Monday, August 26, 1689: Dawn
Holcroft Blood peered around the edge of the wall of the burnt-out farmhouse. In the first grey streaks of dawn, he could make out the silhouette of a sentry on the town ramparts a hundred yards away. Keeping his body mostly hidden behind the broken brickwork, he trained his brass telescope sharply upwards at the roof of Joymount House but could see no movement – just the bulky shapes of the gabions and the faint gleam of the barrel of the right-hand cannon.
The guns were silent. Perhaps the crews were still asleep. Perhaps the two Frenchmen had quit their observation post for good and were now snug in their beds inside the castle. Holcroft did not wish to entertain that thought.
It had taken him till the hour before dawn to get himself and his men into position. It could have been much quicker but he had felt duty bound the afternoon before to visit the No. 1 Battery on the western edge of the siege lines to make sure that its commander, Lieutenant Obadiah Field, understood his orders and was battering the castle with sufficient enthusiasm. Then Holcroft had revisited the No. 2 Battery to check that all was proceeding well with the making of the breach under Lieutenant Barden’s command, before riding up the hill to the artillery park to supervise the loading of the parts of an eight-inch mortar, its wooden platform, several boxes of hollow shells and barrels of powder on to two ox-wagons and begin the slow process of bringing them down as discreetly as possible to the remains of a burnt out farmhouse by the Antrim Road outside the town walls and a hundred yards east of the Carrickfergus town gate.
They had arrived long after midnight, undetected by the enemy, or so he believed, and in darkness and as near to silence as they could manage, they had unloaded the freight from the heavy wagons and set up the mortar on its square bed. In Ordnance slang, a mortar was known as a Humpty Dumpty, after a famous siege gun used by Royalist forces at Gloucester in the late civil wars, which had been placed on a high, flat wall and which, because it was overloaded with powder or just badly cast, had shattered upon its first firing.
Now, behind Holcroft’s craning body, out of sight from the walls, two of his matrosses were using ladles to fill the hollow spherical bombs with loose black powder straight from the open barrel, while the other three were sleeping, curled up in the corners of the roofless farmhouse and its ruined outbuildings. Enoch Jackson sitting beneath a smashed window inside the house was carefully cutting fuses to the appropriate lengths. It was a difficult task requiring great skill and years of practice – but crucially important if his plan were to succeed.
Even if the French do not return to the roof of Joymount House, Holcroft told himself, it would still be worth silencing the twenty-four-pounders up there.
He did not truly believe his own words. General Schomberg had ordered him directly to make a breach, and not to bombard Joymount, and he had flat out disobeyed him. If he merely killed the handful of Irish militia who worked those guns with his hidden mortar, it would not affect the outcome of the siege. Even if he killed the two Frenchmen, it would be unlikely to change the course of the engagement. He must admit the truth: he was deliberately refusing orders and putting his men in harm’s way, to gain a personal revenge.
He looked again at the roof with his glass but his enemies were still nowhere to be seen. Could they really have abandoned the position? No – impossible. He would not believe it. It was the perfect spot from which to observe the battle. None of the English artillery batteries had molested them up there – and they were too distant, two hundred yards behind the town walls, for any enemy musketeer in the siege trenches to trouble them.
Holcroft decided that he would do nothing until he could confirm that the Frenchmen were on the roof. Once the mortar opened fire, their position would be revealed – to the enemy and also to General Schomberg – and the clock would begin ticking on the time they had to destroy the Joymount battery.
Fifteen or perhaps twenty minutes was all they could reasonably expect. A sortie by the Irish from the town walls – even only a few dozen infantrymen, or a squad of cavalry – and his men would be slaughtered, unless they fled, which would mean leaving the mortar for the enemy to capture as a prize of war.
‘Get a tarpaulin over our Humpty, Enoch. It’s full daylight. Cover the whole works from any Irish eyes on the wall. And get all the men inside the ruins to rest. I’m going back to the No. 2 Battery to check on Lieutenant Barden.’
If Jackson was unhappy at being abandoned by his officer a bowshot from the enemy walls, he did not show it. All he said was: ‘Will you be long, sir?’
‘An hour or two, three at most. If I’m not back by noon, that means something has gone wrong and you should all withdraw discreetly, leaving the mortar here. If anyone asks where you’ve been, tell them you have been acting under my instructions. You cannot be punished if it’s your captain’s orders.’
‘Right you are, sir. You remember your Proverbs, of course: chapter twenty-nine, verse two?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Holcroft. ‘See you in an hour or so.’
Holcroft sprinted across a patch of open farmyard and mounted his horse, which was tied up in a half-demolished stable at the rear of their position. As he spurred up the hill back to the English trench lines, keeping the farm between him and the walls for as long as possible, he pondered what Enoch had just said to him. Proverbs 29:2 – ‘When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.’
