Fusiliers Read Online Free Page A

thirties. Even some of the subalterns present that evening cut the forlorn figure of middle-aged men with grown-up children living on the pittance of a lieutenant’s pay – Frederick Mackenzie, the adjutant, being only the most shocking example, having served in this lowly rank for nearly half of his forty-four years.
    Those men, who knocked back toast after toast, understood that the keys to promotion were money and patronage. None of them was heir to a title, although some were only one or two degrees removed from the aristocracy by family connection. Quite a number, like Bernard himself, were the sons of officers, and lacked money. Those who raced up the army in this epoch were those who combined cash with ‘assisting friends’. One or two of the officers could call on considerable reserves of family cash, but were not well connected. Donkin, on the other hand, had some powerful friends, but lacked the money for his next step of rank. Lieutenant Colonel Bernard backed Donkin’s claim for advancement, and was also favourably disposed towards William Blakeney (the grenadier company commander) – the three men forming an Anglo-Irish bloc in the regiment – but he had shown himself to have limited influence in the higher reaches of the army.
    Several of the officers partaking of that Saint David’s Day feast notonly doubted that their pretensions to promotion were about to be gratified, but suspected instead that the coming of war would bring an influx of wealthy young bloods who had sidestepped the tedium of garrison service but would be spoiling for the opportunity of distinction in battle. Good manners and a sense of their own lowly status would have prevented these officers making their case directly to General Gage over dinner, but just three days later captains Grove and Blakeney joined with ten other officers in sending their commander-in-chief an impassioned letter.
    ‘Many young officers lately acquired the rank of major by purchase,’ the old captains complained, adding that others who had only recently become captains ‘are likely soon to succeed to the same preferments’. Could not the general do something about their claims for promotion after such long service? Another hard-done-by captain who had written to the general complained that ‘nothing is more mortifying to an old soldier, than to be commanded by a number of inexperienced young boys (which is often the case on our service)’. Gage, it would transpire during the following weeks, did nothing to address the concerns of these old warriors. Instead the eighteenth-century promotion bazaar would get under way in earnest with the first shots of war, and the fears of the ‘hard bargains’ would prove justified, for it would be a case of every man for himself.
    As for the wives and children of those officers who risked life and limb in the name of their sovereign and parliament, they were not present that evening. Across Boston, in the candlelit parlours of modest rented rooms, Major Blunt’s Molly or Captain Blakeney’s Sarah found their own suppers. Lieutenant Mackenzie’s wife, Nancy, ‘Mrs Mac’ as he affectionately called her, was expecting a late addition to their family. Dozens of soldiers’ wives too awaited the expected campaign. Any fears they may have stifled – that they would soon be called upon to wash their husbands’ wounds as well as their shirts, and to follow the drum, acting as the army’s unpaid auxiliaries – were about to be realised.
    The Saint David’s Day dinner followed its ritual late into the night. The spurs of Toby Purcell, the second in command who had stepped into action when his commander was killed during the Irish campaign of the Boyne back in 1690, were toasted, and honours done to Shenkin ap Rice, by legend a simple soldier of the regiment.
    Matters came to a noisy and inebriated climax when the regimentalgoat, its mascot, decorated with appropriate garlands, was brought into the dining room, led by