Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (44 page)

Hervey sat with his troop leaders and staff at the dining table in the officers’ house to contemplate the events of the night – and, indeed, of the morning. He and Malet had stayed at Princess Augusta’s villa until a cornet’s escort, a dozen dragoons, arrived just before dawn to mount guard. The drive back to barracks had been a dismal business – the streets full of the debris of riot, and not a few bodies, though whether these had given up the ghost or lay merely to rise again when the effects of drink had worn off was impossible to tell without descending from the carriage; and Hervey felt no cause for that.

‘Well, gentlemen, I meet with Baron van der Fosse and his watch committee in an hour, and I trust they’ll have a more complete account of matters, but there’s little doubt that – for the time being at least – the authorities have a very imperfect control of the city. I shall have to make a deposition respecting the events of last night, and our actions, but to whom at present it is by no means clear. Mr Lincoln, how do the arrangements stand for our return to England?’

The quartermaster said that three steamers were engaged for the fifth of next month – ten days’ time – and that if there were any delay there would be a penalty applied, which, he presumed, the War Office would accept as a contingent charge; but, of course, the delay could not be indefinite since the ships would have other contracts to honour, and it might then not be possible to engage any other steamer for some time, and the regiment would have to trust to sail.

‘The intention is to march for Ostend on the second, Colonel,’ said Malet.

It was seventy miles on a good, straight, and for the most part flat, road. They could do it in two days, not three, if it came to a pinch, but stragglers mightn’t make it (as ever, much would depend on the farriers).

‘Might it not be better to quit the city sooner, in the circumstances, Colonel?’ asked Vanneck.

Hervey nodded. ‘Yes, but I’ve a mind the English here will look to us for safety if this trouble isn’t quickly brought to an end.’

‘We can’t be cooped up here till the second, Colonel,’ said Worsley.

‘No, I’ve no intention of being cooped up, but just what’s prudent I can’t say until I’ve consulted with Fosse – and, of course, General Bylandt, under whose orders we are still placed, though that was for the purpose of ceremonial. In the meantime it will be best to exercise horses at dawn. There seems to be some aversion to first light when it comes to rioting.’

They all nodded: it was the best they could make of things. Hervey called for more coffee, they discussed the situation at large, and the regiment’s interior economy, for another half an hour, and then he left for the daily meeting at the Place Royale.

The governor of Brabant’s house was now strongly picketed by gendarmes and regular troops. The Place Royale itself was not without the detritus of disorder – window glass, uprooted cobblestones – but evidently the appearance at some stage of so many men-at-arms had deflected the rioters to other parts, and the house was untouched. Inside, the mood was sombre, and, thought Hervey, the gathering council lacked any appearance of resolve. The baron called them to order without the usual formalities or pleasantries and asked the chief of police for his report.

It was a grim reckoning. The disturbances had, it seemed, begun in the Place de la Monnaie (which Hervey could well believe), and a crowd had gone thence to the offices of
The National
, the leading ‘Dutch’ paper, which was popularly presumed to be the mouthpiece of Van Maanen, broken every window and door, and destroyed the printing presses. Another crowd had gone to the house of Count Libri-Bagnano, one of the king’s most intimate advisers, in the Rue de la Madeleine and put it to the torch. Only the outer walls remained. A number of gun-smiths’ shops had been broken into and their contents carried away. Several small patrols of police and gendarmes had been surrounded and compelled to surrender. More than fifty people were reported dead. The French
tricolore
was flying from many buildings, and that of Brabant.

General Bylandt especially looked uncomfortable. His confident predictions had been proved wrong, and his want of strong precautionary measures – not least the movement of troops closer to the city – had allowed a disturbance to grow into something far worse. General Aberson, who’d evidently slept little, said he’d ordered his gendarmes to withdraw from the streets after dark this evening: he didn’t have enough to patrol in the necessary strength, and felt their presence on the streets in daylight would make a greater impression.

