CHAPTER V
“Youare asking me more, sir,” said Lance, with something like a grim smile on his countenance, “than I could tell you in a month, or two months. But I can tell you how the Duke of Marlborough looked in battle, for I belonged to the foot-soldiers, and we were generally standing still for a time, until the cavalry had showed us where we were wanted, and we could see the generals riding over the field. The duke, you must know, sir, was not so very young when I served under him, but he was still the handsomest man in the British army. They say when he was a lieutenant that all the great ladies fell in love with him, and the one he married, I have read in a book, he was much in love with, but a deal more afraid of her than ever he was of the Grand Monarque and all his armies. They say it was a joke in England that the great duke obeyed his duchess and trembled at her word. But I dare say he is not the only man who ever ruled men and then let his wife rule him. The duke was anoble sight at parade, with his splendid chestnut charger, his uniform of red and gold, his chapeau with plumes, and his great periwig. But, to my mind, he was a finer sight when the French artillerymen were ploughing up the ground—the French are monstrous good gunners, Mr. Washington, and hang on to their batteries like the devil—and the musketry screaming around, and that old fox, Marshal Villars, was hammering us in a dozen places at once. Then the duke was as calm as a May morning, and was full of jokes with his officers, and whistling to himself a queer kind of a tune with no tune to it. But old Villars never caught him napping, and was caught napping himself once. That was the time we took Bouchain.”
George was very much on his guard not to let Lance know that he had never heard of Bouchain—or if he had read of it in the life of Marlborough, he had forgotten all about it—so he only said:
“Oh yes—about Bouchain.”
“Well, sir, in the spring of 1711 the great duke arrived in the Low Countries—and glad enough were all to see him—for not only, we knew, we could lick the French and Bavarians if we were under him—but the army was always paid when the great duke commanded, and fedand clothed, too. I remember when he came back that time he brought us forty thousand woollen shirts. The kings and queens thought that we, the common soldiers, did not know what was going on, but we knew the stay-at-homes were trying to ruin the duke at court, and that he had hardly been treated civilly when he got to England, and that three colonels—Meredith, Macartney, and Heywood—had been cashiered for drinking ‘confusion to the enemies of the Duke of Marlborough.’ It was while he was away that the allied army—as ours and our allies was called—had got a handsome drubbing at Almanza, in Spain, and I can’t say that any of us cried over it; only we thought we might get drubbed ourselves if the duke didn’t come back. So you may be sure, Mr. Washington, that when the news came that the whole army was to rendezvous at Orchies, and the duke had landed in Holland on his way to us, we felt better. The queen and the ministry and the parliament might look coldly on him, but on that bleak April day, when he rode into our cantonments at Orchies, every British soldier raised his voice in a huzza for the great duke.
“Marshal Villars had been all the winter throwing up redoubts and all sorts of works along his lines, from Bouchain, on the Scheldt, which layhere”—Lance stooped down at this and drew an imaginary line on the floor, and George got off the bed, and, taking the candle, sat down on the floor the better to understand—“along the Sanset, which runs this way. Lord, Mr. Washington, I’ll have to use the boot-jack to show you about Bouchain and Arras.”
“And here are the snuffers,” eagerly added George, “for Arras; and here is my pocket-rule, and a piece of chalk.”
Lance seized the chalk.
“The very thing, sir!” And he drew a very fair map upon the floor, George watching him with bright, intelligent eyes, and afterwards taking the chalk, straightened up Lance’s rude sketch.
“That’s right, sir,” said Lance, getting down on the floor himself. “It’s a pleasure to show a young gentleman like you, sir, how it was done, because you have the understanding of it, if I may make bold to say so.
“Old Villars, then, being a monstrous sharp general, said to himself, ‘Aha! I’ll beat the long roll on Marlborough now,’ and he had the astonishing impudence to call his lines ‘Marlborough’sne plus ultra,’ whatever that is, sir; I don’t exactly know myself, but it is some sort of impudence in French.”
