Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) Read online

  About the Book

  January 1830, and one of the hardest winters in memory . . .

  And the prime minister, the Iron Duke, is resisting growing calls for parliamentary reform, provoking scenes of violent unrest in the countryside. But there are no police outside London and most of the yeomanry regiments, to whom the authorities had always turned when disorder threatened, have been disbanded as an economy measure.

  Against this inflammable backdrop Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey, recently returned from an assignment in the Balkans, takes command of his regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons. His fears that things might be a little dull are quickly dispelled by the everyday business of vexatious officers and difficult choices over which NCOs to promote – not to mention the incendiarists on the doorstep of the King himself.

  But it’s when the Sixth are sent to Brussels for the fifteenth anniversary celebrations of the battle of Waterloo and find themselves caught up in the Belgian uprising against Dutch rule that the excitement really starts.

  Will Hervey be able to keep out of the fighting – a war that would lead, nearly a century later, to Britain’s involvement in an altogether different conflict – while safeguarding his country’s interests? It will be touch and go.

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  FOREWORD

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE: THIS BLESSED PLOT, THIS EARTH, THIS REALM, THIS ENGLAND.

  I THE GLORIOUS ASSUMPTION

  II ‘SO CLEAR IN HIS GREAT OFFICE, THAT HIS VIRTUES WILL PLEAD LIKE ANGELS.’

  III PRINCIPLES OF MILITARY MOVEMENTS

  IV AN EYE LIKE MARS

  V ‘STAND UP, GUARDS!’

  VI RENDERING IN WRITING

  VII GOOD AND EARLY INTELLIGENCE

  VIII NO FOOT, NO HORSE

  IX DEFAULTERS

  X HEIRS APPARENT AND PRESUMPTIVE

  XI THE SECRET THINGS

  XII NELSON’S COUNTY

  XIII THE COMMODORE

  XIV CROSSING THE BAR

  XV WHITHER FLED LAMIA

  XVI WITHOUT DUE PROCESS

  PART TWO: THE COCKPIT OF CHRISTENDOM

  XVII A CLOSE RUN THING

  XVIII A WATERLOO DESPATCH

  XIX LES TROIS GLORIEUSES

  XX A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

  XXI THE ARTICLES OF LONDON

  XXII NE PLUS ULTRA

  XXIII UNDER AUTHORITY

  HISTORICAL AFTERNOTE

  MATTHEW HERVEY – CURRICULUM VITAE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY ALLAN MALLINSON

  COPYRIGHT

  To Maggie Phillips, my erstwhile agent, who

  first saw potential in Cornet Matthew Hervey

  FOREWORD

  And brilliant Achilles tested himself in all his gear,

  Spinning on his heels to see if it fitted tightly,

  To see if his shining limbs ran free within it.

  And yes, it felt like buoyant wings lifting the great captain.

  Homer, The Iliad

  Command of a regiment is the desire of every ambitious officer. Command of his own regiment – that in which he was commissioned and has seen the bulk of his service – is the desire of every officer of the infantry and cavalry, the parts of the army in which the concept of the ‘family regiment’ remains, notwithstanding the depredations made on it of late by politicians, civil servants and, I despair to say, even some soldiers.

  The regiment is an extraordinarily flexible institution. Most of all it is self-healing. Indeed it is supremely capable of regeneration. In the First World War there were countless instances when regiments (or, more strictly, battalions, for each regiment cloned itself several dozen times to produce those much-needed units, the lieutenant-colonel’s command) were left with but a handful of officers and a few dozen men; yet within weeks, reconstituted, they would take to the field again with the same strength of identity, just as a river remains the same river though its water daily empties into the sea.

  Field Marshal Viscount Slim of Burma, whose reputation among professional officers verges on sainthood, said in Defeat Into Victory – perhaps the greatest book on soldiering ever written – that the four best commands in the service are a platoon, a battalion, a division, and an army; and explains why – in the case of the battalion ‘because it is a unit with a life of its own; whether it is good or bad depends on you alone; you have at last a real command.’fn1

  It was as true in the early nineteenth century, at the time of my cavalry tales, as it was in 1956 when ‘Bill’ Slim was writing of his experiences in the Second World War; and it remains so today. Two centuries ago some officers paid small fortunes for the privilege of command of the smarter (usually cavalry) regiments; and it was not entirely through vanity that they did so – rather was it the world-within-a-world, ‘a unit with a life of its own’, that appealed.

