Читать книгу The History of the British Army - J. W. Fortescue - Страница 16

Table of Contents

1600.

So far I have abstained from any attempt to describe the military operations of the States, or even the brilliant little enterprises of Vere himself, since his assumption of the command: but at this point, when we enter upon the palmy days of the English in Holland, it is worth while to be more precise. So far Maurice had occupied himself principally with the task of recovering the towns occupied by the Spaniards within the seven provinces;[139] the States-General in the year 1600 resolved upon the bold step of carrying the war into the enemy's country. Ostend, which was held by the Queen of England, was to be the base of operations, and the design was to land a force on the Flemish coast and besiege first Nieuport, to the west of Ostend, and afterwards Dunkirk. Maurice and Vere both thought the enterprise hazardous in the extreme, but they were overruled by the civilians. A force of twelve thousand infantry, sixteen hundred cavalry and ten guns was assembled at Flushing, and a fleet was collected to transport it to its destination. The army was organised in the three familiar divisions, vanguard, battle, and rearguard, of which the rearguard under Sir Francis Vere consisted of sixteen hundred English veterans, two thousand five hundred Frisians, two hundred and fifty of Prince Maurice's body-guard, and ten cornets of horse, making in all four thousand five hundred men. With Vere were men whose names through themselves or through their successors were to become famous—Sir Edward Cecil, Sir Charles Fairfax, Captain Holles, and others. In another division of the army was a regiment of Scots under Sir William Edmunds, which had recently been recruited to the high strength of one hundred and fifty men to each company. English and Scots already loved to fight side by side.

The force embarked on the 21st of June, but being delayed by calms landed short of Nieuport, marched overland, capturing the fort of Oudenburg on the way, and on the 1st of July was before Nieuport. The Spanish commander, the Archduke Albert, no sooner heard what was going forward than he at once concentrated his army at Ghent for an immediate advance; and Maurice, who was busily preparing for the siege of Nieuport, was surprised by the sudden intelligence that his little garrison at Oudenburg had been overwhelmed, and that the Spanish forces were in full march for his camp. The situation in which he found himself was now very critical. Expecting no such movement Maurice had divided his forces round Nieuport into two parts, which were cut off from each other by the haven that runs through the town. Though dry at low water this haven was unfordable at high tide, and the bridge which was constructing across it was still unfinished. Worst of all, it was the weakest division of the force, three thousand five hundred men under Ernest of Nassau, that stood on the side of the haven nearest to the enemy; and a battle within twenty-four hours was inevitable.

July 2.

The question therefore arose whether the action should be fought in dispute of the enemy's passage over a stream called the Yser leet which barred the line of his advance, or on the sandy dunes by the sea-shore, where the Spaniards would certainly seek it if the passage were successfully accomplished. Vere was for the former course, and Maurice, thinking the advice good, ordered Count Ernest's division to march straight for the bridge on the Yser leet, saying that he would shortly follow with the rest of the army. Vere protested in vain that this was a perversion of his counsel: either the whole army must march with Count Ernest, or no part of it must move at all; for to send forward a weak division in the hope of delaying the Spanish advance was simply to court defeat. Maurice, however, stuck to his opinion, and at midnight Count Ernest marched off with his division unsupported to the bridge. He arrived too late, for the Spaniards had already secured the passage, and he therefore took up the best position that he could find, behind a dyke, to defend himself as well as he could. The first shot had hardly been fired when his men began to run. It was such a panic as has rarely been matched in the annals of war. Cavalry and infantry, Dutchmen and Scots, threw down their arms, took to their heels and fled like swine possessed of devils into the sea. The Scotch officers of Sir William Edmunds' regiment strove to rally the fugitives, but in vain: they were cut down one after another, and the men that escaped death by lead or steel were swallowed up literally in the waves. Two thousand five hundred men, including a thousand massacred at Oudenburg, were thus lost, and Maurice had now to face his enemy with a weakened army and with his retreat barred by the haven behind him. Defeat would mean not only annihilation but the undoing of all the work of the rebellion. With superb courage he ordered his fleet of transports to sea, and staked all on the hazard of the coming battle.

