Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War (33 page)

He wrote quickly – a brief account of his coming to Elvas, his deliberations with Dom Mateo, his meeting with Dom Mateo’s chief of staff:

Major Coa was some time in being summoned, but it proved to be wholly honourable for he had been conducting an inspection of the vaults and cellars of the citadel, and the tunnels to the outer works, in order to satisfy himself that there could be no covert ingress. The fortifications are not in universally good repair, but they are much strengthened since first I saw them two decades past. There are more detached lunettes, which I fear we may not be able to garrison, and there are two ravelins that may have to be given up. When the major came it was past two o’clock, and I
considered it the best course to review the situation as a whole and make what list could be made of the actions to be taken, and in what order of importance, so that whatever the movement of the enemy in the days to follow – or even this very night – they might themselves have timely countermeasures.

Sir John Moore had been an inspiration, but the duke had been an equal teacher, mused Hervey. The duke may have been humbugged at Waterloo, but he had disposed his forces in depth, and he had constituted a good reserve. That, indeed, was the essence of the commander’s art. Seeing the other side of the hill was but trial and prelude.
Humbugged –
the duke himself had said it. Dancing quadrilles in Brussels, confident that Bonaparte could not move against him without his knowing. But his art had been such that he was able to take leave of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in his own time when the alarm was raised.
That
had been the surety of his victories; a surety which, perhaps, Sir John Moore had not shared.

Major Coa has a most active mind, and we shall be very well served by his address. He has read Southey’s history of the war here, and he has studied some of Colonel Clausewitz’s commentaries. He well knows the duke’s precepts for making war, and, moreover, he appears thoroughly to understand them. Once Genl de Braganza has settled his plan, I believe we may trust Major Coa to have it executed very faithfully and with percipience.

The Duke of Wellington, the Fabian general: Hervey had spent so much time contemplating his methods that he felt he might know what it was the duke would do in any circumstances. And since the duke had never been beaten, that ought well to be an infallible method. In which case, why did Norris, who sought faithfully to emulate the duke too, fail so comprehensively to see the folly of his plan?

Hervey put down his pen.
Infallible method –
the notion was beguiling. What would the duke have done had he been in Sir John Moore’s shoes? And what might have been had not Moore fallen at Corunna? For surely Moore rather than the duke would have taken the army back into Portugal? Unless the government had dismissed him: who knew what mischief those who disliked his method would have made? Sir John Moore was hardly a true Tory.

Hervey stood and unfastened his tunic bib, then he lay down on his bed, so tired he did not even lift his feet off the floor. They had done their best; Major Coa was even now setting in hand a dozen things that might gain them time if the attack were to come sooner than expected. Tomorrow the captain of the Corpo Telegráfico would be here, and there might, by that means, be had the depth and reserve they were in such want of. Hervey drifted into sleep confident the duke would have approved.

Was it as Sir John Moore would have done too? Perhaps. At Corunna he had beaten off quite five times his number. Brave, bold Moore: the hero-worship of him that day, when all before had been angry, resentful complaint, what did it say of the soldier and what inspired him?
Hero-worship –
not a mite too strong. Even the morning of Waterloo they hadn’t cheered the duke; not in the way they had cheered Moore at Corunna. With the duke it was admiration, respectful, cool. With Moore, after all these years, it was yet still difficult to fathom. The selfsame men who cheered him at Corunna had cursed every inch of the way. There had been neither worship nor admiration on that march, only the dull realization – and even then not by every man – that survival was a question of will, death hovering hard at heel in the freezing air for those without sufficiency of it, whether it came from within or was imposed.

It had been a bitter order indeed to turn back at Sahagun. Especially bitter since it had been so brilliant an affair of Paget’s, economical and decisive, for all that ‘Black Jack’ Slade had missed his entrance. In General Orders the next day Sir John Moore praised them for their ’address and spirit’ and for gaining ‘a superiority which does them credit’. And in his own journal he declared it was ‘a handsome thing, well done’.

