All in Scarlet Uniform (Napoleonic War 4) (39 page)

‘
Vive l’empereur!
’ He caught the words this time and then the drummers added their noise again.

A volley thundered out, and that was presumably the 43rd although he could not see them. Shots came from the other direction too, which was reassuring because it suggested that someone was there.

Another voltigeur was hit, and lay unmoving in the grass, while the rest scampered back behind the wall.

‘
Vive l’empereur! En avant!
’ The main body was getting close now, shouts and drumming carrying over the gunfire. Ranks of men appeared behind the wall, muskets with fixed bayonets still held nonchalantly at their shoulders as if all they needed to do was march over the enemy. Williams could not see well, but he guessed that there were two companies of blue-coated infantry and that meant this was the front of a column at least a battalion in strength. A mounted officer screamed at them to go on as the drummers pounded away.

‘
Vive l’empereur! Vive l’empereur!
’ He could see the mouths of the men opening wide to chant, but still they waited at the wall. Men never liked to cross an obstacle. The closest company were grenadiers, wearing the high bearskin caps that were supposed to have been replaced by shakos several years ago. A lot of colonels liked the expensive, old-fashioned headgear and had ignored the new regulation. Grenadiers were chosen from the biggest men, and the extra foot or so of height from their tall caps made them seem like giants looming out of the smoke.

Dobson fired, the noise loud in Williams’ ears, and all around them riflemen were shooting. The white front of a grenadier’s jacket was suddenly bright red, his musket dropping as he slumped down. The mounted colonel was unscathed, still pointing with his sword and calling for his men to go on. A young officer vaulted the wall and turned to beckon his men to follow. Another sprang on to the wall itself, hat balanced on the tip of the sword he was waving in the air as he showed the men that they had nothing to fear.

Another volley crashed out from the 43rd, and some of the French grenadiers brought their muskets down and levelled them. The colonel was bawling at them to keep going, but a few pulled triggers. At the top of the slope a rifleman took a ball in his left hand, smashing two fingers.

Williams fired at the same moment as several of the 95th and at first could see little through the smoke, and so he did not see the French officer capering on the wall getting struck in the groin. All he heard was a terrible shriek of agony, and by the time the smoke cleared the man had gone, but French grenadiers were climbing over the drystone wall. The colonel spun his horse around and went back before taking a run and jumping the wall neatly. He was calling to his men to form up and still he remained untouched by all the balls flying through the air.

‘Back, sir!’ Dobson tapped Williams on the shoulder and pointed at the greenjackets doubling away. For the moment the closest drums were silent, as the drummers clambered over the wall.

‘
Vive l’empereur!
’ The drums began again, and then the cry turned into a wild yell as the grenadiers charged up the slope.

Williams and the riflemen kept running, and as he came to the mouth of the gully he could see a loose mass of the 43rd going back as well. The ground dipped down again, before rising steeply for a few yards to a little crest crowned by yet another wall, although this was little more than a loose pile of stones. It was enough to halt the men, and officers and sergeants shouted for them to form up. The French paused before the dip, as they too reformed. Then the drums began again.

‘The Fifty-second report French cavalry trying to work around their flank. A regiment of lights, they think, probably chasseurs.’

Brigadier General Craufurd’s face looked taut as he stared ahead at the swarming columns of the enemy. After months of skirmishing and posturing, suddenly the enemy were flinging themselves at his command and he knew that he was not ready.

‘Tell them to hold on as long as possible. I shall send word when I want them to pull back.’ The 1/52nd were to his right, and if they gave way the French could strike at the river and cut off most of the division. Memories of Buenos Aires flooded chillingly back. ‘Not again,’ the general said so faintly that Hanley barely heard the words and did not understand them.

‘Ride to the First Chasseurs!’ the general told another ADC. ‘Tell them to begin to withdraw to the far side of the river. After that ride on to the Third Regiment, and tell Elder he is to follow once the First have gone. Go!’

