‘Should you like some more soup, sir?’ asked the servant.
‘Oh go away, Wallop,’ cried Lord Barmouth: the whole table had in fact been listening closely to Roche’s account, by far the most informed and authoritative they had yet heard.
‘Sir,’ went on Lord Barmouth, as Wallop vanished, ‘may I beg you to place a bottle or two, or some pieces of bread, in the vital places, so that we mere sailors can follow the manoeuvres?’
‘Of course,’ said Roche, seizing a basket of rolls. ‘This is just a rough approximation, but it gives the general sense – Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, the emperor’s centre right over on that side of the table, the Paris wood and some other woods beyond it at Lord Barmouth’s end. Now this piece of bread is Hougoumont, and upon the rise stood the base of a ruined mill: I was on top of it, gazing at the general array, sweeping the countryside with my glass, and I saw a curious movement at the edge of the woods by Chapelle Saint-Lambert: a dark mass, a dark blueish mass – a Prussian blue. I counted the formations as soberly as I could and then leapt down. I said, ‘By your leave, sir: at least one Prussian corps is advancing from Saint-Lambert, some five miles away.’ This was at about half-past four. The Duke nodded, took my glass and directed it at the emperor: within a few minutes French staff-officers were galloping in various directions.
Cavalry squadrons and some infantry left their positions, moving in the direction of the Prussians; while within a very short time Marshal Ney attacked the Allied centre. But his men failed to storm La Haye Sainte and two of Lord Uxbridge’s cavalry brigades rode right over them, capturing two eagles, but paying heavily when fresh enemy squadrons took them in the flank.’
‘Pray, sir,’ asked Mr. Wright, a scientific gentleman, ‘what are eagles, in this sense?’
‘Why, sir, they are much the same as colours with us – a disgrace to lose, a triumph to win.’
‘Thank you, sir, thank you. I do hope I have not checked your flow – that would be a catastrophe.’
Roche bowed, and went on, ‘Then Ney was required to attack La Haye Sainte again: after a most shocking cannonade the Allies withdrew for better cover. The French mistook this for a genuine retreat and launched forty-three squadrons of cavalry. But on this uphill, yielding ground the horses could do no more than trot, and their riders found the Allied infantry formed in impenetrable squares: they were swept by gunfire and the Allied cavalry drove them down the slope. But now the French cuirassiers and the Imperial Guard cavalry were sent forward, their retreating friends falling in behind them – eighty squadrons in all. Eighty squadrons, sir! It was the most furious attack imaginable: such fighting I have never seen. But they could not break the Allied squares: and at last they too were driven down the hill. And now Billow engaged the forces Napoleon had sent against him – this was about a quarter to five – at first with some success, taking Placenoit: just by the centrepiece, ma’am. However, reinforcements drove him out, and Napoleon ordered Ney to take La Haye Sainte: this he accomplished, the troops holding it having used up all their ammunition. But the Duke, undisturbed by the loss of his key-position, sent all he could to strengthen the centre; and by this time two other Prussian corps had joined the battle. I will not go into details – I have talked myself hoarse and you almost to death from starvation – yet I will just say that with Zeiten’s Prussian corps coming up, the Duke could move two fresh cavalry brigades from his right wing to strengthen the centre: a point of the very first importance. But now Napoleon attacked with his utmost strength all along the line, sending in the Imperial Guard. They fought with very great courage, but they no longer had enough men. As the Guard fell back, Zeiten’s Prussians drove through part of the French front, right through: and that was the end. Some battalions of the Guard held firm, but then they too had to join the total rout. I do beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said to Isobel Barmouth.
‘Not at all, Colonel, not at all. I thought it perfectly fascinating, all the more so that I could make out the various directions. Thank you very much indeed.’ She gave the attentive Wallop a secret nod, and dinner resumed its stately pace.
When it was over and the men were sitting over their port, the two admirals and Mr. Wright at the top of the table talking eagerly about the problems of scour as it related to the problem of the new mole, Jack said to Roche, ‘I have never had the honour of meeting the Duke of Wellington: surely he must be a very great man?’
‘Yes, he is: and he can say some very fine things, just straight off, like that – not studied.’
‘Could you tell me one or two?’
‘Alas, I have a wretched memory, above all for quotations. In the middle of the night they may come back to me, but not at command. Still, I do remember that as we rode about the field afterwards, and when we had seen the wreck of the Inniskillings’ square and its shocking number of dead, he said to me, “Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained”. And then again, much later, when we were moving down into France, “It has been a damned serious business – Bliicher and I have lost thirty thousand men. It has been a damned nice thing – the nicest-run thing you ever saw in your life … By God! I don’t think it would have done if I had not been there.”‘
There was a longish pause, in which the sailors and the expert talked passionately about the various currents between the European and the African shores and Jack and Roche walked up and down the terrace outside, smoking cheroots. After half a dozen turns
Roche said, ‘Once he also said that his men Were the scum of the earth, or perhaps Mere scum of the earth. That was well before Waterloo: he said it quite often, I believe, and I first had it at second hand. I rather resented the words, forming my judgement from the men I had served with; but I do assure you they came back to my mind, carrying full conviction, on the march back to Paris, escorting the sick and wounded there was no room for in Brussels: the drunkenness, riot, insubordination, theft, looting and open rape –
and we in a nominally friendly country – were utterly sickening. The provost-marshal’s men were very active and they set up the triangles every morning – we use them for flogging, you know – but it did no good, and I was heartily glad to have them all clapped up in the Coligny barracks and to be rid of the whole shooting-match. In the end I came to the conclusion that men subjected to very strong discipline may behave like devils the moment they are released from it. Anyhow, that matches my experience.’
Jack nodded, saying, ‘Yes, yes, I am sure.’ But his tone implied that although the words were quite true of the army, sailors were, upon the whole, of a different nature.
‘Come in, dear Coz,’ called Isobel at the open door, ‘or your coffee will be no more than just tepid.’
On his way up from the dockyard to Lord Barmouth’s house, Jack Aubrey had been aware of a dark, sullen, dogged, ominous cloud at the back of his mind: but in spite of its almost tangible presence he had enjoyed his evening. He was very fond of Queenie and (though in another way) of Isobel. He had thoroughly relished Roche’s account; and even his last microscopic cause for discontent – the lukewarm coffee – had been dispelled by the appearance of a fine strong pot, almost too hot to drink, and then some capital brandy.
But now that he was going down towards the outer batteries, the dockyard and of course the town, the sullen cloud moved to the forefront of his mind, and his spirits sank with the road. In places it had been blasted out of the rock to allow the passage of heavy guns, and in these hollow stretches he was quite sheltered from the breeze and the diffused murmur of the town, though not from its glow, reflected from the high, even cloud.
He had just settled on a boulder in one of these sheltered corners when he found that he had given Roche the last of his cigars: it was a vexation, but only a moderate one, and it turned his mind back to the soldier’s remarks about men being released from strong discipline and their subsequent excess. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The sailor is a different animal.’ He stood up, walked on, and turned out of the cutting on to the plain hill-side, and there the breeze brought him the very powerful, perfectly familiar voice of Higgs. ‘There ain’t no martial law,’ cried the sailor, apparently addressing a fair-sized group in the still unfinished eastern end of the Alameda Gardens. ‘There ain’t no martial law. The war is over. In any case, Surprise ain’t a man-of-war no longer, but a surveying vessel. They can’t do nothing to us. We’ve got our money and we can do what we damned well please. There ain’t no martial law, and we are free.’