Georgette Heyer, Regency Romances and how much sex is really necessary…?

Of all historical novels, Regency romances seem to be one of the most distinctive genres, and although their popularity has waxed and waned they have never completely gone out of style.  Set approximately during the period of the British Regency (1811–1820) they have their own plot and stylistic conventions. Many people think of Jane Austen when Regencies are mentioned and certainly her novels are set in the right period, but of course she was writing as a contemporary not as a historian.

It has always seemed to me that Georgette Heyer was the mother of the current Regency genre.  She wrote more than twenty novels set during the Regency, between 1935 and her death in 1974 and her books were very much like a comedy of manners.  There was little discussion of sex, understandable given the different views of her generation, and a great emphasis on clever, quick witted dialogue between the characters.

These days, Regencies seem to be divided into two sub genres.  There are the traditional Regencies which are similar to Heyer’s originals, and a more modern Regency historical genre.  Many authors do not seem to confine themselves to one of these two types but may move between the two.  Both are currently popular.

Traditional Regencies emphasise the main romantic plot.  They play close attention to historical detail and take care to replicate the voice of the genre.  There is a good deal of research for writers of traditional Regencies.  Heroes and heroines generally remain within the accepted rules and conditions of the period and although their may be some sex it is very likely that the action stops at the bedroom door, probably at the proposal of marriage.

The more modern Regency historical novels break more rules.  They may be set during the time period but not necessarily in high society with an insight into life outside of the world of wealth and privilege inhabited by Georgette Heyer’s characters.  They may also include characters who behave in a more modern way, particularly when it comes to sexual behaviour and moral values.  The style can be very different to the more traditional works.  There is another sub genre, the sensual Regency which has become very popular in recent years.  These novels are far more explicit than the traditional Regency and the sexual relationship between the hero and heroine is key to the book.

There are some elements which are likely to crop up in all genres of Regency novels.  Many are set in, or will refer to the Ton, which means the top layer of English society.  They revolve around social activities such as balls, dinners, assemblies and other common pastimes.  Men are often involved in sporting activities.  There are detailed descriptions of fashion and a consciousness of social class and the rules of behaviour.  The difference between them is that in traditional Regencies the heroine is likely to stick to them; in the modern genre pretty much anything goes.

The shift in the genre seems to have come about because of a slump in the popularity of Regencies in the 1990s.  Some authors began incorporating more sex into their novels and while lovers of traditional Regencies disliked it, publishers and readers seemed to approve and the Regency novel got a new lease of life.

I grew up reading Georgette Heyer and owned every one of her books in paperback – I still have some of them and still read them from time to time.  They are, for me, the ultimate comfort book – the only other series which comes close are P G Wodehouse’s tales of Jeeves and Wooster.  These are the books I’ll turn to if I’m ill or miserable or sometimes just because my brain hurts and I can’t focus on anything else.  They are written to entertain and with their quick dialogue and comedic moments they never let me down.

I wrote my first Regency novel for the Mills and Boon market during the years I was trying to find a traditional publisher.  I’d tried several other novels, including at least two contemporary ones which are never going to see the light of day again, and had joined the Romantic Novelists Association new writers scheme.  After very positive feedback on both A Respectable Woman and A Marcher Lord it was suggested that I try to adapt these to Mills and Boon.  I did try, but it couldn’t be done.  It appeared that I simply could not have a heroine who defended herself very capably against attack; it was the job of the hero to rescue her and Jenny Marchant simply wouldn’t wait.  In fact she was more likely to do the rescuing.  Philippa Maclay was even worse, she didn’t make it through two chapters without doing something so appalling that it put her beyond hope of redemption.  If I rewrote these characters then I would be writing a different book.  I gave it up and decided to start from scratch.

Out of that decision came Cordelia Summers and Giles Fenwick of The Reluctant Debutante.  Once I got into the swing of it I really loved writing this book.  It’s fun and fairly light hearted.  I was already doing a lot of research into the period for my series set during the Peninsular war and that fitted very well with a Regency so it wasn’t that much extra work.  And the fast paced dialogue and witty characters of the Regency genre exist in all my books, no matter which period they’re set in.  I realise that those years of reading Georgette Heyer and Dorothy Dunnett have affected the way all my characters speak.  They may have different accents and different levels of education, but most of them are smart mouths.  

I had a lovely response from Mills and Boon on the Reluctant Debutante.  It was a no, but a very detailed no.  They liked the setting and the characters and even the plot, but once again my characters let me down.  There was not enough internal conflict between them, it seemed; most of their difficulties were external and their way of overcoming them was not dramatic enough.  Could I rewrite it to include more conflict between Cordelia and Giles?

I did try.  I wrote a selection of scenes for them.  The trouble was, trying to fit them into the book made no sense whatsoever.  I’d already created these people and their responses to events grew out of their essential character.  Cordelia might have flatly refused to see Giles after their quarrel and there could have been weeks of agonising and misunderstandings.  But there wasn’t.  Cordelia was as mad as a wet hen but once she saw him again, she didn’t have it in her not to listen to his explanation.  She’s a practical girl with a wealth of common sense.  She simply can’t behave like a drama queen.

So Giles and Cordelia remained as themselves and I published the book pretty much as I’d originally written it, with the removal of one or two completely gratuitous sex scenes which didn’t seem to add anything to the plot.  I’ve been delighted with people’s response to it.  So far it’s the best selling of all the books although the others are starting to catch up and readers seem to love it.  

The amount of sex in my books varies a fair bit and for me that reflects reality.  Everyone is different in how they feel about sex both in books and in real life.  It’s not hard for me to write about sex; I used to be a relationship counsellor so I’m difficult to shock.  At the same time I need my characters to develop their own attitudes towards sex and it needs to fit within the social norms of the time and one of the most important things to remember is that there was no reliable form of contraception available to any of my heroines which meant that there was an enormous risk involved in illicit sex.

Jenny and Will in a Marcher Lord are very compatible.  He’s around thirty, never been married although knows he should be for dynastic reasons, and likes women.  You have the sense he had a good relationship with his mother and adores his younger sister, so he’s likely to be fairly respectful around women although given his age and status there have definitely been a few adventures along the way.  He’s not particularly a womaniser despite some of his cousins jokes about it and he knows how to behave.  Jenny on the other hand grew up in a loving family where marriage wasn’t really an issue which has given her a very untraditional view on marriage and sex.  Circumstances rather than morality dictate the progress of Jenny and Will’s relationship and they understand each other very well.

For Philippa and Kit, sex is a very different issue since at the start their entire relationship is based around his attempt to persuade her to be his mistress and her steadfast refusal.  Their stances on this are very traditional for the time but there are a lot of other reasons why a sexual relationship is complicated for this couple and it was quite hard to write about at times.  Certainly this was not a couple who were going to fall into bed every five minutes, that’s not what their story is about.

Giles and Cordelia are also fairly traditional.  Giles might forget his manners from time to time but he understands what is expected of him.  They are strongly attracted to one another but their relationship takes a fairly traditional course, for the first half of the book at least.

An Unconventional Officer - love and war in Wellington’s army
Book 1 in the Peninsular War Saga

Paul and Anne are very different.  Technically, An Unconventional Officer could be considered a Regency given the period but it is not; it’s a love story but it’s also the story of two very individual people and their experiences in the army during Wellington’s Peninsular wars and the Ton and Almack’s don’t really feature.  When Anne and Paul meet there is no question of a romantic relationship between them; he’s married and she’s going to be soon.  But of all of my characters, Paul and Anne are by far the most openly physical in their relationship.  He is a shameless womaniser with a string of broken hearts behind him and she is young and inexperienced but neither of those things really matters.  For Paul and Anne the chemistry is instant and undeniable and completely irresistible.  It is also really obvious to everybody around them.  It isn’t hard writing love scenes for Paul and Anne, the difficulty is trying to get them to behave with any degree of propriety at all.

I suspect The Reluctant Debutante falls somewhere between the old and the new when it comes to Regency.  I do like my heroines to have something more about them than a pretty face and good manners, but on the whole I’ve allowed Cordelia to be fairly well-behaved in public although privately she’s a little different.  She’s very grown up but she’s also led a sheltered life in comparison to all three of my other heroines and she behaves accordingly.  It was nice to write something normal for a change…

My new Regency has the working title of A Regrettable Reputation and it’s early days yet but at least some of it is likely to be set in Yorkshire.  Sophia Dorne is very different to Cordelia both in circumstances and in character.  Nicholas Witham is nothing like Giles, having neither his fortune nor his arrogance although they do have some things in common.  I’m looking forward to seeing how things work out for them.

