Chapter 16: Waiting for Napoleon

We sailed from Harwich on the 24th April and disembarked at Ostend two days later.

The Grand Coalition had been thrown into a complete pother by the news of Napoleon's triumphant return to Paris, when King Louis XVIII had to beat a hasty and undignified retreat. Regiments arriving in Belgium from England found themselves being ordered from one place to another, as Napoleon's intentions were first anticipated, and then rejected, by those in charge. After marching and counter marching for a week or more we finally went into cantonments about four miles to the south west of Brussels, and I heard that the Prussians were encamped about ten miles to our east.

Wellington commanded the Anglo - Dutch army, and a veritable rag tag of an army it was.

The current quality of the British army was not that which had fought through Spain and over the Pyrenees.When Napoleon had abdicated many of our best regiments had been shipped off to Canada, to reinforce the army fighting those damned Americans. The war with America was now over, but it would be months before those battle hardened regiments would be available.

Although Belgium was part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands the inhabitants spoke French, and were almost to a man, and woman, supporters of Napoleon. In fact most of the Belgians, and many of the Dutch, now serving in Wellington's army had been in French service until just over a year ago.

Napoleon Bonaparte had to defeat both the Prussian and Anglo-Dutch armies, and he had to inflict that double defeat before the Austrians, and the more numerous Russians, came rolling in from the East. One thing we knew about Boney was that he could appear anywhere, at any time, and that he would strike at each isolated army confronting him in turn. To counter that ploy Wellington had made an agreement with Blucher, the Field Marshall commanding the Prussian Army, that each army would march to the support of the other when Napoleon made his initial attack.

Rumours of where, and what Boney was up to, swirled around the cantonments, as we waited for him to make his move,

I was pleased to see that camped near our battalion were regiments of the King's German Legion (KGL). These doughty warriors were mostly Hanoverian, as George III was also the King of Hanover. The KGL had fought all through Spain and France, and were considered by many to be the best corps in the army. Not far from the KGL lines I was pleased to see 95th Rifles encamped. These veteran regiments gave much needed backbone to the inexperienced army that Wellington now commanded.

As the 1st Light Battalion of the KGL had been camped alongside the 69th at Bordeaux I knew many of their officers, and it was Fritz Lang who I first encountered when I entered their lines.

"Mein Gott" he said when he saw me, "you haf been promoted to Hauptmann!"

He shook my hand, and we spent a pleasant hour chatting about old times in the Peninsula, and in Bordeaux. I was just about to leave when Fritz said,

"You know that after your battalion left Bordeaux there were no more bodies found?"

I asked him what he meant, and he explained that there had been bodies of murdered young boys found in the Bordeaux area, during the time we were garrisoned there. This was the first I had heard of it, and Fritz laughed.

"You were gebumse that French widow, and you heard and saw nothing but her fotze! The townspeople blamed the deaths on your regiment, but our officers suspected it was a battalion of Spanish Irregulars, who left Bordeaux about the same time as the Sixty Ninth, that was responsible. The bodies had been mutilated, and it was obvious only a Spaniard could have used a knife with such skill."

I left him and rode back to my billet, thinking over what he had said. There had been boys murdered and mutilated in Bordeaux when the battalion was there, and bodies of similarly murdered children had been discovered in the area around Devizes. I didn't like to consider the implications of that, so I put it from my mind.

Since our arrival in Belgium the battalion had suffered two serious blows to our fighting ability. Major Boothby Graffoe had been given the brevet rank of Colonel, and sent to command a regiment of Hanoverian militia—good news for the Hanoverians, as he would imbue them with the necessary military ardour to face Napoleon's veterans in the field, but bad news for the 2/69th, who had already lost the services of Adjutant Bywaters. He had contracted a severe case of camp fever, and had been taken to a convent near Brussels to be nursed by the nuns.