Hervey smiled drowsily at the remembrance. As the trumpeters sounded ‘recall’ they had begun collecting the prisoners in the little chapel of Nuestra Señora de la Puente, and Lord Paget heard the first returns – the French, fifty, at least, killed among the truncated vines and ditches between Sahagun and the bridge; one hundred and fifty taken prisoner, including two colonels. Debelle himself had been unhorsed and ridden over, though he had managed to escape. Lord Paget railed furiously over the number that had got across the little bridge and bolted home to Carrion – three hundred more perhaps. But he brightened at the news of his own casualties – not more than a couple of dozen, and a handful only who would not see the sun rise. And if the town of Sahagun itself was a poor billet in the days that followed, a poor billet was, as the sweats said, better than a good bivouac. Compared with what was to come, it would seem like a palace.

The day after the next, Sir John Moore himself came up with the rest of the army. Hervey, cornet of the outlying picket, saw him riding at their head, for all the world like a Roman general. He took out his telescope, discreetly, to see him better. The commander-in-chief rode a cream-coloured gelding, striking among so many blacks and bays, clipped out full like a hunter, its coat very near the colour of the general’s own hair. Word was that he intended falling on Marshal Soult at dawn the following morning, with the Spanish under the Marqués La Romana assailing the French at the same hour from the north-west.

Hervey would not have exchanged his cold picket post for a warm bed that morning, for the sight that followed the commander-in-chief came rarely, he supposed, to one of his rank. First, the King’s Germans, General Alten’s light brigade, its two green-jacketed battalions indistinguishable at a distance from British riflemen. These were seasoned soldiers, Hanoverians who had chosen exile rather than Bonaparte’s terms, but with more than a handful of men from other parts who had found themselves exiled so: Poles, Italians, Danes, Greeks even. They said that in a bivouac of the King’s German Legion, besides being the place for good meat and plentiful drink, there was a story to hear in any language a man cared to name.

Then came the
British
light brigade, Major-General Craufurd’s – ‘Black Bob’. It was strange how his men liked the name, bandied it with a certain grudging pride, whereas ‘Black Jack’ was breathed invariably with spit and dismay.

Everyone knew Sir John Moore himself had trained the light brigade – two battalions of redcoats, the 43rd (Monmouthshire) and the second battalion of the 52nd (Oxfordshire), and one of green, the second battalion of the 95th Rifles, the ‘Sweeps’ as the rest of the army called them, for their facings and equipment were black as soot.

These men thought themselves special, reckoned Hervey. He could see it in the way they marched. The redcoats carried the musket like the Guards and the Line, but they browned the barrels so as not to have the sun glint on them. And the Rifles insisted on calling their bayonets
swords.
But anything novel gained a certain fashion, and the notion of light infantry, and especially rifle troops, was novel enough. Or rather, as Daniel Coates used to have it, it was not so much novel as learned late: they had had lessons enough from riflemen in America. But Hervey did at least know about the rifle. He had stalked deer with Dan Coates often enough. Coates had brought his home from America, a trophy whose exact provenance he had always been loath to detail. The rifle that the Ninety-fifth and the King’s Germans carried was a British pattern, however. Indeed, it had been chosen in a competition against allcomers from America and Germany. There was nothing that England could not do when she put her mind to it, Coates used to say.

And then, if Sir John Moore marched with these praetorians close by him, it was the turn of the legionaries, the regiments of the Line, the backbone of the army. For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon they came tramping, some in decidedly better condition than others, though none had seen much fighting yet.

They wanted to, though. That a good number of them would be sent to their maker or horribly mangled, they did not care. They had drilled for it day in day out –
hours
of drill, back-breaking, bruising, deafening. Drill imparted by NCOs and their crude aids to instruction – foul mouths and the musket-butt or the half-pike. And how they longed to turn it on the French! They loathed them. Few had ever seen a Frenchman closer than a mile, but Bonaparte was ‘the Great Disturber’, and every Englishman had a loathing for a foreigner threatening the sceptred isle, no matter how mean a corner of it he called his own. And there was always the promise of a little drink and loot at the end of the fight. The Irish regiments had not the same loathing perhaps, simply a natural impulse to fight. Hervey had seen them in Lisbon: they would fight among themselves as readily. And the Scotch were always a merry sight, whether kilted or not, for they all wore feathered bonnets of some description. Then, after the Line the Guards, two battalions of the First; they stood out a mile, though at a distance they were otherwise indistinguishable, since in the field they wore the shako rather than the fur grenadier cap. They marched at attention; were they always on parade, he wondered.

