‘Vive l’empereur! Vive l’empereur!’ The drums were beating the hypnotic sound of the charge. For a moment three of the leading columns halted and fired, but then they were moving again, coming ever closer.
Men had fallen all along the British line, but the redcoats were also marching forward at last, feet swishing through the long grass and stirring the fallen pine needles of many years. They walked in silence, save for the sergeants rebuking any man who lost his dressing.
‘Vive l’empereur! En avant, mes amis!’ Ahead of the closest column a French officer was almost dancing as he went at the enemy, swinging his sword around in great circles and shouting to his men of honour and glory.
‘Steady, lads!’ British officers tried to sound calm, as if victory was only to be expected.
The drums kept beating, and three of the columns stopped again to fire.
‘Close up!’ the sergeants called. Only the French battalion marching at the 2/87th kept coming on and held its fire. It was ahead of the others by twenty yards or so. Hanley hurried on, but kept looking back over his shoulder to watch the enemy until he loped up behind the far right flank of his own 106th. The right was the place of honour, where the Grenadier Company would have stood had they not been a mile away with MacAndrews on Barrosa Hill. Instead Truscott tipped a finger to his hat in greeting.
His words of welcome were lost when a great rippling volley drowned out everything else. The 2/87th had stopped some sixty yards from the French column and fired. Men in blue jackets with white fronts were flung back in the leading two companies, but then the survivors steadied the line and brought muskets up to their shoulders. The volley was not quite so loud, for fewer men were firing. Yet it fell mainly on the centre of the red line, and there men staggered or jerked as they were struck by the heavy lead balls.
‘Halt!’ Lieutenant Colonel FitzWilliam was normally a soft-spoken man, but now his voice carried easily over the shouts and firing to their right. There was a French column no more than fifty yards ahead of them, its two leading companies delivering an irregular fire. One of Truscott’s men yelped as a ball drove into his leg. He fell on the grass, screaming.
‘Quiet, you rogue, it’s nothing,’ shouted a sergeant. ‘Don’t show us up in front of the Frogs.’
The man looked more angry than abashed, but stopped anyway.
‘Fix bayonets!’
Hanley drew his sword. It always felt odd to hold the thing, some remaining pacific impulse stubbornly resisting his martial calling. Truscott and his subalterns drew their own blades. The young ensign whose name Hanley could not remember swished it back and forth until he noticed one of the sergeants glaring at him. The boy blushed like a child caught scrumping by his schoolteacher.
The French were trying to form line, the companies in the second and third lines parting so that they could march and deploy on the flanks of the leading division.
‘Present!’ With a long series of rattles and slaps the muskets of almost seven hundred men came up to their shoulders.
‘Now, my boys, be sure to fire at their legs and spoil their dancing!’ Men chuckled, looking at each other in surprise at their colonel’s words.
‘Silence in the ranks!’ bawled the sergeants as they stood in the rear, half-pikes ready to straighten the dressing by forcing men back into place with their six-foot staffs.
‘Fire!’
Smoke blotted the French from sight, but from the end of the line Hanley saw a glimpse of the enemy formation as dozens of men fell.
A howl – there was no other word for it – burst out from the centre of the army, as the 2/87th flung themselves at the enemy. The cry turned into what Hanley thought were words, but he could not make them out. All along the British line the battalions were going forward, but none went as fast as the Irish.
‘Charge!’ FitzWilliam spurred his horse into the smoke and was gone.
The 106th cheered and followed him. It was the first time that their lieutenant colonel had led them into battle, but the men liked him and were confident in themselves. Hanley charged with them, but then a man was pitched back from the company, tripping the officer, so that he landed hard on the ground. He was winded and had let go of his sword – Williams was always telling him to wind the cord around his wrist so that he would keep it even if his fingers let go.
Musket shots rattled like the sound of a child dragging a stick along a rail fence. Hanley pushed himself up, chest still sore. His sword was stuck in the ground, its blade a little bent. He grabbed it and saw that the regiment was only thirty yards or so ahead of him, Truscott standing beside his company as the men reloaded.