  ‘Whether it is good or bad’ depended – depends – on many things, but these, as Slim made clear, are ultimately the business of the commanding officer. In a unit with a life of its own nothing can be innately too trivial, for, as Lenin said, everything is connected with everything else: ‘The trivial round, the common task, will furnish all we need to ask’ (John Keble, The Christian Year, 1827). Command is not routinely exciting; much of it is about ensuring that all will be well found when suddenly it becomes exciting.

  And so at last the hero of my cavalry tales, Matthew Hervey, is to take command of his own regiment, the regiment into which he was commissioned straight from school, in the middle of the war with Bonaparte, and with which he has served on and off for over twenty years in divers places and with mixed fortunes. He has, in Slim’s words, ‘at last a real command’. And this is the story of his first months, of ‘a unit with a life of its own’, and his determination that that unit, His Majesty’s Sixth Regiment of Light Dragoons, should be good not bad.

  fn1 For platoon and battalion, in the cavalry read respectively ‘troop and regiment’, though in the early nineteenth century the troop was more akin to the intermediate level of command in the infantry, the company.

  PROLOGUE

  The Horse Guards, London, 22 January 1830

  ‘A remarkable report, so full of good sense, and percipience – and, I may say, betokening rare judgement. It shall go to the duke with no other but a covering note.’

  The commander-in-chief of His Majesty’s Land Forces, General the Right Honourable Rowland, Lord Hill – Baron Hill of Almaraz and of Hawkestone in the County of Salop – took off his spectacles, laid them on the desk and moved to the window, from which he could look out on the snowy parade ground and beyond to St James’s Park.

  ‘Truly this country is fortunate in having such men as Matthew Hervey in her service. I marked him out for famous things when he galloped for me at Talavera, you know.’

  ‘I did, my lord,’ replied an officer of upright bearing in the blue undress frock coat of the Guards.

  Lord John Howard, lieutenant-colonel of Grenadiers, and so permanent a fixture of the Horse Guards, the commander-in-chief’s headquarters, as to be thought indispensable by a succession of holders of that appointment (including the Duke of Wellington himself, who now held the highest office of state), picked up the sheaf of papers recounting his friend’s recent mission of observation with the Russian army in the war with the Turk, and waited on his congé.

  ‘Has he gone to Hounslow yet?’

  ‘Next week, General.’

  Lord Hill stood silent for a while observing the ever more whitening scene outside. ‘I hope he shan’t become too comfortable there
. I can’t have an officer of his talents remain at duty with his regiment for long.’

  ‘I think he will be greatly perturbed to have his tenure of command foreshortened, General. He’s waited on his chance for many a year.’

  ‘That’s as may be, Howard, but the army’s purpose is not to give satisfaction to ardent half-colonels.’

  ‘Of course, General.’

  ‘How do things stand on the distaff side?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’ve heard tell his wife’s “retired to the country”.’

  ‘Ah; I’m not privy to the particulars, but I understand Mrs Hervey is not … of the strongest constitution.’

  ‘Mm.’ Lord Hill did not sound persuaded.

  ‘Though not a great distance away – Hertfordshire,’ added the upright Grenadier, as if in mitigation.

  ‘Not good, Howard; not at all good. I’ve seen too many men fall at their fences that way.’

  Lord Hill’s predilection for hunting metaphors was always a delight, and could save a good deal of awkwardness. ‘Quite, sir.’

  The snowy scene without seemed wholly now to absorb the chief of men, until suddenly he returned to his former line: ‘I hear he sees much of Lady Katherine Greville.’

  Lord John Howard was momentarily discomfited. ‘That I really cannot say, my lord,’ he managed, but so perfectly pitched as to convey neither dismay nor dissent.

