A Call To Arms

by Allan Mallinson

  Hervey felt rather guilty. ‘Yes. I watched the native horse at drill. They go very well.’

  ‘Mm,’ was the reply.

  ‘What has engaged you?’

  ‘The Bengal Secret and Political Consultations. And they would have engaged far less of my time had they a proper index. I found what I was looking for by a most circular exercise – in volume ninety-one, no less.’

  Hervey had learned to tread gently when Somervile was in his ‘scholarly’ frame of mind, as he thought of it. ‘May I ask what were you searching for?’

  ‘After you had gone this morning, I remembered that Lord Wellesley had sent an officer to Ava to treaty with the then king, Bodawpaya, Bagyidaw’s grandfather. A Colonel Symes it was, and it occurred to me that his reports must include some military assessments, and so I have been searching them out.’

  ‘And do they contain that information?’

  ‘In admirable detail. You must read him. The papers are on yonder table.’ He gestured without looking up again.

  Hervey turned, but at that moment Somervile looked up and took off his spectacles. ‘You know, the real danger is these war boats. There are five hundred of them: every town or village near the rivers has to supply a certain number of oarsmen and soldiers – a hundred or so for each boat – and they mount a gun in the bows. These could swarm on Chittagong – and Calcutta for that matter – and there’d be the very devil of a fight.’

  Hervey made rapid calculations. The results were indeed ominous. ‘Then the answer would be to destroy the boats before they discharged their cargo. But that too might be easier said than done, though I dare say Commodore Peto would know how.’

  Somervile raised an eyebrow. ‘I have a sense that we shall feel his want very keenly before too long.’ He took out his watch. ‘Let us go and see who of the Arakanese is come.’

  There were a dozen of them, men who hitherto had been regarded as at best troublesome and at worst practitioners of dacoity. Now they all sat in the lieutenant-governor’s audience room as if they were waiting for a wedding. ‘I have called you here today,’ began Somervile, in confident Bengali, ‘to ask you for information on the activities of the Burmans.’

  There was at once a hubbub, with keen looks of anticipation on the faces of the Arakanese.

  Somervile halted it magisterially. ‘I must warn you, however, that this does not mean we are contemplating any hostilities. It is simply that the Company in Calcutta wishes to know what movements in general are there.’

  None of the Arakanese looked convinced, but that suited Somervile. He wanted their help, and it would be the more vigorous for believing that the fight might be taken to their old enemy. He pointed to the map several times as he elaborated on his requirements, unsure as to its usefulness in that company, but the place names he mentioned, especially the rivers, brought eager nods. At length he promised them the Company would meet all reasonable expenses. ‘But I must warn you that the Company cannot extend any protection. And I will not condone any offensive action whatever. Indeed, I shall deal with it with infinitely greater severity than hitherto.’

  This latter was unwelcome news, but the manifest disappointment was soon replaced by enthusiasm for the covert action to come, and the meeting was ended with Somervile shaking each of the Arakanese by the hand and bidding them khuda hafiz, and expressing his hope that he would see them again soon – abar dekahobe. When they were gone he asked Hervey for his opinion.

  Hervey smiled. He had understood barely a word. ‘I’d wager those men will bring you your intelligence, and severed heads too to prove their word.’

  Somervile nodded, and frowned. ‘That is my fear. I wanted them keen, but I warned them there was to be no dacoity.’

  Hervey nodded as well. ‘What shall you do now?’

  ‘There is nothing more to do. I’ve sent word to the town major telling him to put the border patrols on alert – such as there are. He ought just about to manage that. Any more and I should have little confidence.’

  Hervey sighed. ‘He is certainly past his prime.’

  ‘He’s close to his military dotage!’

  They both smiled.

  ‘I’ve heard tell there are seven ages of the military man,’ said Hervey.

  ‘I believe we might examine such a theory, but let us do so at table. I think that Emma will be eager to hear of the morning’s work.’

