Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘Yes, yes, Major Coa, I know that full well. But it was blue cloth not red!’

  The major stood properly to attention and drew himself up to his full height, a gesture to say that he spoke with all his dignity and judgement. ‘Senhor General, this leg is not my own.’ He rapped it twice with his knuckles. ‘But it serves me well.’

  Dom Mateo smiled. The simple patriotism was affecting. And then he began to grin at the notion of humbugging his enemies. ‘Very well, gentlemen. What serves best my country shall serve. I shall command British troops. The King of England shall make me a marquess!’

  He began rattling off instructions to Major Coa in Portuguese.

  Hervey walked on along the ramparts, peering at the distant hills towards Spain. The finest of all instruments, British infantry: there was no doubting it, even had the duke not said so. No infantry could stand as they did. They volleyed in two ranks, not three, because they could load faster, and thereby could cover a wider front. No infantry could go with the bayonet like they did. None could take a breech so well. None could march as fast. But it was the lash that saw to it all in the end. He wondered if Sir John Moore would have called them the finest? Not on that march to Corunna he wouldn’t. Not until the very end, at least.

  The dishonouring had begun soon enough, too – soon after Sahagun indeed. And the destruction at the castle of Benavente would ever stand in his memory as an affront to the name of men under discipline. But it was not long after the affair at the Esla that he saw it at first hand. While Paget and Stewart, and all their regiments, had conducted themselves in exemplary fashion, squaring up to many times their number, driving them back across the Esla, there were regiments of redcoats plundering their way west, so that Hervey and his fellows thought themselves nothing more than aiders and abetters in holding back the French.

  The Sixth had scarcely begun the retirement to Astorga, in fact, when they came on the first wilful stragglers: a whole company lying drunk in the street, snow falling on red breasts and backs alike, with not a sign of their officers, and the camp-followers in no better state. Hervey and several others had dismounted and, with all the affronted pride in their profession, marched staunchly into the middle of them and demanded they stand to their arms. But they had soon realized the futility of it, the peril even, and had not Corporal Armstrong been so dextrous with his fists and the flat of his sword they might not have reached Astorga at all.

  The trouble was, Sir John Moore would not let them square up to the French. All they wanted was the chance to rain a few blows on Bonaparte’s men, instead of scuttling away every time without so much as a volley or a run with the bayonet. This wasn’t fighting, they protested. This wasn’t what British soldiers did. But at least they would make a stand at Astorga, their officers said. Sir John Moore had promised them.

  Astorga: that had been the place. That had been where a regular retrograde movement (as it was meant to be) turned into irrecoverable flight. Astorga: infamous memory! Hervey could scarcely bear to think the name, the place where Sir John Moore’s spirit was broken, as so many of his regiments’. And all because they could not fight a general action.

  ‘I am afraid it is not to be, gentlemen,’ explained Colonel Reynell to the Sixth’s officers craning to hear his words in yet another cloister. ‘Evidently there is neither the means nor the stomach for a fight.’

  There were gasps of disbelief, mutterings of dissent, and many an exclamation of ‘Shame!’

  ‘General Romana, I understand – plucky don that he is – would have us contest the mountain passes west of here instead of hightailing it to the sea. But Sir John Moore will not have it. In short, gentlemen, it has become Sir John’s sole object to save the army. And we must allow that he is in a better position than are we to judge it.’

  Still there was the sound of discontent.

  Colonel Reynell had other things to occupy him, however. ‘You may know that the army has already been obliged to destroy the greater part of the ammunition and military stores for want of carriage. And for that reason too we shall be obliged to leave the sick once more.’

  ‘Shall we not at least fight a rearguard action here, Colonel?’ asked Sir Edward Lankester, sounding as if there were no sensible alternative.

  ‘We shall not, Sir Edward,’ replied Reynell. ‘I am afraid we shall be leading the field.’

  Leading? The whole assembly was appalled.