Baron van der Fosse asked General Wauthier if he could make troops available for the support of the gendarmerie, but Wauthier said it was all he could do to guarantee the security of the royal palace and Hôtel de Ville. The baron then applied to Bylandt, who demurred, saying that while he acknowledged there’d been too few troops available last night, any augmentation in the city now would be highly inflammatory, and that he needed to refer matters to The Hague: if the trouble grew so great that it could only be subdued by the use of troops, reinforcements must be sent from the north so as to make the intervention overwhelming. But he was of a mind, yet, that the disturbances were likely to die down of their own accord, when the rougher sort had had their fill of drink and glass, and that it should remain meanwhile a police matter.

There was sense in this, thought Hervey – intervening with overwhelming force – but only if there were no overall increase in violence meanwhile, for it would be vastly more difficult to restore order at that stage. Indeed, his words with the Berkshire sheriff came back to him: ‘Temporization on such occasions might be said to be a dangerous and even cruel policy.’ And, in truth, ‘a stitch in time’ was likely as not a good saying here as at home; as their own, albeit bloody, action had demonstrated last night …

‘May I speak, Baron?’ he asked, judging his moment carefully, when the others at the table seemed to have reached a sort of
impasse
.

Baron van der Fosse gave him leave, and Hervey explained his thoughts, ending with a strong appeal to promptitude. ‘I fear that those I saw last night are capable of even greater mischief. There was murder in their eyes.’

Yet Bylandt would not be moved – except to enquire whether Hervey would place his own regiment at his disposal, to which he replied that he would, but that he must of course send notice at once of his having done so to the ambassador in The Hague, at the risk of his orders then being countermanded. Bylandt thanked him and said that he understood perfectly, but showed no sign of any great determination to take up the offer.

Kuyff, the chief of police, added that he believed the events of last night to be the work of considerable organization, by no means spontaneous, and therefore likely to be repeated. So far no leader had declared himself or stated any demands, but the tenor of the demonstrations, leaving aside the ‘mercenaries’, the roughs from the Borinage, and the usual criminal opportunism, had been in the separatist cause – autonomy, independence even. Tonight, he said, would either be wholly quiet – the ‘political’ point having been made by last evening’s violence – or else more violent still.

A considerable silence followed, and then Baron van der Fosse brought the council to a close, saying that when they reassembled tomorrow they would have a far clearer idea of what it was they faced, and the actions to be taken, but meanwhile that he hoped General Bylandt would send for more troops and muster all that were immediately available and place them on alert.

Hervey left in some dismay. Laying aside all questions of justification (in truth he’d formed some sympathy for the Walloons, whom the Dutch seemed to consider not so much different as inferior), he abhorred
la foule
,
de menigte
, the mob. Was it necessary to look further than Paris thirty years ago, and now, it seemed, once more? He went back to the
Caserne
hardly speaking a word to Malet, sat down at once to write to the ambassador, then changed into plain clothes, put the letter in his pocket and took himself off to see at first hand how things stood.

Rarely, he imagined, did personal reconnaissance prove its worth greater than now. In the space of two hours he came to conclude that the authorities faced a problem that would only get worse. The streets were full of people with ribbons – red, white and blue, or else red, yellow and black, the colours of the first Brabant revolution forty years before. On street corners and in the public squares were armed pickets at bonfires kept burning high despite the August heat. Others were handing out leaflets with calls for the Dutch to leave the country. And up and down the main thoroughfares bands of Borains, many in the clothes of the coalface, ranged ominously, with the look of ‘wait until dark’. Serjeant Acton said he’d take his pick of them for a ‘forlorn hope’, but wouldn’t want to have to disperse them with just the flat of the sword. Hervey agreed. He had a high regard for men who hewed coal, for besides aught else, Armstrong himself was from that stock. But they won their coal under regulation; heaven only knew what
unregulated
men from the infernal regions were capable of.

He then sought out Fairbrother in his rooms in the Grande Place, and found him in unusually solemn mood. He too had had his evening rudely curtailed, having been dining with an old acquaintance of his father’s near the Place Royale when the noise of breaking glass had put the
patron
in a fright, and he’d closed up hastily.