George laughed a little to himself at Lance’s notion of the old Latin phrase, but he was too much interested in the story to interrupt.
SKETCHING THE DEFENCES ON THE SCHELDTSKETCHING THE DEFENCES ON THE SCHELDT
SKETCHING THE DEFENCES ON THE SCHELDT
SKETCHING THE DEFENCES ON THE SCHELDT
“Marshal Villars had near sixty thousand men, and such a gang of ragamuffins, Mr. Washington, you never saw. But they’d rather fight than eat; and let an old soldier tell you, sir, whenever you meet the French, don’t count on licking ’em because they are half starved and half naked; I believe they fight better the worse off they are for victuals and clothes. The duke spent two or three weeks studying their works, and when he got through with it he knew more about them than Marshal Villars himself did. The summer had come, and the streams were no longer swollen, and the duke begun to lay his plans to trap old Villars. The first thing he did was to have a lot of earthworks thrown up at the place where he did not intend to break through the French lines. The French, of course, got wind of this, and drew all their forces away from Vitry, where the duke really meant to break through and cross the Sanset. All the Frenchmen were fooled, and Marshal Villars the worst of all. So when, one bright morning in July, the French scouts reported that Marlborough himself, with fifty squadrons of horse, was on the march for the earthworks he had madewhere he did not mean to cross, old Villars was cocksure he had him. The duke with his fifty squadrons marched a good day’s march away from Vitry, the French scampering off in his direction and concentrating their troops just where the duke wanted them. Meanwhile, every mother’s son of us was in marching order—the artillery ready, the pontoons ready, everybody and everything ready. About midday, seeing the French had been fooled, the order was given to march, and off we put for Vitry. As soon as we reached the river we laid the pontoons, and were drawn up on the bank just waiting for the word to cross. It was then late in the evening, but we had got news that the duke had turned around, and was making for us as fast as the horses of his squadrons could lay their hoofs to the ground. About nine o’clock we saw the dust of the advance guard down the highway; we heard the galloping of the horses long before. The instant the duke appeared the crossing begun, and by sunrise thirty thousand men had crossed and had joined General Hompesch’s division of ten thousand between Oise and Estrum—and now we were within Villars’s lines without striking a blow. ’Twas one of the greatest marches that ever was, Mr. Washington—ten leagues betweennine in the evening and ten the next morning—thirty thousand infantry, artillery, cavalry, miners, and sappers.
“Villars found out what was in the wind about midnight, and at two o’clock in the morning he turned around, and the whole French army came in pursuit of us; and if you will believe it, sir, they marched better than we did, and by eleven o’clock in the morning the beggars were as near Bouchain as we, for Bouchain was what we were after. ’Twas a strong fortress, and the key to that part of France; and if we could get it we could walk to the heart of France any day we liked.
“Old Villars wanted to bring us to fight, but the duke was too wary for him. He sat down before Bouchain, that had a large garrison of picked men, commanded by the bravest officers in the French army, with stores, guns, and ammunition in plenty. The duke had to make a causeway over a morass before he could get at ’em at all, and there was Villars behind us, ready to cut us to pieces, and that stubborn fortress in front. It was the hardest siege I ever knew, though it was not the longest. The people at home were clamoring for the duke to fight Villars instead of taking Bouchain; but the duke knew that if he could get the fortress he wouldhave the control of three great rivers—the Scheldt, the Meuse, and the Lys—and then we could cut off any army the Grand Monarque could send against us. ’Tis a deal harder, sir, to keep men’s spirits up in a siege than in a battle. The army would rather have been fighting Villars any day; but there we were, laying trenches, mounting our guns, and every day closing in on that town. The duke was very anxious after a while to know what the condition of the town was within the bastions, and every young cornet and ensign in the army wanted to risk his skin by sneaking in and finding out. But while the duke was turning this over in his mind it happened that the enemy sent us a flag of truce in regard to an armistice. The duke did not want an armistice, but he wanted mightily to know how things were looking inside, so he agreed to send a flag of truce back. The French, though, are not to be easily outwitted, and they made it a condition that the officers sent with the flag be blindfolded. Three officers went in; but they had their sashes tied around their eyes, and the only thing they saw when they had been led blindfolded for a half-mile through the town and into the citadel was a very handsome room in which the commandant received them. They talked awhile, but did not come to any terms;and then the commandant very politely invited them to take some refreshment, and a regular feast was set out for them—just to make them think that provisions were plenty—and the French officers who dined with them ate scarcely anything. But they looked gaunt and hollow-eyed enough, and I warrant they fell to as soon as the English officers left. So, after all, Lord Fairfax was the one to get in.”
