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  The woman holding you is Elizabeth. She is 16 and unwed. Your father has already vanished from history’s pages and not even his surname will linger. Instead, you will take on the name of your mother and her parents, farmers Jonathan and Martha. In five years’ time Elizabeth will marry James Stanway, a 22-year-old shoemaker from nearby Middlewich. She will be pregnant when she weds and will leave you in the care of your grandparents.

  Now that, surely, is something you will wonder about over the years. Elizabeth and James will go on to have four children of their own. You will call them your brothers and sisters … but Elizabeth never came back to raise you herself. Why was that? Were you too much of a handful? Or did her new husband not want the seed of another man in his presence? It could hardly have been the shame of having brought a bastard into the world – in the late 18th century illegitimate offspring are everywhere.

  It’s a subject that must be touchy because, years later, when you are asked about your childhood, all you will say is that ‘from some circumstance or other, I was adopted by my mother’s father’. Well, whatever the reason, Jonathan and Martha take you into their home and raise you on their small farm of one acre, three roods and 30 perches, which is almost two acres of that lush Marton ground. They are not the strictest of parents, old Jonathan and Martha, even you will admit that. They send you to evening school where you are taught to read. But William Buckley isn’t much of a student. You will have forgotten what you were taught and for the rest of your life your signature, your mark, will be an uncertain cross, pressed against paper with a nervous hand, as if you are trying carefully not to make a mess of something as simple as two intersecting lines.

  As for all those years here in Marton … you won’t remember much. ‘The wandering, extraordinary life I have led has naturally obliterated from my memory many of the earlier scenes of my childhood,’ you will say many years later. But you will never forget old Robert Wyatt, will you? In a way, he’s the man who stokes those early desires to escape, to get away.

  You will never be a scholar. But as you enter your teens Jonathan has obviously seen your huge hands and those massive feet and the way you cannot enter any doorway without stooping. It’s as if the grand old Marton Oak has taken on human form. A man would need two acres just to keep you fed. So Jonathan has started thinking that if your brain is not going to provide for your future, then certainly that body can – and will. And suddenly you find yourself indentured to Robert Wyatt, a bricklayer in the nearby village of Butley.

  If Jonathan and Martha have been a tad soft with you, your new master will make up for it. ‘Master Wyatt’. Or just ‘Master’. Isn’t that what you must call him? Apprenticeships in the late 18th century usually involve a contract between the parents and the craftsman for seven years. The master takes on his ’prentice not just at the work site but in his home as well, providing food and lodging and constant instruction. Old Wyatt must have thought he’d hit the jackpot when he first laid eyes on you. He probably has a workhorse the same size tethered to the ring pit, walking in circles shackled to a trough, mixing the clay mortar before it is moulded.

  It’s a real craft, this one. A bricklayer has to know how to fire the kiln and bake the bricks, increasing the heat until they are cooked and hardened and won’t crumble when you apply the slurry and fix them in place. He must have a feel for straight lines. Hard work, too. It can leave a man hunched and broken as he grows older. It soon becomes apparent to you that this is not the life for you. Wyatt is a disciplinarian. He has rules and expectations and you start to simmer with resentment. Not as bad as the shackles and leg irons on those prison hulks, or life deep in the hold of the Calcutta.

  But it’s enough to get you thinking. It might be time to escape.

  4

  THE SCUM OF THE EARTH

  The scum of the earth. Is that really you, William? One of England’s greatest heroes will say that about men like you. This hero, this legendary figure, is Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, the man who will finally end Napoleon’s dreams of conquering Europe. There, at the battle of Waterloo, as the squat Frenchman squirms in his saddle unable to keep his mind on the battlefield because of the pain shooting up his backside from his ever present haemorrhoids, Wellesley will take charge and lead his alliance with Prussia to victory, a triumph that will end the First French Empire, the Napoleonic Wars and the rule of Napoleon himself.

