Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War (42 page)

He need not have worried about an exact rendezvous, however. In a quarter of an hour they heard musketry. He could not go far wrong if he rode to the sound of the guns.

It was all but daylight now. The musketry was the other side of a thick belt of trees. How might he push through in good order and safety?

The fire continued, more ragged than in volleys, but intense enough. He checked the pace, saw a defile and galloped for it. They checked again to a breaking canter, cursed the low branches, then came out to the flood plain of the Esla as the sun rose full over the hills the other side. He saw the line of blue five hundred yards away. It could have been any of Lord Paget’s six regiments – at that distance it was impossible to make out the distinguishing marks, even the headdress. Yet somehow a dragoon knew his own; he put Stella back into a hand-gallop and took his two dozen wayfaring sabres fast towards the roost.

As he closed on the serrefile Hervey saw Lord Paget galloping from the direction of the river, where the pickets of the 18th Light Dragoons – hussars in appearance and practice, if not by name – had spent the night in chilly watch.

‘You see, there are not so many of them, Reynell,’ called Paget from the saddle. ‘Otway’s pickets should hold them!’

He galloped off towards the reserve, leaving Colonel Reynell to judge for himself what should be his action.

That was how it was meant to be; or so Hervey understood. It was not for a brigadier, let alone the commander of the cavalry, to be the fount of all commands on the battlefield. As custom had it, a cavalry officer, whether in command of a troop or a brigade, was meant to exercise judgement according to his
coup d’oeil.
How easy it all seemed when Lord Paget expressed his intention and left Colonel Reynell to it. It did not require the intermediation of General Slade; that was certain.

Hervey stood in his stirrups to see better, and sensed the twitching of two hundred sword hands, all eager to draw sabres and close with the enemy. The French were across the river, no doubt of it. In strength too, evidently: he could see the Eighteenth’s pickets giving ground before them. But it was one thing to drive in a picket line, and quite another to stand against a counter-charge, especially with a river at one’s back. The Eighteenth would send them splashing back across the Esla in very short order.

Now the Eighteenth’s adjutant came galloping. He was beside himself with exasperation, and full voiced.

‘Where is Slade, Colonel?’

‘It is a mystery to me as you,’ replied Reynell coolly but no less audibly.

‘Will you support us then, Colonel?’

Two hundred men behind him would want to know the reason why not.

‘You need scarcely ask,’ said Reynell. He turned his head at once. ‘Trumpeter, walk-march!’

It was a ragged strike-off, but it did not matter. Colonel Reynell’s promptitude was what counted to ‘the yellow circle’, the fellowship of the cavalry.

The Sixth mustered only two hundred and ten sabres, Number Three Squadron being in reserve with Lord Paget, and a good part of Second on picket or forage duties, but it would still be a fair weight to throw behind the Eighteenth. Together they could drive the French back into the Esla or take them prisoner. Reynell was confident of it. And he would not pull up until the west bank was cleared of every last
chasseur.

If only he could see them. The flood plain was extraordinarily flat, and the Eighteenth were masking the object of the advance.

Hervey could see even less with two ranks close in front of him, and Stella plunging again in an alarming fashion, unhappy with her station at the back of the field. He heard no bugle, but the pace quickened, and Stella began throwing her head up as well as plunging. Hervey thought they would break through the ranks in front if once he let her have the rein. And if he did that he might as well send in his papers at once.

He had both hands to the reins now, struggling to keep his sabre upright as he pulled, not wanting to advertise his difficulties. He wished it were Jessye beneath him; handy little mare, no looker but answering to leg or hand with equal honesty. She could not match Stella for speed, but then he was no longer a general’s galloper. And – the very devil was in it – this fine blood, which had meant to be his making, looked like being his undoing. Or his ruin, even, for a stumble with her head up would mean a broken neck; his too, probably. What
was
this mare about?

Then the whole regiment was trying to pull up hard. The lines buckled, so that for a time it was not possible to say that one man had overtaken another. Stella just missed the flying hooves of the horse in front and slewed into a trooper in what remained of the front rank. Hervey’s leg knocked its rider’s boot clean from the stirrup.

‘Fookin’ Jesus!’

‘I’m very sorry, Corporal,’ tried Hervey, at last with Stella in hand.

Colonel Reynell, a full twenty yards ahead, was standing in the stirrups with his sword raised, still bellowing ‘Hold hard!’

Hervey saw why: the Eighteenth had turned. There was no chance now of taking the Sixth into the enemy’s ranks, not with the Eighteenth retiring before them. He could see the French at last, though: there were so many
chasseurs
it looked as if a whole brigade had got across.

‘The regiment will face in two ranks!’ Colonel Reynell’s voice was calm but insistent.

It was like falling-in at first parade: an eager, untidy business, corporals shouting, heads and eyes all over the place, until by degrees there came the semblance of two lines, and, finally, good order. Hervey managed to find his place, in the rear rank and to Reynell’s right. But he could see with what assurance the Eighteenth retired: unhurried, as at a review, knowing as they must that if the French dared to charge they would be thrown over in an instant. He wondered where they would halt and front. He supposed about fifty yards from where the Sixth stood. That would be where
Dundas
prescribed, so as to have the close support of a second line. But the regulations did not serve on every occasion, and would not this morning, for only too clearly there were more
chasseurs
than the Sixth and the Eighteenth could stand against without support. To his left was a troop of the King’s German Legion coming from Benavente, and at a fair speed, but the rest of Slade’s brigade was nowhere to be seen. And certainly not the brigadier. What were they expected to do?

