Sharpe's Waterloo

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Any one you wish, sir, please.’

  ‘Order a driver to follow us. We want musket ammunition, not rifle ammunition. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sharpe dropped the man. ‘You’re very kind.’

  The French skirmishers were still sniping at the château’s walls, and more enemy infantry were massing in the woods for another assault on Hougoumont as the wagon thundered down the rough track and past the haystack at the gate. The French had turned a battery of howitzers on the farm, and some of their shells had set fire to the farmhouse roof, but Colonel MacDonnell was remarkably sanguine. ‘They can’t burn stone walls, can they?’ A shell crashed onto the stable roof, bounced in a shower of broken slates and landed on the yard’s cobbles. Its fuse hissed smoke for a second, then the shell exploded harmlessly, but the sight of the bursting powder acted as a spur to the Guardsmen who were unloading the cartridge boxes from the newly arrived wagon. MacDonnell, turning to go back into the farmhouse, stopped and cocked his head. ‘Unless I miss my guess, which I rather doubt, our cavalry are earning their pay for a change?’

  Sharpe listened. Through the crack of musketry and the boom of heavy guns, the ten trumpet notes of a cavalry charge sounded thin and clear. ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘Let’s hope they know which side they’re fighting for,’ MacDonnell said drily then, with a wave of thanks, he went back to the house.

  Sharpe and Harper followed the empty wagon back to the ridge where they turned eastwards towards the line’s centre. They passed what was left of Captain Witherspoon who had been killed when a common shell had skimmed the ridge and exploded in his belly. His watch, miraculously unbroken, had fallen into a nettle patch where, unseen and hidden, it ticked on. The hands of the watch now showed twenty-seven minutes past two on the afternoon in which the Prussians were supposed to arrive, and had not come.

  Lord John galloped clear of the broken French infantry. Ahead and around him were knots of other horsemen; all galloping across the valley to assault the main French battle line on the southern ridge.

  The British charge had been scattered by the fighting among the infantry, so now the horsemen galloped in small groups like a field split apart by a long run after a fox. The troopers were still crazed by victory, confident that nothing could stand against their long and bloody swords.

  A hedge of holly, broken and trampled by the advance of the French columns, barred Lord John’s path. His horse soared over it, stumbled on the plough ridges beyond, then caught its footing and galloped on. Three men of the Inniskillings charged to his left and Lord John veered towards them, seeking company. An explosion of smoke and earth gouted to his right, then was snatched behind as he galloped on. A ragged line of Scots Greys were just ahead, their horses’ flanks sheeted with blood and sweat. Lord John looked for Christopher Manvell, or any other of his friends, but saw none. Not that it mattered, for today he felt that every trooper was his friend.

  All across the western half of the valley the cavalry charged. Their big horses were blowing hard, and the ground was soaked and heavy, but the horses were strong and willing. The men had stopped screaming with blood-lust, so the sound of the charge had now become the thrash of the hooves, the creak of saddles, and the rasp of breath.

  The French gunners on the southern ridge loaded their twelve-pounders with canister. They spiked the charge bags and pushed the quills into the vents.

  The horses thundered across the valley floor. They were closing on each other now, drawn together by the need for companionship and the realization of danger.

  The French gunners gave their gun-trails a last adjustment. The gunners crouched with the next round ready in their arms. The officers judged the distance, then shouted the order: ‘Tirez!’

  A blast of canister scoured down the forward slope. Two of the Scots Greys ahead of Lord John tumbled in blood and muddy confusion. He galloped between the two men, watching the smoke of the guns roll towards him. A riderless horse with flapping stirrups raced up on his right side. One of the Irish riders on Lord John’s left had been hit by canister in his right arm. He put the reins between his teeth and took his sword into his left hand.

  The guns fired again; another thunder of smoke in which the sudden flames stabbed, and out of which another blast of canister tore huge gaps in the charging line, but still hundreds of men stayed in their saddles. A Life Guard’s dying horse crashed into a Scots Grey and both men and their horses ploughed screaming into the field. An officer behind jumped the dying mess and shouted the mad challenge that had begun the insane charge: ‘To Paris!’

