Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [519]
The recruiting was slow. In the years that followed, out of four hundred and sixty-four recruits, one hundred and five deserted; but still the numbers were steadily growing, and it was enough.
“It’s the old hands like me who hold things toether,” he declared with perfect truth. The army was full of men like him – middle-aged lieutenants who could not afford higher commissions but who knew the regiment and had seen service. “I daresay I shall die a poor lieutenant,” he said with resignation.
His opportunity came out of the blue – a letter from Fiennes Wilson, now a powerful man in the East India Company, working with Warren Hastings who had become the greatest man in India. It offered him a post in the company:
We are looking for a man of sense and judgement and Sir George Forest recommended your name to us.
I remember your visit here in the glorious days of Plassey, as does Mr Hastings.
The position would not make you a nabob, but would certainly be rewarding.
He could not go; the doctor he consulted was adamant.
“You’ve spent your time in a hot climate, Mr Shockley, and you’ve already paid the price. If you go to India now, I can’t answer for you. You mustn’t think of it. Only a cold climate for you, sir, now. The colder the better.”
He had remained in Ireland and it was from there that he had watched the situation in America grow worse, just as his father had predicted. When the dumping of excess tea into the American market to aid the finances of the East India Company had sparked off the Boston Tea Party, he was not surprised. As the skirmishes of Lexington and Concord gave way to the fighting at Bunker Hill and Boston, he rejoiced. It must mean action – his one chance of promotion. If there must be fighting, he hoped it would be a campaign of interest, and he was full of curiosity when he learned that Generals Gates and Lee, both former British officers, were leading rebel forces and were being joined by a new and powerful figure, Washington, the landowner from Virginia.
The regiment was ready. After what seemed to Shockley an endless delay, in April 1776 they left the west of Ireland for Quebec.
Not, of course, that there was any question of the rebels succeeding. Why, more than half the colony was loyal to the British crown. New York alone was supplying fifteen thousand regular and eight thousand five hundred militia to the British army, when Washington had about twelve thousand under his own command.
“Besides,” the major assured Shockley, “I know something of this Washington. The only reason he’s against us is that our ministers denied him, and others like him, the right to conquer tracts of their own in Ohio. The man’s a gentleman. His brother married into a family with six million acres – think of it, Shockley.”
“Yet he leads the rebels,” Adam pointed out.
“Rabble. And I dare say Washington knows it.” He smiled knowingly. “I’ll tell you a thing. I know a merchant in England that corresponded with him once, this Washington. Sent me a copy of some of the fellow’s words: look at this.” And he produced a small piece of paper on which a single sentence was written:
Mankind when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.
“There, sir. Now don’t tell me that when Washington has tried to wring a few concessions from our ministers, he won’t abandon these cursed radicals to their fate.”
Shockey had heard that part of the reason why the southern states had started to fight was in the hope of repudiating their debts to English merchants. The men of the north, he supposed, wanted to escape taxes. But the air of blustering confidence amongst some of his fellow officers worried