“Halt!” Harness suddenly called.
“Present!”
The guns, tipped by their bloodstained steel blades, came up into the Highlanders'
shoulders so that the whole line seemed to take a quarter turn to the right. The Mahratta
gunsmoke was clearing and the enemy soldiers could see the Scots' heavy muskets, with hate
behind them, and the Highlanders waited a heartbeat so the enemy could also see their
death in the levelled muskets.
“You'll fire low, you bastards, or I'll want to know why,” Harness growled, then took a
deep breath.
“Fire!” he shouted, and his Highlanders did not fire high. They fired low and their heavy
balls ripped into bellies and thighs and groins.
“Now go for them!” Harness shouted.
“Just go for the bastards!” And the Highlanders, unleashed, ran forward with their
bayonets and began to utter their shrill war cries, as discordant as the music of the
pipes that flayed them onwards. They were killers loosed to the joys of slaughter and the
enemy did not wait for its coming, but just turned and fled.
The enemy in the rearward ranks of the compoo had room to run, but those in front were
impeded by those behind and could not escape. A terrible despairing wail sounded as
the ~j78th struck home and as their bayonets rose and fell in an orgy of killing. An
officer led an attack on a knot of standard-bearers who tried desperately to save
their flags, but the Scots would not be denied and Sharpe watched as the kilted men stepped
over the dead to lunge their blades at the living.
The flags fell, then were raised again in Scottish hands. A cheer went up, and just then
Sharpe heard another cheer and saw the sepoys charging home at the next section of the
enemy line and, just as the first Mahratta troops had run from the Scots, so now the
neighbouring battalions fled from the sepoys. The enemy's vaunted infantry had
crumpled at the first contact. They had watched the thin line come towards them, and they
must have assumed that the red coats would be turned even redder by the heavy fire of the
artillery, but the line had taken the guns' punishment and just kept coming, battered and
bleeding, and it must have seemed to the Mahrattas that such men were invincible. The huge
Scots in their strange kilts had started the rout, but the sepoy battalions from Madras now
set about the destruction of all the enemy's centre and right. Only his left still stood
its ground.
The sepoys killed, then pursued the fugitives who streamed westwards.
“Hold them!” Wellesley shouted at the nearest battalion commanders.
“Hold them!” But the sepoys would not be held. They wanted to pursue a beaten enemy and
they streamed raggedly in his wake, killing as they went. Wellesley wheeled Diomed.
“Colonel Harness!”
“You'll want me to form post here?” the Scotsman asked. Blood dripped from his sword.
“Here,” Wellesley agreed. The enemy infantry might have fled, but there was a maelstrom
of cavalry a half-mile away and those horsemen were cantering forward to attack the
disordered British pursuers.
“Deploy your guns, Harness.”
“I've given the order already,” Harness said, gesturing towards his two small gun
teams that were hurrying six-pounders into position.
“Column of full companies!” Harness shouted.
“Quarter distance!”
The Scots, one minute so savage, now ran back into their ranks and files. The battalion
faced no immediate enemy, for there was neither infantry nor artillery within range,
but the distant cavalry was a threat and so Harness arranged them in their ten
companies, close together, so that they resembled a square. The close formation could
defend itself against any cavalry attack, and just as easily shake itself into a line
or into a column of assault. Harness's twin six-pounders were unlimbered and now began
firing towards the horsemen who, appalled by the wreckage of their infantry, paused
rather than attack the redcoats.
British and Indian officers were galloping among the pursuing sepoys, ordering
them back to their ranks, while Harness's 778th stood like a fortress to which the sepoys
could retreat.
“So sanity is not a requisite of soldiering,” Wellesley said quietly.
“Sir?” Sharpe was the only man close enough to hear the General and assumed that the
words were addressed to him.
“None of your business, Sharpe, none of your business,” Wellesley said, startled that he
had been overheard.
“A canteen, if you please.”
