The Scarlet Thief

by Paul Fraser Collard

  The Russian guns fired again.

  Jack whimpered in terror as the blast of canister tore through the Light Company. Sergeant Adams took a load full in the face. His head exploded before Jack’s horrified eyes, splattering the men around him with blood, brains and scraps of flesh. His body lurched forward like a grotesque headless puppet for another pace before it fell to the ground, blood pouring from the tattered stump of his neck.

  More fusiliers had fallen to the devastating fire. English Davies lay twisted on the ground behind the advancing line, his stomach ripped open, his guts spilling out of the terrible wound to pulse, bloody and blue, in the bright sunshine. At his side, another fusilier screamed abuse at the Russian gunners whose shot had smashed his legs into a vile pulp.

  Some fusiliers took their wounds in silence, pressing on even as their blood dripped from their bodies. Lieutenant Thomas wept as he marched, his left arm hanging loosely against his side, the limb shattered and bleeding profusely from a deep wound above the elbow. The subaltern’s tears carved thin channels through his dirt-encrusted face before the young officer smeared them away with his sleeve, more concerned that the men should not see him cry than he was about the severity of the wound.

  Fusilier O’Callaghan, one of the company’s new recruits, calmly bent to the ground and retrieved his severed arm, ignoring the blood that spurted from the tattered remnant of flesh that had once been his elbow. He turned serenely to begin the long march to the rear, the detached limb cradled carefully in the crook of his surviving arm.

  Another volley blasted down the slope. Soldiers littered the ground, corpses tripping the living. Wounded redcoats plucked at the coat tails of those still standing, begging for aid, for water or for a bullet to end their agony.

  Jack turned away from the horror being wrought on his men, his stomach churning in revulsion. His company was being destroyed before his eyes and he was powerless to stop it. He meant nothing against such destruction. All his ambition and all his hopes washed away in the sea of blood.

  The Fusiliers had no choice but to advance. If they stopped then they would be slaughtered where they stood. Instinctively they bunched together, unwittingly making the gunners’ work easier. Jack forced himself forward. He wanted to lead from the centre of the battalion line. He knew it was a pathetic gesture but it was one he was determined to make. As he moved, he cast a glance along the ranks, ever hopeful that Slater would have been struck down by the terrible storm.

  Slater noticed Jack’s look and he met his eyes with a cold flat stare. He was covered in blood but it was not his own; the gore belonged to a nearby fusilier who had been torn apart by a burst of canister. Slater spat in derision and Jack looked away, trying to suppress the dread that flared in his soul.

  Step by bloody step, the fusiliers forced themselves up the slope. Lieutenant Flowers led them forward, his resilient horse overtaking Codrington’s tiring young Arab. The young adjutant was determined to be first into the redoubt, to follow his colonel’s example by leading the battalion from the front.

  As the distance closed, he gathered his reins in one hand and with the other gripped and regripped the handle of his sword. Horse and rider tensed as they readied to take a wild leap over the wall of the redoubt, as if it was a hedge in a fox hunt. Behind him, the fusiliers picked up the pace, desperate to cover the last few yards before the Russian gunners could fire again.

  The front hooves of Flowers’ horse had already left the ground to leap over the wall when the Russian battery fired again. The adjutant was so close to the muzzle of a Russian cannon that he and his horse were touched by the blast of flame that leapt out of its mouth. A heartbeat later and both ceased to exist, a single blast of canister striking them in mid-air, instantly reducing man and beast to nothing more than a gory tangle of blood and offal.

  The British line staggered under the volley. At such close range each load of canister cut a fan-shaped wedge of death through the already badly mauled redcoats. Jack screamed as the guns fired, a shriek of complete terror that was lost in the massive explosion. Instinctively, he crossed his arms to protect his face from the blast. The smoke from the volley choked him, the stink of rotten eggs filled his nostrils. The canister obliterated the leading ranks but somehow he remained whole.