Watch this space…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Matter of Intelligence – Wellington on Twitter

Wellington’s HQ in Pere Negro, the Lines of Torres Vedras

I first wrote A Matter of Intelligence – Wellington on Twitter last year and as today is the anniversary of the great man’s death I thought I would share it again.

Military Intelligence in the early nineteenth century was a little haphazard to say the least.  Wellington made use of local Portuguese and Spanish guerrillas who provided him with information about French troop movements.  He also had a Corps of Guides which performed a wide variety of duties of which intelligence and map-making was one.

Initially the Corps only had a sergeant, a corporal and 18 troopers. It was commanded from 1808 to 1814 by Major (later LtCol) George Scovell, seconded from the Portuguese Quartermaster-General’s Department. Wellington expanded and transformed the Corps into a military intelligence corps.  Around 15 officers, English and Portuguese, were appointed to the corps between 25 April and 3 June 1809; many more enlisted men were also added and, in 1813, the corps had 12 officers and 193 men. In 1808-1810 the corps was mostly Portuguese, its officers being generally students of the University of Coimbra. All were to speak both English and Portuguese. Later recruits were often foreign deserters or Spaniards, recruited to gather information for the Anglo-Portuguese Army in Spain and southern France.

The Corps employed a number of ‘exploring officers’, chosen for three distinct skills: they were expert horsemen, skilled linguists, and able to express themselves in writing or sketching in the briefest and most concise terms.  One of the first duties in the winter of 1810 when there was little fighting, was for the exploring officers to map every bit of the Portuguese countryside four miles to the inch. They accomplished this with the help of local inhabitants who often knew their own immediate area  never travelled beyond the sight of their villages or farms.

With the countryside mapped, the exploring officers were sent out on
reconnaissance, moving behind enemy lines, learning troop movements and strategic information and then bringing the information back to Wellington.  They led lonely and often dangerous lives and received little reward or recognition for it.  Some were even shunned by their former regiments who took the view that they had avoided the dangers of the battlefield but Wellington had enormous respect for them.

These days, so much intelligence is online, and there is a good deal of debate about personal privacy on the internet and how it can be balanced against national security.  Wellington’s needs were much simpler.  He needed men to gather the information, he needed Portuguese and Spanish partisans to capture French messengers and bring him their despatches.  And he needed a code breaker to make sense of them.  He found that in Major George Scovell, an unassuming officer of the quartermaster-general’s department who became a crucial player in Wellington’s winning the war.

I find myself speculating, between my writing, my research and reading news reports, on how different things were for Wellington and his army.  Messages were sent by semaphore or carried by riders and there was nothing instant about them.  News or orders from London took weeks to arrive and the officers of Wellington’s army were often ignorant of the latest news and of their general’s plans which they found very frustrating.  Not that modern methods of communication would have helped them.  Lord Wellington was notorious for failing to consult or inform his officers, with the exception of a privileged few.  He was a private man and it would not have occurred to him to share his thoughts or opinions with the majority of the army.  Twitter would not have been for him.  But I’ve been amusing myself today, reading some of Donald Trump’s latest efforts, trying to imagine what it would have been like if he had…

Wellington on twitter

@Craufurdlightdivision: Camped at Almeida outside fort

@Wellingtonhq: When you say outside fort do you by any remote chance mean outside the actual fortress? What are you doing on that side of the river General? Did you not understand my very

@Craufurdlightdivision: Sir only 140 characters, remember?

@Wellingtonhq: 140 characters? How can I be expected to give orders in 140 characters? This is completely absurd, where are you? Where are the French? Have you made contact with Picton? You

@Craufurdlightdivision: You need to keep it shorter, Picton an arsehole, think French approaching, might need to go, brb

@Wellingtonhq: What do you mean Picton an arsehole, dear God if the enemy is approaching and you have no support you need to get them out of there! Why are you on that side of the river? Retr

@Craufurdlightdivision: Busy here, sir, retreating over the river, very outnumbered, BFN

@Wellingtonhq: BFN what in God’s name does that mean? What numbers? How are they formed? Do you have cover? How can I give orders without any information, General, this is serious! Get th

@Craufurdlightdivision: Shit the bridge is blocked need to go BFN

@Wellingtonhq: Craufurd listen to me! Are you there? Speak to me! How dare you pi me in the middle of my orders! You forget yourself, sir! You are too rash, too ready to throw your men into bat

@Wellingtonhq: God damn it why will this thing never let me finish a sentence? Craufurd answer me!

@Craufurdlightdivision: #ohshit #thatwasclose #nearlylostlightdivision

Wellington (to his ADC): Freemantle, would you be a good fellow and check those bushes for my phone? No not those ones, Captain, those over there. I threw it quite hard. And send a message to General Craufurd by semaphore, would you?

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Scrivener – the writing software that changed my life…

Quill pen

I thought I would surprise everybody with a review of scrivener for novel writing today.  I love Scrivener,  which I now use to write all my books.

I am a technology cave woman.

I was going to call myself a technology dinosaur.  For one thing, I really like dinosaurs and aspire to be one.  My occasional thermonuclear explosions at home when the mess in the house reaches a critical mass or I can’t get any peace and quiet to finish my chapter have led my family to compare me to a pterodactyl, a sub-species apparently known as the Mumadactyl.

But I’m not really a dinosaur with technology, because eventually, after a lot of swearing and moaning and kicking off, and after more tutorials, online instruction and lessons from the man I married who has the patience of a saint at times, I do get it and I can use it.  That’s why the dinosaurs became extinct and I probably won’t.

I don’t love technology.  I get no pleasure from a new gadget.  Every upgrade to whatever I’m using at the time is greeted not by excited cries as I go through to find out what new and useful features have been added, but by a muttered grumbling sound as I go through to painstakingly relearn a familiar task now that some complete and utter moron has changed the way it looks and works.  When my husband tells me that something is intuitive, I usually snarl at him.  Walking is intuitive.  Using any form of technology whatsoever, including a microwave, is not.  I have to learn it and if I don’t use it very regularly, I have to learn it all over again when I’ve forgotten it.

This shocks many people since I’m clearly bright.  “How can you not remember that?” they say.  “It’s like remembering a phone number.”  Well I don’t remember those either, although ask me to talk you through the causes of the Boer War which I last studied back in 1982 at University and I can do it in a heartbeat.

Just occasionally though I come across a piece of technology which looks as though it might be so useful that it inspires me to fight my way past my instinctive resistance to making my life more complicated.  I learned, eventually, how to use an iPhone, an induction hob and wordpress to design this website and all of those have been well worth while.  And finally, after about six months of cursing, I want to announce that I officially love using Scrivener.

Scrivener is an eBook creator.  With it I can write my novels, format them, muck about with them, easily move between various versions of them and once I’m ready to publish them I can compile and upload them with remarkable ease.  The interface is clear and once you’ve worked out what things actually mean, it’s well organised and makes a surprising amount of sense.

You can do an awful lot with Scrivener, not just novels but non-fiction books or even photo-albums.  I will freely admit I don’t use half of these various functions, but if I should ever need to in the future, they exist.

Scrivener supports almost all of the main files eBook writers use including HTML, MOBI and PDF.  You can upload sounds, graphics and videos onto your projects and it seems to be relatively easy.  But the thing I love about it is the file structure which enables you to put your book together but also to store research notes and other material in a way that is quick and easy to access.  I’ve really only just got to grips with this aspect of it, but as a writer of historical fiction it’s crucial to be able to keep good research notes and character lists and now I have everything I need to hand in each binder instead of searching through endless word or excel files for a list or a reference.

I won’t pretend it was all plain sailing learning a new tool.  I’ve been using Word for so many years that I was genuinely terrified that trying to adapt to something new would slow me down.  But now that I’m getting the hang of it I love how easy it is to organise things.

A cave woman, you see, not a dinosaur.  Eventually, after a lot of whinging, cavemen and women learned how to use tools.  I’m not convinced that the dinosaurs ever did…

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Writing Historical Fiction

Writing historical fiction is something that I’ve done ever since a teenager.  I write because I can’t stop.  Reading inspired me to start writing.  I can’t remember a time I wasn’t completely addicted to reading and when I ran out of books, I would make up stories in my head.  I wrote my first attempts in a series of exercise books while I was at secondary school and I hid them because I wasn’t convinced they were good enough for anybody to read.  But writing is an addiction and I have never been able to stop even when I thought there was no possibility of getting anything published.

