Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (40 page)

‘And what did he think were their chances?’

‘He thinks it depends on what happens in France. But his chief fear is that in any general tumult the French will occupy the southern provinces, and he’d be powerless to resist, and that the government – the government in The Hague – would then call on the Congress powers to restore the kingdom, since it was they who created it. But would they answer?’

‘Would they?’

Hervey shrugged. ‘Bylandt knows no more than I. The Prussians might. Another hundred miles or so of border with France can’t be a happy prospect for them. The Austrians? Perhaps. The Russians? I think they have their hands full with the Poles at present. Us? We hadn’t the troops to send to Portugal three years ago to stop a little fighting between two brothers. If France has designs, now’d be a good time to throw the dice.’

‘And did your General Bylandt say what action he proposed?’

‘I asked what he’d do in the event of serious disturbance, and he just shook his head.’

Fairbrother inclined his in the way he did to show his detachment. ‘Then it would seem that King William in Amsterdam needs to find a commander who’s made of sterner stuff. And without delay.’

Hervey raised an eyebrow. ‘What you must bear in mind with Bylandt, who by no means lacks courage with the sword – he fought hard at Quatre Bras and was carried from the field at Waterloo – is that his father was court-martialled for surrendering Breda to the French.’

Fairbrother smiled a shade sardonically. ‘The sins of the fathers … And is this haunted gloom descending on his command generally?’

‘Well, it doesn’t appear to have dampened festivities. There’ve been fêtes every day this past week. Our men have been taking their ease very agreeably. The troops disperse tomorrow for drill, though, and then come together again with the Dutch at the end of the month, and then back here again in the first week of August for the exhibition, which, I might add, is looking very fine – such clever building. And then the illumination for the king’s birthday on the twenty-fourth, which the king himself is attending.’

‘I ought perhaps to have stayed in Paris longer.’

‘Not at all. I’ve no wish to sit on the captains’ shoulders for a fortnight while they drill. I thought we might see Antwerp – and Louvain.’

‘Capital.’ Fairbrother took another slice of black pudding. ‘I have to say, changing the subject, that food is very different in Paris.’

‘So I recall.’

‘I liked it.’

‘I was never very partial.’

‘One of the
restaurateurs
said to me, “In France there is one religion and fifty sauces, but you English” – I tried to explain, but he’d not heard of Jamaica – “you English have fifty religions and but one sauce!” He thought it prodigiously funny.’

Hervey sighed. ‘It loses something, perhaps, in its frequent repetition.’

Fairbrother looked disappointed. ‘You will admit, however, that Paris is a most civilized place.’

‘If you like sauces … And French civilization always appears to me accompanied by so much blood and destruction. They are most immoderate. The Grande Place here – you know they reduced it to a pile of rubble?’

‘When?’

‘But a century ago – well, a little more, but close enough.’

Fairbrother frowned. ‘And they’re still reviled for it?’

‘They brought up artillery and pounded it for days, set fire to the city. Libraries, archives,
objets d’art
– all gone. Half the city lost, they say. As bad as the Prussians. Though, I grant you, clever with sauce.’

Fairbrother looked at him warily. ‘I suppose that if you
were
at Waterloo it is not so easy to forget.’

Hervey’s eyes narrowed. ‘No, it is not. Nor the years that preceded it.’

He arrived half an hour before the meeting. Long experience told him his time would never be wasted, for the conference would always be clearer for having pondered the maps which the staff had been consulting, comparing them with his own. Besides, there were always useful confidences to be picked up from friends in whatever headquarters, or those who thought it to their advantage. Not that he expected this to be a meeting like any other he’d attended. To begin with, he’d little idea why he’d been summoned; and, secondly, he had no Dutch.

Gendarmes saluted as he and Malet got down from the landau at the entrance to the baroque house in the Place Royale that was the seat of the civil governor of Brabant, Baron Hyacinthe van der Fosse. Inside he was greeted in flawless English by one of the crown prince’s aides-de-camp, whom he’d come to know – and like – in the two months since arriving in Brussels.

‘Captain Bentinck, a relief to see you,’ he said, holding out a hand, which seemed to be the manner of greeting no matter what the time or circumstances. ‘There will be one at least with whom I can speak, and understand. Is the crown prince to come?’

‘No, Colonel, but you are here at his request, and I am here therefore to assist you.’

‘Very well.’

Bentinck and Malet exchanged greetings. They had known each other many summers; there’d been many a Bentinck at Eton.

‘Perhaps you will tell me what is the purpose of the meeting?’ asked Hervey as they began the staircase to the
piano nobile
.

‘You are aware of events in Paris, Colonel?’

‘I am, but, of course, I do not know precisely of what I’m
not
aware. I take it, if the governor has convened a council, that there’s a great deal more than is to be had in
Le Figaro
– though that’s bad enough.’

‘Of course. But it is a council concerned with precaution, Colonel. For your information – not, I think, for your action.’

That would be for him to judge, thought Hervey; but he liked Bentinck – how could he not like one of that name? He would keep his counsel.

‘Is the prince in Brussels?’

‘No, Colonel, he has gone to Antwerp this morning early, but he returns tonight or tomorrow morning.’

He wondered what was the significance of Antwerp, but if Bentinck knew the answer he would likely as not feel unable to give it, and so he decided not to ask. Depending on what he heard this morning, he could always seek an audience first thing tomorrow.

Bentinck showed them into a large, mirrored state room where a dozen officials – half of them in uniform (including General Bylandt, and General Wauthier, commandant of the city) – were standing drinking coffee. A conference table was spread with newspapers and maps. A tallish, spare, intense-looking man of about sixty detached himself from the assembly and advanced on them proprietorially.

