Tuesday, February 11, 1690
Something was wrong. Badly wrong. Holcroft’s intelligence had been clear, and had been confirmed by various sources, including several of the raparees still held in the dungeons of Inniskilling Castle: the Jacobite garrison at Cavan had no more than seven or eight hundred effectives, mostly raw, barely trained, ill-equipped infantry drawn from all over Ireland. But the fat columns of men now pouring out of Cavan – to form up in their companies and regiments north of the town on a slight ridge that crossed the Monaghan Road – contained many more than seven hundred men.
And they kept on coming.
Holcroft watched them with his brass spy-glass take their places on the ridge from three quarters of a mile away, sitting on the back of Nut as his own men of the second, fourth and eleventh companies of Tiffin’s Regiment of Foot marched past. Had he been tricked? Had Narrey deceived him again? Had Henri d’Erloncourt somehow persuaded all his informants to give Holcroft the same false information – to lure him and Wolseley to their doom? It was just not possible. Narrey might have got to one agent, perhaps even two. But there was no way he could have unmasked and turned half a dozen of Holcroft’s informants without his knowledge. No, this was something else.
The force commanded by Brigadier Wolseley, which had marched out of Belturbet the evening before, had seemed formidable: a thousand infantry drawn from the Inniskillingers and Kirke’s Lambs, as well as other English regiments, strengthened by two hundred Dutchmen, a double company of the Blue Guards, King William’s elite shock troops. This infantry column had been screened by three hundred cavalry, two troops of Inniskillinger dragoons and three of crack Danish heavy cavalry. Hoping to surprise the garrison at Cavan – which they believed they easily outnumbered – instead of coming directly south-east on the main road, they had taken a long and tiring detour east, crossed the River Annalee at Bellanacargy and come in towards Cavan from the north-east. At a little after dawn, they were marching up the Monaghan Road only a mile or so out from the town and it seemed that their precautions had all been for nothing. The garrison was apparently well aware of their advance and it seemed it had also been forewarned of their attack and massively reinforced.
Brigadier Wolseley came clattering up and reined in beside Holcroft. Without a word, Holcroft handed him his brass telescope and the commander inspected the ridge before them. ‘Bit of a cock-up, Blood, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Holcroft was aware of a sinking sensation in his belly. He knew that Wolseley might decide that the odds against them were too great and choose to withdraw without a shot being fired. Indeed, were it not for the fact that he was almost certain of the presence of Narrey in Cavan, Holcroft would have been tempted to do the same.
‘Where did they find so many men?’ Wolseley asked.
‘My guess, sir, would be that the Duke of Berwick marched north and joined them with at least two regiments, maybe three, and a sizeable force of cavalry. There are nearly two thousand men on that ridge. And I think, sir, that you might be able to make out Berwick’s standard in the centre.’
‘Yes, I see it. Royal arms as befits the bastard son of James, red, blue and gold.’ A moment later Wolseley took the glass from his eye and said: ‘They are well prepared for us. Were we betrayed, Brevet Major?’ He looked at Holcroft.
‘I don’t believe so, sir. Although we may have been spotted on the march. You can’t move a thousand men even on the back roads without making some clamour. I believe the Duke of Berwick’s appearance here at this time is just bad luck. Mind you, our attack would have been fairly simple to anticipate.’
What Holcroft refrained from saying was that he should have anticipated the reinforcement by Berwick’s men himself. If Narrey had taken up residence at Cavan, it was for a good reason – probably because he was planning larger, more damaging raiding expeditions into the soft underbelly of Ulster. And if that were so, he would probably have demanded additional troops for the task.
‘Well, we’re here now, Brevet Major. The question is: can we beat them?’
Holcroft took back his glass and looked up at the thick ranks of men on the ridge. Their lines were shaky, their formations blurred, crowd-like. There were dozens of men wandering in between the regiments looking for their place. They possessed no artillery, not one single gun – which was good. But then neither did Wolseley.
‘Yes, sir. We can beat them,’ Holcroft said, with a confidence he did not feel. He asked himself if he was doing this because Narrey was here. Because if they fought and won, Narrey would be in his sights. No, they could win the day.
‘Do you truly believe so, Brevet Major Blood? They outnumber us at least two to one and they have the higher ground in their favour.’
