The wet weather continued throughout the rest of December and into the New Year. Most of the allied soldiers had been billeted in the port and the small villages south of Bayonne and the Adour river. Some battalions were not so fortunate and had to make do with barns and whatever shelters they could find. The rest slept in their tents, now worn and leaky after months on campaign. Yet if their comforts were few, their days were filled with a familiar range of pleasures. There were many amenable women amongst the camp followers ready to serve their carnal appetites, rough games of football to be played across muddy pitches, and for the literate rankers too the chance to read whatever they could find, and write home to their families, and to those of the illiterate on their behalf for a small fee. The officers put on plays and recitals and hosted meals, each brigade trying to outdo the next as they acted as hosts. Christmas was celebrated with the fervent enthusiasm of men who knew that they might well never see another, and the carols that were sung around the camp fires carried a kind of warm melancholy to Arthur’s ears as he toured his army to present the season’s greetings to his soldiers.

While the men made the most of the enforced break in the campaign Arthur worked long hours at his desk, cajoling his supply officers into making sure that they prepared his army for the next, and he hoped final, campaign of the war. In addition to such burdens, he also had to send increasingly terse messages back to the government in London, explaining why he had been obliged to halt. Politicians seemed to have no understanding of the logistical handicap that mud presented to an army. To them mud was little more than the unsightly accretion on footwear that obliged a man to hand his boots to his servant for cleaning.

It was early in January, while Arthur was wearily drafting yet another reply to his political masters, that a message arrived on the regular mail packet from Southampton. The commander of the vessel, an excited young lieutenant, brought the message to him in person. After handing over the official sealed message he could not help himself from speaking.

‘Wonderful news, sir. It’s all across England and no one speaks of anything else.’

‘Really?’ Arthur replied drily, and then tapped the message. ‘Do you mind?’

‘What? Oh, yes. I apologise, sir.’

The lieutenant stood stiffly, biting his tongue, as Arthur casually broke the seal, unfolded the document and began to read. Somerset, sitting at a smaller desk in the corner of the room, could barely contain his curiosity. When Arthur had finished he looked up.