Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service (5 page)

Between the 1st and 8th of September two additional redoubts were constructed by the besiegers
, and a second parallel was attempted by flying sap, under cover of fresh batteries. These
played directly on the guns of the fortress, instead of the more usual, and I might say scientific, ricochet fire
.

On the 8th of September, the Emperor Nicholas returned by land from Odessa with reinforcements, sixteen battalions and as many squadrons which, in addition to the guards and sappers, gave an effective force of more than 20,000 men before Varna, exclusive of the corps detached to the southern side of the fortress to intercept any relief force, and of another which occupied Pravadi.

The enterprising spirit of the people of Varna, I venture to say, was elevated rather than daunted by the hosts which now threatened their walls, and perceiving a regiment of Cossacks rather in advance, covering a reconnoitring party, 500 Delis made a sudden dash and drove them back. It was on this occasion that my horse was shot from under me and I was rendered incapable
.

Between that time when I was taken into the charge of the surgeon of His Majesty’s own flagship and this day, the explosion of a considerable mine effected a breach
in the bastion at the easternmost angle.
Still the Pasha, who was yet faithful to his trust, indignantly refused to receive a summons to capitulate. At this point, however
, the difficulties attending the transport of heavy guns through Bulgaria had been at length overcome, and
the siege train arrived from Brailow to replace the guns landed by the fleet. At the time at which I write, additional batteries have therefore now opened to render the breach more practicable, and I am myself to rejoin Count Woronzow’s suite presently
…

Lord Hill raised a hand. ‘I’m obliged. As you say, its intelligence is somewhat in arrears: this much we knew from the ambassador. See that Colonel Hervey reads it. You know, I was not minded to send anyone to observe this affair – Bingham can be deuced unrelenting – but I am certain now that it can only be to our advantage to see how these armies fare. The reforms in both are said to be considerable, but I wonder to what end? With a man like Hervey observing, we might have answer.’

‘Indeed, my lord. Will you see him now?’

‘I will.’ The commander-in-chief pushed aside his papers with an air of relish. ‘At what time is the levee at Prince Lieven’s?’

‘Twelve, my lord.’

‘Capital. I would not wish the interview to be hurried.’ He smiled. ‘I might even be able to impart some information to Lieven. He pressed me only yesterday at the Austrian ambassador’s to know who would replace Bingham, and when.’

‘Some might speculate on whether the inquiry were on the Princess’s behalf, my lord.’ Youell’s wryness was all the more for its being infrequent.

‘Indeed. Hah! What schemes Princess Lieven has to her name.’

The door was opened, and Hervey ushered in. He put his feet together noisily in the Prussian style and saluted, a confident presenting to the man who disposed the future of every officer in the army.

‘Daddy’ Hill, as he had been known throughout the Peninsular army for his attention to the comforts of his men, looked for all the world like an elderly cleric, his coat dark, his pate bald and his form somewhat portly. The contrast in appearance with the previous occupant of the commander-in-chief’s office could not have been more profound.

‘My lord.’

‘Hervey, I am excessively glad to see you,’ declared Lord Hill, rising and extending a hand. ‘Nothing warms the heart better on a day such as this than to see an old friend return safe from the fray.’

Hervey was taken aback, but agreeably, by the appellation ‘old friend’, for although he had galloped for the general at Talavera (and Lord Hill was not one to forget a service, especially one so capable as his had been that day), to be admitted to such a sphere, if in words alone, was honour indeed. All he could manage, however, was ‘Thank you, my lord.’

‘I have read your despatches with careful attention, and Sir Henry Hardinge likewise. I dare say there’ll be a ribbon in it.’

The attention of Sir Henry Hardinge, the Secretary at War, and a soldier of some distinction himself – this was recognition indeed, let alone the ribbon (‘C.B.’, with which he had been honoured after the storming of Bhurtpore two years before, was already notable for an officer with so recent a half-colonelcy). ‘I am glad to have been able to do my duty, General. As did others in that expedition – for one, Captain Fairbrother of the Cape Rifles, whom I should very much wish to present to you, sir.’

‘By all means, Hervey. And stand easy.’ He turned to Colonel Youell. ‘Have Captain Fairbrother’s name entered for the next levee, would you?’

‘Certainly, my lord.’

Hervey cleared his throat. ‘My lord, Captain Fairbrother has accompanied me from the Cape, and indeed he is here with me this morning. I had hoped you would receive him.’

Lord Hill frowned. ‘That is most irregular, Hervey. I stand not on great ceremony but I cannot have the business of the Horse Guards conducted with a complete absence of it.’

Hervey felt suddenly discomposed; he had evidently misjudged matters – overreached himself, even. ‘I beg your pardon, my lord.’

Colonel Youell now cleared his throat. ‘There is time before Prince Lieven’s, my lord.’

A smile displaced the commander-in-chief’s frown. ‘Very well. We shall receive your Captain Fairbrother. But first sit you down, Hervey. Take some Madeira.’

Hervey removed his forage cap, took a glass from the tray which an orderly brought, and sat in an armchair half-facing the commander-in-chief’s desk and the windows which looked out on to the parade ground. Snow was now falling so thick as to make St James’s Park at the far side quite invisible.

Lord Hill observed it too. ‘You were not with us on that blessèd trudge to Corunna, were you, Youell?’

‘I was not, my lord.’ Youell did not add that he had been fevered on Martinique with General Maitland, a gentleman volunteer not yet seventeen.

‘Damnably cold, and the army behaved ill – not every regiment, not by any means, but too many. Badly served by their officers, some of them, and scandalously ill-provisioned. But that was no excuse.’

None of this could have been unknown to Youell, reckoned Hervey; and he wondered at Lord Hill’s purpose. ‘All of them fought well at Corunna, though, sir,’ he tried, risking rebuke in speaking unbidden, and seemingly to contradict.

