Run Them Ashore

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  The Flank Battalion marched across the open field towards the end of the ridge furthest from the sea. Sergeants watched the dressing from behind the second rank, pushing men back into place where necessary.

  ‘To honour we call you, as freemen not slaves, for who are so free as the sons of the waves?’

  The thought of his wife and daughter reminded MacAndrews that they were not far away – perhaps fifteen miles, or was it a little more? Probably too far for them to hear the guns when they began. Being made to sing would be a small price to see them again, and somehow it made it worse to think that he might die when they were so close.

  ‘Heart of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men, we always are ready; steady, boys, steady!’

  A few voices joined him – one was certainly Williams with his rich bass-baritone. It was good to have the man back, safe and sound, although whether that would still be true in half an hour’s time was less certain.

  ‘We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again.’

  Please God, let that be true, MacAndrews thought. He kept walking his horse on, for there was nothing he could do save go forward in front of the line. They were across the open ground, coming to the start of the slope, and at this point the gully they had crossed further down was no more than a slight dip.

  ‘We ne’er see our foes, but we wish them to stay.’

  The French were there on the crest, each battalion in a column with a two-company frontage so that they formed a succession of smaller lines, one behind the other. Closest on their left was a unit of Legère, the French light infantry who wore blue jackets and trousers with short black gaiters. These days such regiments rarely skirmished as entire units, but they tended to be better than average soldiers.

  ‘They never see us, but they wish us away.’

  The light infantry did not worry him half as much as the line of eight field guns deployed beside them and almost directly in front of his battalion. They were silent, as were the infantry, but all that meant was that they were letting the redcoats come into the most deadly killing range. Gunners scurried around their pieces. He was close enough to see them push charges and projectiles down the muzzles of each gun. A man stepped forward and thrust them down the barrel with a long wooden ramrod. Then he stood back, and though MacAndrews could not make out the detail, he knew another man was pricking open the bag holding the main charge and then thrusting a reed of fine powder down the touch-hole, before he too stood back. The French gunners waited, standing to attention around their green-painted gun carriages, each gun captain holding a linstock with a slow-burning match, waiting for the order to put it to the touch-hole and set off the fuse. Sometimes one of them would blow on to the match cord to make sure the flame glowed strongly.

  ‘If they run, why we follow, and run them ashore.’

  Three hundred yards to go and still the French waited as the Flank Battalion stepped closer and closer. They were halfway up the slope now, and the going was easy, although there were a few scrubby bushes dotted along the side of the ridge in their path. Redcoats stepped around them, breaking up the line until the sergeants shouted and forced them back into their ranks. Their equipment rattled and slapped softly against them as they marched, with that noise peculiar to infantry on the move.

  A French band still belted out a stirring march, and now that they were close the music was drowning out everything else. The Flank Battalion was two hundred and fifty yards away.

  ‘For if they won’t fight us, what can we do more?’ MacAndrews’ voice cracked as he bawled out the words, not believing them for a moment. The irrelevant thought came that perhaps he should have learned a song about the army rather than the navy, but he simply liked the tune and had known most of the words before his family began to nag him.

  They were one hundred and fifty yards away and still below the French, and he hoped that this would give them some protection when the enemy finally did fire. Troops on a hill tended to aim too high when they tried to shoot down a slope. It was a thin hope, for the slope was gentle and good artillerymen knew how to adjust – and the French gunners were always very good at their job, proud of the fact that the Emperor himself was one of their own.

  ‘Heart of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men.’

  MacAndrews’ throat was dry, his lips felt raw and cracked, and now they were barely one hundred yards from the French and still the enemy waited. A group of senior officers in plumed hats sat on their horses behind the gun line, watching the redcoats approach. The band was even louder now, and perhaps it was his imagination, but they seemed to be playing faster as they urged their comrades on.

