Before taking up his commission in the Coldstream Guards, Macdonell had served as a captain in the 17th Dragoons. He was comfortable on a horse. Many infantry officers, Francis Hepburn among them, were not. For the march he had chosen a handsome grey who knew him well, beautifully turned out by the grooms. His saddle glowed, and his stirrups sparkled in the sun. In clean overalls, he could almost have been a cavalry officer. At his side he wore his sword encased in a black leather scabbard. It was a fine weapon, given to him by his late father. At almost a yard of straight, pointed steel, with a bone handle covered in fish skin and a heavy brass guard engraved with his initials, it needed a strong man to wield it. James Macdonell was a strong man.
They marched between fields of corn and rye as high as a man’s shoulder. In grassland red and yellow poppies and blue cornflowers danced in the breeze, and in low hedgerows mallows and loosestrife took shelter from the sun. Flat the land might be, but fertile and pretty enough.
Outside the village of Braine-le-Comte the Division halted. They had marched twelve miles in four hours and needed food and rest. Seven men from the 2nd Battalion had already fallen by the wayside and Macdonell did not want to lose more. He had ordered them to be left with sufficient water and instructions to rejoin their companies when they could. If they were malingerers intending to disappear, they would not be missed.
While the men boiled their kettles and ate their beef and biscuit, he trotted back down the line to find General Byng. The further back he went the thicker the dust and the greater the number of men who had succumbed and been left to fend for themselves. Behind them, General Maitland’s 1st Division must have been suffering even more.
He found Byng with Colonel Woodford. ‘I have halted the light companies, sir,’ he reported. ‘Are we to enter the town or await orders?’
‘I wish I knew,’ replied Byng gently. ‘We believe that the Prince of Orange has set up his headquarters in the town but General Cooke has as yet received no orders from him. The general is becoming impatient.’
‘A party has been despatched to find the Prince,’ added Woodford. ‘They should have returned by now.’
‘Shall I return to my battalion, sir?’
‘Might as well stay here until we know more, James,’ replied Byng. ‘How is morale?’
‘It is good, sir, but if we are to fight today, it will be with tired men.’
From the rear of the column, a party of riders trotted towards them. One of them carried the 1st Division’s standard. ‘Ah,’ said Woodford, ‘here is General Cooke.’
Whether mounted or on foot, Major General George Cooke was a man of formidable presence and looked a good deal less than his forty-seven years. Square-jawed and broad-shouldered, he would not have been out of place in a prize fight. He had found time since leaving Brussels to change into his usual black jacket and white breeches. As he approached, he leant forward in his saddle and thundered, ‘Does anyone know what the devil’s going on? Because I certainly do not.’
‘Can the Prince not be found, General?’ asked Byng.
‘No, dammit, he cannot. My scouts report that the Hôtel du Miroir, where he is supposed to be, is deserted. The locals say that men and artillery have been passing through the village all night and the streets, I gather, are still full of them. But not a word from the young frog.’ Prince Willem Frederik van Oranje-Nassau GCB, old Etonian, friend of the Prince Regent and Commander of 1 Corps of the Allied army, was known variously as His Royal Highness, slender Billy or the young frog.
‘Where has he gone, General?’ asked Byng.
‘He and his aides left on the Nivelles road, but whether I’m supposed to follow him or stay here, I am at a loss to know. Two Brigades, four thousand men and equipment, and no orders. It’s as bad as Flanders twenty years ago. What do you recommend, gentlemen?’
Macdonell cleared his throat. ‘If I may, General, if the streets are blocked it will take us some time to get through, but the men need rest. If we are ordered to make haste to Nivelles, it would be better to be on the other side of the town.’
General Cooke stroked his chin. ‘Very well. We will march on through Braine-le-Comte and then rest until noon. By then the Prince might have remembered to send us his orders. If not, we will go on to Nivelles. Proceed, gentlemen.’
At the front of the line, Macdonell found Harry Wyndham drinking tea with Sergeant Dawson. They jumped up when they saw him. ‘We’re on the move again, Harry,’ he said. ‘We’re to rest on the other side of the town until noon.’
‘Is the view better from there?’ asked Wyndham, grinning as broadly as ever.
‘I doubt it. It seems the town is blocked so we had best get through in case we are needed in a hurry. Get them moving, please. Quick as you can.’
Wyndham emptied the remains of his tea on the grass. ‘Thank you for the tea, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Very good, it was. But now we must be off. Rouse the men, please, and we’ll find a way through the town. Pass the word that we’ll rest on the other side. That should lift their spirits.’
‘I will, Captain,’ replied Dawson, straightening his jacket around his midriff, ‘although a barrel of gin would lift them more.’
The battalion was soon on its way again. This time Macdonell rode at the head of the column. If the town was really blocked, he wanted to assess for himself how bad it was.
It did not take him long to realise that it was very bad. He ordered Harry to halt the column on the edge of the town, dismounted and tethered his horse. The main street was a melee of men, horses and wagons on their way to Brussels, the lanes and alleys off it entirely blocked by carts and animals whose owners had taken refuge from the lines of retreating and advancing soldiers. Local carters and shopkeepers bawled and cursed and jostled the retreating soldiers. Just as in Enghien, carts were overturned and urchins crawled about in search of plunder. Further north the shouts had been shouts of encouragement. Here ancient crones shouted insults, accusing the cowardly British of leaving them to be robbed and raped by the French. A small boy darted forward to kick an infantryman’s bandaged leg. Another threw a handful of stones at a wagon carrying the wounded. Both disappeared down dark alleys before they could be caught.
These were the troops who were stationed near Charleroi and had taken the full force of the French attack. Among the wounded, the lucky ones were being comforted by their women. Most had to suffer alone. There was little sound of distress, as if all energy had been expended. Instead, those who could be propped up sat and stared blankly into the distance. The rest lay silently, many curled up like babes asleep. Very few of the bloodied faces and shattered bodies looked capable of surviving the journey to Brussels. Beside them the walking wounded struggled to keep up, some holding on to the side of a wagon, others, their eyes bandaged, with a hand on a comrade’s shoulder. Among the British were Nassauers, Germans and Netherlanders in their black and green uniforms.
There was a sharp shove in the small of Macdonell’s back. He lurched forward and narrowly avoided colliding with a limping lieutenant wearing the badge of the 3rd Infantry Division. The exhausted man was using his musket as a crutch. His left trouser leg was red from waist to ankle. Macdonell apologised and asked where they had come from. ‘East of Nivelles,’ the lieutenant mumbled, where, he said, there had been heavy fighting. The wagons were taking the wounded and the women back to Brussels. ‘The Hanoverians are behind us,’ he added. ‘They have had a bloody time of it. They were caught in the open by Lancers before they could form square. The devils were hiding in the woods.’ He was slurring his words and looked ready to drop. ‘God be with you if you are heading that way, sir.’ It was little more than a whisper. The wretched man was wounded not only in body but also in mind. He would not reach Brussels.