All in Scarlet Uniform (Napoleonic War 4) (33 page)

Both squadrons spread out as the horses ran, and the two neat lines were now vaguer. Pringle thought cavalry charges were supposed to accelerate slowly, giving men and horses their head only at the last minute, so that they hurtled towards the enemy like a great wave. It was over a mile to the next rise and the French were still somewhere beyond it. Looking back, he saw great clouds of dust rising behind the two squadrons and thought that the enemy must see this sign betraying their presence. Perhaps that was why the general hurried on. Two hundred horsemen against thirty should not be a contest – with more squadrons to come on if necessary – and so haste was all that mattered, rushing on to fall upon the enemy before they had a chance to retreat.

The horses surged up the little rise and without an order being given they slipped to a halt. A Frenchman shouted in alarm, and Pringle could imagine the shock of looking up and seeing two hundred enemies suddenly crowning the crest. The French were in green jackets with pink fronts, and had baggy brown trousers and helmets covered with brown cloth to hide the reflections. To Pringle’s astonishment they seemed not to have noticed the approaching dust cloud and were no more than three hundred yards away, meandering along the little track without an apparent care in the world. Ugly great sacks of forage were hung from the rear of each saddle.

‘Charge them!’ General Craufurd snapped immediately.

‘
Mein herr!
’ the German captain was pointing to the high grain in a field beyond and to the left of the horsemen. ‘Infantry!’

Pringle scanned the gently wafting tops of the maize and saw nothing. Then he caught a flash of something metal, and a moment later more gleams betraying the bayonets of infantry.

‘No matter,’ snapped the brigadier general. ‘They cannot be formed. Sweep them aside. Now go!’

‘Draw sabres!’ The squadron commanders called out in clear – and in one case heavily accented – voices.

Steel hissed and grated on the metal tops of scabbards as the hussars and light dragoons drew their heavy curved sabres. Pringle’s own hand went to the hilt of his sword, but then he realised that the general did not intend leading the charge. That was sensible, for it was not his job, but Billy sensed the excitement and part of him wanted to ride with the squadrons. He had never been in a cavalry charge. A different part of him, instinctively sympathetic to the plight of foot soldiers like himself, felt sorry for the French infantrymen in the cornfield.

‘Walk march!’ The German order sounded slightly different as the two squadrons went forward, lines still loose.

‘Trot!’ Horsemen accelerated, the men bouncing in the saddles. Sabres still rested comfortably on their shoulders. Pringle coughed as clouds of dust wafted around them, and prompted the general to ride to the side so that he could see better.

The French dragoons shook themselves into a rough line as the blue-coated British and German horsemen went into a canter and almost immediately a gallop. Sabres were now held out and high, points reaching for the enemy. Pringle looked through the thinning dust, but could no longer see the infantrymen in the corn. On the track the dragoons turned their mounts and fled, running back through the field and trampling the high maize.

‘Damn me!’ Shaw Kennedy gasped in surprise as there was a ripple of movement in the corn and suddenly there was a neatly formed square of French infantry, three ranks deep, with the second and third ranks standing behind the kneeling men in front. Dawn light flickered along the bright points of levelled bayonets.

‘Charge on!’ the general shouted, although there was little chance that his voice would carry, but the two squadron captains needed no urging. Men drove spurs into the sides of their mounts and the horses seemed to leap towards the square of soldiers wearing the long drab overcoats beloved of the French line infantry. Pringle had stood in a square little bigger than this one and could imagine the earth trembling under the pounding hoofs, and the infantrymen watching nervously as the line of high horsemen rushed up, sabres bright and horses open mouthed and wide eyed.

It looked as if the French commander had left it too late. There were at least as many horsemen as there were infantrymen in the square, but cavalrymen always filled so much space that they looked more numerous. From the hill, it was if a wave was about to wash away a castle in the sand.

The French fired as neat a volley as Pringle had ever seen, and for a moment the square vanished behind a dense cloud of powder smoke. Men and horses fell, some tumbling down only a few feet from the kneeling French front rank, and the squadrons veered, going around the square instead of into it, and so the wave parted and the castle remained.

