A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

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  There had been cheeses, sausages, and fresh-baked loaves in the town shops, though a cursory search of the depot had turned up little. It was just too vast to search row after row of tentage piled with all an invasion force would need, but blankets, shirts, stockings, boots, and eight-man tents held little appeal to hungry sailors, or those seeking wine or brandy. Some jugs of wine from Siderno had been brought back to the guns, in spite of orders, but the wine was doled out between the men, one swallow at a time, passing the jugs about, and once their meals were done, Lewrie ordered them smashed or spilled out.

  Another hour or more passed, and the men napped round the guns, or nodded sleepily on watch, ’til …

  “Riders, sir!” Midshipman Chenery gave a warning shout.

  “Where?” Lewrie snapped, springing to his feet.

  “Top of the draw, sir!” Chenery answered. “Five or six, so far.”

  Lewrie raised his telescope and made out several mounted men, officers by the look of them. He could see gilt sashes, gilt-trimmed hats with egret feathers, blue uniforms, white trousers, and well-polished boots. He couldn’t tell a French Lieutenant from a General, or an artillerist from infantry or cavalry, but … there was one cove up there in a red coat, tall shako, with a gilt-trimmed pelisse half-draped over his shoulder. He must be cavalry!

  “Quarters! Stand to your guns, there!” Lieutenant Rutland was yelling. “Prick cartridge, and prime your guns!”

  Ahead of them, closer to the ridge, Caruthers’s two regiments were getting to their feet and arraying themselves in two-deep ranks, and officers and Sergeants were barking orders to load, prime, fix bayonets, and stand ready to receive.

  “Shift aim to the draw, where the road comes through!” Lewrie ordered, trying to remember whether his pistols and Ferguson musket were loaded, or primed.

  Men lifted the trails of the howitzers by leather straps with loops, as if made for humans as draught animals, then set them down as gun-captains signalled their satisfaction with their aim.

  “Ready linstocks, blow them hot and bright!” Rutland warned.

  There! The French officers in the draw at the top of the ridge wheeled their mounts about and rode out of view. A long minute went by, during which every man’s hands gripped his gun tools tighter, and all breathed a little harder.

  “Aha!” Lewrie shouted. “It’s a gun battery! You may open on them, Mister Rutland!”

  The senior French officer would want his guns deployed, first, to support the infantry’s march through the draw, down the road, and form. One, two, three horse-drawn cannon hove into view, carriages, caissons, and limbers, with their crews sitting on the waggons and on the draught horses.

  “By broadside … fire!” Rutland yelled.

  Eight howitzers bellowed, lurching back, in an irregular stutter, and two and a half seconds later, the pre-cut fuses exploded the shells, big, ugly black bursts barely fifty feet above the first three enemy guns, and it was chaos! Wounded horses screamed, gunners were scythed off the horses and waggons, and the third crashed into the second. Neat order was lost as caissons and limbers went one way, panicked gun teams and guns on their carriages went another, running off the road, and overturning as they met ditches and rocks jutting from the hillside.

  “Stop vents!” Rutland bawled. “Swab your guns!”

  There was a breeze off the sea running to the Nor’west, but it could not disperse the pall of powder smoke fast enough for Lewrie. He beckoned Midshipman Chenery to him.

  “Run out to the right about a long musket shot, lad, and spot the fall of shot for me,” Lewrie told him with a hand on his shoulder. “Whether we’re over, short, or spot-on. Go! And shout loud! Cut the same two and a half seconds on the fuses!” he called to the men behind the battery as they prepared the next rounds.

  “Charge your guns!” Rutland roared. “Get the bloody shot up here, damn your eyes!”

  “Lord, sir!” a sailor puffed as he waddle-ran forward with a shell cradled in his hands, low by his waist. “’Ese things must be as ‘eavy as twenty-four-pounder roundshot!”

  Twenty-four-pounder explosive shell? Lewrie thought; I love ’em! I want them aboard ship someday!

  “Shot your guns, and ram them snug! Prick cartridge! Prime!” Rutland yelled, then took time to look outwards at the ridge, hunting for fresh targets to slaughter. The smoke had mostly blown away, and everyone could see the draw, by then. What would the French send next?

  “Infantry, sir!” Chenery yelled. “In column of fours!”

