All in Scarlet Uniform (Napoleonic War 4) (37 page)

‘Green, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It is very kind of you.’

The boy looked delighted to help; it seemed that news of their escape from Ciudad Rodrigo had lent the new arrivals a measure of glamour. Second Lieutenant Simmons was evidently eager to press him for details, since O’Hare had taken Hanley away and kept him to himself.

Williams spooned down the last of the stew, wondered for a moment where the chicken had come from and thought it probably better not to ask. He did have one burning question, though.

‘Why are you all here, Mr Simmons?’ The rolling ground made it hard to see more than a section of the line, but they had learned that all five battalions of the Light Division, as well as the Chesnut Troop and several squadrons of cavalry, were spread in a long line over these hills. Behind him, some of the redcoats of the 43rd Light Infantry held a ruined stone tower that had once been a windmill. It stood almost on the glacis of Almeida itself.

Simmons was not sure. ‘The captain says that the general wants to encourage the garrison of the city by showing a bold face to the French.’ The young officer was clearly doubtful of this logic, but unaccustomed to criticising his superiors.

Williams knew this patch of country well from the months spent at the fort. Behind them was the deep ravine of the River Côa, crossed by a single bridge, itself reached by a narrow road that wound and twisted sharply as it came down the side of the valley.

The sound of firing drifted towards them on the breeze. These were not sporadic shots of men trying to clear barrels. They had a purpose and intent, even if the sound was not of concentrated volleys. A cannon boomed dully, and that left no doubt that the outposts were facing a real enemy. Bugles sounded all along the line.

‘Stand to!’ Captain O’Hare shouted, chivvying his men to get moving. ‘Stand to!’ Men stamped out campfires, pouring unfinished tea on the ground as they stowed cups and camp kettles in their packs. The men moved with practised speed, and Williams could not help being impressed. He thanked Private Green as the boy passed him his musket.

‘Loaded and ready, sir,’ he said with a smile.

In just a couple of minutes the company was formed up in two ranks and prepared to move. A staff officer with the buff facings of the 52nd rode up.

‘Captain Stewart’s picket is under attack. Go forward with your company and support him, Captain O’Hare. Cover his withdrawal if necessary.’

Williams looked at Hanley. The four NCOs were less formal, Murphy with his musket held in the crook of his arm like a gentleman ready for a day’s game shooting, but they had also formed up expectantly.

Hanley sighed. ‘If we must.’

‘Probably more dangerous to go wandering without purpose.’

The greenjackets were doubling forward over the brow of the low ridge. Behind them Williams noticed redcoats from the 43rd forming fifty yards back behind a drystone wall. The two officers, three sergeants and a corporal followed the riflemen.

‘Damn the rain,’ Brigadier General Craufurd said bitterly. This morning there was no dust to betray the movement of troops, or give an indication of their numbers.

Major MacAndrews waited while the general scanned the horizon with his glass, but doubted that he could see much in the rolling land ahead of them. The French were coming on, but in what strength and with what purpose was unclear.

‘I’ll do nothing precipitate, MacAndrews.’ The Scotsman had come to ask permission to move the column of supply wagons and artillery vehicles waiting on the road. He wanted plenty of time to get them across the river and out of the way in case the Light Division had to retreat. ‘This is probably another feint.’ In the last days the French had made demonstrations in some strength, but had always stopped short of launching an attack. They nibbled at the outpost line with enough force to edge the British back a little, but they did not press the issue.

‘It would do no harm to start taking the baggage back across the river, sir,’ MacAndrews’ tone was respectful. ‘Just in case this is not a feint.’

‘No,’ the general said firmly. ‘There is plenty of time should the need arise and I do not want it to look to the Portuguese as if we are running.’ Rumours abounded that, after seeing Ciudad Rodrigo abandoned, the defenders of Almeida would open their gates to the enemy. ‘You stay here, and if the matter becomes pressing I shall give you the order directly.

