they had evacuated the Dobrudscha – but killed a hundred of the two hundred horses taking part.2 So within a mere twenty-five years of the Spectator article quoted in the foreword, British troops were operating in that ‘very obscure portion of Europe … [where] there is very little reason why we should trouble our heads with its geography’. And, strange to relate, the cavalry, consisting of Cardigan’s Light Brigade and Sir James Scarlett’s Heavy Brigade, were under the command of no less a man than Lord Bingham – by then 3rd Earl of Lucan – who had preceded Hervey in the mission to the Russians in 1828.
* * * There are two principal sources in English for the war of 1828–9. First is Russo-Turkish Campaigns 1828–1829 (London, 1854) by Francis Rawdon Chesney, a colonel of the Royal Artillery who had carried out surveys of Mesopotamia, and would later be involved in the survey of the Suez Canal. The second, The Russians in Bulgaria and Rumelia in 1828 and 1829 is by Baron von Moltke – the same Moltke whom Hervey met at Iskender. It was published in German in 1845 after his several years’ secondment to the Turkish army. It was then published in English by John Murray, in the same year as Chesney’s volume, 1854 (war then, as now, was evidently a good publishing opportunity). The translator was Lady Lucie Duff Gordon, although Moltke could undoubtedly have made his own translation, for his English was fluent; he had translated Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire into German, for which he received very little money (nor, it seems, did Die beiden Freunde make him much), and he had married an English woman – girl, indeed, for Mary Burt, his step-niece, was only sixteen when they wed. He rose to be field marshal and chief of the Prussian general staff (for thirty years), the architect of Bismarck’s victories. There is, however, a question as to whether he did in fact witness the campaigns. Certainly Lucie Duff Gordon believed he did: he ‘was despatched to the Turkish army by his own sovereign’, she writes in her preface, ‘at the express request of Sultan Mahmoud [sic], and served with it through the campaigns here described.’ But then she also states that he was dead at the time of her writing.3 It is, nevertheless, a very fine work, with superlative maps and diagrams.
Of Lord Bingham’s time with the Russians there is no written trace. Neither the Public Record Office nor the National Army Museum has any account or reference to an account. Nor does the family. Or rather, it must be supposed they do not; following the disappearance of the 7th Earl of Lucan in 1974 after the murder of the family’s nanny, access became difficult. But when Cecil Woodham-Smith was researching for her celebrated work on the charge of the Light Brigade, The Reason Why (London, 1953), she made a full inventory of the Lucan archive at the family seat in Castlebar, Co. Mayo. There is nothing in that inventory relating to Bingham’s time with the Russians. Princess Lieven’s remarks in the letters to her brother are in fact the best contemporary references.
There is a footnote, so to speak, to the action at Pravadi, which Hervey and Fairbrother witness from a prone position in the forest, as ‘through a glass darkly’ – the horseman’s throwing his cloak at the feet of the Vizier. Moltke relates the story. The Turk batteries had pounded the Russian defences for hours, and the Vizier sent a dehli, a fanatic, to examine the effect of the fire. The dehli galloped to within fifty yards of the walls, and although hundreds of rounds were apparently fired at him he returned unhurt to report that ‘everything was as it was’ (bir schei yok). The Vizier, who had expected a report of several breaches at least – indeed that the walls had been entirely battered down – would not believe that the garrison was still within and resisting, and accused the dehli of not having ridden close enough. The dehli answered by throwing down his bullet-riddled cloak as proof that he had.
Finally, to obviate letters of enquiry or complaint to the publishers: Rule’s serves very fine steak and oyster puddings still, but at number thirty-five, not, as in Hervey’s day, at number thirty-eight.
1 Although now applied almost exclusively to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean – Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan – the term ‘Levant’ referred originally (as here) to all Mediterranean lands east of Italy. It derives from Middle French (‘rising’) – ‘the land where the sun rises’ – and could be qualified by ‘near’ and ‘far’.
2 The second of the two regiments of the brigade, the 13th Light Dragoons, was one of the antecedent regiments of that which the author had the honour to command.
3 He died in 1891, aged ninety.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allan Mallinson is a former infantry and cavalry officer of thirty-five years' service worldwide.
As well as the Matthew Hervey series of novels, he is the author of Light Dragoons, a history of four regiments of British Cavalry, one of which he commanded, and The Making of the British Army, a history of the Army's origins from the battle of Edgehill to the current conflict in Afghanistan.
He also writes on defence matters for The Times and the Daily Telegraph, and is a regular reviewer for The Times, the Spectator and the Literary Review.
Also by Allan Mallinson
Fiction featuring Matthew Hervey
A CLOSE RUN THING
THE NIZAM’S DAUGHTERS1
A REGIMENTAL AFFAIR
A CALL TO ARMS
THE SABRE’S EDGE
RUMOURS OF WAR
AN ACT OF COURAGE
COMPANY OF SPEARS
MAN OF WAR
WARRIOR
Non-fiction
THE MAKING OF THE BRITISH ARMY
