Rules of War (35 page)

Unlike Blenheim, the battle of Ramillies was Marlborough's victory alone. As his biographer Winston Churchill rightly opines, even his detractors cannot ascribe it to Eugene or another of his generals. It was a brilliant display of generalship and arguably the highpoint of his career. Indeed the weeks succeeding it saw him at the very pinnacle of his achievement, lauded by a nation and praised at home. He was though, as in this book, reluctant to accept the proffered position of governor of the Netherlands, rightly foreseeing the problems it would bring.

Ostend, along with Dunkirk and St Malo was, as Cadogan points out, a nest of privateers and thus a thorn in the side of any British force on the continent. It was chiefly for this reason that it was taken and to provide a necessary port of supply for the army. While the rescue of Lady Henrietta Vaughan is as fictional as her character, the pirates are not, although we do not know for certain whether the very real figure of René Duglay-Trouin was present among them at Ostend. In 1706 he appears to have taken part in an action off the coast of Brazil. Trouin was indeed a favourite of
Louis XIV who considered him a loyal Frenchman and he often tended to deceive the enemy by fighting under an English flag. He was certainly ruthless although his penchant for torture as depicted here has no personal basis but is founded on the habits and code of conduct of his fellow pirates of this particularly savage era. The year after Ostend he beat an English flotilla in the Battle of the Lizard and in 1711 captured Rio de Janiero. In 1709 Trouin was ennobled and took the motto
Dedit haec insignia virtus,
‘Bravery gave him nobility'. By that stage his kill total was 16 warships and more than 300 merchant vessels from the Englsih and Dutch fleets. In later life he commanded the French fleet at St Malo. He died in 1736. Ten ships of the French navy have been named in his honour and his statue stands today in St Malo.

I may also seem a little heavy-handed with my depiction of the callousness of John, 2nd Duke of Argyll (1678–1743) and it is not my intention to offend that illustrious family. However, it is well documented that he had a sincere loathing of Jacobitism and was utterly ruthless as a soldier, as well as unquestionably brave. He was also noted for his fiery temper and tendency to be vindictive. In the heat of battle he was always at the front and while he had the capacity to be merciful, on occasion his passions would surely have overcome his reason. Notably he fought a duel in 1710 with a Colonel who accused him of having changed political parties and won, wounding the Colonel. He was a Whig fundamentalist, believing in a modern world based on logic rather than sentiment and superstition: the world that Steel sees emerging around him. It was Argyll too who was one of the instrumental figures in the Act of Union of 1707, only a year after his actions at Ramillies and Ostend. He was among those responsible for the eventual fall of Marlborough and himself rose to be Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. He lies
in Westminster Abbey in an elaborate tomb designed by a Frenchman. This is not his first fictional outing. Argyll also appears in Scott's
Heart of Midlothian
as an old man with a softer, more merciful heart.

The siege of Ostend was in fact broken by a storming party of fifty British Grenadiers at the head of a Dutch force who took the port after a heavy bombardment lasting three days principally by two bombketches, rather than my single afternoon, which reduced much of the town to rubble or as one contemporary put it: ‘a heap of rubbish'. While the British lost only five hundred men, the loss of life among the civilian population of Ostend surely ranks with the similar treatment meted out to Copenhagen a century later as one of the more ignominious episodes in the history of the Royal navy.

I have taken some licence with the pamphleteering activities of Frampton and Stapleton. Although not without reason. I have merely condensed the events of the following year, in which Marlborough's popularity was gradually eroded by the fact that the Dutch government imposed by the allies upon the Brabant estates gradually incurred the enmity of the people, who detested the Calvinism of their heavy-handed neighbours even more than they hated the despotism of the French, who at least were Catholic. There was also a Belgian underground movement and I have reason to believe that it used the old medieval title, although perhaps it was not quite as nationalistic as I have painted it.

Marlborough, despite his general popularity, particularly among the rank and file, was constantly subject to attack in the press and officers in the army continued to intrigue against him. The author of numerous scurrilous attacks on Marlborough, one John Tutchin, was arrested for libel, flogged and died of his wounds in the Queen's Bench prison in September 1707. Although Marlborough was privately accused of
being responsible for his death, no charges were ever brought.

Ostend today is a changed place. Not only was it reduced to rubble by the British in 1706, but also suffered severely during the two world wars. It is possible though to still trace the course of some of Vauban's impressive fortifications. Many of the street names are also new and I apologize for any inconsistencies.

For those with a mind to see more of Vauban's works there is no better starting place than with the superb models now kept in the Musee de l'Armee in Paris. For surviving examples the pas de Calais offers Gravelines, Fort d'Ambleteuse, and at Calais itself Fort Nieulay, while nearby the citadel of Lille retains much of the original atmosphere. Standing on a ravelin, climbing a counterscarp or walking through a gate into a defensive ditch one can, with a little imagination, manage to conjure up something of Steel's Ostend.

With Ostend secure, Marlborough now had a permanent base for the entry of supplies and reinforcements into Flanders. This in turn strengthened his continuing pressure on the government and the Queen that the war must be won in the northern theatre rather than in Spain as was contended by Peterborough. Compared to the big four victories of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet, Ostend is now largely forgotten. In this it is characteristic of the many bitterly-contested smaller actions which Marlborough fought henceforth until the end of the war over the next six years, actions in which the British Grenadiers as they came to be known would distinguish themselves particularly in their bravery and daring. As Trevelyan put it: ‘losing more men in a hundred forgotten assaults and sallies … than they ever lost in the four famous battles of the war.' And, although they do not know it yet, it is through these forgotten victories that Steel and his company must now march on the road to a final peace.

Four Days in June

Jack Steel Series

Man of Honour

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