Chapter 33

Just South of Paris, France. September 1069

King Guiscard stood behind an earthen berm and watched the British Army form up. He firmly believed firearms were a cowardly way to fight, but given everything that had happened, he would have to adapt to the new way of fighting if he wanted to survive. When the French generals gathered to discuss strategy, they couldn’t agree. Some wanted to attack the British, while others wanted to fight a defensive war.

While the British rampaged through Brittany, Guiscard could only watch with horror as his ally was decimated. After listening to his generals for too long, Guiscard made the only logical decision for a proper king; he took personal command of the French Army. By this time, the rebuilt French Army numbered almost 40,000 soldiers. While they had the numbers, the soldiers were recent draftees, and very few officers had any experience leading troops.

Once Brittany had been conquered, Guiscard expected the British to rest after their conquest like every other army. Instead, the British Army swiftly advanced up the Loire valley, looting as they went. Afraid his estates would be sacked, Guiscard sent some troops to Orléans to protect them. Then the British swept the French from the battlefield and sacked not only Orléans but all of Guiscard’s estates in the area. All of Guiscard’s estates the British had found were destroyed, with everything of value being carted off or burned.

As the French lost on the battlefield, they learned, and those lessons had been put into effect over the previous days holding actions. While the French had lost a number of troops fighting in piecemeal battles, they had slowed the British to a crawl and given Guiscard time. Guiscard needed every second he could get because his army was scattered all over France, and the British control of the Loire valley stopped messages and troops from moving up from southern France.

Finally, it was time for battle, and Guiscard was out of time. The British were at the gates of Paris, and Guiscard only had one chance to save his capital. If the British couldn’t be stopped, they would sack Paris and most likely reinstall Philip as king of France. Guiscard knew he was currently the weaker party in this fight, and his goal wasn’t to win but to continue the fight as long as possible. If the British Army were bled bad enough, their recruits would dry up, and they would have to settle for favorable terms. He didn’t know the current war had jumpstarted British recruiting, and they had more than enough recruits to cover their losses.

On the other side of the field, General MacDougall checked his pocket watch. Zero hour was set for 14:00, and there was less than five minutes to go. The battle to pin down the start time was almost bigger than the battle itself. Some of Luke’s commanders wanted to launch the attack first thing in the morning, while others pointed out that British troops were trained to fight at night, so they should launch the attack with only a few hours of daylight left. The attack would continue into the night if the French hadn’t surrendered. Luke figured the French wouldn’t attack, and he had made careful notes while in the observation balloon. He knew about the deep forest and its effect on his artillery. What bothered him was the effect the forest would have on his cavalry. If the French did break, the cavalry would have difficulty rounding them up before they got to Paris. From scouting reports, the British knew the forest the French Army was in stretched to within two kilometers of Paris’s walls. Luke had split the advice of his officers and decided to launch his attack in mid-afternoon. Now it was time for the attack to begin, and everyone’s eyes were on Luke as he watched his pocket watch. When the hands showed 14:00, Luke turned to his artillery and yelled: “FIRE AT WILL!”

Guiscard jumped when there was a thunderous roar from the British lines as their big guns opened fire. The Battle for Paris had begun. Hearing the ungodly whistle of the incoming shells, Guiscard had to fight the sudden urge to run. That urge strengthened when the first volley of shells exploded, throwing massive amounts of dirt into the air. Thankfully the first British volley was too long and landed between the French defensive lines.

General Jeevika was pissed and started cursing up a storm. When her first volley missed the French lines, she lost a bet with the 3^rd division commander, and now she owed him a bottle of wine and a tankard of ale. Thankfully, her soldiers were too busy to laugh at her as they were reloading. The division’s 155s took longer to reload than the brigade-level 105s. It seemed like hours to her, but only thirty-five seconds late, the guns were ready to fire again. This time, they had the range correct.

