Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service

by Allan Mallinson

  A train of mules with pannier baskets came plodding along the line, staying Hervey’s plan; he did not want to intrude on the general’s breakfast.

  Instead they dismounted.

  Five minutes later the aide-de-camp of the night before rode over to them with one of the mules. He had no news of Roth, save that his corps was in a running fight. ‘The general-in-chief is resolved to remain here until the situation is known. Meanwhile General Toll sends you these for your favour.’

  An orderly unhitched a basket.

  ‘Please thank General Toll,’ said Hervey, conscious of the consideration of so senior an officer towards a junior. ‘Will you join us?’

  The aide-de-camp shook his head. ‘No, Colonel, thank you; I must attend on General Diebitsch.’ He saluted and returned to the cherry trees.

  ‘Well, I call that uncommon civil,’ said Fairbrother, devilling into the basket. ‘After all the haste of last night … and here we have a regular déjeuner à la fourchette.’

  Johnson’s feast of the pre-dawn was not long past, but the sight of sheep’s cheese, sausage, rice cakes and preserved figs was a strong stimulant to appetite, as well as chocolate hot from the stove, and wine. ‘Corporal Acton, take your fill,’ said Hervey. ‘And then, if we decently can, we must stow what’s left. I don’t count our chances of a regular dinner too high this night.’

  ‘Oh, thank you very much, sir,’ said Acton cheerily, driving a picket peg into the ground to tether his mare.

  ‘This is what you would call in the ranks “hurrying up to wait”.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Well, I confess that the last time I breakfasted in sight of the enemy – if we may call the Turk that, for the purposes of argument – was at Waterloo. And Bonaparte sat watching us a deal too long. What think you, Fairbrother; are those Turks yonder the Vizier’s advance guard, d’you suppose?’

  ‘How shall we know until they move?’ replied Fairbrother, making a thorough mash of cheese and sausage and figs. ‘Recall that it was you who told me that the way to identify a bird was to observe what it does.’

  ‘Just so.’ Hervey turned to his cornet. ‘Mr Agar, you are in command of the advance guard of the Vizier’s army. Your axis of advance is the defile of Yeni Bazar and Kaspichan and thence directly on Shumla. Tell me your course of action.’

  Agar appeared already to have contemplated the question, for his answer came at once. ‘From the vantage point of yonder cavalry I can survey the whole of the line which the enemy – the Russians – here has taken up. I cannot see what reserves are concealed to the rear of Yeni Bazar, but I must assume there to be a force of cavalry and guns. I cannot therefore throw out a defensive flank and march through the defile here; I must attack directly and force the enemy to withdraw beyond Yeni Bazar, which place I must garrison in order to allow the main part of the force to pass through.’

  Hervey nodded appreciatively. It required not the mind of a Marlborough or a Wellington to conclude thus, but it was well expressed. ‘And how strong is the enemy – the Russians – here?’

  ‘I cannot be certain, for my communications with Silistria are severed – the Cossacks intercept all my gallopers – but I must assume that a prudent general would not advance so far without being able to match my forty thousand, of which I have thirty-five thousand in the field and the remainder in Shumla. I know that the corps which has watched Shumla this past month is about ten thousand strong, and that I am pressing them hither from Pravadi, and also that there are strong forces – say five thousand – at Madara, as well as perhaps three thousand in the garrison at Pravadi.’ He paused to calculate. ‘It may be, therefore, that the main force of the enemy at Yeni Bazar is in excess of twenty-five thousand.’

  ‘Admirable. But ponder on those, gentlemen: this will be a battle of numbers the like that I myself have not seen since that day in 1815. So, Mr Agar, your course now is to …?’

  Agar was only momentarily distracted by the thought of Waterloo. ‘The Vizier has placed a quarter of his force in my advance guard – of which those yonder are the scouts – and therefore I shall attack here with seven or eight thousand to test the enemy’s strength and intention.’

  ‘To where would you direct the attack?’

  ‘The right – west – flank, sir.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the enemy could not weaken his left flank since it could then be assailed by the main body. But I too have my apprehension in that respect, for General Roth’s corps might fall upon my right flank.’

  ‘What say you, Fairbrother?’

