Battle of Montevideo - 1777 - Does this flow?

[Alt History Buff]

All, I've been writing a series of amateur novels with the following POD's:

1. Prussia loses the 7 Years War and is dismembered between Russia, Austria, France, Sweden and their smaller German allies. This is a favorite POD of mine.
2. Aids-like and Ebola-like diseases come out of Africa in this time period instead of 200 years later. This would severely affect the slave trade in America while also hitting overall trade as I would think sailors would be prone to contracting these diseases due to their propensity to living in filth and patronizing whorehouses.
3. India was more of a stalemate. Lord Clive won his great victories but poor British governance caused a rebellion in Bengal that returned most of India to the status quo. Clive is later publicly condemned for his "rapacious" ways and eventually emigrates to America (this has many butterflies).
4. The War ends before Cuba or the Philippines were taken from Spain. Most the British conquests in the French West Indies did not occur either.
5. Minorca remained in French hands.
6. The War in North America more or less goes according to OTL. George II tries to trade back Canada for Hanover but France deems Canada a sinkhole for money and indefensible in the long run. By removing Hanover from Britain's kings, it effectively removes Britain from Continental politics.
7. Many of Britain's smaller German allies lose their patrimonies and are exiled to Britain. This has major butterflies as Britain does not have access to huge numbers of German mercenaries in 1776, when most of the "Great Reinforcement" was made of Germans (like 60%, I think) rather than Britons.



I was wondering if someone would give me some feedback as to how I set a period land-based battle scene and if I'm missing anything or using anacronisms, etc.

I confess that I'm not an English or Creative Writing Major (business) so grammar is not necessarily my thing. I mainly learn as I go by writing. The who/whom, etc, can be a problem for me. I'm sure there are some minor spelling issues here and there. I'll clean those up later.

Can you give me any constructive feedback?, on any part of this? It is one of my more recent (and, theoretically, better), series of chapters.

Feel free to comment on writing style, historical inaccuracy in weaponry or everyday life (I'm especially weak with naval matters), dialogue (always a challenge even without trying to figure out how poor rural North Carolinians spoke n the 18th century), etc...

I may do one later for a naval battle.

Some key background:

Beyond the POD's of Prussia loses the 7 Years War and is dismembered, new and horrid diseases come out of Africa, I have Great Britain and the United States going through the American Revolutionary War largely as OTL. However, I also have more tension at this time with Spain (Falklands/Gibraltar) and France (Corsica) which leads to an earlier involvement in the American Revolutionary War.

Portugal has long been Britain's most steadfast ally on the Continent. However, they did nothing to help Britain in their internal struggle, partially because Britain did nothing to help Portugal in their conflict with Spain in 1776.

In 1776, Britain, with about 7000 to 10,000 troops in America, sent a mass reinforcement to America of about 10,000 redcoats and 15,000 German mercenaries. For the most part, they assumed that America was see this force and negotiate their way out of the bind. No one expected a 7 year war.

In this TL, Britain was low on allies and didn't want to alienate Portugal so they agreed to send a couple of Regiments and a flotilla of ships to aid Portugal in their Brazilian/Argentine area border war with Spain (there were also minor conflicts in Iberia but South America was the primary theater).

Since no one expected a long or involved war with America at this time, 2000 troops and a small fleet from the greatest navy in the world would not, in my mind, be out of line to be demanded by Britain's only ally. Feel free to disagree.

Anyway, I have a lesser known noble British officer whom died young in the 7 Years War as the commander-in-chief to start. Other lesser know British and German officers are featured. I enjoy that just so I can use more discretion in their personalities/capabilities.

I have a dozen chapters here. I'll add them one by one so I can get individual chapter feedbac.

Thanks.

Althistorybuff

 

[Alt History Buff]

Scene: Introduce William Draper (56) and Earl Ligonier (37), recently promoted major General, en route to Uruguay.

William Draper could not tell if he was dreaming. That was hardly surprising. In recent weeks, the Englishman’s distinction between the ephemeral realm of slumber and the stark domain of wakefulness had blurred into an opaque, muddled twilight. He supposed it didn’t matter.

The soldier, now well into his sixth decade, conceived no difference between his mind’s meditative torpor of sleep or his attentive waking hours. The same ruminations paced through his head in either case. Unlike the fanciful dreams of youth, envisioning soaring above the clouds as does a bird alternated nightly with heroic fantasies of gaining the hand of fair maidens after daring deeds of heroism, Draper’s mind now dwelled in the prosaic, the banal.

Namely, his dying career.

Born into the secondary gentry, the Draper family were historically well-regarded servants of the ruling class deemed worthy of assuming military rank, the odd seat in Parliament, even the occasional political office. Lamentably, the young William had suffered the loss of the family patriarch, necessitating his indomitably willed mother to raise the family back into prominence on her own. At length, the woman exerted every ally, strained each resource, to return her children to the attention of their betters. Scholarships to Eton, then King’s College at Cambridge, resuscitated the family contacts by associating the Draper youth with the most heralded of lineages, boys destined to rule the nation.

Presently, capital was accrued to grant the second son an army commission as Ensign, which he used to great effect. Serving with distinction in the Austrian War, Draper rose swiftly to Captain by 1748, all the while capturing the attention of as august and diverse personages as the Townsend family and the Duke of Cumberland. His star ascending, Draper married his Colonel’s niece and transferred to the prestigious 1st Foot Guards as Regimental Adjutant, a shocking accomplishment for an untitled youth and evidence of his superior’s esteem.

Upon the conclusion of the war, it appeared nothing would slacken Draper’s elevation. What was next? Standing for Parliament? A government office, or a seat in the Privy Council? Major General by forty?

The future seemed boundless, but somehow his star waned. Rather than forward his career to its logical conclusion, Draper discovered that the aristocratic nature of the 1st Foot Guards in fact slowed his advancement. There was always a Duke or Baron’s son next in line for promotion. In hindsight, the soldier should have exchanged his commission with that of another regiment, where he might stand out with greater clarity from his peers.

Regrettably, that was not to be. When the inevitable occurred and war recommenced in 1756, Draper virtually begged to be sent to the continent, where France threatened George II of Great Britain’s ancestral patrimony of Hanover. He even offered service in America, India, anywhere which might bring his fealty to the King’s attention. For five long years, the youthful soldier awaited his opportunity. Exerting every scrap of goodwill and influence accrued through years of diligent service, Draper received provisional approval to raise his own regiment, only to see the war end before it might be deployed. The result was a mixed bag for Britain. Defeat at French hands in Europe, victory in America and a stalemate in India.

Draper was devastated. His prime years wasted in an age of great opportunity. Politely thanked for his service, Draper was given the Colonelcy of an unfashionable Regiment in the peace and promptly forgotten. Occasionally his allies mentioned in passing sponsoring Draper’s standing for Parliament on a family-controlled seat or his name considered for some minor government posting. The soldier cared little for politics, only how the office might advance his career. In each case, his allies were ushered out of office prior to any serious proposal being enacted.

Draper’s wife died, leaving a grieving widower. He departed for a tour in America, remarried into a prominent New York family, and returned to England without fanfare. A daughter was born. If his name reached the political classes, it was as a cricket enthusiast, not a warrior critical to the defense of the realm. Even a promotion to Major General did little to alter his fortunes, the advancement based largely on seniority and bore no additional authority. It appeared William Draper, whom aspired to so much, would be relegated to an obscure footnote in British history.

Then the American rebellion came, along with rumors of extending the conflict to the Bourbon powers. Into his late fifties, Draper knew damned well this would be his final opportunity for martial glory. The soldier exerted every influence, beseeched every friend, entreated every ally to secure a senior command. The conflict was not fashionable. The upper classes deemed subduing a colonial rebellion as beneath a professional officer. But Draper lacked any alternative. His sponsors’ opinions were divided, some in favor of confronting the ungrateful Americans, others advocating concessions. Draper skirted the line and managed to avoid offending any whom might yet advance his career. Without shame or hesitation, the soldier approached his late wife’s family, the Townsends, even his old Etonian schoolmate Henry Conway.

His reward for these efforts was to watch in envy as his contemporaries departed for America. Draper knew them all well. Howe. Burgoyne. Clinton. Cornwallis. Philips.

With the rebellion soon to be quelled, his time had passed. No Te Deums would be sung for William Draper, no orations of his great service. Then providence smiled once more.

For months, the Major General dwelled upon this twist of fate. Dispatched to a backwater within a makeshift army of four thousand, Draper nevertheless appreciated his fortune. Though he’d pleaded for command, Frederick, Count of Lippe and Major General Lord Henry Pleydell Dawnay assumed that role. Draper was assigned as a brigade commander. In spite of the supplementary role, the Englishman routinely expressed his gratitude to the almighty for even this favor.

Ten weeks aboard a rickety trans-oceanic transport slightly diminished this euphoria. His constitution plainly not compatible with a life at sea, the aging soldier’s misery deepened with every day. Stormy weather and perpetually overcast skies (atypical per the crew and Draper had no reason to doubt the sailors’ words) conspired to render the voyage a nightmare for the landsman. Day and night fused into a miasma of exhaustion. Continuous sleep evaded the officer. Only the rhythmic exertions of the seamen aided the soldier to distinguish day and night.