I’m very lucky in being able to find the time to write and I have my husband to thank for that.  I run an Irish Dance school but that is very much part time.  I have a lot of other commitments with home and teenage children and two dogs.  I freely admit that at times, when I am very involved in a particular storyline, other things get neglected.  I’ve been working on book four of the Peninsular saga recently, and it’s been the most difficult book to write, given the events and how they affect the main characters.  I’ve got very emotionally involved with it and for whole periods of time I have been completely useless and my family has got very good at foraging for themselves.

What made me choose historical fiction?  That’s an interesting one.  Over the years I’ve tried to write all kinds of fiction.  I’ve also written a lot of other stuff, including endless reports, funding proposals, press releases and articles for work journals during my various different careers over the years and I will admit that writing comes very easily to me.

I do wonder about trying contemporary fiction one of these days, but historical fiction is what I love to read so I suppose it was the obvious choice when it came to writing.  I’m fascinated by the past, not just how people lived but how they thought, the differences and similarities to us.

I read a lot for research.  Usually I’ll start with a general history of the period I want to write about, then move on to more specific topics.  I do general research on the internet but I don’t take any one source as gospel without checking it as much as possible.  If I’m introducing actual historical characters into my story I’ll try to find a biography of them, and I also like to read accounts of them from other people who knew them personally.

I did a degree in history many years ago, so research is fun for me.  I love being able to use original sources where possible.  For example, for “A Respectable Woman” I spent some time in the local record office in East London going through the records for Raines Foundation School in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  The Wentworth school in the book is based on Raines, which is the school I attended, and I was able to look at accounts books, punishment books, school rules and the minutes of the Board of Governors which was fascinating.

For the Peninsular War books, I’ve read a lot of accounts written by officers and men who fought in the wars.  Lord Wellington’s letters and despatches are an amazing source and also give a really good impression of what he was like.  I’d heard him described as sarcastic and critical towards some of his officers and having read his own words I can see why he might have upset some of the more sensitive souls although personally I think he’s hilarious.  Letters are often preserved and many of them have been published and they make a great source.

When I’m coming up with a plot, I look at when I want to set the story and then I try to work out what was going on historically and what impact it would have on my characters and their storyline.  I might make some adjustments depending on what I find out – I shifted the timeline of some of the Peninsular books because I realised that my romance wouldn’t work out if he was in the middle of a battle at that point, he’d have had other things to do.

One of the problems with research is what to include and what to leave out.  On the one hand I want the reader to get a real sense of period and what was happening.  On the other hand, I want it to be a story not a history book.  It’s a balancing act.  For every line I put in there are about three books worth that I leave out.  But the important thing is that I know it, because then I’m writing inside the period.

Perspective is different in historical novels, and I try to look at things from the point of view of a person of that era.  For example, in two of my books, “A Respectable Woman” and “The Reluctant Debutante” there is a potential issue between the hero and heroine because they are not of the same social standing which could make marriage an issue.  Personally, from a modern perspective, this is complete and utter rubbish.  But there is no point in pretending that it wasn’t a consideration for the people involved.  Such things could be – and were – overcome in nineteenth century society.  But they did matter.

One or two issues are a genuine challenge.  The position of women in society has changed out of all recognition over the past two centuries.  I tend to write about very strong and often unconventional women who aren’t afraid to step outside the restrictions imposed upon them.  But I can’t pretend that was easy or normal and sometimes bad things happened to women who dared to be different.  They still do, but back then there was not the same protection under the law.  I don’t want to glorify the prejudice and sometimes the violence that women faced when they did not conform, but I’m not going to pretend they didn’t happen.

I’ve given the books to a few people to read and proof read and I’ve had some interesting comments on my characters attitudes and behaviour.  One of them – a male reader who would not normally have read a historical novel – took a definite dislike to one character because of his casual attitude towards sexual relations with a variety of women.  I can understand his point, but at the time I’m writing about, it would have been seen as fairly normal for a young man to be ‘sowing his wild oats’ and providing he had the social standing and the money to manage his mistakes, nobody would have thought badly of him.

For a woman it was very different.  Certainly in the three books set in the nineteenth century, all three of my lead characters need to be careful of their reputations.  For Cordelia, living the conventional life of a wealthy Regency woman, all she has to do is keep within the accepted rules.  For Philippa, left alone and penniless and obliged to earn her living, it is a much more difficult balancing act to maintain her respectability while supporting herself.

For Anne, it should have been easy and clearly wasn’t.  Anne’s parents are very keen to push her into marriage with a suitable suitor at seventeen in order to ‘settle her down’.  By the end of the first book it’s really clear why they might have thought that way, she’s a respectable parents’ nightmare, and when she finds herself obliged to marry to save her reputation it probably didn’t come as that much of a surprise to Sir Matthew and Lady Howard.

From a modern point of view, Anne hasn’t done anything that bad and there’s a sense of outrage that she finds herself having to marry a man she loathes.  There’s a sense of her being punished for her independence, and we feel angry  that a girl could be treated that way.  We’re right to be angry, but girls were treated that way, and very few people thought it was wrong.  Even Anne herself at this point doesn’t attempt to refuse the inevitable although she’s desperately unhappy about it.  She knows the rules and she knows she’s broken them.  Of course she’s very young at this point, I’m not sure she’d have made the same choices a couple of years down the line with a lot more experience and confidence behind her.

Of all my female leads, Anne is the one who breaks the mould most thoroughly.  She finds herself, quite by accident, living a very different life away from the secure, wealthy home in which she grew up and there are opportunities for her to take on roles which were simply not available to women under normal circumstances.  Anne doesn’t hesitate.  She jumps in with both feet, doesn’t look back and doesn’t compromise who she is for anybody.

Not all the women in my books are like Anne and they shouldn’t be, it would be completely unrealistic given the restricted world in which most girls were obliged to live their lives.  But some were, even back then.  Women travelled the world, wrote novels, pretended to be men in order to become doctors or soldiers, fought in wars and fought and died for their rights to be considered equal to men.  Most exceptional women were not written about, some have a footnote in history, a few have become well known.  There are elements of Anne’s story which have been taken from genuine historical events.

I struggled for a while with Anne’s appearance.  For a time I wanted to play down the way she looked, make her very ordinary to look at.  In the end I changed my mind about that because I liked the contrast in the way the world sees her and the way she sees herself.  At her first meeting with Paul when she is seventeen and has barely been further than Harrogate and York, she admits that it makes her furious that people only see her beauty.

“I get complimented a lot. Girls do, you know. Growing up, George and Arthur were told how clever they were. I could run rings around them in any lesson we shared. Didn’t even have to try. But all I ever got told was that I was beautiful. As though that was something I should be proud of.” Anne gave a little laugh. “I’m sorry, you got me on my hobby horse. Harriet tells me I’m ungracious. But I’m not sure half these men would even like me if they knew me. Doesn’t matter. They take one long hard look and all they think about is…” She broke off.
Paul laughed softly. “Darling girl, I can’t condemn any man for that. I thought about making love to you thirty seconds after I saw you.”
“I know. But then you had a conversation with me and you acted as though what I said mattered. And I won’t forget that, Paul.”

An Unconventional Officer - love and war in Wellington’s army
Book 1 in the Peninsular War Saga

That, in the end, is the key to Paul and Anne’s love affair, which endures through hardship, tragedy and scandal.  Right from the start, although acknowledging and being attracted to Anne’s beauty, Paul van Daan falls in love with her wildly eccentric personality which somehow seems to connect with his own.  He realises that life with a girl who accepts none of the limitations of her sex is likely to be challenging, but he doesn’t care.  She changes his perception of women forever and he gives her the opportunity to be herself in a way that nobody else ever had.

Writing historical fiction is a lot of fun but depending on how you treat it, it’s a lot of work.  It can take weeks or even months of reading and research and planning before a single word is written.  Having said that, I find it immensely satisfying, like stepping into another world where everything is different apart from the people.

An Unconventional Officer is published on Amazon kindle on 30th May.

 

 

 

 

General Robert Craufurd – you couldn’t make him up…

Researching for the Peninsular War saga, I’ve met a few characters along the way and other than Lord Wellington, one of my absolute favourites has to be General Robert Craufurd, known to the army as Black Bob, the irascible genius who commanded the Light Division, the elite troops of Wellington’s army.