‘Come, gentlemen, we had better see what is happening.’ The general sped away, followed by his staff. MacAndrews fell in alongside Pringle, who was again serving as an additional ADC. He remembered the captain’s account of the mishandled raid on the French foragers. Black Bob was most certainly a skilful commander of outposts. The sheer fact that he had held the frontier with a small force for so many months was proof of that. Yet it was less clear how sure a hand he was as a commander in battle. The surrender of his brigade in South America surely nagged at the man, and his obvious impatience of character was not reassuring. In truth MacAndrews wondered why the Light Division was still on this side of the Côa at all. All his instincts told him that the French were likely to attack in force, and the battalions were spread over far too wide a front to resist any serious assault. Alastair MacAndrews was worried, and tried to tell himself that he was simply getting old and nervous.

They met an ADC as they neared the top of the hill.

‘Stewart is driven in, sir,’ he reported. ‘The French have cavalry in the lead. Several regiments at least, with infantry and guns behind.’

They could see little more from the brow, for another ridge hid the advance post, but further in the distance were the dark masses of French columns.

MacAndrews looked at the general expectantly.

‘Bring them in,’ the general said. ‘But the rest of the division is to maintain its position. Their main body is not yet close and this is scarcely good cavalry country.’

‘The French have paraded brigades in front of us more than once in the last week,’ Pringle whispered to MacAndrews, prompting a grunt of acknowledgement.

The Scotsman waited in vain for the order to set his convoy moving.

Skidding in the mud and sending up fountains of dirty water, the heavy limber and gun turned the tight corner and sped up the hill, the drivers flogging the team of six chestnut horses. Gunners wearing Tarleton helmets like the light dragoons clung desperately to the seats on the limber, while others followed riding horses of their own. Then the second team came past with as much noise and spray as the first.

Williams, Hanley and their small band knelt on the slope beside the track, watching O’Hare and half his company jog back past them. Another group of greenjackets was retreating beyond the Royal Horse Artillery, presumably men of the picket. They went quickly, and soon a line of French voltigeurs appeared behind them.

O’Hare waved as he passed them, taking his twenty or so men further back to the false crest above them where they stopped and waited. Simmons and the rest of the company appeared, working in pairs as they withdrew.

‘We go with them,’ Williams said. Hanley had told him to give the orders for the moment and he did so without embarrassment. He glanced back over his left shoulder and thought how odd it was to see the ramparts of a fortress rising up beyond the old mill.

Some of the greenjackets stopped to fire their rifles at a target Williams and the others could not see. A roundshot skipped through the grass and somehow missed all of the riflemen, but the presence of light guns suggested a serious attack.

‘Cavalry, sir!’ Dobson called.

A squadron was approaching on their left. It had appeared suddenly, its approach masked by a fold in the ground. There were about a hundred of them in two ranks, coming on in silence at a steady pace.

‘’Ware cavalry!’ Williams shouted, although one of Simmons’ sergeants had already spotted them and called a warning to his officer.

The young second lieutenant looked at the horsemen and then turned to call up to the little knot of redcoats. ‘They’re ours! The Germans!’ His men continued to skirmish with the enemy in front of him, and only slowly withdrew.

The cavalry trotted up the gentle slope. Williams saw their round fur hats, slung pelisses and braided jackets. The uniforms looked drab, more grey than dark blue, but then cloth faded, and the men in the rear were liberally spattered with mud from the hoofs of the front rank’s horses. Behind the first squadron another appeared over the fold in the ground, their jackets so dark they were almost black with bright pink fronts. These men wore helmets covered with drab cloth, but their leader boldly wore a steel-coloured high helmet with a black horsehair crest.

‘Damn,’ Williams said as it sank in. ‘They’re French,’ he yelled.

Simmons looked back, confused. The hussars wheeled a little and with a fluid motion drew their curved sabres. Then they surged forward in a canter. They were already behind the riflemen.

‘Back!’ Simmons shouted, making a snap decision.

‘Back, lads! Back!’ His sergeant took up the call and the half-company dashed up the slope. There was a smattering of shots and one man dropped, his leg bleeding, and Williams could now see the first of the voltigeurs coming over the brow.

‘Back, but keep together,’ Williams said.

