Sharpe's Waterloo s-20

by Бернард Корнуэлл

  Those Riflemen who escaped from La Haye Sainte ran up the ridge’s slope as the victorious French swarmed into the farm buildings. The Riflemen of the 95th had long been driven from the adjacent sandpit, so now the centre bastion of the Duke’s line was gone. The French brought cannon into the farm’s kitchen garden and, at perilously short range, opened fire on the ridge. Voltigeurs, given a new territory to exploit, spread up the forward slope to open a killing fire on the troops nearest to the elm tree.

  An immediate counter-attack could have recaptured the farm while the French hold on its buildings was still new and tenuous, but the Duke had no reserves left. Every man who could fight in the Duke’s army was now committed to defend the ridge, while the rest of his troops had either fled, were wounded, or were dead. What was left of the Duke’s army was a thin line of men stretched along a blood-soaked ridge. The line was two ranks deep, no more, and in places the ridge seemed empty where the battalions had been forced to shrink into four ranks as a precaution against the cavalry that still lurked in the smoke that drifted at the slope’s foot.

  The French were winning.

  The Duke, hardly a man given to despair, muttered a prayer for the coming of either the Prussians or the night. But both, this day, came painfully slowly.

  The first French attacks on the British ridge had failed, but now their gunners and their skirmishers were grinding down the British defence. Men died in ones and twos, but constantly. The already truncated battalions shrank as the surviving Sergeants ordered the files to close the gaps. Men who had started the day four files apart became neighbours, and still the gun-fire shredded the ranks and still the Voltigeurs fired from the smoke and still the Sergeants chanted the litany of a battalion’s death, “Close up! Close up!”

  Victory was a mere drumbeat away because the British line had been scraped thin as a drumskin.

  The Emperor felt the glorious certainty of victory. His will now stretched clear across the battlefield. It was seven o’clock on a summer’s evening, the sun was slanting steeply through the remnants of cloud and skeins of smoke, and the Emperor held the lives and deaths of all three armies in his hand. He had won. All he now needed to do was fend off the Prussians with his right hand, and annihilate the British with his left.

  He had won. Yet he would wait a few moments before savouring the victory. He would let the guns in the newly captured La Haye Sainte finish their destruction of the British centre, and only then would he unleash his immortals.

  To glory.

  The bombardment ground on, but slower now for the French gun barrels were degrading from their constant fire. Some guns shot their vents, leaving a gaping hole where their touchholes had been, while others broke their carriages, and one twelve-pounder exploded as an air bubble in its cast barrel finally gave way. Yet more than enough French cannon remained in service to sustain the killing. The surviving British infantry was numbed and deafen^ ed by the fire. Less than half of Wellington’s army was still capable of fighting. Their faces were blackened by battle and streaked white with sweat, while their eyes were reddened from the irritation of the powder residues that had sparked from their musket pans.

  Yet, battered and bleeding, they clung to the ridge beneath the dwarfing pall of churning smoke that belched from the burning ammunition wagons. The French cannonade had long assumed an inhuman inevitability; as though the gunners had sprung free some malevolent force from within the earth itself; a force which now dispassionately ground the battlefield into blood and embers and ragged soil. No humans were visible on the French-held ridge; there was just the bank of smoke into which the guns flashed fire that was diffused into lurid flares that erupted bright, then slowly faded into gloom.

  Sharpe, standing a few feet to one side of his old battalion, watched the ominous bursts of red light ignite and die, and each unnatural glow marked a few more seconds survived. The fear had come with inactivity, and each minute.that Sharpe waited motionless on the ridge made him feel more vulnerable as though, skin by skin, his bravery was peeling away. Harper, crouching silent beside Sharpe, shivered as he stared wide-eyed at the strange inhuman fires that pulsed amidst the smoke.

  This was unlike any battlefield that either man had known before. In Spain the fields had seemed to stretch away to infinity, but here the combat was held tight within the cockpit of the small valley above which the smoke made an unnatural early dusk. Beyond the battle’s margin, out where the crops stood unharmed and no blood trickled in the plough furrows, the sunlight shone through ragged clouds on peaceful fields, but the valley itself was a piece of hell on earth, flickering with flame and belching smoke.