‘Bugger,’ Pringle said, with more than a hint of admiration for the coolness of the French.

‘Kennedy, go after them and tell them to chase down those dragoons.’ The general barked out the order. ‘The rest of you with me.’ He turned his horse on a sixpence and was off, haring back over the little ridge. As Pringle came over the crest he saw the leading squadron of the 14th Light Dragoons trotting in a column of fours along the track. Another squadron was half a mile in the rear.

‘Colonel Talbot,’ the general said as he reined in beside them. ‘There are two hundred French infantry in a square a long musket shot beyond that rise. Ride the fellows down for me, if you would be so kind.’

‘Sir.’ The commander of the 14th had a leopard-skin band around his Tarleton helmet and now he had an eager smile on his face. Like his men he had bright orange facings to his navy-blue jacket.

‘Shall I ride to the infantry?’ Pringle asked.

For a moment the general’s glance was angry, but it quickly softened. ‘No need. And no time.’ He turned back to the 14th. ‘Good hunting, Talbot! Off you go, while they are still shaken.’

Pringle wondered about the urgency and had grave doubts that the French were in any way shaken. Seeing off a cavalry charge usually gave infantrymen a great boost. Garland was in his place behind the second rank as the squadron deployed into line. The young man was flushed, but he flashed a great smile at Pringle.

‘A friend?’ asked the general, as they rode back up to watch the attack.

‘Yes,’ Pringle replied, thinking that the truth was far too complicated.

This was how a cavalry charge should be launched. Talbot was in the lead, mounted on a dark bay, and he effortlessly kept his men on as tight a rein as the gelding. The square had vanished again, the men crouching down in the high maize, but the debris of dead and wounded men and horses from the first charge lay around it and marked out the position.

Talbot walked his men over the crest, the two lines of light dragoons neatly spaced, a horse’s length between the ranks so that the fall of one in the lead need not bring down the man behind.

‘Trot!’ The trumpeter on his grey rode beside the colonel and repeated the order.

Pringle heard only the trumpet calls and could not make out the shouted command that sent the squadron into a canter and then a gallop, and finally, no more than fifty yards from the square, into the all-out charge.

The French stood, their fawn coats blending with the standing corn, but their black shakos stark. Billy Pringle was holding his breath and again he felt the French commander was waiting too long, and then he flinched when flames and smoke engulfed the little square. The noise came a moment later, louder this time, and he suspected that the kneeling front rank had added their fire to the volley.

It may have made the difference. Some light dragoons kept going, flowing around the sides of the square, and more muskets fired, emptying even more saddles. Pringle guessed at least a dozen men had dropped to the first volley and as many or more horses were on the ground or collapsed to their knees. The charge was stopped in its tracks. Through the thinning smoke Pringle glimpsed a few light dragoons up against the square itself, chopping down with their heavy sabres, but bayonets had a longer reach, and one of the light dragoons was already wheeling away, his sword-arm by his side and the sabre hanging uselessly by its wrist strap. A single pistol fired, and another of the riders was tumbled from his mount. Colonel Talbot’s bay ran back up the slope towards them, blood thick on its empty saddle.

The general rode back to the supporting squadron of the 14th Light Dragoons, who had halted a quarter of a mile behind the low crest. Pringle wondered for a moment whether these men would also be hurled at the little square. It was hard to imagine that they would make any better impression, for the Frenchmen and their commander were admirably cool.

Major Tilney was at the head of this squadron and was peering through his glass off to the right. A cloud of dust was visible just under a mile away, the dark shape of cavalry beneath it.

‘French, sir!’ the major reported.

‘Damn.’ The brigadier general used his own glass to study the approaching column. Pringle did the same, but could not make out any detail.

Shaw Kennedy rode up, his horse skidding to a halt.

‘The French dragoons are all killed or taken,’ he said. ‘But the infantry have run.’

‘Run?’

‘Turned and fled back to the ford beyond the next rise.’

‘Is the squadron of hussars there to cut them off?’ the general demanded.

Shaw Kennedy shook his head. ‘No sign, sir.’