  Fairbrother, breaking from his feast, looked approving. ‘I say that Mr Agar’s appreciation is worthy of the senior class at Addiscombe. But that which is unknowable is the extent to which Roth is engaged.’

  There was no gainsaying it, and Hervey was beginning to wonder why Diebitsch did not send patrols out of his own rather than waiting on Roth’s gallopers. ‘If, however, the Vizier marches by the central route, what do yonder Turk do?’

  Again, Agar did not hesitate. ‘Vantage over the defile here, sir, to guard the right flank.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Hervey decidedly – and thought what an admirable aide-de-camp would Agar make him.

  Towards eleven o’clock, the heat now becoming uncomfortable, and the distant Turks still making no move, a galloper from General Roth at last arrived – a lieutenant of the Narva Hussars whose proud uniform was caked in dust and dried mud.

  Hervey could no longer contain himself. He rode over to the cherry trees to gain what he might, but the obliging aide-de-camp had been sent elsewhere, and so all he could do was stand at a respectful distance and observe.

  The general-in-chief, his countenance sternly fixed, was personally interrogating the hussar. From time to time there was pointing on the map, and the chief-of-staff would ask, evidently, a supplementary question.

  Ten minutes passed, fifteen perhaps – the officer of hussars, who even with his face begrimed looked scarcely older than Agar, spoke with confidence and certainty, not in the least daunted by either the braid before him or the consequence of his report.

  At length Diebitsch turned to his assembled staff with a look of grim satisfaction. General Toll smiled admiringly. And then all was staccato orders and staff officers hurrying this way and that. And when every Mercury had flown, and the clump of cherry trees was empty but for a handful of his closest staff and the officer of the Narva Hussars (with, at last, a flask of wine in his hand), Diebitsch saw Hervey and beckoned to him.

  ‘Colonel Hervey, the situation is developing to our advantage. General Roth has broken clean. He is seven miles hence but in good order. The Vizier is marching by the middle route. We march at once therefore for Madara to join Count Pahlen, leaving a detachment here to guard our lines of communication. You may accompany or wait on Roth as you please.’

  An orderly brought coffee on a silver tray. Diebitsch offered him the first cup.

  Hervey took it and bowed. ‘I’m obliged, as ever, General, for your giving me such licence; I will of course ride with you to Madara.’

  Diebitsch said he was glad of it.

  ‘May I presume that Count Pahlen’s cavalry will screen the army as it deploys?’

  ‘You may. And you may presume you have leave to ride with them too. It will be a bruising battle tomorrow. There will be no easy victory over a general of Reschid’s reputation, or over troops desperate to gain the safety of Shumla. I should want you to see it all – and tell London of it.’

  XVI

  THE BLOODY BUSINESS OF THE DAY

  Next morning

  A hand on his shoulder woke him as the army began rousing for the dawn stand-to.

  ‘Tea, sir.’

  Hervey propped himself up on a forearm. Any tea at such an hour and place was welcome, but this was good tea, and sweet (he had come to prefer it so of late) – and he savoured the remembrance of many such times in their service together. How Johnson had found their bivouac before dark
last night was still a wonder.

  ‘Where did you come upon the cow, or was it a goat?’

  ‘It’s almond milk, sir. I swapped it from a Tartar.’

  He smiled to himself. Almond milk – what luxury there could be in fighting in these parts … or India, or the Cape; anywhere the sun shone bright – Gibraltar? What appeal had the ‘hoary-headed frosts’ and ‘contagious fogs’ of Hounslow (and he shivered at the thought of St Petersburg in snow)?

  He peered left and right at the shadowy reveille. He could make out nothing beyond his companions, except the noise of an army waking. He had not slept amid so great a number since that day on the ridge of Mont St Jean, when Johnson had brought him tea despite the night’s downpour. What a fight of it they had had the day before, in rain all the way back from Quatre Bras, and then to make a sodden bivouac in the corn, knowing they would fight the battle of their lives in the morning. The rain had stopped with the daylight, and they had got themselves up and into line, and the French had pounded all day, and they had beaten them. A close run thing, the duke had said. No doubt it had been, but victory was victory. And afterwards they had marched sharp on Paris.

