With Marlborough to Malplaquet Part 6

But what of George's friends at home all this long while? When Fairburn learnt that his brig had not arrived in port, though she had been spoken in Boston Deeps by another collier which was returning to the Tyne, his heart misgave him. There had been a bad storm on the coast; it seemed only too likely that the _Ouseburn La.s.sie_ had gone down in it! When week after week pa.s.sed without news it seemed more and more likely that the vessel had foundered in the gale. News of captures by French privateers usually filtered through sooner or later; but for long there were no tidings of the _Ouseburn La.s.sie_.

The Blacketts did what they could to console the bereaved parents, but father and mother would not be comforted. At length, months afterwards, they learnt in a casual way that a collier had been captured off Yarmouth by a French privateer, about the time the _Ouseburn La.s.sie_ was making her trip; at least that was the construction the Yarmouth salts who saw the affair from the sh.o.r.e put upon the movements of the two vessels. So a ray of hope came to Fairburn and his wife.

"The lad will be somewhere in a French prison," the father said, "and some day he will be set free and come home to us again."

The spring of 1703 brought Matthew Blackett's seventeenth birthday, and with it an ensign's commission in a well-reputed regiment of foot.

He already stood six feet one in his stockings, and mighty proud he felt when his lanky figure was clothed in his gay uniform.

"Perhaps I shall come across George in my wanderings," he said, when he went to bid a very friendly adieu to the Fairburns. "Won't it be jolly if we do meet!" And the parents were constrained to smile in spite of their sadness.

One of the commonest subjects of conversation in our days is the state of "political parties," and every child of school age can tell you which is "the party in power." Three hundred years ago such expressions would not have been understood at all, in their modern sense, and "government by party" was a thing as yet undreamed of.

Usually the strongest man of his time, whether sovereign or subject, was the real ruler in England. Elizabeth, for instance, was the sole mistress in her own realm, though even she was greatly helped by the famous minister Burleigh. In later times a Strafford, a Laud, an Oliver Cromwell, a Clarendon presided over the destinies of England.

But in the second half of the seventeenth century there began that division of politicians into two sides or parties which has continued ever since. This division sprang, no doubt, from the civil wars between King and Parliament, between Cavalier and Roundhead. By the times of Queen Anne the terms Whig and Tory, replaced in our days for the most part by Liberal and Conservative, had come into common use, and no one who desires to understand the history of her reign can wholly neglect the movements of these two opposing parties in politics. For Marlborough--with his wife--may be said to be the last powerful statesman who ruled England without the formal and acknowledged help of party. Since then the "party in power" has always, through its chief member, the Prime Minister, and his Cabinet, been the actual ruler in the State.

At the beginning of Anne's reign the Whigs were leading in matters of state, but presently Rochester and Nottingham, the former a very strong Tory, came into power. Later on, in 1703, the former was replaced by a more moderate Tory, Harley, and in the following year St. John succeeded Nottingham. The truth was, Marlborough, beginning to see that he was more likely to receive support in his great wars from the Whig side, was working gradually towards the placing of their party in office, though he himself had all along been a Tory. Thus it was that he tried to rule with a coalition, or a mixture of Whigs and Tories. This was in the year 1705, a little after the time to which this story has as yet been carried. But Marlborough and his d.u.c.h.ess were still the real power in the land.

We may rejoin George Fairburn, some three weeks after the day when he had been picked up by the Dutch transport. With others he had been landed in the Tagus, and at once drafted into one of the regiments under the Earl of Galway, a Frenchman by birth, but now, having been driven out of France by the persecutions he and the rest of the Protestants had had to endure, a general in the English army. George learned that Portugal had joined the Grand Alliance, in consequence of the Methuen Treaty between her and England, by which Portuguese wines were to be admitted into English ports at a lower customs duty than those of other countries. This step on the part of Portugal had greatly enraged the French King, and he had poured his troops into Spain. The Allies, therefore, were preparing to attack Spain from the eastern and the western sides of the Peninsula at the same time. So George and his comrades began their march eastward, while the gallant admiral Sir George Rooke was attacking Barcelona on the opposite coast.

It was a new life for the English lad, and the heavy marches in a hot climate tried him. But he was growing into a stout youth, and was not afraid of a bit of hard work.