  When Hervey returned to his quarters in the afternoon he found letters from England, carried from Calcutta by the same packet as the Governor-General’s messenger. He settled to read them at once. They were filled with good news and much cheer. His infant daughter was strong and healthy, and showed spirit and intelligence. Elizabeth likewise enjoyed excellent health and uncommon contentment. His father and mother, it seemed, were more active than ever. There were no reports of depredations by the squatters of Warminster Common, nor of violence by the Hindon Luddites, nor of pestilence in the town workhouse, nor any of a dozen things which periodically threatened the repose of the honest citizens of the neighbourhood. There were not even malevolent clerics. And yet these letters brought about so palpable a dejection that even Private Johnson would be moved to remark on it. For there was no Henrietta in their pages, and nor could there ever be, of course. The finality of it was never more apparent to him than by her absence from these modest records of daily life. It tore at his gut like the eagle of Shelley’s masterwork. Perhaps more than anything he was dismayed by the suddenness of his descent from sunny spirits to dark discouragement. How much he wished to see that villainous poet again, if only his hand in a letter. He would tell him all, even that of which he was half ashamed. Only half ashamed, though, for had he not prayed for a year and more for the strength to endure? What was his true fault, therefore, if he could not bear things as he ought? He was as close to slipping away to the Paterghatta now as he was to falling to his knees.

  But he would not go to the bibi khana. Neither would he pray. He would not even pick up his pen to reply at once to Horningsham, as had always been his practice. For he had not the right to put his own desires first. It was not a question of Christian morals but of his soldier’s duty: he had spent the last hours, with Somervile, considering the possibility of war with the Burmans – there was no other word for it – and he had done nothing since with regard to his own troop. Part-trained though they were, there would be calls on them for such skills as they possessed: guarding, escorting, the occasional undemanding patrol perhaps. And he might accelerate, or in some other way modify, his plans for the completion of their training. This was what his duty required, and he felt wholly ashamed at having to remind himself of it.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CASUS BELLI

  Four days later

  Hervey drew his sword and brought the pommel to rest on his foreleg. The morning sun at his back warmed him in a most comforting way, as indeed did the sight before him. Serjeant-Major Armstrong rode up from the centre of the ranks opposite, halted and brought his sword upright from the shoulder. ‘Good morning, sir! There are nine non-commissioned officers and thirty-eight private men on parade, sir!’

  Hervey returned the salute with a nod of his head. ‘Thank you, Serjeant-Major. Take post, please.’

  It had been the Sixth’s custom for many years to invite its serjeant-majors to take post on formal parades, and many had been the time that the troop captains had done the same in the field as a defiant gesture of composure in the face of the enemy. E Troop was not in review order this warm November morning, but campaign dress, for it was their first field day. Since Somervile’s alert, Hervey had worked tirelessly in the troop’s instruction – picket work on the first day, patrols and escorts the second, and yesterday the crossing of defiles and rivers. Dry work, first in the ‘classroom’ and then demonstrations, dismounted, using the NCOs to represent parts of the troop or the enemy, and buckets, ropes and all manner of commissary things to portray the features of the terrain. In the afternoons, while the troop was at
stables, Hervey had ridden the country to lay out in his mind the course of the field day, the culmination of which was to be a crossing of one of the tributaries of the Hooghly – a stream deep enough to have the horses swim, and yet not so wide as to unnerve the unpractised dragoons. The river was sluggish and the banks were low, making for easy entry and exit. They would be lucky to find so accommodating a crossing site on campaign, that much was certain. He had seen men and horses come to grief in Spain in rivers not much trickier than here. But it was a start.

  ‘Fall in the officers!’

