On His Majesty's Service

the duke, too.’

There was no more approbation that Hervey could have wished for. ‘That is gratifying.’

Howard now brightened. ‘But see, this news of command – splendid, splendid!’

Hervey smiled likewise. ‘It is splendid news indeed, though it would be more so if the regiment were not reduced.’

‘Oh, so you’re not acquainted with recent events?’

Hervey quickened. ‘As you perceive.’

‘The estimates have been restored, and with interest. Such a year of trouble it’s been: Ireland, the manufacturing districts – even violence in the country. Not only are the Sixth and the others to have been reduced restored to full strength, an extra troop is added to the establishment.’

A year of trouble: Hervey could only be thankful – Reform, Catholics, Luddites or whatever they were. He smiled broadly as the full measure of his restoration was revealed. ‘An ill wind.’

Howard smiled again. ‘Quite. I raised a glass in White’s to the place across the road when I heard the news.’

‘Brooks’s?’

‘Why not? The Reformists raised their standard there.’

‘An ill wind indeed!’

‘Dine with me tonight – and Fairbrother. Where is he?’

‘Resting after his bath. He’d be delighted to dine. At White’s? The name amuses him.’

‘He’s a good fellow. Shall he return to the Cape?’

‘I very much hope not. I tell you frankly, I’ll have need of him at Hounslow.’

The coffee was brought, two cups. Howard took his, sat back and contemplated his old friend admiringly. Then he took a leather case from his pocket. ‘Lord Hol’ness left this in my charge for you.’

Hervey opened it. The gilt shone bright. ‘You’ll know what it is? The gorget worn by the Sixth’s first lieutenant-colonel. It’s been passed to every one since.’

‘Hol’ness said it had been his greatest wish to pass it to you in person.’

Hervey smiled, but a little wryly. ‘That, indeed, would have been to break with tradition rather. But it was very decent of him to say so – the major-general.’

Howard leaned back in his chair again. ‘You’ll have the devil of a year ahead if things go on as they are. I wonder how you’ll do it; I shall watch keenly from the vantage of the Horse Guards. What first, I wonder?’

‘That is very simple – promote my groom to corporal.’

Howard smiled. ‘Corporal Johnson. After all these years. How droll! He’s well, then?’

‘At this moment he’s probably roundly cursing me atop a waggon full of baggage on the Dover road. But see, when do you think I might call on Lord Hill?’

‘Tomorrow morning.’

‘So soon? I’d have imagined his day replete enough with these troubles.’

‘I shall arrange some respite. And you must then, of course, go and see the fellows who disburse the Secret Vote. They’re much interested in your acquaintance with Muffling, and this Moltke – and, of course, Princess Lieven. Shrewd of you to chronicle your contact with her as you did.’

‘It’s just that I must go and see Agar’s people before I get myself to Hounslow.’

‘Of course … You know, by the way, that Lord George Irvine is here?’

Hervey brightened. ‘I did not.’

‘Recalled for consultation with Lord Hill on the Irish trouble.’

This was news of the very best: he would be able to call on the Sixth’s Colonel – under whom he had served since a cornet – before, so to speak, walking on to parade; as was only proper. ‘Capital.’

Howard turned somewhat solemn. ‘No doubt you’ll want to call on all manner of people – take leave, by rights. But as far as the Horse Guards is concerned, you’ve been commanding for three months already. Don’t tarry too long.’

Hervey frowned. ‘The troubles, you mean?’

Howard laughed, put down his cup and clapped a hand to Hervey’s shoulder. ‘My dear old friend, I mean that I’m sure you shan’t have an eternity to enjoy it. I’ll wager it won’t be long before the Gazette is printing someone else’s name “vice Hervey, who is promoted Major- General!”’

