On His Majesty's Service

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In the first edition of The Spectator, 5 July 1828, there is an article describing the topography of ‘the theatre of war in Turkey’. Russia had fought the Ottomans no fewer than eight times in a hundred and fifty years, but in none of these wars was Britain directly involved, nor, indeed, very indirectly. There had been a close shave in 1827 when a combined British, French and Russian fleet had – incredible as it may seem – inadvertently sunk a sizeable Turkish fleet which lay at anchor in Navarino Bay (the battle which features in the ninth Hervey tale, Man of War). By deft diplomatic activity, however, war was averted – one of the Foreign Office’s finer moments.

In that Spectator article, quoted at length at the beginning of Part Two of this latest Hervey adventure, there is a statement with sinister echoes: ‘The truth is, that the Danube debouches in a very obscure portion of Europe, and, except in the case of a contest, like the one commencing, there is very little reason why we should trouble our heads with its geography.’ For is this not reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s speech in September 1938 during the Czechoslovakia crisis, in which he referred to ‘a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing’? War came but a year later for Chamberlain’s Britain; in the Russo-Turkish quarrel it would be another twenty-five before Britain found herself embroiled (in the Crimea). But in both cases the British army, sorely neglected in the preceding years, fared badly at first, and only survived by the innate strength of the regimental system until it could variously pull itself together.

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