“Was anybody with him?” asked George.
“Well, sir—the fact is, sir—I was with him.”
George jumped up off the floor, and, seizing Lance’s hand, wrung it hard in his enthusiasm. Lance smiled one of his grim smiles.
“Young gentlemen are apt to think more of a little thing like that than it’s worth,” was the old soldier’s commentary on this, as George again seated himself on the floor and with eloquent and shining eyes besought Lance to tell him of his entrance into the besieged fortress.
“It was about a week after that, when one night, as I was toasting a piece of cheese on a ramrod over the fire, up comes quite a nice-looking young woman and begins to jabber to me in French. She had on a red petticoat and a blue bodice, like the peasant women in those parts wear, and a shawl around her, and a cap on her head; but she did not look like a peasant,but rather like a town milliner. She had a basket of eggs in her hand, as the people sometimes brought us to sell, though, poor things, they had very few eggs or chickens, or anything else. Now I could speak the French lingo tolerably, for I had served so many years where it was spoke, so we begun bargaining for the eggs, and she kept up a devil of a chattering. At last we agreed on two pistoles for the lot, and I handed out the money, when suddenly she flew into a rage, threw the money in my face, and, what was worse, began to pelt me with sticks and stones and even the eggs. That brought some of my comrades around, and, to my surprise, she begun to talk in a queer sort of French-English, saying I had cheated her, and a lot more stuff, and, stamping on the ground, demanded to be taken to an officer. Just then two young officers happened to be passing, and they stopped to ask what the row was about. The young woman then poured forth her story, and I was in an ace of being put in the guard-house when she whispered something to one of them, and he started as if he had been shot. Then he whispered it to the other one, and presently all three—the young woman and the two officers—begun to laugh as if they would crack their sides. This was not very pleasant for me, standingthere like a post, with rage in my heart; the more so, when one of the officers, laughing still, told me it was all right, and I could go back to my cheese and ramrod, and they went off in one direction in the darkness and the young woman in another. They were hardly out of sight when back comes the young woman again. As you may think, I never wanted to clap my eyes on her again; but she slapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Lance, my man, don’t you know me?’ and it was—it was—”
George was so eager at this point that he crawled on all fours up to Lance and gazed breathlessly into his face.
“It was Lord Fairfax dressed up as a woman! And he says, when I had come to myself a little, for I nearly dropped dead with surprise, ‘If I can fool my own men and my own brother officers, I ought to be able to fool the Frenchmen into letting me into the town.’ And sure enough, Mr. Washington, that was exactly what he did.”
Lance paused to get the full dramatic effect of this. It was not wasted on his young listener, for George gave a gasp of astonishment that spoke volumes, and his first words, when speech returned to him, were:
“Go on—go on quick!”