  ‘The mountain roads west of here are too narrow for cavalry to be of any use, save for a very few as orderlies and such. It will fall to the Fifteenth alone to march with General Edward Paget’s rearguard division. Our business will be to get ourselves clear of the road to Villafranca as quickly as possible in order that the infantry and artillery might have free of it. I understand that Sir John may yet make a stand at Villafranca if the circumstances are favourable, for it would not be so easy for the French to outflank him there as here.’

  The promise of action in which they would not take part was little comfort, and the grumbling began again.

  *

  That night, Hervey wrote to Daniel Coates:

  My dear Dan,

  When last I wrote I could not have imagined that our condition could be any worse, but I have to tell you that our army is become a very wretched affair, with much indiscipline and insubordination. The officers complain openly of Sir John Moore, that he has not the stomach to fight the French &c. I, of course, do not know what must be, but I have seen things these past days that almost make me ashamed to bear the name of soldier. The army in general is in a most enfeebled state. I should, of course, say armies, for both redcoat and Spanish alike suffer. Especially are General Romana’s Spaniards truly to be pitied. Today I watched as they stumbled in to the town all morning (to say marched in would have been to travesty the soldier’s term). The poor devils were raveningly hungry, barefoot, and their once fine uniforms in rags. A great many of them had no muskets. A British ensign, attached as an interpreter, told me they fired off all their ammunition just to keep their hands warm. And a good number of them were fevered – typhus fever, it is said. But their delirium looked little different to me from the stupor of our own infantry, too many of whom appeared to have broken into the bodegas and staved in the casks. I have seen them shoot down exhausted bullocks in the street, while they are attached to the cart poles, and then hacked up and wolved with barely a pass through the flame of burning stores and furniture. I should tell you that not all the regiments are in this insolent condition of course. The Guards, as you might imagine, are as steady as ever you saw, and the Scotch for the most part, and the Germans, the 4th King’s Own too, and of course General Craufurd’s light brigade. Our colonel is in a fearful bait lest our men follow suit, but tomorrow Sir John Moore is to have the whole army parade to watch punishment, by which it is hoped that some sense of discipline may be uniformly restored . . .

  *

  ‘Pour encourager les autres,’ said Lieutenant Martyn, very decidedly, on their way to orderly room next morning. ‘Though I myself doubt it will do the least good, judging from the delinquency I saw on my way up. And Edward Paget is to hang two as well, I’ve heard. Though that, I fear, will be not the slightest degree of encouragement either.’

  Orderly room proved a sullen affair. ‘They murdered a woman and her children at Benavente,’ the adjutant explained, seeing the looks on the faces of the other subalterns as he gave instructions for the punishment parade.

  Hervey’s disquiet was allayed.

  ‘Very well, gentlemen, that concludes orders,’ said the adjutant, closing his minute book. ‘To your duties.’

  The subalterns left with heavy hearts, however. The prospect before them was not agreeable in any degree. It was bad enough that they had to slink away to Corunna without so much as a rearguard, but first having to parade for a hanging, and then watching a procession of the dregs of the army, whom the French had overtaken and cut up, hardly conduced to raise the spirits.

  That was not the
object, Hervey realized. Colonel Reynell had made the parade’s condign and exemplary purpose clear. In any case, had not Sir Edward Lankester already said that the regiment must look to its own during the weeks to come? Hervey was sure it must be so: the Sixth had always fought well, Sir Edward said, and they were among friends. It was not mere sentiment, he felt sure. For one thing, Sir Edward was not a man given to sentiment, and for another it seemed manifestly true; even allowing for the business of Serjeant Ellis. In any case, friendship did not have to be cloying. The important thing was that if a man wore the figure ‘VI’ on his regimentals he would do all in his power not to shame those who shared that badge. That at least was the regimental ideal, and it worked often enough as not.