The French were pressing hardest at the flanks, and so the general would withdraw his centre first, and hope that the enemy would not see what was happening in time to do anything about it. His cavalry were already retiring across the river with the guns and supply wagons. That meant the three British infantry battalions would have to hold out alone on his flanks against two or three times their numbers of French supported by horse and guns. The battle teetered on the brink of chaos, with the nightmare of the enemy sweeping down on a road blocked by crowds of men retreating in confusion. The general needed to seize back control.

‘You! Lieutenant Hanley.’

‘Sir!’

‘Ride to Colonel Elder of the Third Regiment and tell him that he is to wait on this side of the bridge until everyone else is across. He is not to cross the bridge until ordered.’

Hanley rode off, knowing that the Portuguese were not far behind them.

Another order went to Colonel Beckwith of the 95th, telling him only to give ground when sorely pressed. Then it was Pringle’s turn.

‘Find the left wing of the Forty-third. They are to hold fast as long as possible. Tell them we must hold for an hour before starting to retire. On your way!’

‘
Vive l’empereur! En avant, mes amis!
’ The French pressed on. A few men dropped at the heads of their columns to the little volleys fired by companies of the 43rd or were singled out by the riflemen, but the blue-coated infantry never stopped for more than a few minutes. Even when they did, voltigeurs ran out again from the flanks of the formed battalion and were soon firing. One rifleman was helping along another hit in the thigh, when he too was struck by a ball that shattered the long bone in his right arm.

Williams and Dobson were in a sunken lane, bordered on both sides by walls and crowded with men with the white facings of the 43rd. More of the light infantrymen spilled down into the path from a gap in the one of the field boundaries.

‘That way!’ a mounted officer shouted in a clear voice, gesturing at a gateway on the far side of the lane, opening into another field, this one higher-walled. The network of lane and fields was a maze, and Williams was struggling to maintain his sense of direction and so readily led Dobson after the officer. Another horseman forced his way through the crowd, and this one was having difficulty controlling his mount.

‘Come on, you bitch!’ he shouted. The beast wheeled on the spot, frightened by something, and then lashed out with his hind legs, narrowly missing a corporal from the 43rd and instead kicking a hole in the wall behind him.

‘Billy!’ Williams shouted to his friend.

Dobson turned and fired back up at a figure looking down into the lane. More voltigeurs appeared. Muskets flamed and the light infantry corporal gasped as a ball slammed into his chest and knocked the breath from him. Pringle’s horse was hit in the head. Its eyes rolled and its long tongue drooped from its mouth and then it fell.

Williams raised his own musket and pulled the trigger. There was a satisfying yelp from one of the Frenchmen at the wall.

‘In here! This way,’ the mounted officer was still calling. Williams and Dobson grabbed Pringle and half dragged him with the men of the 43rd through the gateway. The enclosed field was big, and more than two hundred redcoats and a few riflemen were there. The mounted officer was the last one through the gate, pursued by a smattering of shots, and he shouted at the men to form up and cover the entrance.

‘Bugger!’ Dobson spat the word. The walls were a good eight or nine feet high, and he had just seen that there was no way out apart from the way they had come.

Pringle had recovered and pointed to the far end of the field. ‘Make sure there isn’t a hidden gate in the corner,’ he said without much hope, and headed towards the mounted officer. ‘Orders from the general!’ he shouted. ‘You are to hold as long as possible and only withdraw on specific orders.’

The mounted major stared at him.

‘I know,’ Pringle said with a shrug.

The major realised that they were trapped. ‘Looks as if we can’t damned well go anywhere.’ Two ranks of light infantry formed up in the gate fired a volley out into the lane.

Pringle went to join his friends.

‘Nothing,’ Williams said, and slammed the butt of his musket against the wall in frustration. Then he remembered Pringle’s horse kicking down the wall outside. ‘Dob, give me a hand.’ He hit the wall again, and a stone came loose. ‘You, Sergeant!’ he called to an NCO from the 43rd. The man looked surprised and then smiled.

‘Rudden.’ The name came to Williams almost immediately and he grinned back. ‘Good to see you.’ The sergeant had served in his company of the Battalion of Detachments last summer. ‘Get some men, we need to weaken this wall and make a way out.’

Sergeant Rudden shouted orders and men attacked the wall with their bayonets or the butts of the muskets. Triangular blades were thrust into the gaps between stones and then levered to work them loose.

