The Year of the French (56 page)

During this ten minutes or so, the air was thick with noise, men shouting, the rattle of the French drums, and at least three times the crash of Vereker’s cannon. Humbert, with Sarrizen and Fontaine beside him, moved forward down the road, in plain sight of the enemy, and there was joined by Teeling. They then rode slowly back, and Teeling summoned MacDonnell, O’Dowd, and myself. He dismounted, and ran his hand along the mare’s neck, a long, unhurried hand, like the man himself. Teeling was always for me the most impressive, whether of the French or of the Irish. There was a time when I might have found in him the embodiment of our principles.

“General Humbert has done me the honour of asking me to lead the Irish for this engagement. He intends that the French should move up along the river, and that the Irish should engage the enemy’s right flank.”

“What the hell does that mean, engage his flank?” O’Dowd said. “It means that we should get ourselves blown up while the Frenchies sneak along the wall.”

“Not this time, Mr. O’Dowd. Not this time. The enemy is either a valorous or an inexperienced soldier. He has put himself into a soup bowl. His flank should not be touching that hill, but holding its higher ground. As things stand, he is exposed. We shall go back through the village, circle round the hill, and attack his right.”

“With that great bloody cannon blowing holes in us.”

“Not in us. The cannon is formidable and the gunners seemed trained, but the French will have to take the weight of it. When we come within sight of the enemy, don’t concern yourselves about keeping ranks. Those who have muskets are to blaze away, and then everyone forward with whatever they have—pikes, bayonets, scythes. Engage your enemy, hold your ground, and wait for the French.” He looked from one to another of us and smiled. “It seems simple enough.”

“Well, this is the end of it,” MacDonnell said ruefully, and spat between his feet. “Those bastards in front of us, and the other ones behind.”

“Not at all,” Teeling said impatiently. “If you will do as I have suggested, the battle is won and the road lies open.”

I looked behind me at the Irish, who were staring apprehensively. The cannon exploded again, and several of them fell to the ground. I thought at first that they were slain or stunned, but it was fear which had weakened their knees. What did it matter, I thought, if the road lay open?

For the full half hour that it took us to encircle the hill, we heard but could not see the battle, the rattle of musket fire, the booming cannon. It was clear that many, perhaps most of our men were terrified. Their eyes, when I caught them, were glazed and dull, and some I saw shivering violently, as though it were a winter evening. What carried them foward? Perhaps each man hugged the secret delusion that he alone was frightened. Kilcummin, Crossmolina, Ballycastle, the men of each village walked forward huddled together.

A half hour may become a long time, with ample provision for a near-infinity of thoughts and perceptions. Thus, I observed that the birds had fallen silent: the sounds of battle claimed and filled the air. There are scores upon scores of hills like Knockbeg—“the little hill,” is its English meaning—rock-strewn, its grass coarse and luxuriant. Far to our left, well out of reach of the battle, lay its twin, but with two squat cabins nestling at its foot. Cattle were pastured in a distant field. A plantation of elm half screened them from view. The noise of battle had transformed each prospect, and had drained the air of all familiar meaning.

But when we came at last into sight of the enemy, for so I must term these Irishmen from Limerick and Sligo, they seemed as fierce and strange as we must have seemed to them. Their flanks held bravely to their positions, maintaining a brisk fire against the French, who had moved up along the river, using the wall as cover, but then had halted to await our arrival. The musket fire from both sides seemed the barking of angry dogs, and yet I could but wonder at the sturdiness with which they held their ground, for men had fallen and lay lifeless on the ground or else writhed in an agony which none attended. I do not regard myself as a man deficient in courage or spirit, and yet remain most puzzled that men in battle will face dangers which in other circumstances would cause them to flee for their lives. Yet I write this knowing that within a month I shall myself be dead, and were it not for my dear Judith could almost welcome it.

Our troops now spread out in a rough line at an angle to the loyalist flank. They were silent before a spectacle of which we would all shortly be a part, although for the moment we could gaze upon it as upon a pageant. Many had their eyes upon the cannon, which stood pointed towards the French. It was in truth the sovereign mistress of the battle. Several soldiers attended her, but did so under the instructions of the gunner, who for his task stood stripped to the waist. Its explosions were terrifying and deadly, and a squad of French musketeers, standing clumped together, were blazing away at her to no effect. The French had held their ground so that we could advance together, and yet I would judge, though unskilled in such matters, that the cannon would in any case have held them where they were, and it was discharged and reloaded with a professional skill and speed.

