Suddenly, from his left three horsmen appeared. Steel recognized one of them as the Duke of Argyle. From behind he heard Frampton’s shouted battalion command and a change in the drum beat: ‘Wheel to your right.’
As one, the line of redcoats began to turn, and then, led by the Scottish general, continued to advance up the slope, obliquely towards the French guns.
This was new madness, thought Steel. A cannonball tossed at them now would bowl through them like ninepins. And, sure enough, the roundshot began to pour in. There was a cry from his rear and Steel turned momentarily to see the body of a Grenadier crumple to the ground minus its head and gouting blood, its gaiters still stained yellow with vomit. One of the new lads, he thought. Poor bugger. But at the same time, like any soldier under fire, he was well aware that it could as well have been him and he muttered a silent prayer to providence for sparing him – yet again.
Casting a glance to the left he saw that their place on that side of the line was gradually being taken by a mass of foreign infantry. Perhaps a score of battalions of Prussians and Hanoverians in blue and red had crossed over the pontoon bridges in their wake and were labouring up the hill before the French could turn their flank. In turning now they passed in line through the small hamlet of Schaerken, abandoned it seemed by its sensible inhabitants. It had not been much damaged in the fighting as yet, although one house had been set on fire. Thankfully, thought Steel, it was not the inn.
He pointed at the tavern sign and yelled out to anyone that might be in earshot: ‘There we are, boys. Didn’t I tell you if we took this field I’d buy you the best in the house? Well, there’s the bloody house. Remember it. Follow me to the French and after we’ve won I’ll wager the Duke himself will stand you to anything that’s on the menu there.’
There was a cheer, but only from the veterans. The new, green troops, he noticed, although they continued to advance doggedly, said nothing.
Another cannonball crashed into their ranks and left a sea of groaning dead and wounded men. From somewhere within the confused tangle of dead, wounded and unscathed bodies a single voice began to sing. Private Coles was doing what he always did, fending off the bullets with an invocation to the Almighty. It was a song, although Steel himself would have been the first to say that it was hardly what you might have called a melody:
‘Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And all that is within me
Bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all his benefits,
Who forgiveth all thine iniquities;
Who healeth all thy diseases;
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction;
Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies …’
Clearly the man intended to continue, but as they walked on over the dead and wounded, trying in vain not to walk on living flesh, Steel heard another voice rise above the holy words. Slaughter growled out an order: ‘Coles. I’ll give you tender bloody mercies. There’s no mercies here. Nor no benefits or kindness either. Now shut that noise.’
‘But, Sarge, it’s the 103rd Psalm. It’s the Lord’s word.’
‘I don’t care if it’s the first bloody Psalm or if your sainted bloody mother wrote the whole of the bloody book. Shut your wailing now or you’ll be on sergeant’s orders for the rest of the month. That is if you live through this bloody battle, which, given your closeness to the Almighty, I very much doubt. He must be keen to see you, Coles, you talk to him so much. But I’ve got no appointment with him, so shut your bleeding trap or I’ll do it for you. Last thing I want on this battlefield is a bloody bible-basher. Upsets the men.’
But the God-fearing Coles was not finished: ‘But they seem to like it, Sarge.’
‘Coles. What is it you don’t understand? Are you a fool as well as deaf? I don’t care what the men like and what they don’t like. Fact is, I don’t like it! So shut your trap.’
‘Yes, Sarge.’
For all the fire pouring in on them from the hill, Slaughter’s clever outburst had broken the spell of death that had hung over the advancing company, and a few of the men were grinning now.
Then Steel heard another voice, one of the recruits: ‘Bloody hell, Sarge. I mean, look, sir.’
Steel looked up to his front and peered into the clearing smoke. What met his gaze almost brought him to a standstill. It was everything he could do to carry on. For directly in front of them, at a distance of perhaps eighty yards, was an endless, unbroken line of grey-coated French infantry. As Steel looked on they levelled their muskets until he was staring down the barrel into the blackness of oblivion.
He called back: ‘Steady, boys. Keep going now. Not long –’ But the last syllable of his words was clipped away by the crash as the fire from four hundred muskets spat four hundred three-quarter-ounce balls that ripped holes in James Farquharson’s red-coated regiment of foot. Steel looked quickly over to the left to where the colonel had been riding with the colours and drummers at his side. Miraculously Sir James appeared to be unhurt. One of the drummer boys was down and dead, and Steel saw the brass spike-tipped top of one of the flagstaffs falter, indicating that an ensign had been hit, but then the colour was raised up again. Several gaps had appeared among his own company. But this was no time to think of losses.
‘Close up. Close your ranks. Keep going. With me.’
The order was repeated along the line as sergeants and corporals ran along the files.
A faint cry arose above the cacophony of drums, cries of pain, flying shot and yelling men: ‘Halt.’
Major Frampton had halted the entire battalion sixty paces from the enemy – the exact prescribed distance for a volley. Steel noticed that the two sides were separated by a small stream which ran down from the top of the big hill they called the Boser Couter and along the entire Allied front line. He saw too that the French were already reloading. He barked out the command and slipped quickly between the ranks to a new position.
He found Slaughter. ‘We’ll give them a firefight here, Jacob. By platoons. We can do better than that ragged excuse for a volley, eh? And by God we’ll give them a shock.’