When I first created Lieutenant Paul van Daan who marched into the barracks of the 110th foot in 1802 ready to take over, my research into Wellington’s army was only just beginning.  I wasn’t sure how he was going to fit in.  I had thought, early on, that he might turn out to be one of Wellington’s exploring officers, a bit of a lone wolf, since he wasn’t really much like the other officers.  That idea was quickly abandoned.  Mr van Daan, it turned out, was better at the army than I thought he might be.  Besides which, extensive reading made it really clear to me that there was only one natural place for an over-confident individualist with a perfectionist attitude to training and a liking for eccentric characters.  Paul van Daan, although he didn’t know it yet, was clearly destined for Wellington’s Light Division under the grumpy, over-sensitive genius, General Robert Craufurd.

Craufurd was from a Scottish family and joined the army at fifteen.  He has a surprising amount in common with my fictional character, Paul van Daan.  Like Paul, he took the army seriously, studying at a military school in Berlin and travelling all over Europe and to South America and India on various postings.  Like Paul, he had varying success with his commanding officers.  He gained the reputation of being difficult, rude and bad-tempered.  More than once he seriously considered giving up the army, so disgusted was he with how poorly it was run in places.

Like Paul, Robert Craufurd married for love and was devoted to his young wife.  Mary Holland was a granddaughter of Lancelot Capability Brown the landscape designer and Craufurd was thirty-six when they married.  He fell in love relatively late but he fell hard and it was a source of exasperation to his future commanders, particularly Lord Wellington, that he frequently requested furlough home to see his love.  When Craufurd was in the Peninsular, Mary spent some time in Lisbon to be close to him and he returned to England, incurring the wrath of Wellington, for several months during 1811, arriving back literally on the battlefield in time to save the day at Fuentes de Onoro.  He had four children, three boys and a girl.

In 1808, Craufurd sailed for Corunna in Spain to reinforce Sir John Moore’s army.  Under Moore’s reorganisation, General Robert Craufurd was given command of what was called the 1st Flank Brigade which comprised the first battalions of the 43rd and 52nd and the second battalion of the 95th rifles, all light infantry.  The 2nd Flank Brigade, interestingly was commanded by Brigadier Charles von Alten who was to become Craufurd’s successor in command of the light division.  When Moore realised he was at risk of being cut off he began a brutal retreat to the coast.  The two flank brigades marched separately towards Orense.  Men died of cold and starvation and illness although unlike Moore’s main force they were not pursued by the French.  The retreat became famous for Craufurd’s brutal discipline, although surprisingly the enlisted men did not seem to resent this.  They considered that their safe arrival was due to their commander’s iron control of his brigade.  At the coast they awaited stragglers before returning to England, emaciated, sick and in rags.

Craufurd’s brigade, by now, known as the Light Brigade, returned to Portugal in May 1809, but poor weather delayed their sailing and despite a forced march which covered 45 miles in 26 hours they just missed the battle of Talavera.  Nevertheless, it is clear that despite numerous personal differences, Lord Wellington knew the worth of his most difficult commander and the Light Brigade was increased in number to become the Light Division, the elite troops of Wellington’s army.  Trained skirmishers, they could move fast and travel light and the French learned to fear them.

Craufurd was one of the few men that Wellington the control freak, trusted out of his sight.  The only generals with whom Wellington would ever enter into explanation and discussion were Hill, Beresford and Craufurd – the rest were simply given their orders and expected to obey them.  During that difficult winter Craufurd was sent with his division to hold the Allied outposts, patrolling the border and engaging in constant skirmishing with the French while other divisions rested.  By the time Wellington was ready to advance his army to the border, chasing Massena out of Portugal, Craufurd’s light division was legendary, a force of tough individualists led by the man often described as the rudest man in the army.

General Robert Craufurd had an unusually good relationship with his enlisted men despite being a harsh disciplinarian, very willing to use flogging.  This was because despite his strict reputation, he was also known to care for the welfare of his men in a way that few generals did, working hard to ensure that they were fed and well-equipped.  He seemed often to be more comfortable with the men than their officers.  With a few notable exceptions, the officers of the light division did not like Craufurd.  He had an uneven temper and thought nothing of yelling at officers in exactly the same way as he did the men.  They considered him rude, sarcastic and a bully.

In 1810 Craufurd was keen to show that the confidence which Wellington placed in him was not undeserved.  A sensitive man, he could not forget that he was four years older than Beresford, five years older than Wellington, eight years older than Hill, but still a junior brigadier-general in charge of a division.  He was older and had been in the army longer than most of Wellington’s other commanders but promotion was slow in coming, possibly because of his somewhat abrasive personality.

The Light Division was moved up to the Spanish frontier, and settled in the villages around the fortress town of Almeida with its outposts pushed forward to the line of the River Agueda. From March to July 1810 Craufurd accomplished the extraordinary feat of guarding a front of 40 miles against an active enemy with six times more men.  Not once did the French split his line or find out any information about Wellington’s gathering forces at his rear.  He was in constant and daily touch with Ney’s corps, but was never surprised, and seldom pushed back; he never lost a detachment or sent his commander false intelligence.  General Robert Craufurd’s activity on the border that year gave Wellington everything he needed for the coming campaign.

There were four bridges and around fifteen fords between Ciudad Rodrigo and the mouth of the Agueda, all of which were practicable in dry weather and some even after a day or two of rain. Craufurd insisted on reports being made on the state of the fords every morning.  Beacons were set up on the heights so as to communicate information about the French movements and it took less than ten minutes for his division to get under arms in the middle of the night, and a quarter of an hour, night or day, to bring it in to full order of battle with baggage loaded and assembled.

One of the light division’s most famous skirmishes during this period came at the old Roman bridge at Barba del Puerco.  Ferey sent six companies of voltigeurs, the French light skirmishers, to take the bridge before dawn.  He was able to bayonet the sentries on the bridge before they could get off a shot and was halfway up the slope towards the village of Puerto Seguro, but Craufurd’s system was foolproof and within ten minutes Sydney Beckwith’s detachment of rifles were upon him.  They drove him down the slope and back across the river at speed with the loss of almost fifty men, while Beckwith lost only four men killed and ten wounded.

Occasionally, Craufurd’s daring got the better of him.  At the combat of the Coa in July 1810 he took his men across the river in direct contravention of Wellington’s orders and escaped annihilation by the skin of his teeth.  Wellington was furious but quickly forgave the man he considered essential to his success in keeping the French at bay.  He later wrote:

“I cannot accuse a man who I believe has meant well, and whose error was one of judgement, not of intention.”

Bridge over the Coa

At this point, in my novels, Paul van Daan’s battalion of the 110th is still operating independently under Wellington’s command.  Increasingly, however, Wellington is sending Paul into action with the Light Division.  Initially the Captain of the 110th light company, Paul is now beginning to train his entire battalion as skirmishers and it is clear where he wants to be.  His relationship with Craufurd is surprisingly good, although with the frequent explosions to be expected of two determined individualists.  Their relationship might not have survived their very public disagreement at the Coa when Paul disobeys Craufurd’s direct order so that his men can cover the retreat.  It is Anne, newly married, who persuades Paul that as the junior of the two it is Paul’s job to apologise.  From this point on, no matter what their differences, Craufurd and Paul present a united front, something which must have surprised many people.  As with many other relationships in the army, Paul’s path is smoothed by his lovely, clever wife’s diplomatic skills and she and Craufurd are firm friends.

Craufurd’s Command Post at Bussaco

At Bussaco later that year, Craufurd more than redeemed himself, and Wellington was annoyed when his general insisted on returning to England for the winter to see Mary and recover from some health problems.  He threatened half heartedly to give Craufurd’s division to another to command, but the disaster of Sir William Erskine’s temporary command of the light division made it unlikely he would ever carry through on that threat.  In May, Craufurd reappeared on the field at Fuentes d’Onoro to the loud cheers of his men, a typically theatrical entrance.  He then proceeded, within twenty-four hours, to demonstrate just how it was done when he saved the 7th division and the whole of Wellington’s right flank by making a textbook fighting withdrawal.  By now, Paul is in charge of the third brigade, finally part of the light division, and takes an important part in the battle.  Robert Craufurd was promoted to Major-General on 4 June 1811.

Seven months later in January 1812, Black Bob Craufurd was shot down in the lesser breach during the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo at the age of 48.  Typically, he was high up, shouting orders to his men and did not seem to have realised how exposed his position had become, standing in two fire lines.  Typically, in my story at least, it was the youngest and most awkward of his brigade commanders who helps carry him from the field and is with him to the end.  The men of his light division were devastated.  Craufurd took four days to die, the bullet having passed through his lung and lodged against his spine, and he was buried with honour in the breach where he had fallen.  Wellington mourned him deeply and must have frequently wished, through the rest of the war, that his most difficult but talented commander had survived to make the journey with him.