  He made for the wall of the redoubt. He saw General Codrington leap the four-foot-high wall seconds before he reached it himself. He planted one foot in the gap between the two tree trunks that had been laid horizontally to form the base of the wall and propelled himself up and over it. Sharp splinters tore at his hands, the sudden sharp pain nearly causing him to drop the sword that he held tightly in his right hand. His men piled over after him. As their boots thumped down hard on the Russians’ side of the redoubt, Jack expected a volley of musketry or thrusting bayonets to greet them but no enemy infantry contested their arrival. They had abandoned the Russian gunners, and the gunners themselves were trying to escape. After the final volley they had dragged their guns backwards and were now frantically trying to limber the weapons up to the waiting teams of horses.

  Not far from where Jack stood, a Russian officer was using his riding whip to exhort his men to hurry up and finish attaching one cannon to the limber and team of horses that would drag it to safety. Jack saw the colour drain from the Russian’s face as he caught sight of the redcoats vaulting over the wall of the redoubt. The officer dropped his whip and drew a thin curved sabre. He swung it hard against the back of one of his men, cursing his slowness.

  Fusilier Dodds landed next to Jack and the redcoat screamed his disgust at the Russian gunners’ attempts to escape. ‘Stole away!’

  ‘Dodds, follow me!’

  Jack would not let the enemy slip away without a fight. He had watched his men massacred at the hands of these Russian gunners. It was time to exact a revenge for their suffering.

  With Dodds screaming incoherently at his side, Jack charged at the Russian gunners. His anger was terrible, a remorseless rage that corrupted his soul. Nothing mattered except for the burning need to bury his blade in the flesh of the Russian gunners. His fear had been banished, the fury that replaced it all-consuming and terrible.

  The Russian gunners saw them coming. In a final, desperate bid to escape, the horse team whipped their mounts into motion. The gun train lurched forward, its trail gouging a deep channel in the ground. The gun twisted and for a moment it looked as if it would overturn. Then with a jolt it straightened and the horses surged away from the redcoats. But in their haste the gunners had left two of the traces unbuckled. With a loud snap of breaking lines, the terrified horses tore free of the cannon. They raced away, their sides whipped by their riders who left the cannon and their comrades behind.

  Jack focused his attention on the slim Russian officer who had been beating his men. Jack was close enough to see every detail of the Russian’s face, from his gaunt, beardless cheeks to the thin moustache on his upper lip. His pinched lips stood out, cherry-red against his white face. The young officer put his right foot forward, smoothly taking the position of a trained swordsman, his thin sabre pointing at Jack, his left hand angled backwards, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet.

  The idea of fencing with the Russian officer never entered Jack’s mind. He ran at the Russian with wild abandon, a banshee cry of fear and anger bursting from his mouth. He swept his sword forward, slamming the sabre to one side, and crashed into the Russian with a teeth-juddering impact, knocking him on to his back. Jack landed on top of him with such force that he felt ribs breaking in the Russian’s chest. Jack pulled his arm back and punched the iron hilt of his sword into the man’s unprotected face. Once, twice then a third time, beating the Russian to death.

  Armed with swords, handspikes and rammers the Russian gunners charged the fusiliers with hopeless bravery. One gunner made straight for Jack, his mouth pulled back in a snarl of fury. Jack flung his sword up, his
knees still pressing down on the corpse of the Russian officer, and deflected the gunner’s handspike but the wild parry threw him off balance and he fell off the body on to the ground. The gunner recovered quickly and twisted round, aiming his makeshift weapon straight at Jack’s exposed chest.

  The flash of a rifle seared over Jack. The bullet drove the gunner backwards, leaving a large hole in his dark blue jacket. The Minié ball had struck him in the left-hand side of the chest, killing him instantly.

  ‘Got the fucker!’ Fusilier Dodds hauled his officer to his feet, a ferocious grin on his filthy face. ‘Come on, sir. No time for a lie-down yet.’

  Jack grunted his thanks and braced himself for the next attack.

