Man Of War

Hervey, though taken by surprise, and not knowing whether the recognition was by way of approval or otherwise, answered clearly (and some thought a shade defiantly), ‘Your Majesty.’

After a further interminable moment, the King made an unmistakable bow of dismissal. Hervey saluted, reined back three steps, turned to the right and began his return to the rear. As he passed the first of the two carriages – a pony phaeton – drawn forward of the rest, he turned his head left and saluted. Its occupant, a child of about Georgiana’s age, with long ringlets and a large velvet cap, smiled. Hervey, taken by pleasant surprise (a relief following the King’s uncongeniality), returned the smile with a will, which he then found himself embarrassed by when turning his salute to the occupant of the second carriage, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Coburg. She looked at him with amusement, having seen the smile which Princess Victoria had drawn, as if in some conspiracy of indiscipline. It was a look he might have seen in the face of Henrietta.

When all the officers had been presented, and had retaken their places – Fairbrother the last – the King and his party began taking their leave.

‘Dragoons, three cheers for His Majesty the King: hip, hip, hip!’

‘Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!’

The carriages wheeled right, the King raised his hat, and the trumpeters sounded the royal salute.

‘Not an especially happy king, I should say,’ suggested Hervey, recovering his sabre.

‘I do not suppose I would know,’ replied Fairbrother, a little archly. ‘Was the “Merry Monarch” so very cheery?’

‘You are at times very contrary.’

‘I could not admit it. But I would say that Princess Augusta will be an adornment to you all.’

When the formal dismissals were made, Lord Holderness assembled his principal officers under one of the many great elms in the home park, and read them the general’s orders for the manoeuvres:

Information. The enemy is in possession of the whole of the country to the North of the R. Thames, and has a lodgement to the depth of half of one mile to the South of the bridge at Dorney. All other bridges up and downstream to a distance of thirty miles are destroyed.Intention. 6th Lt Dgns accompanied by section of 1st (Chestnut) Trp RHA are to seize the bridge at Dorney by first light tomorrow and hold it until relieved. In the event that the bridge cannot be held against superior forces, it is to be destroyed . . .

He continued through the various special instructions, the method of communicating with the divisional headquarters (as the general’s orderly room was to be known), the limits of manoeuvre, paroles and the like. Hervey could not but mark how different was the scene from the old days, in the Peninsula and Belgium, for every officer was studying his map, and a good map too – one of the Ordnance Survey’s admirable new sheets. They had had nothing its like in the French war.

‘How great an obstacle is the river?’ whispered Fairbrother. The two sat to the rear of the active officers (his friend already beginning to fret at his status as a mere observer).

‘You saw it as we crossed at Eton, though not so wide as there,’ whispered Hervey in reply. ‘But the rain will have swelled it to some consequence.’

Lord Holderness now laid aside the orders. ‘Well, gentlemen, as you perceive, a straightforward enough assignment, though by no means easy – which, I conclude, is the general’s purpose. We have a bridge to capture, three or so leagues upstream, and by five o’clock tomorrow morning. That is the long and the short of it. I would hear your opinion in the matter.’

It was not unknown for a commanding officer to consult with his troop leaders before action; nevertheless Hervey thought such candour augured well, for many a new man (and this was Lord Holderness’s first manoeuvres with the regiment) would have wished to display early his own mind and will.

Captain Myles Vanneck, in temporary command of First Squadron, spoke at once to the essence of the matter. ‘Colonel, do we believe the “enemy” is of a mind that the river is impassable? Since if he does, he will expect that we have no option but to make a direct assault on the bridge.’

Lord Holderness nodded. ‘As soon as I learned the general scheme of things this morning I sent the riding- master and his staff to reconnoitre the river as far as they might, and to look for boats. They report that every one has been tied up on the far bank or else placed in bond, so to speak, by the general’s staff. The riding-master believes that swimming is too perilous an undertaking: the river is swelled to a great speed. He likens it to the Esla.’

There were few in that gathering who had been at the near-disastrous crossing of the Esla that day, fifteen years ago, when the Duke of Wellington began his final push to evict the French from Spain, but ‘Esla’ was seared deep in the collective memory of the regiment. And it was not, after all, a true enemy that was to be attacked: was the enterprise worth a single dragoon’s life? Hervey was keen to hear the verdict.

‘It seems to me,’ said Captain Christopher Worsley, in temporary command of Second Squadron, ‘that it is above all a test of our powers of eclairage in the dark, if such a word is not thereby inappropriate.’

Lord Holderness smiled. ‘I think, in a way, the word is really most apposite. Shall we say au clair de la lune?’

There was polite laughter.

Fairbrother was intrigued by the jousting; but Christopher Worsley, he knew, had been with Hervey at Waltham Abbey – had been shot down, indeed – and by comparison, a ride through the night in peaceable Berkshire must be nothing. ‘There is a moon, I take it?’ he whispered.

They had not seen it in a week, but the tables declared there to be one. ‘Yes; and fullish,’ replied Hervey.

Myles Vanneck spoke again. ‘But we may expect for sure that the Grenadiers will be picketing every approach to the bridge. One of their company officers told me they would be nine-hundred strong in the field.’ The First Guards, the Grenadiers, were the principal element of the opposing forces, and Vanneck did not underestimate them, for all that their days were tied to parades in the capital. ‘Do we know where the rest of the GOC’s force is, Colonel?’

‘Yes,’ said Lord Holderness assuredly. ‘They do not march from their barracks until tomorrow morning. These are preliminary trials for us and the Grenadiers, since we had no field inspection last year. It is, in truth, a contest of horse and foot. We and the Guards shall have the general’s undivided attention for a full twenty-four hours.’

‘Do we have any information regarding what else the Grenadiers may be doing, or are they entirely disposed to keeping us from the bridge?’

‘I am proceeding on that assumption,’ replied Holderness. ‘If they have other assignments then that is to our advantage. But the ratio, as you perceive, is three-to-one against us, and we the attacking force. Not what the strategian would call favourable.’

‘But we have the initiative,’ suggested Vanneck.

‘We do,’ agreed Worsley. ‘But we need more of it. Do they have any guns?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Holderness. ‘But we may learn more when we meet with the Chestnuts in one hour.’

The little group fell silent.

‘What is your opinion, Hervey?’ asked Lord Holderness, raising his voice slightly to include his erstwhile second in command.

Hervey could see no immediate course but the application of ruthless logic. A direct assault was impossible: the odds were too strongly against them, even (perhaps especially) at night. Yet if there were nine hundred Grenadiers within half an hour’s forced march of the bridge (as must be assumed), then it would avail the regiment nothing to capture it too early by, as the French called it, coup de main, for a determined counter-attack would hurl any but the strongest force from the bridge. If, however, the coup de main were left until the last minute – until just before first light – there would be no time for a secondary plan to be put into action if that were to fail. The only conclusion possible was that coup de main must be combined with ruse de guerre. But how, he could not yet fathom.

‘I see no alternative to getting across the river between here and Dorney, Colonel, and making a surprise