“Well, sir, Lord Fairfax told me that he had a scheme to get in the town as a woman, and I was to go with him as his servant, because I could speak the lingo, and on the frontier there they have so many accents that they couldn’t tell if you were a Dutchman or an Englishman or a Russian or a Prussian; and, besides, my lord said, my French had a High-Dutch twang that couldn’t be excelled. He was a week thinking it over and practising in his tent. Of course, he didn’t tell but one or two persons what he was after; he meant it to be as secret as possible. So when he would send for me to his tent at night every crack and cranny would be stopped, and there would be just one or two young officers putting the earl through his paces, as it were. He was a slim, handsome young man then, and when he got a woman’s wig on, and a little rouge, and was dressed in the latest fashion with a great hoop—for he meant to represent a lady, not a peasant woman—anybody would have taken him for a pretty young lady. The hoop and the sack and all the fallals a lady would wear were of real service to him, as he could wear his uniform under them, and so, if he should be found out and arrested, he would be entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war. If he had been caught in the French lines without hisuniform he would have been strung up in short order as a spy, according to the articles of war. I kept my uniform on too, but that was a simple matter, as I was only disguised by another suit of man’s clothing put on over it.
“My lord had something else under his hoop besides his uniform—a good rapier, with a Toledo blade; and his lace neck-handkerchief was fastened with a jewelled dagger that was more than a toy. He was to be Madame Geoffroy in search of her husband, who was supposed to be in the garrison, and I was to be a great, stupid, faithful Alsatian servant, and my name was to be Jacques; and my name is Peter, sir. I had no arms, only a great stick; but there was a knob in that stick, and when I pulled out that knob I had a sword.
“We used to practise of a night in the tent. My lord had merriment in him then, and officers always like a lark; and it would have made you laugh, Mr. Washington, to have seen my lord, all dressed up as a woman, pretending to cry, and holding his handkerchief to his face while he rehearsed the story he was making up to the two young officers. It was a yarn all about the supposed Madame Geoffroy’s travels in search of her husband, and her delight when she heard he was one of the officers of the Bouchain garrison;and, of course, she would be told by somebody that there was no such officer in the garrison, and then she was to give a screech and fall over, and I was to catch her and beg her to control herself. Oh, it was as good as play-acting! Often, when I have thought of that adventure, and have remembered how my lord looked then and how he looks now—so serious and grave, and as if he never played a prank in his life—I could hardly persuade myself it was the same man. Well, Mr. Washington, after we had got it all straight, one dark August night we ran the sentries—that is, we slipped past them in the dark. They thought we were deserters, although why anybody should desert from our camp, where we had both victuals and drink in plenty, to go to Bouchain, where they had neither, nobody could make out. However, we heard the shots cracking behind us as we managed to pick our way through the morass, and truly, sir, I think we were in more danger of our lives while crossing that morass in the dark between the English and French lines than at any other time. It was terrible work, but we managed to get to a solid piece of ground, covered with underbrush, where our outfit was concealed. Luckily we had to conceal our clothes, for we were covered with black mud, and we had a time scraping it off ourhands and faces. At last, though, after half an hour’s hard work there in the swamp, we were dressed. We then had to steal about a mile off, through the undergrowth, to the right of the French lines. This would have been easy enough for us except for my lord’s toggery, but the little rents and stains we got upon us gave the more color to the story we had to tell of a long day’s travel and many mishaps on the way.
“After a while, sir, we got out on the open highway, and then we took breath and made for the French sentries. I tied a white handkerchief on to my long stick, and we marched along until we got to the first outpost; and when the sentry levelled his piece and asked us ‘Who goes there?’ my lord advanced and said, in a woman’s voice, ‘A distressed lady.’ The night was dark, but the sentry could see it was a lady, and then my lord said, ‘I am Madame Geoffrey, the wife of a French officer, and I desire you to bring the officer of the guard to me at once.’ That sounded straight enough, so the soldier took a little whistle from his belt and whistled, and pretty quickly a smart young lieutenant stepped up.
“The supposed Madame Geoffrey had then sunk upon the ground, pretending to be almost fainting with fatigue, and after this, Mr. Washington, I will make bold to call my lord Madame Geoffroyduring the whole of this adventure; for nobody thought he was anything but a woman, and sometimes I had to rub my eyes and ask if I wasn’t really named Jacques, and Madame Geoffroy and her big hoop and her lost husband weren’t real.
