Allan Mallinson: A Regimental Affair

To

The late Colonel George Stephen,

sometime commanding officer 13th/18th Royal Hussars

(Queen Mary’s Own) and, ‘from time to time in such other regiments

and corps as Her Majesty directs’, a Cameronian and a Grey.

‘What a Go!’

‘Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer,’ wrote William Cecil, Lord Burghley. At the end of every war, a grateful British nation has dismissed its surplus soldiers, and usually with indifference. One has only to look back not ten years, to the end of the Cold War, to see how ill-used a soldier can be when his arms are no longer required. Invariably, too, the calculation proves wrong and a shortage of soldiers soon follows — as was the case with the 1992 reductions.

After Waterloo there was a wholesale disbanding of regiments. Unlike 1992, however, when the cavalry — or, more properly, the Royal Armoured Corps — was all but eviscerated, the Duke of Wellington’s horsed regiments escaped the worst for a time because they were needed to deal with civil disturbances at home, there being no proper police force. On the whole they found it disagreeable work, as soldiers still do. One of the reasons was that their legal position was often ambiguous. I commend two books on this fascinating subject to those who would read more. First is Military Intervention in Democratic Societies (Croom Helm, 1985), a scholarly collection of essays edited by Peter Rowe and Christopher Whelan. Second is Military Intervention in Britain, from the Gordon Riots to the Gibraltar Incident (Routledge, 1990). Its author, Anthony Babington, is a retired circuit judge with wartime military service, and it is a most authoritative and lively account of the soldier’s tribulations in aid of the civil power.

I am indebted to the staff of the Prince Consort’s Library at Aldershot, who have been most generous in searching out books and material. Again I owe many thanks to the two retired officers who keep the Small Arms Collection at the School of Infantry in Warminster, Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Tug’ Wilson and Major John Oldfield. I gratefully acknowledge, as before, my wife’s equestrian advice, and now my younger daughter’s help with the early manuscript. Fortune continues to smile on me with editors, too, for after Ursula Mackenzie’s leaving Transworld for greater things, my publishers took on strength Selina Walker, a woman of such apt cavalry credentials that the departure of Ursula (who taught me a great deal) was in the end bearable. And Simon Thorogood persists in his patient, painstaking way to serve the manuscripts and me admirably.

While I was writing this book, the man who gave my military life the greatest turn, and without whom Matthew Hervey would therefore never have been, died prematurely. I dedicate A Regimental Affair to him, with thankfulness and fond memories.

At the commencement of the present reign, and indeed thirty or forty years ago, peace officers were seen keeping order among the crowd, but now not a court-day passes without a strong military force being stationed on the public highway.

Henry Brougham MP,

future Whig Lord Chancellor

I found myself obliged, by every tie of duty and affection to my people, to suppress in every part those rebellious insurrections and to provide for the public safety by the most effectual and immediate application of the force entrusted to me by Parliament.

His Majesty King George III,

Debate on the King’s Speech from the Throne, Parliament,

June 1780

The Horse Guards, 12 March 1817

Five major generals — so much scarlet and gold that the usually sombre meeting room of the commander-in-chief’s headquarters was for once a place of colour — sat in comfortable upholstered chairs at a long baize-covered table, their chairman, Sir Loftus Wake, Bart., the Vice Adjutant General, at the head, while on upright chairs at the wall perched the Duke of York’s military secretary and two clerks. The atmosphere was somnolent despite the morning hour. In front of each general officer lay a blue vellum portfolio tied with red silk, as well as paper, pencils and a coffee cup of delicate pink Rockingham, rather out of place. Some of the cups were empty, and were being attended to by a footman in court livery. Major-General the Lord Dunseath, a dyspeptic-looking man with a purple nose, waved him aside without a word, intent on some detail in his copy of The Times . The footman next proffered his coffee pot to Sir Archibald Barret, KG, a kind-faced man in spite of his eyepatch, who merely sighed and declined with the same breath. Major-General the Earl of Rotheram, noble-browed, a picture of decency, lit a cigar instead, but Sir Francis Evans, Kt, crabbed and lacking any appreciable chin, with an ear that was turned forward like a tailor’s tab, accepted more of the strong araba and took out his snuffbox. The footman hesitated by the next, empty, chair and then moved to replenish Sir Loftus’s cup.

Sir Loftus Wake resembled a small garden bird in both looks and animation. His frame was spare indeed, and his eyes — his whole head — darted from papers to watch, from watch to door and then back again with the speed and regularity with which small birds must search about constantly for predators. He stared again at the empty chair and then at his half-hunter. ‘It is a quarter past. Where can Sir Horace be?’

Lord Dunseath, his nose always a beacon of his disposition, put down his newspaper and made a loud huffing sound. ‘Well, if he’s trying to come through the City he’ll never get here. They’re hanging that caitiff Cashman at Newgate this morning. The Times says a crowd’s expected. A mob more like, I’ll warrant! I trust you’ve a line of cavalry between them and Whitehall, Wake?’

‘Oh come!’ said Sir Loftus, more agitated still. ‘That will be no occasion for trouble.’

‘Don’t you imagine it,’ huffed Dunseath again. ‘I was ’ere last December when those damned Radicals at the Spa Fields marched on the Tower. As close to revolution as I ever saw!’

‘Stuff and nonsense, sir!’ said the Earl of Rotheram, blowing a cloud of smoke ceilingwards. ‘I was at St James’s the whole time. It was all wind and wine. Hunt and his like — rabble-rousers, yes, but I hardly fancy they have the stuff of a Robespierre in them!’ The earl was ever a man in whom the moderation of the shires found a faithful voice.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure, Rotheram,’ warned Dunseath. ‘There’s radicalism seething all about. In some parts the machine-breakers are as active as ever. And there’s a deal too many discharged soldiers and sailors as well. All a prey to jackanapes like Hunt.’

‘On this latter I would not dissent. And where might we seek to lay blame on that account? I think it truly ignoble that this government has discharged its fighting men in so mean a fashion. There are beggars in scarlet in every lane.’

Lord Dunseath’s nose seemed darker still. ‘What would you have had Liverpool do then? Exalt Pitt’s income tax another penny to provide sturdy beggars with pensions? We want done with it!’

Lord Dunseath’s voice was rising in both pitch and volume, but the Earl of Rotheram remained unperturbed. ‘I very much doubt we shall see an end to the income tax now that it is so expeditiously collected. And I should not have thought it too great a burden on men who stand to profit so much from peace — and, indeed, who have profited so much already from war. At least they might rid us of the wretched Corn Laws.’