  Wellesley might come from Irish aristocratic stock but he’s not that different to you. He’s a late bloomer. He might have gone to Eton but he was no scholar. His newly widowed mother would often complain about his inability to concentrate or focus, saying once: ‘I don’t know what I shall do with my awkward son Arthur’. Well, she needn’t have worried. Arthur becomes a hero of the Empire and will go on to serve twice as Prime Minister.

  The Duke will offer up more than his share of sanguine quotes to history. When the Battle of Waterloo begins he will turn to his troops and say, ‘Hard pounding this, gentlemen. Let’s see who pounds the longest.’ Of course, the Duke is also a bit of a pounder himself, a notorious womaniser who will confront a publisher threatening to reveal one of his affairs with the words: ‘Publish and be damned!’

  But ‘scum of the earth’? Wellesley is talking in 1813, not long after his forces have routed the French during a crucial battle and, instead of pursuing the retreating rabble, stop to loot the enemy’s convoy of wagons.

  ‘The scum of the earth – the mere scum of the earth,’ snorts the Duke about England’s finest. It’s easy to picture him, the corners of his mouth drawn tightly in disgust, peering down over his large Roman nose, that very same beak kind artists will always try to disguise in portraits by painting him head-on. Won’t fool the common folk, though. They will celebrate Old Nosey in ballads for years to come.

  But as for the scum, ‘It is only wonderful that we should be able to make so much of them afterwards. The English soldiers are fellows who have all enlisted for drink – that is the plain fact – they have all enlisted for drink.

  ‘People talk of their enlisting from their fine military feeling – all stuff – no such thing. Some of our men enlist from having got bastard children – some for minor offences – many more for drink.’

  It’s not drink that has lured you to enlist, although by your own account it may contribute to many of your problems in a few years’ time. But signing up with the Cheshire militia – an 18th century version of the army reserve – means an escape from the monotony of bricklaying and all of Master Wyatt’s rules and discipline. And that bounty of 10 guineas – have you ever seen a fortune like it? You’ve never had money like this and you must think it will last forever. But it’s all gone within a year and so you take another bounty by signing with the 4th or King’s Own Regiment of Foot. Easy decision. Guaranteed salary and a promise of a great adventure, travelling the world and fighting for your country.

  Problem is, the public mood has soured by the 1790s when it comes to all of Mad George’s warmongering. Decades of it have taken their toll. When deserters from the army flee into the countryside mobs often assault and even stab the officers trying to apprehend the runaways. There’s a growing suspicion that the desire of the King and his parliament to boost army numbers has less to do with enemies from other shores and more to do with maintaining domestic peace and keeping an eye on possible traitors like Marcus Despard.

  And let’s face it. The Duke isn’t wrong when he laments the lack of quality men at his service. The Secretary of War will stand up in the House of Commons in 1795 and admit that the process of recruiting has lured ‘men of very low description’. But you would hardly call it a process. More like a circus. That same year in St George’s Field more than a dozen men are found shackled in a cellar awaiting sale to the army recruiters, victims of a local agent who has plied them with rum and perhaps a little coin too, and then obtained their drunken signatures in order to earn his commission. Those men wake the next morning with a headache and the kno
wledge they have signed on for life – for the King’s shilling.

  The small towns and rural areas are prime hunting ground for the army’s recruiters. Perhaps that is how they found you there in Marton, not far from the old oak, the arrival of the regiment heralded by drums and trumpets. Some of them seem to have studied the promotional techniques of Philip Astley, the father of the modern circus who becomes the first to use clowns and acrobats in his amphitheatre between acts. One regiment employs the 42-inch ‘Yorkshire Dwarf’ John Heyes, who carries out a sword drill in town squares to lure the crowds. Or how about the battalion whose recruiting campaign centres on Sergeant Samuel Macdonald? Big Sam – now here’s a man who makes William Buckley look … almost normal. He’s six foot 10 inches and his legend is well known. He was the soldier ordered one night to act as sentry over a large cannon. Tired of standing guard in the bitter cold he slung the huge weapon over his shoulder and carried it into the warmth of a nearby guardhouse.

