Chapter CL: Rocroi / Schenkhuizen
18 May 1643
Don Francisco de Melo took off his gloves as he sat in the simple chair prepared for him adjacent to the table. As senior commander of the operation against the Dutch, he held in his hand a baton of command. He, however, did not hold the first place around the table. The seat of respect went to a boy less than half his age. Although Melo held absolute command over an army of twenty eight thousand men, about a third of that being cavalry, with twenty two guns, he, in fact, shared command with a young upstart from Paris.
It had been a political agreement. When Melo first retreated from Belgium, he had expected either to be replaced in his command or dismissed entirely for his failure to keep the southern provinces from the Dutch advance especially after the massive garrisons they had set up in the preceding months. In retrospect, the general contemplated, it was probably these garrisons that not only led to increased discontent amongst the native Dutch but also decentralized the combat forces of the Spanish. When the rebel armies that had been trained in secret appeared and Dutch regiments defected to join them, Melo was put in command of an army that was already cut off into pockets around the major cities. They were easy targets to surround and overcome.
With the civil authorities already hostile towards the solsiders and the countryside now suddenly up in arms, most of the regiments were either captured or simply dissolved from lack of supplies and quarter. Despite these excuses, Melo knew Madrid would not see it as a failure of their policies, but the failure of someone else's strategy: and most likely his. He was surprised to learn instead that he was being retained.
“To tell you the truth, Francisco, we have no generals left,” the courier, who happened to be a friend, had told him unofficially several weeks ago. “Between sending Balaguer and Weir to England, losing de Silva in Jerusalem, and half of the graduates from the academy are either spread out along North Africa while they send veterans like Piccolomini to the alps and Hungary, we're simply running out of top level manpower...”
To add to his surprise, he had suddenly received a new army as part of his reception into France: mostly Frenchmen although many of the officers were Spanish or Portuguese. It was calmly reassuring. Then, of course, there was the catch. “Share command? With that boy?” Melo had protested to his friend when he was first told.
“Not officially,” his friend tried to calm him down, “Officially you'll be supreme commander on the field, but you and I both know that Orange's goal is to incite France to revolt with him. England is already in a tenuous situation and if it weren't for the fact that Germany is bracing itself for a Persian attack and we're the only thing protecting them, they might rise up en masse as well. We have to stop France from turning on us at all costs.”
“Then let me take care of this myself. If Madrid wants me to push Orange back, I will do it,” Melo objected.
“The Duc d'Enghien, despite his age, is a formidable general, Francisco. Well educated and--”
“Well connected you mean,” Melo was quick to retort. “He's the most powerful noble in France after the Duc de Bourbon.”
“Perhaps, but he is qualified. Madrid believes so.”
“Madrid also belived that stuffing soldiers in Dutch towns would stop a rebellion.”
“I'm sorry, Francisco, but I cannot change this. We need the French on our side. If they are invested in this war: if they see their best defending our Empire, then it will do well to solidify our position. The only thing you two need to do is push the rebels back.”
Francisco, in the end, accepted the conditions. It was, at least, more than he had expected after retreating to France in disgrace. However, it not only meant dealing with the oncoming Dutch, but also trying to understand this new commander. It was hard enough to understand the Dutch commanders: none of whom he had much information on, but to try and see how much room he could maneuver with this young duke was another front he had to worry about.
“Good evening, your Grace,” de Melo stood up as the young man finally entered the tent and approached to take his place at the table.
“Good evening, general,” the boy replied almost solemnly.
“Please, have a seat,” Melo motioned tiredly as he pulled back his chair once more.
“It's alright, I prefer to stand,” was the reply. Melo checked himself and stayed standing as well. “I heard you had a question for me?” the young duke asked.
“Yes,” Melo said warily on the opposite end of the table. “I saw that you deployed the men in a new... fashion today.” Melo said uneasily.
“I can assure you, general, that I have trained most of these men thoroughly in this new permutation of our tercios. I've tested it myself--”
“Tested it?” Melo quietly spoke up, but not enough to signal any challenge.
“Well, in a matter of speaking,” the younger one admitted. “I've studied the latest from the fighting in Norway and the rebellion in the low countries. I've sought to combine the best attributes of each fighting style.” The young duke looked at Melo in the eye and gripped his helmet close to his hip. “As you know, our opponent uses a style closer to this as well. As far as I have heard, the superior firepower has been slowly forcing our tercios to adapt and that's what I have done here.”
“This is hardly the time to try out untested--”
“It is not untested, sir. You know as much as I do that the tercios fighting in Oslo against the Russians don't look like the tercios we keep here at home. Nassau defeated square after square on his campaign with his own formations.”
“He had an advantage then. The towns and countryside were against us. We were surrounded in a hostile territory,” Melo's voice rose slightly, but his body seemed to slouch forward: his hand found the top of the table. He noticed the young duke look forward now, breaking eye contact like some regular soldier standing in attention.
