devilstone chronicles 01 - devils band (31 page)

The city guarded a strategic bridge over the River Ticino, which carried the main road from the port of Genoa, an imperial ally, north over the Alps. This accident of geography had made Pavia a vital link in the chain that bound the emperor’ dominions in Italy, Sicily and Spain to the Hapsburg lands in Germany, Austria and the Low Countries. Following the surrender of
Milan to the French king Francis, the Emperor Charles had ordered Pavia’s garrison of 9,000
landsknecht
mercenaries, led by the Spanish prince Antonio de Leyva, to hold the city at all costs however these men, and Bourbon’s army in Lodi, were the only imperial forces south of the Alps. If Francis could defeat them before Charles arrived with reinforcements, the French would be masters of all Italy.

The French marshals Montmorency, Lescun and de la Pole urged their king to ignore Pavia and attack Bourbon at Lodi but Francis had studied the campaigns of Charlemagne. He insisted that Pavia was the key to Italy so, on the morning of the 28th of October 1524, the
Pavesi
awoke to see the vanguard of the French army marching towards their city. Though a siege had been expected, and the imperial defenders had strengthened Pavia’s medieval walls with a ring of wooden blockhouses and earthen redoubts, there was panic. Those that could, loaded their possessions onto carts and fled but one after the other the roads out of the city were captured and closed by squadrons of French horsemen.

With Pavia completely surrounded, the French began to seal off the defenders from the outside world by constructing an elaborate network of palisades, ditches and gun pits that covered the flat, open plain beyond the city’s walls. These siege works were centred on four fortified strongpoints: the village of San Lanfranco in the west, a group of monasteries known as the Five Abbeys in the east, the ancient bridge over the Ticino in the south and the Castel Mirabello in the north.

Though it had been given the grand title of ‘Castel’, Mirabello was actually a hunting lodge in the middle of a vast diamond shaped deer park that stretched for three miles to the north of Pavia, and it looked more like a Byzantine chapel than an Italian fortress. There was a squat circular tower capped by a dome at one end and an ornate cathedral-like façade at the other. Its walls were pierced by tall thin windows like a church but, like a castle, Mirabello was surrounded by a rampart of packed earth and a water-filled moat which was spanned by a wooden drawbridge. Despite its name and outward appearance Mirabello had been built to house noblemen in comfort and the lodge’s luxurious rooms were quickly seized by the French army’s senior commanders.

Once France’s noble marshals had taken up residence, the
tross
quickly followed and the Castel Mirabello soon became a rocky island surrounded by a stormy sea of flapping white canvas. Thomas and his fellow assassins erected their travelling seraglio’s tents in the middle this maelstrom and with Caterina now in a Milanese nunnery they confidently expected de la Pole to pay them a visit yet, once again, they were confounded. Instead of being garrisoned at Mirabello, The White Rose and his Black Band had been ordered to the fortified village San Lanfranco, where they were to hold themselves in readiness for an attack the ancient walls of Pavia.

Despite his recent victories, the French king knew time was not on his side. His men were being decimated by the diseases that flourished in the incessant autumn rain and they desperately needed to find dry winter quarters inside
the city. Francis therefore planned a simultaneous assault, against Pavia’s eastern and western defences in the hope of dividing and conquering the imperial defenders.

The assault in the west would be led by the king in person, supported by Marshal Lescun’s levies and de la Pole’s Black Band. The attack in the east would led by Robert de la Marck Seigneur de la Flourance and, much to de la Pole’s annoyance, supported by his old rival the Duke of Albany who’d been temporarily relieved of his fodder gathering duties. The French bombards had been pounding the city walls for days, and the gun captains confidently predicted that two suitable breaches could open at any time, so the king ordered his men to sharpen their swords and prepare for battle.