Craufurd and Wellington were not close friends although in some ways they were very alike.  Both were brilliant commanders, clever and well-educated in military matters.  Both could be demanding, meticulous and found it hard to tolerate anything but perfection.  Both struggled at times with managing their officers although Craufurd was better than Wellington with his enlisted men, something he shares with his fictional junior.  The two men had an enormous respect for one another.  Craufurd was a sensitive man, considering his own rudeness at times, and Wellington frequently offended him but always made sure to put it right by complimenting Craufurd’s many talents soon afterwards.  He deeply mourned his difficult, irascible commander and on his deathbed, Craufurd apologised for the many occasions he had been less than supportive of his commander in chief.

The next commander of the Light Division was a surprise to many.  General Charles von Alten was German, very correct, very likely to obey orders, very different to Black Bob Craufurd.  Military historians have not all been kind to Von Alten, claiming that he lacked the zest and panache of his somewhat eccentric predecessor although he seems to have commanded the division very competently through the rest of the war.

In my novels, there is a reason for Wellington’s choice, and it is summed up very succinctly by Anne van Daan, speaking of Von Alten.

“He’s not as staid as you’d think.  They’ll disagree at times, but Von Alten is a very clever man, Johnny.  He knows what he’s good at, but he also knows his limitations, and he’s going to use Paul to fill that gap.  In some ways it will work better than General Craufurd did.  Craufurd was every bit as brilliant an improviser as Paul.  They loved working together but it was overkill.  Von Alten is a far better fit.  He’ll bring the stability and the organisational skills and Paul will provide the flashes of brilliance.  And this – this is what they share.  The work ethic to be up at dawn when the rest of the army is still resting and recovering, training the new recruits.  Von Alten is genuinely keen to learn how this works, and Paul loves the fact that he’s down here listening and watching instead of being up at headquarters being nice to Wellington.” (An Uncommon Campaign)

Although the third brigade and its flamboyant commander are a figment of my imagination, perhaps there is something in this.  Wikipedia gives this brief description of an action from the Battle of the Nivelle:

Statue of General Colborne outside Winchester Barracks

While the 43rd and 95th were dealing with the French on the Rhune, there still remained one very strong star-shaped fort below on the Mouiz plateau which reached out towards the coast. This was attacked by Colborne’s 52nd, supported by riflemen from the 95th. Once again, the French were surprised and the British succeeded. They had, in the French eyes, appeared from the ground at which point, in danger of being cut off, the French soldiers quickly fled leaving Colborne in possession of the fort and other trenches without loss of a single fatal casualty.

It sounds like the kind of action at which Robert Craufurd would have excelled.  Perhaps after his death Wellington realized that the officers and men he had trained had turned into independent skirmishers to such a degree that a Charles von Alten was needed to rein them in.  Perhaps it was true that while he had men like Colborne and Vandeleur and Barnard, he did not need another Robert Craufurd.

Whatever the truth of it, I love Craufurd, a brilliant, flawed and very human man who believed in God, loved his children and adored his wife.

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The Customs of the Army – Life in Wellington’s Peninsular Army

An Unconventional Officer - love and war in Wellington’s army

With four of the Peninsular War Saga published on Kindle and in paperback, I thought it was time to update this post on life in Wellington’s Peninsular Army.

Leaving O’Reilly and Carter to line up the men and march them to the

An Irregular Regiment
Book 2 of the Peninsular War Saga

barracks, Paul rode on ahead. He was surprised to hear signs of activity on his approach. Perhaps after all their new lieutenants were managing drills already. If that were true, it was a good sign. Touching his heel to Rufus’ flank he cantered further ahead of his company and rode in through the arched gate of the barracks, noticing that the painted sign was hanging down. He would set somebody to righting it tomorrow.
Abruptly Paul reined in, staring at the open square. The battalion was lined up around three sides, around three or four hundred men, he would guess. In the centre was a triangular wooden frame, and a man was tied to it. A corporal, sweating in the heat of the late morning sun, was wielding a lash and as it fell, the victim gave a scream of pain. His back was a bloody mess. Around a hundred, Paul estimated, as he swung down from the saddle.
The back rank of men noticed his arrival, and Paul motioned to the nearest man to take his horse. The infantryman did so with hesitation. Paul still wore the coat he had ridden in, with no insignia and there was no sign that he was anything other than a civilian. He walked forward. The two officers of the battalion were standing at the front of their men. They were young, probably no more than twenty-one or two, and both wore sparkling new uniforms, their hats cocked at exactly the right angle. There the resemblance ended. One was watching the flogging with an expression of apparent approval. He was tall and dark with a thin handsome face and hazel coloured eyes. The other lieutenant was shorter and slighter with soft brown hair and a pair of fine grey eyes, which watched in apparent horror. His face was white and he did not look well.
It was the dark man who saw him first. Paul walked past him towards the whipping post. The corporal paused in his work, looking unsurely at Paul and then over at the lieutenant.
“I think that’s probably enough for today, Corporal,” Paul said quietly. “Take him down. Carefully, now.”
“Who the devil are you, sir?” the dark lieutenant demanded. He had a clear baritone. “This man’s punishment is not yet finished!”
“I was going to ask you the same question,” Paul said turning to him. “Who is in command here?”
“I am. Lieutenant Lionel Manson, 112th foot. Don’t know who the devil you are, but you’ve no place coming in here interfering with discipline, sir! If you’ve a message, it can wait until we’re done!”
“You are done, Mr Manson. Cut him down, Corporal – don’t make me ask again, I’ve had a long ride.” Paul unbuttoned his great coat. He beckoned to a thin, white-faced private in the front row, who ran forward looking terrified. “What’s your name, lad?”
“T…t…terry, sir.”
“Well, Private Terry, will you take this to the officers quarters for me, please?” Paul said, taking off his coat and handing it to the boy with a pleasant smile. He turned to find that both officers had sprung to attention and were saluting. “Ah, that’s better.”
The corporal called out two names, and the men ran to help lift their comrade down, just as the rest of the light company marched through the gate. Paul walked over to the man and inspected his damaged back. “How many, Corporal?”
“A hundred ordered, sir. Ninety given.”
“What offence?”
“Don’t know, sir.”
Paul nodded. “Take him to the infirmary if you’ve one set up yet. If not, lay him on his bunk, face down, and give him some rum. I’ll get somebody to look at him presently.”
“Yes, sir.”
Paul turned to the two officers. Michael O’Reilly had dismounted and was coming forward. “Have you introduced yourself, sir?”
“I’ve not had time,” Paul said. “It’s busy in the 112th I can tell you, Mr O’Reilly.”
The Irishman surveyed the two lieutenants genially. “Lieutenant O’Reilly, 110th light company. You’ll be under the command of this officer for the foreseeable future, gentlemen – Colonel Paul van Daan who commands the 110th, and now your battalion. We’ve a bit of work to do, I can see, but for the time being lets get our men settled and see what arrangements you’ve already made and then we can have a bit of a chat. I didn’t catch your names.”
“I’ve met Lieutenant Manson here,” Paul said, indicating the dark lieutenant. “And this gentleman…?”
“Lieutenant William Grey, sir.”
“Welcome to Portugal, Lieutenant Grey. I’ll see my quarters and get settled in but you can both meet me in my office in – shall we say half an hour?”
“Yes, sir,” Manson said. “But…will you not want time to wash and change and…”
“Yes,” Paul said gently. “Which will take me approximately half an hour. Carry on.”

(From An Irregular Regiment, Book Two of the Peninsular War Saga by Lynn Bryant)

For the ordinary soldiers of Lord Wellington’s army, life was hard.

The British Army drew many of its raw recruits from the lowest classes of Britain. Since army life was known to be harsh and poorly paid it attracted mainly those for whom civilian life was worse. The Duke of Wellington’s famous quote describes them as “the scum of the earth” and claimed that many of the men “enlist from having got bastard children – some for minor offences – some for drink”.  But there were other reasons.

In Scotland for example, many men enlisted due to the collapse of the weaving trade and came from skilled artisan or even middle-class households.  Ireland, the source of many of Wellington’s recruits, sent men to the army in times of desperate hunger or in flight from failed rebellion.  And on a regular basis, local courts would offer thieves, pickpockets and other criminals the choice between enlisting or prison.  Knowing the conditions in local prisons, such men often chose the army.  Some would try to desert as soon as possible but many stayed.  Often, conditions in the army, although appalling, were better than at home.

