Some 1,400 redcoats advanced uphill against 2,000 Frenchmen, and the latter were determined that they would meet the charge. The enemy battery began to take more of a toll as the First Guards reached the more open slope, but then the French guns fell silent as the columns went forward to sweep the impudent British away. Drummers beat the pas de charge, and behind them the band still played. There were four battalions, two of them grenadiers with ornate shakos topped by high red plumes, and other companies wearing tall bearskin caps. The Emperor had ordered the expensive and old-fashioned headgear withdrawn, but regimental colonels jealously hoarded the ones they had or employed dark arts to hide the fact that they were buying new ones. The fur caps made the wearers look taller, just as the red epaulettes on their shoulders made them look broader. Moustached, suntanned, tall and square, the grenadier battalions looked just like the veterans they were. Beside them came two battalions of line infantry, and if less of an elite, these were still men who had humbled the armies of Europe.
‘Vive l’empereur!’ Williams heard the chant he had heard so many times before. The drummers gave two beats, then a roll, then another beat, and as they paused to begin again the French soldiers yelled out praise for the man who rewarded victory so generously. Marshal Victor and General Ruffin rode just behind the four battalions, next to a fifth which came on in support. All were in column of divisions, with two companies in line three deep, then another pair of companies thirty yards behind them, and a third pair the same distance further back. From the front it looked like a succession of lines coming forward, as strong and inexorable as the breakers of an incoming tide.
‘Vive l’empereur!’ The chant was loud, for the moment drowning the music of the band. It was a concentrated attack, with neither room nor time to let the voltigeurs snipe at the enemy and weaken them. The ragged lines of redcoats were two-thirds of the way up the hillside, still disordered from the climb, and Marshal Victor would strike before they had a chance to recover. He had seen the English run before, when his men drove back the first line of Rosbifs at Talavera, including some of their King’s Guards, but then his columns had been stopped by the few reserves the English general had scraped together and placed in their path. Today, the Duke of Belluno could see that the redcoats had no reserves and so he would crush them.
‘Vive l’empereur! Vive l’empereur!’ The drums went silent as the two battalions in front of the First Guards halted at their commanders’ orders. A shouted command, and the leading companies fired a volley down the hillside. The already untidy line of redcoats shook as men were flung down. One of the Colours dropped for a moment, but was quickly picked up and raised aloft. Sergeants pushed men forward to fill the gaps in the front rank, and Williams could imagine the shouts as they did their work.
‘Present.’ The line of redcoats rippled as muskets came up to shoulders.
‘Fire!’ This time it was the columns that quivered, as the white fronts of men’s blue jackets blossomed red and soldiers dropped or were pitched back into the ranks behind.
Further down the hill, the 2/67th and the Third Guards fired at almost the same instant at the grenadiers bearing down on them.
‘Vive l’empereur!’ The drums started again, officers yelled at their men to go on, but the men were more interested in loading and firing at the enemy. Shouts and drumbeats died, and there was eerie quiet as soldiers on both sides went through the routine of loading. Half a minute later there were new volleys, less perfect this time, but more men were falling on either side. Then it was back to the old drills. Drop the musket’s butt to rest on the ground. Reach back for a cartridge. Some of the veterans had shifted their pouch round more to the front of their hip to make it easier. Take the paper cartridge and bite off the ball itself. Pull back the hammer to half-cock and flip open the pan, pouring a pinch of powder into it. Then the rest went down the muzzle with the paper as wadding. Spit the ball after it. Draw ramrod, thrust once to drive ball and charge down. Retrieve the ramrod, and turn it to slide back into place. Pull back the hammer to full cock, musket levelled again. Pull the trigger and feel it pound back against the shoulder, as the flint sparked, the powder in the pan went off and sometimes flung burning pieces against the cheek, the main charge going off in noise and smoke, and then drop the butt to the ground, reach back for the cartridge, on and on until the drills drove everything else from a man’s mind.
