The Passage to India

by Allan Mallinson

  Minutes passed, and Hervey began thinking it might have been better to bring up the 6-pounder, although the felled trees were even more an obstacle to the gunners than to the infantry.

  Then came the shots, distant, muffled. Warde had obviously found a vantage. Worsley gave the word to load, and then advance.

  In open order, the dragoons filled the road. To even a practised observer they would look like the infantry’s leading troops, though in fact there was nothing behind them for half a mile at least. No matter; such was the game of war.

  Hervey remounted, better to see ahead. Armstrong too.

  But if the Coorgs were in the stockade yet, they kept their cover well – not even a sentry’s shadow.

  The dragoons advanced steadily, and silent once Wainwright had barked at them. It wasn’t for stealth – they advanced in full view of the stockade and stood out like red berries on holly – but for discipline. ‘What is discipline, Private?’ was a regular of the drill parade; and woe betide the dragoon who couldn’t answer at once: ‘Discipline is that which animates a body of men with one mind, and impels them zealously to pursue the same end.’ Some of them understood the actual words; all of them understood the consequences of not understanding the sentiment.

  Wainwright’s bark was not the threat of retribution, however. Zeal was never (certainly not in the Sixth) obtained by terror. Praise from a superior, or the regard, at least, of his fellows, was what animated even the reprobate. Those ‘sweats’ in the ranks who had gone at the Burmans at Rangoon, and then at Madho Singh’s men at Bhurtpore, or even the savages at the Cape, knew it right enough. And those who now for the first time faced the King’s enemies would understand it soon enough.

  The shots continued, random, as if Warde were shooting snipe. Were they aimed shots – at fleeing figures or those who exposed themselves – or to flush the birds? Why were there none by return – or did the forest make no distinction? There was still no powder smoke above the parapets.

  Hervey fretted for a mortar to drop a questing shell inside. It was no good; he’d have to arrange things better.

  A hundred yards to go, and still no sign of life. If the Coorgs watched through loopholes they did it well, he conceded. But if they had muskets (and, God forbid, rifles), why did they not now begin their fire?

  The sudden noise made even the seasoned dragoons blench. The sally port dropped like a stone. Out spilled a host whose like he’d never seen before. Not the numbers – a hundred? – but the baying and the blades, like ancient Gauls in the forests of the north.

  No time even to think it. He drew his sabre. Acton just beat him to it, Armstrong a fraction slower; even Johnson.

  With Neale, the RSM’s coverman and two orderlies – seven.

  Worsley ordered the front rank to its knees, carbines to the aim. Better a heavy volley from both ranks than two lighter ones. No time to reload.

  Hervey shortened his reins. He shouldn’t be here – but as well that he was. ‘Ready, Sar’nt-Major?’

  ‘Aye, Colonel.’

  ‘Fire!’ cried Worsley.

  A perfect volley; much smoke; tumbling men; some still charging; others faltering.

  ‘Clear the way!’ Hervey pushed through and dug in his spurs.

  Shots from Worsley’s flankers tumbled several more.

  Hervey made straight for the middle of them, sabre low, parting the mass and giving point to his right.

  Acton took the man on the nearside before he could swing his knife at Hervey’s mare.

  Armstrong sabred two – impossible but for a man who’d practised on four continents.

  Johnson parried and then cut so hard he severed a head.

  Worsley’s dragoons fell on what remained with barrel and butt.

  No quarter.

  Hervey galloped on – what use pulling up now?

  There were scrambling figures atop the palisade, desperate to get away – and surely with intelligence worth having.

  He spurred hard through the sally port, Acton hard on his heels.

  And then—

  He pulled up hard.

  Women, children – corralled like so many cattle.

  ‘What in God’s name …’

  * * *

  SERJEANT ACTON HAD said nothing. It was not his place. He was not the colonel’s keeper but his coverman. ‘Whither thou goest, I will go.’ That was his duty, his privilege, and – he trusted – his making.

  Corporal Johnson had sworn a good deal, not least because it took him some time to recover the bat-horse, whose lead rein he’d had to drop as they took off, but otherwise he was enlivened by it. It would do him no harm in the estimation of the wet canteen.