  Just like at Vimeiro, Lewrie marvelled.

  He’d been ashore to witness General Sir Arthur Wellesley’s first victory in Portugal, and the French soldiers looked just the same; the flash of bayonets and shako badges, the white crossbelts over blue coats and white trousers, swaying side-to-side like a glittering worm. This lot broke column as they dodged round the ruin of the enemy battery, where wounded horses still screamed and kicked, wounded men shredded by hot, jagged iron shards whimpered, cried out for aid, or cursed for a chance of survival. They came on fast, at double time, re-forming a column of fours once downhill from the carnage, company after company of them, marked by their burgee-shaped flags on poles.

  “By broadside … fire!”

  The howitzers roared and bucked, again, and the view was gone in a fresh cloud of spent powder smoke. There were eight distinct cracks of bursting shells, though, and then the sound of “Huzzah!” from nigh two thousand British throats as the regiments in front cheered.

  “Spot-on, sir!” Midshipman Chenery yelled. “There’s a whole lot of them down!”

  “Re-position your guns! Swab out!” Rutland shouted.

  “They are scrambling over the ridge, either side of the draw, sir!” Chenery warned. “Hundreds of them! They are coming over the top in mobs, slipping and sliding downhill!”

  Lewrie trotted out near him for a better view clear of smoke, devoutly wishing for his gunners to be more proficient with their unfamiliar howitzers. Aboard ship, they could manage three rounds every two minutes; here, they were lucky to get off one round a minute, and it wasn’t enough to stop the French soldiers swarming over the ridge like a horde of ants. He looked left down the line of guns, watching his men charge, ram, shot, prick, and prime the howitzers.

  “Damn my eyes!” he exclaimed after he looked back at the French. He saw two emblems in the centre of those mobs; gilt eagles on tall poles. The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had issued them to each regiment after he’d crowned himself in 1805, emulating the Roman Empire’s legions and their eagles which had been signs of sacred honour.

  “There’s two regiments up there!” he gawped. “Mister Rutland, what’s the fuse setting?”

  “Two and a half seconds, sir!” the fellow replied,

  “Spread out the aim, and I’ll want two seconds for the next salvo!” Lewrie ordered.

  “Aye, sir! Ready? By broadside … fire!”

  Lewrie trotted back to the fuse-cutters and told them the same, then spotted an infantry Ensign trotting his horse near the battery to see what he could see.

  “Hoy, you sir!” Lewrie shouted at him, and the young man seemed to cringe, as if he was not wanted there. “Can you carry a message to the beach for me?”

  “Well, yes sir!” the subaltern, no older than sixteen, replied.

  “There’s a flag signal yard on the road above the beach,” Lewrie rushed out. “Tell Sub-Lieutenant Severance that he is to signal to my ship. The signal is, Engage Ridge, and I hope he has the flags that he needs if he has to spell it out!”

  “Engage Ridge, right, sir!” the Ensign repeated, puzzled, but he jerked the reins of his captured horse about and thumped his heels to urge it to a rapid canter.

  “The enemy is forming either side of the road, sir!” Midshipman Chenery reported once Lewrie was back, sounding a tad more anxious as he beheld the two regiments congealing into four-deep ranks, looking in good order, at last. Drums began to rattle, bu
gles sounded, and the regiments began to shift in complex manouevres to form columns, twenty men across and about fourty deep, with the eagles glittering in the wan daylight in the centres alongside the drummers.

  Buh-buh-boom-boom-boom, buh-buh-boom-boom the drummers beat out as the two columns began their slow advance, followed by the shout that Lewrie had heard at Vimeiro, “Vive l’Empereur!”

  “Mister Rutland, the damn fools are obliging you!” Lewrie cried, almost laughing. “Do you aim for the regimental column to the right of the road!”

  “Aye, sir! Shift aim right! Lower your barrels, screw the elevating screws up! Ready? By broadside … fire!”

  Buh-buh-boom-boom-boom, “Vive l’Empereur!”

  Sharp cracks went off above their heads, quick red blossoms of fire, black flowers quickly replacing them, with trails of smoke flying outwards to mark the flight of the largest hot shards.