  ‘Deucedest thing. I’ve seen too many men follow the wrong scent …’

  The hunting metaphor continued to serve. An acknowledgement seemed all that was required. ‘Sir.’

  For the commander-in-chief had conveyed his meaning in the inexplicit terms of the chase, which might itself be thought analogy for the pursuit of military success – whether honours, wealth or promotion (or, indeed, all three); there was no need of exactness. Both men understood perfectly … though what Howard was supposed to do about it – or rather, how – was quite another matter.

  ‘That friend of his, the halfcast …’

  ‘Fairbrother, General.’

  ‘Yes, Fairbrother – a most gentlemanlike fellow, most agreeable. That report of his – the instantaneous exploding of the mine: really most admirable. Clever fellow the Roosian, to use – what’s he call it: an electric current? – to spark powder. Who’d have thought such a thing were possible.’

  ‘Evidently not our engineers, sir.’

  Lord Hill frowned at him in mild disapproval.

  ‘The Ordnance intends granting Mr Fairbrother a good sum for the intelligence – and for his continued discretion in the matter. Can’t be too sure with fellows such as he – not at all certain where their allegiance lies, half and half so they are – though I do say I liked him a good deal. Be happy indeed to see him exchange into the Fifty-third.’

  ‘High praise indeed, sir.’ For Lord Hill was colonel of the 53rd (Shropshire) Regiment of Foot.

  The commander-in-chief fell silent again, his gaze set distant on the park. At length he turned to look directly at his most trusted of staff officers. ‘Did you ever know the first Mrs Hervey?’

  ‘I did, General. I was Colonel Hervey’s supporter at their wedding – Captain Hervey as he then was. Indeed, too, I was his supporter at his marriage with Lady Lankester – the second Mrs Hervey.’

  Lord Hill returned to his surveillance of the parade ground and the park. ‘I myself did not know her, I regret to say. By all accounts she would have been an adornment to his career.’

  ‘Without question.’

  Without doubt, indeed. Lady Henrietta Lindsay, as first she was, ward of the Marquess of Bath, had been both a beauty and a wit, and a favourite at court. The marriage had been short, however, long enough only to bring forth a single child – Georgiana. Twelve years it had been since she died – a bitter death, laying her husband so low as to make those about him fear a good while for his sanity. Twelve years which, alternately, could seem to him as nothing and yet an age.

  For some time Lord Hill studied the purifying whiteness – the same whiteness that had been the death of Henrietta Hervey in the tractless wastes of Upper Canada – before abruptly signalling the interview was at an end: ‘Deuced weather, Howard. There’ll be no hunting to speak of tomorrow.’

  PART ONE

  THIS BLESSED PLOT,

  THIS EARTH,

  THIS REALM,

  THIS ENGLAND.

  I

  THE GLORIOUS ASSUMPTION

  London, 25 January 1830

  Lance-Corporal Johnson stood at the porter’s lodge of the United Service Club with the confident bearing of an NCO of some seniority. However, if examined with the aid of a moderately strong glass, the stitching of each bar of double lace that formed the single chevron on the upper right sleeve of his jacket would have revealed the haste with which the dragoon of twenty-three years’ service had been transformed into a man set in authority.

  It had not been entirely ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished’ – not at any rate by the dragoon himself who, in the argot of the canteen, had just put up his stripe. There was many a barrack-room philosopher conversant with Mr Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – able to quote from it at length, indeed – of which ‘lance corporal’ was a favourite entry: ‘originally a man at arms or trooper, who, having broken his lance on the enemy, and lost his horse in fight, was entertained as a volunteer assistant to a captain of foot, receiving his pay as a trooper until he could remount himself; from being the companion of the captain, he was soon degraded to the assistant of the corporal, and at present does the duty of that officer, on the pay of a private soldier.’

  And Grose, being an erstwhile cornet of light dragoons, was thereby an authority of Mosaic stature. Johnson himself could cite him; and ‘degraded to the assistant of the corporal, and at present does the duty of that officer, on the pay of a private soldier’ was one such citation. The pay was of little matter; it was that word ‘degraded’.

