Waterloo (2 page)

Macdonell was woken by his servant with a mug of sweet tea and the regimental order book. He rubbed sleep from his eyes and checked his pocket watch, a gold hunter made in Paris by M. Lepine, and of which he was uncommonly proud. It was five o’clock. He had slept little. He had still not adjusted to a bed which was six inches too short for him – at three inches over six feet, most beds were too short for him – and just before he retired a galloper had arrived to report that Napoleon’s Armée du Nord was on the march and seemed to be heading for Charleroi on the River Sambre. If the French attacked the town and crossed the river they would have committed an act of war and would be on their way to Brussels, a city that Wellington had vowed to defend. Major General Sir George Cooke, commander of the 1st Infantry Division stationed at Enghien, had immediately sent a despatch to the Duke, summarising the news and requesting orders. As a reply would take several hours
to arrive, James had retired in the vain hope of sleep.

He swallowed a few mouthfuls of tea and took the order book from the servant. ‘Any news?’ he inquired hopefully.

‘None that I know of, sir.’

‘Shouldn’t be long.’ In a neat hand he entered the first order for the day. The light companies would parade at eight o’clock in marching order. Sixty rounds to be issued to each man and all horses to be thoroughly exercised and fed. He signed the order Lt Col J Macdonell, Coldstream Guards, and handed it back.

‘Sick to report to the infirmary as usual, Private,’ he said. ‘We shall not want any stragglers. And ask Captain Wyndham to have every musket cleaned and tested. Every one, especially the flints. The last batch was useless.’ Faulty flints supplied by unscrupulous dealers were a constant source of complaint.

‘Yes, Colonel. There is one other matter, sir.’

‘What is that?’

‘Vindle and Luke, sir. Fighting. Sergeant Dawson instructed me to tell you.’

‘For the love of God, not again. Drunk?’ The very pair who had been at the prize fight.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Tell Sergeant Dawson that I will see them before parade.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The private saluted smartly and left. James hurriedly drank the remains of his tea, splashed water over his face, ran a comb through his mop of sandy hair and struggled into his new uniform, already brushed by the servant. It was as fine a uniform as any in the army. A red jacket with a high blue collar and blue cuffs, white breeches, cross-belt from right shoulder
to left hip and calf-length black boots. The jacket was laced with gold braid. He checked his appearance in a mirror. He was ready. And if the French were on the Sambre, he would need to be.

On the first day of March, Napoleon Buonaparte had landed with about a thousand men at Golfe Juan on the southern French coast. Ironically, the Duke of Wellington had been in Vienna, discussing with the other European powers how best to ensure peace and stability for all after twenty years of conflict. Boney, not for the first time, had caught them napping and by the sound of it he might be about to do so again.

Macdonell had been with the regiment in Brussels when the news arrived. At first, some of his fellow officers did not take it seriously. They thought that Boney would get no further than Lyon. They did not believe that the veterans who had left their wives and families to fight for him and had seen so many of their comrades die in Spain and Russia would dust off their uniforms, sharpen their swords and make ready to follow him again.

Others did not accept the threat Napoleon posed because they did not want to. They were enjoying themselves too much in the glittering hotels and salons of Brussels to want to go to war, and so persuaded themselves that the little Corsican would simply go away.

James knew they were wrong. The highlander’s instinct that had served him well on battlefield and Scottish hillside alike told him that it would not be many weeks before they were at war again. He had fought in Italy and with Wellington in the Peninsula. He had seen French Lancers destroy an infantry
line in a matter of minutes, he had watched helpless as French artillery had turned an infantry square into a mess of blood and bodies, and on dark nights he could still hear the remorseless drumming that signalled the advance of the French Imperial Guard.

Napoleon would not have left his exile on Elba without being confident that these tough veterans of his Russian and Spanish campaigns would follow him once more. Macdonell had even bet a guinea on it with Francis Hepburn. The guinea was paid the day they heard that Marshal Ney, commander of the Imperial Guard, and so-called ‘bravest of the brave’, had declared his support for the Emperor. If Napoleon’s beloved ‘immortals’, complete with their pigtails and earrings, were with him, not a man in France would entertain the remotest possibility of defeat.

