Lord Paget's cabin on the Berry

[Runs parallel with Setting Sail - Berry, starting here]

Edrington smoothed his damp hair down before knocking. It might only be a cramped and misshapen cabin (normally used by the First Lieutenant) but it was Paget's room for the duration of the journey. His hands and face washed, his red uniform coat buttoned neatly over a clean shirt, he ducked his head and entered the cabin when Paget's man opened the door.

[ This is the Austrian contraption]

The Naval practice of eating a heavy meal in the middle of the day did not find favour with the Army, more used to waiting until the day's work was complete. But Paget's man had provided an excellent luncheon, prepared while Paget had proudly displayed his beautiful fowling pieces and the strangely elegant Austrian gun.

"Thank God they're on our side," Edrington murmured as he laid the gun back into its case.

The rather hesitant knock on the door was followed by the voice of the Midshipman Mr Winger, sent by the Captain to inform them that his preparations were in hand for the shooting competition (if that was what it was to be). The midshipman was sent away, to inform the Captain that the two officers would be there, when they had finished their meal. "If he won't feed us, he must wait for us."

They had gone their separate ways after leaving the quarterdeck, each to his own place to spruce up. Paget's manservant assisted him in finding what he needed - the fellow had a near-magical ability to procure just about any resource - and such a simple thing as fresh wash-water was no difficulty for him. Clean, starched, and once again fit for decent company, Paget drew forth the cases of his prized guns from his dunnage, and laid them out on the thin coverlet of the bed in his cabin. He left the smaller cases, containing pistols, where they were.

Having just finished doing so, he was in the process of opening the cases when the knock sounded on his cabin door. Paget was in something of a fit of pique, and he failed to notice as his servant, Dagwood, opened the door for Edrington and quietly announced the Earl's presence. "Taking pot-shots at birds, indeed - the wretched man has no breeding whatsoever," Paget was muttering half to himself and half to his beloved shotguns. That was when Dagwood cleared his throat diplomatically; the noise broke through Paget's reverie and he spun about to meet his guest. "Lord Edrington, my apologies." How to explain he had not heard the knock? "I was preoccupied-" with verbally berating the absent Dwerry - "Here," he hurriedly offered, and stood as far out of the way as he could to grant his visitor as much room in the tiny cabin as possible. Both men had to hunch. "The fowling-pieces which I promised, and the Austrian air-gun." He gestured. "Feel free to acquaint yourself with whichever suits your preference. Will you take luncheon with me?"

As Edrington examined the air-gun, which Paget introduced as the workmanship of a gunmaker named Girandoni, Dagwood had quietly vanished to pull a few rabbits out of his hat in the process of finding the two officers something to eat. Paget outlined the use of the air-gun in the Austrian army (by specially trained Tyrolese troops), its strengths and weaknesses (primarily being the length of time it took to re-charge the air cylinders and the fact that the common Austrian soldier was simply not clever enough to handle such a weapon.)

As that entertainment came to a close, Dagwood reappeared with a luncheon, which the two officers shared in the privacy of the cabin. They had received no invitation from the captain or the officers of the ship to eat with them, and Paget felt the slight all the more keenly than on previous days (none of which he had been invited to meals) after Dwerry's words from earlier. The sportsman in him had been injured by the captain's outlook.

"The Mantons are splendid, of course, and I am very grateful to you for offering to lend me one, but I am in awe of the Austrian weapon. I had heard of them, but never seen one. How did it come into your possession?" Edrington sipped at the wine. It was excellent. Dinner with the captain would have been miserable by comparison: Dwerry did not seem to be the sort of Captain with a taste for good living.

The conversation had returned to the air-gun, which was a piece of which Paget was particularly fond and thus perfectly happy to dwell upon. "It was given by Cobenzl to my brother Arthur when he was our ambassador in Vienna; Arthur very kindly passed it on to me, as he is not much of a sportsman himself," he answered. "Do you not think that these air-guns would be well implemented in British hands? The independence and adaptability of the British mind is far better suited to such an innovation than is the Austrian. In my experience the Austrians are fine, brave soldiers, but quite sessile in temperament. They only do well with rigid discipline."

"The Hanoverians are the same. Excellent fellows, and I've been honoured to act as - well, liaison with their Infantry. But for adaptability and initiative, the British soldier is supreme. But would the Rifle Brigade accept them? They seem remarkably attached to thier weapons. And there is the question of loading. 20 shots a minute, and with such a range, is magnificent - but how long does it take to reload, and - would the correct term be 'recharge' it? You might lose there what you gain in the shooting speed."

Edrington scowled. "I find it alarming. The thought of what such weapons could do to the enemy is one thing. But what guarantee that it wouldn't be used against us one day. A single man, armed with that, could bring down the whole front rank. Could cavalry stand against a whole regiment?"