  It came from a huge Russian gunner who swung a wooden swab at his head. Drops of water flew from the damp fleece that still covered the last foot of its length. Jack ducked, almost thrusting his face on to the short sword of a second gunner who attacked from the right. The blade flashed by a mere inch from Jack’s face, forcing him to twist desperately out of its way.

  Fusilier Dodds fought at Jack’s side, doing his best to protect his officer from the melee that surged around them. With a vicious snarl, he drove his weapon into the stomach of the gunner who collapsed over the blade, his fingers instinctively grabbing hold of it. Dodds pulled his bayonet back, mercilessly slicing through the dying Russian’s grasping fingers. Stamping his right foot forward, Dodds repeatedly stabbed his weapon forward in short efficient thrusts, the seventeen-inch bayonet deadly in the close quarters scrimmage.

  Dodds’s action gave Jack the crucial few moments’ respite he needed to snatch his handgun from its holster. It was a five-shot, percussion, double-action revolver made by Dean and Adams, the best that money could buy. Jack pulled the trigger five times in rapid succession, a merciless close-range barrage that threw three Russian gunners to the ground.

  It was too much for the other terrified gunners, they dropped their improvised weapons and ran. Other fusiliers who had made it over the wall raised their rifles to their shoulders and fired at the fleeing Russians. Not one made it more than a dozen yards. In their thirst for revenge, the fusiliers kept firing, riddling the corpses of the Russian gunners where they lay.

  ‘Cease fire! Cease fire, damn it!’

  Jack screamed at his men to stop wasting their ammunition, using his sword to batter one man’s rifle upwards so that it fired impotently into the sky.

  ‘Cease fire, damn you.’

  The rifle fire died out as Jack regained control of his men. The Russian gunners had been massacred. The fusiliers had exacted their revenge.

  They had taken the Great Redoubt.

  There was no joy at what they had achieved. No cheers of celebration. No shouts of victory. The fusiliers had paid too high a price. The officers re-formed their companies, the reduced ranks and missing faces a reminder of the men who had fallen.

  The terraced slope that ran down to the Alma River was covered with redcoated corpses. On the right flank, the 7th Fusiliers under Lacy Yea were still engaged in a dreadful war of attrition with the second Russian column, which was slowly grinding the British ranks into oblivion. The other two battalions, the 19th and the 23rd, were picking their way up the slope towards the redoubt.

  For the moment, the King’s Royal Fusiliers were alone. The respite would not last for long; the Russian general was sure to try to recapture the redoubt. He could ill afford to leave such a strategic strongpoint in the hands of the enemy.

  The remnants of Codrington’s Brigade would have to defend what they had won.

  ‘Sir.’ Digby-Brown thrust a scrap of paper towards his captain.

  Jack was scratching the battalion’s initials into the barrel of the cannon that had so nearly escaped.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘Butcher’s bill, sir. As best as I can tell, we’re down to forty-nine effectives. We lost Sergeants Shepherd and Adams.’ Digby-Brown’s voice was tight with tension.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Did you see the colonel go down, sir?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And Flowers?’

  ‘I did.’

  Digby-Brown closed his eyes to shut out the tears. With a visible effort, he composed himself, his captain’s calm and measured tones helping to steady him. ‘Mr Thomas is wounded, sir. He refuses to retire and go to the surgeons. Perhaps you would have a word with him.’

  ‘Perhaps he has earned the right to decide for himself.’

  Digby-Brown opened his mouth to argue but stopped himself. His captain was right. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Digby-Brown.’

  ‘What for, sir?’

  ‘For agreeing with me.’ Jack smiled wearily.

  ‘At least it sounds like the French are still attacking.’ Digby-Brown pointed towards the west where banks of powder smoke rolled across the battlefield.

  ‘Don’t worry about the French.’ Jack kneaded the small of his back. ‘They can look after themselves. I’m more worried about us. We appear to have been abandoned. I don’t see the guards or any of those Scots bastards, do you?’