HISTORICAL AFTERNOTE

Although the action of On His Majesty’s Service takes place largely in the Balkan mountains and Roumelia, the war of 1828–9 ranged wider: there was fighting in Asiatic Turkey, and a deal of ‘tidying up’ in the Caucasus in the aftermath of Russia’s war with Persia (1826–8). The Treaty of Adrianople (the city is now called Edirne) was eventually signed on Russia’s behalf on 2/14 September 1829 by Count Aleksey Orlov, who, incidentally, would also be the Russian plenipotentiary at the Treaty of Paris in 1856, which brought an end to the Crimean War. By the treaty, Russia gained the Danube delta and virtually the whole of the eastern coast of the Black Sea, and the Porte acknowledged the annexation of Georgia and the principal Transcaucasian khanates which Persia had ceded by the Treaty of Turkmanchay the year before. Russian subjects were granted free trade throughout Turkish territory, and passage of the Bosporus and Dardanelles was conceded to Russian and other foreign trading vessels. The Porte granted autonomy to Moldavia and Wallachia, with Russia as guarantor, and confirmed the obligation under the Akkerman Treaty of 1826 to observe the autonomy of Serbia. Tsar Nicholas elevated General Diebitsch to the title Count Diebitsch-Zabalkansky.

But this was a complicated region, as of course it remains. There is no shortage of books that promise to enlighten, but one of the most recent and thought-provoking is from the pen of that most entertaining of contrarians, Norman Stone, whose Turkey, A Short History (Thames and Hudson, 2011) is a corrective to the attitude of Hervey’s time, that, in Professor Stone’s words, ‘Being anti-Turkish [was] “tone”’. In large measure this anti-Turk sentiment was on account of philhellenism, of which Lord Byron was leader among the European Romantics until his death at Messolonghi in 1824. Cooler heads, such as the Duke of Wellington, were more concerned about the growth of Russian power in the Levant¹ as the Ottoman Empire weakened (Turkey would soon be referred to as the ‘sick man of Europe’). Within two years of the treaty, Mehmet Ali of Egypt, an Ottoman vassal, with French backing invaded Syria. The Sultan’s army failed once again, and Egyptian troops were soon threatening Constantinople itself. This presented the Tsar with a problem: Turkey, the hereditary enemy, risked falling into the hands of an ally of France, and this he could not afford. Russian troops therefore camped outside Constantinople as allies of the Porte (‘A drowning man will cling to a serpent,’ said the Sultan). In May 1833 the Egyptians withdrew from Turkish soil, but kept control of Syria, Palestine and Arabia. In July a further Russo- Turkish treaty was concluded, that of Unkiar Skelessi – as once every schoolboy spelled it, but which now must be rendered as Hunkar skelesi (in the same unpoetic way that Bombay is now rendered unhistorically and ultra-nationally as Mumbai, and, worse, Madras as Chennai). The treaty was one of mutual assistance in the event of attack by a foreign power, which in the case of the Porte was limited to closing the Dardanelles to all non-Russian ships.

Britain (and France) was suspicious, even alarmed, that the treaty gave Russian warships passage through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and her efforts to clarify the status of these two narrow stretches of strategic water culminated in the (London) Straits Convention of 1841, which closed them to warships of any nation except those of the allies of the Porte in wartime.

War between Russia and Turkey broke out again in 1853 for reasons that Professor Stone calls ‘surreal’ (these, he writes, ‘lay ostensibly in Jerusalem, and concerned the guardianship of the Holy Places of Christianity’). In 1854 Britain and France, and later Italy (Sardinia), joined the war on the side of the Porte. The Russians occupied Moldavia and Wallachia, and in the spring of 1854 invested Silistria once again and crossed the Danube into the Dobrudscha. An Anglo-French force (an astonishing innovation) landed at Varna in June, and the Light Brigade, under the command of Lord Cardigan, made a three-hundred-mile reconnaissance of the Danube and its environs, including Silistria and Shumla, in seventeen days (the ‘Sore Back Reconnaissance’). It found no Russians –