  Neither Sharpe nor Harper spoke much. No one was speaking much in the British line any more. Sometimes a sergeant ordered the files to close, but the orders were unnecessary now. Each man was simply enduring as-best he could.

  The French skirmishers were falling back as their ammunition became exhausted. That, at least, gave some relief, and let the British battalions lie down on the crushed mud and straw. The Voltigeurs did not retire all the way to their own ridge, but waited on the valley floor for a fresh supply of cartridges to be brought forward. Only in the British centre; in front of the newly captured

  La Haye Sainte, were newly committed skirmishers advancing up the slope beneath the raking canister fire of the two eight-pounder guns that the French had placed in the farm’s kitchen garden.

  Peter d’Alembord, insisting that he was well, had returned to Colonel Ford’s side. He still rode Sharpe’s horse that he now stood beneath the battalion’s colours, which had been torn to yellow shreds by the skirmishers’ bullets. Colonel Ford’s ears were so dulled by the incessant percussion of the guns that he could hardly hear the small remarks d’Alembord made. Not that Ford cared. He was clutching his horse’s reins as though they were his last hold on sanity.

  A single horsemen rode slowly in the emptiness behind the British battalions. His horse picked a slow path through the broken gun carriages and past the rows of red-coated dead. Shell fragments smoked on the scorched and trampled crops. The horseman was Simon Doggett who now sought his own battalion of Guardsmen, but as he rode westwards he saw the two Riflemen crouching close to the ridge’s crest. Doggett turned his horse towards the Greenjackets and reined in close behind them.

  “He did it again, sir. He damn well did it again,“ Doggett’s outraged indignation made him sound very young, ”so I told him he was a silk stocking full of shit.“

  Sharpe turned. For a second he blinked in surprise as though he did not recognize Doggett, then he seemed to snap out of the trance induced by the numbing gun-fire. “You did what?”

  Doggett was embarrassed. “I told him he was a silk stocking full of shit.”

  Harper laughed softly. A shell whimpered overhead to explode far in the rear. A roundshot followed to strike the ridge in front of Sharpe and spew up a shower of wet earth. Doggett’s horse jerked its face away from the spattering mud.

  “He killed them,” Doggett said in pathetic explanation.

  “He killed who?” Harper asked.

  “The KGL. There were two battalions, all that was left of a brigade, and he put them in line and sent them to where the cavalry were waiting.”

  “Again?” Sharpe sounded incredulous.

  “They died, sir.” Doggett could not forget the sight of the swords and sabres rising and falling. He had watched one German running from the slaughter; the man had already lost his right arm to a sabre’s slice, yet it had seemed that the man would still escape, but a Cuirassier had spurred after him and chopped down with his heavy blade and Doggett could have sworn that the dying man threw one hateful look up the slope to where his real killer was. “I’m sorry, sir. There’s no point in telling you. I tried to stop him, but he told me to go away.”

  Sharpe did not respond, except to unsling his rifle and probe a finger into its pan to discover whether the weapon was still primed.

  Doggett wanted Sharpe to share his anger
at the Prince’s callous behaviour. “Sir!” he pleaded. Then, when there was still no reply, he spoke more self-pityingly. “I’ve ruined my career, haven’t I?”

  Sharpe looked up at the young man. “At least we can mend that, Doggett. Just wait here.”

  Sharpe, without another word, began walking towards the centre of the British line while Harper took Doggett’s bridle and turned his horse away from the valley. “There are still a few skirmishers who wouldn’t mind making you into a notch on their muskets,” the Irishman explained to Doggett. “Did you really call the skinny bastard a silk stocking filled with shit?”

  “Yes.” Doggett was watching Sharpe walk away.

  “To his face?” Harper insisted.

  “Indeed, yes.”

  “You’re a grand man, Mr Doggett! I’m proud of you.” Harper released Doggett’s horse a few paces behind the colour party of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. “Now just wait here, sir. The Colonel and I won’t be long.”

