Diksmuide, the Netherlands, AD 1321
The long line of Flemish soldiers wound ahead on the ruler-flat land, the dour figure of Count Robert riding in the van, his coat-of-arms of sable lion rampant on a yellow shield visible to all. Their destination was Diksmuide, where Baron Courcy had brazenly led his Burgundians in an ambitious attempt against the heartland of Flanders.
There were six ribaudequins in his train with their support carts, the gunners marching alongside. And with them were Peter van Vullaere and Jared Barnwell, riding together.
The French were waiting for them: a spreading line in the distance; the pennon-topped tents of their camp just visible behind them; standards, colours and the jagged glitter of weapons in the forefront.
Jared was by now a fair judge of military affairs and saw that while it would be a clash of some thousands it would by no means be on the scale of some he’d seen.
The Flemings were nearly all foot soldiers, a mix of stolid Hollanders and German mercenaries with few knights or men-at-arms a-horse. The enemy seemed to be composed similarly and their massing promised an evenly matched pitched battle of the bloodiest sort.
The Lion of Flanders and his men marched forward with determination and spirit. Count Robert was an astute warrior and had prevailed again and again against some of the best the French had thrown at him.
A mile clear he halted. The French were the invaders, they could come to him.
One close-packed horde ranged against another. Pikes, swords, warhammers, maces, daggers. There was little point in manoeuvring in the din of battle and all would be decided by deadly hackery, man on man until one or the other broke or made a heroic last stand.
Robert’s position was risky. Spread thin, five separate blocks of pikemen faced out, each heading a larger force of foot soldiers. The front facing the enemy, therefore, was broader than they but at the same time invited the French to punch through their centre – but was that what Robert wanted? Allow the enemy to pierce the line and then enfold them from the flanks?
The gunners were summoned and all became clear.
With a massed beating of drums and a bloodthirsty roar the French began their advance but there would be no concentrating to a central thrust – the baron was going for a crude bludgeoning frontal attack.
The Lion of Flanders did not flinch, patiently waiting for the host to draw near, his plans well laid.
Then he struck. From the rear and between the blocks to the front poured every archer he possessed. And with the bowmen were the gunners, wheeling their engines of war to where they would play their part, at an angle to the enemy flanks.
The archers loosed off three volleys and the enemy advance halted to face the hail. The bowmen retired and the ribaudequins were brought forward.
Both sides seemed to hold their breath at this audacity – until the gunnes spoke.
Diabolical lightning and thunder were called down and invisible death struck deep into the French ranks. In terror they turned to flee but were held to a crush by those behind.
The archers returned to the slaughter followed by a second ribaudequin to each side.
It was merciless. Not only was there maiming and killing by plunging arrows and unseen death-dealing missiles, but as dread and panic seized them, instinctively the soldiers fell back and the crowded ranks were wedged into a tight, immovable press. It grew worse, the rear not seeing what was happening, shoving forward and making the inner a living hell of heaving, desperate bodies, helpless, suffocating, dying.
Exactly what Count Robert had intended.
The third ribaudequin came up and delivered yet another savage onslaught into the struggling mass. Now there was blind panic as the outer ranks turned in to escape the appalling punishment and one which they could not fight against: the end could not be far off.
As if in grieving for the misery and slaughter taking place on the earth beneath, the grey heavens wept – a gentle, sad light rain. It sharpened the colours of steel and heraldry and thinned the runnels of blood in a forlorn endeavour at cleansing away the brutality of man.
And it nearly ended the battle.
Recharged, the first ribaudequin was propelled to the fore and the yeoman gunner raised his red-hot wire and fired the weapon.
One gunne alone cracked out viciously – the others varied from a fizzing pop and gouts of evil-smelling smoke to a tired sparking or nothing at all.
The ribaudequin was rapidly withdrawn and Jared hurried over to see what had happened.