  “Oh, right atop them, sir!” Midshipman Chenery enthused to see such carnage. “Dozens and dozens of them down! Uh … they’ve cleared the wreckage in the draw, sir. There are three pieces of artillery on the road, moving to the right, off the road! And there is cavalry in the draw, now!”

  As their gunsmoke cleared, Lewrie could see the bad news for himself; sixty, an hundred cavalrymen trotting over the draw and down into the road by twos. Generals, Colonels, and Majors on horses preceded them. The horsemen rapidly formed a two-deep line across the centre of the French troop dispositions, with the officers just behind them.

  “Mister Rutland, those guns are setting up on the shelf of land I pointed out to you before!” Lewrie urgently yelled. “Cut fuses for one and a half seconds, and take them out before they can open upon us!”

  He had a cruel choice, destroy the artillery quickly, shoot at the cavalry before they charged, or continue to pummel the columns of infantry. He remembered his former brother-in-law, Burgess Chiswick, speaking of how infantry dealt with cavalry; they would have to form square, bristling with kneeling men with bayonets and standing ranks firing their muskets, to deter cavalry. If they had to, the squares would fall victim to artillery, then the cavalry would eat them alive!

  Caruthers, your regiments are on your own, now, he thought.

  The drums still beat, and the French infantry shouted out their “Vive l’Empereur!” He’d seen that at Vimeiro, too; British guns with shrapnel shell had winnowed the tightly packed columns, but, no matter the casualties, they had still come on, hoping to get within musket range where they would fan out into line, deliver a massed volley, and then charge with the bayonet.

  “Ready? By broadside, fire!” Rutland roared, sounding hoarse.

  The French gun teams had wheeled into position on the level land of the shelf to the right of the road, trails dropping and the ammunition caissons were positioned yards in the rear, swarmed by artillery-men, and the horse teams and limbers led off smartly. It was like he watched a clockwork wind-up toy, so practiced were the French at their grim trade, Napoleon’s favourite branch of his Grande Armée.

  The howitzers roared, lurched back, seemed to wish to dig themselves into the ground as their cleverly designed carriages absorbed the downwards thrust of recoil, and the view of the French battery was blotted out. Lewrie heard the welcome series of cracks, and all but crossed the fingers of his right hand that they had hurt them, stymied them for a minute or so.

  “Huzzah, huzzah!” Midshipman Chenery shouted, capering and waving his hat in the air. “Eat that, you snail-eating bastards!”

  Where’d the boy learn that? Lewrie had to ask himself, hoping it was good news; Am I a bad influence? Aye, I probably am.

  Now his gunners were cheering, as were the British regiments, jeering and hooting, daring the French to come on. The smoke drifted clear, and Lewrie could see that those three French guns still stood in place, but most of the men serving them were on the ground, men and horses killed and wounded, the horses thrashing in their traces and harness, a few galloping away trailing entrails.

  “Good God, yes!” Lewrie shouted. A look to the road, though, damped his enthusiasm, for the French cavalry were drawing sabres and holding them aloft. Which British regiment would they attack?

  Before anything could happen, though, the sky was filled with unearthly moans, and the roar of distant guns. Drones in the air, a harpy’s shriek, rising in tone as something passed overhead, dropping in tone and volume, then … it was roundshot from Vigilance, slamming into the slopes down which the French regiments still marched with the drums and the now-and-then shout in praise of Bonaparte. They could not explode or even shatter as they struck the dry, rocky gound, but they could rock the ground when 18-pounder shot hit, and raised great gouts of dirt, sand, and dust almost as frightening as explosive shot.

  Hardly had that broadside landed when a deeper, heavier moaning soared overhead, and 24-pound shot from the lower gun-deck battery hit, making the ground shudder as if there had been a sudden, distant earthquake, and cloaking the French positions in a cloud of dirt.

  Cavalry horses and their riders were just splattered when a direct hit was made, and the French regiment on the left of the road was parted into several smaller columns as soldiers were ripped apart. As the dirt settled round them, the French columns both staggered to a halt, and the drums fell silent.

  Oooh! a broadside from the upper-deck 18-pounders moaned over-head again, better-aimed this time, now that the guns were warming up, and the left-hand French regiment was shredded. A roundshot even hit near the clutch of senior officers, making horses rear and buck, and tearing one of the officers from his saddle in a bloody bloom.

