Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (26 page)

Hervey heard this with a degree of misgiving. He had suffered the Home department’s alarms before, though if Lord Hill spoke in these terms it could not be without foundation. The prospect of a summer campaign against a new ‘peasants’ revolt’ was not a happy one.

‘The prime minister has been considering a scheme of dividing the country into districts of about ten thousand persons, each under the control of a half-pay military or naval officer who would be responsible for the prevention of crime and the maintenance of order …’

This he heard with grave misgiving too. Cromwell’s ‘rule of the major-generals’ would be no more palatable to the country for the martial lawyers being demoted to colonel and commodore.

But he was not alone. ‘So far, however, it appears that the scheme has not found favour with the cabinet,’ continued Lord Hill, giving away nothing yet of his own estimation. ‘Therefore,
rebus sic stantibus
, the responsibility for order remains with the lieutenancies and their magistrates, who as you are aware may call on the assistance of the military.’

And always did so, reckoned Hervey – and either too readily, when instead a decent parish constable or two would have done the job, or else too late and the military were obliged then to use uncommon force (‘a switch in time saves nine’).

‘The duke is of the opinion that cavalry are the only effectual troops for the maintenance of order – in terms of celerity and, shall we say, reliability – in the country districts especially, and also that the yeomanry are superior too in this respect.’

Hervey blinked. He had long stopped calling yeomen ‘cat shooters’, but he was in no doubt that their discipline and capability stood in markedly poor relation to the regulars.

Lord Hill’s thoughts had, as before, anticipated the same. ‘That, I’m sure, will run counter to your instincts or even experience. But the duke is of the opinion that calling out the yeomanry shows to the disaffected that the loyal are both willing and able to put them down if they resort to physical force.’

Undeniably it did, Hervey would concede, but fairly or unfairly the yeomanry’s local connections also gave them the character of parties to a dispute. Besides, at harvest time a large number of officers and men were occupied in gathering in their crops.

‘However, in more exigent circumstances support to the yeomanry may become necessary, and the duke wishes, with a view to that support being given expeditiously, to set in hand a contingent scheme of rapid reinforcement, which is the reason for your forgathering.’

Hervey groaned inwardly. He had quite enough on his plate without making contingent schemes.

‘The Home department and the War Office, with my headquarters, will compile the schedule of support, but it is first necessary to have a thoroughgoing appraisal of the yeomanry and their country. This appraisal has already begun with the scrutiny of routine reports and returns, but I consider your
coup d’oeil
to be indispensable. In short, gentlemen, I wish to receive from you your assessment of those commanding the yeomanry, and the evils particular to their counties, and the most effectual way in which support might therefore be given.’

Hervey groaned again. This was not the work of a few days.

‘My staff here’ (he indicated the officers from the Horse Guards) ‘will give you your individual assignments and make the necessary arrangements. It is my hope – my intention – that this schedule be complete by the first day of April, and I should be obliged therefore if your appreciations are severally received by the last day of March, though in the case of the far distant yeomanries there may be some stay. I might add that not every yeomanry is to be examined, only those adjudged to be in the shires most susceptible. And that the survey is to be conducted with the greatest discretion.’

Hervey was glad at least of the need for urgency. He must trust that fortune and good sense assigned him the Oxford – or, better yet, the Wiltshire – yeomanry.

‘I think I have made myself clear, gentlemen, but if you have questions of me then I am content to hear them.’

There were none (probably because it would imply either that Lord Hill had
not
made himself clear, or that the questioner was a fool).

‘Very well, gentlemen, I thank you and bid you good day,’ adding as he turned to leave, ‘Colonel Hervey, a word if you please.’

Hervey followed him from the room, conscious (and by no means unappreciatively) that eyes were cast in his direction.

Snow swirled over the parade-ground, a pretty enough sight this side of the great Venetian window in the commander-in-chief’s office, but a decided hindrance to the early completion of their mission.

‘Sit you down.’

Hervey took one of the two upright chairs in front of the commander-in-chief’s desk, and Lord Hill the other.

‘That was a deuced-smart little affair of yours at Windsor. You saw the duke in the course of it, did you not?’

‘I did, General, when I was at the castle seeking the Grenadiers’ help.’