  And soon they would be standing to here, and within but seven days of that date in 1815, the infantry to their muskets, the cavalry to their horses. Not as many as at Waterloo, nothing like as many, certainly not guns, but if General Diebitsch had his way it would be as capital a battle. And then it would be onwards to Constantinople. From Yeni Bazar to Madara was about eight miles, the same, just about, as from Quatre Bras to Waterloo. But yesterday there had been no rain to dowse them or cavalry to harry them. They had marched beneath an unkind sun, but along a fair road in flat country and perfect peace, and then a mile or so on to the place where Count Pahlen had planted his pennant, a ruined church on prominent ground half-way to the little village of Kulewtscha. It was an admirable post from which to command, protected by a river that looped the promontory – at this season more a muddy stream, but an obstacle of sorts nevertheless.

  And here they had rested while Diebitsch and Pahlen conferred, and staff officers came and went. Before them, on the forward slope, posted as guard were five battalions of the Bugskiy Mushketerskiy Polk, the Regiment of the River Bug, men of Ukraine and the descendants of Moldavians, Wallachians and Bulgars who had thrown in with the Tsar in earlier wars against the Turk (though not one battalion numbered more than three hundred, for such had been the sickness before crossing the Danube). A brigade of uhlans were covering, and two troops of artillery. Hervey recalled how the line at Waterloo had been posted thus, but that the duke had pulled them back behind the crest when he saw the massed French batteries. He did not suppose the Turks could muster anything so compelling.

  But would he see, when the sun came up, the Russians in their place, as the duke’s men had been? That night before Waterloo they had stumbled, wet and weary, onto the ridge at Mont St Jean, not knowing how many others were there or would come before morning, and then at dawn as they rose from their moist mud beds they had seen in amazement the great assemblage of regiments the length of the ridge as far as the eye could behold – and beyond. The duke’s work, certainly, but his staff’s above all – and they very hastily called together (not least their chief, poor de Lancey, whose bride of but a few weeks nursed him in vain in the days that followed). Diebitsch’s staff were practised, for sure, and had had the marker fires burning as darkness fell.

  He smiled as he recalled Agar’s bewilderment of the afternoon: ‘Can the Second Corps be so long in coming up, sir? The road is good. It cannot have been a march of more than three hours. Can they have taken a false turn?’

  ‘Tell him, Corporal Acton,’ Hervey had said, turning to his coverman, for here was a case of prodigy needing practice.

  ‘Sir!’

  And Acton had turned to the cornet with the relish of an NCO given a class of instruction.

  ‘It’s like this, Mr Agar, sir. The march takes three hours, say, so the leading rank arrives ’ere three ’ours after setting off. But a corps’s ten thousand men, see – maybe more – so the rear of the column ranks past the finish ’owever long it takes for the ’ole corps to rank past. It’s called the pass time, sir. And for ten thousand infantry it would be at least an hour, not counting the baggage.’

  Cornet Agar had looked suitably mortified. ‘Thank you, Corporal; I had not considered it thus. A very elementary point, clearly.’

  ‘And they’ll need to rest, sir,’ Acton insisted, still relishing his commission. And the rests are added to the pass time, he explained; but in such heat and dust as they’d marched in yesterday there was no alternative, nor to spacing between battalion columns; and then they would have to form up at the end of the march so as to be able to deploy in the right way. There was little prospect, he judged, of more than a division’s worth reaching the field before dusk. The only consolation was that the Turks would not be managing any faster pace, for they had the worst of the going.

  And Hervey had praised the exposition.

  But when the 2nd Corps had begun arriving, with what spirit it had been! Even he, Hervey, had stood and watched as they marched with a spring in their step, smiling and singing to their appointed musters. These were not the exhausted men of a forced march, as he in his imperfect knowledge of such things might have ordered, nor even, it appeared, the worn-out remnants of last year’s bloody campaign and sickly season; these were men who looked possessed of the ‘first courage’. Perhaps a good many of them were – new recruits and reinforcements who had not yet been shot over. And down they had settled to their dry rations – peas boiled up with whatever scraps of pork were saved from morning – and thought it a feast.

