The Sabre's Edge Read online

  The Sabre's Edge

  Allan Mallinson

  WF HOWES LTD

  This large print edition published in 2003 by W F Howes Ltd Units 6/7, Victoria Mills, Fowke Street Rothley, Leicester LE7 7PJ

  First published in 2003 by Bantam Press

  Copyright © Allan Mallinson 2003

  The right of Allan Mallinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 1 84197 640 7

  Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Polmont, Stirlingshire Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts.

  To

  Skinner's Horse raised 23 February 1803

  FOREWORD

  In his enigmatic memoir Bengal Lancer, Francis Yeats-Brown recounts how the Honourable East India Company received its licence to trade in Bengal. The Mughal overlord, the Emperor Shah Jehan, who built the Taj Mahal, had a daughter, Jehanara - 'modest and beautiful'. One day Jehanara's maid upset an oil lamp in the palace, and in trying to save her the princess scorched herself about the face and hands. Shah Jehan, distraught, sent word for the best physicians in the empire to come to Agra. One Gabriel Broughton, surgeon of the Company's factory at Surat, arrived quickly and, though hampered by the etiquette of purdah (he was only allowed to feel his patient's pulse from behind a curtain), he not only healed Jehanara but also saved her legendary beauty. As reward, he would take nothing for himself, but asked that a charter be given to the Company to trade :in Bengal. 'These are the threads of karma that go to the making of ant-heaps and Empires,' writes Yeats-Brown: ‘a clumsy slave girl, a kind princess, and an altruistic doctor who asked for the charter on which the British built Calcutta.'

  When the Mughal hegemony began to weaken, in the middle of the eighteenth century, Bengal broke away from Delhi's rule, along with Sind, Oudh and Gujerat, and the Company found itself increasingly drawn into the power politics of the successors to the empire. Fortunately there were Robert Clive, Warren Hastings and a great many others of their kind to advance British interests, and by the third decade of the next century John Company was the predominant power in the whole of India.

  But there were always challengers, within and without, and the sepoys of the armies of the presidencies of Bombay, Madras and - above all - Bengal, together with the handful of British (King's) regiments for which the Company paid, found themselves from time to time campaigning hard. However, in India the climate and disease claimed many more lives than did the tulwar, the jezail or the jingal - in the war that begins my story, nineteen men out of the legions of twenties who died.

  But dead men's boots meant promotion for the lucky ones who survived. That was the soldier's silver lining in the clouds of war ... In addition to those I have thanked in previous books, and in whose debt I remain, I would add this time Major Patrick Beresford, regimental secretary of the King's Royal Hussars (and their Winchester museum's curator), Sally Brown of the British Library, Liza Verity of the National Maritime Museum and Christopher Calkins of the Petersburg National Battlefield. I must likewise acknowledge my debt over some years now to Dr Anne-Mary Hills, whose long study of Nelson's pathology, and of his navy's medicine, she has unstintingly shared with me. My thanks are also due to Dr Michael Crumplin, surgeon, whose knowledge of surgical practice in Wellington's army is, I suspect, unrivalled. I am, as ever, full of appreciation for Chris Collingwood, whose jacket paintings show a deep knowledge of the minutiae of uniforms and equipment, and whose skill in composition and drawing so vividly sets the scene for my cavalry tales.

  On the reverse of the jacket of this, the fifth of Matthew Hervey's adventures, there are two sowars in the distinctive yellow kurtas of Skinner's Horse, better known to the world, perhaps, as the 1st Bengal Lancers. This glorious regiment was raised on 23 February 1803, and this year therefore celebrate their bicentenary. To them, in admiration, I dedicate The Sabre's Edge.

  And Israel smote him with the edge of the sword’ and possessed his land from Arnon

  unto Jabbok, even unto the children of Ammon; for the border of the children of Ammon was strong.

  The Fourth Book of Moses, called Numbers

  THE BAY OF BENGAL 1823

  'The Commander-in-Chief can hardly persuade himself, that if we place our frontier in even a tolerable state of defence, any very serious attempt will be made by the Burmans to pass it: but should he be mistaken in this opinion, he is inclined to hope that our military operations on the eastern frontier will be confined to their expulsion from our territories, and to the re-establishment of those states along our line of frontier which have been overrun and conquered by the Burmese. Any military attempt beyond this, upon the internal dominions of the King of Ava, he is inclined to deprecate; as instead of armies, fortresses, and cities, he is led to believe we should find nothing but jungle, pestilence and famine.'

  The Adjutant-General of the Presidency's Army, to the Government of Bengal, 24 November 1823

  PART ONE

  JUNGLE, PESTILENCE AND FAMINE

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE WOODEN WALLS The Rangoon River, noon, 11 May 1824

  ‘Sile-e-ence!'

  The gun-deck of His Majesty's Ship Liffey at once fell still. The big fourth rate had furled sail, dropped anchor and beat to quarters, and her first lieutenant would have the gun crews silent to hear the captain's next order.

