A Close Run Thing
Page 39
But the brevet captain swallowed hard. Fastening on his sword-belt and taking up the scabbard in his left hand, he touched his shako peak to the Marine and strode resolutely up the steep gangway. As he stepped aboard and turned to salute aft (the one custom of which he was certain) the same figure of the gallery window appeared on deck, immaculate in frock uniform. His face was a year or so older than Hervey’s (but not more), and it remained motionless while returning the salute. Then it broke into a quizzical smile. ‘Captain Hervey, we presume? We are glad you have at last arrived. I am Captain Laughton Peto.’
Even in the short time it had taken to exchange these compliments three seamen were down the gangway and bringing up Hervey’s chests. He struggled to find some apt reply in deference to this courtesy. ‘I am afraid my journey here has been in much haste, sir. I confess I do not even know your ship’s name.’
Peto smiled again. ‘Nisus; you may have heard of her. Now, Captain Hervey, the tide will be turning any minute. You may come aft and watch as we get under way so that you will have something favourable to tell the duke of your time with the Service. Have you seen a frigate make sail before?’
Hervey glanced at the epaulettes on the captain’s coat. The left one looked distinctly newer. By which he concluded that, since the 1813 regulations required two epaulettes irrespective of seniority (he did not wish to peer too closely at them to search for the crowns which would have settled the matter), Captain Peto had held the rank prior to Bonaparte’s exile to Elba – when, indeed, Hervey had been but a cornet. Thus, it occurred to him that Captain Peto might have commanded Nisus on their Dover escort a year before, which had made such a show of sail on leaving them. But before he could allude thus Peto spoke again. ‘I should tell you, too, that in my cabin there are sealed orders for you from Paris, to be opened only when we are under way.’
‘Sealed orders – for me?’ Hervey could scarcely contain his wonder at the change of circumstances: a few hours before and he had been staring oblivion in the face. ‘What do you suppose they say?’
‘My dear Hervey,’ laughed Peto, ‘I have not the beginning of an idea. I am a mere frigate captain; you are aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington!’
THE END
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S CAVALRY
AN EXPLANATORY NOTE
Here is a picture – a very incomplete one – of the cavalry in the Duke of Wellington’s day. The picture remained the same, with but minor changes, until after the Crimean War nearly half a century later.
Like the infantry, the cavalry was organized in regiments. Each had a colonel as titular head, usually a very senior officer (in the case of the 10th Light Dragoons, for instance, it was the Prince of Wales; in the case of the fictional 6th Light Dragoons it was first the Earl of Sussex and then Lord George Irvine, both lieutenant generals) who kept a fatherly if distant eye on things, in particular the appointment of officers. The actual command of the regiment was exercised by a lieutenant-colonel. He had a major as his second in command (or ‘senior major’ as he was known in the Sixth and other regiments), an adjutant who was usually commissioned from the ranks, a regimental serjeant-major (RSM) and various other ‘specialist’ staff.
A cavalry regiment comprised a number of troops identified by a letter (A Troop, B Troop, etc.), each of a hundred or so men commanded by a captain, though in practice the troops were usually under strength. The number of troops in a regiment varied depending on where it was stationed; in Spain, for instance, at the height of the war, there were eight.
The captain was assisted by two or three subaltern officers – lieutenants and cornets (second-lieutenants) – and a troop serjeant-major, who before 1811 was known as a quartermaster (QM). After 1811 a regimental quartermaster was established to supervise supply and quartering (accommodation) for the regiment as a whole – men and horses. There was also a riding-master (RM), like the QM usually commissioned from the ranks (‘the ranks’ referred to everyone who was not a commissioned officer, in other words RSM and below). With his staff of rough-riders (a rough was an unbroken remount, a replacement horse) the RM was responsible for training recruits both human and equine.
Troops were sometimes paired in squadrons, numbered First, Second, Third (and occasionally Fourth). On grand reviews in the eighteenth century the colonel would command the first squadron, the lieutenant-colonel the second, and the major the third, each squadron bearing an identifying guidon, a silk banner – similar to the infantry battalion’s colours. By the time of the Peninsular War, however, guidons were no longer carried mounted in the field, and the squadron was commanded by the senior of the two troop leaders (captains).
A troop or squadron leader, as well indeed as the commanding officer, would give his orders in the field by voice and through his trumpeter. His words of command were either carried along the line by the sheer power of his voice, or were repeated by the troop officers, or in the case of the commanding officer were relayed by the adjutant (‘gallopers’ and aides-de-camp performed the same function for general officers). The trumpet was often used for repeating an order and to recall or signal scattered troops. The commanding officer and each captain had his own trumpeter, who was traditionally mounted on a grey, and they were trained by the trumpet-major (who, incidentally, was traditionally responsible for administering floggings).