“Remember, squire,” One ancient sea dog recommended, exhaled a puff of tobacco from an equally antiquidated pipe. “Belows deck, that be for sleeping. You eyes stay closed. Best to spend as many of you waking hours above. That will spell your troubles, no doubt about that!”

Draper again suspected the advice to be in good faith. However, the roiling seas abetted no more above decks than below, though at least the rail provided a reliable outlet for his seasickness. The General attempted to nap additional hours, as if the inexorable trek might be condensed, the unpleasant experience truncated. No such luck. Instead, Draper’s sense of time evaporated within the minute dungeon the crew voiciferously protested represented “quite fine quarters” upon a naval vessel.

Be he awake or asleep, the fitful soldier’s mind retraced the same ill-fated steps leading to his immaterial contribution to the realm. For the most part, Draper didn’t attempt to differentiate the two as he awaited the obdurate journey to the distant land of South America to conclude.

The soldier was still pondering his fate, now twice widowed and bound for the unknown, when reality slapped him in the face and provided definitive evidence his wakefulness. Recognizing the telltale and now routine biological signs, Draper rose from his bunk, reached for the bucket and disgorged the contents of his stomach. By the remnants, the Englishman determined this had been last night’s supper and the dim beams emerging from the porthole must therefore be dawn’s light.

Hmm, may as well get up. The soldier had no idea how long he’d slept, or even when he’d gone to bed. The loyal valet had long since been ordered not to disturb his master. It wasn’t as if Thomas’ duties were overly rigorous. Draper had long since given up his pretentions of military discipline at sea and preferred to dress himself anyway. No senior officer would witness his rumpled state of undress, so why bother with the formalities? The miserable scow, the Amelia, was more freighter than transport. The common soldiers were crammed into the clippers lumbering alongside. Fortunately, the Amelia still bore a few cabins worthy of a pair of commanders and their staff officers.

Reaching for his jacket, Draper spat once more into the bucket in hopes of alleviating the lingering taste of vomit, and departed for the captain’s mess. Crawling through the bowels of the aftcastle, the General was unsurprised to see Ligonier already seated in the tiny chamber, suitable above the waterline to allow for a pair of windows accepting the rays of morning sunshine. Apparently, the dismal weather might have broken. Blue sky abounded to the east.

Major General Lord Edward Ligonier, Earl Ligonier, bearing perhaps the most nondescript visage Draper had ever seen, nodded in greeting. Nearly twenty years the elder officer’s junior, the son of French Huguenots, Ligonier might have passed as Draper’s son. Yet the younger man bore the identical rank, largely due to a mixture of personal ability and political connections. His late Uncle received the title for remarkable service to the nation over many years. Probably the most capable British soldier since Marlborough, the King condescended the Earldom upon the man for his many contributions to the nation. The younger Ligonier exhibited many of the same qualities and no doubt would do his lineage proud.

Despite the obvious gap in social status and age, the Generals soon reached an amicable relationship and the proper English reserve dispatched. Cramming two officers into close conditions upon a rickety cargo vessel for ten weeks often prompted such familiarity. Provided it didn’t turn to homicide.

“Ah, Draper,” the younger man nodded, one hand dipping a spoon into a steaming bowl. An odd and not entirely pleasant odor emerged. Draper’s stomach churned, though it could hardly bear any further contents. “If my ears did not deceive, you were expressing your opinion of last night’s stew.”

“Hmm. Too true, Ligonier.”

Ten weeks at sea also tended to dampen the use of titles and rank in conversation. Both were quite happy to dispense with the forms of affected manners, at least while separated from their superiors and inferiors.

Draper spied the assortment of maps littering the mess. The soldiers had bonded somewhat over the remarkable task before them. Lippe and Dawnay spent months planning this oriental campaign. Draper and Ligonier were attached to the voyage on short notice, receiving only the briefest of reports, so the officers spend hours reviewing every map of the region disputed between Spain and Portugal. Banda Oriental, or Eastern Bank, included territory separated from the mainland of South America by the southerly Uruguay River flowing into the drainage basis of the Rio de la Plata.

Vast, lightly settled, poorly explored and even more dismally mapped, neither catholic empire had bothered to settle region for centuries. The light European populations tended to congregate along a few towns adjoining the Atlantic Ocean to the Rio Plata. The native savages mostly gathered inland along the Uruguay River. Estimates varied from fifty to a hundred thousand souls populated an area the size of Great Britain and Ireland. That neither Spain nor Portugal had properly settled the apparently fertile area lent evidence of those nations’ criminal incapacity to exploit these resources, at least in Draper’s view. Fertile lands swiftly developed into productive townships in the British colonies.

The largely unknown interior remained a source of speculation, Terra Incognito. Draper was surprised that the blank area on the map did not feature a dire warning of “Here there be Monsters”. To the landsman’s eyes, each chart contradicted the other. To the south lay the Spanish region of the Rio Plata River and enemy territory. To the north, the Portuguese provincial towns of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro must provide the greater portion of supply, not to mention what resources their sovereign dispatched to the New World in order to protect his patrimony.

“Have we not reviewed every aspect with laudable diligence, Ligonier?” Draper teased. “Ten weeks of staring at these pages have burned the details of the maps, such as they are, into my eyes. I swear I can see them in my sleep.”

“Do we truly have anything else to do?”

Draper sighed, “Not really. Beyond memorizing our commanding officers’ ubiquitous treatises on military theory, I can think of nothing else to impress them of our devotion to duty.”

Ligonier nodded, gesturing vaguely to the maps, oddly subdued. The elder man, deciding against demanding a cup of that pungent broth, inquired why.

“I fear our army’s presence must border on the superfluous, Draper. The inland is so remote and unpopulated, largely impassible to friend and foe alike. Provided the Royal Navy gains superiority over the Spanish, hardly a difficult matter should their past performance prove any indication, our crusade against the Bourbon infidel may consist of nothing more than cruising south from Rio de Janeiro, casually assuming control of one outpost after another.”

Draper echoed his newfound friend’s complaints. Desperate to distinguish himself in any manner possible, this far-flung campaign may prove no more difficult than that of General Howe to the north. With a few nominal salvoes of artillery, the Spanish might surrender in good conscience before a superior foe and return to their homelands with heads held high.

“Of course, perhaps the Spanish might actually provide an active opposition this time,” Draper countered with a bit of optimism.

Spying his colleague’s pinched expression of disbelief, he added, “Don’t laugh, we both recall the nation’s dismal performance in the last war but King Carlos has been intent on improving his forces ever since.”

Ligonier nodded, only half joking, “Who knows, indeed? Perhaps a French Armada might arrive and seek our lives!”

“That’s the spirit, Draper! Britain, Spain, France and Portugal! This little colonial backwater might prove the decisive battle for domination of the sea!”

The newfound friends laughed, no more enthusiastic of their mission than before. Still, duty was duty and both intended to serve their Sovereign to the best of their abilities.

At length, Draper attempted the broth and regretted the lapse almost immediately, being forced to stick his head out the porthole to purge. This damnable voyage could not end soon enough.

 

[Alt History Buff]

Scene: July 1777 – Death of His Serene Highness, Count Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe. Downe learns of effective declaration of war by France and Spain.

“…and we shall take great comfort in the myriad manners in which His Serene Highness, Count Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe, has enriched the armed forces of his adopted country.”

Major General William Draper knew Viscount Downe in passing but had not occasion for extended intercourse. Like any soldier, Draper recognized and conceded the fellow’s military expertise and the political classes may recall his modest contributions to Parliament prior to inheriting his father’s Peerage. Of average height and build, the sixtyish Briton represented the typical poise of the aristocracy.

What Lord Downe was not was an orator. A soldier by choice, the Lieutenant General eulogized his superior officer in the most stilted of terms, emphasizing the soldier but not the man. Count Lippe was a remarkable tactician and strategist, but surely there could be some words as to his character?

The great man’s passing was infinitely regrettable. In the face of losing his little German principality twenty years’ past to the ravenous hordes of Britain’s continental enemies, the nobleman exhibited no note of vituperation towards George II of Great Britain for his role in initiating the 5 Years War. The Count lost his patrimony but the British King sacrificed his beloved Hanover in the same peace. Even when the gleeful victors arbitrarily handed over the tiny German County of Lippe to the French King, Lippe made no objection. He was childless, his line doomed to end, and the cousins destined to inherit Schaumburg-Lippe were compensated by the Holy Roman Emperor with an even larger territory confiscated from Frederick the Fool of Prussia.

If rumors were to be believed, Count Lippe even wrote the Emperor a polite letter of gratitude for not disinheriting his cousins. Even as other exiled German Princelings feasted off the British public’s largesse, the House of Wolfenbuttal most prominently, routinely embarrassing George II (and later George III) with their outrageous antics, Lippe merely offered his service to his host in any manner the King may desire as Lippe “had no other occupation at the moment”.

