The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales Read online

  CHAPTER XI.

  THE GATHERING OF THE NATIONS.

  And now I come to a bit of my story that clean takes my breath away as Ithink of it, and makes me wish that I had never taken the job of tellingit in hand. For when I write I like things to come slow and orderly andin their turn, like sheep coming out of a paddock. So it was at WestInch. But now that we were drawn into a larger life, like wee bits ofstraw that float slowly down some lazy ditch, until they suddenly findthemselves in the dash and swirl of a great river; then it is very hardfor me with my simple words to keep pace with it all. But you can findthe cause and reason of everything in the books about history, and so Ishall just leave that alone and talk about what I saw with my own eyesand heard with my own ears.

  The regiment to which our friend had been appointed was the 71stHighland Light Infantry, which wore the red coat and the trews, and hadits depot in Glasgow town. There we went, all three, by coach: theMajor in great spirits and full of stories about the Duke and thePeninsula, while Jim sat in the corner with his lips set and his armsfolded, and I knew that he killed de Lissac three times an hour in hisheart. I could tell it by the sudden glint of his eyes and grip of hishand. As to me, I did not know whether to be glad or sorry; for home ishome, and it is a weary thing, however you may brazen it out, to feelthat half Scotland is between you and your mother.

  We were in Glasgow next day, and the Major took us down to the depot,where a soldier with three stripes on his arm and a fistful of ribbonsfrom his cap, showed every tooth he had in his head at the sight of Jim,and walked three times round him to have the view of him, as if he hadbeen Carlisle Castle. Then he came over to me and punched me in theribs and felt my muscle, and was nigh as pleased as with Jim.

  "These are the sort, Major, these are the sort," he kept saying."With a thousand of these we could stand up to Boney's best."

  "How do they run?" asked the Major.

  "A poor show," said he, "but they may lick into shape. The best menhave been drafted to America, and we are full of Militiamen andrecruities."

  "Tut, tut!" said the Major. "We'll have old soldiers and good onesagainst us. Come to me if you need any help, you two."

  And so with a nod he left us, and we began to understand that a Majorwho is your officer is a very different person from a Major who happensto be your neighbour in the country.

  Well, well, why should I trouble you with these things? I could wearout a good quill-pen just writing about what we did, Jim and I, at thedepot in Glasgow; and how we came to know our officers and our comrades,and how they came to know us. Soon came the news that the folk ofVienna, who had been cutting up Europe as if it had been a jigget ofmutton, had flown back, each to his own country, and that every man andhorse in their armies had their faces towards France. We heard of greatreviews and musterings in Paris too, and then that Wellington was in theLow Countries, and that on us and on the Prussians would fall the firstblow. The Government was shipping men over to him as fast as theycould, and every port along the east coast was choked with guns andhorses and stores. On the third of June we had our marching ordersalso, and on the same night we took ship from Leith, reaching Ostend thenight after. It was my first sight of a foreign land, and indeed mostof my comrades were the same, for we were very young in the ranks. Ican see the blue waters now, and the curling surf line, and the longyellow beach, and queer windmills twisting and turning--a thing that aman would not see from one end of Scotland to the other. It was aclean, well-kept town, but the folk were undersized, and there wasneither ale nor oatmeal cakes to be bought amongst them.

  From there we went on to a place called Bruges; and from there to Ghent,where we picked up with the 52nd and the 95th, which were the tworegiments that we were brigaded with. It's a wonderful place forchurches and stonework is Ghent, and indeed of all the towns we were inthere was scarce one but had a finer kirk than any in Glasgow.From there we pushed on to Ath, which is a little village on a river, ora burn rather, called the Dender. There we were quartered--in tentsmostly, for it was fine sunny weather--and the whole brigade set to workat its drill from morning till evening. General Adams was our chief,and Reynell was our colonel, and they were both fine old soldiers; butwhat put heart into us most was to think that we were under the Duke,for his name was like a bugle call. He was at Brussels with the bulk ofthe army, but we knew that we should see him quick enough if he wereneeded.

  I had never seen so many English together, and indeed I had a kind ofcontempt for them, as folk always have if they live near a border.But the two regiments that were with us now were as good comrades ascould be wished. The 52nd had a thousand men in the ranks, and therewere many old soldiers of the Peninsula among them. They came fromOxfordshire for the most part. The 95th were a rifle regiment, and haddark green coats instead of red. It was strange to see them loading,for they would put the ball into a greasy rag and then hammer it downwith a mallet, but they could fire both further and straighter than we.All that part of Belgium was covered with British troops at that time;for the Guards were over near Enghien, and there were cavalry regimentson the further side of us. You see, it was very necessary thatWellington should spread out all his force, for Boney was behind thescreen of his fortresses, and of course we had no means of saying onwhat side he might pop out, except that he was pretty sure to come theway that we least expected him. On the one side he might get between usand the sea, and so cut us off from England; and on the other he mightshove in between the Prussians and ourselves. But the Duke was asclever as he, for he had his horse and his light troops all round him,like a great spider's web, so that the moment a French foot steppedacross the border he could close up all his men at the right place.

