“These lobsters!” said Midshipman Bracegirdle.
The scarlet lines stood rigid, all five companies, the sergeants with their halberds indicating the intervals — from halberd to halberd the line of faces dipped down and then up again, with the men exactly sized off, the tallest men at the flanks and the shortest men in the centre of each company. Not a finger moved, not an eyebrow twitched. Down every back hung rigidly a powdered pigtail.
The mounted officer trotted down the line to where the naval party waited, and Lieutenant Bolton, in command, stepped forward with his hand to his hat rim.
“My men are ready to embark, sir,” said the army officer. “The baggage will be here immediately.”
“Aye aye, major,” said Bolton — the army title and the navy reply in strange contrast.
“It would be better to address me as ‘My lord’,” said the major.
“Aye aye, sir — my lord,” replied Bolton, caught quite off his balance.
His Lordship, the Earl of Edrington, major commanding this wing of the 43rd Foot, was a heavily built young man in his early twenties. He was a fine soldierly figure in his well-fitting uniform, and mounted on a magnificent charger, but he seemed a little young for his present responsible command. But the practice of the purchase of commissions was liable to put very young men in high command, and the Army seemed satisfied with the system.
“The French auxiliaries have their orders to report here,” went on Lord Edrington. “I suppose arrangements have been made for their transport as well?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Not one of the beggars can speak English, as far as I can make out. Have you got an officer to interpret?”
“Yes, sir. Mr Hornblower!”
“Sir!”
“You will attend to the embarkation of the French troops.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
More military music — Hornblower’s tone-deaf ear distinguished it as making a thinner noise than the British infantry band — heralded the arrival of the Frenchmen farther down the quay by a side road, and Hornblower hastened there. This was the Royal, Christian, and Catholic French Army, or a detachment of it at least — a battalion of the force raised by the emigre French nobles to fight against the Revolution. There was the white flag with the golden lilies at the head of the column, and a group of mounted officers to whom Hornblower touched his hat. One of them acknowledged his salute.
“The Marquis of Pouzauges, Brigadier General in the service of His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVII,” said this individual in French by way of introduction. He wore a glittering white uniform with a blue ribbon across it.
Stumbling over the French words, Hornblower introduced himself as an aspirant of his Britannic Majesty’s Marine, deputed to arrange the embarkation of the French troops.
“Very good,” said Pouzauges. “We are ready.”
Hornblower looked down the French column. The men were standing in all attitudes, gazing about them. They were all well enough dressed, in blue uniforms which Hornblower guessed had been supplied by the British government, but the white crossbelts were already dirty, the metalwork tarnished, the arms dull. Yet doubtless they could fight.
“Those are the transports allotted to your men, sir,” said Hornblower, pointing. “The Sophia will take three hundred, and the Dumbarton — that one over there — will take two hundred and fifty. Here at the quay are the lighters to ferry the men out.”
“Give the orders, M. de Moncoutant,” said Pouzauges to one of the officers beside him.
The hired baggage carts had now come creaking up along the column, piled high with the men’s kits, and the column broke into chattering swarms as the men hunted up their possessions. It was some time before the men were reassembled, each with his own kit-bag; and then there arose the question of detailing a fatigue party to deal with the regimental baggage, and the men who were given the task yielded up their bags with obvious reluctance to their comrades, clearly in despair of ever seeing any of the contents again. Hornblower was still giving out information.
“All horses must go to the Sophia,” he said. “She has accommodation for six chargers. The regimental baggage —”
He broke off short, for his eye had been caught by a singular jumble of apparatus lying in one of the carts.
“What is that, if you please?” he asked, curiosity overpowering him.
“That, sir,” said Pouzauges, “is a guillotine.”
“A guillotine?”
Hornblower had read much lately about this instrument. The Red Revolutionaries had set one up in Paris and kept it hard at work. The King of France, Louis XVI himself, had died under it. He did not expect to find one in the train of a counter-revolutionary army.
“Yes,” said Pouzauges, “we take it with us to France. It is in my mind to give those anarchists a taste of their own medicine.”
Hornblower did not have to make reply, fortunately, as a bellow from Bolton interrupted the conversation.
“What the hell’s all this delay for, Mr Hornblower? D’you want us to miss the tide?”
It was of course typical of life in any service that Hornblower should be reprimanded for the time wasted by the inefficiency of the French arrangements — that was the sort of thing he had already come to expect, and he had already learned that it was better to submit silently to reprimand than to offer excuses. He addressed himself again to the task of getting the French aboard their transports. It was a weary midshipman who at last reported himself to Bolton with his tally sheets and the news that the last Frenchman and horse and pieces of baggage were safely aboard, and he was greeted with the order to get his things together quickly and transfer them and himself to the Sophia, where his services as interpreter were still needed.
The convoy dropped quickly down Plymouth Sound, rounded the Eddystone, and headed down channel, with H.M.S. Indefatigable flying her distinguishing pennant, the two gun-brigs which had been ordered to assist in convoying the expedition, and the four transports — a small enough force, it seemed to Hornblower, with which to attempt the overthrow of the French republic. There were only eleven hundred infantry; the half battalion of the 43rd and the weak battalion of Frenchmen (if they could be called that, seeing that many of them were soldiers of fortune of all nations) and although Hornblower had enough sense not to try to judge the Frenchmen as they lay in rows in the dark and stinking ‘tweendecks in the agonies of seasickness he was puzzled that anyone could expect results from such a small force. His historical reading had told him of many small raids, in many wars, launched against the shores of France, and although he knew that they had once been described by an opposition statesman as ‘breaking windows with guineas’ he had been inclined to approve of them in principle, as bringing about a dissipation of the French strength — until now, when he found himself part of such an expedition.
So it was with relief that he heard from Pouzauges that the troops he had seen did not constitute the whole of the force to be employed — were indeed only a minor fraction of it. A little pale with seasickness, but manfully combating it, Pouzauges laid out a map on the cabin table and explained the plan.
“The Christian Army,” explained Ponzauges, “will land here, at Quiberon. They sailed from Portsmouth — these English names are hard to pronounce — the day before we left Plymouth. There are five thousand men under the Baron de Charette. They will march on Vannes and Rennes.”
“And what is your regiment to do?” asked Hornblower.
Pouzauges pointed to the map again.
“Here is the town of Muzillac,” he said. Twenty leagues from Quiberon. Here the main road from the south crosses the river Marais, where the tide ceases to flow. It is only a little river, as you see, but its banks are marshy, and the road passes it not only by a bridge but by a long causeway. The rebel armies are to the south, and on their northward march must come by Muzillac. We shall be there. We shall destroy the bridge and defend the crossing, delaying the rebels long enough to enable M. de Charette to raise all Brittany. He will soon have twenty thousand men in arms, the rebels will come back to their allegiance, and we shall march on Paris to restore His Most Christian Majesty to the throne.”