It had been a good start, the General decided, for the right of Pohlmann's army had been
destroyed and that destruction had taken only minutes. He watched as the sepoys hurried
back to their ranks and as the first pucka lees appeared from the nearby Kaitna with their
huge loads of canteens and waterskins. He would let the men have their drink of water, then
the line would be turned to face north and he could finish the job by assaulting Assaye.
The General kicked Diomed around to examine the ground over which his infantry must
advance and, just as he turned, so all hell erupted at the village.
Wellesley frowned at the dense cloud of gunsmoke that had suddenly appeared close to
the mud walls. He heard volley fire, and he could see that it was the surviving Mahratta
left wing that did the firing, not his redcoats, and, more ominously, a surge of Mahratta
cavalry had broken through on the northern flank and was now riding free in the country
behind Wellesley's small army.
Someone had blundered.
The left flank of William Dodd's regiment lay just a hundred paces from the mud walls of
Assaye where the twenty guns which defended the village gave that flank an added measure
of safety. In front of the Cobras were another six guns, two of them the long-barrelled
eighteen pounders that had bombarded the ford, while Dodd's own small battery of
four-pounder guns was bunched in the small gap between his men's right flank and the
neighbouring regiment. Pohlmann had chosen to array his guns in front of the infantry,
but Dodd expected the British to attack in line and a gun firing straight towards an
oncoming line could do much less damage than a gun firing obliquely down the line's
length, and so he had placed his cannon wide on the flank where they could work the most
havoc.
It was not a bad position, Dodd reckoned. In front of his line were two hundred yards of
open killing ground after which the land fell into a steepish gully that angled away
eastwards. An enemy could approach in the gully, but to reach Dodd's men they would have to
climb onto the flat farmland and there be slaughtered. A cactus-thorn hedge ran across the
killing ground, and that would give the enemy some cover, but there were wide gaps in the
thorns. If Dodd had been given time he would have sent men to cut down the whole hedge, but
the necessary axes were back with the baggage a mile away. Dodd, naturally, blamed Joubm
for the missing tools.
“Why are they not here, Monsewer?” he had demanded.
“I did not think. I'm sorry.”
“Sorry! Sorry don't win battles, Monsewer.”
“I shall send for the axes,”Joubert said.
“Not now,” Dodd said. He did not want to send any men back to the baggage camp, for their
loss would momentarily weaken his regiment and he expected to be attacked at any
moment. He looked forward to that moment, for the enemy would need to expose himself to a
withering fire, and Dodd kept standing in his stirrups to search for any sign of an
approaching enemy. There were some British and Company cavalry far off to the east, but
those horsemen were staying well out of range of the Mahratta guns. Other enemies must
have been within the range of Pohlmann's guns, for Dodd could hear them firing and see the
billowing clouds of grey-white smoke pumped out by each shot, but that cannonade was well
to his south and it did not spread down the line towards him and it slowly dawned on Dodd
that Wellesley was deliberately avoiding Assaye.
“God damn him!” he shouted aloud.
“Monsieur?” Captain Joubert asked resignedly, expecting another reprimand.
“We're going to be left out,” Dodd complained.
Captain Joubert thought that was probably a blessing. The Captain had been saving his
meagre salary in the hope of retiring to Lyons, and if General Wellesley chose to ignore
Cap tain Joubert then Captain Joubert was entirely happy. And the longer he stayed in
India, the more attractive he found Lyons. And Simone would be better off in France, he
thought, for the heat of India was not good for her. It had made her restless, and
inactivity gave her time to brood and no good ever came from a thinking woman. If Simone
was in France she would
be kept busy. There would be meals to cook, clothes to mend, a garden to tend, even
children to raise. Those things were women's work, in Joubert's opinion, and the sooner he
could take his Simone away from India's languorous temptations the better.
Dodd stood in his stirrups again to stare southwards through his cheap glass.
“The 778th,” he grunted.
“Monsieur?” Joubert was startled from his happy reverie about a house near Lyons where
his mother could help Simone raise a busy little herd of children.
“The 778th,” Dodd said again, and Joubert stood in his stirrups to gaze at the distant
sight of the Scottish regiment emerging from low ground to advance against the Mahratta
line.