The relief Guiscard felt left him when the British fired their second volley only thirty seconds after their first landed. They were firing far faster than the French gunners could, and the second volley was on target. When the second volley hit, massive amounts of dirt, along with men and guns, were thrown into the air. Guiscard witnessed one of his artillery pieces blown to bits and the tube thrown almost fifteen meters from where it started.

Now that the British artillery had the range, the real destruction began as the barrage intensified. The big guns were firing independently as their crews serviced them as quickly as possible. The result was the French on the receiving end had no chance to catch their breath; all they could do was hug the earth and pray. Once in a while, a British round would find a loaded French caisson resulting in a much larger explosion. These explosions would flatten the nearby trees, throwing large splinters everywhere and killing everything in their path. Guiscard saw one soldier speared in the chest by a piece of tree, but he couldn’t fall because the piece of tree impaling him also impaled a large tree behind him. The soldier stood as a silent witness to the power of explosives.

Finally, the artillery stopped, and French soldiers started crawling out of their hiding spots. Many of the soldiers had glazed eyes and looked stunned. Other soldiers were trying to help their fallen comrades to the rear so they could receive medical attention. A third group of soldiers took their positions, sure a British assault was imminent. But no assault came. As the minutes ticked by, more and more men came out of hiding, and order started being restored.

Luke had given the order to cease fire, and almost instantly, the guns fell silent. With the silence, Luke rode over to where his two divisional commanders were standing. He knew about their bet, and it made him chuckle when he saw the look on General Jeevika’s face.

“Are your soldiers ready to go?” Luke asked the 3^rd division’s commander

“Yes, sir! The 1^st and 3^rd brigades are chomping at the bit.”

Luke gave a weak smile. Sometimes this business made him so sick he wanted to curl up and die. Then he thought of his wife, and the feeling went away.

“Well, they will get their chance in a few minutes.”

“Yes, sir.” Luke saluted and returned to the small hill where he had been watching the action. In front of him, he watched as the soldiers did a last-minute equipment check and prepared to advance. The first shot of the second barrage was their signal to advance, and they moved in silence with rifles at the ready.

Suddenly, the thunder returned, and with it, the deadly steel rain. The French who had come out of hiding were caught in that rain, which cut them to pieces. Guiscard watched in horror as some soldiers were turned into a fine red mist when a shell hit them directly. Those were the lucky ones. Other soldiers had limbs torn off or developed large holes in their bodies and had to feel their lives slip away as their blood flowed out of the wounds. What none of the French in the front line bothered doing was look out over the field in front of them. If they had, they would have seen the British infantry advancing toward them with fixed bayonets.

When the artillery stopped this time, the front ranks of British infantry were among the surviving French before they knew what was happening. The ones lucky enough to survive both artillery barrages were quickly cut down. When Guiscard saw the British come over the parapet, he and his remaining guards fled, not wanting to be captured. They didn’t stop until they were safely behind the second defensive line, almost 200 meters behind the front line.

It wasn’t so much the soldiers that Guiscard lost that caused him to start cursing; it was the artillery. Each piece of artillery Guiscard lost cost him a fortune and would take months to replace. French artillery was of the smoothbore muzzleloading variety, which meant they could only fire line of sight and not indirect fire. On the other hand, British artillery had the capacity for indirect fire.

The second French line was far enough in the woods to be reasonably safe from the British artillery since the artillery shell would have to travel through almost 200 meters of forest to reach the French line.

Once the British had mopped up the remaining French survivors, they resumed their advance. They were spread out with their heads on a swivel with their rifles ready as they advanced. As carefully as they moved, they still missed the French second line, which was carefully camouflaged with brush.

King Guiscard waited until the British infantry were within 75 meters before he gave the order to fire. This time the British suffered as French lead tore into them. What Guiscard couldn’t control was the British infantry were well-trained and battle-hardened; they had bled before and every confidence they would win. Before the French could reload, the British took cover and started shooting back. Their fire wasn’t coordinated like the French fire, but it was just as deadly, with the only thing saving the French being their parapets.