  Seton Canning and Vanneck pressed their chargers forward. Hervey glanced up and down the line. He saw dragoons now, not recruits. Here and there he picked out a face and remembered what it had been when first he had seen it. He saw French that day in the barracks when they were being sluiced down, indignant at Armstrong’s suggestion that he had enlisted after losing his name. He saw Harkness at the same parade looking confused when Armstrong said he must answer ‘sir’, though it must not be addressed to him. There was McCarthy, flugelman, his rank restored by virtue of Hervey’s powers as detachment commander, but local rank, limited and unpaid; Hervey recalled McCarthy’s awkwardness when first he had sat astride a horse. He saw Shepherd Stent when first he had come to The Bell in Warminster, a silent, brooding, wounded man, and Rudd in that same place, smart, eager, but answerable to his mother in the millinery shop. And there were the Warminster pals themselves, in the squalor of the Common, Wainwright above all, a lad to whom others looked for the lead. A year had made dragoons of them, all but. Another month and—

  Off to his right, Hervey saw a mounted orderly approaching. He nodded to his trumpeter to intercept him.

  ‘The troop will return swords. Retu-u-urn swords!’

  By the time the drill was complete and they had formed two ranks, Trumpeter Storrs was handing Hervey the orderly’s message. Its terse contents startled him: ‘Come at once to my quarters. Imperative. ES.’

  ‘Mr Seton Canning, if you please!’

  His lieutenant raised a small trail of dust as he trotted up. ‘Sir?’ The formalities were always observed on parade, even without earshot of the ranks.

  ‘Take the troop out to the exercise ground and put them through skirmishing drill. The lieutenant-governor wants to see me. I’ll join you directly.’ Hervey turned without waiting for an acknowledgement and put Gilbert into as unhurried a trot as he could manage.

  At the Somerviles’ he found the lieutenant-governor in his study and still in his dressing gown. As Hervey came in, Somervile’s look of anxiety turned to one of near relief. ‘I’ve been up since the early hours again. I almost sent for you a dozen times.’

  ‘I wonder you did not. What has happened?’

  ‘Two reports, that is what; and notice from Calcutta that it will be the best part of two months before the brigade arrives. The Burmans are assembling a force within reach of the headwaters of the Karnaphuli. They’ll deliver an ultimatum before the month is out and then march on the city, splitting the country in two.’

  Hervey peered at the map lying on Somervile’s desk. ‘This is very precise intelligence.’

  ‘It is. And I’ve paid handsomely for it. We have a Burman fugitive from the court of Ava. And the intelligence of the force assembling has been corroborated by the Chakma tribesmen from the hill tracts.’

  ‘What say the Arakanese?’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing yet. But they wouldn’t go into the hill tracts alone.’

  ‘You had better ask the town major to take defensive measures, then. We shall at least know their route.’

  ‘I shall summon him shortly. What do you think his force can do?’

  ‘Two battalions of native infantry and guns? Well sited they might stop five times their number.’

  ‘My agent says there will be twelve thousand, and war barges with guns.’

  ‘Then they can do little but inflict losses and delay on them, but not, I think, for two months.’

  ‘No, nor I. I’ve sent word this very morning to Calcutta to hasten the brigade. They might at least send them in whatever groups they muster.’

  Hervey frowned. ‘That could be a scheme for losing them piecemeal. I doubt the commander-in-chief would commit anything less than in battalion strength.’

  ‘That’s why I’ve sent for you, Hervey. You shall have to take charge of the defences of this place. You have experience of these things, and you’ve seen the way of war here in the east. We both agree the town major’s a dear enough man, but not a match for this.’

  Hervey narrowed his eyes.

  ‘If rank is the problem I can give you a local colonelcy. That’s well within my powers.’

  ‘No, rank is not the problem,’ said Hervey, shaking his head. ‘A King’s officer always takes seniority over one of the Company’s. The problem’s topography. The country’s too flat to make defences. It’s only numbers of men – men able to manoeuvre – that could tell.’

  Somervile looked dismayed. ‘I have to do something, Hervey!’

  Hervey did not have to think what that something must be. It was, in his view, obvious to the newest cornet. ‘You shall have to forestall the attack.’

  Somervile looked at him uncertainly.

  ‘We have spoken of it. The Burmans must be defeated before they can fall on us from those boats. Before they embark in them, indeed.’

  Somervile’s look of astonishment was sufficient.

