Inferno (39 page)

This was no glorious victory. These citizens had been defending their homeland and were wildly ill-matched against the veteran redcoats, who were now mercilessly hunting them down.

Maynard kept his men pressing forward towards the town.
On the road there were pitiful relics of the encounter discarded by the fleeing militia: improvised weapons, a scythe tied to a pole, broken muskets, a rusty lance. Knapsacks, bundles and, most poignant of all, many wooden clogs that had been cast off for the owners to run faster. Even their ‘cavalry' had been riding plough-horses that now grazed contentedly in the fields.

They approached a hamlet, the warm yellow and red of Danish houses attractive in the sunshine. A severe church tower dominated a rise to the south behind some trees over a churchyard, and to the right was a small square.

The tap of a musket sounded ahead and a tell-tale puff of smoke rose over a ditch. Without waiting for orders Sergeant Heyer motioned for two to double away and take the sniper from the side but there were more shots. One of his men was dropped by a hit and in the general firing a bullet closely missed Maynard with a savage
whaap
. He gulped: as an officer he was a prime target.

They pushed forward to a low wall and looked over warily as a message came from Adams: he was advancing on the right and would be obliged if Maynard would move up on the left.

Before a safe passage had been identified there was the sound of distant horns blending into one – a harsher tone than that of their own. It was from the opposite end of the town and into view burst a squadron of the King's German Legion cavalry.

Their appearance caused all firing to cease, and in the distance the fleeing militiamen stopped in their tracks, mesmerised by the thundering mass. It was fatal – the Hanoverians brutally sabred those they could reach and drove the rest screaming into side-streets and houses, where some
tried to retrieve their honour by firing from an upper floor.

Wellesley's main force arrived, and enraged Highlanders were sent to batter their way in to finish this nonsense. In a short time the streets were cleared.

They regrouped in the little square, and word was brought that the last resistance could prove harder to crush. The churchyard, whose perimeter walls were old and massively thick, held the last fighting remnants of the Danish force and, it was rumoured, their general.

It was a hopeless defiance. In rapid, decisive moves, the churchyard was isolated. The British troops did not press an attack: they kept under cover until a pair of six-pounder guns of the horse artillery arrived and efficiently set up opposite.

A demand of capitulation was sent in.

Before long a white flag was waved and Generalmajor Oxholm emerged at the head of his men. To all intents and purposes all resistance on the island of Sjælland had ceased. Only the city of Copenhagen and its garrison were left and all hope of relief for it was now summarily extinguished.

C
ommander-in-chief of British land forces Lieutenant General Cathcart opened the meeting without mincing his words. ‘I have to acquaint you, gentlemen, with the fact that General Peymann has seen fit to reject my repeated call for a cessation of arms and treat for a peace.'

‘Good God,' muttered Major General Finch of the Guards. ‘He's beaten and doesn't know it. After Køge they've not a hope in Hell of—'

‘They fight for the honour of their country,' Wellesley said stiffly. ‘Do you expect any less?'

Cathcart eyed the recent victor warily. He'd need to tread carefully for this was no mere subordinate. The well-born Wellesley had returned from triumphs in India to become a Tory Member of Parliament. In a very short while he had been elevated to government as the chief secretary for Ireland and privy counsellor with the ear of the highest in the land, which placed him in the peculiar position of being a member of the administration that was giving him his orders.

‘This is very true, Sir Arthur. Nonetheless it places us at some difficulty in knowing how to proceed in achieving the purposes of this expedition.' If the expedition failed, the siege lifted with an inglorious return, his would be the humiliation and disrepute, not Wellesley's. ‘I'd consequently be interested to hear your several views, gentlemen,' Cathcart invited.

The commander of the inshore squadron spoke crisply and with conviction: ‘A direct seaborne assault on the fleet, my lord.'

‘Captain Paget?'

‘Our object is the neutralising of the Danish fleet. If this is achieved, we can raise the siege and return home in the fullest satisfaction.'

‘Sir, the harbour is closed to us. The Citadel and other defences are too strong to contemplate a frontal assault, not to mention your pestiferous gunboats all of a swarm.'

‘I'm persuaded we can do it in one stroke.'

‘Oh?'

‘A grand seaborne assault on the Trekroner Fortress in overwhelming strength. We take that and we turn its heavy guns on the Danish fleet in Nyholm. As well, it allows us to bring up our bomb-ketches and mortars for a very complete destruction. As to the gunboats, it will be my particular pleasure to first blast their lair at Lynetten to kingdom come.'

‘All of which leaves the navy hero of the hour,' murmured Finch.

‘Sir, that is an unworthy remark,' Paget burst out hotly. ‘I demand you retract it.'

‘Gentlemen, it is in any case irrelevant to this discussion,' Cathcart intervened smoothly. ‘It was never in contemplation that the fleet be destroyed except as a last resort. I beg you will think again.'

‘It does strike me that we may have overlooked one possibility,' Stewart of the 43rd offered.

‘Yes, General?'