Hanley caught up, and saw that the French had gone back but rallied and now were a misshaped mass, neither quite a column or a line. They had given way, but not run, and they were loading and firing as each man was ready. The young ensign was calling encouragement to the men when a ball hit his fist as he raised it to wave his sword. He screamed, a horrible piercing scream, and as he was helped to the rear Hanley saw that it had driven into his knuckles.
‘My sword,’ the boy sobbed. ‘I must not leave my sword.’
‘Do not worry, I shall preserve it,’ Truscott told him. ‘It will be waiting for you when you return.’
A man twisted as he fell back from the rear rank, blood and pieces of tooth spilling out from a hole in his cheek. The 106th fired at the enemy and all across the field there were shouts and shots as the British advanced and the French clung stubbornly on. Hanley saw General Graham, horseless and hatless, urging the Coldstream Guards to pour more fire into the French. The elderly Scotsman must have just arrived which suggested that the fighting was over on the hill.
Hanley did not hear the order, but again the men around him started to cheer and the 106th lowered their bayonets and charged. He joined in the yell, running beside Truscott, and he saw the French give way a little more, what little was left of their formation seeping away.
Yet once again they did not go far, and when they stopped the irregular mass still would not give in and resumed its heavy fire. A man in the front rank of the company was hit in the belly and flung back, knocking down his rear rank man, who cursed him until he saw how badly his friend was hurt. Beside him a redcoat turned his head just before he was struck and the ball smashed his left eye and broke his nose.
‘My man, you should not have stayed behind.’ Truscott spoke to a greenjacket lying in the grass with his rifle at the ready. The 95th had long since retired after their noble efforts holding up the enemy advance and it was curious to find one still here.
‘Do you hear?’
Hanley knelt beside the rifleman, and the movement saved him because a ball sang through the air where his head had been an instant before. The greenjacket still did not move, but there was not a scratch on him. Hanley patted his shoulder, and the motion was enough to make the man’s shako fall to the side. A ball had entered his forehead and the back of his skull was gone, a ghastly mixture of grey matter, bone and hair pooled in his cap.
‘Good God,’ Truscott said. ‘And he looked so lifelike.’
‘The rifle appears to be loaded.’
‘Thomas,’ Truscott called to one of his men. ‘You are the finest shot. Take this rifle and see if you can take revenge for its poor master.’
Corporal Thomas stepped out from the rear rank, slinging his musket over his shoulder.
‘How about that bold fellow?’ Truscott suggested, gesturing with his sword at a French officer near the front of the mass ahead of them. The man was brandishing a gilded eagle on a blue staff, making the tricolour flag flap as he tried to get the men to rally and attack. Each French regiment had an eagle, given to them by Napoleon, and carried by the first battalion.
‘No, the green rascal on horseback!’ Hanley said, and made sure that Thomas could see Sinclair with another mounted officer near the flank of the enemy battalion. ‘Knock that treacherous bugger down and I’ll give you ten guineas.’
Thomas la
id his own firelock down and raised the rifle, hefting it to get a sense of its balance. Shots whipped past or flicked through the grass, but he ignored them and took careful aim.
Hanley saw Sinclair turn, recognise him, and his mouth opened to shout. Then Thomas fired, his discharge muted with all the other shots close and far. The officer beside Sinclair fell back in his saddle, arms flung wide as a dark stain spread above his heart.
Sinclair grinned at him – Hanley could see the mocking triumph even at this distance – and then spurred away.
‘Charge! Come on the One Hundred and Sixth!’ This time Hanley caught FitzWilliam’s shout and he began to yell as all the redcoats somehow found the strength to go forward again. The French mass dissolved at last as the British rushed at it – one moment solid and the next instant a crowd cascading to the rear. Hanley saw a group of men led by the colonel going for the eagle, but before they were close it was spirited away and dipped, so that it could no longer be seen in the press.
