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And now for one of the longest of the chapters....
Chapter 25 – Echoes of the Past: The Fall of King William
18/5/1602
King William de Vere woke as the early light of dawn started to diffuse into the room. As King he had naturally gotten the nicest residence near the encampment; the house of an old Dutch merchant. It was no palace, but compared with the many days he had spent in just a tent it was very welcome.
Sitting up, the King looked down at the woman sleeping beside him. She too woke at his movement and peered at him. Her brown eyes and dark hair contrasted with the mostly white pillows and sheets.
“Good morning, your Majesty,” she said with a smile.
“It is indeed, Lady Sophia,” he said. He gave her an affectionate kiss, and she replied by getting closer to him. Finally though he pulled back. “Not now, my dear. I have a battle to fight. Tonight we might celebrate more.”
He stood and pulled a blanket around himself before heading to the water bucket in the corner. For a man of forty-four he still looked and acted like he had when he had first led his sister’s armies to victory. Several scars and other wounds marred him, but he moved with certainty.
Lady Sophia watched from the bed, covering herself with the other blanket.
“I trust you are not going to lead the charge again?” she asked.
“If necessary, then yes, woman, I shall.” The King washed himself from the water bucket, disdaining the need for servants or heated water for the task.
“I must advise you again not to do so,” Sophia said, rising. She held the blanket around herself to provide some modesty should they be interrupted. Though it was pretty clear what they had been up to.
The King looked at her. “I have never known you to be frightened, my Lady,” he said mockingly.
She shrugged. “Call it what you will, Majesty. I am concerned of what might happen should you fall today.”
“My son will be King.” William turned to her and pointed at her sternly. “Yes, he shall be King, and you will not interfere with that. He will learn, he will grow into the role.”
“As you say, Majesty,” Sophia replied soothingly.
The King shook his head. “You are a strange woman. But of course grandmother did say as much. Though I will say you are definitely worth keeping around.” He put his hand around her, and she did not resist.
“I have found you to be a most interesting man also,” Sophia replied, chuckling.
“You put it rather differently last night,” he pointed out.
“So I did.”
After a moment Sophia stepped away and went back to the bed. There she unearthed a dress and pulled it on while the King dressed in his buff coat and trousers.
“I should come with you,” Sophia said.
“And dirty that fine dress?” the King asked.
Sophia gave him a stern look. “I am more than capable of defending myself, and you,” she pointed out.
“And how would I look then; the King which needs a woman to protect him? No, as I’ve said before each time, no.”
“I suppose my duty as a woman is to wait here?” she said acidly.
William went to her and gave her a kiss. “You are beyond my commands, Lady Mendenhall. But I say to you, wait. I shall return.”
And so she watched him leave, perhaps with a frown of concern.
“Your Majesty, the enemy is drawn up,” Lord Carlisle, his aide, said.
The King glanced down from the hill overlooking the field and grunted. The light mist was burning off and it looked like it would be a fine day and quite warm as well. The Colognian army was deployed with the River Meuse on their left and a dense forest to the right. In the centre of their position was the village of Staar, with a long wall joining it with a large windmill near the forest. Behind this wall the enemy was arrayed, arquebuses at the wall, pikemen behind. Further back still the enemy cavalry was assembled, but this was no battle for horsemen.
“Lord Manchester!” the King called. His chief subordinate trotted up, an older man, more conservative than his sovereign, he was nonetheless competent.
“Majesty?”
“Advance the main battle on the enemy if you please. The horse will move around the enemy’s right. I want this over by lunchtime,” he declared.
“Yes, Majesty,” the Earl of Manchester said, turned his mount and galloped off.
“Majesty, the guns?” Carlisle asked.
King William looked the artillery over dismissively. They were not his style of weapon, so his army had no large weapons, just small falconettes and sakers. “Open on their foot. See if these Dutchmen are scared of a little fire and noise.”
The battle begun, but Lord Manchester seemed to be taking things a good deal more slowly than King William wanted. First he advanced skirmishers to duel with the defenders at the stone wall. It was a battle the British in the open field could not hope to win.
Impatient, the King trotted down to the waiting great companies of his pikemen. The few Colognian guns fired the occasional salvo, but to no noticeable effect.
“My Lord Manchester!” the King called, riding over. “Why are we not driving this rabble from the field?”
The older man pointed at the village and wall. “The gunmen are finding slow going, Majesty,” he said reproachfully.
“God in heaven, man! Go forward with pike and sword! Don’t skirmish like cowardly women, press on! Advance the great companies now!”
Unable to refuse such a command, the Earl turned, but the King was already ahead of him.
“My Lord Rouen, my Lord Reims, take your men forward, straight at the wall and into their foot. Drive them back, I will bring up the Gascons and Scotch myself!” he ordered in French.