By prior orders from the brigade, Steel’s Grenadiers were not to be held as was the usual practice in reserve during such a firefight, but would loose off their own volleys, adding to the firepower of the battalion.
‘Firing by platoon, sir?’
‘Fire by platoon, Sar’nt. Three firings each of six platoons. And the only means they have of countering such a fire is to come at us, as they will, with the bayonet. And frankly, Sar’nt, I don’t think they’ve the stomach for it today. So what will they do? Stand and fire at us? They can get off three shots a minute at the most. And I warrant they’ll not manage two. And then we’ll have at them.’
Slaughter nodded, knowing the grim truth in Steel’s words: Farquharson’s, like the other regiments in the British army, was composed of nine companies each of a field strength of around fifty men, and each of those companies was subdivided into two, including the Grenadiers. In a firefight such as this they would be ‘told off’ as one and two. The trick was that within each of those two platoons another six units or small platoons had also been nominated, and it was these which provided the continuous fire which the French had come to fear so much. Using this system, Farquharson’s and the other British foot would be able to fire six small volleys every minute. And, Steel asked himself, what troops in all the world could stand under a volley every ten seconds?
He barked the command: ‘Advance to half distance. Make ready.’
Down the line the men cocked their muskets and the front rank knelt on their right knees, placing the butt on the ground with their thumbs on the cock and their finger on the trigger. Behind them the second and third ranks closed forward.
‘Sar’nt, I think that we might dress the lines. Keep the barrels down. You know the drill. The new lads might think they’re on a partridge shoot.’ He turned back to the line: ‘Present.’
Along the length of the company and all the way down the long line of the regiment, all three ranks raised their weapons: Tower Armoury weapons, the finest that modern technology could produce, forty-six inches long, brass mounted and firing a .76 calibre ball.
Slaughter smiled and wandered off to line his pike along the levelled musket barrels until they were all pointing roughly towards the enemy’s stomachs. An inaccurate musket might easily miss the killing zone of a head. But a shot that went into the torso, packed as it was with vital organs, even if it didn’t kill a man, would certainly render him
hors de combat
for the rest of the action.
Steel sensed that someone was behind him, and turning found the odious adjutant, Major Frampton, looking down at him from horseback as he made his way along the flank, ordering the lines.
Frampton nodded at Steel. ‘Steel. Good day. Your men look keen. Keep them to the fore, Steel. They are Grenadiers, you know.’
He smiled, not meaning the compliment, and rode off to the other flank. Steel wondered whether he would survive. Unpopular mounted officers, and few were more unpopular than Charles Frampton, made a tempting target if you had a crack shot in the battalion. He brushed fantasy aside and turned back to the job in hand.
Frampton’s voice rang out to the battalion: ‘First firing. Take care … Fire!’
But the French had now reloaded and as the guns fired from the British line, so they did from the enemy ranks. It seemed to Steel that the air had become a storm of musket balls, and he saw men fall all along the red-coated line. But then looking across he saw through the smoke to his left that the French too had taken losses. The regimental drummers beat a short preparative tattoo which had the men at the ready.
Again Frampton’s voice sang out: ‘Second firing … fire.’ The second platoon fired and more of the grey-coated infantry fell. But the slower French had not yet reloaded and were unable to return fire.
The drums beat up again. And again the command came: ‘Third firing.’ It was the turn of the Grenadiers this time. They cocked their weapons.
‘Fire!’ A deafening report was followed by billowing white smoke, and Steel knew that by now the French would be suffering badly. And all this in only thirty seconds. The theory was that it should be possible for 2,000 men to fire 10,000 rounds in a single minute. Looking down the line and all along the brigade, Steel wondered whether today might not prove the theorists right.
He shouted the command: ‘Grenadiers. Reload. Make ready.’
As he did so the first firing, already reloaded, loosed off another volley. And so it went on. Not one volley but a continuous ripple which ran up and down the Allied line. The French, now themselves reloaded, managed to fire again, and again men fell among the Grenadiers. But the storm of lead pouring out of the British ranks was just too continuous. Too relentless. Too deadly.
For fully five minutes they kept it up. Near on thirty volleys, until the barrels of the muskets began to overheat and men burnt their fingers on the metal. The smoke was chokingly dense now and there was no way to tell the condition of the enemy. Only a man on horseback, above the hell down in the ranks, might know.
Steel heard Frampton’s voice: ‘Cease firing.’
Now clearly what the commander had in mind was a manoeuvre agreed upon and ordered by the regiment and indeed every British brigade in the army. ‘Advance by platoons.’
The adjutant’s voice rang out again: ‘Advance.’
Quickly the Grenadiers went forward, making sure that their pace was fast enough to ensure that when they stopped after twenty paces their rear rank was level with the front rank of the rest of the line.
Steel shouted the command to the half company: ‘Halt. Ready. Present. Fire!’
The muskets sang and he knew that the same was happening with each individual platoon along the line.
‘Advance.’
The platoon to his immediate left repeated the Grenadiers’ move and then delivered another volley. They were nearing the French now and Steel could see the raw fear on the faces of men who had never before experienced such terrible firepower as that currently being thrown at them.
The enemy barely managed another volley. The balls rushed past Steel, most at a harmless level, and thudded into the earth as a number of the enemy turned and fled.
His blood up now, Steel half turned to his men: ‘Now, boys. Into them.’