  “The brigade will advance!” Lewrie heard Caruthers shout to his men, and trotted out in front of them on his stolen horse, sword pointing towards the enemy. British drums beat, fifers tootled out “The Bowld Soldier Boy,” and the colours went forward. Stunned French soldiers shuffled about, turning their stalled columns into line, waiting for the British to approach musket range.

  “Think we should discourage them, sir?” Lieutenant Rutland shouted, his face and uniform gone smutty with powder smoke.

  “Aye, let’s finish off the cavalry,” Lewrie agreed as more shot moaned in from the sea. “One-and-a-half-second fuses, there!”

  “Prime your guns! The target is cavalry! Ready? By broadside … fire!”

  This time, the explosive shells burst right over the horsemen, and the clutch of staff officers. The surviving red-coated troops at last turned their mounts and trotted back to the draw atop the ridge. Some staff officers dismounted to kneel by one of their own who had fallen, even as more gunfire rolled in from Vigilance, as regularly as a metronome.

  There came a higher-pitched rattle of musketry, massive volleys from the French, overtaken by the platoon fire that rolled continually down the ranks of the British regiments, delivered by men who actually trained in live fire to get off three, perhaps four, rounds a minute. By the time the last Light Company on the left of a regiment’s line had fired, the Grenadier Company on the right had reloaded and were leveling their muskets to start the ripple again, and the French could not stand it. They began to give ground, pacing back from their dead and wounded, over their dead and wounded.

  “Charge!” came the cry, and the British regiments lowered their muskets and raced forwards to fight with the bayonet, and the French, pummeled and decimated, broke, the ones in the rear ranks abandoning their comrades to run back up the slope, heading for the draw.

  “Gut the bastards, make ’em bleed!” a sailor-gunner was yelling.

  Lewrie went forwards of his now-silent guns for a better view, thought to climb up on the carriage and stand astride a barrel, but a touch on the bronze tube made him jerk his hand back. It was hot!

  He caught sight of the Ensign out of the corner of his eye as he trotted back from the beach. The silly sod had his sword drawn, and a look of joy on his face.

  “Hoy, Ensign!” Lewrie shouted, jogging out to intercept him and his horse, but the lad seemed too i
ntent on entering the battle. “Hoy!”

  The Ensign hauled reins. “Yes, sir?”

  “I need you t’ride back to the signals party and tell ’em t’cease fire,” Lewrie told him.

  “Oh, but sir!” the young fellow all but wailed, pointing at the fighting with the tip of his sword like a tot that had been denied the last morsel of a figgy-dowdy.

  “Our troops are going up-slope, and they’ll run into the shot from my ship’s guns,” Lewrie explained. “We can’t have any of our soldiers splattered right at the moment we’re winning, hey? Gallop back, and tell Mister Severance to show Cease Fire.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Ensign replied, sulkily, then sawed his reins and heeled his horse into a gallop, sword still drawn.

  Lewrie let out a sigh of relief and walked back to the gun line, where Rutland, Grace, and Chenery were standing, watching the battle as it petered out. French troops who’d been abandoned by their mates had their muskets held out, muzzles down in sign of surrender, and some who had dis-armed were tending to the wounded. The quicker of them looked as if they were apes scrambling on their hands and feet to get up the slope and over the crest of the ridge, through the draw on the road, to escape the roundshot that still moaned and keened in from Vigilance.

  At least someone’s got a lick o’ sense, Lewrie thought as he saw that the British regiments had halted their charge short of the foot of the ridge, jeering and cheering as the French escaped, still pursued by spurts of earth dug up by 18- and 24-pound shot.

  After two more broadsides, the ship’s guns fell silent, musket fire fell silent, and the battle was truly over.

  “Oh, damn,” Lieutenant Rutland gravelled in a laconic tone.

  “A good show, while it lasted,” Lewrie said.

  “It’s raining,” Rutland pointed out as the first large drops hit the dry ground like miniature roundshot that raised mud spurts. Rain hit the hot howitzer barrels, and made sizzling noises. “All that we bloody need.”

  There was a gust front rolling in from the sea, turning the humid warmth of the day much cooler for a minute, but it faded, leaving only a pleasant zephyr. With the gust front, large rain drops came in wave that rattled hats, but the rain subsided to a gentle shower.