Flashman and the Cobra

by Robert Brightwell

  The only downside to the march was that Fergusson had persuaded the bhinjarries help him find a new set of bagpipes. He presented them one afternoon. The bag had some Oriental silk covering rather than the traditional Scottish cloth, but other than that the bagpipes were the same as other examples of this awful instrument I had seen.

  “It has the original bone tops on the pipes,” he explained proudly. “Ah am thinking of holding trials to appoint a new pipe sergeant this afternoon.”

  “Oh God, must you?” I asked, thinking of various people with no skill trying to play the thing. They were bad enough in the hands of an experienced player.

  Fergusson smiled. “Ah saw ye twitching impatiently through the lament at the burial. Ye may not like the music, but ye must understand that the value of the pipes lies in what it means to others.” He looked more serious. “A set of pipes can be worth a hundred men in battle for what they do to our folk and the enemy. The skirl of the pipes will remind our men of their homes and clans and the reputation of the Scots as fighters that never give up.” He paused and then added, “It does the same for the enemy, who know that before the day is out they will face a Highland charge of cold steel. They rarely stick around for it as ye have seen for yerself.”

  He may have had a point, but I went for a ride that afternoon and forbade any practice to start until I was at least a mile away from the camp.

  Chapter 25

  You may think that seeing the enemy army arrayed before you at the start of the battle is a frightening sight, but as I discovered at Argaum, it is not half as frightening as not being able to see the enemy in front of you. It was the middle of November 1803, two months after Assaye, and until few hours before I had been convinced that I would end up safely in Madras without having seen another shot fired.

  Scindia had eventually agreed to peace terms, but his ally, the raja of Berar, had been slow to follow suit. After Assaye many warriors had left Scindia’s service and Berar had seen the opportunity to capitalise on his ally’s failure. Berar had a strong army and he also had a thousand crack Persian troops called the Pharsee Risaulah. These fearless warriors were unbeaten in battle and the raja of Berar used their reputation to promote himself as the new military leader of the Mahratta and to encourage more of Scindia’s former troops to his flag.

  To meet this new threat Wellesley had combined his army with that of Stevenson and marched towards Berar. The raja at first seemed to recognise the danger and had started negotiations, but then inexplicably he formed his army up in battle order just a few miles away from where the British were camped. I suspect that this was just face-saving bravado on his part. They would have stayed for a few hours and then dispersed, spreading the rumour that the British had been too frightened to take them on. What they did not appreciate was that Wellesley was looking for another battle and this was too good a chance to miss. He now had nearly twice the men he had commanded at Assaye and the enemy was half the size of the one he had beaten before.

  I was with the newly enlarged British army camped at the village of Paterly. We knew that the enemy were a few miles off and had agreed to withdraw under a truce. No one thought that they would be stupid enough to offer battle. Many had resented the fact we had agreed to the truce, for rumour had it that the raja of Berar was with his army, which meant that the luggage would be loaded with loot. When word came through that Berar was indeed a fool and had drawn his army up for battle in front of the village of Argaum, preparations for dinner were hastily abandoned and the men eagerly formed up.

  The enthusiasm was not universal as you might imagine. War is a damn random business and I could not imagine a thousand Persian fanatics giving up without taking a few redcoats with them. As company captain I was expected to lead my men from the front, which was an unwelcome prospect as the Highlanders were bound to be in the centre of the line.

  In half an hour we were formed up and marching towards the enemy. The much larger 78th Highlander regiment was the vanguard with the remnant of the 74th, led by yours truly, just behind. More sepoy regiments followed us with bullocks pulling cannon and ammunition carts. Stevenson’s division marched alongside. The men were in high spirits, even when we crested a hill and saw the dark mass of the enemy on the opposite ridge. There were around ten thousand of them, with forty cannon along their front and cavalry on their flanks. Half a mile in front of their position was a small village and Wellesley’s division was to pass to the right of it and make up the right-hand side of the line. Stevenson, who was ill and commanding his troops from the back of an elephant, was to form his men up on the left.