A man’s throat grew parched, dried by the saltpetre in the gunpowder from all the times he bit a cartridge, and his shoulder was sore. The enemy was a brooding presence somewhere behind the clouds of smoke, and he would never know if any of his balls struck home. Comrades he had messed with for years fell around him, dying with a grunt or sigh, or sometimes with a look of surprise. Wounded men moaned or screamed, and still he went on loading and firing, loading and firing, sorry for them, but glad it was not him.
‘Vive l’empereur!’ Marshal Victor himself rode to the front, waving his plumed hat and yelling at his beloved soldiers to charge and win the day. The two nearest columns stopped firing, and the men walked forward, drums beating a confused rhythm, but then some of the bluecoats were flung back as they were struck, and the leading companies stopped, men reaching for cartridges.
It hung in the balance, everything on a knife edge. Williams could remember how men were left stunned from the noise of their own and the enemy’s fire, confused and lonely even when surrounded by other men in the same uniform. All it would take was a bold charge by either side and if their officers or any brave men could just persuade them to run hard at the enemy then the other side would give way.
‘Bills!’ Pringle called. Williams had not seen him coming along the line. ‘Mr Williams,’ the captain continued more formally. ‘We must form the battalion and advance. Give those fellows something else to think about. Gather as many men and form them in close order here. You will be the centre of the line and everyone else will dress off you.’
He was off, shouting at men and pointing for them to join Williams. A handful responded, pushing themselves up warily and walking towards the Welshman. To his relief MacAndrews cantered up the slope to him, the sides of his horse now flecked with sweat.
‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Just what I was coming to order.’
‘Pringle’s idea, sir.’
‘Then well done, Billy.’ The major walked his horse to stand in front of the half-dozen men. ‘Round up some more. I’ll stand out as a better marker. Flank Battalion,’ he roared. ‘To me!’
The sound of heavy firing came from their right, the French columns and British lines little more than twenty or thirty yards apart, but neither able to push on those last steps. Instead they kept firing, and men in blue and red kept falling on either side.
Williams found Evans, still with the other two loading for him.
‘Battalion is to form up,’ he said. ‘Over there by the major.’ The sergeant looked surly, but then he did most of the time, and Williams ran on to the next group as if to imply that there was no question of his order being disobeyed. He found Flattery and Ryan, the veteran with a piece of torn shirt tied around his thigh, but both got up and went back to rally with the others.
Six men grew into ten, then fifteen and then thirty, and more were coming. Sergeants Dobson and Evans were both there, as was a young but confident NCO from the 82nd. Pringle returned with still more men, and an ensign from the 9th came from the other direction with more. Soon there were two ranks apiece of twenty-four men with a sergeant at each end of the front rank. A corporal and the sergeant from the 82nd along with all the officers save Pringle and MacAndrews stood behind the little line. Williams was at the far right, trying to work out what was happening in the great fight further along the slope.
‘Flank Battalion!’ The major called out the warning order so that men were waiting ready to respond to the command. It was no more than an under-strength company, but they had begun as a battalion and would end the battle that way, for good or ill. ‘Forward march!’
The smoke cleared, and Williams saw General Graham riding along the front of the First Guards. The grey-haired Scotsman was using his sword to flick up the muzzle of any man about to fire. Williams had read of such things, but had never seen anyone doing so bold and dangerous a deed. French bullets kept knocking men down all along the line, but as the redcoats fell the old general rode on without a scratch.
The Flank Battalion went up the hill. There was an enemy column some way ahead and to their right, waiting to support the main attack, and a line of cannon pointing along the slope, but still masked by their own men. A thin line of skirmishers was in front of them; as soon as the line started moving, bullets snapped towards them. Ryan fell, blood gushing in a fountain from his throat, and Flattery stepped over the fallen man, walking stolidly up the hill. Men in red began to appear, coming out from cover. Redcoats fell, but the Flank Battalion grew bigger as it climbed the slope. Now there were seventy men, the newcomers shoved into ranks regardless of their regiment or company.