"Besides," he would say to himself, when disposed to grumble, "am I not a soldier? And isn't that what I've always wanted to be? And I might have been chained up in a French prison still! A thousand times better be here, even in this scorching place."

If it seemed odd to the lad that the English soldiers were commanded by a Frenchman, it was still stranger that the French forces they were marching to meet were under an Englishman. Yet so it was; the commander of Louis's army in Spain being the Duke of Berwick, a son of James II and Arabella Churchill, Marlborough's sister. The two generals were well matched, according to the opinion that prevailed among the troops.

Weeks pa.s.sed, and as yet George Fairburn had seen no actual fighting.

He was all eager to get into action, and was not much comforted by the declaration of the old sergeant under whom he marched.

"Bide your time, my lad," the veteran would say, "you will get your full share of fighting; enough to satisfy even a fire-eater such as I can see you're going to be."

One evening, to his intense delight, the lad was sent forward with a skirmis.h.i.+ng party, a report having come in that the enemy was concealed somewhere in one of the wooded valleys of the neighbourhood.

After a cautious march of three or four miles, the little company, commanded by a lieutenant of foot, dropped down into a dingle, at the bottom of which ran a stream almost everywhere hidden by the thick growth of trees. The men were startled, on turning a corner in the break-neck path, to see below them the French flag flying from what appeared to be an old mill. Scattered about were the roofs of a dozen cottages, and at the doors could be perceived a number of soldiers lolling at their ease.

"The enemy, by Jove!" whispered George, who was leading in his usual eager fas.h.i.+on, pointing out the flag and the hamlet to the lieutenant.

"Wouldn't it be a good joke to whip off their flag from that old mill, sir!"

The officer laughed at the notion; he was not much more than a boy himself.

"My lad," said he, "we must know how many the enemy are first."

"I'll climb to the roof there, and from it I can see right down into the village and command a view of everything in it."

"Do you mean to say, youngster, that you would risk it?" the officer asked in surprise.

"Oh, wouldn't I, sir," the lad replied with flushed face. "Say the word, sir, please."

The lieutenant nodded, saying, "It's worth it. But be cautious."

The soldiers looked on while the boy carried out his freak, for such they judged his bit of reconnoitring to be. Cautiously George crept towards the mill, the sloping roof of which came almost down to the very hill side. Tying a wisp of long gra.s.s and weeds round each boot, he crawled noiselessly up till within a foot or two of the ridge. He paused a moment to gaze down the dingle. There, well seen from his vantage point, a couple of miles away, ran a far larger valley, which was filled with tents. "The enemy's main body!" he thought. He waved his arm in the direction of the camp, but his comrades did not understand the action, as they stood peering down upon the lad from among the trees higher up the slope.

Now flat on his face the boy ventured to peep over the roof ridge down into the village street at no great distance below. Not an eye was directed upwards, so far as he could see, the men laughing and chattering gaily as they drank. Then the temptation seized him, and in a moment he had lifted the flag from the old chimney in which the staff was loosely set. "I'm in for it now!" he cried to himself, as he slid like an avalanche down the roof, leapt to the ground, and made off up the steep slope towards his comrades, the flag triumphantly in his hand.

He had reached a spot half way up when suddenly wild shouts were heard from below, and at the same instant a bullet whistled close past his ear. A little turn in the path had discovered his head to the enemy.

"In for a penny, in for a pound," shouted the lieutenant, and the Englishmen prepared to receive the French soldiers das.h.i.+ng up to the attack. George stumbled on unhurt, but fell at his officer's feet, utterly breathless. There he lay, unable to rise, while shots were rapidly exchanged. For a minute's s.p.a.ce it was hot work, but then the French began to fall back, and with a shout the English handful followed. Fairburn pulled himself together and stood on the edge of the rock-shelf where he had fallen breathless. To his horror, he saw a Frenchman on the shelf below, taking deliberate aim at the lieutenant.

With a loud cry, the lad sprang down upon the enemy, regardless of the steepness of the place, and in an instant the man was locked in his arms, just as the musket report came. Down the two fell, bounding over two or three shelves of rock, and then pitching headlong some twenty or thirty feet into the thick brushwood below.

"You have saved my life, my lad; you are an Englishman worth knowing,"

were the next words the boy heard.