  While Stevenson may have been able to see the enemy from the back of his elephant, for the rest of us they disappeared from view as we approached the village. The slope up from the village towards the enemy was planted with millet. It is not grown in Hampshire or even the New Hampshire in the new United States, and so if you are not familiar with the crop I should explain that the stems of the plant can grow up to four yards tall. As we entered the field we entered a world of tall, golden stalks. The foot soldiers could see no more than a few feet ahead of them. Mounted on my horse, if I stood up in the stirrups I could see further over the fluffy millet heads. It was still hard to see what was happening on the ground, but the movement and sudden disappearance of stalks as they were trampled gave an indication of where the troops were moving.

  The 78th began to form a line in the field facing the enemy directly in front of the village, and I joined the 74th to the end of that line. As we cut and trampled our way into the crop we slowed and the sepoy troops behind us who were set to continue the line began to build up in the village. The bullock-drawn guns and ammunition carts were mixed in with them, creating a jam of animals and humanity between the huts. Given time they would have sorted themselves out, but they did not get the chance.

  From the hilltop in front of us there was a rumble of gunfire. Berar’s artillery had chosen this moment to open fire and they were good. Instinctively I ducked, but the shots were all going over our heads. I wheeled my horse around to see what was happening in the village through the edge of the crop. Berar’s gunners had the range and with such a close-packed target they could not miss. Balls smashed into the crowds of soldiers, killing dozens of them. The cannon fire also smashed gun carriages and killed oxen. The remaining animals started to panic and bolt from the village, dragging whatever was still attached to them.

  Rockets were being fired from the Mahratta lines now. Normally they were wildly inaccurate, especially at that range, but by chance two managed to reach the village and ricocheted between walls before exploding amongst the sepoys. The rout spread quickly. The front ranks had started to edge back, compressing the middle, which pushed against those behind them. As more cannon balls smashed into the crowded mass the rear ranks did not need much persuasion to start pulling back themselves. Once the movement had started, the edging back became a walk and then a run in a matter of moments. Suddenly the right-hand half of the British line consisted of just the 78th and 74th Highlanders, around six hundred men. I could not see Stevenson’s men but could only hope that they were still making up the left of the line. This battle suddenly did not seem like it was going to be the walk in the park that everyone had thought minutes earlier.

  I rode my horse over to the nearest captain of the 78th. “What do we do now?” I asked, gesturing at the now fast-retreating sepoys.

  He was another flinty-faced Highlander with a thick beard, who looked at me with a slightly puzzled expression. “We stay here until we are ordered to advance,” he said firmly.

  I turned my horse back down the trampled strip of crop to stand it in front of the middle of the short line of men of the 74th. To my right I could see lance tops of our cavalry moving through the millet, but some way off: they were leaving space for where they thought the sepoys were coming.

  The crop surrounded us like a tall green cage, but I knew from the journey into the valley that in front of us there was hal
f of the enemy line comprising five thousand men and around twenty well-served guns. With no targets remaining in the village, those guns now turned their attention to the enemy whom they could not see in the field. There was another rumble of gunfire and for a second I wondered if the sepoys were coming back, but then I heard the thuds and the rustling of the crop. Two balls bounced straight over us but the much longer line of the 78th was not so lucky. There were screams as two balls smashed into their double rank, taking out men in both lines. It seemed the Mahratta gunners were playing skittles with us as the pins, firing into the field short so that the balls bounced along the ground. With a continuous line of standing redcoats in front of them they could hardly miss. Already I could hear the sergeants of the 78th getting the men to close up the gaps.