‘That is so, sir. But if we retreat now, we shall all feel defeated. The men will be ashamed. Morale will plummet and they may never find the courage to fight well again. I say we attack today. And I should like, sir, to lead the infantry assault personally. If I may. If you will permit me that honour, sir.’
Holcroft felt better after making this offer. If he were planning to risk the lives of so many good men because of his selfish desire to get into Cavan town, the least he could do was to risk his own life alongside theirs.
‘I believe you’re right. We must attack. And I shall take you up on that gallant offer, Brevet Major Blood. You will command the centre: your Inniskillingers and two companies of Kirke’s Lambs and I’ll give you all the Dutch Blue Guards, too. On my signal, march your men up there on to the ridge and punch a hole through the middle. I shall follow you with the rest of the assault force and we’ll sweep ’em all away like cobwebs before a good-wife’s broom. You will do that for me, Brevet Major Blood, will you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good man. We’ll make our dispositions here, all along this hedge line. I believe I’ll soften them up with our cavalry. Let the dragoons and the Danish knock some of the impudence out of them first. Right, get it done then, Brevet Major. I shall be observing from that hill. And don’t make a mess of this.’
*
Michael ‘Galloping’ Hogan looked down at the lines of enemy infantry in the road below the ridge, now making their dispositions along a thick hawthorn hedge that marked the boundary of a muddy cow pasture. A much smaller force, by the looks of it. Any commander in their right mind should beat a hasty retreat when faced with such an imbalance. But these men it seemed were determined to fight. Were they confident in their superiority, man for man? Or were they arrogant idiots, who did not understand that they were overmatched?
Hogan had been ordered this day to take his place on the extreme right of the Jacobite line, in command of the whole cavalry contingent: his own fifty-strong band of mounted raparees, whose numbers had recently been reinforced by a score of new recruits from his old haunts around Tipperary and Limerick, as well as a full regiment of the Duke of Berwick’s Horse – a grand title for a ramshackle force of two hundred mounted Catholic gentlemen, proud owners of small parcels of land mostly around Dublin with a sprinkling of well-to-do merchants and lawyers from the capital city itself. Each gentleman trooper was able to supply his own horse and two remounts, and possessed a servant and at least a sword and a pistol or two with which to defend himself. They came to the battlefield dressed in all their finery, velvet and silk surcoats, topped by long, flowing, leather-and-wool rain-proof cloaks, and broad-brimmed felt hats with extravagant ostrich plumes dyed all the colours of the rainbow. Some wore bits and pieces of mail or plate armour, some ancient, some even medieval – pauldrons, vambraces and the like – as well as more modern steel lobster-pot cavalry helmets, leather gauntlets, long black riding boots. These gently born horsemen were eager for a fight, eager to prove their manhood, and that eagerness allowed them to swallow their resentment at being commanded by such a low-born bumpkin as Mick Hogan.
The low-born bumpkin himself looked to his left along the line of the small ridge. The infantry formations looked decidedly shaky, to Hogan’s experienced eye. In the centre, beneath his magnificent standard, the Duke of Berwick sat on a silver-grey horse. A slim, handsome young man in a blinding golden coat and white hat plumed with a gold-dyed ostrich feather, the duke was surrounded by a dozen aides, gallopers and personal guards. And with him was the slippery Frenchman Narrey, also well mounted, and his bruiser Guillaume. Would the Frenchmen fight, Hogan wondered, or were they here to observe? Berwick and his entourage were stationed a dozen yards behind the duke’s three foot regiments, fifteen hundred men, pikemen to the fore, red-coated matchlock men behind, the smoke from their lit matches curling, trickling upwards in the air.
These Jacobite soldiers were recently recruited from Cork and Kerry – some had signed up to serve only a few weeks beforehand – and many did not understand the officers’ orders, which were usually given only in English. Their training had been mostly delivered to them on the march from the recruiting depots in the south. As a result, Berwick’s regiments were not in perfect linear alignment, some were bulging absurdly in the middle as the men, already fearful of the bloody fight to come, crowded together for safety. Groups of sergeants with halberds or poleaxes patrolled the edges of the formations shoving the men this way and that in an attempt to get them back into their correct places. But the result was that bodies of hundreds of men contracted and expanded, shifted and swayed like huge schools of fish below a sea-going boat.