Captain O’Hare had formed his men with the front rank kneeling, but the unevenness of the ground meant that he could not yet see the French cavalry so he held his fire. Simmons and his men pelted back up the slope, Williams and the redcoats jogging ahead of them. Then the first of the grey-uniformed hussars appeared, the tall red plumes nodding in their fur caps as the horses rushed forward.

‘Present!’ shouted O’Hare, and the first rifle banged a moment later, flinging an hussar from his saddle.

There was a much deeper boom, followed by another and another, so much louder than the French guns that they drowned the lighter cracks of the rifles altogether. Williams instinctively looked up and saw clouds of smoke drifting from the rampart of Almeida. A shot bounced just behind O’Hare’s line, skidding along and ripping the lower leg off the man at the end of the rear rank. He fell, screaming in agony and clutching at his shattered knee. The line broke up, the men startled and confused by this sudden onslaught, and the greenjackets fired wildly or did not fire at all. No more hussars fell, but a second shot threw up enough mud to panic a few of the horses before it decapitated a running private of the 95th. The man’s body stood for a long moment, blood gushing up from his neck like a fountain, before it slumped down.

Williams wondered why the guns were firing. Were they aiming at the French and simply firing wildly or had they mistaken the dark green uniforms of the 95th for French blue?

The leading hussars were among Simmons’ men, sabres glinting as they hissed down to hack at heads and shoulders. One greenjacket stopped and, firing from the hip, put a ball under the chin of one of the hussars, punching through the brass chinstrap of his fur hat and driving up into his brain. The man rolled out of the saddle, but his foot did not come free of the stirrup and he was dragged along by his frightened horse. Two more hussars converged on the rifleman. He parried a slash from the first, a big splinter of wood flying from the stock of his rifle when the sabre cut into it, but the other man cut down across his body and neatly severed the infantryman’s right arm just below the shoulder. The other hussar pulled at his reins, making his horse rear, and hacked down on the man’s head, cutting through the felt shako and into the bone. The greenjacket was reeling, mouth open, but no cry coming, until two more slices pitched him down into the mud.

Rodriguez and Rose fired almost at the same moment, and the horse of one of the leading hussars sank down, its front legs giving way and flinging the surprised rider over its head. Not bothering to reload, the two NCOs turned and started running again, reaching for their bayonets as they went. Another heavy shot came from the fortress, tearing a ghastly lump from the neck of a horse.

‘Bugger!’ Murphy spat out the word, and was clutching at his leg, blood spreading over his thigh. Dobson ran to help him and Hanley grabbed his other side. Williams tried to cover them, musket ready, and that meant he saw the hussars as they chopped down again and again at the fleeing riflemen. The French troopers gasped with the effort of cutting through bone and flesh, and most of the wounds were to the head and shoulders because it was hard for a horseman to reach lower than that. One hussar with a drooping moustache that flapped as he rode through the mass headed for young Simmons, beating the officer’s light sabre aside. The Frenchman sliced down twice, and the boy was knocked to his knees. Then Williams saw the rolled greatcoat, which he wore wrapped around his body and over his shoulder, part and fall away. A cannonball drove into the ground at the horse’s feet, making the animal shy, and that gave the young officer the chance to spring up and flee.

Williams was walking backwards, but knew that he must soon run because the French were mingling now with O’Hare’s men. He saw the rough-faced officer pistol one hussar from his saddle. The French dragoons were nearly upon them as well, Dalmas at their head, and he saw the big cuirassier give a cry and start to force his way through the press of horses, chopping down to kill a rifleman as he passed. Some men were surrendering, many of them horribly cut about the face, but most still tried to escape and a few had the energy and presence of mind to dodge.

A quick glance behind and Williams could see that Hanley and Dobson had got Murphy a long way back. The officer turned and ran after them. Rose was a little ahead of him and then a shot from Almeida hit the corporal at the waist, slicing him in two and spraying blood and entrails over the Spanish sergeant and a French hussar who was catching him up. The stunned cavalryman reined in, aghast at the sight, and Rodriguez spun around and in the same motion drove his long bayonet into the hussar’s stomach. The Frenchman gave a high-pitched scream, his sabre hanging loose on its wrist strap, and the scream turned into a gasp as the Spaniard wrenched the blade free and ran on.