‘How far back are they?’ I asked one group of skirmishers that came sprinting up the hill.
‘A way back yet, sir,’ called one, and I felt slightly comforted until his mate added, ‘How do you know? That fog is so thick they could have been marching beside us.’
I was just about to tell Campbell it was time to get back, when over his shoulder three British officers emerged, walking calmly up the hill as though they did not have a care in the world. The one in the middle wearing a nightcap turned to me and barked irascibly, ‘What are you still doing here? Get up over the ridge.’ I did not need to be told twice. I started to run up the ridge before a voice barked behind me, ‘Walk, gentlemen.’ I fell back in beside Campbell, trying to walk calmly, while the ground almost vibrated with thousands of enemy boots marching towards my exposed back. I felt the first beads of sweat run down between my shoulder blades, but while moisture was appearing on my body, my mouth was bone dry. The noise of the approaching French was almost deafening now, and the sudden double beat of the drums and bellow of ‘vive l' empereur’ made me jump. There were thousands of voices and they were damn close. Suddenly the two staff officers who had been with Picton sprinted past on either side of us. I whirled round to see if the French had broken through, but all I could see was Picton, walking calmly behind us.
‘Those gentlemen are running because they are obeying my orders,’ he said to me as though I had accused him of inconsistency. He looked at Campbell, ‘I know you, don’t I?’
‘Yes sir, Captain Campbell on Wellington’s staff, and this is Captain Flashman.’
‘Oh aye, I have heard of you too. You’re the daft bugger that likes to dress up, aren’t you?’
‘Well…’ I started, trying to think of what I could say to defend myself, but I got no further before he went on, shouting now over the noise of the enemy behind him.
‘There will be no need of that today. The enemy are sending up huge columns and we either stop every single one or we are done for.’
‘Surely we just have to stop most of them, sir,’ Campbell was braver than me for arguing with him.
Picton pursed his lips angrily but then seemed to decide that Campbell deserved an answer. ‘The French know when and where their next columns will hit our line. If one breaks through they will turn and attack those meeting the next column. You cannot do effective volley fire with a French bayonet in your back.’
We were nearly at the crest now, there were long lines of red coated men facing me lining the ridge, with officers closing gaps between them. To my right I could see two more cannon being set up to fire down the slope behind us. I looked over my shoulder and the mist behind us still showed no sign of the French, but then I heard shouting to my left. I turned and two hundred yards away the mist was suddenly getting darker, and as I watched the first French ranks emerged.
The head of the column was eighty men wide and I watched it almost transfixed. Rank upon rank was emerging from the mist, there seemed no end to them, but then the crest opposite its head was suddenly wreathed in smoke as the redcoats started their devastating volleys.
‘Come on, Flash,’ Campbell was pulling at my elbow and I realised with a start that I did not have time to watch this contest as a second column would soon be on us. We followed in Picton’s wake as he passed through the red ranks, which shrank back as the general approached. An orderly was waiting with his horse and Picton swung himself into the saddle to survey his command. We stood behind the Connaughts; to our left was a Portuguese regiment in their green coats and to our right another British regiment, I cannot remember which. He nodded in grim satisfaction and then rode down the ridge to oversee the defence against the first column. The eighty men from the Connaught Light Company were resting from their climb, and gathered behind the other companies along the crest. I walked up to their officer.
‘Are you sure another column will try to break through here?’
‘Oh yes, we saw them forming up at the bottom.’ He grinned at me before adding, ‘Bloody thousands of them.’ It was only then that I began to notice the sense of excitement in the men around me. I have stood and quaked amongst various nationalities waiting for an attack; stoic Scots, garrulous Welshmen, hard bitten Americans, icy calm Iroquois, I have even seen Zulu impis sweep in like a single animal, but I have never found a fighting force like the Irish. No nation on earth enjoys a drink or a fight more than them. There was a tension in the air amongst the Connaught Rangers that you could almost cut with a knife. It was as though they were gluttons and expecting a huge cake to be delivered to them. Even though we could see and hear a grim and bloody contest for the ridge just a short distance away there was not a hint of fear to be seen. For a windy beggar like me it was unnerving, but strangely comforting, to be amongst such confidence. They would take some breaking, I thought, and if they did break, well they would give me plenty of time to get well away. I realised I was being watched with benign amusement by another man on horseback, who grinned when he caught my eye. He had seen me gauging the mood of the men around me and nodded.
‘They are magnificent aren’t they?’ he said, and judging from the uniform he was their colonel. Then he pushed his horse forward to stand in front of them. ‘Connaught Rangers,’ he called out, and the babble in the ranks fell silent. ‘When the enemy appears we will stand here and fight them with volleys. No man is to charge until he is ordered. But when I do order it, I want you to chase those French rascals. Drive them down the hill.’
There was a cheer at that and the approaching French must have heard it, for their drummers gave the double beat and thousands of French voices called out in reply, ‘vive l'empereur.’