The rain had held off, for once, and it was a bright February morning. A little cold, but dry. That would make the musketry easier, Hogan told himself. Rain often extinguished the burning match cords, unless they were protected, and bad weather rendered a matchlock no more than a heavy lump of wood. Indeed, it treated more modern flintlocks with a similar contempt. Nothing like a good Irish rainstorm to reduce a battle to a muddy, bloody shoving match between groups of men wielding only wooden clubs and wicked blades.
On the far side of Berwick’s regiments, Brigadier John Wauchope’s men were in better order. Their lines were straight, their private men standing almost perfectly still. They had been in Cavan for some months and their Scots commander had made an effort to see they could all at least parade respectably.
They had the numbers, then. But what about the quality of the men? Hogan looked down the slope at the thinner English lines. The Inniskillingers were in the centre, a couple of hundred musket-men in grey, in three small company-strong blocks, and to their left a large single block of men in blue coats with orange facings – Dutchmen, he assumed. King William’s vaunted Blue Guards. There were English redcoats to the right of the Inniskillingers, maybe two full companies. Veterans, too, by the look of them. And now the Williamite cavalry was coming forward, grey-clad Inniskillinger dragoons, what looked like two full troops, and some curassiers, three, no four troops of them, steel breast and back plates worn over long yellow coats with red facings, the metal armour blacked to stop it reflecting the sun and giving the cavalry’s position away on the march. The curassiers were forming up on the far side of the dragoons, twenty yards in front of the lines of Williamite infantry, dressing their ranks, the trumpeters blowing complicated sequences, a dry riffle of drums now. Hogan thought they might be Danes. He had heard that King William had sent over some first-class Danish mercenaries with General Schomberg’s force.
The curassier officer spurred out ahead of the yellow-clad heavy cavalry, and drew his sword. It flashed in the weak sunlight. That was bold – did the curassiers mean to charge? Uphill, against a numerically superior enemy? With no artillery to soften them up? Yes, they did; the dragoons too.
The ranks of the dragoons were moving forward, at walking pace, but it was definitely an advance. An attack. And one in a style he was familiar with from his time as a youngster in the late wars against the Dutch in the Spanish Netherlands. It seemed clear now to Hogan what they planned to do: the dragoons would ride up, dismount at a hundred, or perhaps even seventy yards, if they were brave, from the red Jacobite lines, fire off their carbines, a couple of concentrated volleys perhaps, maybe three, hoping to kill, wound and generally terrorise a large section of the Duke of Berwick’s battle line. Then once the dragoons had done their work, the curassiers would charge home into the now disordered ranks, screaming their war cries, firing their horse pistols, swinging their long, straight lethal swords, smashing into the line of weakened men. The Danish curassiers hoped to chop through the enemy lines, right in the centre – and, if they managed that, then the real killing would begin. Broken, fleeing enemy infantry was easy meat for these heavy horsemen to ride down. The English Foot would follow them up the hill, no doubt, and charge into the gap the horsemen had made. And that would be it. The Duke of Berwick’s whole army would be done: dead, defeated or driven from the field.
It was a good plan. Berwick’s raw infantry were shaky. The English could see that. Having a couple of troops of dragoons – a hundred and twenty hard men – riding up and noisily firing off their carbines at your company from close range, seeming to aim at you personally, was terrifying to a novice redcoat. Even if the men held their nerve, they would break and run when the Danes came thundering in, long swords swinging. That would be the end.
Or not. Not if Mick Hogan had anything to do with it.
He turned to his bird’s-nest-bearded lieutenant, sitting placidly on a bay beside him: ‘Get the boys ready, Paddy. We’re going to take a hand in this.’
Hogan turned his mount and trotted over to the captain of Berwick’s Horse, a fat, extremely short-sighted fellow named Sir Robert Cleverly, who wore a rich plum-coloured velvet coat and a gleaming lobster-pot helmet from the late civil wars.
‘We’re going to charge them, Sir Robert. On my command the cavalry will advance and take the enemy in the flank.’
‘Excellent news, Hogan. My men will sweep these Protestant rogues from the field. Show them our mettle, eh? So, ah, straight down the hill and at ’em?’
‘No, Sir Robert. Absolutely not! Not down the hill. We’re not going to charge their formed infantry ranks. We’d achieve nothing except to scatter ourselves across the landscape. We’re going to charge their attacking cavalry.’
‘Their cavalry, eh? Excellent. And which cavalry would that be?’