“The Frenchmen are monstrous polite, as you know, sir, and when the lieutenant saw a lady sighing and moaning on the ground he took off his hat and bowed low, and asked what he could do for her.
“‘Let me see the commandant of the garrison for only one moment!’ cried Madame Geoffroy, clasping her hands. ‘My husband—my poor, brave husband! Oh, sir, have some pity on a distracted woman, who has travelled nearly seven hundred leagues in search of her husband.’
“‘Was your husband an officer in Marshal Villars’s army, madame,’ asked the lieutenant, bowing again.
“‘He was—and is, I hope,’ said madame. ‘He was one of the King’s Musketeers, but was taken prisoner at Oudenarde, and on being exchanged he joined Montbrasin’s regiment because it was on the frontier; and since that day, a year ago, I have been unable to find any trace of him. I have strong hopes he is living, for I have no proof that he is dead; and knowing that ColonelMontbrasin is the commandant of the garrison of Bouchain, I have made my way here, with incredible difficulty, even through the English lines.’ Now this was really a very clever speech, for the King’s Musketeers was a crack regiment, being the Grand Monarque’s own body-guard, and no man was admitted into it unless he was of the best blood of France. So the lieutenant thought Madame Geoffroy was a great lady.
“‘Madame,’ said he, ‘it is not in my power to promise you an interview with the commandant, but I will conduct you with pleasure to my superior officer, who commands the main entrance to the town.’
“At that madame jumped up so sprightly and started to walk so fast that I was afraid the lieutenant would suspect her. But that is just like the French, Mr. Washington. One minute they are in the dolly dumps, so that you would think they could not live, and the next they are capering about, and laughing and singing as if they never had the dolly dumps in their lives. Off we set for the main gate. We walked along the intrenchments, and I kept my eyes open, and in spite of the half-darkness I saw a good many things that they would rather we hadn’t seen. Their works were in a bad way, and our siege-guns had done their duty.
“Arrived at the gate-house the young lieutenant asked for the officer in command—Captain Saussier. So Captain Saussier came out, and madame went through all her story again. The captain ogled her, and it was all I could do to keep my countenance when I saw that the captain and the lieutenant were trying to cut one another out. They made no bones at all of taking her to see the commandant, particularly as she said she did not wish to stay, except until daylight the next morning, for in a besieged town they don’t want any non-combatants to eat up the provender. But although they were willing enough for her to go in, they refused to let me. She made no objection to this, which surprised me; but in a moment she fell into one of those fits we had rehearsed for the commandant’s benefit, when he should tell her, as we knew he would, that he had never seen or heard of her husband. I came forward then with smelling-salts, and presently she revived. That scared the officers a little, for the bravest officer in the world would rather be out of the way when a woman begins to cry and kick and scream. As soon as they led her towards the gate she had another fit, and as good a fit as I ever saw in my life, sir. Then I came running, of course, with the smelling-salts. The captainevidently did not want her on his hands entirely as long as she was in that condition, so he said perhaps—ahem!—it might be better to take her servant along.
“‘Oh, my good, faithful Jacques!’ cried she. ‘It would be a great comfort if I could have him with me in this trying time!’ So they passed me in the gates along with her.
“She never stopped chattering for a moment while she was walking through the streets with the captain, telling a long rigmarole about her travels; but she used her eyes as well as I used mine. The town was horribly knocked to pieces—houses falling down, the streets encumbered with rubbish, and several breaches made in the walls. They had managed to repair the breaches after a fashion, for the French understand fortifications better than we do; but there was no doubt, from what we saw in that walk at nine o’clock at night, that the town and fortifications had suffered terribly. And there were no women or children to be seen, which showed that they had sent them all away, for some will remain in a besieged town as long as there is anything to feed them on.