  The voice seemed to release a thousand others. The screams began again, the screams of men too frightened to recognize their fear, too exhilarated to believe in death, and too close to the guns to turn back.

  The leading horses cleared the gun smoke to see the French artillerymen running desperately for the safety of the infantry behind. The swords began their work again. A gunner swung his heavy rammer at a Life Guard, missed, and died with a sword blade rammed down his open mouth.

  The infantry, two hundred yards behind the guns, and protected by a thick hedge, had formed square. The horsemen, on tired horses that wanted to draw breath, swerved away from the threat of the close-packed muskets. They sought other targets, galloping in a useless mêlée between the abandoned guns and the infantry’s invulnerable squares. Some of the horses slowed to a walk. No one had thought to bring the hammers and soft copper nails that were needed to spike the captured guns, so the worst they could do was slash their swords at the Emperor’s wreathed initial that was embossed on each gun barrel. Some of the French gunners had been too slow to escape and had taken refuge under their weapons, or between the wheels of the limbers, and those men at least could be hunted down. Horsemen leaned clumsily from their saddles to lunge at men who crouched and dodged under the gun axles.

  More British horsemen arrived, thudding up through the cannon smoke to find the guns captured, the gunners dead or dying, and a mass of cavalry wheeling impotent among the limbers. They had charged to glory, and reached nowhere. The French infantry barred the promised road to Paris, and now that infantry began firing volleys that, even at two hundred yards, found targets.

  ‘Time to go home, I think.’ A Scots Grey captain, his sword bloody to the hilt, walked his horse past Lord John whose tired horse cropped at a patch of grass behind a gun. Lord John was staring at the nearest infantry and wondering when the charge would resume.

  ‘Go home?’ Lord John asked in surprise, but the Scotsman had already spurred northwards towards the British ridge and safety.

  ‘Withdraw!’ another officer shouted. A Scottish trooper, his horse killed by a musket-ball, ran among the guns to find a riderless horse that he managed to corner and mount. He wrenched the beast’s head towards the valley and spurred hard for safety.

  Lord John looked back to the enemy infantry again, and this time a shredding wind thinned the veil of smoke and he saw the whole French army spread in front of him. He felt an eruption of fear and pulled on his reins. His horse, tired and heaving for breath, turned reluctantly. The British charge was over.

  The French charge was about to begin. Their cavalry rode out from the right of their line. They were all fresh horsemen; Lancers and Hussars, the light cavalry of France whose officers knew their grim business to perfection.

  They did not charge the mass of broken British horse on the ridge, instead they cantered into the valley to cut off the troopers’ retreat.

  The British, riding back from the undamaged guns, cleared the smoke and saw the waiting enemy. ‘Shit!’ A Life Guard raked back with his spurs and his horse lumbered into an unwilling canter. It was a race that the heavy British cavalry was doomed to lose. In ones and twos, in scattered groups, in panic, they fled northwards to the far crest where their own infantry waited.

  The French trumpets sounded.

  The Red Lancers led the charge. Some were
Poles, still faithful to the Emperor, but most were Dutch-Belgians, fighting for the flag they loved, and now they lowered their swallow-tailed pennants and flung their fresh horses at the panicked British.

  ‘Run! Run!’ The panic among the British was absolute now. Men forgot the glory and sought only the far shelter, but they were too late.

  The Lancers crashed into the flank of the fleeing mass. The lances, held rigid against the body by the pressure of the Lancers’ right elbows, drove home. Men fell screaming from horses. The Lancers rode over their victims, tugged the blades free, then brought them forward as they spurred after other fugitives. Behind the Lancers came Hussars with sabres so that any man who escaped the lance was cut down by the curved blades.

  Lord John saw the slaughter to his right, but his horse was still running free. A riderless horse galloped past him and his own horse seemed to match its stride. The holly hedge was a hundred yards in front of him. He could see British light cavalry coming from the ridge, riding to rescue the remnants of the heavy brigade.