Surely, that counts for more than a tedious narrative on Count Lippe’s contribution to the British Army’s regulation on billeting!

Having braved the rigors of the Atlantic crossing, Count Lippe swiftly disembarked upon arrival in Sao Paulo and proceeded to whip the Portuguese Army forces on hand into some semblance of shape. It turns out the fellow had plenty of time as, evidently, the Spanish and Portuguese Chief Ministers were discussing a peaceful settlement, much to the annoyance of every Briton present. The Portuguese contingent, intended to provide the majority of the campaign’s victuals and transports, were ordered to halt any offensive actions until all diplomatic options were exhausted.

For months, the increasingly irate British forces camped under the pestilential tropical sun, hundreds of soldiers sickening and dying. Meanwhile, who knew what preparations the Spaniards were making in expectation of an assault? How many would die for this diplomatic folly?

The very day a dispatch arrived from Lisbon authorizing commencement of hostilities, Count Lippe succumbed to illness. Long since exhausted and depressed by the loss of his homeland, Lippe was in ill health, three months at sea having done nothing alleviate this. Neither did six months in the tropics. Yet even approaching death, Lippe fulfilled to his duty. The wretched collection of Portuguese Regiments and Brazilian colonial militia was whipped into some semblance of shape, provisions stockpiled and ships seized for transport. On the verge of the belated commencement of the campaign, the old German left his mortal coil, leaving the dour Downe in command.

Only this impromptu service in honor of the late Count held the fleet for another day. Dozens of senior officers, British and Portuguese, Army and Navy, alighted a hill overlooking the sea to pay their respects. Sweat drenched most of the men present, a fact of life near the equator. Oddly, the Count was nowhere to be seen. Declining to be buried locally, the German was currently en route back to Britain, his body lodged into a barrel of rum to stymy decay. Draper was not certain if the latest lord of Lippe would allow his predecessor’s corpse to be buried in his native soil, but the soldier prayed so. The man merited that final dignity.

Still, Draper could not stifle the image of some sailor mistakenly distributing the rum barrel for sale and some London pub discovering a grizzly corpse pickling within. Stranger things had happened before.

Thankfully, Lorde Downe’s somewhat affected but sincere speech on Count Lippe’s virtues drew to its belabored conclusion, much to the relief of all present. The sun continued to beat down upon the frustrated officers, no less irate at Downe dragging them upon this hill to receive his odd martial sermon than the distraction from their duty. Lippe was dead, Downe now commanded.

Could we not get on with the war?

Though the sky remained steadily blue, there must have been a few clouds above as a momentary sprinkle dowsed the soldiers’ heads. Even Admiral Hood, on good terms with the late General, appeared dismayed at the squandered time. Presently, Lord Downe nodded and announced the departure of the combined fleets two days hence.

At last, Draper considered with relish. The war may begin.

 

[Alt History Buff]

Scene: October 1777 - Viscount Downe, Dawnay in command of small armada taking a Uruguayan town. Spanish retreating. Downe selected due to his years in Portugal helping update Portuguese Army. Horrified at “Guyrani war” depopulations. Much of coast devastated. Learns of taking of Gibraltar.

Major General Henry Pleydell Dawnay, Viscount Downe, muttered in approval as the Royal Navy’s bombardment reached a crescendo. Of average height, the Irish Lord’s thin, bony face bore few distinguishing features beyond the stereotypical weak English chin. The deck of the HMS Barfleur reverberated with the constant thrum of the barrage. Downe pitied the miserable Spaniards attempting to hold the ramshackle fortification on Santa Catarina Island. Precisely why the enemy commander opted to situate so near the water was beyond the Anglo-Irishman’s ken. Several suitable locations, adequately elevated enough to avoid naval fire, were readily apparent at first glance.

The slight fall (no, spring, Downe reminded himself of his orientation from the equator) crisp to the morning air would soon dissipate under the oppressive Brazilian sun. There was nothing resembling an English winter in these parts, even so far south as the little island. Still, anything was preferable to the diseased hell of Sao Paulo. With luck, his little force would be nearer the Rio de la Plata by summer and avoid the worst of the southern pestilence season.

Passing the spyglass to his companion, Downe commented amicably, “Your lads are doing quite the job, Hood. I expect my regiments shall not be required for anything more strenuous than assisting these Spaniards to pack up!”

Admiral Samuel Hood laughed, accepting the proffered spyglass. Long of face and chin, the sailor was of Downe’s vintage, perhaps fifty some years, though Downe hadn’t asked the exact quantity. The scuttlebutt implied that Hood was near retirement, or the permanent sinecure of a land posting. Downe assumed this to be the same thing for a sailing man. Though something of a rarity in British history, the senior and junior services had cooperated splendidly on this endeavor. Much like the soldier, Hood immersed himself in his command upon receiving authority to initiate hostilities, valuing solid logistical and supply work as highly as naval tactics. Downe had seldom encountered a more well-rounded officer. Acknowledging neither service was capable of contributing to the campaign without the full support of the other, an easy collaboration was formed between the two commanders that trended towards friendship. Downe was nominally in overall command but consulted Hood regularly.

“I would not be surprised at all, Downe, should the fellows surrender their little shack of a fortress before your troops reach soil…oh, my, I might take to gypsy card-reading as a hobby! I do believe that I see a white flag!”

Both officers chuckled as Hood called out the signal to ceasefire. The ill-fated defense had been doomed to fail from the start. Without the benefit of naval support, Santa Catarina Island would fall. Some idiot Spanish General, though it may have been a politician playing at General, deemed it wise to deposit a few hundred Spanish and Rio Platen soldiers on an island off the coast of Rio Grande do Sol, hundreds of miles north of any defensible Spanish position…and then promptly withdrew any naval support. These poor bastards had effectively been marooned. The Portuguese hardly required British assistance in dealing with this collection of lost souls.

“Well,” Downe grumbled good naturedly, “what do you think, Hood? Offer them parole or send them to Sao Paolo in chains?”

Hood shook his head, gesturing towards his office his offices. The pair turned their backs on the now-concluded battle. Both officers hoped the enemy’s bold, and brief, show of defiance to retain some semblance of martial pride didn’t cost any Spaniards their lives. “I don’t see the point, Downe. These fellows know they were dumped here in an impossible position. I doubt overly many would willingly serve their country again after such a betrayal. Give them parole provided they return to the Rio de la Plata and not to the disputed territories.”

“I quite agree,” the soldier nodded, ducking between scampering seamen before entering Hood’s comfortable but cramped wardroom. The complexities of a sailing ship as large as the Barfleur never ceased to astonish the landsman. “This whole exercise was a waste of powder. Clearly, those lads never stood a chance at holding such a northerly position.”

Several adjutants, representing both services, skittered about a collection of maps spread across a narrow conference table. Downe congratulated himself for choosing an army life over the navy. Though his sea legs developed well enough, the tight confines would drive him mad.

Alexander Hood, Captain of the vessel and, not coincidently, the Admiral’s brother, nodded towards the table, “Our scouts returned this morning. Neither of the frigates encountered Spanish warships until reaching Rio Grande de San Pedro. At least a dozen of King Charles’ vessels lay in anchor, apparently relinquishing the initiative to us.”

The town of Rio Grande de San Pedro, until recently, had been generally considered as the southern limit of the accepted “Portuguese” South America just as the Rio Plata River was long conceded as “Spanish”. The Banda Oriental border territory east of the Uruguay River, largely unpopulated beyond a few illegal trading towns, was the longtime sore spot between the two empires. Still, no major conflict had brewed for a generation. Spain’s intrusion into the indisputably Brazilian northern territory broke the uneasy peace.

“Ah, welcome back, Lieutenant,” the Admiral exclaimed. Downe recognized one of the officers dispatched to scout the coast, a talented young Lieutenant named…oh, hell what was it? Downe assumed he must have rowed over from one of the other ships during the bombardment of Santa Catarina.

The slight young officer bowed. Downe recalled Hood raving about the fellow’s potential. The soldier knew a protégé when he saw one. Gesturing towards a stack of parchments, “Thank you, Admiral. I have a full report…”

“Yes, yes,” Hood interrupted, “I’ll read in detail later but summarize for the General and myself, please. General Dawnay must deal with our friends on shore.”

“Of course, sir,” the Lieutenant nodded before ploughing forward in a refreshingly concise manner. “Your Lordship, though our voyage was uncontested, it was not uneventful. Anchored off Rio Grand de Sao Pedro are at least a dozen Spanish warships. From a distance, I would estimate a half-dozen first or second-raters, and perhaps as many third or fourth-raters, though one or two of these may have been simply frigates. I took careful notes of the quantity of guns so perhaps we might speculate on the identity of the ships themselves. We dared only approach so closely.”

Hood waved off the semi-apology. Downe appreciated a man whom didn’t waste time on pointless recriminations. The General interrupted, “What of the defenses on land?”

Without missing a beat, the sailor replied with a gesture towards his report, “Naturally, I could not hazard a guess at quantity of defenders from such a distance. However, I did make sketches of the fortifications within view. I would not deem them insurmountable.”