A cheer – a British cheer so different from the sound of a French attack or indeed one by Spanish or Portuguese troops – came from the right. The First Guards surged up the slope towards the columns, and beyond them the other Guards and the 2/67th charged as well, bayonets down.
Williams watched, letting the little Flank Battalion go on ahead, for he knew this would decide the day. If the British stopped to fire again, then they might never manage another charge, and there were more Frenchmen and they had the advantage of height. It was always easier to charge down than up a slope; in fact for a man burdened with his pack it was difficult to stop at all once he began running down a hill.
The French broke. Marshal Victor screamed at them, but the men in the rearmost companies could not see what was happening. They heard the great roar of a cheer and imaginations filled with thoughts of vengeful enemies coming through the smoke. They ran, and then the companies ahead of them crumbled into a stream of bluecoats flowing to the rear, and finally the companies at the front of each column followed them. General Ruffin was down, pinned by the weight of his dying horse, and the redcoats rushed up the slope, bayonets glinting, and General Graham rode with them, cheering them on. The enemy had gone. Some began to cluster together again in line with the supporting battalions, and so the Guards and the 2/67th halted and began to fire. The bluecoats went back.
A cannon fired, leaping back with the violence of the explosion, and a tin of canister swept through the nearest files of the Guards. Another gun captain touched the match to the priming tube and more of the redcoats were tumbled over, but artillery officers had seen the approaching Flank Battalion and shouted out orders to limber up and retire.
MacAndrews had one hundred and thirty-five men in his little line. Williams had caught up, and he could not understand how the Flank Battalion men appeared as if from nowhere. Some must have hidden well, and not bothered to fire at the enemy, for he had thought far more were dead or gone, and yet here they were, coming to rejoin the ranks.
‘Fix bayonets!’ MacAndrews must have suspected that a lot of men had dispensed with the clumsy blades while they were shooting. They made a musket ungainly, and worse still could take the skin off the knuckles of a clumsy man as he reloaded.
‘Charge!’ The Scotsman urged his horse on, his own sword thrusting out ahead of him as he led them towards the nearest cannon. He had not given the men time to fix their bayonets, but that did not matter because the gunners were in no mood to fight. A few voltigeurs fired, and a grenadier from the 9th was hit in the shin and fell forward on to his face. Most of the skirmishers fled, but one stumbled as he ran. Two men in the yellow facings of the 9th clubbed him with the butts of their muskets as he lay, and kept striking until the man stopped moving.
The gunners were hauling the heavy eight-pounder back to the low limber as MacAndrews reached them. His horse reared as an artilleryman in shirtsleeves swung a heavy ramrod. The mare went back, but MacAndrews drove it to the side and slashed down before the man could raise the clumsy weapon again. The gunner dropped the ramrod and clutched at the gaping wound across his face. Dobson was there, and shot one of the crewmen before driving his bayonet into another. The rest raised their hands as the drivers took the team and limber away at a jerky canter.
Men cheered, but MacAndrews was shouting at them to reform in front of the captured gun. A company of French Legère had wheeled away from the main battalion and were forming to face his men.
‘Get back in line,’ Dobson shouted, and Evans was pushing redcoats back into place, snarling at them when they did not respond immediately.
An officer’s sword swept down, and the Legère vanished behind a bank of smoke. The range was long, and most of the shots went high, but Murphy hissed in pain as a ball nicked his arm. Another shot threw up cotton and a puff of wool as it burst through the shoulder wing of a light bob from the 82nd. The man gasped in surprise, and then there was a deeper grunt from the man in the rear rank, another light infantryman but this time from the 9th, as the bullet punched through his ribs and into his lungs.
‘Present!’ MacAndrews’ horse stirred, its ears flicking back and forth and its eyes rolling.
‘Fire!’ he shouted. About half of the men were loaded, and the volley was more like the crackle of burning wood than a roll of thunder.