  Neale had confined himself to a quizzical ‘quite a go, General’. Armstrong was another matter. It was towards the end of the afternoon; the column had halted for the night and Hervey was sitting by himself under an atap roof in the second stockade of the day – taken without a shot, and without much sign that it had ever held a garrison worth the name – drinking tea sweetened with buffalo milk.

  ‘A word, sir, please?’

  Hervey knew what to expect. He’d first heard that request, probably, on the retreat to Corunna – or before that, even. It was the notice of displeasure – severe displeasure possibly. And Acton was nowhere to be seen, a sure sign he’d been told to make himself scarce.

  ‘Of course, Sar’nt-Major. Tea?’

  Armstrong shook his head. ‘Charging like that, Colonel. It won’t do.’

  Hervey nodded. ‘You’re quite right, of course. Except that had we not done so, there’d be half a dozen and more dragoons in shallow graves.’

  Armstrong sighed. ‘I know that perfectly well, but it still won’t do.’

  ‘My mistake was to push Worsley’s troop forward, rather than hastening the infantry, and the guns.’

  He’d changed that straight afterwards, telling Worsley only to scout, that the light company of the Dorsets was advance guard, with the pioneers behind them to clear a way for the guns. It had worked well for the next three or four miles, and the taking of the second stockade.

  ‘And getting between Colonel Lindesay and the enemy.’

  He couldn’t gainsay that either. It was a sound principle that a superior officer ought not to get forward of a subordinate. ‘That I grant you too.’

  ‘Not that it’s done your stock with the troop any harm.’

  ‘Nor yours, Sar’nt-Major. Three cuts, Johnson tells me.’

  ‘I don’t know how he saw anything, Colonel. He was going to it like we were at Sa’gun again.’

  Hervey smiled. Happy memory, Sahagun, freezing though it was (he’d been monstrous young).

  ‘And the women, Colonel. Can’t we just send them down to Kushalnagar, or else let ’em high-tail it home? I don’t like having women round something like this. Nor does the Dorsets’ serjeant-major.’

  ‘I had a mind that they might help us forward. Not a shield, but to discourage their menfolk – the rajah’s men, I mean.’

  For a good many of the women’s menfolk were now dead.

  Armstrong shook his head in disgust at the rajah’s stratagem. ‘Not even them Burmans did that – staking out women and bairns.’

  It was true. In all his service, Hervey had never come across women and children ‘staked out’ in the fighting line. It had certainly not taken much interrogation to learn that their menfolk’s charge – a forlorn hope if ever there was one – was ordered on pain of their women’s execution. Indeed, when the dragoons learned of it, they swore to hang whoever had given the order, angered at having to kill men who charged just to save their kin from butchering.

  ‘Some of them are sure to know a thing or two about what lies between here and Madkerry.’

  He’d already discovered – if it were ever entirely possible to discover the negative – that they’d seen no caltrops.

  ‘Aye, Colonel, true enough, but it’s a slow enough business as it is.’

  Hervey nodded.
‘Yes, I believe you’re right. Indeed, it’s a deal slower business than I’d hoped. There are just too many men on too small a road.’

  ‘That an’ all.’

  ‘So how do you suppose we’d get the women to Kushalnagar?’

  Armstrong shook his head. It was a hopeless business either way. ‘Why don’t we put them under guard where they’re at the village yonder, till all the column’s passed? They’ll be safe enough.’

  Hervey thought on it for a moment or two. It seemed best. ‘Very well. I’ll have Captain Neale give the order. The NI’s company, I think.’

  Armstrong nodded. It had not been his place, he knew, but twenty-five years was a long time in the same uniform. And he’d every wish of seeing another five.