  Astern of Liffey were the sloops of war Larne, Slaney and Sophie, their guns likewise run out and trained ashore. And astern of these, with great pyramids of white sail still set, was the rest of the British flotilla - close on a hundred men-of-war and transports, sailing slowly with the tide up the broad, brown Rangoon river.

  The stockades at the water's edge were silent too. Like the gun crews aboard the warships, the Burman soldiers crouched behind their wooden walls, but teak-built walls, not oak. With their spears and ancient muskets, they had no doubt that the white-faced barbarians would pay for their effrontery in sailing up the river without acknowledging the supreme authority of King Bagyidaw, Lord of the White and All Other Elephants.

  On Liffey's quarterdeck, Commodore Laughton Peto turned to Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell, general officer commanding the Burmese Expeditionary Force. 'Well, Sir Archibald?’

  'They have had their time, Peto.’

  But the commodore required a more emphatic order. Firing first on an almost defenceless town was not a decision to be entered lightly. 'You wish me to commence firing, sir?’

  Before the general could reply, the shore battery erupted in smoke and flame. Two or three heavy shot whistled harmlessly through Liffey's rigging.

  The general was obliged, but amazed. His flotilla had violated the sacred waters of the Kingdom of Ava: but in such force that could not be resisted. He, Sir Archibald Campbell KCB, veteran of the Peninsula, had offered suitable terms of surrender. By all the usages of war the Burmans should have accepted at once.

  'Presumption, and folly,’ he declared, snapping closed his telescope. 'Commence firing!’

  Peto nodded to his first lieutenant. 'Commence firing.’

  The lieutenant raised a speaking trumpet to his lips. 'Fire!’

  Hervey started. The roar of cannon was like nothing since Waterloo - fourteen twenty-four-pounders firing as one, nearly the weight of shot that the whole of the horse artillery could dispose that day along the ridge of Mont St-Jean. He gripped the taffrail as if he would be shaken off his feet. But before the smoke rolled back over the quarterdeck, he just managed to glimpse the destruction that the broadside had wrought - the guns in the sho
re battery toppled and the great teak doors of the stockade beaten down.

  There was another broadside, this time from Larne, and even closer to the bank. Not as heavy as Liffey's, but almost as destructive, it battered down yet more of the stockade, the nine-pound shot from the guns on her upper deck firing high and sending showers of bricks and tiles from the buildings within. Hervey did not think the business could take much longer.

  Now Sidney's and Sophie's guns were bearing on the walls, and soon too were those of the East Indiamen-of-war astern of them, so that there was a drumroll of fire as the crews worked their pieces like demons.

  No, the Burmans could not take a pounding like this for much longer. No one could.

  Campbell agreed. He turned to the little knot of staff officers behind him. 'How our work might have been easier in Spain, eh, gentlemen, had we been able to sail our artillery about so!'

  And had the enemy been so obliging as to call a pile of logs a fortress, said Hervey to himself.

  Major Seagrass, the general's military secretary, turned to his temporary assistant. 'Where are these war boats of yours, Hervey?'

  Hervey nodded. He had warned of them, albeit from limited experience, and the flotilla was taking particular precautions against surprise. 'It seems our luck is great indeed. And the Burmans', too, for those boys yonder are bruising for a fusillade.’ He indicated the lines of red at the gunwales of the transports, private men and sepoys alike in their thick serge, muskets trained ready to repel the war boats. The attack would be a swift, swarming affair if it did come.

  The general judged it the moment. 'Signal the landing!'

  A midshipman had the signal-flag run up in a matter of seconds. There was cheering from the transports, audible enough even with the crashing broadsides. Soon boats were being swung out and lowered, or hauled alongside by their tow lines, and redcoats began descending to them.

  As they began pulling for the bank, fire erupted once more from the battery. Liffey answered at once, and there was no more firing from the stockade.

  The landing parties scrambled from the boats and raced for the breaches. They exchanged not a shot, and soon there was more cheering as the Union flag rose above the shore battery. Campbell saw his success, called off the bombardment and ordered the rest of his force to follow. In half an hour two brigades were ashore, with still not a musket discharged by either side. Later the general would learn that not a man of his had been so much as grazed, and he would remark again on the address with which battle could be made with artillery such as he had.

  He turned now to the little group of officers on Liffey's quarterdeck. 'Well’ he said, with a most satisfied smile, his thick red side-whiskers glistening with sweat in the clammy heat of the season before the monsoon. 'Let's be about it. We have a great need of beef and water, and it is there ashore for the taking. My boat, please, Commodore Peto!'

  Captain Matthew Hervey had watched many an infantry action in his dozen and more years' service, but always from the saddle. The quarterdeck of one of His Majesty's ships was undoubtedly a more elevated vantage point, and perhaps preferable in that respect, but it was no less frustrating a place for an officer to be when there was hot work to be done with the enemy. But then the only reason he was able to observe the action at all was that he had a friend at court - or, more exactly, on the supreme council of the presidency of Bengal - who had arranged that he join the expedition on General Campbell's staff, the general being clearly of a mind that there was no place for cavalry on this campaign. Indeed, the general had planned his operations certain that everything would be accomplished by his infantry - King's and Company's - with the sole support of the guns of the Royal Navy, and without any transport but that which floated, or supply other than obtained locally. It was, by any reckoning, an admirably economical expedition.

