Tyger (33 page)

There was nothing for it but to remain until
Tyger
was relieved. That shouldn’t be long—his was a first-rank fighting frigate and the job could just as easily be done by a light frigate or ship-sloop. Three or four days to get word to Russell and, with a fair westerly, less to detach one of his force. If he was lucky, a week and he’d be on his way.

He should be making an appearance in
Tyger
but he’d been led to believe that an entertainment had been planned for this day in his honour and it would be churlish to absent himself. Besides, he knew Bray would be relishing his time in temporary command.

The reception at the Grand Palace was to be followed by an orchestral concert.

In his star and ribbon and full-dress uniform, Kydd cut an impressive figure as, with Gürsten at his side, he entered the glittering room, remembering to render obeisance to King Friedrich Wilhelm, then award bows of recognition this way and that. In a short while he was surrounded by admiring officers and ladies and the evening swept on in a swirl of gaiety and noise.

Yet underlying the exhilaration and animation he could detect a darker element lurking. Not two score miles away Napoleon Bonaparte and his legions were lying in encampment. Nothing stood between them and that host but Bennigsen and the Russians.

U
NUSUALLY
, K
YDD WOKE LATE
but didn’t hurry in his dressing. He’d return to
Tyger
some time after their dog-watch leisure-time and let the inevitable waiting paperwork slide to the next day. Meanwhile he and Dillon could walk off the previous night’s excesses in the old city with Gürsten.

Königsberg was an agreeable place and they spent some hours in leisurely exploration of the old Hohenzollern capital. However, when they returned they were urgently hustled to the war room.

“There have been developments—not good. Come!” Blücher snapped, stamping towards an inner room.

He slammed the door and pointed to a map. “Bonaparte—he manoeuvres to deceive us.”

Kydd looked down at the pencilled wavy line going to the southeast separating the two armies.

“We have spies. They say that in the rear, concealed from us, there have been large-scale movements across here by Davout and Soult. To the east!” Before Kydd could say anything, Blücher continued, “This means we’re to be outflanked. Bennigsen’s stand is for nothing. He must pull back and face about. His orders now no longer have meaning. Von Hohenlau’s role to stay in position and threaten Bonaparte’s rear is absurd and I won’t be bound by it.”

Blücher stood back, arms folded. He fixed Kydd with a steely glare. “His Imperial Majesty concurs that our forces must be restored to us. Von Kydd, I request you will take off Generalleutnant von Hohenlau, his men, stores, horses and guns.”

Kydd was taken aback. This was an entirely different proposition from a resupply exercise, and even with his limited military experience he knew that a successful formal withdrawal involved great complexities and risks—flanks and rear shortening lines in a co-ordinated sequence to prevent a retreat turning into a rout, the gradual taking up of field guns in such a way that the enemy could not gain advantage, the preserving of as much impedimenta as could be retrieved. It was a dangerous and fraught time.

As if answering Kydd’s unspoken questions, Blücher growled, “I undertake to bring our army to the edge of the sea, no worry to you, Kapitan. Then you—your ships—will take them on board and away. Can you do it?”

This was far more than a handful of coastal brigs could handle. And when the French saw what was going on they would throw everything at them …

Kydd’s expression was grave. “I can—but only if we have regular military transports. They have the right gear and capacity to take men, horses and guns aboard in a short time.” Where the devil these could be found short of Portsmouth or Plymouth he had no idea, or whether they could be released, and on whose authority.

“I understand you,” Blücher responded crisply. “We ask Sweden. I know they have these at Stralsund and more at Karlskrona. It is a matter for diplomats. You will leave this with me. Do maintain your resupply until the transports arrive, four, five days.”

In a way it was a relief for Kydd, for now the end was in sight. This mass continental butchery was not to his liking and it would be good to get back to the blessed reassurance of sea routine.

Tyger
, in her slow offshore cruising, had been able to put the time to good use. The new boatswain had tut-tutted about the condition of some of the rigging and fittings and set to with his mates to bring her to rights. Bray had made sure of an unvarying hour at the guns every morning and, on Kydd’s instructions, this was followed by sail-handling.