They came buzzing into George's ears some ten minutes later, when, the brush with the French over, the Englishmen were hastening back to report to the General.

"What happened when I fell, sir?" George asked with curiosity, as the officer walked by the side of the litter. He was astounded to learn that the Frenchman had been found still held in tight grip, his neck broken. The enemy had been put to the rout and had fled, leaving their flag behind them. Moreover, the French camp a couple of miles away had been spied.

"You have three ribs broken, Fairburn," the officer went on, "and you've got about as many bruises as there are days in a year. But what of that. By Jerusalem! I wish the honour had fallen to me!"

"I don't mind the wounds a bit, sir," George answered, cheerfully, "so long as I've been of some use."

The next day no less a person than the great Earl of Galway himself came to speak to the wounded lad.

"I have heard from your lieutenant here the tale of your doings yesterday," he said, with a smile. "You are a boy of pluck. You are done for so far as the present campaign is concerned, and must be sent back to hospital. But there's work cut out yet for a lad of your mettle."

George heard all this praise as if in a dream. He was never sure in after years whether the Earl had really said so much. But Lieutenant Fieldsend, who was destined to become his comrade on many a hard-fought field, and his warm friend for life, was always prepared to tell the full and correct story.

CHAPTER VI

THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR

"This is better than lying on one's back in hospital, sir, and better than dodging about in a close-packed transport."

The words came from George Fairburn, as with his officer, Lieutenant Fieldsend, he stood surveying, from its northern vicinity, the far-famed Rock of Gibraltar. It was the summer of 1704. His doings since the day of his injuries in the dingle are soon recorded. After months of sickness and a winter of inaction, his service under Lord Galway had come to an end, much to his disgust at first. With others, he had been sent on board a vessel and carried round the coast of Spain to the neighbourhood of Barcelona, where Sir George Rooke was operating. The new troops had arrived too late. The Admiral, despairing of making any impression on the strongly-fortified Barcelona, was about to sail for home. On the way the idea had come to Sir George that the commanding fortress of Gibraltar would be worth trying for. He had accordingly landed a number of troops on the narrow isthmus of flat land that joins the rock and town of Gibraltar to the mainland.

"Yes, Fairburn," the lieutenant replied, with a laugh, "my Lord Galway foretold that you had work cut out for you. Here it is, I fancy, and plenty of it."

It was a striking sight on which the two friends looked--for though the one was but a private and the other a commissioned officer, yet by this time Fieldsend and Fairburn had begun their life-long friends.h.i.+p.

Away in front of them towered the huge irregular ma.s.s called the Rock of Gibraltar, or, more commonly, simply "the Rock," with the little town cl.u.s.tered at its base and on its gentler slopes. To their right was the indentation in the coast known as the Bay of Gibraltar, which was protected by a long stone-built jetty, the Old Mole. From this protection ran a stout sea defence called the Line Wall, with two or three strong bastions. This wall ended at another projection, the New Mole. But neither the Line Wall nor the New Mole was visible from the spot where George and his superior stood. Filling all the narrow neck of connecting ground were the allied forces just landed, five thousand of them. Immediately in front stood the only outlet from the city on its north side, the Land Point gate.

"I wish they would settle the thing, and either let us get to work or else re-embark for home," George said, as he sat in what shade he could find to defend himself against the fierce blaze of the sun.

"I am with you there, Fairburn," the lieutenant agreed, with a yawn.

The speakers were alluding to the answer that was expected at any moment from the garrison within. A formal demand had been made to the Governor for the surrender of the fortress to the Archduke Charles, "the rightful King of Spain." This was on the twenty-first of July, 1704. The demand had been made on the part of the Allies by the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, who was present with three Dutch admirals and several Dutch s.h.i.+ps. The English admirals concerned in the siege were, besides Sir George Rooke, the chief of them, Byng, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and Leake. Many famous s.h.i.+ps were in the Bay or rode off the Rock, including Rooke's own vessel, the _Royal Catherine_, and Shovel's still more famous _Barfleur_.

The day wore to its close, the guards were posted, and the men prepared for rest. Then there came the long-expected answer from the Marquis de Salinas, the Governor of the fortress. It was a stout and dignified refusal. He and his men had sworn allegiance to King Philip, the old fellow said, and in Philip's name he held the town and Rock of Gibraltar, and would continue to hold them as long as he could.