On His Majesty's Service

decline such an offer of advancement? At the very least it demanded some deliberation.

‘General, you press me on a matter of the profoundest consequence which I beg leave to think over.’

Diebitsch nodded. ‘I would have been offended had you turned it down at once, and suspicious had you accepted likewise.’

Hervey was at least diverted by the knowledge that he had passed the first test of Russian generalship. He bowed.

Diebitsch rose. Hervey followed, expecting to be dismissed, but was beckoned instead to a map table. ‘Let me apprise you of the situation facing the army of His Imperial Majesty in the seat of war before Constantinople.’

Hervey, trying hard to put the momentous promise of generalship and military honours from his mind, was flattered to a high degree by this admittance to the realm of strategy. He felt certain, now, that all that had recently gone before – Princess Lieven, the Cossack patrol, the affair of the redoubts – was justified: Lord Hill could not have wished him to be in any other position but this – to have gained the confidence of the Tsar’s general-in-chief.

Diebitsch’s air of assurance was arresting, even as he pointed on the map to the trials that must lie ahead. Between his army and the Sultan’s capital lay first the Danube, deep and wide, with the formidable defences of Silistria still in Turk hands. A hundred miles distant, the Balkan mountains lay square across his path, impassable but in a handful of places. And guardian of those crossing places, standing like Cerberus at the gates of Hades, was the fortress of Shumla, greater perhaps than Silistria. Yet even with the passes forced, there still lay ahead a march of two hundred and fifty miles, open plain for the most part (Hervey had ridden a corner of it with the Cossacks) that could scarcely go uncontested by the Turks. Hervey vaguely recalled that the Balkan was called Mons Haemus because the Greek word for blood was (haema); and he could not but think, seeing on the map what the Tsar’s soldiers would be put to accomplish, that the name was prophetic.

His unease was evident. ‘I will not sport with you, Colonel Hervey; the previous season did not go well – to which I owe my present advancement, as doubtless every camp tattler would tell you. And then many men were carried off by the frosts and the plague. I have spent the latter part of the winter garnering the army’s strength, which is why I have opened offensive operations later in the season than I should have liked – that and the infernal bad weather of late, which has swelled the Danube and washed away the roads.’

Hervey nodded gravely; here was uncommon candour. ‘Is it true – may I ask – that the loss of horses was even more grievous?’

‘It is true. And I have had to bring remounts from the furthest pastures of Russia. And camels from the desert regions – two thousand Turcomans – as well as draught oxen, whose meat we shall take when their work is done. I have, now, a hundred and forty thousand cavalry and infantry, and five hundred artillery pieces in addition to those with the Cossacks. I have two months’ rations and warlike stores in the depots at Varna and here before Silistria. The navy is at my command, as you have seen, and I am confident that not a ship shall venture from the Golden Horn and do us harm.’

Hervey did not doubt it. Perhaps the Sultan feared repeat of the losses he had suffered at Navarino (not for the first time did he think it singular that he should become engaged in the same theatre of war as his old friend Peto). But whatever the reason, in more than two months he had not seen a single Turkish ship.

‘Shall you make any further landing than at Siseboli?’ he asked.

‘No. I shall not dissipate our strength. My intention is to bring the main force to battle in the field, then reduce Silistria and Shumla before what remains of the field army and their garrison is able to withdraw into the Balkan passes. Then I shall march hard on Adrianople. Siseboli shall be my base of supply once we have forced the Balkan. Despite what has gone before, I do not consider the task a difficult one. The Turkish soldier, although he has fought bravely and endured much, is become … bedrukt.’

Bedrukt – despondent, downhearted. There was without doubt something amiss in the fighting spirit of the Sultan’s army. Would the Janissaries have let Siseboli stand as a rebuke to them? Not the Janissaries of old. And yet here they stood, reviewing the coming campaign, not within the walls of Silistria but without. Hervey nodded, but cautiously. ‘There was nothing of elan in their action at Siseboli, or before.’

