Four Days in June

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A remarkable debut novel, ‘Four Days in June’ is an imaginative but accurate reconstruction of five men – all real figures – five points of view, and four days of one of the world's most famous battles.In June 1815, Napoleon has just escaped from Elba, the Bourbon kings were on the run, France rose to their emperor, and the Allied forces were in disarray. The British has disbanded their armies after their victory the previous year and had now cobbled together an uneasy alliance of the Prussians, the Dutch and an untrained army, stiffened by a few veterans.The five characters are: General Zeithen of the Prussian army, concerned both about the French and about his and his men's exposed position, unsupported he fears by his reluctant chief and by the British: De Lancey, Wellington's quartermaster-general, accompanied by his new young wife, and desperately juggling his new role, the movements of men and supplies in face of the rapid French advance, Wellington's incessant demands and communications with the allies: Colonel MacDonnell, originally from the Black Watch but promoted to command one of the Guards companies, a veteran and now pushed into the frontline to stiffen the untried troops: Napoleon himself, a great warrior but can he make a comeback after his humiliation before: and Marshal Ney, only recently returned from the Royalist cause, and thus distrusted by Napoleon but revered and beloved by French soldiers.What is so remarkable about Iain Gale's writing and storytelling gifts is that although we may know the outcome, the reader is completely absorbed by the unfolding drama: the tensions from mistakes made, how characters react under such stress, the interaction of one character with another; how memories of the past affect decisions now; the courage, the fear, the responsibility of command; the whole feel of battle.

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Iain Gale

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IAIN GALE

four days in june

A battle lost, a battle won, June 1815

To the memory of George Gale and Giles Gordon

CONTENTS

Prologue A hundred days

Day One Thursday 15 June 1815

Day Two Friday 16 June 1815

Day Three Saturday 17 June 1815

Day Four Sunday 18 June 1815

A hundred days

They had thought him broken. Believed that they had vanquished forever the tyrant who had laid Europe waste for two decades. But he had proved them wrong. Had, in an unguarded moment of that first spring of peace, slipped the bonds of his captivity and returned to France. Had raised again the eagles and the empire and readied himself for battle.

So now the redcoats waited and watched and guessed how he would come to them. The generals, the captains and the men. Men who had thought their soldiering days were past. Who, depending on their rank, had seen their futures now lived out in riding to hounds or gambling in St James’s or spending hard-earned booty in the taverns and whorehouses of Liverpool and London. Men from the shires and men from the hard north. Highlanders and farmers’ boys and thieves and petty felons. Soldiers all.

Men who had fought this irksome man through eight long years in Spain. And with them now the new blood. Callow privates and pale young subalterns, drawn by the promise of an unexpected last chance to find glory and fortune in Boney’s wars. Others came to swell their ranks: Germans, Dutch and Belgians, and on their flank a huge army of Prussians, all of them equally determined to finish now a job they had thought long done.

Together they waited and they watched. And the summer grew strange and unsettling, the days drifting between hot sunshine and heavy rain. In the fields the rye and wheat, still green in ear, stood shoulder high. And the redcoats and all their allies grew restless and longed for him to come.

DAY ONE

ONE

Charleroi, 3.30 a.m. Ziethen

The man was terrified. Ziethen was not surprised. The only penalty for desertion was death, and he had gambled his all on making a desperate rush through both his own lines and the enemy pickets. By some miracle he had not been shot. To risk death; to betray your country. It was a strange courage. A courage born of cowardice. He did not look like a coward, this Frenchman. And he did not look like a hero. Or for that matter much like a soldier. On his head was the familiar black shako, with its brass plate bearing the raised number 13. The 13th Regiment of Line Infantry. Ziethen tried to place it. Which corps? Which brigade? Who was facing him down there across the river? No matter. They would get that from him later. He remembered the 13th, though. As heroes – of Austerlitz, Eylau, Wagram, Borodino. He had even crossed swords with them himself – at Auerstadt. But this man was not the Frenchman of 1806. The French who had marched into Berlin a month later, to Prussia’s everlasting shame. This, thought Ziethen, was a different sort of Frenchman – shambolic.

He was unshaven. Three days, Ziethen guessed. His uniform was principally a filthy long brown overcoat, albeit with the familiar dark blue jacket beneath. His frayed yellow collar and tattered red and yellow epaulettes testified to his élite status as a voltigeur – a sharpshooter. Élite?, thought Ziethen. He had thrown away his musket. He was still laden down, though – with four days’ bread ration and extra cartridges – necessitated presumably by a lack of adequate transport. If this was all that Napoleon could throw at them they had nothing to fear. Secretly, though, the general knew that he was fooling himself. This sad man was not typical. That was why he was here – in the sombre, provincial dining parlour of Ziethen’s requisitioned headquarters on the outskirts of this godforsaken Belgian town. This fool. This brave coward. This deserter. He would not fight. But he was the exception. There were other men out there, beyond the river, and they, Ziethen knew, were different. They were hardened, they wanted to fight. And they were filled with hate. Hate for the Prussians. Hate for men like him.

There was food on the table, and a bottle of local wine. He had been about to eat when they had dragged the wretch into the room. Conscious now of the Frenchman’eyes, focused on the thin chicken leg in his hand, Ziethen threw the bone into the fire and, somewhat obviously, he realized, wiped his greasy fingers on the scarlet turnback of his own dark blue coat.

The Frenchman took off his shako, revealing lank, greasy hair. He spoke. But the accent was too provincial; the words too garbled. Ziethen’s Chief of Staff, the laconic, educated von Reiche, managed a rough, staccato translation:

‘He says, sir, that he is from the 13th Regiment of the Line. From Count d’Erlon’s corps. That they have been camped for some days near Beaumont, to the south west of us. His whole regiment was there – three battalions. Around 1,200 men, he thinks. But some have left – like him. Some of his friends. And some have died. They came there from Lille. He says that to reach our lines he had to walk ten kilometres. It’s another ten to here. He came through what he thinks was another French corps. A lot of men. Perhaps 20,000. All arms. He saw infan try, many cannon, lancers, chasseurs. One of his friends was shot, two others captured by the gendarmes. He says it was very frightening. He does not want to fight. He says that he would like to help, sir.’

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