But Lord Hill better than most knew how well they had fought that day, for he had commanded the brigade on the left flank, astride the road to the town. ‘The point is, Hervey, if the retreat had continued another week we’d scarcely have had an army left to fight with at Corunna.’ He looked out at the snow again. ‘Look here, you will dine with me this day week, and we shall speak then of your duties in the east. There’s nothing arising from your Cape despatches of which we need speak now; they are admirably clear. But I have to tell you one thing – and though it is not for me to do so, I feel the obligation since it was I who selected you to command of the Sixth.’

Indeed it was, Hervey knew – and without purchase. ‘I have not had opportunity to thank you, my lord.’

Lord Hill looked uneasy. ‘Yes, yes, that is all very well – and I do not need thanks for doing my duty – but matters are not as they were. I am fighting a damnably bloody war of retrenchment. I have had to give orders for the Sixth and two other regiments to be reduced, to be placed
en cadre
– a depot squadron, a hundred men, no more.’

Hervey felt his stomach turn as badly as it could before a fight. ‘For how long, sir?’

‘Indefinitely. They’re supposed to be disbanded: that is what Hardinge asked, but I’ve managed to persuade him that the economy in placing them
en cadre
is almost as great, and the general situation too uncertain to risk complete disbandment – far easier to re-raise than if they had been wholly struck from the list.’

Hervey was now on the edge of his chair. ‘But, sir, why the Sixth? Our seniority, our late service in India, our—’

‘Colonel Hervey,’ warned Youell, firmly but with a note of respect nevertheless.

‘Forgive me, my lord, but it makes no sense to reduce a regiment which has acquired such expertise in its trade. Why cannot those late sent to India be recalled?’

‘Colonel Hervey, remember your place, sir,’ repeated Youell, though more as entreaty than command.

Lord Hill huffed, but with the air of a man challenged reasonably enough. ‘Hervey, let me explain to you the very grave situation the Horse Guards finds itself in.’ (By ‘Horse Guards’ Hervey knew that Hill meant he himself.) ‘The army estimates are in course of preparation as we speak. They require a reduction of eight thousand men. To this end I have it in mind that every battalion is diminished by fifty men, that four companies of one of the penal corps are disbanded as well as the whole of the Staff Corps – some twelve hundred men – though I believe we might transfer a thousand of these to the Board of Ordnance.’ He smiled grimly at the ruse.

Hervey could well appreciate the Horse Guards’ difficulties, for if such sleights of hand to overcome a reduction in supply were being employed, the situation must indeed be disadvantageous. But all the same, if there were not troops enough for every call on them, why reduce the cavalry when they possessed the greatest celerity of movement?

Lord Hill appeared to read his mind. ‘And yet the calls on the army are no less insistent, not least in Ireland and in Canada. I need hardly point out that the cost of a regiment of cavalry is twice that, and more, of infantry. There are one hundred and three battalions of the Line, and seventy-four of these are abroad. It is His Majesty’s government’s policy that troops in foreign stations should be relieved every ten years – that is to say, at the rate of seven battalions a year; but where are the reliefs to be found if there are only enough battalions at home to last for four years? Ministers, as is their wont, put forward makeshift after makeshift. But it will not serve.’

Hervey was about to ask why the prime minister himself, with all his experience of organization, was unable to suggest other than makeshift, but thought better of it and returned instead to the wisdom of reducing the cavalry. ‘But if two or three regiments are recalled from India they may be replaced effectually by native ones – or by regiments raised from the Europeans there, of which there is growing number, as your lordship will know.’

Lord Hill shook his head. ‘If all I were obliged to do is reduce the number abroad I might consider such a proposal, even against the advice of the Board of Control, which is ever anxious as to the
relative
number of native to King’s regiments. But let me remind you that these regiments do not trouble the army estimates; it is the
Company
that pays for them.’ He raised his hand as Hervey, further emboldened, made to speak again. ‘You are about to argue the requirement for aid to the civil power. It is the argument that I myself made with the Secretary at War. Mr Peel’s Police bill will soon be before parliament, and calls on the army thereafter should be the less – three regiments less, Hardinge calculates; do not ask me how. I prevailed on him to await the outcome of the bill, and even its implementation, before we make any irrevocable reduction. Hence the placing of three regiments
en cadre
. I trust I have made myself plain?’

Hervey shifted a little in his chair. ‘Really, my lord, I am discomforted as well as honoured by the pains you have taken to explain this to me. I—’

Lord Hill shook his head. ‘No, it is the least I could do. And lest you suggest that in a year or so we send the Sixth to India and disband the more junior regiment due return, let me disabuse you of the notion: we must show the saving in this year’s estimates. The matter has been discussed with Lord George Irvine, and that must be the end of it.’ He raised his hand again to stay one last attempt. ‘But, of course, quite apart from the future of your regiment is the future of you yourself.’

By no means had this been absent from Hervey’s own thoughts, but it had not been uppermost. In any case, if matters had been discussed with the colonel of the regiment – Lord George Irvine – there really did seem to be little more to say. ‘You mean I am not to have command, sir?’

‘No-o, I did not mean that. You may certainly have command of the regiment
en cadre
if that is your desire, but frankly, Hervey, what satisfaction is there to be had in such an appointment? You’d be little more than a troop captain. I want you to have command instead of a Line battalion.’

Hervey’s face registered disappointment.

‘It is beyond my power to appoint you to any other cavalry regiment since none is in want of a lieutenant-colonel. I wish you to have command of the Fifty-third.’

Hervey swallowed. Lord Hill was himself their colonel – the 53rd (Shropshire) Regiment of Foot; everyone knew it. He could make no remark that appeared either deprecating or ungrateful.