  Digby-Brown looked anxiously towards the Alma River. The Duke of Cambridge commanded the 1st Division, which was made up of the Highland Brigade and the Guards Brigade. The two brigades should have been advancing hard on the Light Division’s heels, ready to support their attack as soon as it ran out of momentum or secured its objectives. Instead, they had been halted on the far side of the Alma where they were enduring heavy artillery fire.

  ‘Oh God. They were meant to be right behind us.’

  ‘They were indeed, Mr Digby-Brown. Perhaps someone forgot to tell them that. Nothing would surprise me. I suggest you make the most of the peace and quiet. Tell Sergeant Baker to check weapons and ammunition and see to the wounded as best you can. I expect it will get pretty noisy around here soon.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Digby-Brown hurried off, glad to turn his mind to practical matters.

  To the south, the vast bulk of the unengaged Russian army was preparing to fight. Twelve battalions of infantry were forming into more huge columns. The Russian general’s conscript army knew no other way to fight. Three thousand cavalry could be seen away to the south-east. The Russians’ second prepared position, the lesser redoubt, lay untouched on the Russian general’s far right flank, a battery of artillery in place. The fusiliers may have seized the larger of the two earthworks but vast numbers of the Russian force were still waiting to be committed to the battle, their men fresh and eager.

  Codrington’s brigade was dangerously exposed. They had to hold fast until reinforcements could arrive. If the Russians recaptured the great redoubt, the whole bloody assault would have to be repeated and the sacrifice the redcoats had already made would count for nothing.

  ‘We made it, sir.’

  Jack looked up at his orderly, unable to summon the energy to greet him with more than a thin smile. Smith had lost his shako in the assault but otherwise appeared to have survived unscathed.

  Smith reached forward and prised Jack’s sword from his grasp. He bent down to clean the bloody blade on the jacket of a dead Russian gunner. ‘Those Russians were lousy shots. Somehow they managed to miss Slater’s hulking great arse.’

  ‘The bastard can’t be so lucky all day.’

  ‘He won’t be if I have anything to do with it. I’ll worry about Slater; you concentrate on looking after yourself. You charged those bleeding Russki gunners like a madman.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I lead a charmed life.’

  ‘Fucking foolish thinking, that is. Now give me your revolver. I’ll bet you’ve forgotten to reload it.’

  Jack meekly handed over his revolver and its pouch of ammunition, and took back his hastily cleaned sword. Slater was almost as much of a threat to hi
s survival as the Russians, it would take a miracle to survive the day.

  ‘Stand to! The bastards are coming!’

  The handful of piquets that Codrington had thrown forward hastened to rejoin their battalions.

  To the south-west a fresh Russian column was making its way across the sloping high ground towards the great redoubt. The column was enormous, much bigger than the one beaten back by the 19th and 23rd. The period of peace had been short and the fusiliers had been given little time to reorganise.

  The three battered battalions formed a single long line. The King’s Royal Fusiliers were on the right, closest to the column. They would be the first to open fire.

  Major Peacock had emerged from wherever he had been hiding. Someone had managed to secure Colonel Morris’s massive black charger and Peacock rode forward on it to stand in front of the fusiliers and address them. The horse fought the major’s unfamiliar control and he had to pull sharply on the reins.

  Jack swore under his breath. The thought of Peacock being in charge of the battalion was galling. He was spared from listening to whatever poppycock Peacock believed would stir the men to fight because he could not hear what he said through the rattle of French and Russian musket fire to the west. Mercifully, the major’s speech did not last long. If he had expected a rousing cheer for his efforts then he was disappointed. The fusiliers greeted his words with stony silence, instead busying themselves with the last-minute preparations of men about to fight. They checked and rechecked their rifles and their ammunition, fidgeted with their pouches and adjusted their uniforms.

  ‘Battalion! At two hundred yards, volley fire! Ready!’

  The fusiliers lifted their rifles and sighted the muzzles on the enormous mass that rumbled across the slope towards them. There were enough men in the column to outnumber the brigade three or four times over, more men than had been in the whole of the Light Division when it had first formed up that morning. The pulsating mass of Russian conscripts cheered wildly as the drums drove them forward with their hypnotic rhythm.