‘Copenhagen is strongly invested to one side of the Strait of Kallebo only, namely the north. The south is untouched, being upon the island of Amager. A landing on that island to take the Danish on both sides will halve the forces facing either, and at the very least increase our pressing upon the enemy.'

‘A capital notion, Richard,' Wellesley said, with enthusiasm. ‘As you have the Reserve Division still in place across the water.'

‘I cannot in any wight advise it,' Paget said, with some feeling. ‘The same channel that separates the two halves of the city is a sovereign highway for the gunboats, which I'm sanguine can be relied on to go through untroubled to dispute any landing. This is a place infested with shallows. No ship with weight of metal can be expected to work up into the bight to defend the descent.'

An icy glare from Wellesley was his only reply.

‘The siege, it seems, is fated to continue,' Cathcart said heavily, fiddling with his pencil. ‘Unless we can conjure some stroke as will have Peymann reconsider his position. In the circumstances I think that unlikely.'

‘Not even with—'

‘I may have omitted to tell you that we lately captured dispatches from the Crown Prince. In them he's ordered to defend Copenhagen to the last and then destroy the fleet. It can be assumed that he received a duplicate by other means and therefore we can take it this is what he will do.'

In the glum silence that followed, there was no mistaking the sentiment. If they held out, the British had won the
battles but the Danes had won the war, for the Great Belt blockade must be abandoned in weeks with the onset of ice.

He glanced across to a quiet, precise officer. ‘General Bloomfield, for the lateness of the season we cannot possibly contemplate a customary siege with all your parallels, trenches and so forth. You are our artillerist. What are the prospects for a concentration of fire to procure a quick breach in order to storm the city by main force?'

‘None.'

‘Sir?'

‘I have been well provided with guns, my lord, but no formal siege pieces of a weight that could reduce the walls and ramparts we see here. I can offer you no hope of a quick end to the business.'

‘Then?'

Stewart raised an eyebrow. ‘It does cross my mind that we may be playing it too much the strategicals. Our motions are purely military, intended to remind the commanding general of defences of his parlous situation. We're at a mile and a half distant of the walls of Copenhagen, out of range of their batteries but as well out of sight of the common people.'

‘What the devil are you saying, Richard?' Wellesley snapped. ‘I don't follow.'

‘Should we close well in with the walls, show ourselves in force and numbers, not to say with our host of guns, then would not this dread presence give cause to the populace to beseech General Peymann to treat for terms?'

‘Seeing us clamping a hold on 'em, meaning business, what?' Finch put in quickly. ‘We'd be under fire but what the devil? We must do something. I'm for it.'

R
ain teemed down and squally gusts rattled window panes in a fit of autumnal spite. Still in his soiled uniform, Ensign Maynard stretched out luxuriously on the big bed. It was no officer-like indulgence, his men were similarly cosseted, and the aroma of bacon cooking was promising a welcome end to the day.

He stood up, went to the little side table with its twin lamps and retrieved his unfinished letter to his brother. At that moment the poor fellow was no doubt in a good deal less comfort, bobbing about on the sea in this weather.
And consequent on Headquarters deciding on a close siege we moved on the Danish outposts, we being a mile or more distant from the city
.

It had been a close-fought, vicious action, driving them back within the ramparts, for the open countryside had given way to houses, a spill of the Copenhagen suburbs beyond the wall. The house-to-house fighting had caused losses but the 52nd had past experience of urban warfare that brought it short. Rapid penetration deep within, and parallel squads
sent to make their presence felt, brought confusion and fear to the defenders. Afraid they'd been passed by and cut off, they fell back.
A smart fight, but with results you'll appreciate when I tell you we're safely tucked in under their walls and my situation is most agreeable, courtesy the owner of this house, who, being unaccountably absent, I'm unable to thank personally
.

The Danes had made a grave error in not levelling the suburbs: everything the British did was now hidden to watchers in the bastions and ramparts and they could think only the worst of what must be happening.

And it was not altogether true that they were at the walls themselves: except in their particular position in the rear of the city, and another directly opposite the Citadel, Copenhagen was surrounded by a fosse, a broad moat that was impassable under fire from the frowning fortifications. But these had been constructed in another age and modern guns drawn up even outside it could easily range to the walls and city.

It seems they're out of sorts at our temerity and seek to annoy us at any opportunity
. A sullen thump somewhere along the ramparts would be a Danish heavy-calibre gun opening up on some real or imagined target. A reply from a British battery could be relied on and firing would then be general up and down the line of fortifications until it tailed off, with nothing to show for it.

What was more worrying were the sharpshooters, daring skirmishers skulking among ruins and upper floors picking off whoever they could, then making off rapidly. There was no defence except vigilant picquets, who were very often in clashes of their own with enemy picquets opposite and now so close.

I shouldn't criticise my betters but this is looking much like a
stalemate, brother. We can't stay for much longer and …
It was not what he should be saying. He put down his pen and looked moodily out of the window at the grey evening. Why couldn't the Danes see sense?