  We couldn’t just stay there. If we had to wait too long then there would be nobody left in the ranks to make the attack. Equally I could not withdraw the men on my own initiative, because we had been ordered here by the general. I needed Swinton to order a withdrawal, but he had gone forward with Wellesley and some of the other colonels to survey the ground ahead. Wellesley wanted every one of his colonels very clear on the plan of attack so that there would not be any confusion in the tall crop, with lone charges like Orrock’s at Assaye. There was no way I was going to die unseen in some bloody Indian field. The solution to the problem came when I saw a cannon ball coming with my name on it.

  When a cannon is aimed directly at you, if you look you can see a briefest glimpse of a black line in the sky which is the ball’s trajectory when it is fired. I had seen this back in 1800 when sailing with Cochrane. I had also seen it once earlier that afternoon, but then I knew that the ball would be aimed well over my head. This time I knew that one of their guns was aimed directly at me and in a second a ball would be crashing through the crop.

  Some officers imbued with traditions of military honour and demonstrating courage to the men might have hesitated, but I am proud to say I did not. When saving the precious Flashy skin, I act first and think about the consequences later. This explains why the soldiers of the 74th saw their gallant officer leap off his horse and dive onto the trampled crop, shrieking, “Get down!” A split-second later a cannon ball smashed its way out of the crop, bouncing just a foot over the saddle of my confused mount.

  It was as I lay sprawled and slightly winded amongst the stems that the answer to the problem came to me. “Have the men lie down, please, Fergusson,” I gasped as I got my breath back.

  The sergeant just stared down at me, aghast. I don’t think he would have been more appalled if I had ordered him to get the men into an orderly queue to bugger the archbishop of Canterbury. In fact as the good bishop is an Englishman he would probably have found that more acceptable. Eventually he drew himself up to his full height and in clear, ringing tones said, “A Highlander does not get down on his belly in front of the enemy.”

  At that moment fate again intervened and another ball smashed out of the crop just a few yards away. This one was pitched perfectly from the Mahratta point of view to hit the line at chest height. A soldier whose name I had not yet learnt simply disappeared. One moment he was there and the next he was snatched away in a spray of blood and offal, taking down the two men behind him too.

  “Lie down!” I shouted directly at the men. “That is an order.”

  Some glanced at the sergeant for his confirmation, but most dropped to their knees and then down on the ground. As the majority began to lie down, the few looking at Fergusson followed suit. Soon only the sergeant was standing.

  I crawled along the line to where the two wounded men from the second rank were lying. Both were covered in blood, although it was not clear whose it was. One wiped blood from his eyes and started getting on his hands and knees, but the other seemed to have had his chest laid open and a bloody rib was protruding from his abdomen. I recognised him as the man who had stuck a bayonet in my back when I had first come over from the Mahratta lines.

  “Lie still, Gilray, you are in a bad way. Sergeant, if you are going to insist on standing, perhaps you can get some stretcher bearers.”

  “Aw, I am not so bad, sir,” gasped Gilray, trying to sit up and wincing a little.

  “Lie down, you fool. One of your ribs is poking out of your chest.”

  Leaning on one elbow, Gilray looked down at the bone with a puzzled expression on his face as though he could not comprehend how he had been so badly hurt. A wound such as this would invariably be fatal as there would be massive internal injuries. He used his sleeve to wipe blood that was dripping into his eyes from a cut on his forehead and then he gingerly moved his hand down to touch the bone. Before I realised what he was doing, he had gripped it and pulled the bone free from his own body. I gasped in disgust before he looked up and grinned at me. “It’s all right, sir. Its nae my rib.”

  Any further discussion was interrupted by the clatter of hooves. For an instant I thought that the enemy had launched their cavalry against us, but then a small group of British officers emerged from the crop, some of the horses wheeling around to avoid tramping the men lying on the ground in front of them.

  “Flashman, what on earth are you doing?” asked Swinton, seeing his regiment prone before him.

  “The sepoys have broken and run and the Mahratta are bouncing balls through the crops.”

