It was, he couldn’t deny, full of good tunes, and very lively – his foot tapped willingly – but the opera was two hours long, and repetitions would sorely test his devotion to duty. ‘Monsieur Auber evidently knows how to please an audience, ma’am,’ he said, and hardly needing to whisper.
‘He is very fine, Colonel Hervey,’ said the princess, lowering her opera glasses, ‘though not of the same order as Herr Weber.’
Hervey smiled. He did not know Herr Weber, but to be German was – naturally – to be per se the superior musician. But she said it with such sweetness that he could scarcely hold it against her.
He was saved from reply by the curtain, however, which rose to reveal, his card told him, the garden of the palace of the duc d’Arcos. A party of Spanish soldiers marched on stage, and at once there was booing. Hervey thought he might enjoy the evening after all.
Act One continued noisy, the audience very volubly expressing its dislike of the viceroy’s son, who, apparently having seduced la muette of the title, Masaniello’s sister, was to marry a Spanish princess.
The first interval was not long, and taken in the boxes rather than attempting a promenade. Princess Augusta gave her favourable opinion of the singing. Hervey said that it was as fine as any he’d heard in Rome when she pressed him for his estimation, though he then had to admit, when she asked him to elaborate, that he couldn’t quite remember what was the opera he’d seen.
Act Two began more peacefully, on the seashore, the stage filling with a chorus of Neapolitan fishermen sorting their catch, mending nets and the like, and some pleasing singing, and then Fenella, la muette, appeared, and danced a little – and very charmingly, Hervey thought – and seemed to be telling the fishermen somehow what had befallen her, the seduction, her imprisonment by the viceroy, and her escape, which did not go at all well with the more vocal of the audience (as well as with those the composer had presumably intended – the chorus). Masaniello then arrived, to encouraging cheers from the pit, and as he learned of his sister’s ill-use by the viceroy’s son, the mood turned dark. A duet began, not unlike the Marseillaise, sung by Masaniello and his friend Pietro, a call to arms which enlivened the audience a little more, and then suddenly, at the words ‘Amour sacré de la patrie’, both pit and boxes alike were convulsed with the loudest cheering.
‘Amour sacré de la patrie, rends-nous l’audace et la fierté; à mon pays je dois la vie. Il me devra sa liberté.’fn1 – The words came clearly even in the tumult, and as the fishermen swore perdition to the enemy there was a thunderous ovation which continued long after the fall of the curtain.
They remained in the boxes for the second interval, for Serjeant Acton reported there was a rather fevered crush in the promenade.
The start of Act Three was delayed by an altercation between General Aberson’s gendarmes and some of the most vocal of the pit, who had begun waving the Brabant tricolore – red, yellow, black – but a merry scene in the market place soon quietened tempers. But then the viceroy’s own police tried to arrest la muette (for a reason Hervey couldn’t entirely follow), which appeared to be the spark for a general revolt in Naples – and more uproar in the pit.
The hour was late, and Hervey was becoming uneasy, but the princess showed no inclination to curtail her enjoyment (the singing was unquestionably fine), and so he endured Act Four with reasonable equanimity, though the further complications of the plot – Naples in uproar and the viceroy’s son a fugitive, whom la muette for some reason now wished to save (the curious ways of women …) – he found trying (as well as the uproar on stage that was increasingly echoed throughout the theatre, even the boxes). But the house was truly elated when finally the city magistrate presented Masaniello with the royal crown and proclaimed him king of Naples, with cheering for several minutes after the curtain.
It was beyond the supper hour when the last act began – another gathering of fishermen, in which one of Masaniello’s friends revealed that he’d given him poison (perhaps, reckoned Hervey, to punish him for accepting the crown – though this, he’d thought, had been what les pêcheurs had wanted). But then another of his compatriots rushed on stage to tell of a fresh column of Spanish soldiers approaching, with the viceroy’s son at their head, and the crowd began entreating Masaniello to take command of them once more. A battle followed, quite lifelike compared with some he’d seen, complete with an eruption of Vesuvius (with more smoke and flame than he thought entirely prudent with so full a house) – but then Masaniello was cut down while saving the life of the Spanish princess (though Hervey wasn’t sure why she was even there), and la muette, discovering that her brother was dead, threw herself from a belvedere, and the Spanish retook the city.
Hervey breathed a sigh of relief as the curtain came down.
Serjeant Acton appeared as the cheering and curtain calls mounted, his jaw set firm. Hervey moved to the back of the box to ask what was wrong.
‘Riot, Colonel. All hell let loose. The princess’s men’ve gone to get the carriage but I don’t reckon they’ll be able to. I don’t think any of the carriages’ll be able to get into the square, let alone through it.’
Hervey thought for a moment. ‘Tell the adjutant. I don’t suppose there’s another door we can leave by? All the others will be thinking the same, mind. It may be safest to stay here, but it’s too great a crowd for my liking … We’re six, and the ladies – it ought to be possible to make our way tight through the square. Where is the carriage?’
‘In the littler square two streets off, Colonel – with a lot of others.’
‘Very well, we’ll make for there. You will lead.’
‘Colonel.’