  ‘Private Johnson, if you are to remain my groom, you must answer to “corporal”,’ his new commanding officer had told him the evening before, the dozenth time at least since learning of his own appointment five days ago; ‘I mayn’t put aside the practice of the regiment on your account.’ (Indeed, Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey had begun to wonder if all the devices and desires of his heart would be met with such difficulties as he took up the reins of command – at last – of the regiment into which he had been commissioned one and twenty years before.)

  And so it had come to pass that the newest and most reluctant holder of rank (or rather, ‘appointment’, for in law the rank did not exist) in His Majesty’s 6th Light Dragoons, the most junior of junior non-commissioned officers in that proud cavalry of the line, had at last – indeed, as the sand had been running out of the glass of ultimatum – complied with the desire of the lieutenant-colonel; for the desire of a superior officer must in the end be taken as an order. Yet Corporal Johnson remained unconvinced by the assurances of immunity that accompanied the lieutenant-colonel’s entreaties: as a dragoon he had been of no account except to the officer for whom he did duty (the same officer for twenty years; since the Peninsula indeed), but as an NCO, even if not in law established, he would fall under the regulation of the regimental serjeant-major, and while that was no cause of disquiet to those made in the image of the RSM – men indeed whose ambition was one day to add the crown to the chevrons on their sleeve – what could such regulation bring to a dragoon such as he, who had no ambition but to do his officer’s will (that is, after due disputation) and who was certainly not cast in the image of a serjeant-major? But in Grose he did have an appeal to exception (in case of the canteen’s denigrating him) – with a little licence. He was not so much the ‘assistant of the corporal’ but the ‘companion of the colonel’.

  But, having now been raised to the rank, the erstwhile Private Johnson intended playing the part, and instead of bending to the charge of transferring the assemblage of trunks, valises, portmanteaux, hatbox
es and dressing cases to the fourgon outside, he now merely supervised the aproned club porters as they did so, afterwards giving them coin with the same self-possession with which he would have treated the native bearers in Bengal, or in any of the other strange parts in which from time to time he had found himself serving the King and Colonel Hervey (and before that, Major Hervey, and before that, Captain Hervey, Lieutenant Hervey, and even Cornet Hervey): the northernmost part of America, the southernmost part of Africa; the near Levant; Spain and Portugal; France; Ireland – India. He was glad to be done with those exotic parts for now, content to take a little ease at Hounslow – so untroubled a station.

  Except that Hounslow would not be without its own vexations. Mrs Hervey – he still couldn’t understand (or, more probably, wouldn’t) how a Lady became a Mrs, especially when the first Mrs Hervey was Lady Hervey, or Lady Henrietta Hervey as everybody said she had to be called, not just Lady Hervey (and yet Lady Irvine had been good enough for Colonel Irvine’s wife) – well, Mrs Hervey, who had not long before been Lady Lankester when her first husband had been commanding and got himself killed at the storming of Bhurtpore, she didn’t like him much; in fact she didn’t seem to like him at all really.

  ‘And why’s that, Johnno?’ Wilkes the club valet had asked, when they’d sat up late in the buttery the last night, drinking to Johnson’s promotion with the ‘unexpended portion of the day’s ration’ – the claret that invariably remained in the decanters when the second bottle had been ordered.

  And Johnson had shrugged, unwilling to speculate, and certainly not willing to paint any unfavourable picture of his officer’s wife, even for so convivial and understanding a drinking companion as Wilkes – old soldier and occasional valet to some of the greatest of martial names. ‘Colonel ’Ervey just says she won’t be at ’Ounslow, not to begin with at any rate, an’ ’e might ’ave to take an ’ouse-keeper for a while, but that ’e’d be sure to take on somebody they’d all get on with, and Mr Fairbrother – Captain Fairbrother as ’e ought rightly to be called – Colonel ’Ervey’s particular friend (and right pleased I am wi’ that, because Mr Fairbrother’s a proper gentleman, even though ’e’s a black man – although ’e’s not very black at all, and a right good man with a sword and a pistol an’ all): well ’e’d said they’d all better depend on it.’