"Our own riflemen can be perfectly pigheaded sometimes," Paget said in a tone that had much more admiration for this vice of the British in it than disappointment. "I believe they might be lured away from their Bakers for these, though. The range and accuracy are nearly as great, and the speed of firing is astonishing. The downside, of course, as I understand it, it takes nearly one thousand five hundred strokes of the air-pump which I showed you to re-charge the air in the rifle, which takes about half an hour. The Austrian army circumvents that difficulty by supplying each soldier with two extra air cylinders, and having runners supply more to the riflemen as needed. That allows them to keep up the rapid firing rate; some of them can fire thirty shots in a minute."

Paget turned thoughtful. "I have never faced such an infantry, but I believe that it is not in wide enough use by the Austrians to warrant too much worry. I certainly trust in the performance of our cavalry against anything."

"A corp of soldiers with the job of filling the cylinders with air. I have known a few who would perfom excellently in such a post. A sheer waste of breath. I would like to see them in action. The Baker rifle has proved its reliablility, and so has the musket. Bayonets." Edrington added rather at random.

"But this is complicated. Any piece can break down, and probably will, just as the Lancers arrive at the edge of the square."

He drank some more wine. "I am bewitched by it. I hate amd fear it - as a regimental officer - as much as I yearn to try it. It would be one in the eye for that miserable Captain Dwerry!" A look of horrified amusement. "Not literally, of course."

Paget grinned. "Indeed; some of the windbags of the House of Commons would be well suited to the task." More than a few, in point of fact. As Edrington finished his first statement, Paget wondered whether the air-gun could be fitted with a bayonet. This one was not. Did the Austrian army equip that? Certainly no infantry could ever hope to stand against cavalry without bayonets, no matter how remarkable their guns.

But in another part of his mind, he was watching Edrington, and wondering if the earl had been enjoying a little too much of the wine; the slightly disjointed nature of the man's conversation suggested that it might perhaps be so. It would not be well if the earl was unable to participate in their planned sport. Underneath the table and out of sight of Edrington, Paget twitched his little finger at Dagwood, and the slightest glance towards Edrington's wine-glass was enough to give the servant the hint he needed. Dagwood began clearing everything away, beginning with the wine.

"You shall try it, then," Paget said cheerfully. "I will have my Manton's, of course, and if the air-gun does not suit you once we are in the main-top, then we may simply trade. Dwerry, on the other hand," and this with lofty disdain towards the absent captain, "must look to his own means for a fowling-piece, not that I expect him to have one. I daresay that he shall hit nothing at all."

Edrington moved back to let Dagwood to the table, retaining his glass. "I wonder just what sort of weapon he will bring with him. One of the bow-chasers, perhaps. It ..."

He hesitated, rather concerned about Paget's clearly undiminished confidence. "Dwerry may well be able to give us a decent match. He has, after all, had the chance to practice shooting on board ship. It was the difficulties - of aim, of calculation - that attracted us to the idea in the first place. I am prepared for the need for some practice, to get my eye in, in the circumstances. But if that impudent cur starts to crow..." He finished his wine and handed the glass to Dagwood. "A crowded maintop is probably not the place to begin anything that cannot be resolved for several days, at best."

Paget entertained the notion of Dwerry attempting to hit a bird with a cannon for a moment, and held back his laughter at the thought. Astounding as the captain’s ignorance of fowling surely was, he would not likely try something as outré as that.

“The captain may be more used to the sea than either of us, but I do not think he has ever been on a game-shoot in his life. ‘Taking potshots at birds,’ he called it. He is an ill-bred mongrel of a man. I am sure that he cannot possibly provide any sort of competition for either of us.” If he did, however, Paget thought it entirely possible that Dwerry might gloat, and though he did not say it he agreed with Edrington that it would be intolerable. Crowded main-top or not, it might be too provoking to ignore until they made landfall. The corners of his mouth turned down as he dwelt upon it.

“His towering ignorance of his duty towards his superiors is perfectly maddening, and all the more so because he does not even seem to have any consciousness of it!”

"Obnoxious," Edrington agreed, "and I doubt if he has the faintest notion of his own - inferiority. But he is in the Navy, after all. Where would he learn such lessons? There is hardly a single officer in the Navy of any birth, and the system of promotions means that anyone can rise and call himself an officer."

He looked back towards Paget. "The same thing may be happening in the Infantry - not the Foot Guards, of course, but the Light Infantry. I fear you are spoiled in the cavalry, with its traditions. I have given up insisting on correct forms of address. It is too tiresome." And makes one look like a pompous idiot - but better not to say that to Paget. "I am content provided they respect the rank. Which Dwerry clearly does not."