Within moments the first two great companies were in motion, the great phalanxes of pikes moving forward over the flat ground. The British skirmishers saw the mass coming and hurriedly parted to either side lest they be trampled underfoot.
The Colognian guns fired, but even though each shot inflicted horrible losses in the packed tericos they were too few and too slow to stop the onslaught. At the wall the arquebusers fired a volley and then ran for their lives. Pikemen fell, but the mass rolled onwards, cresting the wall and catching some of the slower gunmen before they could flee.
This was what the Colognian pikemen had been waiting for, and they advanced on the British as they tried to cross the wall and yet maintain cohesion.
What followed next was a terrible scrum of close range carnage. Pikes and swords drove into armour and flesh. Blood flowed from this vicious melee but neither side could gain an edge. Meanwhile the Colognian gunmen in the village and windmill continued to fire, disrupting and confusing the British soldiers. The crisis of the battle had come.
King William though was supremely in control. He knew from twenty years of experience what the breaking point was, and it was not yet. However, it was time to make the next move.
“My Lord Lennox! Detach all the arquebuses in your great company and take them to the left. Go through the forest and come from behind the windmill. Fire into the rear of the enemy, and move quickly!” He gave similar orders to Lord Montcair, except dispatched them to the right flank.
“Now forward! Go forward!” the King called, waving his sword. “I shall lead you!” The soldiers cheered as King William led yet more troops into the melee in the centre.
In that cauldron of fire in the centre the grinding battle of pikes continued. Neither side could displace the other in the narrow space, and so for the moment the battle was stalemated.
Then however, as the King knew it would, things changed. First his swarm of arquebuses flooded around the village and windmill and opened a galling fire on the flanks of the Colognian pikemen. These troops more than suppressed the fire coming in return, though neither stronghold was theirs quite yet.
And then the death blow came. King William reflected that gold was truly the key to victory. A mere handful of coins had persuaded one of the enemy mercenaries to show his horsemen a path around the forested hill and into the rear of the enemy. Those mercenaries, especially the cavalry, had been unpaid by the Archbishop for weeks, so a liberal infusion of cash had assured their compliance.
Appearing on the hills behind the Colognian guns and struggling pikemen appeared his ranks of pistoliers, lancers and dragoons.
It was all over very quickly. A great cheer went up from the British, a moan of dismay from their enemies. In minutes the Colognian army was breaking and fleeing. Into this mass the cavalry, infantry and artillery inflicted a wicked slaughter. As they dropped their pikes they became vulnerable, and every fallen British soldier was avenged three fold in a matter of minutes. Meanwhile the Colognian cavalry wisely, if somewhat cowardly, dispersed and escaped. They were the lucky ones.
Through the fields of carnage the King rode, cheered by his men. The glorious flag billowed in the wind as the enemy was hunted from the field.
However, King William heard a crash of musketry and saw a group of Colognian troops escaping into the woods. Never content with mere victory, the King drew his sword.
“You men, with me! Forward!” he cried.
A hundred men, a mix of arquebuses and pikes followed him, but he soon outpaced them on horseback.
From the far hill the British guns fired one last time. By luck more than design one hit an abandoned powder wagon near a broken Colognian gun, causing it to erupt in a great explosion.
The King was a great horseman, but his loyal steed Rufus was panicked by the flames and noise and bolted, straight into the trees, far ahead of aid.
By the time the King had controlled his horse he found that he was not alone. He had quite outstripped his men, but now found himself before a group of six or seven fugitive enemies.
For a moment they looked at each other, the Colognian soldiers clearly wishing to escape, and the King determined for total victory.
And so King William, never one to back down, lowered his sword and charged, letting out a fierce cry.
One of the fugitives had an arquebus and fired it wildly as the King bore down on him. The bullet smacked into King William’s chest, piercing a lung and breaking a rib. As his horse reared one of the other men slashed its face with his sword.
The King fell, the sword dropping from his hand and he lay on the ground, his breath coming in ragged bursts.
As the gunman raised his weapon to finish off his enemy there was a sudden noise. British troops opened fire and flooded into the clearing. The Colognian soldier bent down and snatched the royal sword and yanked off the signet ring, and then ran for it.
“Majesty?” one of them asked, kneeling beside him.
His eyes were darkening, but the King had one more lucid thought. That damn woman had been right. His grandmother had warned him about that…a message she had gotten from her father before her. Questions about Lady Mendenhall faded though as he thought about his son.
“My son…King,” he managed to choke out. And then King William III spoke no more, dying there in the woods of Brabant before a surgeon could reach him.
Victory had indeed become bitter, for the King was dead.