Most soldiers at the time signed on for life in exchange for a “bounty” of £23 17s 6d, a lot of which was absorbed by the cost of outfitting “necessities” but a system of ‘limited service’ (seven years for infantry, ten for cavalry and artillery) was introduced in 1806 to attract recruits. Soldiers began, from 1800 onward, to receive a daily beer money allowance in addition to their regular wages; the practice was started on the orders of the Duke of York. Additionally, corporal punishment was removed for a large number of petty offences (while it was still retained for serious derelictions of duty) and the Shorncliffe System for light infantry was established in 1803, teaching skirmishing, self-reliance and initiative. Unlike other armies of the time, the British did not use conscription to bolster army numbers, with enlistment remaining voluntary.

The risk of death or permanent injury was huge.  During the Peninsular Campaign, the army lost almost 25,000 men from disease while fewer than 9,000 were killed in action; however more than 30,000 were wounded in action and most battalions were permanently short of officers and men. Seriously under-strength battalions might be dissolved, merged with other remnants into “Provisional battalions” or temporarily drafted into other regiments.

 Officers ranged in background as well.  Although an officer was supposed also to be a “gentleman”, this referred to an officer’s character and honourable conduct rather than his social standing. The system of sale of commissions officially governed the selection and promotion of officers, but the system was considerably relaxed during the wars. One in twenty (5%) of the officers from regular battalions had been raised from the ranks, and less than 20% of first commissions were by purchase.  The Duke of York oversaw a reform of the sale of commissions, making it necessary for officers to serve two full years before either promotion or purchase to captain and six years before becoming a major.  These changes however, applied more to regiments in barracks than to those on campaign.  In the Peninsular War, promotion was often fast as officers were killed in action or wounded and it was possible for a man who remained in the field to move up the ranks very quickly.

Only a few officers were from the nobility; in 1809, only 140 officers were peers or peers’ sons.   Many more officers came through the Militia and a small number had been gentlemen volunteers, who trained and fought as private soldiers but messed with the officers and remained as such until vacancies without purchase for commissions became available.  Promotion was mainly by seniority; less than 20% of line promotions were by purchase.   Promotion by merit alone did occur, but was less common, although this was very much down to the regimental commanders who could refuse to allow a promotion if they preferred another candidate.  This would have enabled Paul van Daan a good deal of freedom, once he was in command, to choose his own officers and select the candidates he wanted for promotion.  Officers who were disgruntled over his choices would have been free to apply to a transfer to another regiment.

In the 110th and it’s associated battalions, therefore, the mix of officers and men, their backgrounds and promotions and length of service is very typical.  Their commanding officer is very young for his rank, a consequence of plenty of money and a good background combined with a lot of talent and the friendship of the commander-in-chief.  The 110th is not a fashionable regiment and does not attract the aristocracy.  Most of Paul’s young officers are from the middle classes or county families and a lot of them live on their pay.  This works well for them in the 110th since Paul’s regiment is well organised and the mess bills are very reasonable.  In some regiments, particularly the cavalry, a man might buy a commission and then be unable to keep up with the expensive lifestyle of the regiment, where most of the officers came from wealthy families.  Some of Paul’s young officers can afford to purchase commissions and promotions, but for those who can not he is fierce in his willingness to fight with Horse Guards, Wellington and anybody else to make sure that the best men get the commissions they deserve.

The biggest difference in the 110th is in the conditions of the ordinary infantryman.  From the first, Paul van Daan takes a very different view of life in the army, probably stemming from his two years below decks in the Royal Navy as a boy.  He is on very good terms with his enlisted men and NCOs while at the same time having very high expectations of them.  He refuses to use flogging, and rarely gets the provost marshals – the policemen of Wellington’s army – involved with matters of discipline except in very serious cases such as rape and murder.

The 110th have tents for all their men as early as 1809 while the rest of Wellington’s army had to wait until 1813 before tents were issued to all of them.  By then Wellington had improved his supply lines and the commissariat was working better as well, but it was undoubtedly true in the earlier years of his campaigns that enlisted men and their wives and children often slept in the open in all weathers or under tents fashioned from their blankets, and when supplies failed which they did from time to time, they starved.

It was extraordinary how many men did have wives or girlfriends, often local women they met during campaigns.  Lord Wellington and many other senior officers preferred men not to have wives with them but the practice was tolerated largely because it was difficult to stop such liaisons springing up.  Theoretically only a few men in each company was allowed to take a wife on campaign with them but many women stowed away.  The women were invaluable doing laundry and mending, helping with the nursing and cooking and it would have been hard for the army to manage without them.  They too were subject to army discipline and could be flogged or punished.

It was a hard and dangerous life.  Into this world as an eighteen year old bride, Anne Carlyon arrived in 1809, just before Wellesley marched to drive the French out of Oporto.  Officers wives did come to Portugal and stayed in Lisbon or joined their men during winter quarters if the location was fairly safe.    But Anne was different from the start, choosing to make the army her home.  She rode and marched with the men, worked with the surgeons digging out shot and stitching sabre cuts and discovered a whole new side to herself that she would never have known if she had stayed at home.

She also fell in love.

An Unconventional Officer - love and war in Wellington’s army
Book 1 in the Peninsular War Saga

The Peninsular War saga is a new series about the men and women of Wellington’s army and about the battles and the politics of the fight against Napoleon.  It is the story of a wealthy and privileged young man who rose to command one of the finest regiments in the army and of the extraordinary young woman who shared his life.

It is also the story of an army and it’s customs and of the ordinary men who fought and died with their officers.  And what Wellington actually said about them was that they were “the scum of the earth; it is really wonderful that we should have made them into the fine fellows they are.” 

The books are available on Amazon, both in kindle and in paperback.

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The Reluctant Debutante – Ensign Giles Fenwick

The Reluctant DebutanteWelcome to a short biography of Giles Fenwick, hero of the Reluctant Debutante which is my bestselling book so far.

At the age of thirty two, Giles Fenwick, Earl of Rockcliffe had earned himself a reputation in the polite world as a dangerous rake, adept at seduction and quick to boredom with the women he pursued. The matchmaking mammas had welcomed him with open arms three years earlier upon his return from Waterloo, a professional soldier come unexpectedly into the ancient title and accompanying fortune.
These days, the Earl was aware that the same ladies eyed him askance and warned their delicate charges to avoid him if possible. There seemed no prospect of him doing his duty and marrying to secure the succession, and few mothers would have wanted to entrust their daughters to the scarred, cynical Earl with his unpredictable temper, his reputation for seducing married women, for keeping low company, having expensive mistresses in his keeping and for saying whatever outrageous thing should enter his head on any occasion.
The nobility of his birth and the size of his fortune ensured his continued welcome in the houses of the ton. Rockcliffe, who had returned from the army reluctant to be in any kind of society, was sardonically amused at how easy people found it to ignore his behaviour when dazzled by his title and money. But he had little in common with most of the well born people who saw themselves as his equals, and at times found their company stifling and overwhelmingly tedious.

Rockcliffe knew that the nature of his military service had a good deal to do with that. For many years he had served in the Peninsula under Wellington. Initially an excellent junior officer of light infantry, his intelligence, his talent for languages and his initiative had brought a transfer and he had served for much of the war as an exploring officer. These officers in Wellington’s army were under the command of the Quartermaster General. They operated on their own or with one or two local guides and their task was to collect first-hand tactical intelligence by riding to enemy positions, observing and noting movements and making sketch maps of uncharted land. The work was highly dangerous and required physical fitness, good horsemanship and a willingness to take risks. Captain Giles Fenwick had been a legend in Wellington’s army, his exploits talked of and laughed over in mess and over campfires.

It was a solitary life, and bred independence and impatience with rules and conventions. Hardly the best training, the Earl thought wryly, swinging himself out of bed, for an Earl entering polite society. But he could have done better if he had tried harder. He had not wanted to. The years of danger and excitement, the fights and the killing had culminated in the horror of Waterloo where he had seen friends and comrades cut down around him. He had expected to die from the wounds received on that day. But he had lived, had come home to be courted and feted by the polite world who would have petted him and made a hero of him if they could. He could not bear it – and made no attempt to hide the fact.

I’m delighted by how many people seem to be reading and enjoying The Reluctant Debutante which is now also available in paperback.

By the time we meet him in a humble tavern on the London road in 1819, Giles has inherited a title from his uncle and is the Earl of Rockcliffe. It has been a difficult transition for Giles who was, for many years, a penniless young officer in Wellington’s army, initially in a line regiment and then as one of Wellington’s exploring officers. He returned to regular service for the battle of Waterloo where he was seriously wounded and lost Simon Carlton, one of his best friends.