The lowest rank was private man. In a muster roll, for instance, he was entered as ‘Private John Smith’; he was addressed by all ranks, however, simply as ‘Smith’. In the Sixth and regiments like them he would be referred to as a dragoon. The practice of referring to him as a trooper came much later; the cavalry rank ‘trooper’ only replaced ‘private’ officially after the First World War. In Wellington’s day, a trooper was the man’s horse – troop horse; an officer’s horse was known as a charger (which he had to buy for himself – two of them at least – along with all his uniform and equipment).
A dragoon, a private soldier, would hope in time to be promoted corporal, and he would then be addressed as, say, ‘Corporal Smith’ by all ranks. The rank of lance-corporal, or in some regiments ‘chosen man’, was not yet properly established, though it was used unofficially. In due course a corporal might be promoted sergeant (with a ‘j’ in the Sixth and other regiments) and perhaps serjeant-major. The best of these non-commissioned officers (NCOs – every rank from corporal to RSM, i.e. between private and cornet, since warrant rank was not yet properly established), if he survived long enough, would hope to be promoted RSM, and would then be addressed by the officers as ‘Mr Smith’ (like the subaltern officers), or by subordinates as ‘Sir’. In time the RSM might be commissioned as a lieutenant to be adjutant, QM or RM.
All ranks (i.e. private men, NCOs and officers) were armed with a sword, called in the cavalry a sabre (the lance was not introduced until after Waterloo), and in the early years of the Napoleonic wars with two pistols. Other ranks (all ranks less the officers) also carried a carbine, which was a short musket, handier for mounted work.
And of course there were the horses. The purchase of these was a regimental responsibility, unless on active service, and the quality varied with the depth of the lieutenant-colonel’s pockets. Each troop had a farrier, trained by the farrier-major, responsible to the captain for the shoeing of every horse in the troop, and to the veterinary surgeon for the troop horses’ health. Hard feed (oats, barley, etc.) and forage (hay, or cut grass – ‘green forage’) were the serjeant-major’s responsibility along with other practical details such as the condition of saddlery, allocation of routine duties and, par excellence, discipline.
Although the cavalry often worked independently, sending detachments on escort duty, patrols and pickets, regiments were usually grouped into brigades of three or more, commanded by a brigadier who was a full colonel or major general (brigadier at this time was an appointment not a rank), with a brigade-major as his staff officer. Brigades could in turn be grouped into divisions (most spectacularly in the retreat to Corunna under the
command of that quintessential cavalry general Lord Uxbridge, later Marquess of Anglesey) or attached to an infantry division or to a corps of two or more divisions. The cavalry were prized for their flexibility, though Wellington complained that they were too frequently unmanageable in the field, with the habit of ‘galloping at everything’.
The independent-mindedness of cavalry officers had in part to do with the manner of their commissioning. The cavalry (and the infantry) were the responsibility of the commander-in-chief – for most of the period of these cavalry tales the Duke of York, whose headquarters were at the Horse Guards in Whitehall. On the other hand, the artillery, engineers and other technical services were the responsibility of the Master General of the Ordnance, whose ‘explosives authority’ gave him a seat in the Cabinet. To make matters even more complicated, the commissariat and transport were the direct responsibility of the Treasury.
Officers of the MGO’s arms were appointed to their commissions without purchase and promoted on seniority and merit. Those of the cavalry and infantry, with a few exceptions, purchased their commissions and promotion. They actually paid several thousand pounds for the privilege of serving. When it came to their turn on the seniority list, they bought promotion to the next higher rank, which in practice meant selling their present rank through the regimental agents to someone else and paying the difference in price for the higher one. In fact a rich and influential officer did not need to bide his time on the seniority list: he could offer an officer in another regiment more than the going rate for his rank – called paying overprice. The exception was during active service, when the death of an officer meant that the vacancy passed without purchase to the next regimental officer on the seniority list. Hence the officers’ black-humoured toast, ‘To a bloody war and a sickly season!’
The iniquities of the purchase system are obvious, principally in the widespread abuse of the supposedly strict and fair rules. The advantages are less so, but they were none the less significant (space precludes a worthwhile discussion of the purchase system here, and I commend instead the essay in the first volume of the Marquess of Anglesey’s History of the British Cavalry). There is no doubt, however, that with so many men under arms, England (which in Wellington’s time was shorthand for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) was on the whole well served by it.
It did mean, though, that men such as Matthew Hervey, a son of the vicarage, of the minor gentry – the backbone of Wellington’s officer corps – who had little private money, had to watch while others less capable and experienced than they overtook them in the promotion stakes. There were promotions for meritorious service occasionally, but the opportunities were few even in so large an army, and when peace came to Europe in 1815 the opportunities became even rarer.
