An Infamous Army (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 4)

He had had an exasperating letter from his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, putting a scheme before him for the augmentation of the German Legion by volunteers from the Hanoverian line regiments. If the Royal Dukes would be a little less busy his lordship would be the better pleased. A nice feeling of dissatisfaction there would be if any such measures were put into action!

‘Both the Legion and the line would be disorganised exactly at the moment I should require their services,’ he wrote, and enclosed for his Royal Highness’s digestion a copy of the objections to the precious scheme which he had sent to Lord Bathurst.

In polite circles he was still being flippant about the chances of war, but occasionally he dropped the pretence now. When Georgiana Lennox mentioned a pleasure party to Lille, or Tournay, which some officers had projected, he said decidedly: ‘No, better let that drop.’

He gratified Mr Creevey by talking to him in the most natural way, joining him in the Park one day, where Mr Creevey was walking with his stepdaughters. He spoke quite frankly of the debates in Parliament on the war, and Mr Creevey, finding him so accessible, asked with one of his twinkling, penetrating glances: ‘Now then, will you let me ask you, Duke, what you think you will make of it?’

‘By God!’ said his lordship, standing still. ‘I think Blücher and myself can do the thing!’

‘Do you calculate upon any desertion in Bonaparte’s army?’ enquired Creevey.

No, his lordship did not reckon upon a man. ‘We may pick up a marshal or two,’ he added, ‘but not worth a damn.’

Mr Creevey mentioned the French King’s troops at Alost, but that made his lordship give one of his whoops of laughter. ‘Oh! Don’t mention such fellows!’ he said. ‘No, no! I think Blücher and I can do the business!’ He saw a British soldier strolling along at some little distance, and pointed to him. ‘There,’ he said. ‘It all depends on that article whether we do the business or not. Give me enough of it, and I am sure.’

This was good news to take home to Mrs Creevey. It gave Creevey a better opinion of the Duke’s understanding, too, and made him feel that in spite of every disquieting rumour from the frontier there was no need to fly for safety yet.

There were plenty of rumours, of course, but people had been alarmed so many times to no purpose that they were beginning to take only a fleeting interest in the news that came from France. It was said that everywhere on the road from Paris to the frontier preparations were being made for the movements of troops in carriages. It was said that Bonaparte was expected to be at Laon on June 6th; on June 10th report placed him at Maubeuge, but the Duke had certain intelligence of his being still in Paris, and issued invitations for a ball he was giving later in the month.

He was always giving balls, informal little affairs got up on the spur of the moment, but this was to be a splendid function, outdoing all the others which had been held in Brussels. There would be s

o many Royalties present that the Duchess of Richmond declared that there would be no room for a mere commoner. The Dutch King and Queen were coming; the Prince of Orange, and Prince Frederick; the Duke of Brunswick; the Prince of Nassau; Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, who commanded the 2nd Dutch-Belgic Brigade under General Perponcher; and of course the Duc de Berri, with his entourage of exalted personages.

There was much laughing rivalry between his lordship and the Duchess of Richmond over this question of balls. The best hostess in Brussels was not to be outdone by his lordship, and whipped in before him with her gilt-edged invitations for the night of June 15th. His lordship acknowledged himself to have been outmanoeuvred, and was obliged to postpone his own ball until later in the month. ‘Honours are even, however,’ said Georgiana. ‘For though Mama has the better date, the Duke has the King and Queen!’

‘Pooh!’ said her Grace. ‘They will make the party very stiff and stupid. It will be all pretension, Duke! I promise you, my ball will be the success of the season!’

‘No such thing! It will be forgotten in the success of mine.’

‘It will be too hot for dancing by that time. Have you thought of that?’

‘We will take this young woman’s ruling on that point. Is it ever too hot for dancing, Georgy?’ demanded his lordship, pinching her chin.

‘No, never!’ responded Georgiana. ‘Mama, consider! If you provoke the Duke, perhaps he won’t come to our party, and then we shall be undone!’

‘That would be too infamous!’ said the Duchess. ‘I will not believe him capable of such dastardly behaviour.’