Within two days of Ney’s declaration, King Louis XVIII had fled with his family to Bruges, and their emperor, to the joy of the people, had entered Paris. The Allies declared war on France and Wellington made haste to Brussels. Macdonell had heard the Duke say that he wished a more distant island had been found for Napoleon. St Lucia in the Caribbean, perhaps, where yellow fever or malaria might have done for him, or even the lonely island of St Helena, stuck out by itself in the middle of the Atlantic. And the Duke had been proved right. For Napoleon, Elba in the Mediterranean had been no more than a stepping stone back to France.

The Château Enghien stood at the north-eastern edge of the town beside a heart-shaped lake fringed with willow and oak. Once a magnificent building with a grand park, it had long ago
fallen into disrepair. Nevertheless it had provided the officers of the 2nd Brigade with more than adequate accommodation. The walls might be peeling and much of the furniture broken, but it was dry and comfortable enough. James had tried, and failed, to imagine it as it must have been in its glory days – the scene, surely, of lavish banquets, grand balls and glittering musical gatherings. Just the things Napoleon was known to hate.

He strode out of the chateau, down a broad flight of stone steps and set off around the lake. A good walk before joining General Sir John Byng for breakfast and to be briefed on the night’s news would help clear his head. It was Sir John’s habit to take breakfast with his senior officers. Unlike Major General Peregrine Maitland who commanded the 1st Brigade, Byng liked to extol the merits of a good breakfast. The fastidious Maitland dismissed it as an unwelcome new habit and insisted that a man should do at least two hours work before breaking his fast.

Macdonell worked better on a full stomach. He had more energy and thought more clearly. And if they were to march, a clear head would be needed. Mobilising troops who had been in quarters for as long as they had would not be easy.

Among the rows of tents the first stirrings were apparent. Grizzled heads appeared, sniffed the air like hunting dogs, relieved themselves and retreated back inside. Fires were being lit and water boiled for tea. Most would breakfast on their ration of boiled beef and biscuit. A few might have scrounged an egg or some bread. In front of a tent at the head of a line, two large figures and an unusually small one were busy preparing their food.

‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ Macdonell greeted them. All three immediately snapped to attention. Macdonell grinned. He could not help grinning when he saw the Graham brothers together. They were so alike that they could have been twins, although today James bore the marks of the fight. One eye was swollen and both cheeks bruised. Six and a half feet tall, broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced, hewn from the hardest Irish granite, and inseparable. Macdonell often thought that if the army had just ten thousand like the corporals Graham, Napoleon would be wise to turn tail and run.

In appearance, the third man, Sergeant George Dawson, was rather different. Barely an inch over five feet, pug-nosed and barrel-chested, he might have been about forty years old. No uniform had ever quite fitted him, however skilful its maker. He was a tough borderer from the town of Hawick who carried his lack of height with a certain panache. Dawson, too, had been at Maida and in that odd, short battle, had fought bravely and by word and deed had encouraged others to do the same. That was why he now wore a sergeant’s crimson sash.

‘Good morning, Colonel,’ replied the sergeant. ‘You find us making ready for the day.’

‘Joy of the morning to you, Colonel,’ added James. ‘Mug of fine Irish tea?’

‘No thank you, Corporal. Good fight. Well done. How are the wounds?’

James raised a hand to his face. ‘Wounds, Colonel? Just a few scratches and my hands are good as new. Joe’s a fine mess, poor fellow. Hope he can hold his musket.’

‘So do I. How was the night?’

‘Long, Colonel. We expected news.’ This time it was Joseph.

‘Will we be marching today, Colonel?’ asked Dawson. ‘The men are asking.’

‘I expect so. Full parade at eight. Be sure to kick the drunks and dreamers awake and in to line.’

The corporals smiled their lopsided smiles. ‘That we will, sir,’ replied Dawson. ‘Are you aware of Vindle and Luke fighting again?’

‘I am, Sergeant, and I will deal with them after breakfast.’

‘Very good, sir.’ Macdonell nodded and went on his way.