He turned and told the princess.
She remained serene, though the countess looked troubled.
‘Have no fear, ma’am. It’s not the business we had at Waterloo. There’s no one being hunted – just an uncouth sort of rabble.’
Besides, five officers and a serjeant of light dragoons was an ample escort.
Nevertheless their progress down the grand staircase and out into the portico was a slow affair, with much jostling, pushing and elbowing – and unconscionably noisy.
But outside was noisier yet – and impossible to make out what was the commotion. Riot it certainly was, but against what or whom he couldn’t tell.
For the moment, however, he had but the one intent – to get the princess to her carriage. He motioned to Acton to lead on.
They edged along the inner wall of the portico until they could use the last of the columns as a rallying-point. Acton glanced back at Hervey for the ‘off’, and then with a few sharp words parted a knot of anxious patrons atop the steps to slip into the square, followed by the tight ring of blue protecting their charges.
It was doubly dark after the limelight of the theatre, and the crowd wasn’t that of the pit; they were menacing rather than merely rowdy. Hervey was glad of his sword, but prayed he wouldn’t have need in a press so tight.
Now came shots – at least, reports of some kind, fireworks perhaps; he couldn’t tell. The mood turned violent.
Flames began to lick at one of the buildings across the square.
Suddenly a dozen roughs brandishing clubs were barring their way.
‘Kut-Hollander!’ one of them spat.
Acton’s robust English reply only confirmed their misidentification.
‘Sales Hollandais! Allez-vous faire foutre!’
Hervey grimaced. Drunk – the roughs that Kuyff had spoken of no doubt, paid to do mischief. Where were his police, and the gendarmes?
‘Nous sommes Anglais!’ he barked.
They didn’t hear, or didn’t want to. ‘Kut-Hollander! Moffen!’
Then they rushed them.
Acton had his sabre out in a split second. Two of the roughs lunged but a cut to the wrist stopped one club. The other swung heavily but Acton sidestepped and sliced into the man’s upper arm. His yelp carried even above the tumult.
Hervey and the rest
drew sabres and gave point.
The drink was powerful, though. The roughs weren’t deterred.
More now loomed.
Acton ran at them, choosing his man, felling him in a bloody heap with a flash of cuts.
Fell one, frighten twenty. A good rule.
But not all had seen it. Hervey was suddenly having to parry.
And no longer clubs. Swords came from somewhere.
Malet leapt forward as one of them charged, went to guard, deflected the blade and followed through with a looping cut that almost severed the arm.
Hervey pulled the princess to him with his left arm, parried a cutlass and put his point into a throat.
The other sabres were no less active.
Yet more came on, like savages.
The fight was unequal in skill, but numbers might yet tell …
Hervey held the princess tight. She made not a sound.
Parry, thrust, parry, cut – a dozen bloody bundles soon lay still or writhing on the cobbles.
He prayed she wouldn’t faint.
What sense to add more?
But more came at them, and they fell as bloodily, and not a single blade touching the party.
Until just as suddenly they were gone.
‘The carriage, Acton!’
Hervey loosed his grip to take the princess by the arm. She was shaken. No doubt of it.
‘Come, ma’am, it’s done.’
They hastened for the nearest side-street, the others following at his heels, Malet facing rear in case of another rush.
But they made it without check, slipped into its eerily empty haven and hastened into the next and beyond to the place where the carriages were parked.
The princess’s footmen had out their staves, ready, though the cul was still empty. Even by the dull light of the coach lamps her ordeal was evident. ‘Ihre Hoheit!’
‘Denken sie sich nichts dabei, Clemens.’
Hervey realized he still had hold of her arm, and loosed it awkwardly. ‘Entschuldigung, Hoheit.’
She said nothing, but turned to the countess. ‘Are you well, Beatrix?’
‘I am well, Your Highness.’
Hervey spoke to the coachman. ‘We can’t go out towards the square. Can you turn the carriage, or must we unhitch?’
The coachman said he could.
‘Then turn at once … Whose is behind?’
‘Es ist zu mieten, Herr Oberst.’
A carriage for hire two streets from a riot – as lucky as it was singular.
‘Worsley, Vanneck, Mordaunt – take the hackney behind, will you. Follow us to the princess’s.’
‘Colonel.’
‘Sar’nt Acton, take the footboard.’
‘Colonel.’
‘Malet, come with me in the princess’s carriage.’
‘Might it not be safer to get an escort from the barracks, Colonel?’
‘I fancy the road to the villa’s a good deal quieter than to the barracks, but we’ll only know when we begin.’
Shooting – if that it was – increased. And an orange glow lighting the sky.
‘Come, then, gentlemen,’ called Hervey breezily, not least for the ladies’ benefit. ‘We may have to forgo our supper, but we’ll not be without honour!’
fn1 ‘Sacred love of the fatherland, give us courage and pride; to my country I owe my life. It will owe me its liberty.’