Hogan saw the man was peering across the field. Why had this purblind mole been put in command of the Duke’s Horse? Hogan knew the answer: Sir Robert was someone’s cousin or brother-in-law. Or someone owed him money.
‘Their cavalry are advancing – see over there. The dragoons are coming forward. The horsemen in grey?’
‘Oh yes, of course. The grey dragoons. I see them clearly now.’
Sir Robert Cleverly was staring at a small copse of silver birches by the side of the main road that cut through the centre of the battlefield.
‘I tell you what, Sir Robert. When I give the word you and your merry band of cavaliers follow after me and my men. Stick with us. Is that clear?’
‘Quite so, quite so. At the word, we’ll come out hot on your heels.’
‘Very good.’
*
The dragoons advanced at the walk. Halfway up the slope they came to the trot. And for the last few dozen yards they were at the canter. Then they stopped abruptly. The Inniskillingers slid from their horses’ backs at about eighty yards from their enemy, in front of the centre-right of the line, equidistant between the Duke of Berwick and Galloping Hogan. The Jacobite musket fire began almost immediately, individual pecking shots, barks and flashes, that kicked up mud and earth near the feet of the dragoons or whistled overhead – Hogan could hear the outraged roaring of the sergeants and officers telling their Cork and Kerry men to hold their damned fire.
The dragoons were untouched by the sporadic barrage – muskets, even in the hands of well-schooled men, were notorious for their inaccuracy at anything over fifty yards. One dragoon in ten was designated the horse-holder, and the nine other dragoons calmly passed their reins to him before advancing, walking into the sputtering fire, carbines in hand, to form up at a distance of sixty yards from the Duke of Berwick’s men.
The officers around the duke were staring over the infantry’s heads at the dismounted enemy horsemen, a hundred yards away, beyond effective range. One aide galloped away along the rear of the line, carrying an order.
The sergeants and officers were shouting again, trying to organise a combined fire, but as many men in the Jacobite ranks were now unloaded, only a weak, raggedy volley sputtered out from their red ranks when the order was finally given. The dragoons ignored the splattering fire as they dressed their line, taking their time to ensure that they were exactly the same distance apart from the man on either side. Only then did they shoulder their carbines.
One dragoon was hit, and fell back like a nine-pin, knocked down by a Jacobite ball, his face a mass of blood, but the rest of the Inniskillingers – a perfectly still grey line of men, muskets levelled – were unscathed.
They fired. A single crashing sound, then smoke plumed from a hundred barrels and a dozen men in the centre of the Duke of Berwick’s lines staggered and fell. The dragoons began to reload, calmly, methodically, seemingly without a care in the world, oblivious to the enemy wall of red sixty yards in front of them. And the wall feared them. It was shifting, moving back and forwards. Individuals breaking free and running to the rear. The sergeants were bellowing, ‘Close up. Close up. And hold your goddamn fire!’ Once in a while a shot would ring out, a lone musket fired off by a fearful man.
The dragoons were reloaded. They shouldered their carbines again, and at a command from their officer of ‘Give fire!’ discharged them as one in a rippling crash that ripped into the enemy ranks. The wall of redcoats twitched and wavered, another dozen men fell. Some were trying to edge away from the line of fire. Somebody was screaming: a terrifying animal noise.
It was at that moment that Hogan’s fifty-odd raparees and the two hundred eager gentlemen of Berwick’s Horse cantered on to the field of battle. Their drumming hooves reverberated through the turf. Their war cries could be heard over the crash of the muskets and the screams of the wounded redcoats.
The dragoons, until now so perfect in their discipline, turned their heads at the sound, saw the Jacobite cavalry pounding towards them and . . . panicked. They ran, some hurling their empty carbines away, every man scrambling to get back to their horse-handlers and their mounts twenty yards away, sprinting from the line, desperate to escape before the oncoming catastrophe overtook them.
Hogan’s men crashed into them at the full gallop. For the most part the raparees merely rode down the running men, the weight of horse knocking humans to the turf before the churning hooves milled over him. Some runners they slashed at with sabres, other horsemen pulled out their pistols and fired into the backs of their fleeing foes. The red wall of Jacobite recruits was cheering now – revelling in seeing their erstwhile tormentors taking this punishment. Men were trampled, sliced and stabbed by plunging swords, faces back-cut to the bone. About twenty of the Inniskillingers, the fleetest men, had managed to get to their horses, into the saddle and were kicking their frightened beasts down the hillside. A few of the dragoons, bizarrely, ran towards the Jacobite lines, crying out that they surrendered, calling for mercy. The frightened young men from Cork and Kerry waited till they got within twenty yards, then shot them down like dogs.
