Second to None: A Military Romance, Volume 2 (of 3) by James Grant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXV.
 SAIL FOR GERMANY.

We had been very comfortable in our quiet country quarters in Sussex, and being so near London, our officers led a gay life, for at least one-half of them were always in town "between returns;" but now Ranelagh and Vauxhall, with their fireworks and lighted promenades, their belles, beaux, music, and gaiety; the ridotti, the opera, the theatres, and entertainments al fresco in the beautiful West-end parks, or by barges up the Thames to Richmond or to Hampton Court, were all to be exchanged for the long dusty march by day or the dark and weary one by night—the tented camp, the wet bivouac, and the perils of the German war.

The regiment was embarked on board of two frigates—the Venus and Thames. The Light Troop was in the latter, under Major Maitland.

Owing to the circumstances of the expedition, and that the frigates, after landing us, were to run down the Channel and join the Brest blockading fleet, under Anson and Howe, discipline was somewhat relaxed, and the seamen and marines were permitted the privilege of having their wives, sweethearts, and friends on board. So there were enough, and to spare, of singing and weeping, swearing, smoking, and even fighting between decks.

To most of us the atmosphere, especially below, was rendered insupportable by the mingled odours of bilge, coarse tobacco, purser's gin, and new paint, while the language heard on every side was neither classical nor poetical; and this continued until the Blue Peter appeared fluttering from the frigate's foremasthead, and the boom of one of her bow-chasers announced that all shore-people must leave. Then began the howling of women and the grumbling of the seamen, many of whom, to express their discontent, roared in chorus a song then popular among taverns and crimping-houses, a portion of which ran thus:—

"Ere Hawke did bang Mounseer Conflan,
 We had plenty of beef and beer;
 Now Mounseer's beat, we've little to eat,
 And d——n the drop of gin so neat,
 Since John Bull's nought to fear."

After having most severe weather at sea, we were landed at the quaint, old, and Dutch-like town of Embden, about the middle of September.

There we remained two days, giving our horses gentle exercise after the cramps of the sea voyage, riding them by the long canals which intersect the city, and by the sluices of which the whole surrounding country can be inundated in time of war. The officers received a banquet from the burgomaster and Count of Embden in the old feudal castle of the latter, and then we marched to join the allied British and Hanoverians, who were now commanded by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick.

I shall never forget that route, which occupied ten days. The rain poured incessantly, and we had to traverse a low, marshy country, few portions of which were less than fetlock deep in water. Many of the towns we passed through had been destroyed; the inhabitants of others declined to be incommoded. Thus we frequently bivouacked amid the wet, being quite without tents; but old Colonel Preston always cheered us on. Sometimes he would say, as some of us nodded over our holsters, when riding wearily on in the grey dawn that heralded another day of toil and travel:

"You are weary, my gude lads; we shall halt in an hour; but there can be no sleep even then, unless with the sword in the hand and the foot in the stirrup."

On one of those wretched marches I had command of the regimental baggage-guard, and was hourly annoyed by the master waggoner, an East Frieslander, who was never sober, as he drank constantly from a keg of Schiedam which hung at the back of his wain, and his companions assured me that he had never been sober for a year—others averred that he had been born drunk, so great a toper was he. I was riding a little way in rear of the escort, which was traversing a fetid swamp from whence a pestilential evening mist was rising white as milk, when amid that gloomy vapour there suddenly rose in front a lambent light of a pale hue. Then a cry of dismay from Hob Elliot and others of my men, made me trot up to the spot, where I beheld a very appalling spectacle.

The Friesland waggoner was lying on his back, and literally on fire—flames were issuing from his crackling nostrils, mouth, and ears, and even, while we gazed on him, his whole face and hair were burned away, while the fire seemed to pass over his whole body, scorching his clothes to powder.

Dr. Lancelot Probe, our surgeon, came speedily back from the front, but the Frieslander was already beyond his skill, having expired in agony. It was a case of spontaneous combustion. Probe naturally conjectured that a spark from his pipe—which he yet firmly grasped—had ignited the fumes of the spirit within him, and the subtle gases issuing from every pore and orifice, had kindled at once to fire, on reaching the external air.