  The front of the Legère rippled and seemed to turn to the right as the first and second of the three ranks brought their muskets up their shoulders. They were to the left of the guns. To the right of the artillery was a battalion of line infantry with white trousers and white fronts to their jackets. MacAndrews doubted that they were at a favourable angle to fire at his men, and evidently their colonel thought the same thing, because the front of their column wheeled a little to face them and then brought muskets up to the present.

  ‘We always are ready; steady, boys, steady!’

  The last word was lost and the French music blotted out as the gun captains touched match to fuse and a fraction of a second later the main charges exploded. Six eight-pounders and two six-inch howitzers slammed back on their trails, flinging metal canisters and the wooden sabots on which they were mounted from the muzzles in a gout of flame and thick white smoke. The tins disintegrated, flinging out scores of musket balls and scrap iron in a great swathe.

  For MacAndrews it was like walking into the teeth of a gale, as the air all around him was ripped by a hail of metal. The canister swept into the line, so that it twitched and writhed as men were flung down like rag dolls. One blast killed one of the 106th’s grenadiers outright, two balls driving through his ribcage into his chest, and another smashing the bridge of his nose. Seven other men dropped around him. None of the canisters missed altogether, and each scythed great holes in the line.

  The infantry fired, the noise less appalling than the great roar of the heavy guns, and more men were snatched from the line of redcoats. A light bob from the 106th screamed as he was hit in the groin, and, as he fell his rear rank man was shot through the forehead and died with no more than a gentle sigh. Further along, the Light Company of the 1/9th was badly hit by the Legère’s volley. Its captain was on the ground, his pelvis shattered by a musket ball, and a third of his front rank was hit.

  In the battalion as a whole a dozen men were dead and some seventy wounded, and none of them had yet fired a shot. MacAndrews could not believe that he and his horse were untouched.

  ‘Steady, lads!’ he called, no longer singing. Behind him sergeants and officers bellowed out encouragement and orders to re-form, and behind all the cries were the moans and screams of the wounded and dying.

  ‘Close up, close up!’ Redcoats stepped forward on their own or were pushed to take the place of the fallen. The line drew in on itself, closing up towards the centre. It still rippled like a live thing or a banner in the wind. Ahead of them the French reloaded. The band had stopped, shocked by the roar of fire, but now it started again. Smoke drifted slowly towards the Flank Battalion.

  ‘Come on, follow me!’ MacAndrews called, daring to look back over his shoulder to satisfy himself that enough order had been restored. ‘Forward!’

  The Flank Battalion went on up the slope. Its line was less neat, with little gaps opening up between the companies and wider ones between the different corps as men instinctively shuffled together with those they knew best. Some had the blood of comrades spattered over their jackets and showing bright on their white trousers. Most looked pale, staring blindly ahead, but they went forward, muskets still on their shoulders.

  ‘Steady, boys.’ MacAndrews held his sword high, and could not remember when he had drawn it. He saw gunners ramming down the charge and f
resh canisters. The infantry were already bringing muskets back up to the present.

  This time he was close enough to hear the shouted orders, as the French columns fired a second volley, the balls punching into the flanks of his line. More men dropped, with the companies from the 9th and the 82nd the worst hit because they were nearest to the fire. Then the guns boomed, the sound coming almost at the same instant hundreds of canister balls flayed the line. Eight more men from the 106th’s grenadiers were flung back, limbs suddenly flying wildly like those of dangled puppets. Two bursts hit the Light Company, snatching away ten men. Pryce was dead, half of his face carried away. Lieutenant Black was sitting on the grass, hands pressed against his belly to hold in his own entrails. Gaps opened all along the line, as men fell or sprang back in horror.

  Again MacAndrews was not hit. There was a graze along the neck of his horse, but it was no worse than if it had been scratched by a branch, for otherwise it was untouched. He struggled to accept that the storm had passed him to strike with such horrible fury against his men.

  ‘Mother, Mother!’ a man was screaming.

  ‘Help me,’ another pleaded, while more simply moaned or howled in pain.