The Admiral nodded approvingly as Downe chuckled, “Excellent, Lieutenant, thank you. We’ll review again tomorrow. Anything else?”

“Yes, sir, there was one other incident of note. We intercepted a Spanish trader, originally departed from Spain, then sailing south from Havana to Buenos Aires with an odd assortment of rum, tobacco and trinkets. As the vessel was somewhat ramshackle and carried no valuable cargo of martial note, we determined not to interrupt our mission to take her as a prize. We seized what quantities our own ship could carry of the lightest and most valuable cargo and released the sailors.”

“Wise,” Captain hood commented as his brother nodded in support.

“However, she did bear some interesting…dispatches…from Cadiz though I pray they might be exaggerations. They claim that Spain and France have taken Gibraltar.”

Stunned silence filled the congested wardroom. The Rock of Gibraltar? The enduring symbol of British invincibility at sea? Surely, it cannot be! After the loss of the fine naval base on Minorca in the last war against the French, Britain’s Naval and merchant fleets possessed few such strongholds in the Mediterranean worthy of the name.

“Were there no British vessels to repel this attack, Lieutenant?” The Admiral demanded.

The young officer, obviously uncomfortable with his commander’s scathing inquiry, nodded solemnly.

“Evidently so, sir. The papers referred to the “cowardly flight of the British Navy” after a few French salvoes. It seems that rumors of Gibraltar’s besiegement were true. The documents name Lord Richard Howe commanding a relief force towards the garrison but losing his life in the attempt.”

Several junior officers growled at the implication but held their tongues. Downe turned to his comrade and muttered, “It was the colonists, Admiral. If our attention had not been so focused on the troubles in America, the damned French and Spaniards would never dare attempt such an action.”

The Lieutenant cleared his throat meaningfully. Receiving his superior’s curt node, the young man continued, “Also, Sirs, we discovered another piece of disquieting news.”

“Good god, more?!”

“We interviewed several of the Spanish crewmen quite thoroughly, Admiral, and seized their manifests and logbooks. Without any undue physicality, virtually every sailor confessed that the cargo they bore from Spain was two hundred barrels of French-produced gunpowder…destined for Charlestown, South Carolina.”

A long silence ensued before a junior officer muttered, “And the French and Spaniards deem Britain to be perfidious?”

 

[Alt History Buff]

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[Alt History Buff]

Scene: November 1777 – Naval victory over Spanish squadron in Rio Grande do San Pedro. English takes several towns. Drives Spain back. Note devastation of entire cost. Spanish kicked out Portuguese. Feral cattle.

“General! I see a white flag!”

About damned time, considered Viscount Downe caustically. Hood ran off their fleet two days ago.

The last settlement of significance in Brazil prior to reaching the contested Banda Oriental region, the Spanish-occupied town was likely the most fortified location north of the Vice-Royalty, its capture essential as a forward supply depot. After a mercifully brief voyage, the wallowing transports bearing four disease-ravaged British Regiments and the motley collection of a thousand or so hired Portuguese adventurers (the Sao Paulo governor preferred to keep the handful of trained Portuguese soldiers available in case of slave revolt) lowered sail and dropped anchor. The soldier was thoroughly disgusted with his allies whom, evidently, intended Britain to carry the entire burden of the campaign.

Don’t these fine fellows realize His Majesty parted with four regiments of infantry for their benefit, not His own?

Though he loathed the necessity of passively waiting for the Navy to set about their task, no further assault may occur until Hood’s Anglo-Portuguese squadron evicted the Spanish flotilla anchored off the town. Downe felt oddly naked, sitting placidly twenty miles north of the town as the pair of fleets battled for the wind gage. He’d feared the Spanish maneuvers a ruse to draw Hood’s protective warships away while another Spanish squadron emerged from the south to scatter or seize the helpless Anglo-Portuguese transports. With the little armadas so evenly matched, Hood couldn’t release more than a pair of frigates to protect Downe’s vulnerable convoy. For two days, the fleets circled like pugilists, in and out of sight of the fretting and atypically apprehensive soldier. Generals are seldom sanguine with waiting idly by as others decide their fate. Despite Downe’s confidence in his comrade, and the occasional burst of cannon-fire echoing over the horizon, the Englishman’s intestines roiled.

Hood had repeatedly commented on the poor state of the Portuguese sailing ships, both the vessels themselves and the crews. Fortunately, several of the ships were masters by expatriate Britons, so at least they might be properly commanded. Both British and Portuguese squadrons consisted of an eclectic assortment ranging from fine ship-of-the-lines to smaller, heavily-armed frigates, two classes of warship seldom utilized in unison. Hood lacked any realistic option but battling with whatever was on hand and departed with a confident wave.

Fickle fate did not betray the soldier on this occasion. Within forty-eight hours, Hood returned triumphant, three prizes in tow and claiming two others settling upon the floor of the Atlantic. Viscount Downe prompted invited the disheveled Admiral to supper.

“It was a hard-fought battle,” Hood toasted his enemy that evening, “so often the Spaniards flee anything resembling equal odds. But the old boy certainly had put up a fight for he must lose the settlement with a retreat.”

“I imagine his superiors would have had the gallant Spaniard shot otherwise,” Downe commented.

“God knows, a Briton would be. Remember Byng in the last war? Gave up on Minorca a bit too easily and, well, I never really championed his execution but a scapegoat was deemed necessary.”

Regardless of the Spanish Admiral’s fortunes, Downe bore into his task the following day. The ungainly transports crept as close to the shoreline south of San Pedro (or Rio Grande as some of the Portuguese referred it it) and painstakingly initiated the process of rowing his men and material to land. Though he’d studied the maps carefully, the Anglo-Irish General was ill-prepared for the sheer vastness of the coastline adjoining the town of San Pedro. Located on a peninsula at a bizarre confluence of two expansive enclosed coastal lagoons, the Portuguese had erected a small trading post and fortification against raiders at the narrow channel where the shallow lagoons disgorge their contents into the Atlantic. Protected on either side by barely navigable water, the forest at its back, the location was potentially defensible provided one was not constrained by the normal Spanish lethargy. Lacking any high ground and a frontal assault against a narrow façade the only conceivable action, the Spanish commander evidently hadn’t bothered to erect a defensive barrier.

Beyond the occasional half-hearted sniping from sand dunes, the British-Portuguese force landed without major incident and crawled inexorably forward towards the town. Too late, the incompetent Spaniard attempted to halt the British progress by launching a few feeble charges. Feet now on solid ground (or semi-solid sand), Downe casually brushed off the assaults, pushing the poorly armed and provisioned Spaniards back onto the peninsula bearing the town. The enemy might have retreated toward the interior but this direction provided little sustenance and no avenue for escape. The Spaniard was either playing for time or merely going through the motions for honor’s sake. Downe cared little either way. After three days of dragging the cannon forward through grasping sand, even as a handful of resident Portuguese applauded their “liberators”, brought the British force to San Pedro (or Rio Grande, at this point, Downe didn’t care what they called it). With the narrow channel to the Atlantic hopelessly blockaded and lacking adequate transports anyway to escape, the enemy sought terms of surrender.

This time, Downe could not afford mercy. No paroles were offered. The bedraggled Spanish colonial army was shipped to a man to Brazil as prisoners of war. Downe could not grant such a large body of men their freedom, not when they might be put to more mischief at a later date. Besides, his beleaguered King’s Men were succumbing to the rampant tropical diseases in alarming numbers, especially when imprisoned on crowded, unsanitary transports waiting out a campaign whose outcome had been decided at sea the previous week. A garrison was swiftly established (like the others, temporarily under British auspices until Portugal might assume command), the ill and wounded were put to land, and General Henry Pleydell Dawnay, Viscount Downe of the Irish Peerage, prepared to decisively and permanently settle the ownership of the Banda Oriental.

 

[Alt History Buff]

Scene: November 1777 - Wallmoden arrives in Santa Tereza. Dinner party. Have already taken Sao Pedro, Santa Catarina. Downe was waiting for reinforcements Montevideo and Colonia de Sacramento.

“How many Dukes of Brunswick are there?!”

The assembled party, at least those whom spoke English, sniggered at Draper’s open-mouthed astonishment. Hardly a regular at the Court of St. James, the middle-aged soldier lacked any deep erudition on the subject of nobility within the Holy Roman Empire.

“Oh, let me see,” Wallmoden chuckled, “Fifteen? That sounds about right!”

Another cacophony of laughter shook the table. General Wallmoden had arrived from Britain barely two weeks prior, the arduous voyage plainly telling upon the Hanoverian’s constitution. Three months at sea seldom benefit landsmen. Fortunately, firm ground beneath his feet reinvigorated the man soon enough and felt well enough to join the “Council of War” congregating in the battered fortress and Santa Tereza, the latest Spanish stronghold to fall to the Anglo-Portuguese forces.