Hogan’s men, with Berwick’s Horse mixed in among them, chased the fleeing dragoons off the summit of the hill and north down the grassy slope. The outnumbered dragoons saw the cuirassiers advancing towards them in their neat lines and, recognising their allies, they spurred madly towards their yellow-coated ranks – despite the desperate cries of the Danish officers that the broken dragoons must steer clear to maintain troop cohesion. The grey horsemen, some slashed and bloody, others mad with pain or fear, ignored the Danes’ desperate warnings and barged into the ranks of the cuirassiers. They destroyed the neat order of the Danish advance, forcing their bodies into the safe crush of their ranks. In a moment, what had been an orderly attack up the hill which was supposed to crash into the Jacobite lines at the spot that had been weakened by the dragoons’ fire, became a rabble, a horde of milling horsemen. With the terror of the sweat-slathered dragoon horses infecting the cuirassiers’ fresh mounts, all discipline and order were lost in a few, mad, chaotic moments.
Hogan’s horsemen made the most of it.
His men plunged into the Danes’ ranks like an axe splitting a rotten bough. The impact of the Jacobite charge destroyed all remaining order in the yellow cavalry and tumbled it down the slope; Hogan’s men set about them with sword, pistol and carbine, some raparees wielding half-pikes like lances with a brutal efficiency. Hogan pistolled a curassier in the groin, avoiding his blackened chest armour, as the man rode past. The city gentlemen of Berwick’s Horse were yelling, even screaming with excitement, slashing with their fine blades, hacking down Danes and dragoons left and right. Others were battering at their foes with empty pistols and blunted swords. And the mêlée of warring cavalry – Hogan’s rough riders, Berwick’s ecstatic gentlemen, exhausted dragoons and confused and frightened Danish cuirassiers, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, jumbled in mad confusion, fighting, clawing, killing, dying – slid down the hill faster and faster, inexorably tumbling towards the English infantry lines.
*
Brevet Major Blood was standing one pace to the right and three paces in front of the fourth company of Tiffin’s Regiment of Foot. The company was formed of three ranks of twenty men each, a neat rectangle of grey-coated soldiery. The second company of Tiffin’s and the eleventh were on either side of Holcroft’s men. Beyond the eleventh, to his right, stood the statue-like ranks of the Dutch Blue Guard. Impressive, clean-shaven, taller-than-usual men with at least seven years’ experience of fighting in King William’s armies in the Low Countries and elsewhere. They were the Prince of Orange’s elite troops, the heart and soul of his armies, perhaps the finest soldiers in all Europe. They were the bravest in battle, the steadiest under fire. The best men. And they damn well knew it.
The Blue Guards were also lined up in three ranks, although the formation was of a double company two-hundred-men strong. Behind them, and behind Holcroft’s Inniskillingers, were two companies of Colonel Kirke’s Lambs. These redcoats were hardy veterans: forged in battle from the sands of Tangiers, to the slaughter at Sedgemoor, to the siege of Londonderry the year before.
Holcroft watched as the orderly advance by the dragoons and the Danish cavalry was turned into a rolling shambles by the sudden Jacobite flank attack. His heart sank. He had scanned the enemy lines a few minutes before with his glass and was almost certain that he had seen Henri d’Erloncourt in earnest conversation with the Duke of Berwick in the very heart of their formation. He was almost beside himself with impatience to attack. And now it seemed the cavalry had made a God-awful mess of it and been utterly routed. They were now galloping down the hill, enemy next to enemy, no formation at all: curassier and raparee, dragoon and Dublin gentleman, each slashing at the other, their horses biting and kicking, beasts and men barging and banging into each other and all heading towards his company.
Holcroft nodded to Sergeant Hawkins, who bellowed: ‘Tiffin’s prepare to fix bayonets . . .’ and a moment later: ‘Fix bayonets!’
A hundred and eighty-six Inniskilling men drew their new plug-bayonets from the stiff leather sheaths at their belts and rammed the handles into the clean muzzles of their flintlock muskets. Holcroft was aware that the sergeants of both the Blue Guard and Kirke’s Lambs were barking out similar orders.