‘Charge!’ he called. Men lurched forward through their own smoke, all feeling suddenly tired, but still they went with the Scotsman and they managed a thin cheer. Williams shouted as loud as he could, drawing out the cry, and others were yelling with him. It was less a formation than a scatter of men, only a few of them still able to run, and the rest jogging or lumbering along.
The Legère went back. Their battalion was giving way as the Guards closed on them, and the isolated company did not want to be left behind, so their captain shouted at them to retire. MacAndrews took his men to where the French had stood and halted. They were all breathing hard, even though they had not come very far.
To their right the First Guards were re-forming, with the other units beyond them. The French were retreating, some of their battalions grudgingly and others fleeing with no real order. The Guards had taken another of the guns, but the remaining six went back with the infantry. Some of the redcoats were cheering as General Graham galloped along the lines and went to see how his other brigade was faring. Even the Flank Battalion jerked from their exhaustion and yelled out as the Scotsman went past, raising a crop in acknowledgement.
For the moment the British were in scarcely better order than the retreating French. Six hundred of the redcoats lay forever still or moaning softly on the top and slope of the hill, more than a third of the men who had attacked. There were almost as many dead and wounded Frenchmen scattered in the grass, and now that the sound of firing had faded the air was full of cries for help, cries for mothers or friends, and wordless whimpers of pain.
Pringle looked around him and then at Williams. It had been so close, so very close and it could so easily have been the French who had charged on to glory.
‘Bills,’ he said, ‘how the hell did we get away with that?’
31
Major Duncan’s guns kept firing through their own smoke and the blacker smoke of the grass fires started ahead of them by their wadding. None of the cannon was still manned by all the crewmen who had been there at the first shot. Behind the battery was a long row of wounded, and there were redcoats from the 47th helping to drag the heavy cannon back into place before firing and drivers from the artillery train were filling the places of the dead and wounded. Hanley saw the sergeant who had knocked down the pine tree ram the charge down one barrel and wondered whether it was the same gun.
‘Pour it in, keep firing!’ Duncan had little to do, for the targets were obvious and the enemy columns now little more than eighty yards away. They had hesitated when the British battalions of Wheatley’s Brigade first appeared at the treeline, but the long pause as the redcoats sorted themselves out had give
n the enemy the chance to press closer. Musket fire ripped along the front of the nearest column, pitching a man from the 47th into the muddy puddles made by the constant rolling back of the gun. A gunner pulled the man out of the way, before the gun captain set off the charge and the heavy carriage sprang back again.
There was nothing for him to do here, so Hanley headed towards the formed infantry in time to see the angry Major Gough of the 2/87th telling the commander of the Coldstream Guards to ‘Damn your precedence, sir. My regiment will lead off !’ The major’s battalion was in the centre of the line, and still numbered six hundred and fifty men even though several dozen of the Irishmen had been cut down while the senior officers bickered.
To the right was the other wing of the 2/67th in their yellow facings. To the left of the Irish Battalion were the neat ranks of tall Coldstream Guardsmen, two hundred of them in two companies. On the far left Hanley saw the red cross on white Regimental Colour of his own 106th. Before he knew it he was jogging towards them, seeking comfort in the familiar faces.
‘Vive l’empereur! Vive l’empereur!’ It was the first time today he had heard the French chanting. Four battalion columns were bearing down on the thin British line, with two more following in support. Leval’s Division marched confidently and kept good formation, the men resplendent in their best uniforms. Hanley saw a group of senior officers riding ahead of the supports. A man on a tall bay with an abundantly plumed hat was no doubt the divisional commander, and near him was a shorter officer wearing a green uniform and riding a grey horse.
Hanley wondered what to do. Sinclair was over there and he was sure Wharton and the admiral would be very happy to hear that the Irishman was taken or dead. He wished Williams was here, or better still Dobson. He was sure they could find a way to reach the man in all the confusion of battle.
Run Them Ashore Page 39