Hervey 08 - Company Of Spears

by Allan Mallinson

  Somerset, his head already half turned to the lieutenant-governor, and his lips parted to form the first of his enquiries, was obliged to return to his hostess. He looked a shade abashed (which Emma took satisfaction in). ‘Forgive me, ma’am … yes, it has been a long day. I was obliged to go to Simon’s-town early this morning on account of a frigate’s putting in.’

  ‘To advantage?’ asked Somervile.

  ‘Yes, she brought the Horse Guards’ approval for the estimates respecting the Cape Corps, as well as private mail. There is, I observe, a substantial bag for you and your dragoons, Colonel Hervey.’

  Hervey was pleased to hear it: the mails were ever the soldier’s cheer, but he was especially hopeful that his bag contained the percussion cartridges he had ordered from Forsyth’s in Piccadilly. But beyond the information of the mails, Colonel Somerset was not especially communicative, and certainly not warm. Hervey knew that the business of the Cape Corps estimates was of some family concern to him: Eyre Somervile had told him that General Donkin had left a quarter of a million pounds to the credit of the colony, whereas Lord Charles Somerset had left a deficit of almost a million. General Bourke had therefore set about the economies necessary for the restoration of the budget, including taking down the signal towers communicating with the frontier, leaving only those to Simon’s Town from the castle, and the reorganization of the Cape Corps into something more akin to Mr Peel’s Irish constabulary.

  ‘Colonel Hervey has had a most interesting time of it at the frontier,’ said Somervile, in the pause during which Colonel Somerset took his glass from the khansamah. ‘Quite a sharp encounter with the Xhosa indeed.’

  Hervey had no desire to conceal it, and certainly not to deny it, though he would have wished for it not to have arisen so soon.

  But it was a vain hope on both counts. ‘So I heard,’ replied Somerset, not at all approvingly. ‘And with that planter’s bastard from the Africans.’

  Somervile remained blithe. ‘Rather a useful planter’s bastard, though: he appears to have saved Hervey’s life here, and rendered rather valuable service in other directions too. He collared one of the Xhosa in the middle of the night, who turns out to be no less than one of Gaika’s own sons – and a favoured one at that.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Emma, suddenly returned to the conversation. ‘You did not tell me that, my dear. Was the man therefore held to ransom?’

  Somervile looked at Hervey. ‘I think you should have the pleasure of the story, for it was your enterprise that brought about the happy end.’

  Hervey tried not to appear reluctant. ‘It was Fairbrother’s enterprise, in truth. I confess I know of no one in the army who would have been able to crawl about in the black of that night and do what he did. Plenty, perhaps, with the courage, and some with the skill; but to dispose of two and then bring in a third prisoner – hostage – shows a rare presence of mind.’

  Emma had not the slightest doubt that in her very drawing room stood a man who could have accomplished the same. ‘I am all admiration for you both, Colonel Hervey – and indeed for your corporal – but I would that you were not so unforthcoming about things and let us have all the intelligence!’

  Somervile smiled. She saved him the trouble of expressing the same sentiments, and she did so more bluntly.

  Hervey resolved to trouble himself no longer on Colonel Henry Somerset’s behalf. ‘We took the Xhosa to Gaika two days following, and Gaika put his son into confinement in his kraal, and called for the others of the party to be arrested, professing of course that he had no knowledge of the raid.’

  He was about to say next what had been Gaika’s sentiment, but Colonel Somerset was already agitated. ‘Whose was the discourse with Gaika?’

  ‘Mine, principally,’ replied Hervey, not altogether concealing his irritation at the tone of the questioner. ‘Fairbrother was interpreter, though he made a number of judicious remarks of his own. It was an altogether rather effectual method of parley.’

  ‘Indeed it appears so,’ said Eyre Somervile, seemingly oblivious of the signs of rancour. ‘For I believe we have the makings of a little peace on the frontier, at least for the time being. But see, dinner is announced’ (he nodded to the khansamah). ‘Let us adjourn to the table.’