This was an old game of theirs, to quote Bible verses to each other as a way of private communication. Holcroft had memorised almost all of the Good Book in idle hours during his youth, and Jackson had been a celebrated lay preacher forty-odd years ago. But as he rode up the hill he wondered – was he actually a righteous man? Or did disobeying General Schomberg’s orders make him one of the wicked?
Fifteen minutes later he dismounted at the No. 2 Battery, and was dismayed to see almost no activity. Claudius Barden was seated at a large, empty, upturned powder barrel sipping a mug of ale and reading a small leather-bound book with a fine gilt-decorated spine. The other thirty-odd gunners and matrosses of the No. 2 Battery were scattered around, some sleeping, or cooking breakfast, some chattering with friends, playing dice or mending clothes.
The sun was a finger above the horizon yet the guns were silent.
‘What is going on, Claudius? Why are you not firing on the walls?’
‘Oh, there you are, sir,’ said Barden. ‘Morning. Wondered where you’d got to.’ He stood up and put the book down on the barrel. Holcroft could clearly read the title that was printed on the spine: The Pilgrim’s Progress.
‘I have been . . . occupied . . . on private business . . . elsewhere.’
‘Is that so, Mister Blood? Private business, eh! Don’t tell me you’ve found a nice Irish lass! You are a sly boots, sir. But fair play to you, sir, fair play!’
There was a clatter of hooves that prevented Holcroft from denying this absurd notion. He turned and saw, with a pang of guilt, General Schomberg, with two aides-de-camp, towering over him from the back of his huge black stallion.
‘What is the meaning of this? I gave you clear instructions, Captain Blood, to make me a breach as fast as possible. And now I see you, idle as a fire-side hound, amusing yourself with books. Why are you not working your battery?’
Holcroft swallowed. He had no idea why the great guns were cold and unworked. He opened his mouth to try to give some kind of answer . . .
‘If you’ll forgive me, Your Grace,’ said Claudius Barden, ‘we’ve no more ammunition. We used the last ball and last scraping of the powder barrel at dusk yesterday. We’ve nothing to charge the pieces with, begging your pardon, sir.’
‘Nothing to charge them with? There is a park full of Ordnance not a mile up the hill: four thousand barrels of powder, eight thousand or so balls, I have been told, wadding, linstocks, match . . . it’s a damned cornucopia of materiel.’
‘I sent a master gunner up to fetch supplies last night but Captain Vallance, the Quartermaster, was already fast asleep in his tent, and his deputy said he dared not release anything to us without Vallance’s say-so until this morning.’
‘Incompetence. Sheer bloody incompetence. How am I supposed to prosecute this war if my officers lack even the merest hint of professionalism. You should have woken that lazy dog Edmund Vallance, demanded the powder and ball. Threatened to report him if he refused. Dear God, I despair. And you, Captain Blood, where were you when this absurdity was taking place? Eh, eh? I placed you in charge of the Train after Major Richards was wounded and, frankly, sir, I expected more. Why didn’t you do anything?’
One of the brilliantly dressed aides snickered.
Holcroft found he was unable to answer. For an awful moment, he contemplated telling Schomberg the truth. The truth was always the best course.
He said: ‘Well, sir, you see, I was . . .’
Barden interrupted him: ‘Captain Blood was suddenly taken ill, Your Grace. A stomach gripe. He left me in charge. The fault is all mine, sir. We sent a galloper to the park at first light, so the Ordnance should be arriving within the hour. We’ll have the guns going – ha-ha! – great guns in a very short while, sir.’
Holcroft looked at Barden – if the Ordnance was on its way that was something at least. He saw the lieutenant wink at him. By God, the man truly thinks I’ve been debauching myself with some Irish trull. But Holcroft also felt a sense of gratitude. Barden’s lies had saved him from disgrace.
‘Indeed, sir? Taken ill, eh? You don’t look well, Blood, I must say. You look exhausted. And you do not appear to have changed your clothes from yesterday. So, are you recovered, Captain? Able to do your duty like a soldier?’
‘I am perfectly well, thank you, Your Grace.’
‘Very well. But I want this battery in action as soon as possible. And if Vallance gives you any more trouble, tell him I shall have him shot for treason. Make that breach practicable today, Blood. Today – you understand?’
The General and his aides galloped away. And fifteen minutes later three lumbering wagons could be seen approaching down the muddy track that led to the artillery park. Holcroft left the unloading to his lieutenant, his gunners and matrosses and took out his shiny brass telescope. The breach was, in fact, nearly practicable already. A crumbling hole a dozen yards wide had been smashed in the town walls a little to the east of the town gate and while the enemy had made some efforts during the night to fill the gap with empty barrels, loose masonry and timber planks, Holcroft reckoned that another hour or two’s bombardment would give the General the avenue of attack he desired.