‘No, no, I shall be there!’ promised his lordship.

It was hard to believe that in the midst of these light-hearted schemes, other and much grimmer plans were revolving in his lordship’s head. Foreigners, coming to Brussels, found the Duke’s Headquarters a perplexing place, and his staff incurably flippant. No one seemed to take the approaching war seriously; young officers lounged in and out, talking to one another in a careless drawl that had so much annoyed General Röder; Lord Fitzroy could pause in the writing of important letters to exchange a joke with some friend who apparently thought nothing of interrupting his work; in the adjutant-general’s teeming office, assistants and deputy-assistants demanded the names of bootmakers, or discussed the chances of competitors in the horse race at Grammont. It had never seemed to poor General Röder that anyone did any work, for work was mentioned in the most offhand fashion; yet the work was done, and the lounging young officers who looked so sleepy, and dressed so carelessly, carried the Duke’s message’s to the Army at a speed which made the Prussian general blink. They would drag themselves out of their chairs, groaning, twitting each other on the need for exertion, and stroll out with yawns, and lazy demands for their horses. You would see them mount their English hunters: ‘Well, if I don’t come back you’ll know I’ve lost myself—Where is the damned place?’ they would say. But long before you would have believed it possible they could have reached their destination, let alone have returned from it, there they were again, with nothing but the dust on their boots to betray that they had ever left Brussels. General Röder, accustomed to officers bustling about their business, clicking their heels together smartly in salute, discussing military matters with zest and enthusiasm, would never be able to understand these English, who, incomprehensibly, considered it bad ton to talk about anything but quite childish trivialities.

But General Röder had been relieved at last, thanking God to be going away from such Headquarters, and in his place a very different officer had come to Brussels. General Baron von Müffling brought no prejudices with him, or, if he did, he concealed them. Gneisenau had warned him to be very much on his guard in the English camp, but General Müffling had dealt with Gneisenau for many years, and knew him to be a prey to preconceived ideas. The General came to Brussels with an open mind, and immediately endeared himself to his hosts by confessing with a disarming smile that in his early studies of the English language he had never got beyond The Vicar of Wakefield and Thomson’s Seasons. He made it his business to try to understand the English character, and to earn the Duke’s confidence, and succeeded in both aims to admiration. The Duke found him to be a sensible man, given to speaking the plain truth; and the staff, accustomed to the glaring disapproval of General Röder, declared him to be a very good sort of a fellow, and made him welcome in their own easy unceremonious fashion.

He was soon on good terms with everyone. His manners were polished, his address a mixture of tact and dignity. He did not snort at graceless lieutenants, and he never committed the solecism of introducing grim topics of conversation at festive gatherings. He seemed, in fact, to enjoy life in Brussels, and to be amused by the Headquarters’ jokes.

‘I think you are something of a wizard, Baron,’ said Judith. ‘Your predecessor was never on such terms with us all, though he had been in Brussels for so long.’

‘That is true,’ he replied. ‘But General Röder’s irritability carried him too far. It is unfair for anyone in the midst of a foreign nation to frame his expectations on the ideas he brings with him. He should instead study the habits and customs of his hosts.’

‘Do you find our customs very different from your own?’

‘Oh yes, certainly! In your Army, for instance, I find some customs better than ours; others perhaps not so good. There is much to bewilder the poor foreigner, I assure you, madame. There are the Duke’s aides-de-camp and galopins, for example. One is at first astonished to find that these gentlemen are of the best families, and count it an honour to serve the Duke in this manner. Then one is astonished to see them so nonchalant.’ A smile crept into his eyes; he said: ‘One finds it hard to believe them to be des hommes sérieux! But I discover that these so languid young officers make it a point of honour to ride four of your English miles in eighteen minutes, whenever the Duke adds the word Quick to his despatch. So then I perceive that I have been misjudging them, and I must reassemble my ideas.’

‘How do you go on with the Duke?’ asked Worth.

‘Very well, I believe. He is agreeable, and in matters of service very short and decided.’

‘Excessively short, I understand!’ said Judith, with a laugh.