This, then, is the army in which Matthew Hervey is making his way – a slow, sometimes disheartening progress, but with the advantage of knowing that he serves among friends who face the same odds, and with NCOs with whom he has, so to speak, grown up. The strength of the army was this regimental system, because the regiment was largely self-supporting and self-healing. It remains so today. It is threatened more than ever before, however. For who that has not served in a regiment, directly or indirectly, can truly appreciate its strength? Certainly not the Treasury, and, I begin to doubt, even ‘the War Office’.
* * *
MATTHEW PAULINUS HERVEY
BORN: 1791, second son of the Reverend Thomas Hervey, Vicar of Horningsham in Wiltshire, and of Mrs Hervey; one sister, Elizabeth.
EDUCATED: Shrewsbury School (praepostor)
MARRIED: 1817 to Lady Henrietta Lindsay, ward of the Marquess of Bath (deceased 1818).
CHILDREN: a daughter, Georgiana, born 1818.
MILITARY HISTORY:
1808: commissioned cornet by purchase in His Majesty’s 6th Light Dragoons (Princess Caroline’s Own).
1809-14: served Portugal and Spain; evacuated with army at Corunna, 1809, returned with regiment to Lisbon that year: Present at numerous battles and actions including Talavera, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vitoria.
1814: present at Toulouse; wounded. Lieutenant.
1814-15: served Ireland, present at Waterloo, and in Paris with army of occupation.
1815: Additional ADC to the Duke of Wellington (acting captain); despatched for special duty in Bengal.
1816: saw service against Pindarees and Nizam of Hyderabad’s forces; returned to regimental duty. Brevet captain; brevent major.
1818: saw service in Canada; briefly seconded to US forces, Michigan Territory; resigned commission.
1819: reinstated, 6th Light Dragoons; captain.
1820-26: served Bengal; saw active service in Ava (wounded severely); present at Siege of Bhurtpore; brevet major.
1826-27: detached service in Portugal.
1827: in temporary command of 6th Light Dragoonns, major; in command of detachment of 6th Light Dragoons at the Cape Colony; seconded to raise Corps of Cape Mounted Rifles; acting lieutenant-colonel.
* * *
About the Author
ALLAN MALLINSON IS A FORMER CAVALRY OFFICER. Besides the Matthew Hervey series, he is the author of Light Dragoons, a history of four regiments of British Cavalry, one of which he commanded, and a regular reviewer for The Times and the Spectator. His Matthew Hervey novels are all available in Bantam paperback and his new novel, Man of War, is now available in hardcover from Bantam Press.
For more information on Matthew Hervey, please visit his website on www.hervey.info
Also by Allan Mallinson
AND FEATURING MATTHEW HERVEY
A CLOSE RUN THING
1815: introducing Matthew Hervey, fighting for King and country at the Battle of Waterloo.
‘I have never read a more enthralling account of a battle … This is the first in a series of Matthew Hervey adventures. The next can’t come soon enough for me’
DAILY MAIL
THE NIZAM’S DAUGHTERS
1816: in India Matthew Hervey fights to prevent bloody civil war.
‘Captain Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons and ADC to the Duke of Wellington is back in the saddle … He is as fascinating on horseback as Jack Aubrey is on the quarterdeck’
THE TIMES
A REGIMENTAL AFFAIR
1817: Matthew Hervey faces renegades at home and in North America.
‘A riveting tale of heroism, derring-do and enormous resource in the face of overwhelming adversity’
BIRMINGHAM POST
A CALL TO ARMS
1819: Matthew Hervey races to confront Burmese rebels massing in the jungle.
‘Hervey continues to grow in stature as an engaging and credible character, while Mallinson himself continues to delight’
OBSERVER
THE SABRE’S EDGE
1824: in India Matthew Hervey lays siege to the fortress of Bhurtpore.
‘Splendid … the tale is as historically stimulating as it is stirringly exciting’
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
RUMOURS OF WAR
1826: while Matthew Hervey prepares for civil war in Portugal, he remembers the Retreat to Corunna twenty years previously.
‘I enjoyed the adventure immensely … as compelling, vivid and plausible as any war novel I’ve ever read’
ANDREW ROBERTS, DAILY TELEGRAPH
AN ACT OF COURAGE
1826: a prisoner of the Spanish, Matthew Hervey relives the blood and carnage of the Siege of Badajoz.
‘Concentrating on the battle of Talavera and the investment of Badajoz, both sparklingly described, [Mallinson] plays to his undoubted strengths’
OBSERVER
COMPANY OF SPEARS
1827: on the plains of South Africa, Matthew Hervey confronts the savage Zulu.
‘A damn fine rip-roaring read’
LITERARY REVIEW
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A CLOSE RUN THING
A BANTAM BOOK: 9780553507133
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781407057354
First published in Great Britain
in 1999 by Bantam Press
a division of Transworld Publishers
Bantam edition published 2000
Copyright © Allan Mallinson 1999, 2007
The Battle of Waterloo, 1815 by Felix Philippoteaux.
Map by David Lindroth, Inc.
Allan Mallinson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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