XXI
THE ARTICLES OF LONDON
Next day
Hervey sat with his troop leaders and staff at the dining table in the officers’ house to contemplate the events of the night – and, indeed, of the morning. He and Malet had stayed at Princess Augusta’s villa until a cornet’s escort, a dozen dragoons, arrived just before dawn to mount guard. The drive back to barracks had been a dismal business – the streets full of the debris of riot, and not a few bodies, though whether these had given up the ghost or lay merely to rise again when the effects of drink had worn off was impossible to tell without descending from the carriage; and Hervey felt no cause for that.
‘Well, gentlemen, I meet with Baron van der Fosse and his watch committee in an hour, and I trust they’ll have a more complete account of matters, but there’s little doubt that – for the time being at least – the authorities have a very imperfect control of the city. I shall have to make a deposition respecting the events of last night, and our actions, but to whom at present it is by no means clear. Mr Lincoln, how do the arrangements stand for our return to England?’
The quartermaster said that three steamers were engaged for the fifth of next month – ten days’ time – and that if there were any delay there would be a penalty applied, which, he presumed, the War Office would accept as a contingent charge; but, of course, the delay could not be indefinite since the ships would have other contracts to honour, and it might then not be possible to engage any other steamer for some time, and the regiment would have to trust to sail.
‘The intention is to march for Ostend on the second, Colonel,’ said Malet.
It was seventy miles on a good, straight, and for the most part flat, road. They could do it in two days, not three, if it came to a pinch, but stragglers mightn’t make it (as ever, much would depend on the farriers).
‘Might it not be better to quit the city sooner, in the circumstances, Colonel?’ asked Vanneck.
Hervey nodded. ‘Yes, but I’ve a mind the English here will look to us for safety if this trouble isn’t quickly brought to an end.’
‘We can’t be cooped up here till the second, Colonel,’ said Worsley.
‘No, I’ve no intention of being cooped up, but just what’s prudent I can’t say until I’ve consulted with Fosse – and, of course, General Bylandt, under whose orders we are still placed, though that was for the purpose of ceremonial. In the meantime it will be best to exercise horses at dawn. There seems to be some aversion to first light when it comes to rioting.’
They all nodded: it was the best they could make of things. Hervey called for more coffee, they discussed the situation at large, and the regiment’s interior economy, for another half an hour, and then he left for the daily meeting at the Place Royale.
The governor of Brabant’s house was now strongly picketed by gendarmes and regular troops. The Place Royale itself was not without the detritus of disorder – window glass, uprooted cobblestones – but evidently the appearance at some stage of so many men-at-arms had deflected the rioters to other parts, and the house was untouched. Inside, the mood was sombre, and, thought Hervey, the gathering council lacked any appearance of resolve. The baron called them to order without the usual formalities or pleasantries and asked the chief of police for his report.
It was a grim reckoning. The disturbances had, it seemed, begun in the Place de la Monnaie (which Hervey could well believe), and a crowd had gone thence to the offices of The National, the leading ‘Dutch’ paper, which was popularly presumed to be the mouthpiece of Van Maanen, broken every window and door, and destroyed the printing presses. Another crowd had gone to the house of Count Libri-Bagnano, one of the king’s most intimate advisers, in the Rue de la Madeleine and put it to the torch. Only the outer walls remained. A number of gun-smiths’ shops had been broken into and their contents carried away. Several small patrols of police and gendarmes had been surrounded and compelled to surrender. More than fifty people were reported dead. The French tricolore was flying from many buildings, and that of Brabant.
General Bylandt especially looked uncomfortable. His confident predictions had been proved wrong, and his want of strong precautionary measures – not least the movement of troops closer to the city – had allowed a disturbance to grow into something far worse. General Aberson, who’d evidently slept little, said he’d ordered his gendarmes to withdraw from the streets after dark this evening: he didn’t have enough to patrol in the necessary strength, and felt their presence on the streets in daylight would make a greater impression.
Baron van der Fosse asked General Wauthier
if he could make troops available for the support of the gendarmerie, but Wauthier said it was all he could do to guarantee the security of the royal palace and Hôtel de Ville. The baron then applied to Bylandt, who demurred, saying that while he acknowledged there’d been too few troops available last night, any augmentation in the city now would be highly inflammatory, and that he needed to refer matters to The Hague: if the trouble grew so great that it could only be subdued by the use of troops, reinforcements must be sent from the north so as to make the intervention overwhelming. But he was of a mind, yet, that the disturbances were likely to die down of their own accord, when the rougher sort had had their fill of drink and glass, and that it should remain meanwhile a police matter.
There was sense in this, thought Hervey – intervening with overwhelming force – but only if there were no overall increase in violence meanwhile, for it would be vastly more difficult to restore order at that stage. Indeed, his words with the Berkshire sheriff came back to him: ‘Temporization on such occasions might be said to be a dangerous and even cruel policy.’ And, in truth, ‘a stitch in time’ was likely as not a good saying here as at home; as their own, albeit bloody, action had demonstrated last night …
‘May I speak, Baron?’ he asked, judging his moment carefully, when the others at the table seemed to have reached a sort of impasse.
Baron van der Fosse gave him leave, and Hervey explained his thoughts, ending with a strong appeal to promptitude. ‘I fear that those I saw last night are capable of even greater mischief. There was murder in their eyes.’
Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) Page 33