Matthew Hervey

It's 1814, and Napoleon is hard-pressed to defend France from a combination of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Britain. Nor is he the only one in a quandary. Matthew Hervey, a young British cornet, is in a rather unusual situation. As far as he knows, it's highly irregular to be arrested on a battlefield after a successful action. Still, it's hardly the first time politics has interrupted war, and as Hervey's career progresses, he increasingly balances both, sometimes more successfully than others!

India, 1816. Fresh from the field of Waterloo, Matthew Hervey is dispatched on a mission of the utmost secrecy. Leaving behind his fiancée, Lady Henrietta Lindsey, he must journey across tempestuous seas to India, an alien, exotic and beguiling land that will test his mettle to the very limit. For the princely state of Chintal is threatened both by intrigue from within and military might from without, and Hervey - sabre in hand - finds he is once more destined for the field of battle....

1826: Napoleon Bonaparte is dead, the Congress of Vienna's work is done, and there is peace in Europe. However, in Portugal there is the scent of civil war in the air following the death of King John VI. Newly returned from India, Matthew Hervey joins a party of officers sent to make an assessment and lend support to the Portuguese queen. His place on the expedition is secured with the help and influence of his new friend, Lady Katherine Greville. But the Peninsula is a place redolent with memories....

Things are looking up for Major Matthew Hervey: news of a handsome legacy should allow him to purchase command of his beloved regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons. He is resolved to marry, and, rather to his surprise, the object of his affections - the widow of the late Sir Ivo Lankester - has readily consented. But he hasn't reckoned with the opportunism of a fellow officer with ready cash in hand.

In 1827 Captain Sir Laughton Peto, recently engaged to Matthew Hervey's sister, Elizabeth, has just taken command of HMS Prince Rupert. But his passage to the Ionian Sea, where Admiral Codrington is assembling an Anglo-Russian-French fleet to evict the Turks from Greek waters, will not be smooth sailing. First he must exercise his crew. He has also been entrusted with the safe passage to Malta of the Admiral's youngest daughter.

1828: Matthew Hervey of the Sixth Light Dragoons has been urgently recalled to South Africa. The stability of the Cape Colony has been threatened by Xhosa tribesmen who have been making incursions across the borders. When Hervey is told by his old friend, Sir Eyre Somervile, that the Zulu warrior king, Shaka, is about to make war on neighbouring tribes, he knows that matters are perilous indeed.

January 1829: Cuts in the army mean that Matthew Hervey’s Dragoons are to be reduced to a single squadron. With his long-term plans in disarray, Hervey undertakes a six-month assignment as an observer with the Russian army. Soon Hervey and his faithful groom, Private Johnson, are sailing north to St Petersburg, and on to the Eastern Balkans, seat of the ferocious war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. For Hervey, the stakes have never been higher - or more personal.

The prime minister is resisting growing calls for parliamentary reform, provoking scenes of violent unrest. Against this inflammable backdrop, Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey, recently returned from an assignment in the Balkans, takes command of his regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons. His fears that things might be dull are quickly dispelled by the business of vexatious officers and difficult choices over which NCOs to promote, not to mention the incendiarists on the doorstep of the king himself.