‘Grenadiers. To me. We’ve got them, boys. Follow up. Follow up. Come on. Follow me.’
Leaving the wounded French dragoons to the tender mercies of the Imperial infantry, the redcoats ran quickly to join Steel and Hansam, pouring pell-mell towards the centre of the fortification. To their left more Austrians were now climbing unhindered over the breastworks. There must, he thought, be a good 500 on the plateau by now. Yet the day was not yet complete. Suddenly, in a clatter of sword and harness, and with a chilling cheer, a squadron of red-coated cavalry swept past their right flank. At their head Steel recognized Lord John Hay. Marlborough was sending in the Scots dragoons. Some said they were the finest horsemen in Europe. Steel watched as their sabres swung and chopped at the heads of the French infantry like tops of barley. The Grenadiers pressed on now too, along the slope and directly into the exposed flank of the main French garrison. Then with a great cheer the entire allied line – the British and Dutch who for nigh on two hours had suffered at the hands of the defenders, broke in over the parapet. And then it was over. The French line simply fell to pieces.
Steel glimpsed a senior French officer – a full General he thought – riding hell for leather down past the ruined fort, towards the town, pursued by five of his aides and a party of British dragoons. Isolated groups of French infantry began to surrender. Some succeeded. Others fell under the unforgiving bayonets of the allied infantry. Steel looked away. He knew what happened in the aftermath of an assault. It was unlike any other battle. No room for gentlemanly conduct here. He watched instead, transfixed, as the allied cavalry and dragoons careered down the reverse slope towards Donauwörth, in pursuit of the French who were dropping anything that might slow their progress: packs, muskets, hats, all were thrown off in the desperate rush for safety. Some of the Frenchmen made it across the single narrow bridge. The less fortunate were forced into the waters of the Danube. Few emerged. He saw horses trampling men into the mud as the cavalry swung their sabres and the allies exacted their murderous revenge. Hansam patted him gently on the back.
‘Well, Jack. I told you I’d see you at the top of the hill, and here we are. You know I am a man of my word.’
‘We did cut it a little fine, don’t you think?’
Hansam smiled, picking langrously at a soot-encrusted fingernail.
‘Oh, I knew we’d do it.’
And so they had. Against all the odds and against all the rules of military logic they had done it. But at a terrible cost. Steel looked back down the hill towards the allied lines where the main body of the army was now preparing to advance. There seemed to be no grass any more. Just a carpet of bodies. Redcoats mostly. Among them men sat nursing wounds and wives and lovers looked for their men. Hansam sneezed and tucked away his snuff handkerchief.
‘I’d better rejoin my men. They look set to chase the Frenchies all the way to Paris.’
As Hansam hurried off to secure the prisoners, Steel found Slaughter kneeling over the dead body of a Grenadier. Pearson. His face looked quite serene, despite the fact that a musket ball had passed into his cheek and blown off the back of his head. The Sergeant spoke quietly.
‘Poor sod. He did bloody well. Saved the lot of us, I reckon. Close thing, Sir, weren’t it?’
‘I never knew a bloodier fight.’
‘Nor me.’
Slaughter paused, pushing the dead boy’s hair away from his brow.
‘Do you think this is how it will be, Mister Steel? The rest of the campaign. The rest of the war?’
‘I do, Jacob. This is how the Duke chooses to make war. This is war without limits. War such as even you and I had not seen until today. As savage and bloody and brutal a war as Europe has seen for nigh on eighty years. Since this place was built.’
Steel kicked the earth wall of the ruined fort. ‘It is not the way that gentlemen like to fight. When that war ended gentlemen drew up rules for the conduct of war designed to prevent such a thing ever happening again. Well, Jacob. Today we threw away the rule book. Now it’s up to men like you and me to make sure that there’s still such a thing as honour on a battlefield.’
‘We have to write our own rules, you mean, Sir?’
‘Our own rules. Yes. That’s it exactly.’
Steel looked down at the broken body of the young Grenadier that lay at his feet. ‘If we must fight in such a way as this, Jacob, then at least let’s do it with honour. God knows this life is short enough. We might as well take pride in what we do.’
He raised his sword and, stooping to pick up a length of neck cloth that lay on the ground, wiped the big blade clean of blood, before sliding it firmly back into the scabbard.
‘And now, Sarn’t, I believe there was the matter of a cask of wine.’
‘Ale, Sir.’
Steel laughed.
‘Ale, Jacob. Find what’s left of the platoon and be sure to tell Mister Hansam where we’re going. I think it’s time to see what the good people of Donauwörth have to offer us.’
General Van Styrum was dead. Cut clean through the skull by a French officer’s sword the moment he reached the ramparts. Goors too had been sent to oblivion with a bullet through his brain and with him a score more of the army’s senior officers. In all six lieutenant-generals were dead, five more wounded, together with four major-generals and twenty-eight brigadiers and colonels.
Steel counted off in his head the names of close on a hundred lieutenants and captains, among them some old friends. Names that now stood as undeniable proof of their death on the hand-written list of officer casualties pinned that morning to one of the beams of the wooden-framed inn which served as temporary officers’ mess for James Ferguson’s Brigade of Marlborough’s army. To Steel’s surprise Mordaunt had survived, though God alone knew how. His element of the Guards had been decimated in throwing itself time and again against the French breastworks until the men had to tread upon piles of their own dead and dying to advance.
The victors’ entry into Donauwörth had not been as easy as they had presumed it might. The French garrison had only abandoned the defences when they realized that the allies’ efforts to bridge the Danube were sure to cut them off from the rest of their army. Then they had run; a pell-mell rattle of a retreat to join the main army. That had been two days ago. The cautious, curious townspeople had welcomed in the British redcoats and allied soldiers, uncertain of their fate and with recent memories of the slaughter of another war fresh in their minds. They needn’t have worried. For the time being even the roughest elements of Marlborough’s army had had enough of killing. Besides, pursuit of the French and Bavarians would be impossible until the engineers had finished their bridges. So the soldiers settled down to a few days of unexpected rest. Most of the officers had managed to secure billets within the private houses of wealthy merchants. For the NCOs and other ranks more humble dwellings or stables and outhouses made comfortable enough barracks. The wounded, who had not been transported by wagon or walked or crawled back to the headquarters camp at Nördlingen while the battle still raged, had been placed in tents outside the city walls, such were their numbers.
Steel knew that a third of them would not survive their horrific wounds. Even now, three days after the fighting, the burial parties were still at work and the bitter-sweet stench of death hung heavy in the air. It was the moment that Steel liked least in any war. That time directly after a battle, when he was as conscious of loss as much as any victory. This was a fallow period when the men might be capable of anything, from drunkenness to desertion – or worse. For those who had survived the attack – officers and other