Be it as it may, the terrible episode of the Frieslander had the effect of keeping some of our most tipsy fellows sober for many a week after.

Our mode of passing the night was generally thus.

A ridge would be selected; we dismounted and cloaked, throwing a portion over the saddle and holsters, each man standing by his horse, and holding on by the stirrup leather to steady himself if sleeping, as he was pretty sure to be. Despite the danger of lying down among the horses' hoofs, some did so in utter weariness, but were soon forced to get up again, lest their own chargers should tread on them.

Moreover, a dragoon accoutred cannot lie on his back for the spurs that are on his heels, and the cartridge-box between his shoulders, nor on his right side for his haversack, nor on his left for his canteen and sword-hilt; thus, when harnessed, he has no resource but to sleep on his face with his nose and toes in the turf!

So the dreary night would pass—the trumpet pour its melancholy twang through the mist at daybreak, and amid the pestilential swamp we would groom our horses or imagine that we did so; pour the water out of our boots; partake of a ration biscuit soaked by the night rain to pulp, if nothing better could be had; denounce the Hanoverians for whom we, H.M. Scots Greys, endured all this discomfort, and then again resume the march, which ended on the 31st of September, when we joined Prince Ferdinand at Coesveldt, a small but fortified town in Westphalia.

On those long marches, Tom Kirkton—he had now attained the rank of troop-sergeant—and I had many a confab as of old, for on service rank makes little difference, if discipline be retained. He frequently and bluntly urged that I should "lay siege," as he phrased it, "to my pretty cousin, and marry her, and so quit this miserable work. Lay siege!" he added, on one occasion; "you don't require to do that, for I have no doubt she is anxious enough to hook you for the mere sake of being Lady Gauntlet."

"This is most flattering, Tom; and so you would have me pander to a spirit so mercenary. Nay, nay; I cannot judge of her thus; and by this time perhaps she is the wife of Major Shirley, whom I left in possession of the field."

But Tom's advice, though heedlessly given, always rankled long and bitterly in my mind.

And now, lest the reader may naturally inquire what object we had in making a tour of Germany, I may briefly state that his Britannic Majesty's native and well-beloved Electorate of Hanover had been overrun by a French army, to expel whom, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick had put himself at the head of the German troops, and to reinforce these, six regiments of British infantry and some cavalry had joined him, and were now under the command of Lord George Sackville. Since the accession of the house of Guelph to the throne, the whole taxes and energies of the British people had been systematically devoted to the defence of Hanover and the pauper princelings of Germany; just as in the preceding age they had been wasted in defence of King William's dearly-beloved Dutch; and it was not until the peace of Paris that, as an historian says, the nation "would no longer suffer the public treasure to be squandered on poor foreign princes under the name of subsidies, to enable them to fight their own battles, nor the blood of British soldiers to be spilt to water the forests and fertilize the plains of Germany."

However, these are after-thoughts; of such we took little heed then, and cared less whom we fought, or where, remembering only a soldier's first duty—implicit obedience.

I shall briefly state that we skirmished through all Westphalia; that during these operations I received a slight pistol wound in the bridle hand; Colonel Preston had a horse shot under him, and Tom Kirkton a standard pole broken by a grape-shot, and so forth, until the month of November, when we retired to winter quarters at the little city of Alphen, in the Bishopric of Paderborn, where we remained quietly recruiting our energies for a new struggle in the early part of the ensuing year.

The allies, 34,000 strong, were led, as I have stated, by Ferdinand of Brunswick, one of the most celebrated generals of the age; but opposed to him were two maréchals of France, one, whose name found an echo in my heart, the Duc de Broglie, and the other M. de Contades, with 60,000 troops, the flower of the French line—men at whose hands the British and Hanoverians had suffered a series of reverses which made us long for spring, that the contest might be renewed and ended for ever.

END OF VOL. II.