An Infamous Army (10 page)

"Above all things!"

"You have not met my brother and his wife, I think? They are holding a soiree here tomorrow evening. It will be confoundedly boring, but come!"

"Thank you: I shall not fail."

A few minutes later, Barbara dropped into a chair at her brother's breakfast table, and tossed her forage cap on to another. Vidal said peevishly: "I suppose you have been making yourself remarkable. If you choose to ride out before breakfast, you may for all I care, but I wish you will not go unescorted!"

"No such thing! I was escorted - I was doubly escorted! Tell me all you know of Charles Audley, Robert."

"I don't know anything of him. How should I?"

"A younger son, with no prospects," said Augusta trenchantly.

"But with such charm of manner, Gussie!"

"I daresay."

"And such delightful smiling eyes!"

"Good God, Bab, what is all this?"

"Oh, I have had the most enchanting morning!" Barbara sighed. "They rode on either side of me, Etienne and this new suitor of mine, and how they disliked one another! I have invited Charles Audley to your party, by the way."

"Oh, very well! But what is the matter with you? What is there in all this to put you in such spirits?"

"I have lost my heart - to a younger son!"

"Now you are being absurd. You will be tired of him in a week," said Augusta with a shrug.

CHAPTER FIVE

From the Rue Ducale, with its houses facing the Park and backing on to the ramparts of the town, to Worth's residence off the Rue de Bellevue, was not far. Colonel Audley arrived in good time for breakfast, laughing off his sister-in-law's demand to know what could have possessed him to ride out so early after a late night, listened meekly to some pithy comments from his brother on his appropriation of the Doll, swallowed his breakfast, and made off on foot to the Duke of Wellington's Headquarters in the Rue Royale. This broad street lay on the opposite side of the Park to the Rue Ducale, its houses overlooking it. Two of these made up the British Headquarters, but the guard posted outside consisted merely of Belgian gendarmerie, the Duke, whose tact in handling foreigners rarely deserted him, having professed himself perfectly satisfied with such an arrangement.

The Duke, when Colonel Audley arrived, was closeted with the Prince of Orange, who had brought with him a welter of reports, letters for his Grace from Lord Bathurst, the English Secretary for War, and his own instructions from the British Commander-in-Chief, his Royal Highness the Duke of York. Colonel Audley, learning of this circumstance from Lord march, whom he met in the hall, ran upstairs to a large apartment on the first floor overlooking the Park, where he found two of his fellow aides-de-camp, in curiously informal attire, kicking their heels.

A stranger, unaware of the Duke of Wellington's indifference to the manner in which his officers chose to dress themselves, might have found it difficult that either of the two gentlemen in the outer office could be n aide-de-camp on duty. Fremantle, lounging in a chair with his legs thrust out before him, was certainly wearing a frock-coat, but had no sash; while Colonel the Honourable Sir Alexander Gordon, who was seated by the window, engaged in waving to acquaintances passing in the street below, was frankly civilian in appearance, his frock-coat being (he said) quite unfit for further service.

Fremantle was looking harassed, but Gordon's sunny temper seemed to be unimpaired.

"In the immortal words of our colleague, Colin Campbell," he was saying, as Colonel Audley strolled in."Don't be so damned cheerful!" begged Fremantle. His jaundiced eye alighted on Colonel Audley's immaculate staff dress. "Lord, aren't we military this morning!" he remarked. "That ought to please the Beau we have had one snap already about officers presenting themselves for duty in improper dress."

"Oh!" said Audley. "Crusty, is he?"

"Yes, and he'll be worse by the time he's done with Slender Billy's lists and requisitions and morning states," replied Fremantle, with a jerk of his head towards the door leading to the Duke's office.

Gordon, who was looking down into the street, announced: "Here comes old Lowe. I wonder whether he's realised yet that the Duke doesn't like being told how he ought to equip his army? Someone ought to drop him a hint."

"Fidgety old fool!" said Fremantle. "There'll be an explosion if he cites the Prussians to the Beau again. I'm glad I'm not going to Ghent."

"Ghent? Who is going to Ghent?" asked Audley.

"You are, my boy," replied Fremantle comfortably.

"When?"

"Tonight or tomorrow. Don't know for certain. The news is that Harrowby and Torrens are arriving from London today for a conference with the Duke. He is going with them to Ghent, to pay his respects to the French king."

"Damnation!" exclaimed Audley. "Why the devil must it be me?"

"Ask his lordship. Daresay he noticed your fine new dress uniform last night. He must know mine ain't fit to be taken into Court circles. Why shouldn't you want to go to Ghent, anyway? Very nice place, so I'm told."

"He's got an assignation with the Fatal Widow!" said Gordon. "That's why he's so beautifully dressed! New boots too. And just look at our elegant sash!"

Colonel Audley was saved from further ribaldry by the sudden opening of the door into the inner sanctum. The Duke came out, escorting the Prince of Orange. He did not, at first glance, appear to be out of humour, nor did the Prince bear the pallid look of one who had had the ill-luck to find his Grace in a bad temper.