  For myself, I was very happy at Ath, and I found the folk very kindlyand homely. There was a farmer of the name of Bois, in whose fields wewere quartered, and who was a real good friend to many of us. We builthim a wooden barn among us in our spare time, and many a time I and JebSeaton, my rear-rank man, have hung out his washing, for the smell ofthe wet linen seemed to take us both straight home as nothing else coulddo. I have often wondered whether that good man and his wife are stillliving, though I think it hardly likely, for they were of a halemiddle-age at the time. Jim would come with us too, sometimes, andwould sit with us smoking in the big Flemish kitchen, but he was adifferent Jim now to the old one. He had always had a hard touch inhim, but now his trouble seemed to have turned him to flint, and I neversaw a smile upon his face, and seldom heard a word from his lips.His whole mind was set on revenging himself upon de Lissac for havingtaken Edie from him, and he would sit for hours with his chin upon hishands glaring and frowning, all wrapped in the one idea. This made hima bit of a butt among the men at first, and they laughed at him for it;but when they came to know him better they found that he was not a goodman to laugh at, and then they dropped it.

  We were early risers at that time, and the whole brigade was usuallyunder arms at the flush of dawn. One morning--it was the sixteenth ofJune--we had just formed up, and General Adams had ridden up to givesome order to Colonel Reynell within a musket-length of where I stood,when suddenly they both stood staring along the Brussels road. None ofus dared move our heads, but every eye in the regiment whisked round,and there we saw an officer with the cockade of a general's aide-de-campthundering down the road as hard as a great dapple-grey horse couldcarry him. He bent his face over its mane and flogged at its neck withthe slack of the bridle, as though he rode for very life.

  "Hullo, Reynell!" says the general. "This begins to look like business.What do you make of it?"

  They both cantered their horses forward, and Adams tore open thedispatch which the messenger handed to him. The wrapper had not touchedthe ground before he turned, waving the letter over his head as if ithad been a sabre.

  "Dismiss!" he cried. "General parade and march in half-an-hour."

  Then in an instant all was buzz and bustle, and the news on every lip.Napoleon had crossed the fron
tier the day before, had pushed thePrussians before him, and was already deep in the country to the east ofus with a hundred and fifty thousand men. Away we scuttled to gatherour things together and have our breakfast, and in an hour we hadmarched off and left Ath and the Dender behind us for ever. There wasgood need for haste, for the Prussians had sent no news to Wellington ofwhat was doing, and though he had rushed from Brussels at the firstwhisper of it, like a good old mastiff from its kennel, it was hard tosee how he could come up in time to help the Prussians.

  It was a bright warm morning, and as the brigade tramped down the broadBelgian road the dust rolled up from it like the smoke of a battery.I tell you that we blessed the man that planted the poplars along thesides, for their shadow was better than drink to us. Over across thefields, both to the right and the left, were other roads, one quiteclose, and the other a mile or more from us. A column of infantry wasmarching down the near one, and it was a fair race between us, for wewere each walking for all we were worth. There was such a wreath ofdust round them that we could only see the gun-barrels and the bearskinsbreaking out here and there, with the head and shoulders of a mountedofficer coming out above the cloud, and the flutter of the colours.It was a brigade of the Guards, but we could not tell which, for we hadtwo of them with us in the campaign. On the far road there was alsodust and to spare, but through it there flashed every now and then along twinkle of brightness, like a hundred silver beads threaded in aline; and the breeze brought down such a snarling, clanging, clashingkind of music as I had never listened to. If I had been left to myselfit would have been long before I knew what it was; but our corporals andsergeants were all old soldiers, and I had one trudging along with hishalbert at my elbow, who was full of precept and advice.

  "That's heavy horse," said he. "You see that double twinkle?That means they have helmet as well as cuirass. It's the Royals, or theEnniskillens, or the Household. You can hear their cymbals and kettles.The French heavies are too good for us. They have ten to our one, andgood men too. You've got to shoot at their faces or else at theirhorses. Mind you that when you see them coming, or else you'll find afour-foot sword stuck through your liver to teach you better. Hark!Hark! Hark! There's the old music again!"