It was the powder; even the smallest hint of damp it seemed killed its ardour. This was calamitous: and if gunnes must retire at the first sprinkling on the field of battle …
Jared felt all eyes on him as he tried to think.
The gunnes must be sheltered while they were charged ready, but as soon as they were exposed to fire they would be silenced by the rain.
Meanwhile the drawn-back ribaudequin had to be readied. Gunnes half-fired had to be cleaned of their coarse fouling – and worse, the unfired ones awkwardly emptied of their contents.
It was deadly work and at the third gunne the inevitable happened – a sudden flash and smoke and the gunner was looking in dazed shock at the stump of his right hand.
A second ribaudequin was brought up. This time there was no firing at all.
A messenger from the count rode up, demanding to know why the gunnes were not serving out death at this critical stage of the battle. Distracted, Jared mumbled something about a temporary resting but it was clear they were in deep trouble.
All six ribaudequins were now silent and the enemy had taken notice of this, regrouping and facing the dread engines, plainly of a mind to wreak a terrible vengeance.
The rain shower petered out, leaving the ground wet and slippery but this came too late: it had done its worst. All powder was now suspect, for every barrel in the supply carts had been opened to feed the gunnes. It was nothing less than a complete routing.
Distant shouts turned into an impetuous clamour. The French were on the move again.
A weak sun began to appear – did they stand or flee?
Unlike at Arezzo, these gunnes could be moved and Jared had every man available clapping on to the trail poles and heaving the sorry contrivances, slipping and sliding back through the blocks of Flemish soldiers who jeered and cursed them – and past a furious Lion of Flanders.
The archers were sent out to delay the inevitable, the bowmen hooting and mocking as they passed.
Every barrel of powder was ruined but there was a chance. In one of the supply carts Jared had had the foresight to put aside sealed pots containing the elements that would be mixed together to yield more gunne-powder should the battle have spilt over into the next day.
He worked like a madman at the mortar and pestle. All it needed was enough to charge say, three gunnes apiece on each ribaudequin.
The first was made ready and launched at a trot through the ranks again and positioned.
At the sight of it the enemy’s forward impetus slowed and quietened.
The ribaudequin remained silent. And by degrees the advance turned into an uneasy milling – then the gunnes cracked out viciously, finding an easy mark in the tight-packed host. Another was hastened up on the other flank and the punishment resumed.
It couldn’t last.
Baron Courcy sent in his knights against the gunnes. In a massed thunder of hooves they burst out around the trapped mass in a heroic martial display, lunging straight for the gunnes.
Jared knew it would be nothing less than butchery at the exposed ribaudequins but he had one last card to play.
Every one of them, full-charged or no, was turned to face their galloping nemesis and touched off together.
As he’d dared hope the flash and blast of the gunnes was too much for the horses. They swerved and skidded to a halt, rearing up in fright. Their riders were sent crashing to the ground and the animals fled in terror.
It was more or less a stalemate.
Then, as if by common consent, the two opponents drew back slowly, leaving the field to no man.
Peter was well satisfied with his ribaudequins and from his own pocket rewarded the gunners, but Count Robert was less enthusiastic. True, the gunnes had done their work: the trapping of men in a lethal crushing, but in his view the cost of it all was exorbitant and much the same would have been achieved by outlaying on more common archers.
He pointed to the scattered bodies – a hundred or more, but coming at such a price … It could only be concluded that the main work would as before have to be done in a traditional brutal hand-to-hand melee. As to the shock value of the gunnes firing, in due course soldiers would overcome their fear as they had for every other ghastly battlefield horror.
Still, the count allowed, the gunnes had shown promise.
Jared had his own concerns. In addition to their problems in wet weather, if moved forward to fire, their exposure to counter-attack was a serious flaw, as was the relatively low number of casualties they could inflict. There was no denying that to this point they were unlikely to change the way battles were fought.
This only strengthened his conviction that the future of gunnes was not on the field of battle but in the developing of castle levellers, which in one world-shaking move would turn everything on its head.