Well, that was not entirely fair to the Navy to say that; there were a few decent sorts. Paget's own younger brother Charles was in the Navy, as one example. But for the most part he agreed with Edrington; there were precious few. It was almost dangerously Republican in that sense. A man who started out before the mast could raise himself to an Admiral. The parallels with the French army, where Marshal Lannes had begun as a conscript, were disturbing.

And yet Paget had difficulty quite agreeing with his own self about that. Surely a man who showed initiative, judgement, and skill ought to be rewarded. The system of purchase might be well-suited to keeping gentlemen in charge where they ought to be...and yet those gentlemen were not always the best fitted to command. It felt disloyal to think that, and distressingly radical. But his innate sense of justice protested against the idea that a man otherwise well-equipped to command should be kept in the ranks by a lack of money.

He attempted to reconcile the two differing sensations in a somewhat illogical way by considering that birth did not always equal money. There were plenty of wealthy men now-a-days that had absolutely no breeding whatsoever. The son of a shop-keeper that had done well for himself could purchase a commission that he certainly did not deserve. Thus, purchase did not ensure purity among the officers, and it was not a perfect system for that reason. If wealth were kept where it belonged, among those of true class, then the British army would be immeasurably improved. It was still an issue on which Paget was not entirely resolved.

Instead he remarked upon the cavalry. "I am afraid you are wrong about that. We have plenty of our own black sheep. Vivian complains to me constantly about the poor quality of the officers in the 7th." The name brought up further uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty. Hussey Vivian himself was not of any particular birth at all - in fact he was from a Cornish family of nobodies - and yet Paget was proud to call him his friend. He continued in the same vein of complaint as Edrington had begun in an attempt to convince himself of the proper way of thinking. "In the entire cavalry we have, I believe, only one true peer, not over a dozen sons of peers, a very few knights, some sons of baronets and knights...and of course an exiled Italian prince and a Hanoverian baron, but those last are hardly worth counting."

The difficulty which Paget was finding in attempting to resolve himself upon an opinion was simply too great to leave it at that, however. "But, damn it all, sir, I confess I have some difficulty restricting my definition of a good officer to those of noble birth. Certainly it is not to be denied that a man brought up among the highest society of the country is far better bred to the battlefield. That is the only way in which we may hope to maintain any civility about warfare at all. Yet on occasion there may be found an officer who, though he cannot boast an ancestry of any note, deserves to hold rank among the best. Do you not think that such an exception is possible?" Hussey Vivian was at the forefront of his mind, insistently providing an example to Paget of just such an officer as he described. The devil take Vivian for making it personal.

Edrington hesitated, realizing from Paget's vehemence that he had hit on a tender area, quite unintentionally.

"I fear I may have expressed myself badly. I do not accept that because a man is a Marquis he is necessarily the right man to command me in battle, nor does he become any more competent to do so because he can afford to spend more on his promotion. And as soon as I recognize that, I am forced to admit that the fact that I am an Earl, and can afford to buy the rank I hold, does not make me fit to command other men. I have to make myself fit: if I do not do so, it would not be right for me to risk men's lives by my incompetence. This sounds positively Revolutionary, but there are those who are born to the best families who are less fit to command than the son of a provincial parson, or a mere squire. I have served with such noble officers and, occasionally, under them, and have regretted it."

He cast another glance at Paget. "There are men I am honoured to serve with, and to call them friends, whose families have no pretensions to noble ancestry, and who would be at a loss to follow the correct rules of address or precedence. I would rather have them beside me - and even see them rise to highest rank in the Army or Navy - than some scion of the aristocracy who thought it might be fun to buy a cornetcy and has no more idea of commanding men than he has of controlling himself..." Edrington stopped and raised his hands. "The Navy's methods may have reversed the trend too far, but this War is showing us that we need to cast our net wider to find good officers, regardless of wealth or social rank. And once the Army does that, we may find, my lord, that our abilities too count for more than our ancestry."

Paget saw that he had given the other man pause, and he wondered if his somewhat incoherent speech had been offensive. Or Republican. Paget had a horror of being Republican. He began to formulate an apology in his mind, but Edrington began laying out his own position. And Paget listened quietly.

The earl was more decided in his own mind than was Paget, more willing to subject his opinion to a rigorous logic. He made sweeping statements that rang true, though they ran counter to every principle expected of a gentleman-officer. The fact that it resonated with something in Paget's own mind made him distinctly uncomfortable, but completely unable to contradict anything which Edrington had said. He chewed the thoughts over for a few moments, then offered the plain, unvarnished truth, hoping that at least within the privacy of this cabin, no-one would despise him for it.

"I cannot help but agree. As much as I should wish our peerage to produce only the best men, I have found many of my best officers to be of very questionable background. Skill and talent do not appear to go hand-in-hand with a pedigree. It seems terribly radical to think so. I cannot help it, though. Surely it cannot be supportive of revolutionary political philosophy to observe common-sense in our military?"