The White Rose stared appreciatively at the jagged hole in the city wall. The gunners had done their work well and a section of masonry at the furthest point between two of the blockhouses guarding Pavia’s western approaches had been reduced to rubble. The dawn mist swirled over the half mile of flat, open ground in front of him and de la Pole shivered, but with excitement not cold. The time for the attack was near and this would be his chance to outshine his Scottish rival once and for all. A page boy appeared leading de la Pole’s warhorse by its reins. The White Rose grunted his thanks, mounted his charger and cantered off to join the French army forming up at the edge of the plain.

Francis had deployed his men in three long lines that stretched out along the battlefront. The first line consisted of archers and crossbowmen whose orders were to sweep the defenders from Pavia’s walls. The second line consisted of halberdiers and double handed swordsmen who would scythe through any survivors trying to defend the breach. The third line would be made up of the Black Band who would protect the first two lines from any counterattack and offer support where needed.

“Good morning My Lord,” said Count Wolf, one of de la Pole’s most trusted captains, as the White Rose arrived at his place in the line.

“Good morning Wolf, how are the men?” De la Pole replied cheerfully.

“Their spirits are high and they’re eager to start slitting
landsknecht
throats,” said Wolf proudly. He was a veteran of the Italian Wars who’d been so long in Italy he’d forgotten he’d been born north of the Alps. Only his ruddy beard and guttural accent indicated his Swiss ancestry.

“With luck we’ll be breakfasting inside the city before Albany has finished putting on his best silk breeches,” replied de la Pole glancing along the Black Band’s well-disciplined ranks. His men’s sombre armour and clothing contrasted sharply with the brightly coloured garb of the other French troops but this made his men appear even more terrifying. In the half-light of dawn, The Black Band looked like an army of spectral wraiths summoned from deepest pit of Hell and de la Pole wondered if the necromancer Thomas Devilstone could ever have conjured such a formidable host.

A fanfare of trumpets gave the signal for the assault to begin and the French army began to shuffle forward. De la Pole glanced to his left and saw the royal standard and the banners belonging to the king’s personal guard of Scottish nobles fluttering in the breeze. He cursed at the sight, though he admired Francis’ courage in leading the assault in person, he was worried by the rashness of the king’s gesture. If Francis was killed or captured at Pavia there’d be no Yorkist invasion of England in this or any other year. Putting such thoughts out his mind, de la Pole fixed his eyes on the towers of the sleeping city. Pavia rose from the surrounding plain like a volcanic island in a placid sea and the French army rolled towards it like a fierce ocean storm.

After the men had marched three hundred paces a second fanfare sounded, the lines stopped and the sky turned black as hundreds of bowmen loosed their missiles. Whilst the bowmen fixed fresh arrows and bolts to the strings of their bows and crossbows, the French halberdiers and swordsmen gave a great shout and charged forward. The bowmen quickly loosed a second volley over the heads of their comrades before slinging their bows over their backs, drawing their swords and running after them. De la Pole felt his own men were straining to follow but he held them in check as the king had ordered. The Black Band were Francis’ best men and not to be squandered in the first charge. A moment later the White Rose had good reason to thank the king for his foresight.

The attacking Frenchmen were still a hundred paces from the city wall when the blockhouses on either side
of breach began to spew flame and fire. The battlefield became engulfed in a fog of smoke as the defenders’ handguns and cannon let fly a murderous hail of iron balls and stone shot. Under such withering fire, the first wave of the French assault broke. In vain, the survivors tried to find shelter in any small depression in the ground but the blockhouses had been cunningly sited to create a deadly killing field.

Suddenly the battle seemed to draw breath as the imperial gunners paused to reload. The French took the chance to launch another flight of bolts and arrows but they were answered by a second ear splitting roar of guns. Through the smoke, de la Pole’s caught sight of the royal banner being waved, this was the signal for the Black Band to join the fray. De la Pole spurred his horse and cantered to the front of his little army.

