Allan Mallinson: Nizams Daughters

The rajah pondered the notion before nodding his head slowly. ‘But one more question, Captain Hervey: how have you discovered this critical information about the guns? Your telescope alone would not reveal it.’

‘No, indeed, sir. I sent spies into the Pindaree lines last night.’

The rajah eyed him sternly before nodding again, but this time with a smile. ‘As did Joshua?’

‘As did Joshua, Your Highness,’ said Hervey, smiling.

‘And is there a Rahab in the Pindaree lines?’

‘No, sir; merely some brave hijdas, now returned.’

‘Hijdas. Always hijdas,’ he tutted. ‘But now you have to be about your business?’

‘Yes, sir. I have my orders to give.’

His officers assembled in the lone shade of a flame tree in full bloom. Locke’s absence he now felt all the more as he looked into the faces of those on whom his plan depended. Templer, for all his youthful enthusiasm, was no substitute, and Alter Fritz was… old. The faces of the native officers revealed a mixture of eagerness and apprehension. Hervey explained his design to tolerable effect in a mixture of Urdu and German (which Alter Fritz then rendered in Telugu — and not once was the rajah’s facility called on). The sepoy officers, hearing the plan, now looked keen. The rissalah officers looked disappointed, however.

‘You want us only to make a demonstration, sahib?’ they said disconsolately.

‘Yes, to begin with. We must tempt their attention away from the companies as they advance along the forest edge on our left flank. We must therefore convince them that we intend moving along the river’s edge in strength. We might tempt their cavalry to a charge and lead them onto the fougasses.’

The cavalrymen looked a little happier.

Hervey turned back to the infantry. ‘When you sepoys reach your enfilade position I shall gallop our guns to join you, and bring them to bear at close range on the embrasures, or even on the flanks of the redoubts if we have got far enough round.’ He now turned to Alter Fritz: ‘Have you the taste for the sabre still, Captain Bauer? Shall you take command of the cavalry?’

Alter Fritz’s face lit up. ‘Hervey, with sword in hand I die here!’

Hervey smiled and clapped the old Württemberger on the shoulder. ‘Then let us begin, before the sun makes our work even hotter than will the nizam’s daughters! But first,’ he said, turning to the rajah, ‘Your Highness, do you wish to say anything?’

The rajah looked around benignly at the dozen or so officers crouching in the flame tree’s welcome shade. ‘Only this,’ he began in Telegu: ‘today I believe is a day when honour shall return to us all in full measure. May your god be with you.’

All stood. Alter Fritz saluted, his face still aglow, and the rajah walked with his officers towards where their bearers waited.

Turning to Templer, Hervey said simply, ‘Now you know what is my design. If I should fall then it is you who shall have to see it through. I want you to leave your horse and go with the sepoy companies.’

‘But—’

‘There can be no “but”. Alter Fritz is well able to see to the demonstration. The point of decision will be with the sepoys on the left. That is where I shall be as soon as the Pindaree cavalry is drawn across to the right and you have reached a position of enfilade on the left.’

And then they shook hands.

The sepoys’ blue coats stood a better chance of going unnoticed than the scarlet of the British infantry would have, but a diversion nevertheless seemed prudent. Hervey therefore ordered one rissalah to advance along the river bank with the galloper guns to draw fire — which he was confident would be opened prematurely by the nizam’s gunners in their eagerness to begin work. ‘Double your charges,’ he told the gunner jemadar. ‘Do not concern yourself with any effect but that on the enemy’s attention.’

Though he knew where he wanted to be, Hervey knew where necessity demanded he should be, and he now took post in the centre of his depleted brigade, drawn up with four companies in line and a halfrissalah on either flank. From here he would watch his design for battle unfold, and judge the moment when and how to make the dash to join the sepoys’ enfilade. And as he sat, keenly observing the flattest, emptiest arena on which he had ever faced battle, his thoughts turned not to home, as they had done before Waterloo, but to that very battle, with its many, many times greater numbers — horses, guns and men. Yet though the numbers were vastly greater at Waterloo, he fancied his situation now not entirely unlike the duke’s that day: at least, in the closing stages of the battle. He sat astride a horse not much bigger than a pony, in front of a body of men who, though stout-hearted enough, faced what must be overwhelming odds.

And yet there was one test they would not face — the test that had been Major Edmonds’s and then Captain Lankester’s as they had had to judge the effect of the enemy’s cannonading on their line. For this morning Hervey’s brigade was outside the guns’ range, and he intended that it remain so. Nevertheless, he knew that the smallest misjudgement would see them all perish.

Alter Fritz and his rissalah advanced in two ranks at the trot. The lance pennants, though there was no breeze, fluttered with the forward movement — a pretty sight, thought Hervey, and unusual for its not facing him. He watched through his telescope as they proceeded with admirable steadiness towards the Pindaree lines, Alter Fritz sitting erect in the saddle, as proud, no doubt, as when he had first been a trooper on parade for Duke Charles Eugene. When the rissalah was half-way to the lines, there was a long, rolling eruption of flame, smoke and then noise from the nizam’s guns. The range was extreme, yet Hervey held his breath as the rounds arched lazily towards the lancers in a graceful parabola: he could see each one of them quite clearly. All fell short of the rissalah by a furlong at least, one ball bouncing into the river, sending up a fountain of water and steam, followed by another and then another. Two balls bounced straight at the lancers, but with each bounce their velocity was diminished, and the ranks opened to allow them to pass through harmlessly. The three remaining shot were what interested Hervey most, for they were so wide of their mark (fired, he supposed, by the guns on the Pindarees’ left) that he knew their traverse must indeed be severely limited, with only the narrowest of arcs. Though the battery was able to sweep the whole of the kadir, and very effectively out to a quarter of a league, they were not able, it seemed, to concentrate on one target. It was exactly as he hoped. And then, a minute later, Alter Fritz having most daringly advanced a further hundred yards, the second salvo was fired (equally without damage) and Hervey realized the full import of the limited traverses: at half the distance between the cannons’ first graze and the muzzles themselves there would be a significant extent of frontage which the guns could not cover at all. He had never been especially good at geometry — and he would have wished now for paper and protractor — but, by his rapid calculation, at that distance half , indeed, of the front would be uncovered.

Now here was an opening. Between salvoes he could take the whole of the cavalry in a gallop from as close as where Alter Fritz and his rissalah stood presently in safety, and in the time before the gunners could fire another round they could be through the belt entirely swept by fire (he supposed the enemy must have explosive shells as well as roundshot) and into that where the arcs could not interlock. From then on the odds would change in their favour until, in the final furlong or so, the guns would scarcely be able to bear on more than a fraction of his front.