  And as he spoke there came the low grumbling of a cannonade awaysomewhere to the east of us, deep and hoarse, like the roar of someblood-daubed beast that thrives on the lives of men. At the sameinstant there was a shouting of "Heh! heh! heh!" from behind, andsomebody roared, "Let the guns get through!" Looking back, I saw therear companies split suddenly in two and hurl themselves down on eitherside into the ditch, while six cream-coloured horses, galloping two andtwo with their bellies to the ground, came thundering through the gapwith a fine twelve-pound gun whirling and creaking behind them.Behind were another, and another, four-and-twenty in all, flying past uswith such a din and clatter, the blue-coated men clinging on to the gunand the tumbrils, the drivers cursing and cracking their whips, themanes flying, the mops and buckets clanking, and the whole air filledwith the heavy rumble and the jingling of chains. There was a roar fromthe ditches, and a shout from the gunners, and we saw a rolling greycloud before us, with a score of busbies breaking through the shadow.Then we closed up again, while the growling ahead of us grew louder anddeeper than ever.

  "There's three batteries there," said the sergeant. "There's Bull's andWebber Smith's, but the other is new. There's some more on ahead of us,for here is the track of a nine-pounder, and the others were alltwelves. Choose a twelve if you want to get hit; for a nine mashes youup, but a twelve snaps you like a carrot." And then he went on to tellabout the dreadful wounds that he had seen, until my blood ran like icedwater in my veins, and you might have rubbed all our faces in pipeclayand we should have been no whiter. "Aye, you'll look sicklier yet, whenyou get a hatful of grape into your tripes," said he.

  And then, as I saw some of the old soldiers laughing, I began tounderstand that this man was trying to frighten us; so I began to laughalso, and the others as well, but it was not a very hearty laugh either.

  The sun was almost above us when we stopped at a little place calledHal, where there is an old pump from which I drew and drank a shakofull of water--and never did a mug of Scotch ale taste as sweet.More guns passed us here, and Vivian's Hussars, three regiments ofthem, smart men with bonny brown horses, a treat to the eye. The noiseof the cannons was louder than ever now, and it tingled through mynerves just as it had done years before, when, with Edie by my side, Ihad seen the merchant-ship fight with the privateers. It was so loudnow that it seemed to me that the battle must be going on just beyondthe nearest wood, but my friend the sergeant knew better.

  "It's twelve to fifteen mile off," said he. "You may be sure thegeneral knows we are not wanted, or we should not be resting here atHal."

  What he said proved to be true, for a minute later down came the colonelwith orders that we should pile arms and bivouac where we were; andthere we stayed all day, while horse and foot and guns, English, Dutch,and Hanoverians, were streaming through. The devil's music went on tillevening, sometimes rising into a roar, sometimes sinking into a grumble,until about eight o'clock in the evening it stopped altogether. We wereeating our hearts out, as you may think, to know what it all meant, butwe knew that what the Duke did would be for the best, so we just waitedin patience.

  Next day the brigade remained at Hal in the morning, but about mid-daycame an orderly from the Duke, and we pushed on once more until we cameto a little village called Braine something, and there we stopped; andtime too, for a sudden thunderstorm broke over us, and a plump of rainthat turned all the roads and the fields into bog and mire. We got intothe barns at this village for shelter, and there we found twostragglers--one from a kilted regiment, and the other a man of theGerman Legion, who had a tale to tell that was as dreary as the weather.

  Boney had thrashed the Prussians the day before, and our fellows hadbeen sore put to it to hold their own against Ney, but had beaten himoff at last. It seems an old stale story to you now, but you cannotthink how we scrambled round those two men in the barn, and pushed andfought, just to catch a word of what they said, and how those who hadheard were in turn mobbed by those who had not. We laughed and cheeredand groaned all in turn as we heard how the 44th had received cavalry inline, how the Dutch-Belgians had fled, and how the Black Watch had takenthe Lancers into their square, and then had killed them at theirleisure. But the Lancers had had the laugh on their side when theycrumpled up the 69th and carried off one of the colours. To wind it allup, the Duke was in retreat in order to keep in touch with thePrussians, and it was rumoured that he would take up his ground andfight a big battle just at the very place where we had been halted.

  And soon we saw that this rumour was true; for the weather clearedtowards evening, and we were all out on the ridge to see what we couldsee. It was such a bonny stretch of corn and grazing land, with thecrops just half green and half yellow, and fine rye as high as a man'sshoulder. A scene more full of peace you could not think of, and lookwhere you would over the low curving corn-covered hills, you could seethe little village steeples pricking up their spires among the poplars.But slashed right across this pretty picture was a long trail ofmarching men--some red, some green, some blue, some black--zigzaggingover the plain and choking the roads, one end so close that we couldshout to them, as they stacked their muskets on the ridge at our left,and the other end lost among the woods as far as we could see. And thenon other roads we saw the teams of horses toiling and the dull gleam ofthe guns, and the men straining and swaying as they helped to turn thespokes in the deep, deep mud. As we stood there, regiment afterregiment and brigade after brigade took position on the ridge, and erethe sun had set we lay in a line of over sixty thousand men, blockingNapoleon's way to Brussels. But the rain had come swishing down again,and we of the 71st rushed off to our barn once more, where we had betterquarters than the greater part of our comrades, who lay stretched in themud with the storm b
eating upon them until the first peep of day.