Authors: Allan Mallinson
A Close Run Thing
About the Book
Waterloo, 1815
As the war against Bonaparte rages to its bloody end upon the field of Waterloo, a young officer goes about his duty in the ranks of Wellington’s army. He is Cornet Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons – a soldier, gentleman and man of honour, who suddenly finds himself allotted a hero’s role …
CONTENTS
IV: THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF DIRECTS …
XVIII: THE INTERESTS OF THE SERVICE
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S CAVALRY: AN EXPLANATORY NOTE
MATTHEW HERVEY – CURRICULUM VITAE
To
The Light Dragoons
(formerly the 13th/18th and the 15th/19th Hussars)
In whose history, character and personalities I have
found much inspiration for this story.
FOREWORD
This is not just the story of an officer in the Duke of Wellington’s army: it is the story of a regiment – that particularly British institution which Sir John Keegan, the most percipient historian and observer of all things military, has described as ‘an accidental act of genius’. Every regiment was – still is – different and revelled in that difference. The difference was not just in the people but in the regiment’s history and traditions – the received notions of how things should be done, the
esprit
, the spirit.
The 6th Light Dragoons are a fictitious regiment, but the events in which they take part are historical fact. The major characters outside the regiment are real figures of history. Occasional liberties have been taken – General Slade did not go to Ireland in 1814, for instance – but not in any way that changes the historical plausibility of the story.
The army of 1814 was singular. It had endured five years of campaigning in the Peninsula, and it had gone from success to success, until the duke was able to remark, famously, that it ‘could go anywhere and do anything’. Now, on the eve of Bonaparte’s defeat, it found itself in a particularly commanding position. At Aboukir in 1798 and Trafalgar in 1805, the Royal Navy had confined Napoleon to Europe; British money had financed the allies when they were ready to rejoin the fight; and a British army in the Iberian peninsula had, from 1809, maintained a front which had drained French resources and given hope to other Europeans – the so-called ‘Spanish ulcer’.
Thus it was that by the beginning of 1814 Bonaparte could defend only France: Russian, Prussian and Austrian armies were closing in from the east, while the British, already over the Pyrenees, stood ready from the south-west.
This was the situation facing young Cornet Hervey and his regiment as they stood on the southern doorstep of France: perhaps one more battle, and their fate, and the rest of Europe’s, might be settled for their lifetime …
‘Oh! pity the condition of man, gracious God! and save us from such a system of malevolence, in which all our old and venerated prejudices are to be done away, and by which we are taught to consider war as the natural state of man, and peace but as a dangerous and difficult extremity. Sir, this temper must be corrected. It is a diabolical spirit and would lead to interminable war … At what time did we ever profit by obstinately persevering in war?’
Charles James Fox, to the House of Commons,
3 February 1800
PART I
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
‘But if you cannot make peace with Buonaparte in the winter, we must run at him in the spring.’
The Marquess (later the Duke) of Wellington to the Cabinet,
10 January 1814
I
IN THE HEAT OF BATTLE
The Convent of St Mary of Magdala, Toulouse, 12 April 1814
‘IT IS A
very singular thing indeed, Mr Hervey, for a cornet to be placed in arrest upon the field of battle.’
Joseph Edmonds was deploying all his considerable facility with words in order to convey the gravity of the matter at hand.
‘Tell me, if you please, precisely and dispassionately, the circumstances by which this was brought about.’
Cornet Hervey stood rigidly to attention before the major’s desk, his left hand clasping the sword scabbard to his side, his right hand clenched with the thumb pointing downwards along the double yellow stripe of his overalls. His eyes were set front, and filling the limited arc of their fixed gaze were two symbols which, while if not to his mind entirely contradictory, in their juxtaposition seemed somehow incongruous. For on the wall behind the desk was a large wooden cross with
a
painted figure of the crucified Christ. Next to it – perhaps even leaning against it – was the regimental guidon, a piece of red silk on a beechwood stave, its richly embroidered battle honours still resplendent despite the staining and fading. The irony, that he had been raised in a household whose world was shaped by the first symbol, and had then elected to throw himself wholeheartedly behind the second, was not lost on him even at this exigent moment. He had little imagined such a convergence, however, nor its place – a nunnery hastily and rudely requisitioned for the purposes of the military. He drew in a deep breath, his stomach feeling tighter than ever it had done when he had been awaiting combat, and began the recollection of the events which had brought him now before his commanding officer.
