On His Majesty's Service

‘Where did you come upon the cow, or was it a goat?’

‘It’s almond milk, sir. I swapped it from a Tartar.’

He smiled to himself. Almond milk – what luxury there could be in fighting in these parts … or India, or the Cape; anywhere the sun shone bright – Gibraltar? What appeal had the ‘hoary-headed frosts’ and ‘contagious fogs’ of Hounslow (and he shivered at the thought of St Petersburg in snow)?

He peered left and right at the shadowy reveille. He could make out nothing beyond his companions, except the noise of an army waking. He had not slept amid so great a number since that day on the ridge of Mont St Jean, when Johnson had brought him tea despite the night’s downpour. What a fight of it they had had the day before, in rain all the way back from Quatre Bras, and then to make a sodden bivouac in the corn, knowing they would fight the battle of their lives in the morning. The rain had stopped with the daylight, and they had got themselves up and into line, and the French had pounded all day, and they had beaten them. A close run thing, the duke had said. No doubt it had been, but victory was victory. And afterwards they had marched sharp on Paris.

And soon they would be standing to here, and within but seven days of that date in 1815, the infantry to their muskets, the cavalry to their horses. Not as many as at Waterloo, nothing like as many, certainly not guns, but if General Diebitsch had his way it would be as capital a battle. And then it would be onwards to Constantinople. From Yeni Bazar to Madara was about eight miles, the same, just about, as from Quatre Bras to Waterloo. But yesterday there had been no rain to dowse them or cavalry to harry them. They had marched beneath an unkind sun, but along a fair road in flat country and perfect peace, and then a mile or so on to the place where Count Pahlen had planted his pennant, a ruined church on prominent ground half-way to the little village of Kulewtscha. It was an admirable post from which to command, protected by a river that looped the promontory – at this season more a muddy stream, but an obstacle of sorts nevertheless.

And here they had rested while Diebitsch and Pahlen conferred, and staff officers came and went. Before them, on the forward slope, posted as guard were five battalions of the Bugskiy Mushketerskiy Polk, the Regiment of the River Bug, men of Ukraine and the descendants of Moldavians, Wallachians and Bulgars who had thrown in with the Tsar in earlier wars against the Turk (though not one battalion numbered more than three hundred, for such had been the sickness before crossing the Danube). A brigade of uhlans were covering, and two troops of artillery. Hervey recalled how the line at Waterloo had been posted thus, but that the duke had pulled them back behind the crest when he saw the massed French batteries. He did not suppose the Turks could muster anything so compelling.

But would he see, when the sun came up, the Russians in their place, as the duke’s men had been? That night before Waterloo they had stumbled, wet and weary, onto the ridge at Mont St Jean, not knowing how many others were there or would come before morning, and then at dawn as they rose from their moist mud beds they had seen in amazement the great assemblage of regiments the length of the ridge as far as the eye could behold – and beyond. The duke’s work, certainly, but his staff’s above all – and they very hastily called together (not least their chief, poor de Lancey, whose bride of but a few weeks nursed him in vain in the days that followed). Diebitsch’s staff were practised, for sure, and had had the marker fires burning as darkness fell.

He smiled as he recalled Agar’s bewilderment of the afternoon: ‘Can the Second Corps be so long in coming up, sir? The road is good. It cannot have been a march of more than three hours. Can they have taken a false turn?’

‘Tell him, Corporal Acton,’ Hervey had said, turning to his coverman, for here was a case of prodigy needing practice.

‘Sir!’

And Acton had turned to the cornet with the relish of an NCO given a class of instruction.

‘It’s like this, Mr Agar, sir. The march takes three hours, say, so the leading rank arrives ’ere three ’ours after setting off. But a corps’s ten thousand men, see – maybe more – so the rear of the column ranks past the finish ’owever long it takes for the ’ole corps to rank past. It’s called the pass time, sir. And for ten thousand infantry it would be at least an hour, not counting the baggage.’

Cornet Agar had looked suitably mortified. ‘Thank you, Corporal; I had not considered it thus. A very elementary point, clearly.’