  When they were seated, Somervile resumed the conversation but in a more emollient tone. ‘Colonel Somerset, I do not wish to interfere with strictly military matters; those are the preserve of General Bourke, and in his absence you yourself, and I am well aware that command of the eastern frontier is devolved upon you, but in those matters which are not strictly military I do, of course, bear ultimate responsibility to His Majesty’s ministers.’

  Somerset did not reply; there could be no question but that it was so.

  ‘I have been in the colony a mere two months, and have yet to leave Cape-town, but it seems to me – indeed it did seem to me before even I left England – that the future of the Cape Colony would be best secured by a vigorous but enlightened policy towards the native people. That was, I understand, what your own father believed.’

  He tasted his wine, nodding with approval at the khansamah’s choice. Hervey was never entirely certain whether Eyre Somervile was diverted naturally or by design on these occasions for there was by no means eccentricity in his ways.

  The lieutenant-governor continued. ‘The Dutch are ever of concern, of course, but they are not – or need not be – so violently opposed to our presence, since theirs was a colonial enterprise here too, and as long as they are allowed their own customs, and taxation is not burdensome, I see no cause for vexation out of the ordinary. Except, of course, in the business of slaves; and there we must proceed with great circumspection. The Cape is not India, however, though its … shall we say raison d’etre is India. The Company in India has become, now, an enterprise of factoring as much as trade – some would say more than trade – because, like the crab, it moved sideways, this way and that, crawling sometimes, scuttling at others, with no apparent great purpose, merely as the wind or the tides dictated.’

  Somervile accompanied his soliloquy with increasingly extravagant gestures, to the consternation of the khitmagars trying to serve at table while avoiding his flailing arms.

  ‘And so now there is a Company army as large as the King’s own, and the prospect of continual skirmishes, for we are not committed to the settlement of the continent, only its administration. Here, on the other hand, we wish to see a settled European population. First the Dutch and then we have dispossessed the native tribes, which we have not done in India – merely their rulers, and in some cases the predatory hordes that made misery of so much of the country. We are not resented there except by those we have usurped – and these are they whom we must fight. Their power is limited to the arms they can raise, but that will always be under good regulation by the Company’s. Here in the colony we have sown the seeds of a different peril. We have destroyed, to all intents and purposes, the Hottentots and the Bushmen.’

  Emma was distressed, as much by her husband’s casual reference to it as the destruction itself (she knew his true mind well enough).

  Somervile noticed her discomfort and sought to make amends. ‘Grievous as that may be, it is done, it cannot be undone, and we might therefore make the most of it. The Xhosa, however, are a different prospect. By dispossessing rather than destroying them we have created a hostile neighbouring power. How permanently hostile, it is difficult to say. We have taken from them what might appear to be indifferent farmland, but patently it was greatly prized by them. If, of course, their present settled territory proves fertile – in every sense – then in a generation or so there might be contentment and therefore peace. It occurs to me we should help them towards that happy condition by treating with them as if they were any other sovereign nation – in the free intercourse of trade, for one thing. I therefore intend issuing instructions and regulations for trade with the Xhosa, on a strictly businesslike and cordial foundation. Colonel Somerset, I know your own
father to have favoured such a view of the Xhosa – of Gaika, at least – and although it was not successful in keeping tranquillity along the frontier, we do not know that the opposite policy would not have brought an infinitely greater peril.’

  Hervey remained silent, as did Somerset, who was nodding gently as if weighing the words and finding them sure. It was Emma who began the scrutiny. ‘Is there a danger that the Xhosa might combine in alliance with another? For then they might truly overwhelm the Crown’s resources?’

  Somervile had contemplated the question long, but he turned to his senior guest. ‘What is your opinion, Colonel Somerset?’