  ‘Go on!’ He slashed back with his sword as though it was a whip. A Scots Grey was over the hedge. A Lancer chased the man, lunged, but the Scot swerved, backswung, and the Lancer reeled bloodily away. Lord John looked behind and saw two of the red devils pursuing him. He savaged his horse with his spurs. Fear was in his throat like a sour vomit. There was to be no glory, no captured Eagle, no radiant moment of heroism that would make his name famous; there was just a desperate scramble for life across a muddy field.

  Then, from his right, he saw a slew of the Red Lancers charging at him. Their horses’ teeth were bared yellow, while the riders seemed to leer at him above the bright wickedness of their spears. Lord John was pissing himself with fear, but he knew he must not give up. If he could just charge through their line and jump the hedge, they might abandon their pursuit.

  He screamed in defiance, gripped his sword rigid at the end of his right arm, and touched the reins to swerve his horse to the right. The sudden change of direction threw the Lancers off their own intercepting course. They had to wheel slightly, their lances wavered, and Lord John was suddenly crashing through them. His sword, held at arm’s length, parried a lance to splinter a great shard of bright wood from the shaft. He was past the lance points! The realization made him shout in triumph. His horse cannoned off a smaller French horse, but kept its footing. Two Hussars were in front of him. One of the two lunged at Lord John, but the Englishman was swifter and his sword rammed hard into the Frenchman’s belly. The blade was gripped by the contracting muscles of the dying man, but Lord John somehow ripped it free of the suction and swept it across his body to slice down at the second Hussar who parried desperately wrenched his horse away.

  Lord John’s fear was turning to exultation. He had learned to fight. He had killed. He had survived. He had beaten his pursuers. He held his bloodied borrowed sword high like a trophy. Last night he had lied about his prowess, yet today the lies had come true; he had been tested in combat, and he had rung true. Happiness welled and seethed in Lord John as his horse crashed through the holly hedge and he saw only the long empty slope in front of him. That slope meant freedom, not just from his pursuers, but from the fear that had dogged him all his life. He suddenly knew just how frightened he had been, not just of Sharpe, but of Jane’s anger. Then damn her! She would learn that her anger could no longer frighten Lord John, for he had conquered fear by riding to the enemy’s gun line and coming home. He shouted his triumph just as a riderless grey horse galloped across his front.

  Lord John’s shout turned to alarm as his horse baulked and swerved. The horse staggered into a patch of deep mud and, as it tried to find its balance, stopped dead.

  Lord John screamed at the horse to move. He sliced the spurs savagely back.

  The horse tried to pull its hooves out of the glutinous mud. It lurched forward, but with painful slowness, and the first of the two Lancers who still pursued Lord John caught up with his lordship.

  The first lance point went into the small of Lord John’s back.

  He arched his spine, screaming. He dropped his sword as his hands groped behind to find the blade that twisted like a flesh hook in his belly. The second Lancer grunted as he lunged. His spear struck Lord John in the ribs, but glanced off the bone to slice into his right arm.

  Lord John was screaming and falling. The surviving Hussar, whose friend Lord John had killed, rode in on the Englishman’s left and gave his lordship a vicious backswing of his sabre which, like many of the French weapons, had only a sharpened point to encourage the trooper to lunge and not slash. The blunt steel edge thudded into Lord John’s face, breaking the bridge of his nose and bludgeoning his eyes to instant blindness. His left foot slid from the stirrup, his right, trapped by the iron, dragged him through the mud as his horse struggled free. The lance was ripped out of his back. He fell onto his belly, screaming and crying as his stirrup leather broke. He tried to turn over to face his tormentors and he scrabbled for the sword that was still hanging from its wrist strap, but another lance thrust ripped down into his right leg, this blade thrust with all the weight of man and horse, and Lord John’s thighbone snapped. The lance point broke off in the wound. Lord John wanted to plead with his attackers, but the only sound he could make was a babbling and childlike cry of terror. His fingers fluttered uselessly as though to ward off any more blades.

  The three French horsemen stood round the twitching, bleeding Englishman.

  ‘He’s finished,’ one of the Lancers said, then slid out of his saddle and knelt beside the Englishman. He unsheathed a knife and cut at the straps of Lord John’s sabretache that clinked with coins. He tossed the pouch up to his companion, then slit open the Englishman’s pockets, starting with his breeches. ‘The dirty bougre pissed himself, see?’ The Lancer spoke with a Belgian accent.