  Hervey's regiment, His Majesty's 6th Light Dragoons, had been scattered about Bengal on countless trifling errands these past three years, frustrating to officers and men alike. They had hoped to be employed against this impertinent King of Ava, who threatened the Honourable Company's domain, insulted the Crown and boasted of his invincibility, but it seemed that nowhere on the eastern frontier were their services required. Especially not in this coup de force, by which it was calculated that the Burman king would at once capitulate. No, their value to the Company - which, after all, paid the Crown handsomely for their services in India - lay in their ability to be fast about Hindoostan in the event of trouble. The commander-in-chief would not easily be persuaded, therefore, to tie down a single troop of King's cavalry that constituted his meagre reserve. And so, with the prospect of further months of tedium before him, any diversion had seemed attractive to Hervey - even as assistant to an officer who himself had little to do. But it had truly been an unexpected delight to learn that his revered friend Peto had the naval command.

  Not that in other terms Hervey had been ill content with the years since Chittagong. Chittagong had been an affair, indeed, of real cavalry daring, if through country wholly unsuited to the arm. 'And we shall shock them’: that had been his intention. And how they had, cavalry and guns appearing from the forest like chinthes, routing the Burman invaders and burning their war boats. Yes, he had hazarded all, and the Sixth's reputation in Calcutta had been made. And he had watched his troop's star continue to rise afterwards. He had taken real pleasure in advancing several of his men, though he had had occasion more often to shed a tear when the fever or some such had claimed one of them (the regiment's corner of the cemetery in the Calcutta lines now held the bones of more dragoons than any single troop could muster). Above all, however, the regiment was at ease with itself. That was their colonel's doing. Sir Ivo Lankester may have been an extract, but he had his late brother's blood in his veins, and never did the Sixth have a finer officer than Sir Edward Lankester until they had had to bury him at Waterloo. And the regiment was no less handy for being at ease, for Sir Ivo managed somehow to have the best of them, always, without recourse to any more rebuke than he might for an inattentive hound. It was said that he had only to look pained for the hardest of sweats to feel shame, and only to smile for the same to believe they were as good as chosen men. He had returned to England for his long leave two months before, and he had done so with utter confidence: the major, Eustace Joynson, for whom sick headaches and endless returns had been the miserable order of the day under the previous colonel, was now modestly self-assured. Sir Ivo knew that Joynson would always err on the side of kindness, and that since the troop captains and lieutenants, and the non-commissioned officers, were all sound enough, a right judgement would be reached in those things that mattered most. One of those judgements had, indeed, been to permit Hervey his attachment to the general's staff.

  Despite having almost nothing to do, Hervey had from the outset found the appointment fascinating, for it allowed him a seat at the general's conferences, albeit in an entirely attendant capacity. He had thus been privy to the plan of campaign throughout almost its entire evolution. It was, like all good plans, in essence simple. The Governor-General, Lord Amherst, was of the opinion that it would be necessary only to occupy Rangoon, the country's great trading port, for the King of Ava to lose courage and ask for terms, and that the Burman people, in their condition of effective slavery to King Bagyidaw, would welcome the British as liberators. Thereafter it would be an easy enough business to sail the four hundred miles or so up the Irawadi to Ava itself and take it - opposed or otherwise. Even the timing was propitious, for the rainy season was soon to begin, and the river would thereby be navigable to Commodore Peto's flotilla. Furthermore, since this was to be a maritime, indeed a riverain, expedition, there would be no need to embark the transport required to maintain the army. It was altogether a very thrifty way of making war, and General Campbell was justly pleased with the speedy accomplishment of the first part of his design. Pleased and relieved, for he had provisioned his force only for the crossing of the Bay of Bengal, and there had been delays.
Now he had the better part of eleven thousand mouths to feed, and the sooner they were ashore the sooner they could begin buying beef - and water.

  Hervey beckoned to his coverman to get into the cutter before him. Besides the sailors at the oars, they were the only occupants of the general's two boats not wearing red. They settled towards the bow and Hervey took off his shako, then mopped his forehead and fastened closed the front of his tunic. 'Did you see anything of the cannonade?'

  ‘No sir,' said Lance-Corporal Wainwright, grimacing. 'I was helping bring shot. My ears are still ringing.'

  'Mine too,' said Hervey, looking at his watch. It was not yet one o'clock.

  ‘Pull!' called the midshipman, and a dozen oars began ploughing the flat brown water of the Rangoon river.

  In not many minutes they were grounding on the shallow slope of the bank in front of what remained of the great teak gates of the stockade - no need even for wet feet. Tidy files of redcoats, King's and Company's alike, marched ahead of them with sloped arms as if at a field day.

  Hervey jumped from the boat wondering if his misgivings had been wholly unfounded after all. Eyre Somervile's misgivings, rather, for it had been his friend at court who had voiced them first. His own doubts could be only those concerning the military arrangements, although in truth these he found worrying enough.