Lord Downe, naturally, fully intended the evening meal to progress swiftly to military matters. Montevideo, the finest anchorage New Spain had to offer in these southern waters, beckoned for conquest after all. Fortunately for the senior officers accustomed to Downe’s tedious General Staff meetings, the charming Wallmoden occasioned a slightly less formal gathering. The bastard son of George II by a German mistress, and therefore the biological uncle of the current British monarch, Wallmoden had joined the exodus of prominent Hanoverian families fleeing the Electorate after succumbing to French forces in the last war. Lacking any other occupation worthy of the son of a King, Wallmoden volunteered for the “King’s German Legion”, a collection of Regiments composed of remnants of the Hanoverian Army and their Brunswick-Wolfenbuttal allies. Most of the force currently defended Gibraltar. However, His Majesty, George III, graciously volunteered the 1st and 5th Regiments to King Joseph’s South American campaign.

Rumors of discord between the German soldiers and the English country squires adjacent the barracks no doubt expedited the reinforcements from British soil.

Though the single-minded Lord Downe clearly desired to return to the topic at hand, the General tactfully allowed the Council to devolve into a dinner party, as the officers, bored and exhausted by three quick conquests of Spanish holdings along the Banda Oriental coast, plainly desired distraction. Wallmoden, whom spoke unaccented English as readily as German, proved an entertaining dinner companion. His tales of court foibles left his new comrades in stitches.

“Oh, yes,” Wallmoden nodded as his bland, fiftyish features contorted. “There are more German Dukes in London than British peers, I can assure you. Every prince of the blood stemming from the Duchy of Brunswick, meaning that applying to both the Electorate of Hanover and Brunswick-Wolfenbuttal, is entitled to the appellation of “Duke”.”

Johann Heinrich Bohm, the Prussian mercenary commanding the Portuguese forces in Brazil, muttered something to Colonel Benningsen, the commander of the 5th Hanover. Bohm reportedly communicated adequately in Portuguese, indeed had served the little nation’s interests since the 5 Years War, but spoke not a whit of English. In fact, Bohm had been one of the late Count Lippe’s adjutants in that conflict and received a glowing recommendation from the Count. Benningsen, another Hanoverian forced from his German homeland, whispered an explanation, no doubt forwarding the joke. The Prussian had spent the past six months attempting to whip the Brazilian colonists into some semblance of efficiency, dismissing those whose service unlikely to exceed the value of their rations, and consolidating into a trio of theoretically functional regiments. The predominantly English officers captaining the Portuguese vessels echoed this policy, preferring to advance with five properly trained, paid, provisioned and captained crews in place of a greater number of vessels haphazardly outfitted.

“Which is the one that continues to embarrass the King?” Ligonier, in his cups, inquired somewhat tactlessly. “You know, the one married to His Majesty’s sister?”

“Oh, that would be Duke Charles, son of the current reigning prince, if you can deem an exile as “reigning”. Lamentably, the old man is somewhat of a drunk and a recluse these days,” Wallmoden nodded. “And really it isn’t his heir, also named Charles, whom is the problem. Princess Augusta simply cannot let the matter of her husband’s patrimony go. The woman has even publicly admonished her brother the King for placing the American rebellion above what she considered should be His Majesty’s only priority: invading Hanover in order to return her husband to his rightful throne!”

“I imagine the lady also expects His Majesty to invade Denmark as well,” General Pattison, the commander of the Royal Irish Artillery Regiment, which arrived to supplement Downe’s meager forces, “to place their sister Caroline Matilda back upon the Danish throne! No doubt expanding the war to Hanover, Austria and Denmark shall lead to ultimate victory!”

“Well, Britain is not yet at war with Russia or the Ottoman as of yet! Maybe assume a declaration upon the Chinese Emperor as well?!”

Draper hadn’t formed much of an opinion of Pattison as of yet. The Englishman appeared competent enough but the elder officer was shocked at Pattison flagrant denigration of his own soldiers, estimating the scrawny and hungry Irishmen, “his diminutive warriors”, “bare breeched” and “lower than serpents”. Who, exactly, was then responsible for the gunners’ miserable condition but Pattison?

But with Montevideo, the southernmost fortified town east of the Uruguay River as the allies’ next obvious target, the Irish Regiment’s artillery train would most unequivocally be required. Draper pitied the poor fellows, still trapped aboard ship after their protracted and hazardous voyage. The year was late and, at this latitude, some seasonal relief was expected from the oppressive heat and humidity. Yet disease ran rampant upon the overcrowded transports and conditions harsh. Inopportunely, the fortress of Santa Tereza lacked any amenities for large quantities of soldiers. It could barely contain the Anglo-Portuguese garrison installed few weeks prior at the conquest. Allowing only a few hundred sick or wounded onshore, the remainder of the expedition must remain anchored along the nearby Atlantic bays.

Perhaps, Downe is correct, Draper mused. We must make for Montevideo at once or lose the initiative.

The banter went back and forth for hours, despite Downe’s feeble request for order. The campaign had been difficult and even the commanding General was fatigued. Yet duty prompted Downe to bid his men to the matter at hand. The General presented an assortment of accounts provided by junior officers and Portuguese traders familiar with the Montevideo’s defenses. Stout walls rimmed the little peninsular town, the bulk of New Spain’s naval forces at this latitude called the fine harbor home, snuggled comfortably under the protective guns of the fortresses.

Montevideo would be a tough nut to crack indeed.

 

[Alt History Buff]

Battle of Montevideo: 1777 December 27th

Draper flinched, instantly regretting approaching so close to the thunderous resonance of the mortars, embedded deeply in the rich South American loam. He ears throbbed in agony as the sonorous blasting made way for dull ringing sensation pervading every corner of his skull. Only with difficulty could he make out General Pattison’s caustic taunts belittling the frantic Irish Artillerymen rushing about. The gunners sprinted back and forth from the powder caissons, mostly located hundreds of yards rearwards of the jagged trenches twisting adjacent the stout walls of Montevideo. Though the December weather had cooled slightly in the past few days, the stricken Irishmen sweated profusely from the effort.

The mortar shells, hardly the most precise of ordnances, largely pounded the interior of the provincial town. These huge field guns, busily arcing massive shells over the walls, were merely the distraction despite the damage inflicted upon Montevideo’s besieged inhabitants. Rather it was the lighter cannon methodically pounding away upon the stone and earthen walls that truly advanced His Majesty’s cause.

The Englishman gazed northwards across the harbor, reassured that the fine port anchored only Royal Navy vessels and their allies, a slew of Portuguese flagged warships, victualers, transports and captured Spanish traders. The British frigates occasionally spewed forth a volley of their own, their heavy maritime cannons adding to the demolition of the Spanish colony’s defenses but, in truth, the sailors had already done their job. The last major Spanish stronghold in the Banda Oriental, Montevideo boasted the finest harbor in New Spain. The azure waters represented a strategic asset like few others, a potential Gibraltar of the south to replace the Mediterranean bastion so shockingly given up by her determined defenders. Upon the allied British and Portuguese fleet’s advance, the Spanish flotilla commander evidently determined that blocking off the wide harbor entrance to be impossible and fixed upon confronting the interlopers at sea rather than risking a close-quarters battle without possibility of maneuver or retreat.

By all accounts, the ensuing mêlée was a close run thing and Draper, never one comfortable at sea, was pleased to miss that particular engagement. After delegating garrisons to hold the conquered citadels to the north, Admiral Hood and General Downe vowed to break the Spanish power in the region by the conquest of Montevideo, the linchpin of the Rio Plata. Naturally, it was left to the Navy to strike the first blow. Admittedly low on resources, Hood ruthlessly purged his mish-mashed British and Portuguese armada of unseaworthy vessels, sending those north to Rio de Janeiro whilst impressing their finest sailors into the remaining ships. Though he’d sacrificed three rickety Portuguese brigs and one British frigate, those remaining were now properly outfitted with competent officers (the Portuguese Naval commanders were largely British officers or British-descendants in the Portuguese service) steering full and experienced crews. Once again leaving the British transports behind, the sixteen warships advanced boldly towards the gathering Spanish storm.

For thirty-six hours, the fleets circled like prizefighters, seeking the advantage. Unlike so many occasions in the past, the Spanish plainly intended to hold their ground (or water) against reputedly superior British seamanship. What constituted a battle at sea was often obtuse but the outcome fairly translucent. Three Spanish vessels lowered their flags in surrender even as four more burned the waterline or grudgingly sank beneath the waves. What was left of the battered enemy force limped westwards to Buenos Aires in search of succor.

The Anglo-Portuguese allies had won, the entrance to Montevideo’s harbor beckoned.

The next few days were a blur of activity. The British and Portuguese forces disembarked upon the northern shore of Montevideo’s harbor. Desultory cannon fire emerged from the town of Montevideo upon the interlopers, largely out of range and ineffective. The little colonial speck on the map was located upon a promontory jutting westwards, nearly severing the harbor from the La Plata Basin and the vast expanses of the Atlantic. While sparsely settled haciendas littered the eastern and northern coasts of the harbor, the local population was simply insufficient to properly develop the interior coast of the sprawling anchorage. It was easy to disgorge the human contents of the transports without significant opposition. Lord Downe took stock and promptly marched his men and material eastwards along the waterfront until the approaches of Montevideo appeared.