  ‘Come on, my brave boys, close up, close up!’ MacAndrews turned to the side to call back at them. The carnage was appalling, but the NCOs still responded.

  ‘Mother, oh, Mother!’

  ‘Close up!’ That was Dobson, shako gone and a cut to his forehead. Other sergeants echoed the shout. Much more slowly this time, they harried the men back into ranks, closing up around the piles of dead as the wounded were dragged or crawled to the rear. ‘Close up, close up!’ The men of the Flank Battalion moved as slowly and clumsily as sleepwalkers, stunned by the horror around them. All the while the French reloaded and their band kept playing.

  ‘Come on!’ MacAndrews bellowed the order as loud as he could and urged his horse up the slope. ‘Charge!’

  They cheered then, with the defiance of a wounded beast, and muskets came down from the shoulders to thrust out in front, long bayonets reaching for the enemy. The Flank Battalion ran forward, its still shaky order loosening further as they went at their own pace. There were no more volleys from the French infantry, each man firing as soon as he was ready, and so balls began to come one or two at a time. Ensign Dowling had pushed his way through the ranks of the grenadiers, a mix of terror and excitement contorting his face so that he looked even older than usual.

  ‘Follow me,’ the eighteen-year-old squealed in a voice as high pitched as a little boy’s as he circled his slim sword above his head. A musket ball smashed into his ankle and the shout turned to a scream as he slammed forward on to the grass.

  Five of the eight guns fired, their captains not willing to wait for the others, and the canisters seemed to fling the whole of the redcoat line backwards. Two balls hit Dowling, one in the shoulder and another in the hand, and he screamed all the more. A grenadier fell on top of him, the man’s kneecap shattered. The smoke was so thick that MacAndrews could not see the French.

  His battalion had gone. Another forty or so men were down, and all the rest were scattered, going back down the slope in ones and twos, not running, but moving as if they had no will of their own. They went back, companies jumbled together, and most of them stopped when they were still a hundred yards from the French.

  MacAndrews had felt balls pass inches from his face, pluck his sleeves and the long tails of his coat, and yet none had touched him. He patted his horse, avoiding the cut to its neck, and turned her to go after his men.

  29

  There was a good deal of confusion in the woods as the British division turned about and hastened back to seek the enemy. The French were advancing from the south-east as well as occupying Barrosa Hill, and so General Graham ordered one brigade to face the enemy attack and the other to re-take the hill. There was not time to make this happen neatly. Voices were shouting orders and all the time harrying the men to hurry, but the pines made it hard to see any distance and often the track split or grew faint. A pause of only a few moments often meant the troops ahead vanished into the woodland. Companies strayed from their battalions and battalions from their brigades.

  ‘I reckon it’ll break, sir,’ the sergeant in charge of the drivers assured Hanley. General Graham’s staff had been sent out to do what they could to bring order to the confusion, and he had found himself tasked with guiding the guns back to where they were needed. In the Royal Artillery, gunners served the guns and their officers were in overall charge, but the limbers towing them were handled by soldiers of a separate corps, who wore Tarleton helmets like the Light Dragoons instead of shakos.

  ‘I’m sure it’ll work,’ the sergeant insisted, the three gold chevrons bright on the right sleeve of his blue jacket. As they hurried along through a more open patch of the forest, one of the teams had turned too tightly and the left wheel of the limber had hooked around the sturdy trunk of a sapling, bringing horses, carriage and gun to an abrupt halt. Three pairs of horses could not be made to walk backwards and it would take time to unhitch them and manhandle gun and limber clear, and so the sergeant suggested driving the horses forward in the hope of snapping the tree.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Hanley told them, for he had long since reached the conclusion that sergeants normally knew what they were about. A gunner subaltern looked as if he was about to disagree, but deferred to the staff officer.