‘Rear rank only,’ shouted Hawkins. ‘Just the rear rank, mind . . . that does not mean you, McNally, you stand where you are . . . rear rank, about turn!’
The third line of each of the three companies turned around to face backwards. ‘Now then, lads.’ Hawkins’ voice had dropped in tone and volume but it still rang out clearly across the field. ‘First rank, kneel! Stand your ground, Tiffin’s; grip those muskets tight as your lovers. Prepare to receive cavalry!’
Holcroft edged into the side of the fourth company, pressing close to the end file, and drew his small-sword, adding its shining length to the bristling hedge of plug-bayonets. The front rank was kneeling, musket-butts on the ground, barrel and bayonet pointing upwards at chest height. The second rank, standing, had their bayonetted muskets at port. The rear rank, facing backwards, also presented a line of bayonets. The whole effect was to nearly surround the company with lines of sharp steel blades, a double-sided defensive barrier.
The nearest horseman, a blood-slathered dragoon on a wildly out-of-control horse, was only yards away. The dragoon was screaming, waving the infantry to move out of his path. The kneeling Inniskilling men flinched, ready for the impact of half a ton of horseflesh and the slice of madly kicking iron-shod hooves. They closed their eyes, gripped their muskets and prayed.
The horse saw the hedge of blades and tried to halt its mad momentum, skidding on its back haunches, spraying mud and small stones, neighing madly – at the last moment the frightened beast side-stepped and swept past the company, missing Holcroft’s arm by inches, and bearing the astonished blood-daubed dragoon past with it.
The horsemen came barrelling in thick and fast: curassiers sawing on their reins, trying to bring their animals under control, raparees whooping and laughing madly, waving their bloodied swords around their heads, whipping up the panic as best they could . . . But no living horse would willingly impale itself on the Inniskilling bayonet hedge and the wide gaps between the three grey companies allowed every one of the galloping horsemen to swerve round the huddled ranks of Ulstermen and horse after horse thundered safely past the clenched infantry and away towards the rear.
When the last of the horses had gone, Holcroft stepped out of the ranks and surveyed the field. Those Jacobite horsemen who had not run madly down the hill and on to the English lines were walking their sweat-stained horses slowly back to their position on the enemies’ right flank. They looked utterly spent, exuberant but exhausted. But they had not won much of a victory.
Holcroft’s three companies of Inniskillingers seemed unharmed and intact, and the Dutch to his right were also unscathed. Behind him, though, Percy Kirke’s veterans had taken a few casualties. A horse – probably shot dead by some marksman in the ranks – had tumbled, dying but with heavy flailing hooves, into the heart of the second company of Kirke’s redcoats and there were now two bloodied men lying unconscious on the turf being tended by their mates. And another sitting man seemed to be cradling a broken arm. But it could have been worse – in fact, Holcroft was pleased by the conduct of the men under his command. Now would come the true test of their mettle.
Holcroft looked up and to the right to the summit of a small hill where there was a trio of horsemen sitting placidly and watching events. He lifted his hat from his head and waved it at the figure in a fine gold coat and gorgeous brown periwig, and the Brigadier lifted his own hat in response. Holcroft made a sweeping motion of his hat towards the enemy lines; he made the motion twice. There was a short conference on the hilltop and then Wolseley copied Holcroft’s gesture exactly, his hat seeming to wave the troops on into battle.
‘Unfix bayonets, Sergeant Hawkins,’ said Holcroft, ‘and make sure every man is loaded. I’m going to have a word with the Dutch and the Lambs.’
‘What’s afoot, sir?’ said Hawkins.
‘We are going up there, Sergeant. All of us. And we’re going to push those bastards off that ridge.’
*
The red line of Jacobites was a hundred and fifty yards away and already the ill-disciplined troops had begun to fire at the advancing enemy. Holcroft’s overwhelming emotion – above the commonplace terror of death or wounding, above the anxiety that he should fail in this task – was of contempt. These Irishmen might wear red coats and wield sword and matchlock but they were not true soldiers. Their sporadic, individual fire was too early and too disorganised to be effective. Some of the bullets flew wide of the three compact Tiffin’s companies as they advanced slowly up the slope, or went high, but most often they fell short, slamming into the turf between the two sides with little kick-spurts of mud. No discipline. What were their officers thinking? Not a single Inniskilling man had been hurt so far. And long may that last. The wall of redcoats was unnerved by the near-silent advance of the enemy: Holcroft had forbidden any cries until the last moment and the only sound came from the rattle of the drums as the boys beat out the pace, and the snap of the big square standards, held by the ensigns, that flapped in the breeze above their heads.
