A Regimental Affair

approve of Caithlin Armstrong you will feel obliged — doubly obliged — to take things up with Lord Towcester. And I doubt that this would be… felicitous. You think I do not understand your character sufficiently?’

‘But you would surely want me to do what was right? You wouldn’t want me to say nothing just in case I called down the wrath of the lieutenant colonel?’

Henrietta frowned. ‘Oh Matthew, my darling, it is not so simple as that, is it? You of all people know that to fight a battle when there is no chance of success is…’ She seemed to be wondering how to finish her challenge.

‘Contra jus ad bellum?’

She smiled. ‘If it is so, then it strengthens my point.’

He sighed heavily. ‘Very well, then. I shall say nothing. I shall speak with Serjeant Armstrong, though, and try to find out if there is more. It’s my intention anyway to speak with Lord Towcester to get a fourth stripe for Armstrong.’

‘Then you must weigh things in the balance very keenly,’ said Henrietta, sounding wise. ‘For his promotion is surely worth more to them than the few shillings the schoolroom would bring. Yes, I know what you will say,’ she added quickly, seeing him make to protest, ‘but let the Armstrongs be able to afford their pride before standing on it.’

CHAPTER EIGHT. TAKING THE FIELD

Hounslow Barracks, a few days later

The major general commanding the London district was a shrewd man. He knew all there was to know about the interior economy of a regiment, and likewise its drill, but all of this knowledge he had gained in the brigades of foot guards. Of cavalry regiments he knew nothing beyond what they had in common with the infantry, which was not a very great deal. He knew what to look for in a horse, as did any general officer. But he was all too aware that Waterloo light dragoons would demand a careful eye. He had therefore assembled a small inspecting staff of officers from the cavalry and horse artillery, under the command of a Waterloo veteran lately promoted colonel. And a month or so before, he had set the colonel the task of devising a scheme by which the Sixth’s handiness in the field might be tested.

On the day of the inspection, General Browning and his staff rode into the barracks promptly at ten o’clock.

‘General salute; prese-e-ent arms!’ Lord Towcester’s voice carried easily across the closed parade square.

The officers’ sabres lowered to the present just a fraction ahead of the lieutenant colonel’s guidon — as was proper — and the trumpeters, dismounted, sounded the first five bars of the lieutenant general’s salute, as was a major general’s due.

The commanding officer trotted up to General Browning on his blood chestnut to inform him that 467 officers and men of the 6th Light Dragoons were ready and awaiting his inspection. The general nodded in acknowledgement and then reined his charger left to begin his ride down the double rank of dragoons, as the band struck up airs from Figaro, reported to be his favourite opera.

The real work of the administrative inspection had been completed the day before, when the staff had examined every ledger and given every private man the opportunity to raise any grievance. They had found the Sixth to be in good order, and there had been no notices of grievance. The deputy assistant adjutant general — a major of the Coldstream — had reported to the general that the regiment seemed somewhat sullen compared with when he had seen them last in Belgium, but added that there had been so many new recruits that perhaps it was not too surprising that they should lack the old confidence. General Browning was alert to the point, however, and as he rode along the front rank he too thought the men’s eyes lacked just that something he had seen so often in the eyes of light cavalry — a special sort of alertness, eagerness perhaps. Well, he was confident that Colonel Freke Smyth would find out right enough when he put them through their paces on Chobham Common. Then he would know whether he had a regiment he could rely on. For he could not rid himself of the doubt, one way or other, that nagged him still about the affair in Skinner Street: the death of a young cornet in his district (and the Duke of Huntingdon’s son, too) was not something that went easily with him.

After he had gone up and down the ranks the general complimented the commanding officer on the fine appearance of his men. Then the regiment rode past their inspecting officer in troops, first at the walk and then at the trot, wheeling and giving ‘eyes right’ as pleasingly as Browning would have wished to see in his foot guards.

‘Be so good as to have the trumpet-major sound “officers”, Lord Towcester, if you please,’ the general said when he had dismissed the parade.

‘All officers, my lord?’ asked the trumpet-major, saluting as he drove his right foot down at the halt.

Lord Towcester looked at the general.

‘Just the troop leaders and their subalterns.’

The trumpet-major saluted again, turned to his right and marched off five paces to blow the officers’ call.

The quartermasters and other non-combatants — the paymaster, surgeons and veterinarians — looked relieved when the call ended with the G, for the next four bars would have summoned them as well as the squadron officers.

Ten minutes later the squadron officers were assembled in the mess ante-room. ‘Sit down, gentlemen,’ said General Browning as he came in. ‘I wished to see your faces before the real business of the day began. And to say that of one troop I hope to see very little, for I have told your colonel that I intend taking it to act as enemy for the entire scheme.’ He glanced at Lord Towcester.

‘A Troop, General. Captain Hervey’s.’

Hervey bit his tongue. Someone quite evidently had to be the enemy, but it implied that his troop was the one whose services the lieutenant colonel was happiest to dispense with. He rose to identify himself.

‘Very well, Captain Hervey. Report at once with your officers to Colonel Freke Smyth. He will inform you of your duties while I give my intention to the regiment.’

‘It should have been the junior troop — F,’ said Seton Canning when they were outside.

‘I don’t want to hear your opinion of the colonel’s decisions,’ Hervey snapped, seething with anger, though not, in truth, at Seton Canning, for he had worked up his troop so well in the past week that he wanted to see them tested.

Hervey’s discouragement was allayed to an extent, however, when he learned what Colonel Freke Smyth had in mind for them. They were not simply to send men here and there with false reports, or to hand the usual piece of paper to an officer: There is an infantry picket on the high ground to your front. Instead they were themselves to manoeuvre as a troop in the face of the rest of the regiment, which was to advance as if covering an infantry division on the march to first encounter.

‘These are your boundaries, Captain Hervey,’ said the colonel, pointing out the roads and streams across Chobham Common, which he had come to know so well in the last week. ‘There will be officers from the Blues on either flank to ensure that neither your troop nor the regiment transgresses them, and Major Jago from the horse artillery will be my eyes and ears with you yourself throughout.’

Hervey opened his sabretache to make notes.

‘And, mind you,’ warned the colonel, looking him fiercely in the eye, ‘there is to be no faking — no giving way to the other troops just to make them seem crack.’

The thought had not occurred to him, but Hervey knew it must at some stage, for it was only natural to want his regiment to show well.