a second body of cavalry rode up from the village. Now the infantry paused again and fired another volley. Crauford moved his sabre in a downward arc, and came forward at the gallop.