  *

  Quartermaster Banks looked distinctly unfriendly when A Troop paraded an hour later. Had any dragoon shown the merest sign of comradely familiarity his humiliation would have been effected with summary despatch. A tongue-lashing from Quartermaster Banks was not a complete deterrent to delinquency, any more than the cat was a complete deterrent in the flogging regiments, but its effect was none the less for that. Fortunately, this morning every man sensed the quartermaster’s humour, and even the corporals were wary. Why the quartermaster looked so unusually severe was anyone’s guess, but it was not difficult to imagine that with Holland and India to his credit, he was all too aware that it was but a stone’s throw from good order to mutiny. And he, Quartermaster Isaac Banks, would have no stain on his record for such a thing in his troop (Sir Edward Lankester may own the troop in strictly proprietary terms, but it was Izzy Banks’s until he had handed it over to the captain; handed it over not merely in good order but in perfect order).

  That had been the message this morning: no explicit order, but the understanding that turn-out was to be beyond mere muster-good. The quartermaster’s eye searched, noted, reproached, approved. Sir Edward Lankester took over a troop the King himself could have inspected. But there were no words, and Lankester led them in silence to the appointed place, where he found the rest of the Sixth already drawn up in two ranks. He formed A on the right of the line, as was their privilege, and reported ‘all present’ to the adjutant.

  The town square, a vast fairground in better times, and filled with every type of uniform, was as silent as A Troop’s ride. There was nothing like the proximity of the gallows to still the restless and quieten the wags. Three sides of it were packed four ranks deep with infantry of the Line, while five regiments of cavalry and two battalions of the Guards occupied the other. The gallows, impressed from the civil authorities, towered above the parade, the two condemned men standing rock-like on the scaffold, hands and feet bound, a serjeant with pike on either side of them.

  The silence continued a full five minutes. Then there was a sudden cacophony of words of command from every regiment.

  ‘Sixth Light Dragoons, atte-e-enshun!’

  Three hundred sabres came to the perpendicular from the slope. Colonel Reynell dropped his to the salute as Sir John Moore, half a dozen general officers and his staff rode into the square.

  General the Honourable Edward Paget, the cavalry commander’s younger brother, lost no time. ‘By the provisions of the Mutiny Act and the Articles of War, I confirm sentence of death passed by field general court martial on Privates Lynch and Terry of the Ninth Regiment of Foot.’

  No one had expected Paget to commute the sentence, but the words were terrible to hear nevertheless. Men as well as horses shifted their weight.

  ‘Provost Marshal, carry out sentence!’

  Neither Lynch nor Terry was offered hood or blindfold. They were men under discipline, they had committed murder, and they would face their end squarely.

  Hervey strained to see.

  A chaplain in Geneva gown said inaudible prayers for a full minute, and it seemed longer. When he was finished, the serjeants tightened the nooses about the men’s necks. Then the provost marshal nodded to his assistant. The corporals pulled the levers.

  The two privates, feet lead-weighted, dropped through the trapdoors into the open-front space beneath. Hervey thought he would never be able to describe, or forget, the sharp intake of ten thousand men’s breath. Private Lynch’s rope unravelled on the jib and his body fell too far, almost to the ground, so that his head snapped clean off as the rope jerked, and rolled to a muddy halt in front of the guard at the foot of the scaffold. But that was a mercy compared with Private Terry’s contortions: he struggled a minute and more at the end of his rope until, the air choked off, he at last fell still.

  ‘Botched,’ muttered Izzy Banks. ‘Both of ’em. Too heavy the one, and not enough the other.’

  Those dragoons near him shuddered at their quartermaster’s acquaintance with the finer points of a hanging.

  But the provost marshal and his men could scarcely be blamed. They had not hanged anyone since coming to the Peninsula.

  ‘Carry on, Provost Marshal,’ said Sir John Moore, grimly.

  Grimly and, thought those sweats who knew him, dejectedly. It was not the pleasure of a general officer to have men hanged and arraigned when there were the King’s enemies close by.

  A sorry-looking procession (‘parade’ would not have served) now began to shuffle through the square, men horribly cut up and mutilated. These were the stragglers, the men who had broken ranks for whatever reason, whom the French cavalry had set about with evident skill and relish. Sir John Moore wanted every man in the army to know what fate awaited those whose will and discipline failed them.