  ‘Now!’ the sergeant shouted, and each of the drivers kicked hard at his own beast and cracked his whips as he struck the horse beside him. The NCO was at the front, pulling at the collar of the lead trace horse. Together the animals pulled and took a step forward before the chains stretched taut. They strained, eyes wild, and the drivers kept jabbing with their spurs and beating with their whips, until the sapling started to bend forward. Hanley saw blood on one of the horses from the driver’s spur and felt a pang of conscience, but then with a sharp crack the trunk snapped and fell. The whole team shot forward, limber and gun rolling over the stump and shaking the branches of the fallen tree as the iron-rimmed wheels rolled over it.

  ‘Keep going,’ he shouted, and at least the ruts left by the wheels of the rest of the guns made it easy to follow them. The gunners ran to keep up with the speeding limber, and a moment later they saw some of the redcoats from the 2/47th who were tasked with escorting the artillery.

  They came into the open suddenly, on the eastern side of the forest, and saw the other guns already deploying. Major Duncan waved at Hanley, and pointed for the team to take this last gun to the left of the position.

  ‘I’m having to pack them closer than I would like,’ the artillery officer explained. Duncan was in charge of the two batteries with the force that fielded a mixture of nine- and six-pounders, and a couple of howitzers. ‘Look at it,’ he added, disappointed with the efforts of nature. ‘Flat as a pancake, but we shall do our best.’

  There were thick gorse bushes all around, and horses had to go carefully not to trip. Men and animals had already trampled patches of the gorse down around each gun and team, but it still covered the ground ahead of them, which sloped up gently. Half a mile ahead of the gun the French columns of Leval’s division were advancing, and Hanley heard their band playing. He counted four battalions in column and there looked to be another one or two behind them in support. There was no sign of any cavalry, but artillery teams were pulling guns up on the enemy’s left.

  ‘Six, I make it,’ Duncan said, ‘and I doubt there is any better position for them either.’

  Gun captains were raising their hands to show that their pieces were ready to fire. Duncan waited for the last gun to finish loading and then began to call out fire orders, telling them to aim at the closest columns.

  ‘Fire!’ Gun captains set off the priming tubes almost as one, and the guns leapt back with deep-throated roars as they belched flame and smoke and sent roundshot to bounce in front of the enemy formations and then skip through them, smashing flesh, bone and anythin
g else in their path. The force of the detonations flattened more gorse bushes in front of each gun, while pieces of burning wadding dropped down in the scrub to smoulder.

  Hanley went to the left as he saw greenjackets of the 95th emerge from the trees. There were some men in blue with them, and he recognised the uniforms as Portuguese. Most of them were formed up, acting as supports for the riflemen in the skirmish line, and he watched as the pairs of soldiers moved forward through the scrub.

  The guns fired again, some at the columns and some at the French artillery. Their barrels warm, the British gunners had switched to spherical case shot. Hanley saw one of the shrapnel shells burst in the air just in front of an enemy column. It shook, men dropping from the front rank, but it still came on, the living stepping over the dead and wounded. The band kept playing and the French formations advanced as if on parade. Hanley had rarely seen anything quite so magnificent in terms of martial pomp. Yellow plumes topped with green bobbed as the voltigeurs advanced to form their own skirmish line. The tops of their shakos had a yellow rim, and there were green epaulettes on their shoulders. Many of the men wore long black gaiters reaching above the knee, and all of them had all their brasses polished so that they gleamed whenever they caught the sunlight. Behind them the main columns marched with shouldered arms and uniforms just as immaculate. They were getting closer now, some six hundred yards away, and coming on steadily.

  Muskets and rifles coughed as the rival skirmishers began to fight their own battle as precursor to the main action. The British rifles sounded different, sharper somehow, and they were more accurate than the smooth-bore muskets. Hanley could already see a few bundles of blue rags stretched out in the long grass and scrub. The voltigeurs stopped, searching out any fold in the ground to use as cover while they fired back. Duncan’s guns thundered again, ignoring the light infantry and firing instead at the main bodies.