Second Writing Group Meeting

[matteus the inbred]

Seven Years' War seems to be ok by most people? There's also the Wars of Spanish (Marlborough, Eugene, etc.) and Austrian Succession (Frederick the Great again...)

I suggest we have several of the main characters from one nation and add 'diplomatic', 'emigree' or 'mercenary' characters from others. A dramatic way to kick off a story could be to start with a major battle that ends in defeat for the main character, thus allowing him to turn the tide in the rest of the story, but we could always go the other way or start with something other than fighting...the 7YW had naval actions too.

OK. I will write a rough opening chapter based on the 7YW, as I've just had an idea of what to write, and I will try to introduce a number of 'characters' into it...perhaps if anyone likes the characters, we can continue on with one or more plotlines based on them, even going 'back' to fill in backstory...
That didn't take long:

Opening Chapter

1757: pour encourager les autres…

The scuffling thud of boots on timber abruptly ceased, allowing the tension to creep back into the cold March morning air, chilling it even further. The creaking of ropes began to intensify as the gentle stirring waves of the morning tide grew in vigour. Not even the sea breeze, now spiriting away the last remnants of morning mist, could conceal the pervading smell of tar, filth and bilges that hung in the air. It seemed to radiate from the massive sides of the battleship. Like her sister ships of the line, HMS Monarch had nothing of subtlety about her, and everything of brute power. Although French-built and captured in ’47 at Cape Finisterre, she was now a third rate ship of the line in the world’s greatest fleet, the Royal Navy of Britain. Her two gun decks, their red painted ports closed now, carried 74 guns, and her crew of 563 officers and seamen manned them with trained and practised efficiency. Not today though. Today, the world would see why Britain’s fleet was and intended to remain the defining naval power of the age.
Colonel Franz Von Staupfen, official military attaché to the Prussian embassy in Britain, stared gloomily at the grey green waters undulating past the warship’s bows. He was not entirely sure why he had been sent post-haste down to Portsmouth for this charade. Prussia did not own a fleet of any significance. His master, Freidrich der Grosse, King in Prussia, did not see the point in entering a race he was sure to lose, when, with the fine Prussian army, he had already entered a race he could certainly win. To Von Staupfen’s mind, the scene he was about to witness confirmed his views. To be sure, Britain needed a navy; she was an island and depended on trade. Prussia did not.
Von Staupfen sighed. He longed to be back with his regiment and not stuck in this wretched country full of fat merchants, sly politicians and pontificating fools. England seemed full of loud, boorish and overly mannered people, worse even than the effeminate politicians and drawing-room gossips of France. In Prussia people stood straight and strong and spoke only of their pride and duty to the State, and as for the army, what a thing to behold, an oiled and perfect machine designed solely for the people’s protection...!
“Don’t worry my dear Colonel, we’ll be done soon! As it is in everything else, the navy is terribly efficient at shooting admirals!”
The Prussian started. His portly and effusive companion, Mister Jeremiah Coles, chuckled at the soldier’s obvious discomfort and took another swig from his hip flask of fine French brandy. He was enjoying the day, and in no way averse to seeing an execution. The main deck of the Monarch was lined on three sides by the ship’s marines, resplendent in red tunics, white breeches and the odd single cross-belt that differentiated them from the soldiers of the British Army, as marines did not carry marching packs, having the navy to transport them about. Along with a half dozen senior naval officers, looking stern in blue and white splashed with gold frippery, several senior civilians and a scattering of witnesses and attachés lurked about the crowd that jostled behind the marines. The final side of the deck contained one figure, lonely and forlorn as only a man about to be shot by his own side could look.

John Byng, Viscount of Torrington and Admiral until his recent court-martial, stood in white breeches and stockings, shirt and waistcoat, hard up against the larboard rail. Fleshy and broad-faced, possessed of a studied dignity, he nevertheless appeared pale and tired, without hat or wig. This was the man upon whom the British government and naval establishments had poured their scorn and censure for his failure to ‘do his utmost’ in striking the first decisive blow of Europe’s latest war, the relief of Fort St Philip on Minorca. Coles, one of the men who had had a hand in that decision, privately believed that a sentence of death was fully unjustified despite the recent alterations to the Articles of War which allowed it. For public consumption, someone had to be offered up as an example to Britain’s allies, and Byng was simply the unlucky first opportunity to present itself. The Admiralty could huff and puff about preserving the honour and tradition of the navy, but Coles, Assistant to the Secretary of State for War and head of Britain’s network of European agents, knew better. It was not this Prussian martinet of a colonel that he wished to impress this day, nor the other assembled dignitaries, nor the navy.
Turning his head, he caught the eye of the small man standing behind Von Staupfen. Karl Brecht, dressed in grey and brown and utterly convincing as a functionary, gazed dispassionately at Coles for a mere instant and then turned to watch as, with a clatter of boots, a squad of eight marines marched two abreast up the gangway and lined up facing Byng. As the chaplain and presiding officer followed them, Coles peered at the crowd opposite. Behind the cordon of tall marines, he spotted his other guest, Monsieur Jean-Paul Fralesnes, apparently sous-adjutant to the French attaché for Trade. Fralesnes, ever the actor, was a grey haired and dishevelled looking man of medium height whose very appearance suggested disinterest and distaste. In reality, Coles knew, the man would be scrutinising everything.