“When we reached the citadel we noticed there were not near enough cannon to defend it; so we knew that they had been forced to take theguns to place on the ramparts. At last, after going through many long passages and winding stairs, we were ushered into the commandant’s presence. He was a tall, soldierly looking man, and he received madame very politely. The captain told the story of her tremendous efforts to get there and her trouble, madame all the time sighing and weeping. But here came in a frightful thing, sir. There had been a Captain Geoffroy, an officer in Marshal Villars’s army, and I felt myself turning pale when the commandant offered to let madame remain in the town twenty-four hours until he could find out something about this Geoffroy. But madame’s wit saved her.
“‘Pray,’ said she, clasping her hands, ‘what was this M. Geoffroy like?’
“‘Tall,’ said the commandant, ‘with a swarthy skin and black hair.’
“‘Ah,’ cried she, muffling her face in her handkerchief, ‘it could not have been my husband. He was short, and had light hair, and had lost a part of his right ear in a duel; it disfigured him very much.’
“‘Then, madame,’ answered the commandant, ‘I can give you no further information, for that is the only Geoffroy in the army of whom I know anything, and from your description hecannot be your husband. I will make inquiries among my officers, but I can give you but little hope.’
“Madame sighed and groaned some more, and then said she would be ready to depart at daylight in the morning, to begin her search over again. The commandant offered her a room in the citadel, warning her that it would be necessary for her to get out before daybreak, as the English began their cannonade as soon as it was light enough to see the French lines. Madame agreed tearfully to this, and the commandant offered her some supper, smiling when he told her it was not exactly the kind of fare he was used to offering ladies. But she declined—we had not the heart to eat up anything from those poor devils. So she was shown to a room, and I lay down at the door and pretended to sleep; but you may depend upon it, sir, that neither one of us slept a wink. Towards daylight the captain of the guard came to waken us, and told us it was time to leave. The commandant was up to bid madameadieu, as they call it in the French lingo; and after thanking him for his politeness madame was escorted to the gate, I following her, and thence as far as the picket-line. And here, after the officer had left us, for the first time we aroused suspicion. We were walkingpretty fast, and something in the supposed lady’s gait made the sentry suspect us. There was another soldier, not a sentry, with him, and this fellow called after us to stop. We were near the entrance to the bog then, and we knew the way across it, particularly as there was now daylight enough to see, so the only notice we took of him was to walk a little faster. The soldier followed us clear into the underbrush, when my lord—for so I will call him now—deliberately dropped his hoop and petticoat, revealing a pair of legs that evidently belonged to the British army, and a rapier, while from the waist up he wore a woman’s sack, and had a hood on his head. The apparition dazed the soldier for a moment, when my lord made at him with the rapier, and he turned and ran, giving the alarm, however. We took to our heels and gained the causeway, when the French fired a regular fusillade after us, although not a shot struck; and our own people, seeing us running towards them, thought we were escaped prisoners, and we got within our own lines without trouble. My lord had some valuable information to give the duke, and the adventure got out in the army and made a hero of him. The French kept monstrous quiet about it; you see, sir, we had taken the commandant himself in. My lord repaid his politeness,though, by sending him a box of wine, which we knew he needed for his sick; but the commandant was the most chagrined man in the French army. They made a sortie soon after that, but it did them no good, and within a week they surrendered. The duke granted them all the honors of war, and the garrison marched out with drums beating and colors flying. They had made a gallant defence, and had not surrendered until they were starving. That was the end of my serving with the great Duke of Marlborough, for that was his last campaign. And soon after my lord left the army. And I’ll be leaving his service by the toe of his boot if I don’t go to him now; so good-night, sir, and excuse me if I have kept you out of bed too long.”
With this Lance disappeared.
In a few minutes George was in bed, and for the first time a sudden shock of homesickness came to him. His mother would not come to him that night and kiss his forehead, as she always did. It almost drove away the story of the siege of Bouchain; but in a little while he had lapsed into a sleep, in which dreams came of Bouchain, and the earl dressed up as Madame Geoffroy, and his mother sitting by the fire smiling, and Betty playing on the harpsichord, and then deep oblivion and the soundest of sleep.