Meanwhile Vere, whose division had this day the place of the vanguard, had moved at daybreak down to the bank of the haven and was waiting for the ebb-tide to cross it, when the news came that the Archduke's army was in full march along the sea-shore. As soon as the tide permitted he forded the haven with all haste, not allowing the men to strip, for, as he said, by nightfall they would have dry clothes or want none. Presently he came in sight of the enemy, ten thousand foot, sixteen hundred horse and six guns, moving along the flat sands of the sea-shore. The space between the sea and the enclosed country was broken up into three descriptions of ground running parallel one to another; next the sea was the narrow plain of the strand between high- and low-water mark, next the strand were the broken hillocks of the sand-dunes, and between the dunes and the enclosed land ran a margin of unbroken green, called by Vere the Greenway. Vere lost no time in taking up a position at the narrowest point that he could find, distributing his division skilfully among the hillocks to repel an advance through the dunes, and posting two guns, by Maurice's order, to command the Greenway. To his right rear stood the battle or second division, one thousand strong, and in rear of the battle the third division of rather more than two thousand men. The army was thus formed in echelon of three lines with the right refused, its left resting in the sea, its right on the enclosed land.

Weak in cavalry, the Spaniards halted till the rising tide had covered all but thirty yards of the strand, and then moved the whole of their horse to the Greenway and of their infantry into the dunes. Maurice likewise withdrew his cavalry from the shore and massed it in columns on the Greenway, leaving but two troops, both of them English, still standing on the beach. For two whole hours of a beautiful summer's afternoon the two armies waited each for the other to advance, and at last, at half-past two, the Spaniards began to move. Vere, taking every possible advantage of the sandhills to protect and conceal his men, had thrust forward small parties to contest every inch of ground; and it was against the foremost of these, two and fifty English and fifty Frisians, that the first attack of five hundred of the flower of the Spanish infantry was directed. Meanwhile the Spanish cavalry moved forward along the Greenway. This cavalry, disordered by the fire of Vere's two guns and galled in flank by a detachment of his musketeers, soon gave way before the cavalry of the States; but the struggle of the infantry in the van was very severe. The first attack of the Spanish vanguard was repulsed, but being quickly reinforced it moved forward again and the fight then became desperate. For a time the battle seems to have resolved itself into a furious contest for the possession of a single sandhill, round which, as round the two-gun-battery at Inkermann, both sides fought madly hand to hand, each alternately repelling and repelled, till at last this "bloody morsel," as Vere called it, was finally carried by the English.

The Archduke without delay brought up his centre in line with his vanguard, and essayed to force his way through Vere's right. The columns were met by a murderous fire from a party of musketeers which had been posted by Vere to check any such movement, and were driven back; and then the whole strength of the Spanish attack was concentrated once more upon Vere's main position. Husbanding his strength to the utmost, Vere gradually drew the whole of his English into action and fought on. So far, owing to the skill of his dispositions, little more than half of his force had been engaged, but seeing that they were likely to be overwhelmed by numbers, he sent messengers to summon his reserve of two thousand Frisian infantry, and to beg Maurice to help him with cavalry from his right. Messenger after messenger was despatched without result. Vere went down among his few remaining men, and the little force, cheered by his presence, fought gallantly on and still held the enemy at bay. He was struck by a musket ball in the thigh and by a second in the leg, but he concealed the wounds and held his men together. Yet the expected reinforcements came not, and the English were slowly forced back, still in good order and still showing their teeth, from the dunes on to the beach, the Spaniards following after them, but afraid to press the pursuit. As the English retired, Vere's horse was shot under him and fell, pinning him helpless to the ground. Three of his officers ran up and freed him; and mounted on the crupper behind one of them, he continued calmly to direct the retreat.