He trained the glass on the roof of Joymount House and saw it was an ants’ nest of activity. Men with ropes and hand spikes were clustered round both guns and as he watched it became clear they were shifting their position. Slanting both the barrels of the cannon several degrees to the west, lowering the extreme elevation to their maximum depression.
Why? Holcroft asked himself. Why move them? What is the new target?
He trained the telescope along the line of the barrel of the right-hand gun and followed an imaginary flight of a cannon ball. That cannot be right.
He checked again, performing the same exercise with the second twenty-four-pounder. There could be no mistaking it. The guns were being aimed at the town wall. More precisely, at the half-breach in the town wall that his No. 2 Battery had made the day before. For an insane moment, he wondered if the enemy battery was going to assist in the widening of the breach. That was absurd. Why would the enemy help the attackers? He noticed there were fresh soldiers on the walls, hundreds of Irish musket men on either side of the breach, keeping low beneath the parapet for the most part but their dark, broad-brimmed hats plainly visible from this high vantage point.
Then he had it. They were preparing to resist the English assault on the breach. Repointing the guns so that their lethal fire would crash down from Joymount House and sweep through the breach; and the musket men on either side would add their weight of lead to the onslaught. He felt suddenly cold and sick. When Schomberg had his breach, and judged it practicable, he would send in his regiments and they would charge through the gap in the town walls and be met with the lacerating fire of the two twenty-four-pounders firing at point blank range. It would be carnage. Hundreds would be cut to pieces in the breach, or if the fire was well directed, blown out of it on to the bloody turf outside. It was not quite a trap – Schomberg would expect to bear heavy casualties in storming the breach. But it would be as horrific as a London shambles on a busy market day in the narrow gap in the walls through which the English and Dutch soldiers must attempt to pass.
Holcroft lifted his telescope to the roof of the tall building. And a sly smile spread over his face. The two Frenchmen were back, with another two Irish officers, it seemed. The cloaked slender one – Narrey – was pointing out something to the Irishmen below them in the town. But Holcroft did not care what. He now had a legitimate reason to attack them with his mortar. As well as destroying his two enemies – how good those words sounded to his private ear – he would end the menace of the battery and save hundreds of his countrymen’s lives when the massed assault went in.
‘Claudius, if I could have a word . . .’
The lieutenant came strolling over; he had a smudge of dirt on his cheek and a wide sunny grin.
‘I am afraid that I shall have to leave you once more. I have to go and . . .’
‘Why, sir, you are a lusty fellow! I never knew you had it in you. At it like a rabbit all last night, and back again for second helpings this morning.’
‘No, no, you misunderstand . . .’ Holcroft tried to think how he could explain that he had spent the night setting up the hidden eight-inch Humpty just outside the walls. He was too tired to think straight – and Barden would no doubt make some silly joke out of whatever he said anyway.
‘Nevertheless, I must leave you again. Only for an hour or two. You will get the battery firing on the breach, won’t you? Uncle Frederick will have me shot if there is another delay. I can trust you to do that, Claudius, can’t I?’
‘Absolutely, sir. Happy to oblige you: what’s sauce for the goose, eh?’
Holcroft had no idea what Barden meant by this last comment; he assumed some sort of jest, so he smiled warily, nodded and went off to find his horse.
*
‘It needs another ounce of powder, sir, or you will not make that distance,’ Enoch Jackson said. ‘I reckon it’s at least three hundred and twenty yards.’
‘It’s no more than three hundred and ten, man, I measured it carefully by eye from the No. 2 Battery. Another ounce and we’ll sail over the top.’
Enoch and Holcroft were crouched over the squat, round barrel of the mortar, like witches around a cauldron. Jackson was holding a small wooden ladle filled with black gunpowder, and it was clear to Holcroft that he was itching to add it to the half pound of explosive already packed inside.
From behind them came the reassuring sounds of the No. 2 Battery firing, the crash of the four big cannon, one booming out every few minutes, followed by the thump and rumble of falling masonry as it hit the walls. The breach was nearly wide enough for it to be deemed suitable to attack – and Schomberg now could not complain about the No. 2 Battery’s efficiency. Claudius Barden was doing his duty.
‘Oh very well, said Holcroft grumpily, ‘you may have your last ounce, Enoch.’ This particular Humpty was fixed at an angle of forty-five degrees and fired a hollow iron spherical shell filled with black powder. Before the gun was discharged, the fuse in the shell must also be ignited, just moments before the main charge in the barrel was set off. The amount of powder in the propellant charge dictated how far and how high the shell would travel, the fuse in the bomb must be cut to the correct length so that it would explode the shell, scattering its lethal fragments of red-hot iron, just above the target. He and Jackson had already had an amicable disagreement about the length of fuse required to hit such a high target. If the missile landed without exploding, it could be easily rolled off the roof of Joymount House by a kick from a bold soldier, whereupon it would explode relatively harmlessly in the streets below. Holcroft had won that argument, so he was partially reconciled to submitting to Jackson’s expertise on the quantity of powder in the main charge.