Kydd had allowed his officers leave in pairs to Königsberg, as much to see something of what lay behind the strategics of the armies that were deciding Europe’s fate as to make acquaintance of the ancient city.

But two days later catastrophe struck. The plan for taking off von Hohenlau’s troops was uncovered, and before the transports could arrive, the French made their move in an intelligent and daring expedition.

A force of dragoons dragging field pieces had crossed the marshy flatlands at the far end of the Frisches Haff on to the Vistula Spit. Now, along unused trails of the old native peoples, they were advancing rapidly up its length, followed by reinforcements of regular troops.

They would be at the resupply crossing in little more than a day.

The move was well thought-out and in keeping with the main outflanking thrust—it was in Bonaparte’s interest to keep a full corps of his enemy in idle helplessness while he brought the Russians to battle.

At the council-of-war that evening it quickly became clear that to counter the manoeuvre in a formal way would be impossible. In the time they had, it would be hopeless to attempt to effect fortified works on the sandy terrain and therefore it would descend into a brutal hacking match, which, without cavalry, the Prussians would certainly lose. Besides, Blücher was bleakly insistent that the Prussian Army should be preserved for the cataclysmic battle at the gates of Königsberg, which was still to come.

The occupation of the spit would therefore not be contested. The army would once again be left isolated and under siege.

Blücher turned to Kydd. “We don’t know when the transports arrive. Can you maintain resupply along the Frisches Haff?”

He had been dreading the question. The shallows couldn’t take a reasonable-sized ship, and now that both sides of the lagoon were occupied by the French with guns, any attempt by boats would make them sitting ducks.

But somehow it had to be done.

“I’ll think on it, General,” he murmured, feeling eyes on him from around the room. It was no use giving false hope with impossible promises and he left quickly.

The French dragoons made good time and were in position opposite before the next morning was out. Now even communications with von Hohenlau were severed.

Kydd ordered
Stoat
, his armed ketch, to be readied.

Taken up by the Royal Navy desperate for anything that sailed, she was as elderly as her commander, her sharp stern giving her away as a native of the Baltic. A relic of the far-off days of peace, the varnish of her upper-works hardly concealed the dark weathering of her timbers underneath.

Rogers, an elderly master’s mate, was her captain.

“I shall want to wake up the French guns, see where they’re positioned, how many and so forth.”

“Aye aye, Sir Thomas.”

“No heroics, in and out only.”

“Sir. How long should I—”

“I shall be the judge of that, Mr Rogers, as I’ll be aboard with you.”

They put out from Pillau and passed into the lagoon.
Stoat
glided slowly along.

There was no gunfire: to the right there would be no point in the French occupying any of the spit past the crossing point, and the left was still Prussian-held. It was calm and the watery expanse glittered in the sun, ruffled here and there by small flaws in the breeze.

It couldn’t last. Well before they were anywhere near the besieged Prussians the shoreline to the south sprouted puffs of white. The thud and rumble of the guns followed soon after. It was at long range but, even so, balls skipped and flew, some of respectable size, eight-pounders, Kydd surmised. He smiled grimly. It would have been better for the French gunners to hold their fire and trap the little vessel.

He spotted the far-off besieged encampment well down the lagoon. His heart sank with the realisation that as the range closed they would not survive: the French would undoubtedly have worked out that this was the only way to relieve the army and brought up many more guns to make it impossible.

“Take us back, Mr Rogers,” he muttered.

The idea came to him as they went about to go alongside the jetty at Königsberg harbour, where the ships lay together in idleness. On the short walk to the Grand Palace it took form and detail. There was great risk. But it
could
work …

“The relief will resume in a day, General,” he said flatly, “provided I shall have what I desire.”

It all depended on his observation that both sides of the lagoon were completely flat, no high ground of any sort. This had one priceless consequence: at night even in moonlight the width of reflecting water between the shores would appear narrow, and targeting an object with the majority of its silhouette invisible against the darkness of the opposite shore would be damned difficult.