Teeling, O’Dowd, MacDonnell, and I were together, on a slight rise of ground, and we sat there, watching, for how long a time I cannot say. There was a movement beside me, and turning I saw that Teeling had taken out a pistol, not the cumbersome one which was holstered to his saddle, but a gentleman’s weapon of admirable craftsmanship, its butt of dark, polished wood, and its metal engraved most elegantly. As he set to work loading it, he obtained our assurances that we understood exactly the manner in which our men should be brought into battle.

Yet clearly, I thought, whether or not they went into the engagement rested with them. I turned again in my saddle. They stood in ragged groups, with those who possessed muskets or other firearms placed in the forefront of each group. Such was the entirety of the discipline which the French sergeants had been able to impose upon them, or which their faction leaders had contrived to maintain. The men of one faction, from my own Ballina as it chanced, had fallen to their knees and were attending the maniacal exhortations of Murphy, our “chaplain,” their eyes raised to the cross which he held above his head. At this distance, only the mercifully unintelligible sound of his voice reached me, rancorous and obsessed, the heavy Gaelic syllables wrenched from his throat by passion. With such men, we had fondly thought to shape a modern nation, these coarse-dressed kernes, kneeling before a zealot in shabby black.

Teeling had been observing me with a slight amusement, as though he read my thoughts. “We can but attempt it, Mr. Elliott. If all else fails, you may depend upon the French dragoons at their rear to drive them forward.”

“Like cattle.”

“Precisely so. Like cattle.” His pistol was now primed and loaded, and he held it in his open palm, as though weighing it. “How else can men be driven to this sorry trade?”

“And the ranting of that bloodthirsty priest?”

“It may be helpful. Drums, banners, rant, the edge of a sergeant’s sabre. How else?” He raised his voice then, so that O’Dowd and MacDonnell could hear him. “Follow along as soon as you are able.”

That said, he turned his horse’s head to the right, and rode off towards the loyalist line. It was a sudden and astonishing action. At that moment, the cannon shook the earth again, and the sound and movement seemed joined. He put the heavy bay mare to the canter, and shortly had moved so far from us that every one of our men had his eyes upon him, a tall, thin man in blue uniform, riding with the assurance and apparent unconcern of a fox hunter. Indeed, an image of the hunt imposed itself fleetingly upon my imagination, the air was clear and brisk, the wide sky held the mild blue of autumn, and the grassy field towards which he was riding was a dark, vivid green. A low wall lay before him: the mare cleared it easily. He was riding now at the gallop, straight towards the centre of their line. The sounds of battle continued, the crack of musket fire. But many of the loyalist troops were staring at him, and I fancied, though at the distance it was too far to tell, that some of the French had lowered their muskets to stare.

Alone, held within the swift-moving circle of his intention, he rode across the field, following the soundless belling of invisible hounds. For a minute or two after he had come within range, none of the muskets were pointed in his direction, but then the balls began to spatter the ground before him. He rode to their lines, then wheeled, and rode towards the gunner who stood, motionless, beside his cannon. Then, when he was almost within arm’s reach, he presented the pistol flush into the gunner’s face and fired. The gunner fell backward, as if he had been lifted from the ground and thrown, but by the time he reached the ground, Teeling had turned again, and now towards the French lines. An officer was now directing fire towards him, and two cavalrymen gave him chase, but turned back when they came under the French guns. He was riding at the gallop when he reached the French, and he drove through them.

For a full minute, the field was uncannily quiet. The scene seemed sunk within an immense jar of clear water. Then I heard voices behind me, ragged and scattered at first but then rising in volume, and I turned to find that our men were shouting with excitement and something like exultation. I had not seen them so inspirited since the first hours after Castlebar, and I found a deep, peculiar pleasure in the knowledge of its cause, an act of individual bravery and resourcefulness, separated cleanly out from the deeds of packs and mobs and armies. This pleasure was so intense that I almost forgot the purpose of Teeling’s ride, although imagination could have shown me the gunner’s face, with blood exploding from the ugly hole that had been smashed into it.

MacDonnell lifted off his hat, with its absurd, swaggering plume. “Did you see him, boys? You did. Riding past those sods and pistolling that great bastard of a gunner. By God, I will let no man from Ulster get the better of me by a morning’s canter. Come on out, now that they have no gunner to batter us with his huge cannon.” It was cheap rant, I thought, but then realised that he meant it, for he was a vain, empty, harmless creature. And he caught their mood, for they began to run forward, first the men of one town and then of another. When the French saw that we were moving forward, they began their advance upon the other loyalist flank.