‘God damn them all to bloody German hell!’ yelled Black Bob. He turned to Pringle. ‘Ride to the Ninety-fifth. Tell them French cavalry are advancing around our flank. They are to hold their position and be ready to cover our withdrawal.’

Pringle galloped off. By the time he returned from his round trip all sense of urgency had vanished.

‘The “enemy” proved to be our own German hussars,’ Shaw Kennedy said ruefully. All in all the Light Division had sent more than two thousand men marching through the night to launch this raid. The result was thirty or so French dragoons taken, and two hundred enemy infantry escaped. British losses matched the French and far more of them were dead or badly wounded.

Billy Pringle rode forward to look at the wreck of battle left around the square. As he arrived, a weeping German hussar killed a wounded horse with his pistol. Colonel Talbot was dead, shot seven or eight times and probably killed instantly. He and several privates had fallen within yards of the French infantrymen.

‘They were noble fellows,’ Garland declared as Pringle helped his orderly and another dragoon raise him. The lieutenant was shot in the chest. There was not much blood, although some trickled from the corner of his mouth when he spoke. As they sat him up Billy looked in vain for the hole where the ball had come out. It must be still inside and that was never a good sign. ‘Noble fellows,’ Garland repeated as if speaking of the opposing side in a cricket match. ‘I lay there almost at their very feet, and helpless with this leak in me, and yet not one of them made a move to finish me off. Splendid brave fellows.’

Pringle was puzzled by the delight the young officer took in the quality of the men who had shot him. No wonder Garland was always so warm in greeting his former opponent from the duel. ‘Noble fellows,’ he agreed. The admiration was genuine, for the French had been in a tight corner and yet had fought their way to freedom. Less pleasant was the thought that with so many infantry and the guns near by, it was only British mistakes that had let them escape.

That afternoon a party of light dragoons buried Lieutenant Colonel Talbot on the glacis at Fort La Concepción, firing a volley from their carbines over the grave. Major Tilney read the words of the service flatly, but there were clear signs of emotion from the officers and men who had known the colonel better. Several cheeks were moist by the time the little service was over.

Pringle watched with MacAndrews, and as they walked away the Scotsman surprised him.

‘Do you hear that?’ he asked.

Pringle listened, wondering whether he meant the cry of a bird perched on the wall of the fort. ‘Sounds like a crow to me,’ he said, for his interest in such things was even less than his knowledge. ‘Otherwise I hear nothing.’

‘That is the point.’

Billy Pringle suddenly understood. In all the activity and confusion of the morning’s skirmish it had not registered, but the guns had fallen silent at Ciudad Rodrigo.

‘Been like that for hours,’ MacAndrews said gloomily. ‘I do fear that it is all over.’

T
he night seemed to last for ever. Williams tried to stay awake, concerned that at any moment their hiding place would be discovered and the cellar invaded by French soldiers. He knew it was night, because Hanley’s watch told him so, and more than once he lifted the round brass piece and held it to his ear to reassure himself that it was still ticking. During the daylight hours there were tiny cracks of light between the floorboards above their head, but when night fell the darkness in the cellar was almost impenetrable. At need they lit a small candle, but were too cautious to risk a brighter light in case it betrayed them.

It was noon before the French guns ceased to pound the city, and another half-hour before the Spanish guns also fell silent. Then they had waited, not knowing what was going on. Josepha’s mother’s cousin and her servants stayed in the house, and once or twice she sent one of the men down to tell them what was happening. Ciudad Rodrigo had surrendered, just as the enemy were preparing for their final assault. The governor himself had gone to the top of the breach with a white flag.

At first things were ordered. The garrison laid down its arms and returned to its billets to await captivity. Some companies of French climbed through the breach and marched to secure key points in the town. As night fell the order vanished. More soldiers slipped inside the city, with or without permission. They heard heavy footsteps in the house above them, and shouts demanding wine and food. Before they blew out the candle Williams saw Dobson running a sharpening stone over his bayonet. Josepha was suddenly next to him, clinging tightly, and Williams wished that they had been able to persuade the lady of the house to join them as well. Then he heard her raised voice, calmly telling the Frenchmen to eat their fill from the table already laid out before them. The tone was as commanding as it was welcoming.