  XXIV

  The Culminating Point

  Towards evening, four days later

  THEIR POLICY HAS been to oppose incursion with great vigour when the place of it is known beforehand and where the enemy force is small. Alternatively, when the situation is otherwise, the policy has been to permit of deep incursion to exhaust resolve and supplies, and then to counter-attack …

  He had gambled. He might not admit it – he preferred to think that first he’d reckoned, then risked, which was the art of generalcy – but he’d counted on the Coorgs losing heart as the columns converged. Progress had been damnably slow on all roads – almost continuous resistance: palisades and abbatis, cuddungs and breastworks, the closeness of the country affording no room for manoeuvre; and the sheer unwieldiness of the columns. His own, with the shortest distance to travel, was still a league and more from the plain of Madkerry, and before it, as the scouts reported, was a stockade larger than any so far (and who knew what lay beyond that?). Sickness, too, was thinning the ranks – of the Dorsets especially, on whom he depended most to maintain the momentum.

  He began to wonder: did he have luck, that supreme and elusive quality which Bonaparte – mountebank that he was – said he prized most in his generals? He’d had his share in his rise from cornet to colonel; but was he a ‘lucky general’?

  They had but two days’ rations left. The night before, as he contemplated the despatches from the other columns (including the death of the gallant Colonel Mill of the Fifty-fifth, who he thought must be the first commanding officer since Waterloo to die in battle), he began to think that no column would have the strength now to break through the stiffening defences as the Coorgs fell back ‘to permit of deep incursion to exhaust resolve and supplies, and then to counter-attack’ – his own words; his own cautionary words. Neale had suggested – urged, indeed – that the ration be cut by half, but Hervey had said no, for to do so would signify to the troops that the advance was faltering. Besides, to take away the source of strength to the fighting man at the very moment at which he might be called to a supreme effort would not serve.

  So he’d gambled on breaking through this day – or on one of the other columns breaking through. The Coorgs could not prevail; not against an army of the Company. Not with him at its head. This was the culmination of twenty-five years practising the soldier’s art. Failure was unthinkable; and therefore impossible. It was a question of time, and at what cost. That indeed would be the measure of his generalcy, not merely the achievement of his object.

  He had one priceless advantage now, however – ripe intelligence. Of all the things he’d ever read before putting on the King’s coat, nothing had made a deeper impression than what the great Duke of Marlborough had said: ‘No war can ever be conducted without good and early intelligence.’

  And having then put on the King’s coat, he’d learned over the years how that good and early intelligence was obtained: by stealth, cunning, and daring; by extortion, enticement, gold – and chance. Recognizing the worth of chance intelligence was another matter, however.

  The nautch girl had certainly chanced on them. She was, she’d told him – or rather, the dowra who’d brought her had – the wife of a high official of the court whom the rajah had sent towards the west to make sure there was no treachery in the ranks of the army there, as she believed he had also sent to north, south and east. The following day, she’d been hauled from their quarters by the chowdigars and sent east with the hostage wives, though they had largely shunned her, at least until she too was roughly corralled at the stockade.

  And yet Neale had had his doubts at first. One of the wives had spat as she was led away, calling after her ‘kottu’ – concubine (harlot, even) – and Hervey was anyway inclined to be wary, for she began with a litany of the rajah’s crimes, just as would one who wished to ingratiate. On receiving word that the Company was assembling a force at Mysore, she said, the rajah, so as to be sure there would be no usurpation, no collusion, had murdered his mother and all his brothers and sisters – with his own sword indeed – and thrown them into a pit.

  Had she seen this, Hervey asked. She had not, but neither had she seen the rajah’s family in the days following; and it was spoken of freely in the palace at Soamwar Pettah. Pemma Virappa, the vakeel, was dead too – found hanged in the palace orchards, by his own hand or that of the rajah she didn’t know. She said also that the rajah had begun to make free with any woman he chose, wed or not. That indeed, he had forced himself on her several times, and on others of her husband’s family, which Hervey took to mean other of her husband’s concubines. She wished only now for the rajah’s death, she said, and would do whatever was in her power to assist him.

  Hervey withdrew to speak with Neale, telling Johnson to attend on her as civilly as he could, and Acton to observe the dowra.

  Then he sighed, and raised an eyebrow. ‘And so, like Rahab before the fall of Jericho, to spare herself and her kin she now conspires with the enemy?’