The colonel just grinned and looked down at a soldier in the ranks. ‘Sandy, give them a song to let them know the Rangers are waiting for them.’ A plaintive voice started up singing in Gaelic, and within moments eight hundred voices had joined him. I have no idea what the song was about, but the man just in front of me had tears rolling down his cheeks with emotion a few moments later. The song included such a loud and passionate refrain that I noticed the Portuguese troops shrank back several paces, and they were on our side! The singing was only interrupted when there was a roar of triumph from our right. The colonel from his higher vantage point called out, ‘The first column is breaking, lads.’ A cheer rippled down the ranks and as it finished you could hear the distant calls for bayonets and the screams of panic from the trapped front ranks of the French as the blades moved forwards. Just like Talavera, I thought, and tried to reason with myself that this meant there was no cause for alarm. As if on cue the mist in front of the Connaught Rangers suddenly went dark.
The mounted colonel pushed his way back behind his men as the first French ranks appeared through the mist ahead. This column was also eighty men across and the centre of it seemed directly opposite where I was standing. Despite having climbed up a steep rock strewn hillside they seemed in good order and did not hesitate as they saw the Irishmen standing before them. The mist may have been an advantage for us then, for I was to discover later that there were eleven French battalions in this column against just four battalions dressed in red and green facing them. Not that the Irish would have been dismayed, but the British and Portuguese on their flanks may have been hesitant to start to curl their line around the head of the column, as they were now doing, to create an arc.
‘Fourth Company, fire,’ called out a voice nearby, and the first volley from a third of the line crashed out. Around five seconds later came a second volley and then seconds after that a third crashed out. By then the men who had fired first were raising reloaded muskets to their shoulders. The devastating company volley fire I had seen at Talavera was being repeated with similar effect. The front ranks of the French tried to return fire while they continued to march forwards, but they were massively outgunned. I suddenly felt reasonably confident standing behind the massed red ranks. The French had to be winded after their long climb, and while there were thousands o
f them, only their front soldiers could fire. As the thought crossed my mind, a French lead ball passed through the brain of the man standing just in front of me. Blood and brains spattered my face and chest.
‘God damn it,’ I gasped, as I dashed the gore away from my eyes and involuntarily took several steps back.
‘Steady sor,’ said a voice behind, and I turned to see the Connaught Light Company arrayed in a double rank of forty men. I had backed into their sergeant who regarded me impassively as I spat out some blood that had got in my mouth. ‘It looks like you have some oirish in you now sor,’ he added, before glancing at the poor soldier who had been hit. He was now stretched out on the grass in front of me, his hands still gripping his musket as he had died. I looked beyond the sergeant at the Light troops who had fought in ones or twos on the hillside. They had to be tough, independently minded men to make it into the Light Company, so these were the toughest men from one of the toughest regiments.
Their captain was shouting at them to stay alert for trouble along the line as they were the reserve, but several of them impudently returned my look of inspection. They were not friendly stares. Some seemed amused at the reaction of the English officer to getting blood in his face and I heard some mutters in Gaelic. These were men of the west of Ireland, many of them tenants of English absentee landowners. They lived in poverty to pay their rents and that poverty had probably forced many of them to come and fight and die for the English. So there was little sympathy for English officers who got spattered with Irish blood.
I straightened up and turned towards the front. Looking along the line there were a score of dead and wounded now, lying on the ground or being helped to the rear. The front ranks of the French were faring a lot worse though, going down like skittles under the steady onslaught of volley fire. But for now they were still coming on, stepping over their dead and wounded to reach us and still returning fire. Some were even trying to reload as they marched, although they rarely survived long enough to complete the procedure.
‘I say Flash, are you hit?’ Campbell was next to me, staring at my blood soaked face and chest.
‘No, it comes from some other fellow, a drop of the Irish if you will,’ I laughed, trying to put on a brave front. It is a strange thing, but while I have a yellow streak a mile wide I always seem to attract the friendship of genuinely good and brave men. Campbell was by then one of my closest friends, but before him there had been Cochrane and Skinner and there were many more to follow. Few seemed ever to suspect my true character and, through disaster and mischance, I had normally suffered greatly to earn their respect. So while I did not care a jot for the opinions of the likes of Grant or Cam Hobhouse, I did greatly value my reputation amongst that band of brother officers. But there were times, like this one, when those lantern jawed heroes had no idea how much of a strain it was to maintain the pretence.
Campbell gave me a pounding slap on the back in reassurance, ‘I’ll bet there are a few bottles of powerful Irish poitin amongst the regimental baggage to help celebrate our victory, eh? Hello, what is this? They are spreading out.’ He was staring through the recently created gap in the ranks ahead and I saw that while the head of the column was struggling to make progress, the sides of it were swinging forward like the wings of a bird. Now I realised why the Portuguese and British officers had been pushing their men forward to make an arc when they saw where the column had emerged. If the French could deploy their ‘wings’ they would bring many more guns to bear, and with their superior numbers the length of the wings could overwhelm us.