However, when the Duke returned from seeing his youthful visitor off, there was a frosty look in his eye, and no trace of the joviality which had surprised Lady Worth at the Hotel de Ville. He had, at the fete, given everyone to understand that he was entirely carefree, and perfectly satisfied with all the preparations for war which had been made.

But the Duke at a ball and the Duke in his office were two very different persons. Lord Bathurst, in London, had been quite anxious to see him at the head of the Army as any in Brussels, but Lord Bathurst was shortly going to be made to realise that his Grace's arrival in Belgium was not to be a matter of unmixed joy for officials at home.

For the Duke was not in the least satisfied with the preparations he found, and did not hesitate to inform Lord Bathurst that he considered the Army to be in a bad way. He had received disquieting accounts of the Belgian troops, thought the English not what they ought to be, and expressed a wish to have forty thousand good British infantry sent him, with not less than a hundred and fifty pieces of field artillery, fully Horsed. It did not appear to his Grace that a clear view of the situation was being taken in England. "You have not called out the militia, or announced such an Intention in your message to Parliament," he complained. "… and how we are to make out 150,000 men, or even the 60,000 of the defensive part of the treaty of Chaumont, appears not to have been considered." His boldly-flowing pen travelled on faster. He wanted, besides good British infantry, spring wagons, musketball cartridge carts, entrenching-tool carts, the whole Corps of Sappers and Miners, all the Staff Corps, and forty pontoons, immediately, fully horsed. "Without these equipments," he concluded bluntly, "military operations are out of the question."

Yes, the Duke might not yet have taken over the command of the Army, but he was already making his presence felt. General Count von Gneisenau, the Prussian Chief-of-Staff, whom his Grace had visited at Aix-la-Chapelle on his journey from Vienna, also had a letter, written in firm French, to digest. General Gneisenau had proposed a plan, in the event of an attack by the French, of which the Duke flatly disapproved. Nothing could have been more civil than the letter the Duke wrote from Brussels on April 5th, presenting a counter-plan for the General's consideration, but if his Excellency, reading those polite phrases, imagined that a request to him to "take these reasons into consideration, and to let me know your determination," meant that his lordship was prepared to follow any other military determination than his own, he had a great deal yet to learn of the Duke's character.

A copy of this suave missive was enclosed in the despatch to Bathurst, a formal note sent off to the Duke of Brunswick, and the returns presented by the Prince spread out on the table.

The Duke's aides-de-camp might groan at his crustiness, but no one could deny that there was enough to try the patience of even the sweetest tempered general.

Of his Peninsular veterans only a small percentage was to be found in Belgium, the rest being still in America. His quartermaster-general was also in America, and in his place he found Sir Hudson Lowe, who was a stranger to him, and, however able an officer, not in the least the sort of man he wanted to have under him. The Prussians were going to be difficult too; General Gneisenau, a person of somewhat rough manners, evidently mistrusted him; and the Commissioner, General von Roder, was doing nothing to promote a good understanding between the twoheadquarters. That would have to be attended to: probably matters would go more smoothly now that old Blucher was to take over the command from Kleist; but the hostility of the King of the Netherlands towards his Prussian allies meant that his lordship would have the devil of a task to keep the peace between them. He suspected that King William was going to prove himself an impossible fellow to deal with, while as for the Dutch-Belgic troops, a more disaffected set he hoped to see. The only hope of making something of them would be to mix them with his own men, but it was plain that that suggestion had not been liked. Then there was the Prince of Orange, a nice enough boy, and with a good understanding, but quite inexperienced.He would have to be given a command, of course: that was inevitable, but damned unfortunate. It was a a maxim of the Duke's that an army of stags commanded a lion was better than an army of lions commanded by a stag. The Prince would have to be kept as much under his own eye as possible. He must be warned moreover, to be on his guard with several of his generals. But he had a good man in Constant de Rebecque, and another in General Perponcher, who had seen service with the British in the Peninsula, and had done well with the Portuguese Legion formed at Oporto in 1808.

"Your Lordship's presence is extremely necessary to combine the measures of the heterogeneous force which is destined to defend this country," had written Sir Charles Stuart, and it did not seem that he had exaggerated the difficulties of the situation. When the Anglo-Allied Army was at last brought together it would be found to be heterogeneous enough to daunt any commander with less cool confidence than the Duke. A large proportion of the force would consist of Dutch-Belgic troops, many of them veterans who had fought under the Eagles, and as many more young soldiers never before under fire. In addition, a contingent from Nassau had been promised; and the Duke of Brunswick, the Princess of Wales's brother, was to place himself and his Black Brunswickers at the Duke's orders. There was to be a Hanoverian contingent also, tolerably good troops: but his lordship had found in Spain that the Germans had a shockingly bad habit of deserting, which made them troublesome. That did not apply so much to the King's German Legion, of course: those stout soldiers were as good as any English ones; and they had good commanders too: Count Alten; old Arendtschildt, the model of a hussar leader; Ompteda, with his large dreamy eyes at such odd variance with his soldierly ability; Du Plat, always to be relied on to keep his head. His lordship was not so sure of this new fellow, Major-General Dornberg, commanding a brigade of Light Dragoons; his lordship was not acquainted with him, and in his present mood nis lordship was not inclined to look favourably upon strangers.