Too late: the front rank was into the trees, sabres slashing. Hervey looked for a mark as they closed up behind them, but there was none. The voltigeurs wouldn’t stand against steel. No one would if they could run instead.
‘Halt! Halt! Halt!’
The rear rank pulled up just short of the trees. Hervey glanced left: it was a good, straight line, ready to support the front rank if they pressed into the wood or cover them if they withdrew.
‘Front rank retire!’
Sir Edward burst from the trees, his expression keen, but for all the world as if he were drawing a fox covert. There was blood on his sabre, and on a dozen of the dragoons’ that followed him out. Two or three had lost their Tarletons – not the best of caps for a fight in the woods – but they all looked in good order and high spirits. Hervey cursed his luck.
More dragoons began tumbling from the wood – the Fourteenth’s. Many were bloodied, others bewildered-looking. It was plain to him: they had had a mauling. He was not surprised; none of the Sixth was. To plunge into a wood, mounted, was to give the advantage to the man on foot. Surely the Fourteenth had seen that, even without the benefit of high ground?
At last, General Stewart came galloping out, his two aides-de-camp hatless and blood-spattered. He looked like a man who knew things had gone ill. He sought to congratulate someone. ‘Sir Edward! Splendid work! Capital! The French are driven back. We shall push them across the river just as soon as the infantry come up!’
Sir Edward Lankester returned his sword after dropping it to the salute. ‘When the Fourteenth are all out of the wood, General, I propose we retire so that the guns have a clear line.’
‘Just so, Sir Edward,’ replied Stewart, looking over his shoulder at the Fourteenth’s disordered squadron. ‘And, I might say, one of your corporals deserves promotion as soon as may be!’ He looked along the front rank. ‘There, the right marker! He cut down a sharpshooter who’d have put a bullet in me for certain. Admirable address! Admirable!’
Sir Edward knew who was his right marker well enough, but he turned to see the object of the general’s favour. With a nod, and in a voice just loud enough to carry to each flank, he announced, ‘Corporal Armstrong, by desire of General Stewart, you are promoted local serjeant herewith!’
CHAPTER TEN
THE KING’S COMMISSION
Badajoz, late afternoon, Christmas Day, 1826
Hervey began peeling his last orange. They had been cork oaks at the affair of the Douro, good for voltigeurs to take cover behind, and low branches to entangle the unwary dragoon, Absalom-like. But when they had got to the other side – when the infantry had come up and swept through the wood – there had been orange trees; and what a feast they had had! Stewart had far exceeded his authority in promoting Armstrong, but that had been the least of his faults. The Fourteenth had lost half their men in that bungled affair. If the French had counter-attacked before the straggling squadron had cleared the gunners’ line, there was no knowing how things would have gone. But they hadn’t, and the infantry had come up, and the day had ended well. And not least for General Stewart, who had already botched things on the march north; another reverse might have proved fatal.
Hervey sighed. No, it would not have been fatal for Lord Castlereagh’s kin, not for the brother of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s supporter in London. There had been many, and greater, names in the pantheon of incompetence, secure in their positions in spite of any calamity because of some influence at the Horse Guards. In any case, Sir Arthur Wellesley had known how to deal with the problem of the Honourable Charles Stewart: he had checked his impetuous confidence by hobbling him to the duties of the staff (and even there, Hervey learned years later, Stewart had been more hindrance than help). But checking Stewart had not been the end of it: there had been others who had sent brave men needlessly to their deaths. Slade, for one. What had Slade ever done but bungle things? And with a streak of malevolent cowardice that singled him out as being in a special category. Now he was lieutenant-general, with the rank to make war on his own, to dissemble and bungle on a campaign scale, to send men to their deaths in thousands.
Hervey angered, even as he sat confined. Would it be always thus? Would advancement in the army forever depend on this rotten system of purchase and patronage? Parliament couldn’t care less: the nation won its wars, eventually; did it matter at what cost? Evidently not, for neither house showed any appetite for demanding generals’ heads in return for soldiers’ bodies – legions of bodies. Unless, of course, the general was known as a party man: there had been baying enough as the army stumbled back to Corunna, for Sir John Moore had been a Whig. The Tory Wellesley had heard party baying too, on occasion.
How different it had been at regimental duty in those early days in Portugal, with Armstrong promoted serjeant. There was scarce a man that had not lifted a glass to him – not because Armstrong had especially deserved it in the confusion of the cork grove (there was nothing singular in saving a comrade, except that Stewart was Stewart), but because of the aptitude he had shown on countless occasions since their first footing in the Peninsula.
Hervey smiled as he took the last of the peel from the orange. It had been a short-lived celebration, Armstrong’s third stripe. Three days later, before the local rank could even be confirmed, he had been reduced to corporal again. A dispute in a Porto tasca over who was more use, infantry or cavalry, had come to blows, the sort of pointless debate in which no speaker could entirely believe his own proposition, yet each would submit to trial by combat to settle the question of honour. A serjeant of the 29th Foot (Worcestershire) had been chastened by a bloody nose, and the town commandant, charged by Sir Arthur Wellesley to maintain the strictest discipline, had insisted on condign punishment. Sir Edward Lankester had only been able to spare Armstrong from a regimental court martial by summarily removing the unsubstantiated chevron. Hervey smiled again, and wryly. That, he reminded himself, was regimental duty.
As to his own fortunes in the aftermath of the Buffs’ brilliant and economic victory at Oporto, they had run no better than Armstrong’s, for soon after entering the city, Colonel Shaw had been killed by the explosion of an ammunition tumbril. There had been no despatch commending him to Sir Arthur Wellesley, therefore. ‘Here is your command. You will never have another like it!’ – how the words had haunted him in the months that followed. The opportunity to display came rarely for the cavalry officer, just as Sir Edward Lankester had warned him. Poor Shaw: the commander-in-chief had lost a brave and resourceful observing officer; but he, Hervey, had lost the best opportunity he would have for the rest of the war!
He sighed a third time, cursed almost. He let events take him, that was his trouble. No, that was absurd: he had never waited for orders, and he had seized the moment to good purpose often enough. He frowned: that was why he was here now, was it not? Only in part. It was true that he would not be here if he had not opposed Colonel Norris’s design, but, he told himself, no selfrespecting officer of his arm could have done any other than press his case as he had. That was the purpose of the reconnaissance, was it not? Was he supposed to advance in rank by saying, instead, only what was welcome to the hearer? He knew some who believed it – until such time as they achieved a position of importance, they explained, whereupon they could exercise their independence of judgement to true advantage. But how did the independent mind not atrophy meanwhile? That was what he would know. And would the moment ever come when they judged the exercise of an independent mind more important than even further advancement, however remote it might seem? With such men, did not the sole purpose of advancement become advancement? Why did he not play their game, though? For nine times out of ten his judgement would be superior to any promoted in his place; and the tenth time – the tenth part – was a very small fraction of the whole business of command. Did he dissemble if he only did so one part in ten?