Rumours Of War

Charles Annesley having sailed late. He found Annesley’s groom and had him walk the mare out.

High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong: Shakespeare’s counsel – crude, but not a bad start. She was a good-looker, sixteen hands, he reckoned, a nice liver chestnut. She had a lean head, which spoke of the quality of her breeding, and well set on. Her eyes were kind. She had a good length of rein, so the saddle would be well placed. She hadn’t a lot of bone, but the legs did look ‘passing strong’.

‘Would you trot her up, please?’

Annesley’s groom led her off.

The mare moved cleanly, no brushing or dishing, and with a fair reach. Leading nearside, he circled left with her after twenty yards, which she managed perfectly level, and trotted her back.

‘And the same again, if you please, circling right this time.’

The mare turned full circle right, as level as she had done left, trotted back straight and pulled up as obediently as before, if very gay.

Hervey ran a hand down each leg. There were no swellings, no windgalls, no blemishes, no heat. He liked her.

‘Thank you. How does she do?’

‘Very well, sir,’ replied Annesley’s man, a youngish dragoon who, though he must know he was selling up the stock, so to speak, seemed nevertheless to be honest enough. ‘She can hot up a bit on oats, sir, but that’s all, I reckon.’

A blood hotting up on oats was not something Hervey found too alarming. And he did like the look of her – more so by the minute. ‘Very well; thank you. You may take her back now. Has anyone else been to see her?’

‘Just an officer from next door, sir.’

‘Next door?’

‘The Germans, sir.’

‘Ah.’

‘But he didn’t say nothing, sir.’

All the same, news would soon get about. He had better go and find Annesley at once. ‘What is her name?’

‘Stella, sir.’

There was nothing in a name, but he liked it nevertheless. He nodded. ‘Thank you.’

As he turned, he saw Serjeant Ellis approaching. There was no avoiding him (it was, he would have to admit, his first instinct), so he thanked the dragoon again and struck off.

At five paces, Ellis threw his head and eyes right in the prescribed fashion and saluted, but without a word.

Hervey returned the salute, adding ‘Good morning, Serjeant Ellis’ in a tone just sufficient to say he had noticed. There was nothing that contravened regulations in Ellis’s salute, but between NCOs and officers in the Sixth there was a common association which required a greeting, and a cordial one at that. With no ‘good morning’, even by return, Hervey knew that Ellis served notice on him.

Indeed, as he walked on, Hervey imagined there was a degree of menace in the manner of their passing. There was nothing material with which he could take issue, though, either directly with Ellis or with his quartermaster. Unlike ‘the affair of the Tantony Pig’, as it was now known. But it set him ill at ease, for an officer must count on the loyalty of the NCOs of whatever troop. Ellis had been formally reprimanded by the commanding officer, and it had been recorded in regimental orders, but it might have gone much worse for him. Did the man believe he had no further prospects, and therefore nothing to lose by taunting a cornet? It was perfectly evident that he was not of a mind to mend his fences.

That evening, Hervey wrote home – a brief yet affectionate letter to his parents with but little detail of his adventures, save to say that he was well and that he was among good friends. And then he took up fresh paper to write at length to Daniel Coates.

Sahagun 23

December 1808

My dear Dan,

I warrant that you will never have heard of the place from which I write this letter, unless the news of our exploits here travels faster than the mails! Two days ago, at day’s break, after a long approach march through a blizzard, Lord Paget led three hundred men of the Fifteenth in a charge against twice that number of French chasseurs and dragoons, and drove them from the field . . .

He strained by the dim light of an oil lamp to write his news. Outside, a thick fog lay like a damp blanket over the countryside, promising additional surprise to the attack on Soult’s camp at first light. The temperature had risen suddenly in the afternoon, just as the fog came down, and the snow had since been turning to a mire. Poor infantry, thought Hervey. Not that many of them, if any, would have chosen to keep their feet dry rather than go at the French now. They would have their fight soon enough, by all accounts, and they could not doubt that it would mean some desperate fighting. There were plenty for whom the bloodier the better. A man in the Seventy-sixth – a regiment as full of wild Irish as any with an Irish name to its title – told Private Sykes they would drink the cellars in Carrion dry before the next day was out. And the Ninety-second were boasting of being in Burgos for Hogmanay, their pockets filled with loot and their bellies with Spanish brandy. But all this was bravado, the stuff of the camp, not of letters home.. . . I believe you would approve of the charger I have today purchased from a poor fellow who is sick of a very virulent fever and is to return to England, though I had to pledge the better part of two hundred guineas of my prospects to secure her. She is as fine a blood as you would see anywhere, and I trust she will carry me fast in and out of danger should I find that to hand (I did not say that I am to do galloper duty for Genl Stewart, who commands the hussar brigade) for I believe we are about to deal a blow to the French that will greatly hasten their departure from the entire Peninsula . . .

He would write four more pages before he retired to his bed, a palliasse, a very great luxury, in the corner of a weaver’s workshop, his fellow troop subalterns occupying the other three. And he would express the same eagerness as the infantry for the offensive come at last, though in terms more measured than noble.

In the Benedictine convent the other side of Sahagun, where Sir John Moore had made his headquarters, Lord Paget was writing too. His letter was to Lord Holland, lately the lord privy seal, and a Whig whose affection for the Spanish Paget now strained to amend:. . . Such ignorance, such deceit, such apathy, such pusillanimity, such cruelty was never before united. There is not one army that has fought at all. There is not one general who has exerted himself. There is not one province that has made any sacrifice whatever . . . The resources of the country are withheld from us. We are roving about the country in search of Quixotic adventures to save our honour, whilst there is not a Spaniard who does not skulk and shrink within himself at the very name of Frenchman.

And in the library at the other end of the convent, which served as Sir John Moore’s office, the commander- in-chief himself was writing, as he had been for much of the afternoon. His letter was to the man who, beyond the French themselves, had vexed him most during the past three months – John Hookham Frere, privy councillor and British minister with the Spanish junta:. . . If the British army were in an Enemy’s country, it could not be more completely left to itself. If the Spaniards are enthusiasts, or much interested in their cause, their conduct is the most extraordinary that ever was exhibited.The movement I am making is of the most dangerous kind. I do not only risk to be surrounded every moment by superior forces, but to have my communications intercepted. I wish it to be apparent to the whole world, as it is to every individual of the army, that we have done everything in our power in support of the Spanish cause, and that we do not abandon it until long after the Spaniards had abandoned us.