  There is little they won’t try in the quest to provide fodder for the slaughterhouses of Europe. In 1794 the Marquess of Huntly begins assembling what will become known as the 100th Foot. He uses his mother, the Duchess, a woman known as ‘Bonnie Jean’ for her ravishing looks, to ride the countryside, visiting farms and hamlets with a shilling on her lips, transferring it with a kiss to any man who signs up.

  Well, many of them can’t actually sign their names but then, the men recruiting them are hardly better educated. One soldier who joins the ranks, Tubal Cain, will find himself forever designated in the books as ‘Two Ball Cain’.

  But you have your shilling. And they have issued you the famous red waistcoat, a pair of breeches and two pairs of shoes, although God knows how they managed to find the right size. You will have to take that long hair of yours and form it into a ‘club’. That takes some doing, doesn’t it? You’ll have to plaster it with grease, thicken it with flour and then use a small bag of sand to roll it into place at the back of your head. That can take more than an hour and if it falls out of place you have to go through the same routine again.

  Little wonder John Gaspard Le Merchant, a cavalry commander during the Napoleonic Wars, will never forget that evening when he arrives in a Flemish barn where his troops are spending the night. ‘They were … lying on the hay. But to preserve the form of their clubs for the next day, they were all prone on their faces, trying to sleep in that pleasant posture.’ One man always had to act as sentry, though. That heavy dusting of flour on each club often drew rats.

  But you will have plenty of time to get your club in place each day. Life in the barracks in England is monotonous. Best to avoid indoors during the day. Squalid and cramped, beds are often shared and that bucket of stale piss in the corner of your room should be cleared more often than it is. First morning parade in summer is just after four in the morning. Then breakfast. Then the sergeant’s daily sobriety check. The Duke isn’t wrong. Alcohol has become a peculiar British disease, cheap gin distilled from the remnants of corn crops is everywhere and the nation’s thousands of illegal gin houses barely cope with demand. An average soldier will receive up to a pint of rum or wine with their regular issue of bread or biscuit and beef. The wounded are regularly plied with booze before surgery. Why, its restorative qualities are endless – a surgeon with the 71st Foot will insist it helps even more in defeat: ‘The exhilarating and beneficial effect of liqueur in distressing circumstances is also well known, and often exemplified on the retreat.’

  Problem is, they encourage you to drink, to down as much grog as you like. Then they call you the scum of the earth, don’t they?

  5

  FIGHTING THE FRENCH IN THE DUTCH RAIN

  Listen closely. Hard to do that when someone near you is screaming because half their leg is missing and they can’t find it no matter how hard they drag their ruined body through the bedlam and chaos.

  The battlefield is shrouded in smoke from the opening barrage of cannons and muskets. Your mouth is dry and tastes of powder, your face blackened, your hearing dulled by the roar of war and the constant explosions. Your heart, it’s thumping so hard it rattles your ribs and forces your hands to shake.

  But listen you must.

  There. It’s faint at first and only the most experienced hands can hear it. Then the noise grows, from a low hum to a buzzing sound. A swarm of bees, here on the battlefield? The veterans know what it is: incoming musket fire. Old soldiers know to listen because you can tell by the pitch whether the musket balls still have enough force to penetrate your body or have lost just enough momentum to leave a bruise. You flinch and want to drop to the ground but know that would be breaking formation and if you manage to survive this, you might not survive the lashes that will come later. So you stand here, no longer sure where north and south are, lost in the fog and wondering if a musket ball or a bayonet will be the first to pierce your red coat.