“Perhaps,” Enghien replied. “If you wish for me to change them back to the tercio formation you desire, I will, naturally, do that. It is
your command after all, and
your responsibility as to its outcome.”
Melo looked at him silently. The single lamplight that hung at the apex of the tent they were in swung restlessly. Melo looked at the young man standing in attention looking off to some far off point beyond the tent's confines. “Have them change back before morning. The battle will begin by then,” Melo instructed him.
Enghien stayed silent for a moment and perfectly still. His eyes glanced at his commanding officer for a single moment before he nodded. “Very well, sir,” he replied before turning and leaving.
---
19 May 1643
The afternoon sun painted the men, the dust, the water, the walls of the town, and the flags each battalion was holding a dusty, orange hue that seemed to suffocate as much as it blinded. Small storms of dirt passed by the battlefield like vengeful spirits on the heels of cavalry, on the advance of men, or by the invocation of cannonballs shattering or bouncing against the ground. Plumes of smoke entered existence at the fronts of lines before joining their angry solid counterparts in the confluence above the melee.
It had been eight hours since the start of the battle and there was no conclusion in sight. The Dutch would advance and then be repulsed: the Spaniards sent their horse only to be shot down. The cannons roared on either side of the field before another infantry charge would commence: this time with a flanking cavalry proposal only to be met with cavalry from the other end. However, by the eighth hour, it was clear by the pile of bodies which side was losing more men.
The dead Frenchmen sprinkled the front of the Spanish line. There were enough to form a small partition. Spanish officers were not so lucky either. “
Mala suerte” was muttered amongst the officers as they dragged their own. They did not need to appoint new commanders: the toll on the soldiery was enough that combining two groups together was the most efficient before the next cavalry charge could infiltrate the gaps.
It became obvious, perhaps to the Prince of Orange first, what it was that gave him an advantage in the stalemate: what it was that was slowly eroding the Spanish lines. It had not been so obvious in the smaller engagements or in the sieges. Indeed, pitched battles had not been the usual way of doing combat during the rebellion. It was clear now to the commander of the Dutch that the tercio was failing. He was watching, almost in quiet awe, as his ragtag rebel army performed more effectively than the feared Imperial square. The only thing keeping the half dead Spaniard line alive was the discipline so emblematic of Imperial forces. He ordered his musketeers forward again.
General Schenkhuizen (he preferred not to go by his ducal title despite it being awarded to him by the Emperor himself) watched the battle carefully. He had hoped, from what he heard been told of earlier, that the new commander attached to the army would have employed a new, innovative formation. He had hoped that perhaps there was finally someone aside from himself and his battered, isolated militiamen that had learned something from the enemy tactics that had been streaming in from across Europe. Unfortunately, he had to be disappointed.
Kevin was watching next to him with a similarly disappointed expression. “Sir, the men are in position.”
“Good work. We may need to move faster than I anticipated. Orange has rarely shown a weak side for us to exploit, but now he's getting cocky—or impatient. Is the gun in place?”
“Yes, sir. I've brought whatever townsfolk were willing to their places as you planned as well.”
“Very good,” Schenkhuizen replied before looking out once more through a window in the city wall. “Once I get down to my horse, we shall open the gates.”
Rocroi was not a big city, but it was well fortified. It was a city under Imperial control, but its garrison had been depleted much earlier to move north to attempt to relieve Melo. Needless to say, it had failed and it left the town defensless. When the Dutch army advanced, most of the city dwellers abandoned the town. When they had seen what was left of Melo's army retreating, many had followed him into France. Melo himself had encouraged the townsfolk to evacuate and bring what they could to deprive the coming Dutch of any supplies. He even had the grain reserves burnt.
It was this movement of refugees that was key for Schenkhuizen. His light militia was quick and his familiarity with the area was enough to get him to Rocroi a day before the Dutch arrived. He, however, did not mean to raise the flag of Spain at the town. Indeed, his light militia would not have been able to withstand any serious assault. Instead, he disguised his men as regular peasants and burghers. He hid their weapons in the cellars of abandoned homes and assigned his soldiers to the houses to pose as townsfolk.
When the Dutch came by, he himself—being the most recognizable out of all of them—assumed a temporary vow of poverty at the church and cleaned the belfries (which, of course, gave him the perfect opportunity to spy on the enemy army from that height). He had brought a small gun with him as well. It was more akin to the personal guns on the sides of ships rather than any cannon, but he hid that as best he could in the crypt of the church.
When the Spanish army arrived, he correctly guessed that Orange would not be so stupid as to hole up his superior army in the walls of a city to be surrounded and also that he would waste none of his strength inside the city. The Dutch decided, as Schenkhuizen calculated, that Orange would use the fortified city to protect one of his flanks: in this case, his right flank which faced north. Thus, when day broke, Schenkhuizen was secretly master of the city which now touched the right flank of the Dutch army.
