The Spanish Bride

7

Early in May, Major-General Baron Charles Alten, of the King’s German Legion, was appointed to the command of the Light division. He was forty-eight years old, a hard-bitten warrior with a dark hatchet-face, stern, bright eyes, and a strong German accent. Rather an odd choice of General for The Division? Not at all: no Englishman had anything but the most profound respect for the King’s German Legion. As for Baron Alten, he was just the kind of leader the Light Bobs liked: a General who knew his work; never, even under the most trying circumstances, lost an atom of his cool presence of mind; was calm in action; and did not irritate those under his command with unnecessary orders, or the teasing habits of many an English General. It was by no means an easy task to command the Light division to the Light division’s satisfaction; it was a very hard task indeed to fill the place of General Craufurd. ‘The fellow who commands us will have to be a damned good fellow,’ said Charles Beckwith. ‘None of your old women, thank you!’

‘And no marches and counter-marches for God alone knows what reason!’ ‘And no damned reviews and inspections!’

‘Must understand outpost duty!’

‘Mustn’t be one of these cats on hot bricks who won’t go into action unless they’re pushed!’ ‘Take heart!’ said Harry Smith, entering in the middle of this discussion. ‘The news is out. It’s old Alten.’

‘Alten?’ There was a pause. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Eeles cautiously. “They say he’s a good fellow. Won’t worry us, will he?’

‘Devil a bit!’ said Kincaid. ‘He’s a gentleman, is old Alten. If we can’t have dear Barnard, I’d as soon have the Baron as any other I can call to mind. Except Erskine, of course,’ he added, dulcetly.

‘Oh, my God! Sabugal!’ groaned Beckwith.

‘Well, nothing like that will happen under Alten,’ said Harry, ‘even if he isn’t a Craufurd.’ But it was not everyone who desired Alten to be a Craufurd. Craufurd had made the Light division the superb fighting unit that it was, but he had been no easy man to serve under. A less irascible General, thought some of his officers, would be a relief. General Alten was neither irascible nor fussy. He noticed as little as Lord Wellington himself irregularities of dress, and made not the slightest attempt to correct the slouch which the Light Bobs found so much less tiring than a correct military carriage. They were not at all the sort of troops a general would wish to review in Hyde Park, but old Alten did not care a jot for that. They did everything in the easiest way possible; though they might not march smartly, they could march far; and though their uniforms might be patched with strange colours, and their shakos shapeless through being exposed to much rain, their pieces were always in perfect order, with never a speck of rust in the well-oiled barrels. ‘H’m! They look remarkably well, and in good fighting order,’ said Wellington, when he reviewed them near El Bodon, late in May.

‘I dink so, my lord,’ replied Alten, observing his motley division with calm satisfaction.