‘And they’ll need to rest, sir,’ Acton insisted, still relishing his commission. And the rests are added to the pass time, he explained; but in such heat and dust as they’d marched in yesterday there was no alternative, nor to spacing between battalion columns; and then they would have to form up at the end of the march so as to be able to deploy in the right way. There was little prospect, he judged, of more than a division’s worth reaching the field before dusk. The only consolation was that the Turks would not be managing any faster pace, for they had the worst of the going.

And Hervey had praised the exposition.

But when the 2nd Corps had begun arriving, with what spirit it had been! Even he, Hervey, had stood and watched as they marched with a spring in their step, smiling and singing to their appointed musters. These were not the exhausted men of a forced march, as he in his imperfect knowledge of such things might have ordered, nor even, it appeared, the worn-out remnants of last year’s bloody campaign and sickly season; these were men who looked possessed of the ‘first courage’. Perhaps a good many of them were – new recruits and reinforcements who had not yet been shot over. And down they had settled to their dry rations – peas boiled up with whatever scraps of pork were saved from morning – and thought it a feast.

And now, shaved and breakfasted, he climbed a statue atop one of the more substantial graves beside the ruined church as the sun broached the hilly horizon to spy out the field.

There was no sign of Turks. The only movement was that of the pickets making ready to come in. But neither was there sign of the 6th and 7th Corps, Roth’s. And with the 2nd Corps posted well to their right, he realized that he, and Diebitsch and his staff, with just the Regiment of the Bug and a brigade of uhlans, had stood as Roth’s advance guard during the night. It defied all the normal usages, but it had evidently paid off. Diebitsch was a cautious man, not committing himself to a course of action until it was certain what it should be – yet in that caution was there not considerable daring, for to wait was also to risk? Herein, evidently, lay the general-in-chief’s shrewdness; and Hervey marked it well.

In half an hour he was in Diebitsch’s headquarters tent, a thing of some size bedecked with flags, pennants, and coloured bunting, all of which must have risen by the light of torches. Here he found the general in perfect spirits and readying himself for the saddle, surrounded by staff officers looking as keen as he for the off.

The reason was soon apparent. ‘Colonel Hervey, I have just received word that Roth is but a short hour’s march away. Pahlen’s corps will therefore deploy forward to the ground we rode over last night, with an advance guard under General Ostroschenko in Kulewtscha and Tschirkowna.’

Hervey hoped the wretched inhabitants of those two places – what few remained – had taken to some place of safety after seeing the party reconnoitring the villages last evening.

Diebitsch’s voice then changed slightly, to one of speculation. ‘I am also sending General Buturlin in a reconnaissance along the road to Marasch to see if the Vizier makes any attempt to march by that place. Cavalry were observed last night on the heights above Kulewtscha – or so the village elders report. I consider it most unlikely they would come by other than the direct road from Pravadi, but it is as well to be certain. You may accompany if you wish.’

Hervey thanked him. ‘With your leave, General, I should rather remain here where the Turk is expected.’

Diebitsch smiled and said simply, ‘I should consider it a favour if you rode with Buturlin.’

Hervey hoped he did not hesitate; as ever, the invitation of a senior officer, even if not properly his superior, was best taken as an order. Surely Diebitsch did not imply any lack of confidence in Buturlin? Perhaps it was that he wished him to meet this general (was there to be more extolling of life in the service of the Tsar?). ‘I am, of course, happy to oblige, General.’

Diebitsch made light of it by a wave of the hand. ‘And you may of course thereafter ride where you please.’

‘Thank you, General. And, if I may, my compliments to the soldiers of the Tsar in manoeuvring the Vizier thus.’ It was not given for a junior officer to praise a senior, even if the senior were not properly a superior, so praise of his troops was the artful alternative. Artful and heartfelt.

General Diebitsch smiled knowingly. ‘What was it that your Lord Nelson said before the Nile: “Tomorrow it will be a peerage or Westminster Abbey”?’