Rumours Of War

The promise of action in which they would not take part was little comfort, and the grumbling began again.

*

That night, Hervey wrote to Daniel Coates:My dear Dan,When last I wrote I could not have imagined that our condition could be any worse, but I have to tell you that our army is become a very wretched affair, with much indiscipline and insubordination. The officers complain openly of Sir John Moore, that he has not the stomach to fight the French &c. I, of course, do not know what must be, but I have seen things these past days that almost make me ashamed to bear the name of soldier. The army in general is in a most enfeebled state. I should, of course, say armies, for both redcoat and Spanish alike suffer. Especially are General Romana’s Spaniards truly to be pitied. Today I watched as they stumbled in to the town all morning (to say marched in would have been to travesty the soldier’s term). The poor devils were raveningly hungry, barefoot, and their once fine uniforms in rags. A great many of them had no muskets. A British ensign, attached as an interpreter, told me they fired off all their ammunition just to keep their hands warm. And a good number of them were fevered – typhus fever, it is said. But their delirium looked little different to me from the stupor of our own infantry, too many of whom appeared to have broken into the bodegas and staved in the casks. I have seen them shoot down exhausted bullocks in the street, while they are attached to the cart poles, and then hacked up and wolved with barely a pass through the flame of burning stores and furniture. I should tell you that not all the regiments are in this insolent condition of course. The Guards, as you might imagine, are as steady as ever you saw, and the Scotch for the most part, and the Germans, the 4th King’s Own too, and of course General Craufurd’s light brigade. Our colonel is in a fearful bait lest our men follow suit, but tomorrow Sir John Moore is to have the whole army parade to watch punishment, by which it is hoped that some sense of discipline may be uniformly restored . . .

*

‘Pour encourager les autres,’ said Lieutenant Martyn, very decidedly, on their way to orderly room next morning. ‘Though I myself doubt it will do the least good, judging from the delinquency I saw on my way up. And Edward Paget is to hang two as well, I’ve heard. Though that, I fear, will be not the slightest degree of encouragement either.’

Orderly room proved a sullen affair. ‘They murdered a woman and her children at Benavente,’ the adjutant explained, seeing the looks on the faces of the other subalterns as he gave instructions for the punishment parade.

Hervey’s disquiet was allayed.

‘Very well, gentlemen, that concludes orders,’ said the adjutant, closing his minute book. ‘To your duties.’

The subalterns left with heavy hearts, however. The prospect before them was not agreeable in any degree. It was bad enough that they had to slink away to Corunna without so much as a rearguard, but first having to parade for a hanging, and then watching a procession of the dregs of the army, whom the French had overtaken and cut up, hardly conduced to raise the spirits.

That was not the object, Hervey realized. Colonel Reynell had made the parade’s condign and exemplary purpose clear. In any case, had not Sir Edward Lankester already said that the regiment must look to its own during the weeks to come? Hervey was sure it must be so: the Sixth had always fought well, Sir Edward said, and they were among friends. It was not mere sentiment, he felt sure. For one thing, Sir Edward was not a man given to sentiment, and for another it seemed manifestly true; even allowing for the business of Serjeant Ellis. In any case, friendship did not have to be cloying. The important thing was that if a man wore the figure ‘VI’ on his regimentals he would do all in his power not to shame those who shared that badge. That at least was the regimental ideal, and it worked often enough as not.

*

Quartermaster Banks looked distinctly unfriendly when A Troop paraded an hour later. Had any dragoon shown the merest sign of comradely familiarity his humiliation would have been effected with summary despatch. A tongue-lashing from Quartermaster Banks was not a complete deterrent to delinquency, any more than the cat was a complete deterrent in the flogging regiments, but its effect was none the less for that. Fortunately, this morning every man sensed the quartermaster’s humour, and even the corporals were wary. Why the quartermaster looked so unusually severe was anyone’s guess, but it was not difficult to imagine that with Holland and India to his credit, he was all too aware that it was but a stone’s throw from good order to mutiny. And he, Quartermaster Isaac Banks, would have no stain on his record for such a thing in his troop (Sir Edward Lankester may own the troop in strictly proprietary terms, but it was Izzy Banks’s until he had handed it over to the captain; handed it over not merely in good order but in perfect order).

That had been the message this morning: no explicit order, but the understanding that turn-out was to be beyond mere muster-good. The quartermaster’s eye searched, noted, reproached, approved. Sir Edward Lankester took over a troop the King himself could have inspected. But there were no words, and Lankester led them in silence to the appointed place, where he found the rest of the Sixth already drawn up in two ranks. He formed A on the right of the line, as was their privilege, and reported ‘all present’ to the adjutant.

The town square, a vast fairground in better times, and filled with every type of uniform, was as silent as A Troop’s ride. There was nothing like the proximity of the gallows to still the restless and quieten the wags. Three sides of it were packed four ranks deep with infantry of the Line, while five regiments of cavalry and two battalions of the Guards occupied the other. The gallows, impressed from the civil authorities, towered above the parade, the two condemned men standing rock-like on the scaffold, hands and feet bound, a serjeant with pike on either side of them.

The silence continued a full five minutes. Then there was a sudden cacophony of words of command from every regiment.

‘Sixth Light Dragoons, atte-e-enshun!’

Three hundred sabres came to the perpendicular from the slope. Colonel Reynell dropped his to the salute as Sir John Moore, half a dozen general officers and his staff rode into the square.

General the Honourable Edward Paget, the cavalry commander’s younger brother, lost no time. ‘By the provisions of the Mutiny Act and the Articles of War, I confirm sentence of death passed by field general court martial on Privates Lynch and Terry of the Ninth Regiment of Foot.’

No one had expected Paget to commute the sentence, but the words were terrible to hear nevertheless. Men as well as horses shifted their weight.

‘Provost Marshal, carry out sentence!’

Neither Lynch nor Terry was offered hood or blindfold. They were men under discipline, they had committed murder, and they would face their end squarely.

Hervey strained to see.

A chaplain in Geneva gown said inaudible prayers for a full minute, and it seemed longer. When he was finished, the serjeants tightened the nooses about the men’s necks. Then the provost marshal nodded to his assistant. The corporals pulled the levers.

The two privates, feet lead-weighted, dropped through the trapdoors into the open-front space beneath. Hervey thought he would never be able to describe, or forget, the sharp intake of ten thousand men’s breath. Private Lynch’s rope unravelled on the jib and his body fell too far, almost to the ground, so that his head snapped clean off as the rope jerked, and rolled to a muddy halt in front of the guard at the foot of the scaffold. But that was a mercy compared with Private Terry’s contortions: he struggled a minute and more at the end of his rope until, the air choked off, he at last fell still.

‘Botched,’ muttered Izzy Banks. ‘Both of ’em. Too heavy the one, and not enough the other.’

Those dragoons near him shuddered at their quartermaster’s acquaintance with the finer points of a hanging.

But the provost marshal and his men could scarcely be blamed. They had not hanged anyone since coming to the Peninsula.

‘Carry on, Provost Marshal,’ said Sir John Moore, grimly.

Grimly and, thought those sweats who knew him, dejectedly. It was not the pleasure of a general officer to have men hanged and arraigned when there were the King’s enemies close by.

A sorry-looking procession (‘parade’ would not have served) now began to shuffle through the square, men horribly cut up and mutilated. These were the stragglers, the men who had broken ranks for whatever reason,