Arrived on the sands he found his reserve of Frisians still halted in their original position, having never received orders to move, and with them the two troops of English horse. A charge of the cavalry, supported by two hundred infantry under Horace Vere, soon swept the Spaniards back into the dunes, and then at last Sir Francis made himself over to the surgeon, while Maurice came forward, cool and unmoved, to save the day. The Spaniards now massed two thousand infantry together for a further advance, while the English officers, weary with fighting and parched with heat and sand, exerted themselves to rally their men. The English were quickly reformed, so quickly that the Spaniards, who had sent forward a party to disperse them, promptly withdrew it at the sight of Horace Vere returning with his two hundred men from the beach. Maurice saw the movement and exclaimed joyfully, "Voyez les Anglais qui tournent à la charge." He at once ordered up the cavalry from the right under Sir Edward Cecil; and meanwhile Horace Vere and his brother officers hastily decided that their only chance was at once to charge the two thousand Spaniards with their handful of men. They rushed desperately down upon them; the Spaniards, worn out by a long march and hard fighting, gave way, and Maurice catching the supreme moment launched Cecil's troopers into the thick of them. A second charge disposed of the Spanish horse; Maurice ordered a general advance, and the battle was won. Three thousand Spaniards were killed outright; six hundred more with all their guns and one hundred and twenty colours were captured. On the side of the States the loss fell almost wholly on the English. Of their captains eight were killed, and but two came out of the field unhurt; of the sixteen hundred men eight hundred were killed and wounded. They with the Frisians had borne the brunt of the action, and Maurice gave them credit for it. So ended the fight of Nieuport,[140] the dying struggle of the once famous Spanish soldier, and the first great day of the new English infantry.

1601.

July 9.

Next year the Archduke Albert sought revenge for his defeat by the investment of the one stronghold of the United Provinces in Flanders, the little fortified fishing-town of Ostend. The garrison had made itself so obnoxious to the surrounding country that the States of Flanders petitioned the Archduke to stamp out the pestilent little fortress once for all; and hence it was that in the following years the principal operations grouped themselves around the siege. The Archduke's army consisted of twenty thousand men with fifty siege-guns; the garrison of barely six thousand men, half English and half Dutch, of which fifteen hundred English, all dressed in red cassocks, were a reinforcement just imported from across the sea. Francis Vere was in supreme command, and his brother Horace commanded a regiment under him.

I shall not weary the reader with details of Vere's skill and resource in improving the defences of the town, or of the incessant encounters that took place during the first weeks of the siege. The Spanish fire was so hot and the losses of the besieged so heavy that the garrison was fairly worn out with the work. Vere was dangerously wounded in the head within the first three weeks and compelled to throw up the command until restored to health, and at the close of the first month hardly a red cassock of the fifteen hundred was to be seen, every man being wounded or dead. Nevertheless, the sea being always open to the besieged, fresh men and supplies could always be poured into the town to repair the waste. Two thousand English, for a wonder well equipped and apparelled, were the first to arrive, and were followed by a contingent, of French and Scots. They too went down with terrible rapidity. The town was but five hundred yards across, and the Spanish batteries were built within musket-shot of the defences. Hardly a house was left standing, and the garrison was compelled to burrow underground as the only refuge from the incessant rain of missiles. The winter set in with exceptional rigour, the defenders dwindled to a bare nine hundred effective men, and at Christmas Vere, in the face of foul winds and failing supplies, was compelled to resort to a feigned parley to gain time. By a fortunate change of wind four hundred men were able to enter the harbour and recruit the exhausted garrison.

1602.

So far the Spaniards had fired one hundred and sixty-three thousand cannon-shot into the town, and they now decided on a general assault. On the 7th of January Vere received intelligence of the coming attack, and, though his force was far too weak to defend the full extent of his works, made every preparation to repel it. Firkins of ashes, barrels bristling with tenterhooks, stones, hoops, brickbats, clubs, what not, were stored on the ramparts, and at high tide the water was dammed up into the ditch. At nightfall the Spanish columns fell on the devoted town at all points. They were met by a shower of every description of missile; flaming hoops were cast round their necks, ashes flung in their eyes, brickbats hurled in their faces; and storm as they might they could gain no footing. Thrice they returned to the assault, and thrice they were beaten back, and at last they retired, sullen and furious, for the tide was rising, and on one side they could advance to the town only by a passage which was not fordable at high water. Vere opened the sluices of the ditch as they retreated, and the rush of water swept scores if not hundreds of them out to sea. The Spanish loss was two thousand men; that of the garrison did not exceed one hundred and thirty.

1603–1604.