For anybody who would like to know more about Giles’ early years before he met and fell in love with a merchant’s daughter, you’ll be glad to know that the opportunity will arise during the course of the Peninsular War Saga as the regiment that young Ensign Fenwick joins is the first battalion of the 110th Infantry, commanded by the young and flamboyant Major Paul van Daan.

I wrote The Reluctant Debutante as a standalone novel and when I began writing the first of the Peninsular Books some time afterwards, the connection did not immediately occur to me. Giles was an exploring officer who operated away from the main army. However, as I spent more and more time researching Wellington’s army, it became clear to me that Giles would have started out in an ordinary regiment before being seconded to that post. We already know that he was poor, with no money to join the guards or an expensive cavalry regiment, and we also already know that his uncle, whom he visited, had an estate in Leicestershire, the home county for the 110th.

Giles is a few years younger than Paul van Daan. When Paul joins the 110th in 1802 he would have been just fifteen, still at school. But it did not seem unreasonable that when he was looking to join the army, he might have found a commission in the local regiment, the 110th cheap to buy, just as Carl Swanson did some years earlier. Moreover, I had a strong feeling that the young Giles Fenwick was probably the sort of lad who would catch the attention of Major van Daan and his clever wife. They like young officers with a strong personality and a lot to offer and Lord Wellington was always looking for men who might be suitable for his Corps of Guides.

After that the connection was obvious. Giles does not appear in the first book, although he joins the 110th in 1805 when he is eighteen. But he has the misfortune to be commissioned into the seventh company of the first battalion under the disaster that was Captain Vincent Longford, which means it is going to be some years before he finds himself under the command of Major van Daan. What happens then and how he becomes an exploring officer will be told during the course of the series.

I love connections like this, and having realised that I was going to be able to explore Giles’ back story as part of my saga, I realised that thanks to having unintentionally used the same surname in two of my books, I could create another connection, this time with the gallant Major Kit Clevedon of A Respectable Woman Kit is another officer who comes late into a title unexpectedly, but at twenty he gained financial independence from his bullying father when he inherited a small estate from an uncle. It didn’t take me long to work out that the character from An Unconventional Officer who shares his surname would have been 68 had he died that year. It would appear that Gervase Clevedon, one of Paul’s most reliable officers and very good friends, was the uncle from whom Kit inherited. I wonder if it was his idea for Kit to join the army to get him away from his unhappy home life? I rather suspect that it was; Gervase was a very good soldier and would have approved of the life for a favourite nephew…

Giles Fenwick also makes a cameo appearance in A Regrettable Reputation which is now the first book in the Light Division Romances, a series which follows the stories of some of the supporting characters from the Peninsular War Saga back into civilian life after the war.

My third standalone novel, A Marcher Lord is from a different time period entirely. However, the Scottish borders have provided fine soldiers to His Majesty’s armies for many hundreds of years. I have a strong suspicion that although nobody would know it, some red haired descendent of Will and Jenny Scott would have been fighting alongside the Van Daans, the Fenwicks and the Clevedons on Wellington’s front line. I’ll let you know if I run into him at some point.

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Officers and Gentlemen – Promotion and Rank in Wellington’s Army

Cannon

Lord WellingtonPromotion and rank in Wellington’s army was a daily preoccupation of the officers who served under him.  During the wars against Napoleon, an officer’s commission in the army was obtained by purchase, a crucial plot device in many a Regency novel. Young men wishing to enter the army were obliged to raise the money to buy their way in, and within the army promotion was, for the most part, by purchase as well.

There were several reasons for this. First and foremost, it preserved the social standing of the officer class, keeping out undesirable elements simply because they could not afford to join. It ensured that commissions were generally held by men with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, thereby reducing the possibility of Army units taking part in a revolution or coup. It ensured that officers had private means and were less likely to engage in theft or looting during wartime or to engage in profiteering. It served as a form of collateral against abuse of authority or gross negligence or incompetence, since a disgraced officer could be cashiered by the crown which meant they would be dismissed without recouping the cost of their commission. And finally the sale of the commission could provide for an officer’s retirement at the end of his service.

All of these reasons made perfect sense for the time. There was no equality for other social classes in any other area of life and nobody had any desire to see the common soldier raised from the ranks. It happened occasionally but very rarely and was seldom considered to be a success. Unfortunately, the system did not always ensure that the best men rose to positions of command ahead of those who simply had more money. Social exclusiveness was preserved not only by money but by sheer snobbery as regimental colonels were allowed to veto the purchase of a commission in their regiment if they did not think that the officer was of the right social background. This often happened in the Household and Guards regiments which were dominated by aristocrats.

During wartime, especially a war as bloody as the long Napoleonic wars, promotion on merit was more common. If an officer was killed in action his shoes could be filled by promoting a man who could not otherwise have afforded the purchase. It alleviated some of the worst effects of the system and ensured that at least some men of little means but considerable talent had the chance to rise to more senior ranks. But overall Wellington’s army was a hotbed of privilege and tradition with layers of social snobbery between officers, between the guards, the infantry and the cavalry and between old traditional regiments steeped in history and some of the new-fangled regiments recently raised.

This was the background against which the young Paul van Daan purchases his commission in the first book of the Peninsular War saga. The 110th light company was not the obvious choice for him. Paul comes from considerable wealth on his father’s side and very good birth on his mother’s side and a commission in a fashionable cavalry regiment is well within his means. He chooses instead to join with his boyhood friend, Carl Swanson, who as the son of a humble parson has not the means to buy into an expensive regiment. The light company of the relatively new 110th infantry is their choice, and after basic training down at Shorncliffe under the legendary Sir John Moore, one of the men who created the modern army with his light infantry tactics, they arrive at barracks in Melton ready to go to India.

Once in the field, a man’s progression through the ranks could vary widely. Some would be based on ability to pay and willingness to transfer between regiments. An ambitious officer might quickly go through a number of different regiments to achieve rank. By this time, rules had been introduced about the amount of time an officer needed to have served in order to purchase promotion, but in the field all bets were off and rules and regulations were set aside in the name of expediency. Commanding officers would bend and break rules to either promote or block promotion according to their preference for candidates and vacancies opened up all the time due to death or illness.

The various rules and changes going on in the army can be an advantage to a writer needing to promote a character up the ranks in a particular way, since there were so many ways this could happen with local ranks, official ranks, field ranks and temporary ranks, that it is almost always possible to assert honestly that this could have happened in Wellington’s army even if it was not the usual route to success. But despite this flexibility, all of Paul’s fellow officers would have been gentlemen and would have expected their fellow officers to share a set of unquestioned values and beliefs with which they all felt safe.

So what happened when one of them didn’t?

What happened when an officer broke all the rules of his class and his rank and cared more about his enlisted men than the comfort of his officers? What happened when an officer decided to pick and choose which regulations mattered and which didn’t? What happened to a young lieutenant who often preferred the company of his Irish sergeant and his cockney Corporal; who would rather eat by the campfire than dine in the mess; whose friends included thieves and pickpockets and ex poachers? How could any officer who flatly refused to use flogging to discipline his men expect to get on in the snobbish, hierarchical army of the early nineteenth century?

Welcome to the 110th infantry, where officers and men are about to get the biggest shock of their lives.

An Unconventional Officer
Book 1 of the Peninsular War Saga

Welcome to An Unconventional Officer

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Lord Wellington

An Uncommon Campaign, 110th at the Battle of Fuentes d'Onoro
An Uncommon Campaign, 110th at the Battle of Fuentes d’Onoro

Lord Wellington is one of the most important supporting characters in the Peninsular War Saga.  He first met Paul van Daan on a hillside in India when Paul was an arrogant young lieutenant and it was the beginning of a friendship and working relationship which lasted the rest of Wellington’s life.

As Richard Graham emerged from his billet to find his horses ready, with one loaded with his small amount of baggage, he saw Captain Sean Devlin approaching him. “They’ve gone ahead to get the German lad settled,” he said. “I waited to show you the way. You ready?”

Graham nodded. “Yes. I’m hoping we get fed. I’ve been dreaming of a drink and a meal and trying to forget about today. What a bloody introduction to Portugal!”

Devlin laughed. “You were unlucky, laddie. Normally these affairs aren’t so exciting. Come and be properly introduced.

“I’m not sure I want to be,” Graham said.

“Admit, you’re curious. And you’ll want to find out how the lassie is.”