The slow and the reluctant stayed and a few were caught, the long bayonets doing their work, but most surrendered and the rest escaped. Everywhere the French were giving way.
Sinclair knew the battle was lost. He was still not quite sure how it had happened, for he had not seen any Spanish and he was sure the French outnumbered the redcoats. Somehow they had still been driven back. He galloped back to find General Leval in the hope that the reserve battalions could still save the day, although he knew in his heart that the chance was gone.
‘Faugh A Ballagh!’ The shout was so unexpected that he reined in violently, his horse twisting its head in discomfort as he tugged at its bit. ‘Faugh A Ballagh!’
A battalion of redcoats with deep green facings were yelling the cry as they drove back a column of the 8ième Ligne. The French infantry had left it to the last minute before they broke before the onslaught, but when the second battalion ran they went straight into a confused mass of their own first battalion. Men collided, pressed up against each other, and it turned into a tightly packed mob, unable to move.
‘Faugh A Ballagh!’ It was so odd to hear the Gaelic, a tongue to which he had not been born, but had learned and come to love. ‘Clear the way!’ they shouted, and the men of the 2/87th cleared the path with bayonets and the butts of their muskets. The Frenchmen could not run and so the Irishmen killed them, and went on killing them.
‘Faugh A Ballagh!’ The men of the 87th had been mauled by the French before Talavera, and now they saw that enemy at their mercy and found that they had little. Sinclair saw a man whose musket had broken grab a Frenchmen and wrestle him to the ground, where he pounded his skull with a rock.
The eagle of the 8ième Ligne was in the press, Sinclair could see it protected by a knot of moustached veterans who were not running. It was just a plain blue staff, for the regiment had left the flag in store, but the men who protected it were NCOs chosen for their courage even if they often lacked the education to command. A surge of Irishmen led by an ensign came at them, and the lad dodged the halberd of one of the eagle guard and thrust his slim sword through the body of the officer carrying the precious standard. The man died, and for a moment the young ensign had hold of the blue staff. One of the guards fired a pistol, which missed the officer and killed a private running up to help him. Then another Frenchman jabbed with his bayonet, and the ensign arched his back away as he screamed, until another bayonet took him in the throat.
A big sergeant came at them, wearing the shoulder wings and white plume of a grenadier, and he jabbed with his half-pike and ran through one of the men who had killed his officer. He ripped the blade free and swung the staff, tumbling another enemy with the blow and forcing the rest back.
Sinclair tried to urge his mount through the press, but could not tell what he hoped to do for he both loved and hated these fierce countrymen of his. Another of the eagle guard fell, his thigh gouged deep by the spearhead of the pike so that blood pumped from the wound and sprayed across the sergeant’s white trousers. He recovered his balance, stamped forward and killed the man who had picked up the eagle.
The crowd split apart. Suddenly there was enough room to run and so hundreds of men fled, and as they pushed by his horse, Sinclair found himself being carried with them. The slowest still fell to the Irish bayonets, but they were few and the remnants of the 8ième Ligne escaped. Behind them they left the big Irish sergeant holding the eagle aloft in triumph. There was a wreath fastened over its head as a battle honour, but now the Irish had taken this symbol of pride and the regiment would have to live with the shame.
‘Bejabers, boys, I have the cuckoo!’ Sinclair heard the cry in so familiar an accent and he laughed amid the bitterness of defeat.
EPILOGUE
It had been dark for hours by the time the men of the Flank Battalion felt the wood planks of the bridge of boats beneath their feet. After so many miles of mud and earth the springiness was an odd sensation, especially when the boats shifted under their weight and with the tide. Williams heard the cables creak and hoped that the Spanish engineers had done a good job when they made the crossing. The Light Company proceeded in silence, too tired even to complain about another night march or the uselessness of their allies. It was almost midnight on a day when they had fought a battle and lost so many comrades. There were Spanish soldiers holding torches to guide them across the bridge, and in the flickering light Williams thought his men’s faces looked blank, eyes staring without seeing as they shuffled along, struggling to take each new step. The bridge led to the Isla, and if a man kept on this road he would come in time to Cadiz.