In truth, it was hardly an exact science, and a good deal more complicated than firing a cannon such as the ones they aimed to destroy. And in the back of Holcroft’s mind was the fate of the original Humpty Dumpty. A brilliant French architect called François Blondel had published an elaborate table that gave exact weights of powder for a specific weight of mortar missile over a variety of distances, and Holcroft had studied the man’s works while in service in Louis XIV’s Corps Royal d’Artillerie; he had even memorised much of it. But he knew the quality of the black powder used could make an enormous difference, as could its composition of charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur. Then there was the wind and weather on the day of firing. So a mortar bombardment had always been, and would always be, in Holcroft’s view, a game of trial and much error.
Holcroft calculated that they would have twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour at a push, to get it right. Once the position of the mortar was revealed it was only a matter of time before the enemy responded. Holcroft wished he had a company of Royal Fusiliers to protect the mortar, but the infantry arm of the Ordnance had been dispatched to Flanders. Anyway wishing was useless.
The last ounce added, Holcroft beckoned forward two matrosses, who were carrying the shell suspended on two sturdy iron chains hanging from a long iron bar. Behind him Jackson was tending the linstock, a pole with a burning piece of match-cord at the end, which would be used to light the fuse of the iron missile and then fire the touch-hole on the mortar.
‘Everyone ready?’ said Holcroft. The men nodded; Jackson gave a grunt.
Holcroft flicked open his old brass pocket watch. It was half past eleven. He would give himself till noon, he thought. Then they must retire swiftly up the hill whether the attack had been successful or not.
‘In that case, tend the match, have a care . . .’ Jackson was already leaning forward with the linstock, ready to light the fuse.
‘Halt,’ said Holcroft. ‘Stand by, everyone. What is that noise?’
Jackson took a step back. The two matrosses stood there gawping into the black mouth of the mortar, holding the iron bar that carried the bomb, ready to lower it into the barrel after the fuse had been lit.
It was a low groaning noise, very loud, like a giant in terrible pain, but many voices, and there was a drumming noise accompanying it. It sounded, to Holcroft, very much like a regiment of cavalry at the charge.
He stepped to the edge of the farmhouse wall, scrambled up a mound of rubble and looked at the town. A vast cloud of dust was rising beyond the breach. To his astonishment he saw a huge bullock, long horned, tawny brown with a white forehead, stumbling up the broken rocky slope of the inside of the breach. It was followed by a dozen other beasts, lowing in terror and surging forward as if making a desperate attempt to escape the town. In an instant, the whole breach was filled from side to side with jostling, bawling animals.
Then the guns on the roof of Joymount House spoke.
The first cannon blast crashed into the herd of cattle in the breach. Partridge, was Holcroft’s immediate thought. They had loaded the cannon with the kind of shell known as ‘partridge’, after the ammunition used to hunt wild birds. A score of bullocks were struck down by the hundreds of flying missiles sprayed out by the Joymount gun, which was firing thin metal canisters packed with musket balls point blank into the herd. From either side of the breach on the town walls, the Irish musketeers stood up and poured their fire into the stricken and terrified beasts, felling them by the score. The second gun on the roof roared, flaying the mound of dead and dying beasts that were filling the gap in the town’s defences with their dripping carcasses. And yet still more cattle were coming up behind.
Holcroft was struck by the appalling genius of the enemy plan. He recalled Claudius Barden’s quip from the day before – ‘Once more unto the breach!’ – and remembered the rest of the line from Henry V: ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close up the wall with our English dead . . .’
They were closing up the wall, and no error. Not, thank God, with English dead but with the slaughtered bodies of more than a hundred prime beef cattle.
The guns bellowed again from the roof, spraying the dead and dying cattle jammed in the breach, lashing them with flying lead. They were mere dumb animals, but it pained Holcroft to see such horrible carnage. And his heart gave a little jump as he saw that the lead bullock – the one with the white forehead that had been first through the breach – had escaped the murderous fire and was galloping across the open ground towards the English trenches.
The big guns fired twice more. The Irish soldiery on either side joyfully peppered the stricken beasts squashed into the narrow gap. Then all fell quiet. The breach in the wall was filled almost to the top with the twitching carcasses of the dying animals; a waterfall of blood flowing down the outer surface.
Schomberg will not be pleased, Holcroft thought as he scrambled down the rubble to rejoin his comrades by the mortar.
He will not be pleased at all.