‘Well, as you might suppose, he thinks highly of your address. He is in a most sanguinary state of mind at present.’

‘You don’t concur in this, sir?’

‘In acting with address? I do most certainly, as well you should expect.’

Hervey’s instinct was to beg pardon for implying otherwise, but he said nothing; it was Lord Hill who had made for equivocation with his ‘sanguinary’.

‘I confess that I am, however, exercised by the state of incipient disorder, and our own incapacity to stem it by the immediate application of force. The duke places much importance on this survey of the yeomanry. I believe he’s set his mind against all further con cessions to the radicals; the affair of the Catholics was a most bruising one and put him out of favour with the King for a while, to the detriment of much business.’

For all his Tory principles, Hervey had never been able to share the duke’s antipathy to some further measure of relief for the Catholics, though he had to admit that he had but a poor measure of experience of Ireland compared with its former chief secretary. It seemed to him that too many of his fellow-countrymen – those that had not served (served, that is, in the Peninsula) – conflated the religion of the Pope with, at best, a drag anchor on the ship of progress, a force that would permanently dim the Enlightenment (extinguish it if it could), or else, at worst, a plague-like thing spread by priestly black rats, that would enervate the nation to the point that its enemies might take possession without a fight. Yes, in the Peninsula he had seen much that was akin to superstition –
was
superstition – but it had been harmless enough. And at times he had seen its beneficial effect. He did not give these matters great thought, it was true (not any longer), but it seemed to him that the stern avoidance of sin, as defined with such chilling completeness in the Prayer Book’s
Commination
, so often the mainstay of his own church, was alone too arid a doctrine. But the Catholic relief measure was now carried, and the country was neither benighted nor plagued – and so perhaps might it also be with Reform? What terrible things it risked, though. But, he reckoned, the duke must know his business – if, that is, command of the country were anything like command of an army …

‘It seems the cruellest of things, sir, that having fought so long against the Great Disturber we should now face disturbance as great at home.’

‘Quite, Hervey. And there’s no doubt – I speak very plainly with you – that the late retrenchment leaves us in a most perilous position were the country to fall into general tumult. Disbanding so many of the yeomanry was a short-sighted expedient which we’re paying for already – I hardly need tell you.’

No indeed, thought Hervey; Worsley’s troop might as well have been renamed ‘Berkshire Yeomanry’.

‘The duke himself has also formed, I believe, a greater notion of their worth.’

Hervey began wondering to what this was all tending, and whether its purpose might not be solely to allow the commander-in-chief to speak his thoughts with someone other than his staff (and who was not therefore obliged to give them expression in orders to the army), or one who might relate them elsewhere. That Lord Hill chose to do so with a former galloper of his was perhaps not so astounding, but it nevertheless demanded some consideration.

‘When you are returned, Hervey, you are to come and speak with me about all that you find, in addition to rendering the specific intelligence in writing.’

‘With pleasure, General.’

‘I think Norfolk the very place to gauge things.’

Hervey’s heart sank: Norfolk – distant and broad, not a task of a few days.

‘You’re not pleased at the prospect?’

‘In truth, General, I’d expected – hoped – to be assigned Berkshire, or Wiltshire … Oxford, perhaps.’

Lord Hill’s expression was suddenly turned wry. ‘Well, there ain’t any yeomanry in Berkshire, as you know too well, and your letter contained all that there’s need of for the schedule there; and Wiltshire’s the one place where I’m confident the yeomanry’s well found and the arrangements on a sure footing. Norfolk, on the other hand, is a deuced difficult county; if trouble were to become widespread there the call on regular troops would be prodigious. We must make the most expeditious, the most economical, provisions. Norfolk’s a weather vane.’

‘I understand, General.’

Lord Hill rose. ‘Besides, is there not someone there who is overdue a call? Is not that admirable fellow Peto in want of company?’

Hervey smiled. Surely this man was the most genial, the most amiable of generals? Not for nothing had his nickname with the troops been ‘Daddy’, such was his solicitude. ‘Indeed, sir.’

And then the countenance became grave again. ‘You’ll have heard of the Gifford business? Infamous.’

‘I have, sir.’