  Wellesley was giving me his usual icy stare but his head whipped around to where the sepoys should be when I told him that they had run and I saw him curse under his breath.

  I got on my knees and continued. “I thought lying the men down would be best to ensure that they are still alive here and ready to fight when the time comes.”

  “Ah told him Highlanders do not lie down in front of the enemy, sir,” cried Fergusson, the peaching bastard.

  But he was backing the wrong horse here. I had been looking at Wellesley when I had spoken and I had seen him give a slight nod when I had used the words ‘ensure that they are still here’. He would have to regroup the sepoys, which would take some time, and he needed to be sure that the Highlanders were not decimated by cannon or edging back themselves in the meantime.

  “Have the whole line lie down until we are ready to attack,” he said in clipped tones to his colonels. “Now back to your regiments, gentlemen,” he said. “I need to re-organise the sepoy battalions.”

  With that the horsemen dispersed.

  If you read the history books, they say that Wellesley’s decision to lie the army down at Argaum was an example of his military genius. Of course, yours truly who started it does not get a mention. Wellesley used the tactic repeatedly after that both in the Peninsular War and even at Waterloo, but as for me, I was just happy to still have my head on my shoulders at the end of the day.

  Chapter 26

  It took Wellesley over an hour to regroup the sepoys and then they started to sheepishly appear at the end of our line and extend it further into the field, before lying down themselves. The Mahratta had kept up a steady fire on our lines and must have thought that they were killing hundreds of our men, but in the 74th we did not lose another man. Of course that is easy to say with hindsight, but at the time every time we heard a cannon ball crash through the crop we had no idea where it would land. I saw one smash its way out of the stems just in front of me and whistle just a few inches over my head. The 78th had three casualties when a ball pitched to bounce right on top of some lying men, but that was it from an hour’s cannonade. Fergusson had refused to lie down and so Swinton had sent him and Wee Jock with the regiment’s flags back into the village, telling them to wave them about a bit as though we were retreating and then stand behind the thickest wall they could find.

  Finally the order came to start the attack. A couple of horse-drawn galloper guns appeared at the end of the line, Fergusson, Wee Jock and the flags were recalled and suddenly the British and sepoy line was ready.

  “Check your priming,” called Fergusson and down the line men checked that their muskets were
loaded and primed with powder to fire.

  I swung myself back into the saddle next to Swinton, Colonel Chalmers of the 78th gave the order to advance and Swinton followed suit. Wee Jock started beating the time on his drum and then Fergusson said the words I least wanted to hear: “Shall ah start the piper, sir?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” replied Swinton eagerly, for at that moment a caterwauling screech had started up from the pipers of the 78th. A few moments later the racket was enhanced by the rising drone of our single piper, who naturally seemed to be playing an entirely different tune to the others. The pipe tunes all had stupid names; the 78th were playing something like ‘Stealing the Campbell’s Sheep’ while our piper was giving wind to ‘When McDougal Got Stuck in a Bog’. The noise alone should have been enough to send the enemy running.

  I turned my mind to more important matters. In a few minutes we were going to emerge from this field into open ground and facing us would be a thousand of Berar’s unbeaten fanatical Arab soldiers intent on our slaughter. I needed to determine the safest place in this attack for T. Flashman Esquire. The double rank of infantry now in front of us appeared to offer even protection along the line. Swinton and I were the only officers on horseback and we were either side of the party carrying the regiment’s colours, which included Fergusson with his vicious spontoon. In theory we were supposed to fight to the death to protect these flags, but some Arab could have them for his underdrawers for all I cared. My priority was to emerge from this battle intact.

  Looking along the line, I saw that the man mountain known as Big Jock was lumbering away in the second rank a few yards to my left and so I eased my horse behind him. Any Arab that took him on was likely to be brave and dead in short order, for I had seen him perform amazing feats of strength in the few weeks I had known him. But just to be on the safe side, I checked again the priming in my two pistols and that my sword was loose in the scabbard.