Still, the battle was hard fought as the French soldiers would put their heads up just long enough to fire at the British before disappearing below the top of their parapet. Quickly, it developed into a slugfest between the two sides, with neither able to get the upper hand. The trees kept the British artillery away while also keeping either side’s cavalry from operating.

After almost an hour, both sides were low on ammunition, with casualties mounting. The cries of the wounded mixed with the sounds of gunfire to make a genuinely macabre symphony of death. Guiscard had his own adventures as three horses were shot out from under him. The first one, he was able to jump clear before it landed on the ground, but the second one fell like the strings holding it was cut, and Guiscard had no time to jump free. The pain in his leg was intense as some of the horse’s tack pinned his leg against a fallen tree. It took six men to move the dead horse enough for Guiscard to get free. When he tried to stand, he discovered it hurt too bad, so his aid found another horse. The third horse didn’t pin his legs when it fell, but the sudden jarring sent terrible shock waves of pain through Guiscard’s body. To avoid another horse being shot out from under him, Guiscard ordered that he be sat on a log where his troops could see him. If the British broke through, he had his sword and knives; hopefully, he could take a few with him.

As the day came to a close and darkness fell, the firing slackened until it ultimately died. The only sounds were those of the wounded as they moaned or cried to God or their mothers for help. Once in a while, there was a single gunshot from one side, then four or five shots rang out from the other side. This shooting would continue for a few minutes before it slackened off again. Occasionally a British illumination round would burst overhead, and a firefight would break out in the sudden light only to stop when darkness fell.

Through the night, both sides moved ammunition and reserves to the line and wounded to the rear; French casualties were taken straight to Paris. Guiscard would have loved to make a night assault on the British, but his troops had enough trouble with a daylight assault; a nighttime assault would have been disastrous. The British, however, had trained for nighttime assaults, and after four hours of darkness, they launched their first assault.

The assault took the French by complete surprise, and the section of line directly in the path of the assault collapsed. Fortunately for the French, the British didn’t communicate their breakthrough back to their commanders, so reinforcements were not sent up. The fighting turned to hand-to-hand combat as the French were able to reinforce their line, and slowly they drove the British back.

Half an hour after the assault started, the French had reclaimed their front line; however, the death left behind was staggering. Over 1,000 dead and wounded British and French soldiers lay on the ground. Guiscard went over to a small British soldier and figured out how to remove their helmet. The face looking back at him sickened him. It was a young woman Guiscard figured couldn’t be older than eighteen. “Such waste,” he mumbled. She had been a good-looking woman Guiscard would have loved to take to bed, but for all his peculiar taste, fucking dead bodies wasn’t one of them. Looking the young soldier over, Guiscard noticed the patch on her shoulder and asked one of the drafted merchants if he knew what the patch meant. When the former merchant looked at the patch, he told Guiscard this soldier belonged to the British 3^rd division. Investigating further, Guiscard found all the British had the same patch, but nothing significant was learned when he tried to interrogate a wounded British soldier. All the soldier would tell Guiscard was his name, rank, and serial number.

An hour later, there was another British assault, but it failed to break through. By now, the French troops were exhausted from being awake for two straight days. The day before, many had marched through the night or sent the night setting up defenses so they couldn’t get any sleep. Their commanders had counted on a quiet night for their troops to rest. They would have to fight the next day’s battles with no sleep and little to eat.

The second day of the battle started with a bang. As the sun was coming up, the British attacked the French flanks with fresh troops. After the second assault, Luke withdrew the 3^rd division and replaced it with the 1^st. On the French left, the forest was thicker, which slowed the British down enough for the French to stop them. However, the British troops broke through on the right and threatened to turn the French flank.

Guiscard ordered an immediate retreat to the third and final line of defenses to avoid being surrounded. Due to the fresh British troops, only about half the French made it out, Guiscard being with them. The rest of the French troops were trapped and forced to surrender. If Guiscard was hoping for a break, he was sorely mistaken when the British 1^st started chasing after his troops while leaving the battered 3^rd to clean up behind them.

