Company Of Spears

Hervey glanced left and right. The line’s dressing was good enough. ‘The regiment will fire by half squadrons! Draw carbines!’

Four hundred right hands reached to the leather ‘buckets’ on the offside of the saddles to draw the short muskets – the cavalry carbines – just as Hervey had so often seen in the French war. There were not many veterans of those days now: the serjeants, for the most part, had been at Waterloo, and the majority of them were seasoned Peninsular men, though fewer than half had been at Corunna. Of the corporals, there was but a handful who had clambered into the boats at ‘Groyne’ that day. It had been almost twenty years ago; what else did he expect? The old order changeth.

Except that in too many respects the old order did not change fast enough. Here they were with the exact same weapon their fathers – even grandfathers – would have been handy with, dependent on a piece of flint to spark loose powder in the pan. The primitives who had lived on Salisbury Plain had worked flints; as a boy he himself had played in the pits. It did not seem to him that the techniques of war had advanced with the dispatch possible. He had lately returned from Portugal in a ship whose power came from steam as much as from the wind, and he knew there were locomotives which derived all their traction from that source. Why, therefore, could science not serve the soldier better? The answer was – and he knew it – that science was perfectly able to serve the soldier, if only the Board of Ordnance would let it. His own life at Waterloo he owed to the merest drop of fulminate of mercury, a percussion cap instead of a flintlock, which had allowed him to fire his soaking carbine when a flint, even if it had sparked, could not have ignited damp powder in the firing pan. Later he had petitioned the board on behalf of an American inventor who had shown him an astonishing revolving-chamber pistol. The authorities had not been impressed, however. Other than for a few riflemen to act as skirmishers, they required an army that could volley, on command, for it was volley fire that broke up massed ranks and columns. Would the enemy be always so obliging as to come on in such a manner?

The Sixth were handy with their carbines at least, observed Hervey as he took post on the right flank with the other officers, allowing the dragoons a clear line of fire, for unlike the gunners they would load live cartridge. ‘By squadrons, carry on!’

The squadron officers now took over the practice.

‘Load!’

Ramrods clattered as dragoons tamped the one-ounce balls.

‘Front rank, even numbers, advance!’

One hundred dragoons pressed their troopers to the walk.

‘Halt!’

They checked, inclining right in the prescribed manner so as to be able to fire to the flank rather than over the horses’ heads.

‘Present!’

Up came the carbines to the aim, though there were no targets.

‘Fire!’

It was a good volley, but there were slow ignitions and misfires. Some of the horses shied; only one bolted. Hervey watched intently as next the odd numbers advanced half a dozen paces beyond the evens, presented and fired. And then the same again with the rear rank. Four volleys in all.

On the whole the horses stood them well, thought Hervey, but he could hardly be satisfied with the rate of misfires, and on a morning with not a touch of dampness in the air. ‘Very well,’ he said to the adjutant, as grey smoke drifted towards them. ‘Have them re-form in double rank.’

‘Sir.’