  “Where are you going?” Doggett shouted after the Irishman.

  “Not far!” Harper called back, then he followed Sharpe into a drifting bank of powder smoke and disappeared.

  Sharpe was half-way to the elm tree when Harper caught him. “What are you doing?” the Irishman asked.

  “I’m sick of the royal bastard. How many more men will he kill?”

  “So what are you doing?” Harper insisted.

  “What someone should have done at his bloody birth. I’m going to strangle the bugger.”

  Harper put a hand on Sharpe’s arm. “Listen — „

  Sharpe threw the hand off and turned a furious face on his friend. “I’m going, Patrick. Don’t stop me!”

  “I don’t give a bugger if you kill him.” Harper was just as angry. “But I’ll be damned if you hang for it.”

  “Damn the bloody rope.” Sharpe walked on, carrying his rifle in his right hand.

  The ridge’s centre was more thickly smothered with smoke than its flanks. The muzzle blast of the two cannon that the French had placed in La Haye Sainte’s kitchen garden carried almost to the ridge’s summit, and every shot pumped a filthy stinking fog to blanket the slope. The French were firing canister, punching a massive weight of musket-balls into the heart of the British defences. The British gunners, exposed on the skyline as they tried to return the fire, had been killed or wounded, allowing the enemy skirmishers to creep ever closer to the bullet-scarred elm tree from which every leaf and most of the bark had been blasted away.

  Those staff officers who still lived, and they were not many, had sensibly retreated from the ravaged tree and now stood their horses well back from the ridge’s summit. Sharpe could not see the Duke, but he found the Prince in his fur-edged uniform. The Prince was two hundred paces off, close to the highway and surrounded by his Dutch staff. It was a long shot for a rifle loaded with common cartridge instead of the extra-fine powder, and it would be a tricky shot because of the men who crowded close to the Prince.

  “Not here!” Harper insisted.

  A shattered gun limber and two dead horses lay not far away and Sharpe crouched in the wreckage to see whether it gave him the cover he needed.

  “You’ll never hit the bastard from this distance,” Harper said. “They don’t call him Slender Billy for nothing.”

  “I will if God’s on my side.”

  “I wouldn’t rely on God today.” The Irishman stared about the ridge top, seeking an idea, then saw a file of green-jacketed Riflemen running towards the valley. The Prince had spurred his horse to follow the Riflemen, thus taking himself closer to the embattled crest of the ridge.

  “Where are those lads going?” Harper asked.

  Sharpe saw the Greenjackets, and understood. The Duke must have gathered the remnants of his Riflemen and ordered them to stop the French guns firing from La Haye Sainte. It was a desperate throw, but Riflemen alone might succeed in silencing the murderous guns. Fifty Greenjackets were preparing to charge over the crest, and the Prince, who had never lacked bravery, could not resist going forward to watch their fight.

  Sharpe suddenly upped and ran towards the Riflemen who had stopped just short of the crest and now crouched in a group as they fixed their long, brass-handled sword-bayonets onto their rifle muzzles. “You’re not coming,” he shouted at Harper who had begun to follow him.

  “And how will you stop me?”

  “You bloody deserve to die.” Sharpe dropped at the back of the squad of Riflemen, all of whose faces were blackened by the powder scraps exploded from their rifles’ pans. Their commanding officer was Major Warren Dunnett whose face showed understandable resentment when he recognized Sharpe. “Are you taking over?” he asked stiffly.

  “It would be a great honour to serve under your command once again, Dunnett.” Sharpe could be very tactful when he wished.

  Dunnett, pleased with the compliment, smiled grimly. “We make‘ this very quick!” he spoke to his fifty men. “Use the blades to clear the slope, then make your shots count! Once you’ve fired, tap reload and hold off the Voltigeurs. You understand?” The men nodded, and Dunnett waited. He waited so long that Sharpe wondered whether Dunnett had lost his nerve, but instead it seemed that there was another identical group of Riflemen who were attacking from the far side of the highway and Dunnett’s men merely waited for their signal so that the two groups crossed the ridge crest at the same moment.