The French barely had time to reach their fortifications when the British struck like a sledgehammer. Casualties quickly mounted on both sides as the British, having the momentum, drove the French back. Guiscard would have loved to deploy his cavalry, but the thick forest prevented this and allowed the British to push his forces toward Paris. Finally, they crossed a clearing where the French cavalry could be brought to bear, ultimately halting the British drive.

Each army settled down on their side of the clearing as they caught their breath. Guiscard only had 17,000 soldiers left, many of whom were wounded. On the other hand, the British had lost 2,000 killed and a further 1,800 wounded, many of which would survive thanks to the training provided by Doctor Kensley.

With the lull in the fighting, both sides could get some rest and resupply. General Jeevika brought her mortars up to the edge of the clearing; they were within range, and the plunging fire would avoid most of the trees. To increase the effectiveness of her mortars, the general waited until the sun began to set. Behind her, Jeevika could hear the engineers working to build a road for the artillery. They did that by using explosives to take the trees down. Once the trees were down, they were either moved out of the way or used to reinforce the road. At the rate they were working, the road would be at the British front lines in a few hours.

As the sun began to set, many of the French troops fell asleep, some while standing. Guiscard was one of those who wasn’t even aware he had fallen asleep until the ground hit him in the face. As he brushed some dirt off him, the British line erupted with artillery fire again, and the French hit the dirt. This time, the smoke plumes were more vertical than before, and their shells came down through the trees. It was bad enough when the rounds hit the earth, but the ones that exploded in the trees were much worse. When one of the mortar rounds exploded in the treetops, they showered everything below them with shrapnel and wood splinters.

Once again, with artillery bursting around them, the French didn’t bother to watch the field until it was too late. This time the French were attacked by all three brigades of the 1^st division, and this attack finally routed the French. Guiscard was swept up in the rushing tide of French soldiers trying to escape the British. It didn’t matter what Guiscard did; the French soldiers ran. At least they took Guiscard with them because he still hurt badly from having his horse land on him.

As the French emerged from the forest, the French cavalry fought the British cavalry to keep a path of escape open. The path was enough for the remains of the French Army to escape back to Paris. As the infantry fled, the cavalry closed in behind them to keep the British infantry and cavalry at bay. Many of the soldiers had dropped their muskets and thrown away their ammunition so they could run faster. Even then, only about 3,000 soldiers escaped with the French cavalry into Paris.

The city guards barely had time to close the gates before the British infantry arrived and were driven back; they didn’t have the equipment to assault the walls. General Jeevika ordered her division to build a siege line only 300 meters from the city walls so she could wait for the artillery.

Inside the city, Guiscard wasn’t idle. He drafted every person he could find and forced them onto the walls. While the civilians manned the wall, the soldiers were reequipped and placed in reserve to repeal any British assaults that got over the wall. Guiscard also began working on an escape plan. If he couldn’t get the treasury out of the city, he might as well give up. It takes vast amounts of money to keep an army in the field, especially with large numbers of mercenaries.

By nightfall, the British lines surrounded the city and were too solid for the depleted French to break through. To cross the Seine, the British stole a number of boats and built a temporary pontoon bridge. Being surrounded threw Guiscard a curveball he didn’t see coming. None of the French officers thought the British would be able to cross the river so fast or with such strength.

Throughout the night, Guiscard paced back and forth through his quarters, trying to figure out his next move. So far, the British had outmaneuvered him at every turn, and now his back was against the wall. The French infantry and artillery had been destroyed, while the cavalry had been badly bloodied. Guiscard only had three options: surrender, hold out as long as possible, and hope for a miracle, or charge out of the city and try to break out or die a glorious death. The longer he waited, the more dismal his chances were. If the British artillery could be brought up, Paris would be flattened.