  Hervey paled at the sight, a veritable march-past of grotesques. Even the red cloth could not hide the blood stains and raw wounds.

  Red cloth, all save for one. Hervey gaped as he saw the bloody bundle of blue shuffling along with the rest. A serjeant of the 6th Light Dragoons: there could hardly be a more shameful sight. Ellis had brought himself to this, no one else. Even so, he, Hervey, had been the instrument of that shaming, and the sudden evidence of so profound a fall from grace unnerved him.

  The escort, non-commissioned officers of the Guards, formed the procession into line to face each side of the square in turn. Immaculate in their blackings and pipe clay, the Guards stood in stark contrast to their charges, as indeed was the intention, reckoned Hervey. He thought it like some medieval representation of hell, the promise of infernal torture for the transgressor. He fixed on the bloody blue bundle again, then suddenly remembered that Ellis was a fugitive still.

  But the quartermaster spoke first. ‘I have him, sir.’

  Hervey was relieved to have the responsibility taken from him.

  And Ellis would have a glimpse of the fate that awaited him.

  General Paget glowered at the stragglers, his horse a length in advance of Sir John Moore’s (he commanded the parade), and shifted in the saddle. ‘March on the prisoner!’

  His voice condemned the man as surely as had the court martial. It contained no hope of clemency. Hervey felt his stomach churning.

  The provost marshal’s men stood aside to let twenty guardsmen file into the middle of the square. A red-coated private, hatless, marched at their head, as broken-looking as the escorts were magnificent. They halted in front of the overturned waggon that was to serve as bullet-catcher.

  ‘Sentenced this very morning,’ said Izzy Banks, loud enough for those dragoons nearest to hear and relay it to the extremities of the troop.

  Speedy justice, as well as the remorseless kind, was a powerful reminder.

  Hervey strained to hear more.

  ‘Mutiny.’

  The dread word; Hervey tried hard not to flinch as he turned back to see the condemned man brought out of the ranks and made to stand in full view of the parade.

  The provost marshal began to read. ‘Given this thirty-first day of December, eighteen hundred and eight, by order of Major-General the Honourable Edward Paget, Private Leechman of His Majesty’s Fifty-second regiment of foot is hereby sentenced to death by shooting for the offence of mutinous conduct contrary
to the provisions of the Mutiny Act, in that he at Benavente on the thirtieth day of December eighteen hundred and eight did strike his superior officer, namely Serjeant Hamilton of that regiment. The sentence to be carried out without delay.’

  General Paget turned to the Fifty-second.

  Private Leechman’s commanding officer now spoke up. ‘Sir, the man’s previous record has been exemplary, as stated at the court martial, and his officers respectfully request for clemency to be given on this occasion. He wishes to admit his guilt before the parade assembled.’

  General Paget nodded.

  Private Leechman began in a loud but faltering voice. ‘I am brought to this by my own devices and through drink. And the justice is fair. If I might be spared my life I resolve never to falter again, and to serve my King and country faithfully, as I have always endeavoured to.’

  ‘That will do it,’ said Lieutenant Martyn in the Sixth’s front rank, just loud enough to carry to the cornets. ‘A clean breast of it and an oath to the King.’

  Hervey hoped so. The offence was not perhaps so great, he imagined, for no doubt the serjeant had been harsh, and the man was of previous good character.

  The provost marshal turned to General Paget.

  ‘See,’ said Martyn. ‘Paget will turn to Sir John Moore, and in so doing accept the petition for clemency.’

  But the general did not. ‘No man who has previously been of good character may escape the consequences of an offence. By that method the whole army shall be undone. Carry out sentence!’

  The universal shock was audible. The depravity of the offence and the severity of the discipline were at once imprinted on every mind.

  The provost marshal nodded to the field officer of the Guards, who in turn nodded to the serjeant of the escort.

  The serjeant tied Leechman’s arms to his side, bade him kneel down as the escort cleared the line of fire, and placed a sack over his head.