‘Colonel Hervey I may presume?’ Again, the English was flawless. ‘Van der Fosse.’

They both bowed.

‘It is very good of you to come – and at such notice.’

Hervey nodded. ‘At your service, Baron.’

‘You know Generals Bylandt and Wauthier, I believe?’

The two nodded, their smiles ready enough – if perhaps less easy than he’d seen before.

‘And General Aberson, of the Gendarmerie.’

Aberson and Hervey bowed formally, for they’d not met.

‘And Mynheer Kuyff, the chief of police in the city.’

They bowed in turn.

He was brought coffee, while Malet introduced himself to the staff officers and junior officials.

The half-hour passed quickly, not least because Mynheer Kuyff, whose English was as good as his excellent French, wished to know what Hervey made of the incident at Waterloo – was it well planned, well executed &c?

Six or seven others arrived, and then the man for whom they’d evidently been waiting – the secretary to the minister of justice in The Hague.

Baron van der Fosse called the meeting to the table, placing Hervey close on his right.

There was none whose hand he’d shaken or with whom he’d exchanged bows that answered to a name other than Dutch, or, he supposed, Flemish (supposing indeed that he knew the difference – or even that there
was
a difference). Did every French-speaking noble or official of the old Spanish Netherlands eschew public life? There again, if public life required Dutch, it would be hardly surprising. He wondered how he himself would fare this morning.

Baron van der Fosse allayed his concern. ‘
Colonel Hervey, si vous voulez, nous pouvons conduire cette réunion en français
.’

Hervey said he would be glad of it.

‘
Alors
…’

He began with a résumé of the events leading to the ‘violent convulsions’ which had so taken the authorities in Paris by surprise. The deteriorating relations between the king and his
parlement
had, he said, led to the signing, this last Sunday, of a number of ordinances suspending the liberty of the press – which, he added, had been of late months particularly insolent – and dissolving the chamber of deputies and instituting a number of measures that would materially reduce the representation of the people. ‘These measures,’ he added, ‘we are all familiar with from many years’ battle with the
ancien régime
.’

Heads nodded and there were evidently stern words of Dutch.

He continued, and in a tone of even greater distaste. ‘It seems the
Bourse
at once suspended all loans, and in consequence the owners shuttered their factories and threw out the workers unceremoniously – so that there was on the street a sudden disaffected army of
sans-culottes
. Some of the newspapers at once complied with the ordinance, ceasing publication altogether, I understand, but others would not, and on Monday the police seized all the newspapers at one of the presses, at which the crowd began jeering “
À bas les Bourbons!
”’

There was more muttering: whatever the aversion to
sans-culottes
, the Bourbons were no heroes to Dutch Protestants.

‘A journalist of
Le National
wrote the following day’ (he picked up a cutting from the papers before him): ‘“France falls back into revolution by the act of the government itself. The legal regime is now interrupted, that of
force
has begun. In the situation in which we are now placed obedience has ceased to be a duty. It is for France to judge how far its own resistance ought to extend.”’

There was consternation.

The baron continued. ‘This morning I received a copy of a despatch from the minister in Paris, who writes that later in the afternoon of Monday troops of the garrison and of the Garde Royale were posted with artillery outside the Tuileries, the Place Vendôme and Place de la Bastille, and patrols were ordered throughout the city to secure the gun shops, though no special measures were taken to protect either the arms depots or powder factories. But in the evening a prodigious violence erupted, and before the night was out there were more than twenty killed, and some soldiers.’

He put down the despatch and reminded his audience that Paris lay two hundred miles (‘
trente myriamètres
’) from Brussels, and that their information, even post haste, would always be two days behind events. ‘And therefore, gentlemen, I wish this council to convene each morning at the same time until the tumult in Paris has died down. I have sent to The Hague for instructions, but in the meantime we shall proceed with plans for the visit of the king.’

There was a murmur of surprise at this, and speculation on the outcome of the Paris tumult, and then Mynheer Kuyff spoke of the investigation of the Waterloo outrage, believing it not impossible that agents of the French were in some way connected, operating among the colliers of the Borinage, though the others received this with some scepticism. The secretary from The Hague, whose ministry of justice had the primary responsibility for assimilation of the southern provinces, said nothing throughout but made copious notes.

As the meeting adjourned, Hervey asked the baron what he wished him to do. ‘Only to be in attendance at these councils, Colonel, as the representative of His Britannic Majesty’s government.’

Hervey blinked. He had no such authority. He might not even have the competence, though he knew perfectly well that Castlereagh’s had been a signature to the Articles of London, by which the United Kingdom of the Netherlands had been created, and that as one of the ‘Great Powers’ Britain might be appealed to in the event of anything disturbing the settled peace of the Congress of Vienna. It was no good his saying that he’d no authority
de jure
when he was
de facto
the senior of His Majesty’s servants in Brussels (the nearest consul, indeed, was in Antwerp). His first course must be to communicate with Sir Charles Bagot, the ambassador at The Hague.

This he went straight to the barracks of the Garde Civile and did.

He then assembled the captains and regimental staff and explained the situation in Paris and the concerns of the authorities in Brussels. The regiment was, he said, to carry on in all respects as before, except that safeguarding of firearms was to be given special attention.

Quietly, afterwards, he told Malet and Mr Rennie that he wanted ball-cartridge ready for general issue, and that the picket was to have ten rounds each under lock and key in the guardhouse.