They had won the battle, driving the French away, and the two squadrons of KGL hussars had done sterling work chasing the fleeing enemy, and driving back the dragoons who tried to screen the retreat. The Germans took prisoners, and two more French cannon, but they could not prevent Marshal Victor from following the road back to Chiclana. Whittingham, the Englishman in charge of the Spanish cavalry, had done little. Captain general La Peña had done even less, sitting with ten thousand men faced by a quarter of their number of French soldiers. He could easily have driven them back, as easily have cut off Victor as he retreated, but he had not. Instead the regiments under his command had chafed and sat idle.
Two hours ago a Spanish colonel, no less, had come up to Williams, a mere lieutenant, and apologised. ‘The man should be shot,’ he had declared of his own commander. ‘He is a useless coward and we must be rid of his kind if we are to win this war.’
The Walloon Guards and the Ciudad Real Regiment had reached Barrosa Hill a mere ten minutes after the British had captured it, having force-marched back as soon as they received the order. Williams’ men had joined the other redcoats in jeering the approaching soldiers. It was unfair because they were good and willing regiments, but with so many fallen comrades the men of the Light Company were not inclined to be fair.
There was a rumour that General Graham and the Spanish commander had argued, and whether or not it was true the British had gone back to the Isla. The Spanish had not, although it seemed unlikely that they would stay on their own. Victor’s men were driven off, but their regiments were not crippled, and so once the Allies crossed back to the Isla, the French would no doubt resume the siege as if nothing had happened.
‘We’ve lost twelve hundred men,’ Hanley had told him earlier on, ‘and the French at least two thousand,’ and yet for all that blood they would all soon be back where they started.
Their friend had been able to bring them news of the battalion, which had done well under FitzWilliam’s leadership. ‘He is mentioned in the dispatch, as is MacAndrews. Stanhope tells me that the general is sure there will be a brevet for him.’
Hanley saved the best news until last. He must have known that the story had spread around the little army with the speed of the electric matter so talked about in recent years and demonstrated on the London stage. ‘The Eighty-seventh have taken an eagle. It is to go with the dispatch back to England. A sergeant
took it and he is promised a commission.’
Their friend had said more, assuring Williams that he was due a substantial sum of prize money from the Navy. He had said as much before, when the Welshmen had come through the lines to Tarifa, and yet it did sound far-fetched. Jane MacAndrews was not far away, probably asleep in her bed as anyone of sense ought to be at this hour. Their last meeting had been one of joyous hope, cruelly interrupted, but the long months had not altered the essential truth that she was rich and he was not. Prize money brought fortunes for admirals and considerable wealth for captains. While pleasant enough, he doubted it would make him the girl’s equal and so the hope could be no more than a daydream.
Love was not enough without honour, although he could imagine Pringle struggling to understand and Hanley filled with baffled incredulity if he dared say such a thing aloud. The thought brought memories of Guadalupe, of the love she had declared for him. He did not know whether she had escaped back to join her sister and the partisans, or what would happen to that beautiful, sad girl. The little war had horrors that even the bloody hill of Barrosa could not match.
Williams remembered the slow growth of happiness in the young woman’s face, the tenderness with which she had watched him, and felt honour was a cheap word by comparison. He also recalled her dancing, the graceful sensuous movements as her skirt twirled and her shoes pounded the floor, and then the feel of her in his arms, the softness of her lips. The voice of the man he aspired to be told him that it was just as well that they had been interrupted. The man he was had no such certainty, and he found himself thinking of her touch and her smell. Tired as he was, the thrill coursed through his body and led his mind back to Jane.
‘Bravo, boys, bravo!’ An engineer officer was waiting as they stepped off the planking on to dry land. ‘Welcome home!’ The man must have greeted each unit in the same way, and his voice was hoarse from cheering them.
Run Them Ashore Page 40