  Neale looked doubtful. Rahab had been a harlot too. ‘“And she said unto the men, I know that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you.”’

  Hervey nodded. He was no Joshua, nor was Madkerry Jericho. His object was not to take the city, but its rajah. ‘It is well said, but I have no task for this Rahab.’

  Neale, however, could not quite bring himself to conclude that her words were merely honeyed. She’d borne herself well in being spat at. ‘For the moment, General, I agree there is no task, but perhaps she might accompany in case of need. She would at least be able to identify the high officials, and those we might trust.’

  Hervey wasn’t inclined to dispute it. There was little mischief she could make under escort. ‘Very well.’

  They returned to find Corporal Johnson looking pleased.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Colonel – sorry, Colonel: Gen’ral – she knows ’ow t’rajah can get out o’ t’fort if ’e ’as to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He glanced at Acton, who nodded.

  ‘’E’ll tell yer, Gen’ral,’ said Johnson, gesturing to the dowra.

  Neale asked him.

  ‘Sahib, it is true. She say there is secret way, to house of merchant.’

  ‘Does she know which is the house?’

  ‘Of course, sahib.’

  ‘It might be useful,’ Hervey conceded.

  ‘There is more, sahib. She say rajah become angry when he learn all things taken from fort. All things to stop men.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Gokharoo, sahib – things hurt foot.’

  ‘Take from fort – take where?’

  ‘Rajah not know, sahib. They steal. That why angry.’

  Hervey tried to conceal his satisfaction, for it wouldn’t do to signal his earlier disquiet, even to Johnson. But relieved he most certainly was. He turned to Neale. ‘I would know more.’

  Neale was already looking as pleased as Johnson.

  He had not long begun his despatch to Bangalore when one from St Alban arrived by hand of Private Owthwaite. Armstrong was at once at hand to observe – supervise – the novel experience of a private dragoon addressing a colonel
, a brigadier-general even, on a matter other than a charge.

  Hervey read it, and smiled. St Alban wrote that the prospect of Madkerry lay before them, and by tracks unused by the rajah’s men. ‘And you’re able to return by these same tracks, Owthwaite?’

  ‘I am, General. I ’ave a guide. They use the tracks to take stuff in and out without paying the dues.’

  ‘Do they, indeed.’ He supposed he ought to register some disapproval, given that he’d remanded Owthwaite for court martial for evading his dues – if it might be put that way. But St Alban had known his man. There were two real corporals with him – and good ones – but Owthwaite was the one for a job like this.

  Neale came.

  Hervey told him the news. ‘We have our chance, now, of stopping the earth before our fox bolts. If our Rahab returns with Owthwaite, she can indicate the house.’

  ‘Indeed so, General.’

  Hervey dashed off a note for St Alban.

  ‘Here, Private Owthwaite. I ought to send this by hand of an officer, but if you’re true, there is no need. Just a sowar to accompany you back, I think, and the wife of a high officer of the rajah’s court.’

  Owthwaite took the note and saluted. ‘General!’

  ‘Read it and ask Captain Neale if there’s anything to explain. But waste no time getting back.’ There was but an hour’s light left, at most. ‘And watch the India woman like a hawk.’

  ‘General!’

  Armstrong frowned as Owthwaite doubled away.

  ‘All is hazard in war, Sar’nt-Major, but I fancy not this time with Owthwaite.’

  ‘I’d stake my pension on it, General. Well, some of it.’

  The column had been at the halt for the better part of an hour. Even half-rations had to be cooked, water fetched and boiled, and sentries posted. They were to bed down en position that night again, as last night – no tents; weapons by their side, ready; and Hervey and his party with the Dorsets for safety. He must go forward and see Colonel Lindesay, though. There was now no reason not to run hard at Madkerry tomorrow, and early. Whatever barred their way – even another stockade – couldn’t stand long, for without being able to salt the road with caltrops as they withdrew, the defenders risked being overrun. If the rajah stood his ground at the fort, the guns would make short work of it; and if he bolted via his secret way, they’d have him in the bag. He even contemplated resuming the march after dark, but moving at night in jungle, even on a road, was the devil’s own business.