The Spanish, no doubt panicked, attempted to waylay the march but no proper defensive position existed prior to the town itself. Beyond a few haphazard volleys from the woods, the Spanish appeared resigned to retreating within the walls of Montevideo and waiting out a siege. Neither Hood nor Downe were of a mind to waste their advantage. The sailor was adamant that the whipped Spanish fleet in Buenos Aires was not a threat to his own forces. But were not reinforcements from Spain, and possibly a grander armada from France, a distinct possibility? Disinterested in squandering time, Downe politely offered terms of surrender to the Spanish commandant (equally politely declined) and set upon investing the town. No hints of malaria or yellow fever presented themselves yet such outbreaks might emerge without warning and stymy even the strongest and most determined of sieges. No doubt the Spaniard prayed for such. With ten thousand civilian mouths to feed and safeguarded by a scant few thousand soldiers and militia, confidence was unlikely an inherent vice at the moment within the stout walls of Montevideo.

The improvised allied army spent Christmas day hastily digging trenches to secure the artillery even as the Regimental officers apprehensively organized to assault the walls. Though he might have granted his beleaguered and exhausted men a seasonal holiday, shortfalls of powder and uncertainly over Spanish reinforcements forced Lorde Downe’s hand. The Englishman was determined to bludgeon the enemy town as best he could before ordering the necessary sacrifice of so many fine men. But the town was physically too large and the Irish Artillery insufficient to bring the Spanish to terms on their own. The infantry must carry the day. To their everlasting credit, the Brigadiers and Colonels, to a man, vowed to enter the gates and ascend the walls alongside their charges. There would be no commanding from the rear this day.

Draper had never been so proud to be an Englishman.

A mere three days of bombardment brought powder and shot supplies to a critical point. Hood offered what naval resources he could spare without foregoing his fleet’s capacity to wage battle itself. Hopes that the Spanish might seek terms dissipated and the army, ensconced along the crumbling exterior walls, anxiously awaited the word with siege ladders in hand. British regulars and Portuguese-Brazilian militia, standing side by side through conquest by conquest from the start of the campaign, prepared their souls to meet their makers.

Witnessing a precipitous collapse along the southern wall, Lord Downe had just ordered an assault upon the following dawn when a dispatch arrived from Europe threatening to dissolve the allied army where it stood.

 

[Alt History Buff]

Scene: Assault on Montevideo December 31st 1777 – Bribery of Bohm to keep Portuguese forces in the field. See 1807 in Wikipedia.

General William Draper gazed upon the Spanish colonial city with a critical eye, the rising sun at his back. If the locals spoke truth, the southern summer proved atypically moderate. The woolen garb of the soldiers were not affixed to their flesh by unrelenting rolls of sweat.

Draper sighed, dragging his mind back to the present. Many a good lad would meet his maker today.

“A foreboding sight, eh, Draper?”

The Englishman nodded, unable to reply to his younger friend. Ligonier’s Brigade bore the dubious honor of the first assault, so decreed by General Downe. Draper was uncertain if there was any rationale why Ligonier drew that lot, or simple chance. Though desirous to punctuate a laudable though undistinguished career with a redoubtable victory over Britain’s enemies, Draper bore no jealousy for his friend drawing the black stone.

Seated upon a westward pointing promontory, Montevideo appeared formidable indeed. The ten foot stone wall, stretching from the azure waters of the La Plata Basin to the placid Bahia de Montevideo, bore an indefinable arrogance as if it inviting the British to attack. Most imposing of all was the massive fortress equidistant between the two bodies of water, built into the already stout city walls. Based upon the proven design of a classic star fortress, the Spanish colonial office at some point in the past evidently deemed the town significant enough to justify the expense of this “Ciudadela”.

The day the expedition landed along the protected inner shores of the Bahia, Draper had jocularly estimated Montevideo the “Gibraltar of the South” with his colleagues. Perhaps there was less levity on the observation than initially intended. The Ciudadela’s massive bastions jutted eastward from the colonial town like a dagger stabbed toward the heart of the invaders, trenches wounded the earth before the steeply sloped glacis. Ravelins and tenailles abounded, adding additional layers of defense before one even reached the stronghold. Spaniards skittered about the ramparts like ants, ensuring an ideal position to enfilade any British or Portuguese soldiers daring enough to scale the less imposing city walls north and south of the citadel. Mortars periodically pounded the stout fortress throughout the night, to little avail. Draper winced at the thought of the assailants’ exposed position to Spanish fire.

An hour before dawn, the entire British and Portuguese force was in place, the plan simple. The cannon would deliver an hour of concentrated fire upon the weakest sections of the southern wall, where Downe had appointed Ligonier and Wallmoden’s Regiments to attack. Each length of wall, north and south of the citadel, bore but a lonely pair of gates, no doubt reinforced with tens of thousands of pounds of debris and earth. The gates themselves were demolished under the constant bombardment of the cannon, beads of soil bleeding through the tattered timbers lending evidence that further assault at that point would be futile. Conversely, the stone walls, prone to shattering when overstressed by three and five pound balls, were the weak point. The natives had desperately attempted to heal the wounds throughout the night by reinforcing the complaining stone with earth and cattle hides but the evidence of structural fatigue was obvious.

Once the wall fell, and both engineers and artillery officers swore the moment was nigh, Ligonier would assault this southern wall, breaking into the city. Once within, he would race behind the citadel towards the northern stretch and grant entrance to Draper’s soldiers. It was a simple and elegant plan. Draper wondered at the measure of blood such a triumph must demand for the Spanish were no doubt prepared within the failing ramparts.

Thousands of men, Draper shook his head. Rushing through a tiny crevice, or alighting siege ladders. The enemy snipers in the Ciudadela must have a field day.

The elder soldier feared for his young friend. A “forlorn hope” detachment had been prepared, their mission: be the first in. Only General Downe’s direct command restricted Ligonier from entering the city walls at the head of his men, sure to face the inevitable onslaught of enemy fire. The Brigadier vowed to obey, yet Draper held not a shadow of a doubt that Ligonier would follow but moments later. The casualties must be appalling.

“It’s broken! See how it shatters! It’s brokeeeeeeeen!”

The unseen soldier’s cry was punctuated by the thunderous rupturing of the sturdy southern wall’s support. A colossal mass of stone, perhaps spanning thirty feet, slowly toppled to the ground as if only grudgingly conceding defeat, a cloud of dust and soil spewing skyward as the expanse shattered into dozens of pieces. For days, the Irish Artillery peppered the stone and earthen walls, probing for a weakness as the stalwart defenders attempted to shore it up from the inside. At last, their efforts paid off.

Only by happenstance, and a desire to say goodbye to his friend, was William Draper present to witness the august event. His own brigade was situated along the northern partition of Montevideo’s barricade, no doubt awaiting their commander. He mustn’t tarry.

Draper clasped his friend’s hand.

“I must be off, Draper,” Ligonier grunted.

“As I, Ligonier.”

With that, Draper struck off as quickly as his old bones could carry him, dodging between scampering British, German and Portuguese soldiers desperate to get into position. The Englishman might have taken his horse to say his goodbyes but determined not to bother. His Regiments were barely two hundred yards northwards. It would take longer to get on his horse than it would to navigate the trenches.

As if on cue, the Spaniards deemed now to the moment to open fire, unseen mortars and cannon erupted from within the fortified city. Draper was not concerned. If the Spaniards possessed any artillery of note, or the powder and shot to supply it, they would have expended it long before now. The moment an intruder approached the walls was literally the least useful time to utilize this advantage, not unless the Spaniards desired to crater their own defenses.

The thought hadn’t crossed Draper’s mind when the fates nearly punished the soldier for his insolence. Spying his command ahead, the General ducked behind a caisson half-buried behind a wall of soil and halted momentarily to step over a gnarled root protruding from the earth, its associated trunk and branches long since harvested for fuel. At that precise instant, a screaming cannonball collided with the caisson, the impact hellish. The ammunition cart, fortunately barren of powder, disintegrated as shards of kindling punctured the air. A sharp pain, oddly non-localized, pierced the Englishman’s body. With an unmanly cry, Draper hit the ground, his shaking, blood-drenched hands searched for entry wounds.

Strong arms grasped Draper from behind and hoisted him to his feet.

“Ar’ ye alright, sir!?”

One of the Irish Artillerymen, perhaps responsible for the caisson. Draper patted his chest, then his abdomen for wounds. A belly wound was a slow, lingering death. Fortunately, no obvious perforations presented themselves.

“Sir,” the freckled irish lad, a diminuative boy of perhaps eighteen, gestured towards Draper’s face. “Your head!”

The General reached back across his skull, uncertain of what happened to his cap. Blood coated his fingers. There seemed to be no serious harm. Even minor scratches on the head tended to bleed profusely. Draper fetched his cap from the sodden soil and pressed a hankerchief to the wound as he casually sauntered back to his command, the desire for speed extinguished by his near-death experience.