  Sharpe looked behind him. The Prince was fifty yards away, but staring over the Riflemens’ heads towards La Haye Sainte. Sharpe, to lessen his chances of being recognized, smeared mud on his scarred face and shoved his tricorne hat into his belt.

  From somewhere beyond the high-road a bugle called the familiar running triplets of the order to open fire. “That’s the signal, my boys! Let’s go!” Dunnett had waited six years to avenge himself on the French and now, his sabre drawn, he led the Riflemen over the crest.

  The appearance of the Rifles was so sudden that the closest French skirmishers were trapped. The sword-bayonets rammed down, were kicked free, then carried on. Dunnett shouted an incoherent challenge and slashed madly with his sabre, not striking anyone, but hissing the blade so fiercely through the smoky air that the French scrambled to escape such an apparent maniac. The fifty Riflemen on the far side of the road attacked with the same sudden and vicious desperation, driving the panicked Voltigeurs down the long slope. The mad charge stopped a hundred yards short of La Haye Sainte as the Riflemen abandoned the pursuit of the French to take up their firing positions. First, before aiming, they undipped their sword-bayonets so that the heavy blades would not unbalance their rifles.

  Each man had loaded carefully. They had cleaned their rifle barrels by the old expedient of pissing down the barrels, sluicing the caked powder deposits loose, then pouring out the fouled liquid. Then, when the barrels had dried, and using the extra-fine powder they carried in their horns, the Riflemen had charged their rifles. They had wrapped their bullets in a scrap of greased leather that not only helped the bullet grip the spiralling lands in the barrel, but, when the weapon was fired, expanded to block any of the exploding gas escaping past the bullet through the barrel’s grooves. It took over a minute to load a rifle so meticulously, but the resultant shot would be as accurate as any weapon in the world.

  Now, in the brief space and time they had won, the Riflemen aimed at the gunners who were visible above the hedge of La Haye Sainte’s kitchen garden. The range was a hundred yards; a simple rifle shot, but misted by the drifting smoke. The gunners in the garden were too busy serving their guns to be aware of the threat.

  Dunnett did not hurry his men. He must have been tempted to urge them to fire quickly, for the French skirmishers were regrouping at the foot of the slope, but instead he trusted his men and they did not disappoint him.

  The first rifles crashed their brass butts into shoulders bruised raw by a day’s fighting. White smoke spurted across the slope. The French skirmishers began firing uphill and two Greenjackets lu
rched backwards. Other Riflemen still took careful aim. A gunner stared over his rammer at the slope and a bullet took him in his open mouth. A French artillery officer spun backwards, half clambered up, then began crawling under his gun’s trail. More rifles fired. The officer slumped flat. A handful of gunners fled to the farmhouse where they crowded and obstructed each other in the narrow door, and where they were struck by a flail of rifle-fire. Those Greenjackets who had already fired reloaded, not with the fine powder and wrapped bullet, but by tap loading with a normal cartridge. Then they turned their weapons on the skirmishers.

  “Withdraw!” Dunnett, the executions neatly carried out, shouted at his men.

  “Got the bastard!” Harper shouted.

  “Where?”

  “Look at the tree, then left thirty yards!“

  Sharpe was downhill of Harper. “Kneel down. Aim your rifle at the farm.”

  Harper, bemused, obeyed. He braced his left leg forward, knelt on his right knee, and aimed his rifle at the kitchen garden which seemed to be filled with dead artillerymen. The first Riflemen were already running uphill. “Hurry, for Christ’s sake!” Harper muttered.

  Sharpe lay flat on the ground and thrust his rifle between Harper’s right thigh and left calf. Now Sharpe was effectively hidden from the staff officers close to the Prince who were all staring at the slaughtered gunners in the farm’s garden. The Prince’s horse was sideways on to the valley, presenting the Prince’s left shoulder to Sharpe’s rifle sights.

  Sharpe had not had time to load with the good powder, or wrap a ball in leather. Instead he was using the commonplace coarse-powder cartridge, but if God_was good this evening then an ordinary musket cartridge would suffice to avenge a thousand dead men and perhaps to save the lives of a thousand more.