Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey)

January 1830,
and one of the hardest winters in memory . . .

And the prime minister, the Iron Duke, is resisting growing calls for parliamentary reform, provoking scenes of violent unrest in the countryside. But there are no police outside London and most of the yeomanry regiments, to whom the authorities had always turned when disorder threatened, have been disbanded as an economy measure.

Against this inflammable backdrop Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey, recently returned from an assignment in the Balkans, takes command of his regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons. His fears that things might be a little dull are quickly dispelled by the everyday business of vexatious officers and difficult choices over which NCOs to promote – not to mention the incendiarists on the doorstep of the King himself.

But it’s when the Sixth are sent to Brussels for the fifteenth anniversary celebrations of the battle of Waterloo and find themselves caught up in the Belgian uprising against Dutch rule that the excitement really starts.

Will Hervey be able to keep out of the fighting – a war that would lead, nearly a century later, to Britain’s involvement in an altogether different conflict – while safeguarding his country’s interests? It will be touch and go.

CONTENTS

COVER

ABOUT THE BOOK

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

FOREWORD

PROLOGUE

P
ART
O
NE
: T
HIS BLESSED PLOT, THIS EARTH, THIS REALM, THIS
E
NGLAND
.

P
ART
T
WO
: T
HE COCKPIT OF
C
HRISTENDOM

HISTORICAL AFTERNOTE

MATTHEW HERVEY – CURRICULUM VITAE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY ALLAN MALLINSON

COPYRIGHT

To Maggie Phillips, my erstwhile agent, who
first saw potential in Cornet Matthew Hervey

And brilliant Achilles tested himself in all his gear,

Spinning on his heels to see if it fitted tightly
,

To see if his shining limbs ran free within it.

And yes, it felt like buoyant wings lifting the great captain.

Homer,
The Iliad

Command of a regiment is the desire of every ambitious officer. Command of his own regiment – that in which he was commissioned and has seen the bulk of his service – is the desire of every officer of the infantry and cavalry, the parts of the army in which the concept of the ‘family regiment’ remains, notwithstanding the depredations made on it of late by politicians, civil servants and, I despair to say, even some soldiers.

The regiment is an extraordinarily flexible institution. Most of all it is self-healing. Indeed it is supremely capable of regeneration. In the First World War there were countless instances when regiments (or, more strictly, battalions, for each regiment cloned itself several dozen times to produce those much-needed units, the lieutenant-colonel’s command) were left with but a handful of officers and a few dozen men; yet within weeks, reconstituted, they would take to the field again with the same strength of identity, just as a river remains the same river though its water daily empties into the sea.

Field Marshal Viscount Slim of Burma, whose reputation among professional officers verges on sainthood, said in
Defeat Into Victory
– perhaps the greatest book on soldiering ever written – that the four best commands in the service are a platoon, a battalion, a division, and an army; and explains why – in the case of the battalion ‘because it is a unit with a life of its own; whether it is good or bad depends on you alone; you have at last a real command.’
^fn1

It was as true in the early nineteenth century, at the time of my cavalry tales, as it was in 1956 when ‘Bill’ Slim was writing of his experiences in the Second World War; and it remains so today. Two centuries ago some officers paid small fortunes for the privilege of command of the smarter (usually cavalry) regiments; and it was not entirely through vanity that they did so – rather was it the world-within-a-world, ‘a unit with a life of its own’, that appealed.

‘Whether it is good or bad’ depended – depends – on many things, but these, as Slim made clear, are ultimately the business of the commanding officer. In a unit with a life of its own nothing can be innately too trivial, for, as Lenin said, everything is connected with everything else: ‘The trivial round, the common task, will furnish all we need to ask’ (John Keble,
The Christian Year
, 1827). Command is not routinely exciting; much of it is about ensuring that all will be well found when suddenly it
becomes
exciting.

And so at last the hero of my cavalry tales, Matthew Hervey, is to take command of his own regiment, the regiment into which he was commissioned straight from school, in the middle of the war with Bonaparte, and with which he has served on and off for over twenty years in divers places and with mixed fortunes. He has, in Slim’s words, ‘at last a real command’. And this is the story of his first months, of ‘a unit with a life of its own’, and his determination that that unit, His Majesty’s Sixth Regiment of Light Dragoons, should be good not bad.

fn1
For platoon and battalion, in the cavalry read respectively ‘troop and regiment’, though in the early nineteenth century the troop was more akin to the intermediate level of command in the infantry, the company.

‘A remarkable report, so full of good sense, and percipience – and, I may say, betokening rare judgement. It shall go to the duke with no other but a covering note.’

The commander-in-chief of His Majesty’s Land Forces, General the Right Honourable Rowland, Lord Hill – Baron Hill of Almaraz and of Hawkestone in the County of Salop – took off his spectacles, laid them on the desk and moved to the window, from which he could look out on the snowy parade ground and beyond to St James’s Park.

‘Truly this country is fortunate in having such men as Matthew Hervey in her service. I marked him out for famous things when he galloped for me at Talavera, you know.’

‘I did, my lord,’ replied an officer of upright bearing in the blue undress frock coat of the Guards.

Lord John Howard, lieutenant-colonel of Grenadiers, and so permanent a fixture of the Horse Guards, the commander-in-chief’s headquarters, as to be thought indispensable by a succession of holders of that appointment (including the Duke of Wellington himself, who now held the highest office of state), picked up the sheaf of papers recounting his friend’s recent mission of observation with the Russian army in the war with the Turk, and waited on his
congé
.

‘Has he gone to Hounslow yet?’

‘Next week, General.’

Lord Hill stood silent for a while observing the ever more whitening scene outside. ‘I hope he shan’t become too comfortable there. I can’t have an officer of his talents remain at duty with his regiment for long.’

‘I think he will be greatly perturbed to have his tenure of command foreshortened, General. He’s waited on his chance for many a year.’

‘That’s as may be, Howard, but the army’s purpose is not to give satisfaction to ardent half-colonels.’

‘Of course, General.’

‘How do things stand on the distaff side?’

‘Sir?’

‘I’ve heard tell his wife’s “retired to the country”.’

‘Ah; I’m not privy to the particulars, but I understand Mrs Hervey is not … of the strongest constitution.’

‘Mm.’ Lord Hill did not sound persuaded.

‘Though not a great distance away – Hertfordshire,’ added the upright Grenadier, as if in mitigation.

‘Not good, Howard; not at all good. I’ve seen too many men fall at their fences that way.’

Lord Hill’s predilection for hunting metaphors was always a delight, and could save a good deal of awkwardness. ‘Quite, sir.’

The snowy scene without seemed wholly now to absorb the chief of men, until suddenly he returned to his former line: ‘I hear he sees much of Lady Katherine Greville.’