I shall not further follow this memorable siege. Vere and his brother Horace left the town worn almost to death in March 1602, but still the defence was maintained. Reinforcements from England came in by hundreds and by thousands. Rogues, vagabonds, idle, dissolute, and masterless persons were impressed impartially together with men of honesty and reputation, clapped into red or blue cassocks and shipped across to Ostend. Volunteers of noble and of humble birth, some in search of instruction, some with a thirst for excitement, hurried likewise to the siege, and Ostend became one of the sights of Europe. Governor after governor, gallant Dutchmen all of them, came to take command. Three of them were killed outright, but still the defence continued, until at last on the 13th of September 1604 the heap of ruins which marked the site of Ostend was surrendered into the generous hands of Spinola. The siege had lasted three years and ten weeks, and had cost the lives of one hundred and twenty thousand men.

Before the town fell the campaigns of Francis Vere were ended. In 1602 he accompanied Maurice to the siege of Grave, where he was once more dangerously wounded, and in the summer of 1604 he retired from the service of the States, from whom he deservedly received a pension for his life. In the very same year King James the First made a treaty with the Archdukes of the Spanish Netherlands, which left the Dutch patriots henceforth to fight their battles by themselves; but nations like the English and Scotch are not bound by the decisions of such a creature as James. The British troops not only remained in the service of the State but grew and multiplied exceedingly, and Francis Vere, who had made their service honourable and given their efforts distinction, could feel that his work was well done. A few short years of rest closed a life that was shortened by hardship and wounds; and on the 28th of August, 1609, within four months of the signing of the truce which gave breathing time to the exhausted combatants of the Dutch war, the old soldier died peacefully in his house in London. His tomb in Westminster Abbey is admired by thousands who know not one of his actions, but surely it is no derogation to art to remember that the recumbent marble effigy, and the four noble figures that kneel around it are those not of conventional heroes, but of honest English fighting men, typical of many thousands who perished in the cause of Dutch freedom and lie buried and forgotten in the blood-stained soil of the Netherlands.

1619.

The twelve years' truce gave the English regiments a rest which, though not wholly unbroken, left some of the more daring spirits free for other adventure. The cause of the Elector Frederick, a prince less interesting to the English as the Winter King than as the husband of their favourite Princess Elizabeth, called Horace Vere and many another gallant gentleman with four thousand good soldiers into the Palatinate, where however their bravery could not avail to save them from inevitable failure. King James of course had no part in the venture; so far from moving a finger in aid of the Protestant cause in Germany, he even conspired secretly with Spain for a partition of the Netherlands, which was to be effected by the English troops in the Dutch service, the very men who had made the cause of the United Provinces their own and had carried it through the perils of Nieuport and Ostend. It is hardly surprising that such a man should, not indeed without searching of heart but without stirring a hand, have suffered Germany to drift into the Thirty Years War.

1621.

1624.

1625–1637.

The lapse of the twelve years' truce found a large contingent of English under the command of Sir Edward Cecil attached to the army of Prince Maurice; and three years later the final breach of England with Spain increased its number from six to twelve thousand, and in 1625 even to seventeen thousand men. It would be tedious to follow them through the operations of the ensuing campaigns; it must suffice to call attention to the rise of men who were to become famous in later days and thus bridge over by a few stepping-stones the connection of the British army with the old Dutch schools of war. The first names are those of Philip Skippon, whom we find wounded before Breda in 1625, and of Captain John Cromwell, a kinsman of the great Oliver, who was also wounded in the same action. Coming next to the siege of Bois le Duc in 1629 we find the list far longer—Lord Doncaster, Lord Fielding, who trailed a pike in Cecil's regiment, Lord Craven, a Luttrell, a Bridgeman, a Basset, a Throgmorton, a Fleetwood, a Lambert, a second Cromwell, Thomas Fairfax, Philip Skippon, Jacob Astley, Thomas Culpeper, the veterans Balfour and Sandilands from north of the Tweed, and many more. Lastly, at the siege of Breda in 1637 we see Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice, sons of the Winter King, as forward in the trenches as any needy cadet could be, working side by side with Philip Skippon, Lord Warwick, and George Goring. Of these Skippon and Goring divided the honours of the siege. Skippon at a post of extreme danger drove off two hundred Spaniards at push of pike with thirty English; he was struck by five bullets on helmet and corselet and at last shot through the neck, but he merely sat down for ten minutes and returned to his work until recalled by the Prince of Orange. Goring in the extreme advanced sap paid extra wages from his own pocket to any who would work with him, and remained there while two-and-twenty men were shot down round him, until at last he was compelled to retire by a bullet in the ankle. Meanwhile fresh volunteers kept pouring in—Herbert, son of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Sir Faithful Fortescue of the King's cavalry in Ireland, Sir Charles Slingsby, with many more, and lastly Captain George Monk of Potheridge in Devon, one day to be the first colonel of the Coldstream Guards, and even now distinguished by peculiar bravery.