This was the critical moment of the engagement and everyone seemed to sense it. The French soldiers in blue, marching towards this maelstrom, gave a final bellow of loyalty to their emperor, and launched a determined effort to climb over their fallen comrades to close with their enemy. Men in the green of the Portuguese and the red of the Irish and British lost themselves in the automatic routine of loading, aiming and firing as fast as they could… and one British officer glanced over his shoulder to check where he had left his horse.
If the French broke through then the thousands of men below the head of their arrow would stream up the hill and we would be overwhelmed. There would be no chance to recover the situation with more columns on the way. But to do that the French had to get through the hail of lead that was now hitting three sides of the front of their column. Good troops could fire three shots per minute and as the battalion was broken into three sections that resulted in nine volleys a minute. I could not see the wing on the right but I could see the left, which had initially extended further forward. It got to within thirty yards of the Portuguese, but at that range the musket balls could penetrate several bodies and while the French were dying hard, they were still dying. I looked to my front and the Irish soldiers were firing like the well drilled machine that they were. Crash after crash of volleys smashed into the French ranks and now I could see that they were starting to falter. One of their eagle standards glinted in the early morning sun; it had not moved forward through the column. It was only now near the head of the formation because all the men that had been in front of it had been killed. As I watched it wavered, whether the man holding it had stumbled or been shot I could not see, but it seemed to stop. Then with a cry of ‘retreat’ from the French ranks the huge formation started to move back.
As at Talavera, when the French broke it was sudden. Collectively the column seemed to sense that it would get no further, and then it collapsed into chaos. The men on the wings broke first. They had fewer men behind them and where a second before they had been fighting, they were now running back down the slope. The movement spread to the centre of the column and men were turning, frantic to get back down the hill, pushing those in the way. On relatively flat ground this would have caused confusion with some still pushing up the hill from lower down the column. But on a steep slope it was disastrous. Those that had started to run soon found that they could not stop and crashed into those lower down, sending them flying. Others slipped and fell but most stayed desperately on their feet, and were soon running pell mell down into the valley and disappearing into the fog.
‘Fix bayonets,’ called the colonel of the Connaughts. The call was repeated down the line as the long blades were drawn and carefully fixed to hot musket barrels. Campbell and I drew our swords and showed ourselves eager to be unleashed, but only one of us was genuine in that emotion. I knew Campbell would be at the forefront of any charge. He was as fast as quicksilver over rough country and we had joked that there was mountain goat in his parentage. He would not expect me to keep up and with eight hundred screaming Irishmen there would be quite a crowd for me to get lost in. I looked down at the blood still covering me and decided that I would let them hurtle down the hill without me, and then I would feign a limp as I went slowly after them. A blood soaked and wounded Flashy, hobbling into battle despite his wounds; it would fit my reputation like port and cigars.
‘Charge,’ shouted the colonel.
‘Charge, come on men,’ called Campbell, already pushing through to the front and waving his sword in the air as eight hundred Irishmen, screaming more like clansmen warriors than British soldiers, launched off after him.
‘Huzzah, forward you brave fellows,’ cries the gallant Flashy, flourishing his blade in the air too, but only staggering forwards a few paces and watching the backs of the others recede before him.
Chapter 25
Before I had gone more than a yard I was aware of the Light Company men coming up from behind. The first few soldiers jostled past, but then I felt an arm lift me at my right elbow followed immediately another at my left. My feet were lifted off the ground and a voice called in my ear, ‘Don’t you worry sor, we’ll help you down all right, so we shall.’ With that I was carried off down the slope at an alarming speed, my arms in vice-like grips, my feet in the air and my sword waving futilely in my hand.
‘Put me down you stupid bastards,’ I roared, but they took no notice. The more I shoute
d and raged the more they laughed in delight. They swore afterwards that they thought they were helping the gallant officer meet the enemy, but it is my belief that they knew exactly what they were doing. Some had seen that the blood I was covered in was not mine and when I started to hobble away the evil minded villains saw straight through my charade. Laughing with glee they picked up one of their English masters and cruelly deprived him of his honest right to shirk his duty.
I realised this in the first twenty yards when they ignored my raging and a voice called in my ear, ‘Come now sor, you don’t want to miss the fun.’ It was the blighter holding my right arm, but I didn’t dare look round at him as I needed to see where I was going. My feet were touching the ground now but we were already going at such a speed there was no chance of stopping, especially in the middle of a crowd of men. The ground ahead was littered with wounded French soldiers and their dead, lying between rocks and boulders. One slip at this speed and I would be breaking bones all the way down the hillside. You could not help stepping on some bodies, and I remember one Frenchie screaming in agony as my boot punched down into his chest. Then we were into the mist, which now seemed thinner and lower than before. I could see that we were starting to catch up the slower Rangers lumbering down the hillside. On we went. Twice I nearly slipped and went down but was hauled up by the men at my elbows. At least two men in our group did fall, and as far as one was concerned, I suspect they do not call the speed we were going ‘break neck’ for nothing. The other screamed, yelled and bounced off into the mist.
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