“You are 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 a noble 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 fed and
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
lay here”--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’s _ne 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.
[Illustration: 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 made where 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 between
nine 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 would have 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, standing there 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 his uniform 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 our hands 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 Geoffroy during 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 Colonel Montbrasin 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 captain evidently 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 the
guns 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 he cannot 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 madame _adieu_, 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 walking pretty 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.