There they were, brave English gentlemen, all wearing the scarf of orange and blue, fighting side by side with the pupils of Francis Vere, learning their work for the days when they should be divided into Cavaliers and Roundheads and flying at each other's throats. It was a merry life enough, though with plenty of grim earnest. Before each relief marched off for the night to the trenches it drew off in parado[141] to the quarters of the colonel in command, heard prayers, sang a psalm and so went to its work; but though there was a preacher to every regiment and a sermon in the colonel's tent, there was no compulsion to attend, and there were few listeners except a handful of well-disposed persons.[142] It was to be a very different matter with some of them ten years later, but that they could not foresee; and in truth we find among the gentlemen volunteers some very familiar types. One of them arrived with eighteen suits of clothes, got drunk immediately on landing and remained drunk, hiccuping "thy pot or mine," for the rest of his stay. It is not difficult to understand why this gentleman was sent to the wars. Another, Ensign Duncombe, came for a different reason; he had fallen in love with a girl, who though worthy of him was not approved of by his parents. So he too was sent out to forget her, as such foolish boys must be; and he became a great favourite and did well. But unluckily he could not forget; so one day he sat down and wrote two letters, one full of passion to his beloved, and another full of duty to his father, and having done so, addressed the passionate epistle, as is the way of such poor blundering boys, to his father and the dutiful one to the lady. And so it came about that some weeks later the regiment was horrified to hear that young Duncombe had shot himself; and there was an ensign the less in the Low Countries and a broken heart the more in England, sad silence at the officers' table and much morbid discussion of the incident in the ranks. It is such trifles as these that recall to us that these soldiers of old times were really living creatures of flesh and blood.

The men too were learning their business with all the elaborate exercise of musket and of pike, and familiarising themselves with the innumerable words of command and with the refinements in the execution of the same. The pikeman learned by interminable directions to handle his weapon with the better grace, and listened to such cautions as the following. "Now at the word Order your pikes, you place the butt end of your pike by the outside of your right foot, your right hand holding it even with your eye and your thumb right up; then your left arm being set akimbo by your side you shall stand with a full body in a comely posture." The musketeer too grasped that the minutest motion must be executed by word of command. Stray grains of powder spilled around the pan disappeared at the word Blow off your loose corns, sometimes by a puff or two sometimes by a "sudden strong blast," but always in accordance with regulation. At the word Give fire again he learned the supreme importance of "gently pressing the trigger without starting or winking," and soon revived the old English reputation, first won by the archers, for fine marksmanship. An eye-witness records with delight that after each shot they would lean on their rests and look for the result as coolly as though they had been so many fowlers watching for the fall of their bird. Lastly, they learned a new feat, untaught in any drill-book, with which this section may fitly be closed. Pikemen and musketeers were drawn up in line, every pike with a wisp of straw at its head, and every musket loaded with powder only; and at the word every wisp was kindled and every musket fired in rapid succession. The volley met with a stop at first, to use the words of our authority, as was perhaps natural at a first attempt, but eventually it ran well; and thus was fired before Bois le Duc in the year 1629 the first feu de joie that is recorded of the British Army.[143]

Authorities.—The chief sources of information for the actions of the British in the Low Countries are the histories of Meteren, Grimeston and Commelyn; Roger Williams's Actions of the Low Countries; Hexham; Vere's Commentaries; the Leicester Correspondence (Camden Society); the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic and Foreign Series; and the Holland Papers in the Record Office. These last, consisting of several scores of portfolios of manuscript documents, I cannot pretend to have studied exhaustively. Sir Clements Markham's Fighting Veres and Mr. Dalton's Life of Lord Wimbledon are the best modern books on the subject, and I wish to acknowledge to the full my obligation to them. Hexham's Principles of the Art Military is the best authority for the Dutch system of drill. The Tactics of Ælian, translated with commentary by Captain John Bingham, 1616, is also valuable. Last, but not least, the reader will supply for himself the familiar name of Motley.