  Somerset thought for a moment. ‘Sir Eyre, for all my years here I will admit to a very imperfect knowledge of native affairs, but it is better than most, including the Dutch, who are inclined to believe they know everything. There are a number of smaller tribes with whom the Xhosa are conversant, made easier by the closeness of their speech, but in truth if all these were to combine I do not believe we should find ourselves greatly threatened – no more than at present, such is the situation of their territory.’

  The lieutenant-governor nodded, though in a way that said he understood rather than agreed.

  ‘The one alliance that should trouble us, were it ever to be made, is of the principal Kaffir tribes, the Xhosa and Zulu.’

  Emma inclined her head. ‘I have heard of the Zulu, Colonel, but are you able to enlighten me a little more?’

  Somerset glanced at his host, finding the same enquiry in his expression. ‘I have had no personal contact with the Zulu, you understand, Lady Somervile, but throughout my time here there has been a steady increase in their influence. Their chief – king, as they have it – is called Shaka, by all accounts an able but exceedingly cruel man. The Zulu were but a small tribe before Shaka became king, about ten years ago, their country confined on the far eastern coast. Shaka made an army out of them – terrified the neighbouring tribes, who one by one submitted. They now occupy extensive territory.’

  Emma frowned. ‘It sounds to me as if the Xhosa have more to fear from the Zulu than we have from the two combined.’

  ‘Unless,’ began her husband, in the manner of someone considering the proposition as he spoke it, ‘the Xhosa believed that, in becoming Shaka’s vassals, they would recover their former territory here in the Cape. Would they rather live independent but in reduced circumstances, so to speak, in their present territory, or as a tributary to Shaka in their old lands? Do we know what that answer might be, Colonel?’

  Somerset shook his head. ‘I for one do not, Sir Eyre.’

  After dinner, while the lieutenant-governor was called to read a second ‘Most Urgent’ dispatch (but which touched only on finance, and was urgent only as far as the sender in Whitehall was concerned), and while Emma spoke with her staff, Hervey and Somerset took their coffee into the garden, Somerset (Hervey sensed) rather reluctantly.

  Between the two there was little to speak of in age, and but an inch in height, though Somerset’s hair was thinning somewhat and receding notably at the temples. In other respects they had little in common. Colonel the Honourable Henry Somerset was grandson of the Duke of Beaufort; he had first held a commission with the 72nd Highlanders, seeing no service to speak of, and had obtained a troop in the Cape Regiment through the patronage of his father, the then governor of the Cape. He had seen a little skirmishing in the frontier war of 1819, he had advanced rapidly by purchase and further patronage to major, and was appointed Commandant of the Eastern Frontier by his father in 1825 in the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He and Hervey did share a willingness, perhaps even propensity, however, to disregard the opinion of superior (not to say senior) officers – perhaps even to disdain it. But while Hervey’s occasional disagreements and sometimes more deleterious disputes were ever on matters of military expediency, Somerset’s were of the nature of petulance, and self-serving. Edward Fairbrother had told Hervey that not half a dozen years before, Somerset had been placed in arrest for insubordination to General Donkin when the general had failed to appoint him landdrost of Graham’s Town, and that his father had flown into a rage at Donkin’s presumption, exacting considerable revenge by placing both his sons in superior positions. Fairbrother had said he did not know all the particulars, but that it was well known throughout the Cape: Colonel Henry Somerset was a man to be wary of, not least because his ambition and experience were ill-matched.

  But Hervey also knew that for the time being he must get on with the Commandant of the Eastern Frontier. Neither did he want ill-favoured reports reaching London, for he must presume that any letter of Somerset’s would, via his father, reach the hand of Uncle Lord FitzRoy Somerset, now secretary at the Horse Guards. ‘Colonel, may I say to you at once that I am entirely at your disposal,’ he began, though in a tone far from submissive. ‘My commission is to the raising of the Mounted Rifles, but I have known the lieutenant-governor for many years, and it is only natural that he uses me in a rather more ranging capacity. I am conscious, however, of my inexperience here at the Cape, and by contrast your very great knowledge of this place. I will speak plainly: I do not wish to be your enemy in this or any other thing. Besides ought else, I have the greatest respect for Lord FitzRoy, whom I had the privilege to meet before Waterloo.’