  ‘Rich as a pig in shit, this one. Here!’ He had found more coins in the pockets of Lord John’s breeches. The Lancer ripped away Lord John’s silk stock and tore at his shirt. Lord John tried to speak, but the Lancer slapped his face. ‘Quiet, shitface!’ Under Lord John’s shirt he found a golden chain with a golden locket. He snapped the chain with one jerk of his hand, clicked the locket lid open with his bloody thumb, and whistled when he saw the golden-haired beauty whose picture lay inside. ‘Have a look at that piece of meat! Last time he’ll screw her, eh? She’ll have to find someone else to warm her up.’ He tossed the locket to his companion, pulled the watch from Lord John’s fob, then rolled the wounded man onto his belly to get at the pockets in his coat’s tail. He found a folding spyglass that he shoved into his own pockets. The Hussar who had blinded Lord John was searching the Englishman’s saddlebags, but now shouted a warning that the enemy’s light cavalry was getting dangerously close.

  The Lancer stood, put his right boot on Lord John’s back and used his lordship as a makeshift mounting block. He and his companion wheeled away. So far it had been a good day; the two Belgians had set out on their charge with the idea of hunting down a richly dressed officer and, by finding Lord John, they had taken at least a year’s pay in plunder. The Hussar took Lord John’s horse.

  Lord John slowly, slowly twisted his burning, bleeding, blinded eyes from the mud. He wanted to cry, but his eyes were like bars of fire that annealed his tears. He moaned. The glory had turned obscene, to an agony that filled his whole universe. The pain burned and racked at his back and leg. The pain tore and filled him. He screamed, but he could not move, he cried but no help came. It was over, all the honour and the excitement and all the gold-bright future, all reduced to a bleeding blind horror face down in the mud.

  The survivors of the British charge came home slowly. There were not many. A few riderless horses formed ranks with the survivors as the rolls were taken. One regiment had charged with three hundred and fifty troopers, of whom only twenty one came home. The rest were dead, or dying, or prisoners. The British heavy cavalry had broken a whole French corps, and themselves with it.

>   Steam rose from the wet fields. The day was hot now.

  The Prussians had not come.

  CHAPTER 17

  ‘There.’ Rebecque pointed at the bodies which lay in the grass east of La Haye Sainte. They were scattered in a fan shape, like men killed as they spread out from a single point of attack. At the centre of the fan, where men had bunched together in desperate defence, the bodies were in heaps. Sharpe glowered while Harper, a few paces behind the Prince’s staff, crossed himself at the horrid sight.

  ‘They were Hanoverians. Good troops, all of them.’ Rebecque spoke bleakly, then sneezed. The drying weather was bringing back his hay fever.

  ‘What happened?’ Sharpe asked.

  ‘He advanced them in line, of course.’ Rebecque did not look at Sharpe as he spoke.

  ‘There were cavalry?’

  ‘Of course. I tried to stop him, but he won’t listen. He thinks he’s the next Alexander the Great. He wants me to have an orange banner made that a man will carry behind him at all times...’ Rebecque’s voice tailed away.

  ‘God damn him.’

  ‘He’s only twenty-three, Sharpe, he’s a young man and he means very well.’ Rebecque, fearing that his previous words might be construed as disloyal, found excuses for the Prince.

  ‘He’s a Goddamned butcher,’ Sharpe said icily. ‘A butcher with pimples.’

  ‘He’s a prince,’ Rebecque said in uncomfortable reproof. ‘You should remember that, Sharpe.’

  ‘At best, Rebecque, he might make a half-decent lieutenant, and I even doubt that.’

  Rebecque did not respond. He just turned away and stared through tearful eyes at the western half of the valley that was a mangled ruin of dead infantry, dead cavalrymen and dead horses beneath the skeins of cannon smoke. He sneezed again, then cursed the hay fever.

  ‘Rebecque! Did you see it? Wasn’t it glorious?’ The Prince spurred his horse from the knot of men who marked Wellington’s position at the elm tree. ‘We should have been there, Rebecque! My God, but the only place for honour is in the cavalry!’