  Is this what you wanted, what you thought it might be like when you signed up with the 4th? Your height means you have been made a point man, out here on the flank helping to keep the line straight. But it doesn’t matter that much anymore. Another battle on another rain-drenched field somewhere in the Netherlands. More bloodshed before another embarrassing retreat as you nurse a wounded hand and a head filled with unforgettable scenes of carnage. This is not one of those times in the Napoleonic Wars that veterans and historians will recall with relish. No glory here, no opportunity to add even more pain to the little Frenchman’s sore arse. He’s not even here; Bonaparte is enjoying the warmth of Egypt, basking in a campaign that will ultimately serve as a springboard into statesmanship and the Emperor’s throne. But his forces are here and they have combined with the Dutch to give the English and their Russian allies an almighty flogging.

  It is October 1799. William Buckley stands at the crossroads of history. Four years earlier the Netherlands had seen one of those popular uprisings against its monarchy, just the sort of grass-roots rebellion against established royalty the rest of Europe had feared after the French Revolution.

  French fingerprints were all over this revolution, too, as the Dutch rebels ousted Prince William V and established the Batavian republic. Mad George and his advisers were apoplectic. The French now had access to the Dutch fleet, which meant they were within striking distance of invading Britain.

  Restoring Prince William to power seemed the only solution. So in late August 1799, a ragged 40,000-strong coalition of British and Russian troops head to the Netherlands, led by King George’s inexperienced son, the Duke of York, Prince Frederick.

  The sea crossing provides a taste of things to come. Storms and heaving seas separate the English fleet. Troops are ‘packed like a parcel of pigs in an Irish boat’ and after landing one naval officer will observe that ‘nothing looks more picturesque than to see a parcel of men with powdered heads and cocked hats puking’. It’s easy to find you here on the Dutch peninsula as the rain begins to fall. They say only two per cent of most regiments stand six foot or more and around you are hundreds of soldiers more than a foot shorter. Some of them had placed leather pads in their shoes to make themselves look taller when they signed on; others were more ingenious, hiding blocks of wood beneath clumps of hair.

  Not that anyone cares that much. You’re all battlefield fodder. There will be some early success; the Dutch fleet will be seized in the Battle of Callantsoog and the French-Batavian forces pushed back. Perhaps this is when the Duke of York should stop. Glory might come to all of you. But no, onward you push and as the rain gets heavier, the already patchy roads are washed away, cutting off supplies. The retreating Dutch flood the surrounding farmland, turning it into malarial swampland. The death toll from marsh fever and hunger begins to rise.

  These nights must be the worst. It will be another decade before the English army issues tents in the field. So in the darkness you must squat on your knapsack, a greatcoat and a single thin blanket the only thing separating you from the ever-present damp.

  Just what t
he hell was the Duke of Wellington thinking when he sneered at the scum of the earth? It’s a miracle any of you can even stand in those sodden uniforms, empty stomachs churning, holes in the line already forming because so many have succumbed to the conditions. This is the sort of fortitude that will inspire Samuel Johnson – yes, Dr Johnson himself, the great essayist and moralist – to talk about an epidemic of bravery within the nation’s ranks. ‘We can shew a peasantry of heroes, and fill our armies with clowns, whose courage may vie with that of their general,’ he will write.

  This courage, this glue that holds motley regiments together under so much pressure, can be found at night as you huddle against the rain just as often as it is on display on the battlefield. Hard to think of something that can actually prepare a man for that, though. ‘Every minute seems an hour and every hour a day,’ says a wistful George Gleig, a Scottish soldier and military writer, about those awful moments before battle begins. ‘The faces of the bravest often change colour and the limbs of the most resolute tremble, not with fear but anxiety. It is a situation of higher excitement, and darker and deeper feeling, than any other in human life …’

  And then the trumpets sound. Look at the French once the signal to start fighting is given. They will have had an officer whipping them into a frenzy with a passionate speech about liberty and freedom and all those ridiculous notions the French think should be the way of things. And then they will charge into the fray, hollering and screaming, eyes bulging, looking and sounding like Bonaparte as those haemorrhoids torment him during another arduous stint sitting on the pot.

  The English, that stiff upper lip always on show, prefer silence and stillness, believing it might unnerve the opposition.