  Hervey had calculated carefully. The word ‘Waterloo’ excited admiration and resentment in equal measure in those who had not themselves been there. He had no idea of Somerset’s opinion of ‘Indiamen’ (Somerset’s own service in the Cape Colony indicated, however, that he might not share that of a Brighton fashionable), and he did not want to be thought of as a mere dust and heat soldier.

  Somerset gave little away by reply. ‘I imagine your work with the riflemen will be taxing enough. A year, your commission?’

  Hervey took a sip of his coffee expressly to display a measure of insouciance. ‘That is the expectation, as much to do with the detachment of the troop from my own regiment as with the requirements of the Rifles.’

  ‘Mm. Your troop – their horses in a bad way.’

  There seemed something just a shade censorious in the manner that Somerset expressed himself, but Hervey chose not to take offence. ‘I have a most excellent veterinary surgeon.’

  Somerset did not at once reply. When he did, his tone was almost icy. ‘Colonel Hervey, let me be rightly understood. I do not take kindly to officers ranging at the frontier as you did, and I do not approve the conversion of the Cape Corps into a bunch of English burghers in green coats. Raise your Mounted Rifles as you will; it will be regular discipline that checks these savages.’

  PART III

  THE WOLF ON THE FOLD

  The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

  And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

  And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

  When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

  Lord Byron, ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’

  XX

  TO GLORY WE STEER

  Gibraltar

  Captain Sir Laughton Peto was not a dressy man. If the officers and crew of His Majesty’s Ship Prince Rupert (120 guns) did not know of his character and capability then that was their look-out: no amount of gold braid could make up for reputation.

  Peto’s time with Admiral Hoste, not least in the action at Lissa, his command of Nisus with the East India Squadron, then commodore of the frigate squadron in the Mediterranean, and lately command of Liffey while commodore of the flotilla for the Burmese war – these things were warranty enough of his fitness for command of a first-rate. Not that it was any business of the officers and crew: he, Captain Sir Laughton Peto, held his commission from the Lord High Admiral himself. These things were not to be questioned, on pain of flogging or the yard-arm. Except that he considered himself to be an enlightened captain, convinced that having a man do his bidding willingly meant the man did it twice as well as he would if he were merely driven to it. Threateni
ng to start the last man down a sheet might increase the speed of the watch’s descent, but men fell in their dread of the knotted rope-end. Threatening to start the slowest team in gunnery practice risked the sponging done ill: a ‘premature’ could kill or maim every last one of them. Except, of course, it was one thing to have a crew follow willingly a captain who was everywhere, as he might be able to be on a frigate, but quite another when his station was the quarterdeck, as it must be with a line-of-battle ship. Nisus had but one gundeck. In action the captain might see all. Prince Rupert had three, of which the two that hurled the greatest weight of shot were the lower ones, where the guncrews worked in semi-darkness and for whom in action the captain was as remote a figure as the Almighty Himself. The art of such a command, Peto knew full well, was in all that went before, so that the men had as perfect a fear of their captain’s wrath – and even better a desire for his love – as indeed they had for their Heavenly Maker. If that truly required the lash, he would not shrink from it, but at heart he was one with Hervey: more men were flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice.

  Rupert had a fair reputation herself. Like the Admiralty’s other first-rates she had not seen action in a long time – Peto thought it probably in the West Indies – but being later built she had been kept in full commission for longer after the peace of 1815. He knew her first lieutenant just a little, and what little he knew he approved of. Rupert looked in good trim, handsome even, as she rode at anchor in Gibraltar Bay against the background of the towering Rock.

  Any ship would look handsome at Gibraltar, reckoned Peto, as hands pulled smartly for their wooden world – his wooden world. The barge cut through the modest swell with scarcely any motion but headway: not a degree of observable roll, nor more than ten of pitch – testament to the power with which hands were bending oars.