  ‘Truly, there’s no alternative.’

  At last the lieutenant-governor found his tongue. ‘But how in heaven’s name do you propose we do it?’

  ‘I don’t know. We did something of the same in Chintal, but that was a madness I thought never to repeat, and five years past. Do you have licence to attack the Burmans, by the way? In their own country, I mean?’

  ‘I have plenipotentiary powers, yes. But as far as the Company goes we should be licensed ultimately by success.’

  Hervey frowned. ‘My dear Somervile, we must face the possibility that if we undertook such a thing, you are more likely to be arraigned in failure, and I court-martialled.’

  Somervile sighed. ‘Hervey, I have no wish to prompt you to rashness, to any adventure that might bring such a thing to you.’ He scratched his head and called for his bearer. ‘No wish at all. Would you therefore make an assessment, a thorough, measured affair? It might reveal some course we have not imagined.’

  It was reasonable in one sense, thought Hervey, but the facts were unpromising and time was not on their side. An assessment could only betray how desperate were their straits, and that was too evident already: his own troop was still scarcely better than half-trained – unpractised, at least. ‘I shall make a very measured assessment,’ he replied, and in a tone intended to reassure Somervile that he would have his best efforts. ‘But directed only towards an attack on those boats with all the promptness to be had.’

  Somervile, though defied, looked surprisingly relieved.

  ‘I think I should first like to hear all that there is of the Burman force. Are your agents here yet?’

  At four o’clock, as the sun’s strength was fast diminishing, Hervey left his quarters and went to the stables. His neck was aching from holding his head too long in the same position as he pored over books, manuscripts and maps in order to make his ‘measured assessment’. Somervile’s Burman agents had not appeared, however, and so all his calculations were based on a supposition that the scant intelligence of the enemy was accurate. This worried him. It was one thing to go bald-headed for a rabble of mutineers, as he had done in Chintal; quite another to undertake an expedition against an organized force which was itself preparing an offensive expedition.

  And then there was the problem of the maps. He could hardly expect that they would be as faithful as the Ordnance sheets with which the most part of England was served, nor even the military surveys of Bonaparte’s legions which had tramped over the best part of the Continent. However, those with which he was obliged
to make his assessment were sketchy in the extreme.

  ‘It’s the rivers which give me the greatest trouble,’ confided Hervey, as Armstrong listened to the summary of the appreciation. ‘There are too many of them and they’re too unpredictable.’

  Armstrong shifted his weight on the sack of gram, pushed his legs out straight and reached into his pocket for his pipe. ‘Rivers are rivers, aren’t they?’

  To another, the remark might have meant nothing. To Hervey, who had consulted many maps and negotiated many rivers in Armstrong’s company, there was no need of elaboration. ‘Not here, by all accounts. I’ve been reading the natural history of the country, and strange it is too. Only thirty years ago the Jamuna shifted its course a full fifty miles.’

  Armstrong was not overawed. ‘But if these Burmans is coming down a river to attack, then they must know where it leads. And in that case we just hunt the heel line. That’s what you’d call it, isn’t it?’

  Hervey smiled. Armstrong had never followed hounds, but he had always studied his officers’ pastimes to advantage. ‘We need guides, though. And from what Mr Somervile says, they don’t much travel in these parts. I’ve yet to see these Burman agents who brought him the intelligence. They ought to have some idea of the country between here and there, even if they’ve not seen the assembly area for themselves.’

  ‘I’ve always distrusted guides. Ever since that time in Spain.’

  A searing experience that had been. Hervey could see it now – Armstrong’s ferocious strength unleashed on the Spanish guides who had proved treacherous the night before Corunna. Never again had he had much trust in men who did not wear a uniform. ‘Mr Somervile places great faith in the hill tribes, the Chakma especially. They know the forest well, and they’re no friends of the Burmans.’

  Armstrong made a face as if to say they would have to prove it first. ‘And what do your books say about the weather, sir? Thank God it’s over the worst, at least.’