“Men of the Black Band, we are to be unleashed at last, come let us follow the hounds of Mars and they’ll lead us to honour, riches and glory!” he cried. His men raised a great cheer, the fifes and drums struck up the beat and the Black Band set off over the boggy, uneven ground. Their armour clanked and their long pikes clattered together like the bare branches of trees in a winter gale but the lessons learned in months of training kept de la Pole’s six thousand men marching in perfect formation. A spent culverin ball splashed into the mud but not a man turned a hair, all their eyes were focused on the smoke that wreathed the breach in Pavia’s walls. Beyond that curtain of death was everything a man could wish for and all he had to do to seize it was stay alive.

The White Rose also felt his spirit rejoice in the glory of war. At the head of his men he felt invincible and he began to imagine the lofty spires of Pavia’s churches belonged to St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. At last he understood why God had led him to this rain soaked corner of Italy. This baptism of blood and fire would forge his Black Band into a mighty army that would conquer England and restore the House of York to the throne of their ancestors.

The sharp cracks of the arquebuses and sonorous booms of the heavy cannon shook de la Pole from his reverie and as the noise of battle grew louder, figures began to emerge from the smoke filled breach. For a heartbeat de la Pole thought the imperial garrison had launched a counterattack and he was about to order his men to lower their pikes to defend against such a charge when he realised the men fleeing for their lives were not German
landsknechts
but French bowmen. In that instant de la Pole realised the assault had failed but he had no intention of turning back without firing a shot.

“Onwards! Don’t let these cowardly farmhands shame us into retreat, we’re men of the Black Band, we’ll not give ground even if we face all the Legions of Hell!” he cried and ordered his pikemen to halt whilst his arquebusiers advanced and fire a volley.

His handgunners roared their battle cry and ran forward whilst their comrades planted their pikes butt first in the ground. When they were fifty paces from the breach, the arquebusiers touched their matches to their weapons. Two hundred handguns roared their defiance and scores
of defenders gathering for a counterattack were pitched backwards into the mud. Like rabbits seeking the shelter of a thicket, the arquebusiers quickly retreated behind the forest of pikes to reload and they were not a moment too soon. As the sound of the Black Band’s volley died away, a thousand Imperial
landsknechts
came pouring out of the breach. They ran down the rubble piled against the shattered wall brandishing huge double-handed swords and shouting all manner of threats and curses.

“Kill the oath-breakers! They are the Black Band, they are traitors beyond the mercy of God and men!” cried one
landsknecht
captain.

“No quarter for
landsknecht
scum! Show the Emperor’s cocksucking, catamites how real men fight!” came de la Pole’s reply.

The
landsknechts
rushed at their enemy and began hacking at the hedge of pikes with their long swords, trying to carve a way through the line to the arquebusiers. To meet the danger, de la Pole’s own swordsmen rushed between the ranks of pikemen wielding their
katzbalgers
. These short German swords were no more than two feet long and had been designed for use in the press of the melee. So whilst the
landsknechts’
two handed blades quickly became entangled in the pikes, the Black Band’s swordsmen used their ‘cat skinners’ to rip open their opponents’ bellies.

The ground in front of the first rank of pikes became sodden with the blood and entrails of the fallen but the
landsknechts
fought back, lopping off pike-heads and pikemen’s limbs with their two handed swords as if human
bone was mere firewood. Revelling in the slaughter, de la Pole was in the thick of the fighting, using his old fashioned longsword to crush skulls and slice flesh whilst the steel barding around his horse’s chest turned countless blows from imperial weapons.

The butchery continued for some minutes but it was stalemate. The Black Band could not pass through the narrow breach without breaking formation and to do so would have been suicide. Equally, the defending
landsknechts
were not strong enough to dislodge the attackers. Eventually a French trumpet sounding the retreat ended the impasse. De la Pole had been in enough battles to know when a fight was lost and though the thought of retreat stuck in his throat, he gave the order for the Black Band to withdraw. However his men did not turn and show their backs to the enemy, instead they dressed their ranks and began to slowly march backwards. It was a remarkable manoeuvre and it allowed the Black Band to salvage some pride from the debacle.