Diebitsch nodded. ‘It is, they say, in the Turk nature – a tendency to fatalismus. And it is my intention to persuade them of their inevitable fate, and quickly.’

‘General – you will forgive me if I appear impudent – but are there more solid grounds for believing the Turks will not fight as once they did? Especially once we – you – cross the Danube.’

Diebitsch nodded thoughtfully (and smiled to himself, for he ought to have expected as much from a man he wished to make major-general). ‘My spies report that there have not been the reinforcements from the west on which the Sultan was counting. The Servians and Arnauts have sent but few, and the Bosnians, the best of their auxiliaries, none at all.’

Hervey nodded too. ‘That would indeed bear on their fighting spirit.’

‘And I believe they have lately made a grave mistake, which I am now about to take advantage of.’ Diebitsch pointed to Shumla on the map. ‘Here the main Turk force has been assembling since the snows were past, and Reschid Pasha, the new Vizier, arrived at the end of March to take personal command. You are aware of his aptitude?’

‘Yes,’ said Hervey: the reputation of General Reschid was well known to London from his campaign against the Greeks in Morea.

‘But I perceive in this a measure of alarm,’ continued Diebitsch. ‘You may not know it, but Reschid is the son of an Orthodox priest, a Greek. He was made captive as a child, then rose by sheer capability – the Sultan’s first minister, a remarkable transformation. Yet I wonder if the Sultan or any other can have complete trust in his loyalty. That is something on which it is futile to speculate, but it may from time to time impel him to action in order to prove it. In any case, he has miscalculated. General Roth, a capable man despite the reverses of last season, of his own initiative has placed a force of two corps before Shumla – they wintered in Roumelia – and a line of defensible posts between there and Rustchuk, which is the westernmost Turk garrison of any importance. And I have now a line of Cossack patrols between Pravadi and Turtokai here on the Danube,’ (he pointed to the latter fortress, almost equidistant between Silistria and Rustchuk) ‘so that, in truth, the country of the Dobrudscha, though it is not yet ours, is denied to the Turks. The Dobrudscha is good farmland, valuable to the army. And to there,’ (pointing to Rasgrad, half-way between Rustchuk and Shumla) ‘my headquarters are being transferred as we speak.’

‘Before Silistria falls?’

‘Silistria is now surely invested. Its garrison is made prisoner. And – here is the point – the more so for Reschid’s miscalculation: he attempted to recover Pravadi two weeks ago, but his letter to the Pasha at Rustchuk, to send troops to his assistance, was intercepted by my Cossacks, and so Reschid was thrown back. But because he has a reputation to maintain – and perhaps that need to reassure the Sultan – he now marches thither again with the whole garrison of Shumla.’

Hervey could see the opportunity in this, but it would be to no avail if the Turks were simply to entrench themselves at Pravadi instead of Shumla. ‘Can Pravadi stand in the face of such numbers?’

‘It has been most carefully fortified since we captured it.’ Diebitsch took an engineer sketch from beneath the map. ‘An inundation here,’ he went on, pointing, ‘covered by a battery, protects the northern side of the town. There is a hornwork constructed on the commanding ground to the west, here, while the town itself is surrounded by a wall flanked with tenailles, so that although it rests in a deepish sort of valley, it is perfectly defensible.’

‘How strong is the garrison, General?’

Diebitsch paused only momentarily before disclosing the number. ‘Eight thousand. With some of my best engineers.’

‘So I take it you intend besieging Reschid as he himself besieges?’ Hervey smiled. ‘Like the Gauls laying siege to Caesar as he laid siege to Alesia?’

Diebitsch looked at him warily.

‘I did not mean to suggest that yours would be the fate of the Gauls, General,’ added Hervey quickly. ‘Only that the ground and the situation seem greatly to your favour.’

Diebitsch shook his head. ‘I have done with sieges. I shall force Reschid to withdraw once more to Shumla, and in that withdrawal I shall destroy him in the open. Upon that battle the key to the Balkan lock shall turn.’