‘The Home department believes it may be all of a piece with that of which we’ve been speaking.’ He shook his head. ‘Assaults on military officers in the street … Unspeakable.’

Hervey frowned. ‘I’m doubtful of that, General. It was my good friend Captain Fairbrother who came on him directly afterwards. According to a witness the assailant had called out a different name, seeming to mistake him for another.’

‘Indeed? I had not heard it … Your friend came upon him in the street, you say?’

‘And took him to Guy’s hospital.’

‘’Pon my word. Then it’s from him that my information shall come in this matter. Did he say how Gifford came to be in such an insalubrious place at such an hour? That damned rookery close by.’

‘Is it really so insalubrious a place, m’lord? I don’t think Fairbrother would be given to it were it so. I understand it to be a regular short cut between the Theatre Royal and the Strand.’

Lord Hill made no reply to the particular, sensing perhaps the difficulty in suggesting that his friend had somehow descended to the nether regions. ‘A deuced mysterious business, be what may. A general officer cut down in the street … I call it a matter for the closest study.’

Hervey took his cue to leave, bowing and assuring the commander-in-chief that he would lose no time in setting out for Norfolk, and returning as promptly to relate his findings.

‘And my compliments to your friend Fairbrother in his address that evening. I should have been bereft had Gifford died. His work on the estimates is invaluable.’

‘With pleasure, my lord.’

‘A most useful sort of man.’

‘General Gifford?’

‘Fairbrother –
fidus Achates
.’

Hervey smiled. ‘Yes, yes indeed.’

‘The electrical exploder – that was he, was it not?’

‘It was.’

‘Mm. Well, I might send for him about Gifford.’

‘I’ll inform him, my lord.’

Hervey left the Horse Guards with the most elegant of portfolios – all chased leather, red, with the royal cipher embossed in gold – and within a sheaf of instructions, letters of introduction, authorizations, money orders and requisition forms. He supposed he ought to return it when his assignment was over, but it would make a fine present for Georgiana when at length he was able to see her …

It was not yet one o’clock, but matters were pressing. He sent word to Corporal Wakefield at the light horse stables to bring the chaise to the United Service at four, where in the meantime he would write letters – letters arising from his (frankly) unwelcome assignment; and then pay what calls he could – that is to say, felt able to – before returning to Hounslow.

One letter he would write with the greatest of pleasure. The sole consolation of his wintry sojourn to that most singular of counties – where, like the King, the true glory had departed, leaving but melancholy fragments of what had been (though he had to admit that he visited but the once, and very briefly, after Waterloo) – would be to see his old and most excellent friend, most admirable of men, Captain Sir Laughton Peto RN, late of the command of His Majesty’s Ship
Prince Rupert
, wounded most grievously at Navarino two years before, and now ‘beached’ most terribly in his native county, albeit in the care of that most patriotic of men, the Marquess of Cholmondeley …

But he knew he would have to curtail his calls that evening, sparing only those of business – the agents, and his bank. In any event, he had thought better of troubling Lord George Irvine again so soon after taking command, for the unpleasant details of Tyrwhitt, and now Kennett (there was little, if anything, the colonel could do in either regard), would suffice in writing. And Kat … well, he trusted he was not evading his promise at Windsor by writing that circumstances now prevented his paying her a call at an early date (he would explain with as much candour as possible that duties took him with little notice to Norfolk, and that he thought he might be detained there a month, perhaps more, though he certainly hoped not to be). Though he would evade, and prudently, he considered, any particular promise on return, for their encounter at Windsor had left a corner of his mind in little short of turmoil. As for Princess Lieven’s supper, he could now send word – even at so late an hour – that by the command of Lord Hill he must make haste on an assignment of the utmost importance (it amused him to think how she would at once set her mind to discovering what occupied Lord Hill). It would vex her, he knew full well, but it was undoubtedly for the best. He ought also to send word for Fairbrother, but he had no very clear notion of where to send word to, for he would surely by now have left Guy’s hospital – and Covent Garden was a large place to scour. But first things first – or rather, and for once, family affairs first. He owed his people a longer missive than he’d so far managed, and Georgiana deserved more than a pretty piece of leather; he would devote the rest of the afternoon to making amends.