After a moment Graham nodded. “Should I change?”

“Don’t bother, they won’t expect it.”

“No dinner in the mess?”

Devlin laughed. “Just come as you are.”

Graham complied, admitting to himself that he was curious. His impression of the colonel had been of a towering personality with a temper but he had nothing other than that to go on. On the ride across to the abandoned convent where the 110th regiment had apparently been billeted until they had marched north to fight at Sabugal, Graham glanced at Devlin.

“So what’s the story, Captain?” he asked quietly.

“Don’t know yet, laddie. That’s why I’m here. Hoping to find out. It’s just up here. Best billet on the lines, the 110th always end up somewhere good.”

“I’m not surprised if he’s in charge,” Graham said drily. “Who is he and why the big fuss?”

Devlin grinned. “As the girl said, he commands the 110th. You heard of them?”

“No. Don’t forget I’ve just spent three years in the Indies, which is the arsehole of the world, I’ve not heard of anybody. Don’t think they’ve ever been posted out there. Infantry?”

“Yes. The first battalion is out here and the second in barracks and Paul van Daan commands the regiment along with a Portuguese brigade and the first battalion of the 112th. At the moment. Given how he’s just distinguished himself in this campaign, look for further promotions, I’d say. He’s on his way up, laddie, and fast. They often fight as part of the light division, he’s got a mania for training – a perfectionist – and he’s trained all his men to fight as light infantry although they’re not officially designated as such. I imagine they soon will be. He started out in India under Wellington in the light company. They’re as thick as thieves, he’s one of the few men Wellington will tolerate arguing with him and he has a reputation as something of an individualist. He is known in some quarters as Wellington’s Mastiff. Hookey likes to keep him close at hand and often gives him the jobs nobody else wants. Which is not a reputation I’d want, but it’s certainly a quick route to promotion if you can stay alive.”   (From: “An Uncommon Campaign” Book Three of the Peninsular War series by Lynn Bryant.)

Since I decided to write a series of books set in the Peninsular War, I have spent an inordinate amount of my time reading about Sir Arthur Wellesley, later Lord Wellington, who led the Anglo-Portuguese army during it’s five year struggle against Napoleon’s forces in Portugal and Spain. I started knowing very little about Wellington and I have ended up by feeling surprisingly attached to him.

My knowledge of Wellington, to be honest, came from my schooldays when I studied nineteenth century politics in history. He was Prime Minister twice, not very successfully, pushed through Catholic emancipation and fought strenuously and unsuccessfully against the Reform Bill, and in my mind he was always a slightly grumpy and very superior elder statesman who looked down his nose at the young Queen Victoria and disliked change and modernisation.

For my Napoleonic fiction books set during the Peninsular War I have had to go right back to the early days of Wellesley’s career. When he is introduced to the young Lieutenant Paul van Daan in 1802 he is a relatively young and inexperienced general with his greatest victories in the future. He had not yet made his disastrous marriage to Kitty Pakenham and the battle of Assaye, which brought him his knighthood and some public attention, was a year away. He was ambitious, single minded and determined, a moderate drinker for the time, a serious student of military affairs and a man who enjoyed the company of women. Even then, he struggled to delegate, and preferred his officers not to show any initiative or to take matters into their own hands.

As I began to read more about Wellington’s character it became obvious that I had accidentally stumbled on the perfect foil for the flamboyant, unpredictable bad boy of the 110th infantry, Lieutenant Paul van Daan, a character I’ve had in my head for a while. On paper, Paul is everything Wellington likes to see in a young officer; he’s dedicated, intelligent and courageous. In reality, Wellington the control-freak is about to come up against a force of nature and their disagreements are frequent and explosive.

While Paul’s love story is at the heart of the novels, his relationship with his commander-in-chief is almost as important. Increasingly through the years of war, Lord Wellington felt isolated and under siege from political influences in London and worn down by lack of money, men and resources and the limited pool of talented officers available to him on the ground. It increased his tendency to control every aspect of his campaign and the running of the army himself and anybody who reads the volumes of his letters and despatches will quickly begin to realise how involved he was in the detail of administration.

There were few men in his army that Wellington felt comfortable with, but his friendship with the young officer he had first singled out on a hillside in India endures the storms of war and politics. It was a source of envy and resentment among some of the other officers but it was very much understood by Anne, who has her own surprisingly close relationship with the commander in chief.

When I set out to write these novels, Lord Wellington was supposed to be a subsidiary character with little to do apart from to issue orders. As so often happens with subsidiary characters, he developed a mind of his own and began to intrude into the action in the most unsuitable manner. As he is a general, I thought it best to let him have his way.

 

 

The Battle of Talavera – the problem of a battle

An Unconventional Officer - love and war in Wellington’s army

The battle of Talavera has been causing me a good deal of trouble while revising An Unconventional Officer.

Talavera, 1809

 Paul had just rallied his men after their encounter with the left column, keeping a wary eye on the French and trying to assess the extent of the damage. The first company had taken the worst punishing. He had no way of knowing how many were dead and how many lay wounded on the field, but more than half of them were missing including all of the officers. His own light company was battered and bloody and there were faces he searched for and could not find.
     “Sergeant, where’s Grogan?”
     O’Reilly shook his head exhaustedly. He was sporting a bloody arm where it had been grazed by a musket ball. “Down, sir,” he said quietly.
     “Wounded?”
     “Dead. No doubt.”
      Paul nodded. The green-jacketed rifleman was one of the oldest in his company and had been with him since India. “Poor bastard. Isn’t his wife expecting again?”

I mentioned a few days ago that I am already tired of the battle of Talavera.  Home again after spending the Easter weekend with friends I am contemplating another go at it.  I’ve been whinging about Talavera but in some ways it illustrates the general problems of writing about battles.

In writing a series of books about the Peninsular War, it’s hard to avoid the odd battle.  They occur with increasing regularity, interrupting the daily life of my characters and causing death and mayhem all over the place and they are impossible to ignore.

Researching battles is actually quite fun.  There are a lot of first hand published accounts of this war as well as a fair few histories stuffed with maps and diagrams and other useful tools.  In addition, some people have written modern guides to the battlefields for people wanting to tour them.

We weren’t able to get to Talavera during our recent trip around battle sites.  It was too far off our route and I had read that a motorway recently built makes it difficult to get much sense of how the country would have looked.  I found it incredibly helpful to visit the sites of some of the other battles I’m writing about.  My fictional regiment, the 110th took part in Talavera, Sobral, Massena’s retreat and Sabugal, and then the fighting along the border the following year leading up to Salamanca and I made it to most of these places, but the two major battles in the first book were left out so I’m doing Talavera from books and maps and photos.

The problem of battles is how to write them.  Battles weren’t particularly neat and tidy, they weren’t always well organised and they often took place over ground covering several miles.  Things didn’t happen in neat chronological order, so the battle could be going well in one part of the field while disaster struck on the other.  And the most crucial problem from an author’s point of view is that for whole sections of the time the men involved had no idea what was going on.

That leaves the choice of whether to write from the point of view of the individuals involved or whether to take a more general view so as to tell the reader what is happening all over the field.  There is also, in my case, the action off the field since what is happening in the surgeons tents is of some importance to the plot.  With so much going on there is a danger of flitting from one place to another leaving the reader completely bewildered.  I suspect my first draft of Talavera was guilty of this since the man I married informed me he had no idea what was going on when he read it.

The other problem is how long to spend describing battles.  Book one of the series begins with Paul joining the 110th and describes his early days with the regiment including the battle of Assaye.  At this stage he has not met either of the two women in his life and the focus is very much on the action on the field and it’s aftermath.

By the time we reach Talavera there is some conflict.  Not only do I have to work out where the 110th is fighting and what happens to the main characters in the regiment as the day unfolds, but I need to keep an eye on my female character who has her own role to play for the first time.  It’s a delicate balance between turning the thing into a military history rather than a novel or giving the impression that the battle is a mere backdrop to the personal lives of the characters.  I’m working on how to get that right.  Time will tell.

Having said all of that, I like a good battle.  It enables me to to bring out the best in some of my characters – and on occasion, the worst.  It highlights personality traits and gives opportunities to move the plot along very quickly.  There are opportunities for some light-hearted moments but far more opportunities for tragedy.  At the end of a battle nothing is ever quite the same.

I’m rather looking forward to getting on with Talavera and I’m hoping it will be the last big section of rewriting I need to do on the first book before it’s ready to publish.  I wonder if I’ll still be as cheerful about it by the end of next week…..