Starbuck's Legion

by redwallanderson

Yes this isn't about the Sharpe series but it's by the same author and there isn't a category for Starbuck Chronicles unfortunately so here I am. Would love reviews, constructive criticism, whatever. Just mostly writing this for fun though at the end of the day, and out of fandom for the series and the history of that war and most wars really. Bernard Cornwell is excellent.

~ Part One ~

Starbuck's Legion was marching again. They had been encamped in the Shenandoah Valley recuperating from the slaughter around Antietam Creek a few months before. But now they and the other twenty-five thousand Rebel soldiers of "Stonewall" Jackson's Second Corps were on the march to Fredericksburg. After his costly failure at Antietam, McClellan had finally been replaced as commanding general of the Yankee Army of the Potomac by Ambrose Burnside.

Nathaniel Starbuck snorted in soft derisive laughter at the thought of Burnside commanding the northern soldiers. The man had lost thousands of soldiers' lives at the Rohrbach Bridge over the Antietam, and it was already being called by some on both sides the Burnside Bridge. The derisive nickname was even more cruel now because counter-intelligence reports suggested that Burnside had been thwarted again by bridges.

He had intended to cross the Rappahannock River and sweep through Fredericksburg which at the time had a garrison of only a few hundred Confederate soldiers. There had once been a bridge across the river from the town of Falmouth to Fredericksburg but it had long since been destroyed after the outbreak of war. A set of portable pontoon bridges with which Burnside's entire army could quickly cross the river were scheduled to meet him at Falmouth and they were weeks late.

By the time they arrived, the element of surprise had been lost. Or at least that was what Nate had heard in the latest batch of letters he'd received from his friend Belvedere Delaney, who was now a permanent 'legal liaison' in General Lee's headquarters. There were several friends who wrote to Starbuck from time to time and Nate thought with another barely suppressed burst of ironic amusement, the south was more his home than Massachusetts had ever been or ever would be.

A beautiful, proper young Christian lady named Julia Gordon had written to him from Richmond as well and, at the thought of her, Starbuck hitched the rifle tighter around his shoulder by its worn leather strap. Win this battle, he told himself, and you'll be marching home to her instead of more war. For Julia had written in a perfectly platonic, friendly way - at first. After Antietam though, after what some called the battle at Sharpsburg... Julia had written to Nate and she had told him of the way her heart sank as she tended the horrifically wounded soldiers trickling home from Maryland to Richmond's already overcrowded Chimborazo Hospital. She confessed having feared one of the maimed boys would be Nathaniel Starbuck.

Almost as an afterthought, Julia had added at the end of her letter the jarring news that Nate's former best friend Adam Faulconer had been killed near Frederick City. Nate had felt a pang go through his heart like a knife when he first read the words but then he dismissed the thought like swatting and shooing away a bothersome fly. Adam had made his choice and he died for his country, for a cause he believed in. He was no different, no more special or stunning a loss than any of the hundreds and thousands of others.

"Be careful Nate," Julia had written, and finished the letter with "Yours as ever." The promise behind those words seemed to set something inside Starbuck alight like a cannon fuse.

"Sir... Sir! Colonel Starbuck!"

Nate stirred from his thoughts and turned looking for the source of the voice. Looking down slightly, he saw the diminutive Lieutenant Franklin Coffman trotting into place beside him in the shabby column of marching soldiers.

"No stragglers so far, sir! You told me to check, sir!" Coffman said with an apologetic, lopsided smile. "All companies accounted for!"

Nate thanked him and went down a mental list of his Legionnaires, as much out of necessity as to get his mind off the pain in his feet. Casualties had been horrific for both sides after the slaughter and skirmishes in the cornfield and around the Dunker church at Sharpsburg. The newspapers - north and south alike - were already calling it the most terrible battle of the war. Barely a company's worth of men, for example, had been left of Major Haxall's Izzard County, Arkansas Volunteers and Haxall himself had been killed. What was left of that regiment was enfolded into the Legion as part of its F Company under Captain Leighton. The men Starbuck had commanded in the 'Yellowlegs' punishment battalion had also joined the Legion and even still, the men of the two regiments together totaled far below the numbers of one full-strength regiment.

Starbuck was confident in his officers though. Captains Tom Truslow and Matt Potter of the skirmish companies H and G, Peter Waggoner of company A, Nate Peel of company B. Captain Howes of E Company, Ezra Pine of D Company, Ethan Davies of C Company. The roster might be light by pre-war standards but these men were veterans and Starbuck was proud to walk to war alongside every one of them. Up ahead of them marched the 65th Virginia Regiment, also of Swynyard's Brigade. Just over a hundred men had been left of the 65th after Sharpsburg.

Colonel Thaddeus Bird, who had once commanded the Legion himself before being badly wounded at Cedar Mountain, had returned from his wound. Prudently acknowledging Starbuck's rightful place as Legion commander, Bird had taken the open position of replacement for the 65th Virginia's commanding officer. Another Legion officer returning from his wounds, Captain Anthony "Tony" Murphy, was Bird's second-in-command. Like the Legion, conscripts had also filled as much of the gaps in the regiment as possible but all of Bird's men were already taking an enthusiastic liking to him that caused Starbuck to bite back a bitter pang of jealousy, nostalgia and self-doubt. Should Bird be leading the Legion again instead of him?

"Only God knows," Nate muttered blasphemously under his breath, "but I wish he would let us mortal sinners know."

"Sir?" Coffman asked, still marching at Starbuck's side.

"On to Fredericksburg, Lieutenant," Colonel Starbuck replied distractedly as he stared ahead towards the ranks of the 65th. "I said 'On to Fredericksburg, on we go'.."

And the Legion marched on to Fredericksburg, where death grew hungry.