‘Well, we’ve got it worried,’ Pringle said, looking at the stonework after five minutes of grunting effort. ‘All of you, push!’ He and Williams leaned with the others, using all their weight and strength. ‘Come on, heave!’ he shouted as they strained against the wall. ‘Push for your lives!’

Williams felt the stone shifting slightly, and then almost fell forward as it gave way and a cloud of dust choked them as several yards of wall collapsed outwards.

‘This way!’ Pringle shouted back towards the major at the other end of the field.

Williams and Dobson went through. There was a walled orchard off to the left, and a small sheep pen on the right, but otherwise the ground was open and strewn with boulders as it dipped and then rose to another low ridge where there was a small barn and another drystone wall.

Behind them a volley was fired through the open gate.

‘Come on, Rudden!’ Williams called, and began jogging towards the barn. Dobson and several dozen men from the 43rd followed him. Officers and NCOs were shouting as they tried to reform their men, but no one was in a mood to stop. Little clusters of men grouped together as they hurried across the open field.

‘French!’ yelled Pringle in warning.

Williams heard the sound of hoofs and looked back. Dragoons in brass helmets and green coats with pink fronts and collars were walking their horses around the corner of the high-walled field. Then he saw Dalmas, polished cuirass glinting in the sunlight. The cuirassier shouted and his men spurred their mounts into a run, long swords stretched out, wrist turned so that the point was aimed down.

‘Loaded, Dob?’

The veteran shook his head.

‘Keep going!’ He sprinted ahead to the wall beside the barn. ‘Come on!’ he yelled back. Williams leapt, banged his knee painfully on the top of the wall, but pressed down with his hand and was over.

‘Form here! Form on me!’ Dobson was beside him, as was Rudden, who was calling out to the men by name. ‘Reload!’ Williams shouted.

Williams watched as a dozen French dragoons rode in among the mob of redcoats. He saw one chop down and slice into a light infantryman’s pack, knocking the man off his feet, but leaving him unscathed. Others were more skilled. One man with the red stripe of a sergeant on his sleeve jabbed down and punched through a man’s forehead with the point of his long sword, letting the momentum of his horse free the blade as he rode on. Dalmas took another man in the neck, before slicing down through an officer’s shoulder, almost severing his arm.

A dragoon was down, thrown from his horse after a redcoat smashed the butt of his musket into its mouth, and the cavalryman screamed as he lay on his back and was stabbed by two bayonets. More dragoons appeared, urging their mounts on as soon as they saw the enemy.

‘Present!’ Williams called out as loud as he could, hoping that the threat of a volley might deter the French. There were thirty men lining the wall, and more pressed through the opening or clambered back to join him.

‘Aim high, lads!’ The field was full of redcoats. Firing high risked wasting the balls, but stood a chance of missing the infantrymen and emptying some saddles.

Dalmas was heading towards a cluster of men retiring around the battalion’s Colours, the heavy standards still in their leather cases, and Williams wondered whether that was why he had not noticed them until now.

Men were falling to the dragoons’ swords, but fortunately there were too few Frenchmen to turn the retreat into a massacre and many of the men simply barged through. The major galloped through the gap made by Pringle and his men, and behind him came a mass of redcoats, bayonets fixed. A dragoon’s horse reared as it was stabbed in the flank, and the rider was pulled down into the grass to be clubbed and stabbed. Other cavalrymen were wheeling away.

‘Aim high,’ Williams shouted. ‘Fire!’

One dragoon was hit in the teeth, and one of them took a ball in the left arm and another in the belly so that he slumped in the saddle, barely keeping his seat. The charge of the major’s men and the volley took the heart from the cavalrymen. Momentum was their best weapon, and there was little to be said for standing and fighting in the middle of so many enemy infantrymen. Dalmas went back with them.

‘Well done,’ the major said to Pringle as he rode into the new field, and then he said the same to Williams before getting to the matter in hand. ‘Form up, lads, form up. We can hold them here!’

Williams wondered for how long, and then he heard the drums beating again and the sound of thousands of men chanting together.