Fortunately, the Spanish colonial defenders were unable to bring much fire to bear upon the exposed British and German troops. His adjutant patiently waited throughout the chaos of his regimental tent, reins in hand, with Draper’s mount, a slight stallion he’d jocularly named Hercules. Few senior officers were present, the order of battle long since established. Urging his weary bones into the saddle, the aging General galloped eastward along the northern face of Montevideo’s defenses in a vain attempt to gain insight as to when exactly his Brigade might be called into action. Though bearing siege ladders and assorted other instruments to scale the formidable twelve foot walls, General Downe had commanded his subordinates to hold off on any assault until the main gate had been forced by Ligonier’s men. Fearing dreadful casualties by storming the northern walls, the plan called for Draper to wait until Ligonier arrived to open the northern gates from within. At once, Draper recognized the flaw in the plan. If the Spaniards had packed the interior of the northern gates with tons of earth, as they had to the east…Ligonier’s men might require hours to tear open a second entry to the city.

The Englishman’s conscience recoiled at the fearful casualties awaiting the vanguard of Ligonier’s assault. No doubt the Spanish recognized Downe’s strategy and a murderous storm of fire might be anticipated by the first wave. And second. And third. But the casualties were inevitable. The town must be taken.

 

[Alt History Buff]

An hour earlier, the prospect of forcing the eastern walls of Montevideo left a hollow void in William Draper’s soul. Fearful for his friend Ligonier’s fate, and those of his valiant subordinates, a callow voice deep within taunted the Englishman for his cowardice. Only in the fullness of time, as the reverberations of cannon fire and noxious waves of expended powder wafted over Draper’s command, did the General belatedly recognize that being left behind proved crueler than facing the massed defenses of the colonial town. What horrors lay beneath the lingering cloud of acrid powder, billowing smoke and pulverized stone expelled skyward by the British bombardment?

How Draper longed to stand aside his comrades, even in the face of such terrors. Anything must be preferred to waiting impotently for an ally to press open the gates, gates likely blockaded from within anyway. Frustrated, Draper abandoned his position and paced back and forth before his command. It was ill-advised for an officer to publicly display such emotion. The General couldn’t care less. By the anxious gazes of his command, the rank and file bore similar angst. No one enjoyed being left behind. Only a single dispatch had arrived from Downe’s command tent. The attack proceeded. Nothing else. No orders for the forlorn soldiers manning the northern wall, Draper’s force condemned to bear silence witness to the belching explosions of cannon and seemingly endless cracks of musket-fire emerging from beyond the walls.

As the northern approaches to Montevideo had long since been denuded of foliage, much of Draper’s command lay exposed along the shoreline of the Bahia de Montevideo, barely fifty yards from the imposing walls. Given the topography of the area, Draper didn’t bother developing any particularly cunning strategy. His forces were more or less spread along the waterfront in a straight line, three or four soldiers deep. Hundreds of hastily constructed siege ladder would be borne by the first ranks, their comrades surely immediately behind. Officers stood a respectful distance ahead of their commands, feigning indifference to the dangers of exposing their position. Fortunately, the Spaniards deemed the unbroken human link secondary to other concern within and enemy fire was sporadic at best.

“Let’s charge, General!” A high-pitched voice pleaded, no doubt emerging from the throat of a rash youth.

“If the gates not be opened by now, General, let us force ‘e walls ourselves!”

A pair of soldiers, bearing the weight of a siege ladder between them, jumped forward as Draper passed their position. The scaling devices, a fallback should Ligonier fail to breach the gates from within, had been distributed among the most experienced of the enlisted men. For days, the men had practiced their use. Officers given leeway to react to threats within for surely all Brigade organization would collapse upon contact with the daunting fortifications. These would be the first men over the wall to face the expected onslaught within.

“Our mates fight and die, sir! For the love of god, General, let us charge!”

“Nothing was halt us, General!” His partner, virtually sagging under the weight of the ten foot ladder, echoed.

The shocked admonishments of their sergeants were lost in the approving roar of the ranks. Muskets, bayonets, even a few swords borne by junior officers jutted rapturously towards the heavens. Sharing the elation, Draper made perhaps the most injudicious decision of his life.

Slowly drawing his blade, tempered steel glinting eagerly under the shimmering rays of dawn, the aging commander bellowed towards a nearby adjutant, barely recognizable over the din, “Dispatch a message to General Downe at once. Northern gate is blockaded, General Ligonier will not be able to open. Ordering my brigade to scale the walls.”

Without awaiting a response, William Draper bowed to the will of his command and toward his own conscience. Nodding towards the stout Corporal bearing the colors, the Englishman raised his blade skyward. A second roar of approval, greater than the last, emerged from the massed throats of a thousand warriors. Officers, from Colonels to pimply-faced Ensigns, stood ten feet advance of their units, awaiting only the word from their commander. All knew their tasks. The open expanse of desolated terra before the northerly wall, once deemed so formidable, beckoned invitingly.

His teeth gritted by a bizarre confluence of emotion ranging from fear, joy and determination, William Draper lowered the blade southward, directly towards the imposing bulwarks of Montevideo’s northern walls. His officers, stretching a hundred yards in either direction.

As one, the Brigade surged forward.

 

[Alt History Buff]

Scene: Aftermath of battle of Montevideo – next day

It all returned in a mad rush. The rasping attempts at breath as the aged soldier vainly attempted to remain at the forefront of the manic charge aver Montevideo’s earthen and stone northern wall. The acrid tang of gunpowder as the surprisingly light garrison of Spanish sentries vainly purged their weapons into the teeming mass of British, German and Portuguese soldiers rushing the fortifications. A chaotic mixture of elated bellows by those fellows energetic enough reach the dubious safety of the base, followed almost immediately by cries of frustration at having to wait for the siege ladder bearers to arrive with their burdens, brought to an end of any semblance of unit cohesion. Effectively ignoring their officers’ vain cries for order, the most daring and courageous struggled to alight the walls and face the awaiting muskets of the Spanish colonials. Fortunately for Draper’s stalwart command, the enemy pickets were light along the northern wall, no doubt their commander prioritized his resources elsewhere.

At once, dozens of British soldiers settled the battered soles of their boots upon the interior of metropolitan Montevideo. The first officer to alight within the fortress-city was William Draper. Past the retreating backs of the enemy regulars and militia, the Englishman spied what must pass for a business district in this colonial town. Glass store-fronts settled along the teeming narrow lane, many boarded up displaying a wide assortment a variety of goods: boots, ladies attire, glassworks.

Draper cared only for what lay beyond the little curves and warrens the haphazard city planners allowed to develop over time. With each bend of the mud-drenched streets must lay a trap. Along every rooftop, a skilled militia sniper awaited a plethora of exposed targets advancing through his native lanes. Recognizing the futility of attempting to reassemble the milling mob spewing lead into the backs of the Spaniards, Draper simply raised his sword and marched forward. His charges, veterans of a dozen battles, required no further instruction. As one, dozens of soldiers, the first to descend into the charnel pit, instinctively knew their duty. Fixing bayonets or frenetically reloading their muskets, the Britons and their allies advanced into the swirling clouds of powder expended by the equally confused enemy into Draper’s ranks. The Englishman suspected the chaotic scene repeated itself along the length of the northern wall. He expected (and prayed) whichever officers touched ground first had set upon the same strategy: advance, no matter the cost.

Of the bedlam of mutually encouraging shouts and anguished cries, the officer steadfastly marched forward, sword leveled, giving the jumbled soldiers a rallying point. The oppressive sun beating down upon Draper’s brow conspired with the exertions of the past few minutes to leave the old man perspiring uncontrollably. Never would Draper publicly concede a sense of terror at the events unfolding around him. Ignoring the haphazard buzzing of Spanish fire whisking past his ears, the officer almost sedately rounded a bend in the mud-splattered streets. Without warning, the confined conditions opened into a modest plaza strewn with upturned carts and assorted barricades splitting the relatively expansive space in two. An uneven volley emerged from unseen lairs carved into makeshift obstruction, Draper’s cap carried from his sweat-stained brow by a bullet grazing the Englishman’s skull.

Spanish gunners visibly struggled in loading a one-pounder mere paces away. Though utterly ignorant of the scale of the Spanish defense, four decades of training bellowed instruction into his ears.

“Charge, boys! Chaaaarge!”

Breaking into a rambling trot, the senior officer lumbered to the partition base in moments, deafened by a confluence of musket fire and huzzahs. He could see the gunner lighting the fuse. Closer and closer, Draper ran, the fuse reaching the barrel…

With a start, William Draper awoke at the unpleasant sensation of a horsefly attempting to navigate his nasal passage. Expelling the intruder to the ground with a violent snort, the old man jolted upward in his cot and managed to stamp the little bastard into oblivion, his sense of triumph short-lived as a shock of stinging agony billowed upon his spine.