They were a hundred yards away. To the right of the Inniskillingers, the Dutch guards were advancing slightly slower than Holcroft’s men, and consequently they lagged about twenty paces behind. But Holcroft had no worries about these veterans. They would do their duty, and do it well. Fifty yards behind him, two companies of Kirke’s Lambs were coming up the slope, with a savage battle-eagerness on their faces, a blood-hunger that was somehow more than a little shocking.
The musket balls were cracking all about them. And one Tiffin’s private, John Watson, gave a shout of surprise and, dropping his flintlock, stumbled to the ground clutching at his bloody thigh.
‘Close up, there!’ Hawkins voice was steady, unsurprised by the tragedy.
The Inniskillingers marched on, close now, seventy yards out. Well within musket range. The rain of shot from the red ranks ahead of them grew heavier. Holcroft felt a ball pass close to his head with a whine like a mosquito. On the far side of the fourth company Corporal Horace Turner was hit. He gave a bubbling cry as half of his evil little face was replaced by a gory mash.
Only fifty yards from the enemy. The private men beside Holcroft, and behind him, were sneaking glances at his back, silently begging him to halt so that they might fire their weapons and end the torment of the advance. Yet Holcroft was unaware of their distress. The crackling of the enemy musketry was nearly continuous now, a ball thumped into the man next to Holcroft. The private dropped to the ground without a sound.
‘Sir?’ said Hawkins. Forty yards away from the enemy, Holcroft could see the individual features of the redcoats in front of him – this one unshaven, that one with a purple carbuncle on his cheek. His own men were silently willing him to halt. Another type of man would have been able to sense it. Their mute appeal would have been deafening. Holcroft did not. He was oblivious to their unexpressed entreaties.
Thirty yards. They were far inside the usual range for a musket duel.
‘Brevet Major Blood?’ said Hawkins again. ‘Should we not . . .’
Another pace, another yet. Holcroft could see over the heads of the Jacobite line, the mounted forms of the commanders; the gaudy one in gold with all the lace must be the Duke of Berwick, and beside him, staring directly at Holcroft was . . . it was him. Narrey.
The man who had murdered his friend Aphra. The man who had killed dozens of innocent men to Holcroft’s certain knowledge. The spy. His true enemy. Narrey was draped in his customary black cloak, with his hat low over his face, but it was definitely him. He looked small, cold and more than a little frightened.
The Inniskillings were twenty-five yards away from the enemy line. It was hailing musket balls. To their right the Dutch had halted, and Holcroft could hear Captain Jan van Zwyk giving the orders for the men to present their pieces. Holcroft fixed his eyes on Narrey. The Frenchman stared back at him. Musket balls dropped two men in the Inniskilling front rank one after the other. A bullet tugged at the sleeve of Holcroft’s blue coat.
‘Halt!’ They were twenty yards away. Holcroft heard the exhalation from two hundred lungs as he gave the order.
‘Dress ranks! Close up! Close up!’ Hawkins had the men well in hand.
Holcroft ignored the shuffling of the men behind him and the sergeant’s cries to level their muskets. His gaze was fixed on Narrey. He pulled the Lorenzoni repeating pistol from the scarlet sash around his waist, half turned to the men. ‘I believe I shall take over now, sergeant,’ he said quietly.
Then louder: ‘Tiffin’s Regiment! All companies. First rank only. Give fire!’
Sixty muskets thundered out along the lines and all three Inniskilling companies were shrouded in a thin grey fog.
‘First rank, reload. Second rank, two paces forward. Present your pieces. Second rank, fire.’
Another tightly controlled volley lashed out, punching through the fog and smashing into the company of redcoats a stone’s throw ahead of them. Holcroft could see dozens of enemy soldiers lying still on the ground; others seated, holding in their fatally punctured bellies, yet more bloodied but standing their ground and firing back like men.
He bawled: ‘Second rank, reload!’
A fair proportion of the scarlet enemy line were trying to move back, squirming away from his blocks of firing men, edging into the mass behind them.
On his right, Holcroft could hear the Dutch discharge their pieces, a much greater thunder, even though the Blue Guards were further from the enemy.