With only three hundred men (two hundred being simple militia), his plan was to strike fear into the spirits of the Dutch more so than an actual victory at arms. He would raise his banner as well as the standards of Spain at the city parapets. He would man that wall with as many peasants as he could making as much noise as they could. He entrusted all of his muskets into their hands to fire from the city wall: his soldiers would fight only in a melee. He would throw open the gates and charge the Dutch flank, and he would let his lone gun fire some volleys down at the rebels. He calculated that seeing the flag of Schenkhuizen, the Dutch will think that they had been outmaneuvered: that the city was turned against them, and that a whole garrison was now pouring in to crush them.
General Schenkhuizen climbed his horse and looked at Kevin next to him. “Are you ready, son-in-law?” he asked almost jokingly. He knew that if they should fail to turn the courage of the Dutch, they would mostly end up as corpses on the field.
“Absolutely,” was the reply.
The General, at the head of his personal one hundred, took a deep breath. The air, being disturbed by the battle outside, was acrid and dirty: but it also contained a small hint of something else now. He did not let it bother him. He looked up at the sky and saw the sun setting against the wall of the city. Somehow, it seemed as if a strange yellow cloud had passed in front of his vision, but he paid it no heed. Although he wondered what it could mean, he nonetheless raised his hand to give the signal. As he opened his mouth to give the verbal command, a sudden constriction afflicted his throat. An intense pain overtook his chest, and his eyes seemed to start to burn. He looked to Kevin but that soldier, too, was in agony.
The general fell off his horse.
---
“It was here that the famed General Schenkhuizen was supposed to make his charge. History would remember that it was he who saved the the Spanish army and turned the tide of the entire war.” A long inhale. “He would have been, once again, Spain's saviour. He would go on, with the help of the innovations of the Duc d'Enghien, to shatter the rebel resistance.” Another long inhale. “But being a Dutchman himself and knowing exactly what it was that afflicted the Dutch people, he would have been a voice—THE voice—for clemency and reform.” A third inhale. “He would have been instrumental in securing Dutch freedoms while ensuring Dutch loyalty. Spain would be able to turn away all of her enemies and enter another century of gold...”
“An important man,” someone else said.
“And one who should not exist...”
“The
Weißkreuz should be at full effectiveness now.”
“Good. Finish them off.”
The new “safe house” that they were ushered into seemed like a joke. Randall looked around at the antiquarian furniture and thought he might be going insane. “This is
real time travel,” he said to himself as he handled the lava lamp. He sighed and hopped onto the bed sourly.
Without answers and with a restriction on his movement, he felt restless. “Don't worry, we've taken measures to ensure that your families stay safe as well,” Rodrigo had mentioned to him. Somehow that made Randall chuckle, “but, naturally, due to security issues they'll have to be taken to a separate place so that no one is led to us.”
Randall turned to one side. On the couch to the edge of his temporary room was his laptop. It had been thoroughly searched and the little red tape on the side designated that it had been forced into autistic mode: it wouldn't be able to access the local nets. Or... at least that's what they had intended. Randall slowly sat up. He moved his eyes to the door of his new room as if to check if anyone was peering in before moving to his notebook.
He flipped it open. He reached his hand into his pants and carefully pulled an adhesive USB drive stuck to his skin (his secret hiding place) and stuck it into one of the ports. He booted the notebook with the drive. A few minutes to clicking around and the red tape on the side of his laptop had become just another cosmetic accessory. But he wasn't stupid: he wasn't going to sign onto any of the local nets: he didn't want another abrupt change to a different location. No... instead he scanned the area for all wireless networks: even the ones that were being masked.
A military encryption... not surprising he thought to himself.
He disconnected his flash drive and connected his phone to the free port. It was only a matter of tricking the military network into believing that his SIM card was one of the agents' communication pieces. Actually, better yet, why not just bounce off his signal through their devices. It would be easier to dive into an earpiece than their network.
“Looking at porn is a sin, you know.” Randall snapped his notebook closed. Rodrigo was standing at the doorway as silent as a shadow.
“I wasn't--”
“It took a little while, but I finally figured out who you are,” Rodrigo was grinning at Randall. Randall felt uneasy on that couch. “Of course it would take a
wunderkind like you to cover up your identity in the school records—in all records really.”
Randall could only give a resigned half smile. “So how did you find out? You must have a good team of divers if--”
“I was tipped off when the team sent to secure your 'family' had some... 'difficulties.' Then it was just a matter of getting the information from you. So... the last time you were asleep, I flooded your room with sleeping gas then strip searched you until I found the USB drive that all good divers of your caliber have somewhere. You keep nasty defenses on that thing: we lost a few machines diving into it, but we finally got past the false entries and barriers.”
“Well that was definitely a rude invasion of privacy,” Randall sighed, leaning back onto the sofa.
“You really went to great lengths to hide who you are, your Majesty.”
“I'm not exactly proud of who I am,” Randall shrugged carelessly but then glared at the grinning Rodrigo, “and please... don't ever call me that.”
Chapter CLI: Majesty / The Proud (coming soon)