Hervey had a particular favour to ask, one that he might trust to any of his officers, but which he could trust to his good friend even better – not least for his capacity for robust advocacy. He explained all that had gone before – the opera and then this morning’s meeting – and asked if he would take a letter to Sir Charles Bagot in The Hague. It was necessary that someone from the embassy come at once to Brussels.

Fairbrother, far from deeming it granting a favour, accepted the errand at once with gratitude, for he confessed he was becoming bored. And in view of the urgent necessity of bringing some plenipotentiary of His Majesty to Brussels, he declined the offer of a carriage and said he would ride post instead. It was, by all accounts, about a hundred miles, but there would be numerous ferries to engage, and a carriage would take him twice as long. If the post-houses were alert and the roads well signed, he could, he believed, if he set off at once, make The Hague by midday tomorrow.

Hervey was much relieved. ‘I’ve thought long since the meeting this morning. I’ve no notion why Bylandt’s so supine, nor indeed Baron van der Fosse, who, I believe, is in a position to overrule him, or at least appeal to The Hague to do so, but two possibilities occur to me – that they act in good faith but wholly mistakenly, or else they’re in sympathy with the cause of the separatists. With which I’m not concerned, only to the extent that they let in the French, either by invitation or neglect.’

‘I confess I’ve been expecting to see them any day now.’

‘Quite. Now, I’ve said nothing of it in the letter, for seen from so distant a place as The Hague the situation may look different, the view all too sanguine, but I’ve resolved to take the regiment to observe the border – tomorrow or the day after. Those damned French
tricolores
– an invitation to the dance.’

Fairbrother looked wary. ‘Is that entirely wise? On whose authority?’

Hervey nodded. His friend’s question was entirely apt. ‘Not whose authority, but by
what
authority.’

‘Explain?’

‘Before we left Hounslow I asked Malet to get a copy of the “Articles of London”, for it seemed only courtesy that I was acquainted with them – little knowing of course that they would become of such moment. The first of them – there are eight – which the Congress at Vienna took into its treaty, is of the essence, and unequivocal: “The union shall be intimate and complete, so that the two countries shall form but one state”. And I must tell you, Fairbrother, that that day fifteen years ago, at Waterloo, a good many Englishmen, many friends of mine, fell astride the road to Brussels to keep the French – Bonaparte – out of here. And if all that’s to be set aside now, what purpose was served that day? If there’s no one else in Brabant who can or will place the interests of His Majesty – His
Britannic
Majesty – foremost in their actions in the coming days, then I for one will not shrink from doing so.’

That night General Wauthier’s troops remained inactive, guarded by the walls of the buildings they were meant to be guarding. And Bylandt, despite the parting request of the provincial governor at the morning’s meeting, moved no others to his support, so that by dawn on the twenty-seventh Brussels had the appearance of a city occupied by a hostile force – ‘hostile’ rather than ‘liberating’ because the destruction of property, a good deal of it belonging to private citizens, was so widespread. Only by private enterprise indeed would the destruction be checked once daylight came, when the remnants of the Garde Civile were taken in hand by Baron D’Hoogvoort, one of the city’s more active magistrates, and joined by an impromptu militia of tradesmen and those of property who feared not only for their lives but for their livelihoods.

But though the violence abated, its true purpose revealed itself: the Brabant
tricolore
, its horizontal stripes even more striking than those of the French, now flew everywhere, and royal insignia on those buildings not guarded by troops were torn down.

Meanwhile, news – reliable or not – that reinforcements from Ghent were marching on the city brought a deputation to Bylandt, threatening that no troops would be allowed to enter the city without the utmost resistance. Bylandt at once sought out Baron van der Fosse, who summoned General Wauthier. But the city commandant protested that it was all he could do to guard himself, and that he could spare not a man from the defences of the royal palace to act against the
agitateurs
. Bylandt therefore agreed to have the reinforcements halt, and to keep his own troops in their encampment at Vilvoorde, ten miles north, until he received orders from The Hague.