It was in this manner that the loyalist garrison was broken, and our road into Ulster opened.

After the battle, when I had an opportunity to speak with Teeling, I remarked, in jest, that the prospect of returning to his own province had doubtless inspired his feat. He looked at me with his level grey eyes and smiled, but did not otherwise reply.

“You took a most dreadful risk,” I said. “Your example drew the men forward, but if they had seen you dropped by a bullet, I doubt if they would have moved.”

“I was not setting an example,” he said coldly. “The gun could have checked the French advance, and had to be put out of action.” He nodded and walked away from me towards Sarrizen and Fontaine. But he paused and said over his shoulder, “I leave examples to MacDonnell and your other squireens.”

By every meaning which I know for the word
victory
we had achieved one. Vereker scrambled back to Sligo, and once there decided that the town must be left to its own fate. From Sligo, as we now know, he moved with great haste along the southern shore of Donegal Bay to Ballyshannon, where the lower Erne, emptying into the bay, forms part of the border between Connaught and Ulster. Behind him, on the field of Collooney, he left sixty dead, together with muskets and boxes of ammunition, the cannon, and, for those who value such trophies, the Limerick flag.

And we were left with our wounded, of whom some were dying. They were attended by Baudry and the two other surgeons who had come upon the expedition, first the French wounded and then the Irish. They moved with despatch, in a brusque and almost a brutal manner, their aprons soaked with blood, less doctors than butchers, hacking away at red flesh. It was a sight which I had no stomach for, yet I forced myself to watch as Baudry sawed away the shattered leg of a young fellow whom I recognised, one of two lads who had joined us a few miles back, in Tobercurry, clambering with their scythes over the wall of an estate. His brother, as I supposed him to be, knelt beside him, clutching his arm for dear life and weeping uncontrollably. But his solicitude was in vain, for the boy died then and there, perhaps of the shock of steel on bone and flesh. Baudry nodded, and then wiped his long, thin-bladed knife and turned his attention elsewhere.

But what purpose was served by these ministrations, such as they were?

For when they had been completed, to Baudry’s satisfaction, he nodded to Humbert, who ordered us thereupon to fall into marching formation. Those wounded who were able to walk were allowed to accompany us, but the others were abandoned there, left to Crauford’s mercies or to make their way as best they could into the hills. I know nothing of their fate, but were I a religious man they would have my most heartfelt prayers. Some of them cried, piteously, to men from their own villages, who stood before them, irresolute and stricken, but were then driven forward. The lad whose brother had died beneath Baudry’s knife clung dazed to the lifeless body and was pulled roughly away. Poor devil, he walked along with us, dazed, his face streaked with tears, and though several attempted to speak with him, he said nothing, but would walk along in silence for a while and then commence again to weep. He knew none of us. By what right did we lure children to their deaths, caught by a glint of light on metal, a trumpery banner? We were all of us I think—I cannot speak for the French—shocked by Humbert’s decision to leave the wounded behind us, and many turned to look back along the road towards them, so long as they remained in sight, but I did not. It was that bitter taste that filled our mouths now, and not the “victory” which we had won.

I had expected that we would march north now, upon Sligo, to follow up our success, but instead we moved in a direction roughly eastwards, along Lough Gill, to the small and primitive village of Dromahair, which is dominated by a ruined and empty castle of some sort. It was late evening when we reached it, and so here we paused. A low hill lay beyond the castle, and there Humbert walked, drawing Teeling, Sarrizen, and Fontaine after him. They remained there for the better part of a half hour, holding a kind of council of war, and of none too amicable a sort, for several times their raised voices carried to me. Once I looked towards them, and fancied that I caught Teeling’s eye upon me, but they were at too far a distance to be observed closely. Presently they came down, with Sarrizen and Fontaine looking greatly discomfited, and Teeling told me that after we had made camp for the night Humbert would hold a general meeting with all of his officers. Then we set off again, to make use of the hour of light which remained to us. Although it may have been but my imagination, I sensed that an uneasiness had fallen upon all of us, perhaps because the wounded whom we had abandoned were a burden weighing upon our backs, but for my own part I had been made uncomfortable by the sight of the four of them upon the hill, outlined against the evening sky, and in the foreground the shattered castle of some old defeat. The country is scattered with them, like hulks upon a strand.