“And no support for them?” Dodd asked, puzzled, and he had begun to think that Boy
Wellesley had blundered very badly, but just then he saw the sepoys coming from the
valley. The attacking line looked very thin and frail, and he could see men being snatched
backwards by the artillery fire.
“Why won't they come here?” he asked petulantly.
“They are, Monsieur,” Joubert answered, and pointed eastwards.
Dodd turned and stared.
“Praise God from Whom all blessings flow,” he said softly.
“The fools!” For the enemy was not just coming towards Dodd's position, but
approaching in a column of half companies. The enemy infantry had suddenly appeared
at the upper edge of the gully, but on Dodd's side of that obstacle, and it was clear that
the redcoats must have wandered far out of their position for they were a long way from the
rest of the attacking British infantry. Better still, they had not deployed into line.
Their commander must have decided that they would make better progress if they advanced
in column and doubtless he planned to deploy into line when he launched his attack, but
the men showed no sign of deploying yet.
Dodd aimed his telescope and was momentarily puzzled. The leading half company were
King's troops in red jackets, black shakoes and white trousers, while the forty or fifty men
of the half company behind were in kilts, but the other five half companies were all
sepoys of the East India Company.
“It's the picquets of the day,” he said, suddenly understanding the strange
formation. He heard a shout as a gun captain ordered his cannon to be levered around to
take aim at the approaching men, and he hurriedly shouted to his gunners to hold their
fire.
“No one's to fire yet, Joubert,” Dodd ordered, then he spurred his horse northwards to
the village.
The infantry and gunners defending the village of Assaye were not under Dodd's
command, but he issued them orders anyway.
“You're to hold your fire,” he snapped at them, 'hold your fire. Wait! Wait!" Some of the
Goanese gunners spoke a little English, and they understood him and passed the order on.
The Rajah's infantry, on the mud walls above the guns, were not so quick and some of those
men opened fire on the distant redcoats, but their muskets were far outranged and Dodd
ignored them.
“You fire when we fire, understand?” he shouted at the gunners, and some of them
understood what he was doing, and they grinned approval of his cunning.
He spurred back to the Cobras. A second British formation had appeared a hundred paces
behind the picquets. This second unit was a complete battalion of redcoats advancing
in line and, because marching an extended line across country was inevitably slower than
advancing in a column of half companies, they had fallen behind the picquets who, in
sublime disregard of Assaye's waiting defenders, continued their progress towards the
cactus hedge. It seemed to be an isolated attack, far from the clamour in the south that
Dodd now ignored. God had given Dodd a chance of victory and he felt the excitement rise
in him. It was bliss, pure bliss. He could not lose. He drew the elephant-hilled sword and,
as if to give thanks, kissed the steel blade.
The leading half company of picquets had reached the thorn hedge and there they had
checked, at last unwilling to continue their suicidal progress towards the waiting
Mahrattas. Some artillery from further up the line, wrhich did not lie under Dodd's
control, had opened fire on the column, but the white-coated Mahratta forces
immediately to the front of the column were silent and the picquets' commanding
officer seemed encouraged by that and now urged his men onwards.
“Why doesn't he deploy?” Dodd asked no one, and prayed that they would not deploy, but as
soon as the half company of kilted Highlanders had filed through a gap in the cactus thorn
they began to spread out and Dodd knew his moment was close. But wait, he told himself, wait
for more victims, and sure enough the sepoys pushed through the breaks in the hedge until
all the picquets were in front of the cactus and their officers and sergeants began
chivvying them forward onto the open pasture where there would be more space for the half
companies to deploy into line.
Captain Joubert was worried that Dodd was leaving the command to open fire too late.
The second British formation was close to the hedge now, and once they were through the gaps
they would add a vast weight of musketry to the attack. But Dodd knew it would take that
regiment a long time to manoeuvre through the hedge, and he was concerned solely with the
three or four hundred men of the pic-quets who were now just eighty yards from his gun line
and still not properly deployed. His own men were a hundred paces behind the guns, but now
he took them forward.