“God damn ye to bloody…”

Grateful that none of his subordinates bore witness to his humiliation, Draper took a moment to gather the wool from his eyes. The drab, stale hovel behind a chandler’s now-torched establishment, to which his adjutant delivered the exhausted Brigadier in the week hours of the night, provided no keener sense of charm under the piercing rays of dawn. The cot, probably the prize possession of some apprentice slaving at his craft twelve hours a day, consisted of little more than a horse-blanket overlaying a pair of boxes, nevertheless provided three or four hours of undisrupted slumber to the exhausted soldier. For that, Draper should be grateful. The ghastly dreams, however…

Vague memories emerged from his dull senses. The soldier’s mind vainly attempted to spare the old man the horrific recollections of the past twenty-four hours yet haunted visions slipped before his eyes. Finding the exterior walls of Montevideo less foreboding than he’d feared, Draper dared to hope of an easy victory once his command clambered up the stone fortifications and slipped into the winding streets of the colonial capital.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Spaniards weren’t good for much but the papist bastards could compose dissertations on street-fighting. Every bend and hook in the dust-strewn provincial streets bore a trap, every blind alley an ambush. Sharpshooters manned every rooftop. If the Spaniards ran low of ammunition, tiles were cast down upon the interlopers. Blood flowed freely, staining the American soil. Yet, Draper’s soldiers inexorably pushed forward. Unit cohesion virtually nonexistent, Lieutenants and Ensigns operated independently, commandeering any soldier in sight. Easy targets, the commissioned officers frequently were the first to fall. Sergeants and Corporals stepped forward to assume command.

Choked by dusk, blistered by sun and nearly paralyzed by an aching sense of loss at the sight of fallen comrades, the British and German soldiers nevertheless pressed on, returning fire whenever possible. Enraged regulars kicked down doors of residences and business establishments to bayonet the stubborn defenders angrily spewing fire into the streets. Some edifices were simply set ablaze by enraged Britons rather than charge into the hellfire. The narrow streets, multi-storied structures and overhanging balconies obscuring the sun did nothing to disguise the omnipresent haze of billowing smoke the soldier knew must ensconce the entirety of the once-prosperous colonial town.

His command hopelessly disorganized and scattered throughout the northern quarter of Montevideo, Draper was reduced to marshalling fifty or so soldiers forward, his sword lending evidence of his authority. As the smoke-obfuscated sun wane into evening, Draper’s brigade drove into the heart of the city, house by house, block by block, the enemy plainly determined to inflict maximum retribution for every pace forward.

Three times, the sting of musket shot tore through Draper’s jacket, inflicting savage burns upon his body. Yet, no bullets lodged into the General’s flesh, fickle providence deeming grazing wounds the Englishman’s only punishment for his trespass upon alien soil. As the sun set beyond the western hills, stars vainly attempting to peek past the screen of acrid mist to witness the carnage, the narrow confines of Montevideo’s streets expanded unceremoniously into the city’s central plaza.

At once, the enemy fire slackened under the waning rays of light as hundreds of British and German soldiers emerged from the claustrophobic alleyways into the heart of the colonial capital. The primary Spanish defenses, consisting of light artillery interspaced among hastily constructed barricades, arrayed almost entirely towards the eastern gate. For all the hellish resistance tilted towards the advance of Draper’s brigade, Ligonier’s force received the worst of it.

Draper’s incipient, haphazard charge from behind broke the Spanish resistance within moments. The enemy infantry, both regulars and militia, collapsed into the dubious safety of Montevideo’s labyrinth of grim alleys. The handful of artillerymen vainly attempting to swivel their heavy guns northwards to face this new attack were bayoneted at their stations without mercy. The bedraggled remnants of Ligonier’s force stumbled over the barricades to take possession of the plaza, the milling throngs of additional regiments generating even more confusion amongst the variegated British, German and Portuguese units. Draper, recognizing it would take hours to segregated the motley collection of exhausted souls back into regimental cohesion, commanded every officer within earshot to disperse at once into the dark catacombs of Montevideo’s side-streets and alleyways.

“Do not let the rascals reassemble! Advance, advance, advance!”

By nightfall the battle was over. The last sharpshooters were cleansed from the rooftops, the most determined of militia convinced of the folly of further resistance. The colonial city bowed to King George’s might. Mentally and physically exhausted, the old soldier could not summon the elation of victory. He weary bones simply could not allow it. Hours passed, as did midnight. Under the starless night, battered remnants of the British force took stock of their prize. Enemy soldiers and militia were disarmed and placed under guard. Martial law among the civilians rigorously enforced. Regiments were reformed as best they could, Draper’s exhausted men tasked with holding the northern and western reaches of the town. The wounded, both British and Spanish, were placed under the dubious care of surgeons. No doubt, many would fail to survive the dawn. At four in the morning, Draper, ensconced in his hastily organized headquarters, allowed his adjutants to lead him towards the little servant’s quarters behind the chandler’s establishment where two boxes of wax enfolded by an old horse-blanket served as a bed for one of His Majesty’s Brigadiers.

Draper managed to rip open the creaking door of the tiny domicile, cringing slightly at the screech. A pair of sentries shot to the feet, presumably ordered to await their General’s pleasure by Lieutenant Copper or Morris. The Englishman nodded, started towards the chandler’s workshop where Draper had set up his temporary headquarters and halteding retracing his steps. Nature called and the old man gratefully voided his bladder upon the side of the apprentice’s hovel. If the General was called upon to sleep in the lifeless abode a further night, then fate must have intervened on the side of the Spanish. Surely, some fine townhome must have survived the hostilities intact. Only sheer exhaustion prevent Draper from seeking one out in the wee hours.

As his stream splattered off the rotting timbers, Draper inquired offhandedly towards the pair of enlisted men attempting to look elsewhere, “Private, what time is it?”

“Er…about nine, sir? Maybe, ten?”

Four or five hours sleep then. It was probably more than most of his comrades received through the night. Age had its privileges and concessions. A younger man would not have taken so long to crawl off that miserable excuse for a bed. Still, Draper should not have been allowed to slumber so long. The day was well advanced. He’d trained his staff officers well and most knew their duties well enough to handle minor matters. But General Downe no doubt expected a direct report shortly.

Raising his breeches, Draper promptly sought out his considerate if somewhat indulgent subordinates. Nothing could suppress or disguise the grief tearing at the old man’s soul when Lieutenant Morris haltingly informed Draper that his close friend, General Ligonier, had fallen in battle.

 

[Alt History Buff]

The officers’ raised their hands in subdued toast. Good tidings for King and Country, family and friends, were obligatory given the season yet William Draper could not recall a more forlorn Christmas Eve. Absent the standard balls and celebrations, no pretty girls upon their arms, particularly the morale of the younger wavered in face of heartrending losses.

The latest dispatches from London provided no reprieve from this near-constant state of melancholy that bordered precariously close to mourning.

Portugal had sought terms with the Spanish interlopers, Britain’s false and faithless ally abandoned her protectors without regard for centuries of friendship. Shipped half a world away at the gesture of George III’s slender finger, a campaign was waged and won in the south despite of His Majesty’s own colonial problems. Victory without gain? The crimson sands of Montevideo even now soaked up the splatter of British blood, expended in a victorious cause not even their own.

King Joseph of Portugal commanded his own subjects to abandon this precarious middle ground between Brazil and the expansive Spanish Empire. But what of the British forces clinging haphazardly to this wild and unforgiving land?

Was it all truly for nothing?

Like his commander, William Draper pondered that question as he dully echoed the traditional Christmas toasts, his heart aching for those poor English lads condemned to await resurrection beneath alien sands so terribly far from Britain’s familiar shores.

Correspondence from London offered no absolution whatsoever from other corners of the British Empire. Gibraltar was confirmed lost, the Royal Navy impossibly defeated, though naturally the campaigns in the British colonies were still ongoing at the moment Lord Weymouth’s packets raised sail for the arduous voyage past the equator. Perhaps this colonial rebellion had been finally quashed, the shocking blow of Gibraltar’s surrender but a minor blemish in British history.

Two months removed from the latest intelligence and gossip, the aging Englishman had no inkling of the near continuous flow of misfortunes God had seen fit to heap upon his nation. Draper knew not that the London rags proclaimed 1777 as the Anno Cladibus or Year of Disasters.

If he had, no doubt the old soldier would have drunk much more deeply in memory of his lost friend, Lord Ligonier, the last of his august line.

 

[Alt History Buff]

Nothing?

 

[Alt History Buff]

Bump one more time to see if there is any feedback

 

[Red_Galiray]

I think the reason nobody has given feedback yet it's because it's too much to read, and some people just don't have the time or interest to do so. I myself only read the first chapter. My native language is not English, so I'm more used to read in Spanish and the help I could offer to you in grammar is very limited. However, I think your prose it's pretty good and entertaining, and I really liked Drapper. With just a few paragraphs I was able to picture him in my mind. I will try to read the rest once I have some free time. Perhaps I will be able to offer some constructive critiscism then.

 

[Alt History Buff]

Thanks, Red.

I thought that these chapters were long given the format of this website. But they work better in a book.