Hervey shook his head as he contemplated all the savage ranks of red.

But whether it was a star or a number on the trotter, these men were beasts of burden when it came to the march. They carried sixty pounds of issue this morning, so that even the best of them leaned forward like poplars in the wind. Many a man would have blisters on his back and shoulders as well as his feet, and a good number would be pack palsied. Hervey shook his head again: poor devils.

But it was a merry sound the army made for all that. Each regiment had its band, and fifes or bagpipes to lead them, to try to put a spring into leaden steps or to take the mind from chafing pains with tunes the men whistled about camp. Many a corps had claimed its own march (it was how Hervey recognized some of them), but the drummers, mere boys many of them, all beat the same time, so that however weary a man was he did not have to think about the step, and the corporals could save their voices for when they were needed. Hervey smiled; it was surprising what a jaunty tune could do.

Later, when the rest of the Sixth arrived, Cornet Peach relieved him of picket duty, and Hervey rejoined his troop.

‘You had a sharp affair of it here yesterday, by all accounts,’ said Sir Edward Lankester, checking feet again in the horse lines.

Hervey smiled. It was a singular confidence that came with a furlong’s charge and a cut or two with the sabre. ‘Yes, sir. And they were big men too, the dragoons especially, though they fell all the harder for it.’

‘What did you make of Paget?’

Hervey knew the question did him credit, but he did not dwell on it. ‘I think he could take us to Paris!’

Lankester nodded. ‘He is an extraordinarily fine fellow. Without him, frankly, I would fear for the cavalry. Stewart is not bad, but Slade is an abomination. I hear he got lost?’

Hervey was only momentarily troubled by propriety; it was, after all, his commanding officer who asked him. ‘I think not so much lost as slow to come up.’

‘Did you see anything of Edmonds?’

‘Yes. His troop came onto the field when Lord Paget charged. They penned up the French very nicely. Hirsch says they had the very devil of it too, coming round the town and through the forest.’

‘I don’t doubt it. I expect Edmonds led them every inch of the way. I hope he has some recognition. And all Slade had to do was ride through the town. Not a place you’d imagine a man could fail to find!’

Hervey remained silent. It was one thing for Sir Edward Lankester to give his opinion of a general officer so decidedly; it was quite another for
him
to do so, no matter how much blood there was on his sabre.

‘Well, Hervey, do you feel fatigued?’

Hervey was surprised by the apparent solicitude. ‘Not greatly, sir.’

‘And your chargers?’

‘Well rested, I would say.’

‘Good. The brigadier has need of a galloper for a day or so.’

Hervey looked unsure.

‘Well, what is it? Saddle sores?’

‘No, sir, nothing the like. Just that General Stewart’s gallopers ride bloods, and neither of mine is.’

‘I myself would not be so fastidious, especially in this country and this time of year. But it won’t be winter for ever, and we’ll be down onto the plains soon. Annesley in C Troop will have a nice mare to sell, since he’s being invalided. You’d get her for a hundred and fifty guineas, I suppose – if you looked sharp about it.’

Hervey was dumbstruck. A hundred and fifty guineas! Where was he to lay his hands on such a sum? The trouble was that the army had come to Portugal with not enough horses. The country could not oblige, and so prices had risen beyond all reason. The government allowed twenty-five pounds for a troop-horse, but forty was the price they were having to pay in Lisbon. An officer wanting a half-decent charger paid any amount above that, although few of the native breeds would pass muster in even this description. Jessye he would have pitted against any of the bloods, except over a four-furlong sprint (and there was more to galloping for a general than mere celerity over a short distance, he supposed), but Jessye was in England. Robert and La Belle Dame were doing him well enough; Sir Edward knew his business, however, and if he thought he had need of a blood charger then he evidently did.