The mumbling of the chaplain and the sonorous recital of the sentence passed Coles by, unnoticed. Byng was being shot not for failing in action, but for coming back to England with a secret that must not be made public, a secret that he had acquired precisely written knowledge of during the attempted relief of Minorca, a secret whose only evidence now presumably lay in the hands of the French who had captured the island. Coles must now activate his agents and spies, and discover the whereabouts of the secret, and who knew it, before it fell into the wrong hands, and to do so he needed the aid of the two men he had invited unobtrusively to the main deck of the HMS Monarch for just such a purpose…

‘No sir, I’ll not be blindfolded! Take your aim, damn your eyes!’
Byng shrugged off the sergeant-at-arms and stood straight, chest outthrust, staring defiantly into the black muzzles of eight Sea Pattern flintlock muskets. ‘If I must be shot thus sirs, I shall die in the traditions of the Navy which I am wrongly accused of forsaking! For my country’s sake I have concealed certain truths about certain matters, sirs, but one day they shall become known, and I shall be exonerated.’
Coles felt panic rising in his bowels. What was the fool going to let slip? They had Byng's log and all his personal effects, and his will had been strictly scrutinised. Certain payments to certain people had allowed Coles to ensure that no hidden bequests had been made by the doomed man. He asserted control, masking his face and allowing no twitch of his eyes towards either Fralesnes or Brecht, preparing himself for damage limitation.
Instead, Byng shouted the hoarse words, ‘Long live England! Long live the King!’

‘Cock your muskets!’
A series of heavy and ominous clicks as the flintlocks were drawn back.
‘Take your aim!’
Silence. A cough. Men swallowed with dry throats, looked away, looked back as if unable to prise their gaze from the tableau.
Byng closed his eyes, opened them again, and breathed deeply…
‘Fire!’
The sudden crash made almost everyone present jump, seagulls leaped wheeling and shrieking from the rigging and the flat crackle of sound echoed and walloped across the waves and back from the harbour wall. Byng’s chest erupted in blood and shreds of cloth and bone as the volley flung him against the rail and dropped him twitching to the deck, his last breath bubbling through the ruined lungs. The officer in charge waited for the filthy grey gunsmoke to clear, then walked cautiously over to the corpse and hefted his pistol uncertainly, considering the coup de grace. Seeing no evidence of life, he un-cocked the weapon and paced slowly back to the panel of Admiralty officials.
‘Sirs, the sentence is served.’
Solemn nods all around. The deck began to clear, nervous stares at the bloodied body on the deck as people hustled away down the gangplanks. Coles, filled with relief, strolled casually over to Von Staupfen.
‘Ah, my good colonel, perhaps you would like to take a glass of wine and some breakfast with me? I suspect we have matters to discuss relating to military trade.’
As Von Staupfen made his usual brusque assent and headed for the gangplank, Brecht in tow giving no hint of recognition, Coles turned and smiled thinly. Fralesnes he had already invited privately by code, and the Frenchman now strode from the deck, the slightest indolent gesture from his gloved hand indicating his assent to a meeting. Feeling some hope that Byng’s disaster might not reverberate any further, Coles followed his guest out to the carriages they would take separately and by circuitous routes to the meeting place…

In his carriage, Von Staupfen pondered the byplay he had seen. He knew why Brecht had been foisted on him by the Prussian diplomatic corps, and what his mission ostensibly was, but an obvious invitation to a meeting that was a mere façade could only mean that someone was trying to contact Brecht using himself as a cover. And why involve that Frenchman? Who else could be involved? Most importantly, why had Byng been shot? Obviously for failing to carry out his orders, but why, if he had kept the secret that he was supposed to keep, had he not been given another chance, or been given new orders rather than being allowed to withdraw and thus allowing the secret to be captured? Why this tentative approach?
Franz Von Staupfen, personal agent to Frederick the Great of Prussia and head of his elite Guards regiment, began to feel uncertain as he had not done in a long time…

Lady Alison Barwick lowered her elegant spyglass and dropped the window sash of her carriage. There were some places in society to which a well-bred woman could not go, and an execution was definitely one of them. Lady Alison’s thin, coldly beautiful features remained impassive, but she concealed a growing excitement at the thought that she might be on to something. That revolting little man, Coles, had definitely convened some kind of meeting, and unless she missed her guess, that Prussian officer was not the intended target of such a meeting. Perhaps she could find out…there was a soiree at the Duke of Cumberland’s house on Grosvenor Street this Friday. Smiling, she called to her driver.
‘Reeves, drive me to the Red Lion Tavern, and then go and find Mr Longley. I have a job for him.’
Society may have some places a well-bred woman could not go, but fortunately she knew an ill-bred man who could get in anywhere…

Giles Longley swore softly. Dark shadows slipping from pillar to pillar made little noise, but under his own barely controlled breathing he could hear the creak of cautious footsteps approaching his hiding place. Gripping his knives, he filled his lungs in preparation and vowed never to undertake missions in the Whitechapel rookeries ever again and never mind the money…
END

So, there you go. Something of a plot, some characters with minimal backstory and characteristics, and an overall background. It could certainly be adapted to the earlier wars of Spanish or Austrian Succession, and could go anywhere from here...the battlefields of Europe, the Mediterranean, North America. I'm eager for this not to turn into a 'Sharpe' style thing, but equally I think a chapter with a big set-piece battle in would be good. Tolstoy managed it, after all...as for the 'secret', hell, it could be anything from blackmail documents (against William Pitt the Elder, perhaps) to something as fantastical as a treasure map. If adapted to one of the wars of succession it could even be a vital document proving that someone very important is actually illegitimate, say...