A cloudless sky and already he could feel the warmth of the coming day on his face. God willing, the order to march would come that morning. If they were off to fight, the men should not be kept on parade for too long. Knapsack, blanket, sixty balls, powder, musket, bayonet and three days’ biscuit weighed nearly sixty pounds. As a young ensign he remembered finding the load heavier when standing still than when marching or fighting. Mind you, when it came to battle, the light companies he commanded would carry nothing but their guns, ammunition and a light oilskin haversack. Speed and stealth were the skirmishers’ best weapons.

Beyond the rows of tents the park stretched out towards distant woods. Sweeps of grass, close-cropped by the horses, were fringed with lines of poplars. All semblance of a garden had long disappeared, although there were paintings in the chateau of what had once been spectacular beds of roses and tulips. Macdonell made his way towards a stream that ran through the park and into Lac d’Enghien. On the banks of the stream grew willows, their branches draped over the water and, here
and there, stooping so low that they might have been trying to drink. Just once he had seen a kingfisher there. It had swooped so fast to spear its prey that it had been no more than a blur of green and red; it was only when it emerged with a stickleback in its beak that he had been sure of what he had seen.

Macdonell liked that spot. He went there to watch dragonflies and waterboatmen and, occasionally, to take off his boots and dangle his feet in the cool water of the stream. Although no more than a few hundred yards from the noise and bustle of the camp, it was peaceful. It was a good place to think. Army life allowed little time for private thought. And it reminded him of home – Glengarry, where the river ran down to the loch and on to the Great Glen above Fort William. He had been born there, grew up there with his brothers, learnt to catch salmon, stalk deer and shoot pheasant there. At school in Douai he had missed the lochs and glens of Scotland almost as much as his family. And he missed them now. He stooped to pick up a pebble and threw it into the stream. He watched the circles it made in the water as they expanded outwards, eventually to be swallowed up by the current. He used to do the same in Glengarry when the river was slow.

For him, the Netherlands and Northern France were too flat to lift the heart, too much of a muchness. He craved the wildness of the highlands, snow on the peaks, icy streams, crofters’ cottages, the sweet smell of burning peat, yellow gorse and purple heather on the slopes. God willing, it would not be many days before he saw them again.

As the third son of a Catholic highland family, his father dead, he had chosen a military life for himself. The family
estate had passed to the eldest brother Alasdair, the second was content with his writing and his books, which left James. He had considered the Church, politics, travel, exploration, and had settled on the army. It had been a wise decision. The discipline and order suited him. He enjoyed the company and fellowship of soldiers. And he had acquitted himself with distinction in battle, enjoying the irony of a member of a staunch Jacobite family serving a German king who sat on a throne in London.

A knot of tension was growing in his stomach. He had felt that same knot in Italy and in the Peninsula. Not fear, not excitement, more a sharpening of the senses, an acute alertness that presaged action and danger. Today, surely, they would march. The Duke of Wellington would give the order and they would march to meet Napoleon. Napoleon, who could not acknowledge defeat, had risen again and, if he were not stopped, would sweep through the Netherlands to the coast where he would gaze across the Channel to England. And then what?

Dragging himself from his reverie, he turned and walked briskly back to the camp. The camp stirrings had taken on a new energy and he knew at once that the tension was not his alone. He could see it, hear it, even smell it among the men. It was there in the urgency of their movements, it was there in their gruff voices and it was there in their faces. They were going to war and they wanted to get on with it. Wellington had called them, admiringly, the scum of the earth – scum who had taken the King’s shilling rather than see their wives and children starve, or to avoid the horrors of Newgate or Bridgewall. It worried the Duke and his officers that so many had never
hefted a sword or fired a musket in anger, but they were at least survivors, scrappers who the army had trained to fight as a unit and had turned into proud members of a proud regiment. Like as not, Macdonell’s light companies would be first into battle and first to draw blood.

Unwilling to face more questions, Macdonell skirted the camp and returned to the chateau. General Byng was a man who insisted always on exactness and accuracy. Breakfast at seven o’clock meant just that and woe betide the officer who was late.