As if he hoped to balance out that concern, he mitigated his own statement by adding, "There are, however, certain customs of war that I fear shall be lost if men of less refinement do make their way into command. Restrictions on what can be done...conventions of simple human decency. Warfare has been a gentleman's business; I dread the day when that ceases. When any weapon or action, however monstrous, is permissible, and the behaviour of such men as the Spanish irregulars becomes the standard...that is what I fear, Lord Edrington."

Paget's words brought back the chill that Edrington had felt at the touch of the Girandoni rifle. The other man, in his enthusiasm for his possession, seemed unaware that here was one possible forerunner of those monstrous weapons he feared. New inventions would outrun decency, as each nation sought to improve the effectiveness of its armed forces. Britain itself had only recently introduced shrapnel shells. Did Paget actually believe that 'gentlemen' would reject the possibility of any advantage?

But his concern - both about his own daring radical thinking, and about the future - was so obviously genuine that Edrington tried to reassure him. "We can be more hopeful than that. I do not think we are on the point of handing over total control of the army to the common man. There will always be a need for those who have been trained - educated - to command. But surely it is right that the best men should not be rejected, whatever their birth. If our standards are principled and decent, then those who join us in command will adopt them." As the first enobled Brant had adopted the ways of the aristocracy, five generations before, and - his lip twitched slightly at the thought - Paget's own family pride would grow to match the honour of the Earldom recently bestowed on them.

Paget was firmly of the opinion that the British were on the side of God and righteousness. He was equally sure that the system of purchase, and specifically the maintenance of gentlemen as the officers in command of the rabble, was what kept the British army a moral force. While Paget would expound at length upon the virtues of the ordinary British soldier, he would still insist that like any men, they needed a strong hand to keep them in check. When he was in the Peninsula before, he recalled many times seeing the aftermath of attacks by the Spanish and Portuguese irregulars, the guerilleros. In an army where any man could name himself a chief, horrific crimes quickly became routine.

Cruelty and atrocity becoming commonplace and even celebrated - that was what Paget feared, more so than developments in weapons. And a clever piece of workmanship like the Girandoni's was not even needed for the latter. During the Seven Years' War a scant few decades earlier, whispers had gone about regarding Bouquet's...innovations. They had not completely vanished for those who looked closely. Paget was a man who looked closely and with great interest into military history. He had come across Bouquet in his reading - notably (in his mind) the son of a tavern-owner - Bouquet and Amherst, now Lord Amherst, whom he had met in person before he passed away. The professional soldier and commander-in-chief, and the Nessus shirt which they had prepared...

Paget did not like the direction his own mind was taking him. As unpleasant thoughts asserted themselves alongside his memories of the Peninsula, he shook his head as if to clear it. "One may hope so."

This was not a happy subject. Paget thought it best to change the conversation. "I believe it may be better not to leave the captain waiting for too long. It is still in his power to call the whole thing off, and if it does not take place I shall...shall be no where," he suggested incautiously.

"He'll not do that," said Edrington firmly. "He is merely waiting for us to be ready - remember the young midshipman. He would not dare deny us our pleasure now, in what would clearly be an act of spite."

He glanced down at his red uniform. "I will go and prepare. And this time I will leave all this paraphanalia in my cabin, and go on deck dressed for the occasion. Be damned to appearances." He would take his pistols, in the case with its ammunition and powder. With Paget's fowling pieces, the Girandoni and the muskets, that would make it a very pleasant afternoon's entertainment, and a genuine and practical test of ability.

He paused with his hand on the door. "It has been a most enjoyable meal." Probably the best he had ever had on board ship. "And a very interesting discussion. Thank you."

Paget hoped that Edrington was right. He had the feeling, though, that Dwerry was concealing much more of a backbone than he had displayed earlier, more even than his outbursts of impudence suggested. It was nearly enough to make him like the man. However odd that thought sounded, even to him. Paget always did find it damned difficult to keep up resentment at anyone, and after the discussion they had just held, several of the more general arguments he had against Dwerry were called into question. Though he would probably always hold 'potshots at birds' against the captain.

But if Dwerry did dare, all stirrings of good feeling would be instantly wiped away, and Paget was sure he never would forgive that. He decided that he ought not to give any occasion for such a decision, however, and as Edrington was beginning to take his leave Paget was already considering what he ought to wear.

"I suppose," he said regretfully, "that you are right. Be damned to appearances." But Paget could not quite damn them entirely. Surely there was something to be found in what he had brought along with him.

"Good afternoon, then, Lord Edrington. I have quite enjoyed your company." Impulsively, he added, "Do come again sometime, won't you? Any time you like; don't stand upon ceremony."