The other part of his plan was to use harbour lighters for the cargo-carrying. These were simple hollow craft brought up to a merchant ship at anchor offshore to allow discharge of cargo into them. Fully laden, only a foot or two of their gunwales would show above water, a near-impossible target compared with anything carrying sail.

Finally he had to find an alternative to boats in towing them. His solution was simple but back-breaking. The boats would tow the lighters as far as they could, then cast off. Aboard each one, they would have two grapnels on a line. The idea was to cast them ahead as far as possible and on the little after-deck a makeshift windlass would haul in on the line, propelling the lighter ahead for the distance of the cast and length of the lighter. To keep a steady momentum, there would be one line on each side, out of sequence with each other.

That was the best he could do. Their silhouette would be very low but this was achingly slow work and it was to be expected that they’d be under fire most of the time. And without doubt they would take casualties.

The first four harbour lighters were fitted out and the next night they were loaded, the tow-lines passed. When all was in darkness they set off into the gloom.

Kydd was in the first boat and kept them together as they passed across the entrance by Pillau, only too conscious that tonight moonrise was scheduled for ten.

In the boats a heavy silence was broken only by the slither and thump of oars—no one was in doubt about what lay ahead for the lighter crews who squatted in readiness.

“Put some heavy in it, then!” Kydd growled. The men at the oars wouldn’t understand a word of what he was saying but the deep-laden craft were going agonisingly slowly through the calm waters.

They would eventually be seen. The French would be expecting some sort of attempt and would be looking out for it. The only question was when.

The camp fires of the friendly Prussians fell away abruptly to an unrelieved darkness. This was the forbidden ground between the two armies.

On they crept, into the blackness and silence.

More camp fires. With a prickle of tension Kydd knew that these were enemy positions now and at any moment …

The moon emerged above low cloud and, although only quartering, the night had lost its cloak of anonymity. It bathed the tops of the woodland in silver and laid a sheen on the Haff that could only reveal the intrusion.

Feeling exposed in the unearthly shimmer, Kydd tensed.

First one gun, then several—and the whole shore burst into life with the thunder of cannon fire.

The boats could go no further. “Cast off the tow. Good luck, you men!” he roared at the lighters.

He watched as they began their furious work with the grapnels, slow at first, then increasing to one or two knots as they found their rhythm.

As they moved away Kydd saw that gun-flash at the emplacements was making nonsense of aimed fire. The low shapes would thus not have to suffer a concentrated barrage directed on them. On the other hand the scene was alive with the crash and skitter of shot, some of which must find a target.

His instructions were to advance the lighters together to minimise time of exposure but stagger them in order that one shot striking would not take another beyond. It was all very well in theory but these were desperate men who would care little about formation once the guns opened up on them.

Straining his eyes, he followed the creeping shadows until they faded into the dimness among the leaping splashes and skipping of ricochets. If they succeeded, the army was safe for another two days on iron rationing.

“Return,” he snapped, gesturing back. The men and lighters would stay with von Hohenlau: there was little point in braving the holocaust again to bring back the empties. With luck, there would be just one or two more of these heroic sallies before the transports came.

Next day word was returned that three of the four lighters had got through, the fourth taking a hit and sinking quickly. There had been no survivors.

Another gallant sortie had been completed when
Dart
came streaming in from seaward with signals flying. The transports!

Heaving to well out of sight of the enemy, as instructed, it was at last time to put the grand plan into operation.

“We move tonight!” grated Blücher, unrolling a map.

The general had kept his preparations a close secret but had promised to bring his army to the water’s edge.

The plan was outlined with an economy of words. It was simple and brutal: a suicide battalion. A picked body of troopers with light guns would be landed at the unoccupied opposite tip of the spit. Their mission was to ride down its length until they met the French and by any means to drive them clear of Kydd’s crossing point, then keep them back, whatever the cost.