  And now, shaved and breakfasted, he climbed a statue atop one of the more substantial graves beside the ruined church as the sun broached the hilly horizon to spy out the field.

  There was no sign of Turks. The only movement was that of the pickets making ready to come in. But neither was there sign of the 6th and 7th Corps, Roth’s. And with the 2nd Corps posted well to their right, he realized that he, and Diebitsch and his staff, with just the Regiment of the Bug and a brigade of uhlans, had stood as Roth’s advance guard during the night. It defied all the normal usages, but it had evidently paid off. Diebitsch was a cautious man, not committing himself to a course of action until it was certain what it should be – yet in that caution was there not considerable daring, for to wait was also to risk? Herein, evidently, lay the general-in-chief’s shrewdness; and Hervey marked it well.

  In half an hour he was in Diebitsch’s headquarters tent, a thing of some size bedecked with flags, pennants, and coloured bunting, all of which must have risen by the light of torches. Here he found the general in perfect spirits and readying himself for the saddle, surrounded by staff officers looking as keen as he for the off.

  The reason was soon apparent. ‘Colonel Hervey, I have just received word that Roth is but a short hour’s march away. Pahlen’s corps will therefore deploy forward to the ground we rode over last night, with an advance guard under General Ostroschenko in Kulewtscha and Tschirkowna.’

  Hervey hoped the wretched inhabitants of those two places – what few remained – had taken to some place of safety after seeing the party reconnoitring the villages last evening.

  Diebitsch’s voice then changed slightly, to one of speculation. ‘I am also sending General Buturlin in a reconnaissance along the road to Marasch to see if the Vizier makes any attempt to march by that place. Cavalry were observed last night on the heights above Kulewtscha – or so the village elders report. I consider it most unlikely they would come by other than the direct road from Pravadi, but it is as well to be certain. You may accompany if you wish.’

  Hervey thanked him. ‘With your leave, General, I should rather remain here where the Turk is expected.’

  Diebitsch smiled and said simply, ‘I should consider it a favour if you rode with Buturlin.’

  Hervey hoped he did not hesitat
e; as ever, the invitation of a senior officer, even if not properly his superior, was best taken as an order. Surely Diebitsch did not imply any lack of confidence in Buturlin? Perhaps it was that he wished him to meet this general (was there to be more extolling of life in the service of the Tsar?). ‘I am, of course, happy to oblige, General.’

  Diebitsch made light of it by a wave of the hand. ‘And you may of course thereafter ride where you please.’

  ‘Thank you, General. And, if I may, my compliments to the soldiers of the Tsar in manoeuvring the Vizier thus.’ It was not given for a junior officer to praise a senior, even if the senior were not properly a superior, so praise of his troops was the artful alternative. Artful and heartfelt.

  General Diebitsch smiled knowingly. ‘What was it that your Lord Nelson said before the Nile: “Tomorrow it will be a peerage or Westminster Abbey”?’

  Major-General Dmitry Buturlin was a year older than Hervey, wore the ribbon of the Pour le Mérite (though he spoke no German, and so Hervey supposed it to be a mutual honour in the defeat of Bonaparte), and had seen a good deal of the Continent, including Spain, all of which he related in excellent French. He was well versed, almost bookish, and gave his opinions freely. Hervey found him an engaging companion. Several times he spoke of St Petersburg in a way that suggested he knew what the general-in-chief had offered his riding companion. An attractive prospect, the city, by his account.

  They chatted inconsequentially for an hour and more (Fairbrother and the others had fallen back respectfully). It was good to ride at the head of a brigade of hussars – a brigade, not merely a regiment. For when might his own army ever brigade its cavalry again, except for a field day? He was content, with sadness, to have sent word that he would have the Fifty-third.

  They found no Turks, however, nor any sign of them. It was not difficult country to reconnoitre – flat and open, for much of it. Hervey was soon of the opinion that a standing patrol of cavalry was all that was needed: they would see soon enough if the Turks did for some reason try to come by this way – soon enough, to be sure, for the general-in-chief to adjust his plans, to throw out a flank and muster some artillery to prevent their debouching into the valley where General Ostroschenko’s advance guard were posted.