‘Third rank, forward. Present your pieces. Fire!’ Holcroft shouted.
He watched calmly as bullets from his men smashed into the enemy, ripping soft flesh, knocking down men, splashing others with gouts of blood. The press of redcoats was thinner now, directly to his front, weakened by his fire. ‘Third rank, reload!’
There were gaps between the red-coated bodies through which he could see the turf and churned earth behind. An Irishman, standing over the body of his dead comrade, hefted his matchlock and fired at Holcroft, aiming for him personally, and he felt the hot wind of the passing ball by his cheek. He filled his lungs with stingingly cold air . . .
‘Tiffin’s Regiment. First rank, present. Fire!’
‘Second rank, present. Fire!’
‘Third rank, present. Fire!’
‘Inniskillingers,’ shouted Holcroft. ‘Fix bayonets . . .’ A clattering and foul curses as fingers burned on hot barrels. ‘Ready, lads? Now . . . charge!’
More than a hundred and fifty men in grey leapt forward, every flintlock tipped with nine inches of sharp steel. They screamed as they ran the twenty yards towards the bullet-battered enemy, releasing all the built-up fear in shrill, high, ululating cries. They smashed into the Irish ranks like a herd of bulls hitting a frail garden fence at full speed, bayonets lancing out to slice faces and spear bellies. Holcroft ran with them, pausing only to shoot a sergeant standing before him with a halberd poised to strike. He reloaded the Lorenzoni with a twist of the lever and shot another man coming at him with a sword.
The Inniskillingers ripped into the disintegrating Jacobite army like a mighty wind, screaming and stabbing, shoving, thrusting, stamping, crushing faces and snapping limbs with the butts of their heavy flintlocks. Others had abandoned their muskets, the bayonets stuck fast into the ribs of their victims and pulling out their swords, they were carving lanes of mayhem through the enemy ranks. Lieutenant Watts, frothing madly at the mouth, was laying about him with his small-sword like a berserker of yore. A green-coated Jacobite officer, with a jet-black plume in his broad hat, pistolled Watts through the body, lifting and hurling the lieutenant back two full paces to land in a heap. Holcroft ran forward, raised the Lorenzoni and shot the officer in the lower jaw, scattering blood and teeth.
He paused for a second, panting, looking over the heads of the few remaining foes before him. The Lambs had come up fast to support the charge, and unfamiliar men were all around him, red coats with green turnbacks, savage blood-spattered faces, hacking with blades, lunging with their bayonets. The Dutch company were assaulting the line, too, forty paces to Holcroft’s right, big blue-clad men, barging into the lines of terrified Jacobite recruits . . .
And the enemy dissolved under this combined onslaught. They were running away, fleeing as fast as their terrified legs would carry them. Holcroft suddenly had a vision, a stone’s throw in front of him, of the Duke of Berwick on the back of his silver-grey horse, splendid in gold and lace, and beside him Narrey, smaller, and all in night-black, and they were both being led away, other horsemen dragging their bridles, right now breaking into a fast trot.
‘Stand and fight me, you bastard!’ Holcroft was screaming impotently – on foot and forty yards from his quarry, the distance growing with every moment that passed. He lifted the Lorenzoni and fired, knowing it was too far to be truly accurate. The bullet struck the hind-quarters of Narrey’s mount, and the horse reared and bucked, and Holcroft, for one glorious moment, believed that the black-swathed rider would be thrown. He ran forward but Narrey mastered his beast, and spurred away, a tight group of horsemen fleeing from the field of battle. Holcroft called stupidly: ‘Stop! Wait! Come back here, you turd.’
And one enemy horseman miraculously answered his call. A bulky man on a bay horse. He reined in, turned his mount and came galloping back to the shattered enemy lines, covering the ground in a dozen heartbeats. Holcroft recognised Guillaume du Clos’ big, snarling face. He cranked the lever on the Lorenzoni, but the mechanism stuck, the lever refusing to turn. Holcroft tugged at it, wasting valuable seconds. It was locked tight.
He looked up and Du Clos was almost on him. He dropped the pistol, and reached for his small-sword. He got the blade half out, looked up again and there was Du Clos, looming on the horse, a levelled pistol in his hand, the huge black muzzle pointed directly into his face. The handgun fired; a bloom of orange-red flame and Holcroft only just had time to feel a crushing blow like a mule-kick to his forehead.
Then all was blackness.