He saw General Stewart, the Eighteenth’s brigadier, signalling the right with his sword,
towards
Benavente, and they began wheeling. It looked to Hervey like a very explicit giving of ground, and it left the Sixth exposed. But perhaps that was intended? He was surprised by the pace of things, how little time there was to judge their action; it had not been like this up to now.

Colonel Reynell was not outpaced, however. ‘Advance at the trot –
march
!’

The line billowed forward.

‘Left wheel!’

The Sixth wheeled left to follow the Eighteenth. As they did so the
chasseurs
quickened their trot.

In a minute the leading French squadron was closing, and rapidly. Hervey thought the regiment must change to canter or else be overrun. It would look horribly like flight though.

Colonel Reynell had other ideas. ‘Walk-march! About face!’

It was smartly done. The Sixth turned about in two ranks, the flanks nicely overlapping those of the
chasseurs
now only seventy yards away.

‘Return swords! Draw carbines!’

Out from the saddle buckets came the Paget carbines.

‘Load!’

Fortunate was the infantryman with his steady platform. Many a dragoon might have envied that as he took a cartridge from its pouch, bit off the end and clenched the ball between his teeth, struggling to keep his mount still as he tried to tip a little powder into the priming pan. Hervey, now in the front rank, drew his pistols ready-shotted. He looked left and right: one dragoon dropped a ball, cursed terribly and reached for another cartridge, but otherwise every man worked mechanically, and two hundred butts came to rest on the foreleg within an impressive ace of one another.

‘Front rank, present!’

A hundred barrels came up to the aim.

Hervey would swear he saw the
chasseurs
check. Yet at fifty yards surely the carbine could have little effect?

A few seconds more and they checked most decidedly; the trot faltered and then the whole line came to a halt.

Would they draw swords and charge? He thought they could do no other.

But the
chasseurs
made no motion. They stood as if on parade. Were they waiting for
them
to make the first move?

‘Sixth Light Dragoons, carry arms!’

As one, the carbines came down from the aim.

‘Sixth Light Dragoons, walk-march!’

That settled it! Reynell was
not
going to be bustled from the field. If the
chasseurs
wanted to wait out of carbine range then the regiment would close it. It was a bold move, an audacious move; some might say foolhardy. But Reynell would give no cause for complaint against the Sixth, off or on the field. No one, whatever Sir John Moore had them do in the days to come, would be able to say the
Sixth
lacked fight.

At forty yards Reynell held up his hand. ‘Halt!’

They all knew what would be the next order, but no man anticipated it. Strict drill was the imperative in the face of the enemy: a hundred carbines raised as one would have its effect.

But the Sixth faced not only a squadron. Beyond the stationary
chasseurs,
not a furlong away, looked the better part of a brigade. Hervey could not believe they had laboured a day and a night at the bridge when but a mile upstream, evidently, there was so serviceable a ford.

He made ready his holsters, and he had a mind to keep them open once he drew his pistols again, for there would be no time to spare before he needed a sabre in his hand to meet the charge.

‘Light Dragoons, present!’

Hervey levelled both pistols, his right hand through the reins, not a little anxious about his mare’s steadiness off the bit and a fusillade about to start her.

The pause was long. Or else it seemed to be. He held his breath.

But the
chasseurs’
colonel simply brought the hilt of his sword to his lips, then down to his side.

Hervey heard the Frenchman call ‘retire’, and he heard the breath escaping from a dozen men around him. He felt relieved and cheated at the same time.

‘Carry carbines! Threes about!’

The ranks babbled with pride.

‘A good go, that, Mr Hervey, sir?’ came Armstrong’s cheery opinion.

‘Yes indeed, Corporal; very smart it was.’

But did the French not have the field now? Surely General Craufurd’s men could not have made it to Astorga yet? Hervey could not grasp what must be.

In two more furlongs he saw that Lord Paget had no intention of surrendering the field to the French. It even occurred to him that Paget had quite deliberately drawn the
chasseurs
across the Esla so as to be able to engage them on ground of his own choosing, with the river hemming them in. He had formed the Eighteenth at the narrowest point between the Esla and the birch wood that ran parallel to it, and Hervey saw their brigadier, Stewart, at the head, and the King’s Germans mustered with them. He could see too a squadron of the Tenth beyond, coming up fast from Benavente. He calculated Stewart would be able to dispose six hundred sabres, and only then did he realize that not only had Paget chosen his ground but he had fallen back onto his reserves. He smiled to himself; these were lessons that no amount of book-learning could take the place of.

The Sixth wheeled, tight, to halt rear of the Eighteenth, with the King’s Germans to their left and the Tenth’s squadron closing behind them to form a third, support, line.

There was no time for dressing. ‘The brigade will draw sabres and advance.’

General Stewart’s voice carried easily, but his trumpeter repeated the order.

‘Draw sabres!’

The rasping notice of a bloody fight put an edge to every nerve again. Hervey thrilled at the cautionary ‘brigade’, the first he had heard it – another of the rites of cavalry passage. No matter that the brigade numbered fewer sabres than the regiment had come to the Peninsula with; it would be an affair of four regiments.

‘Walk-march!’

The brigade advanced.

‘Trot!’

The horses stumbled and extended for a dozen yards until settling to the rhythm.

‘Gallop!’

Hervey could hear nothing but pounding hooves and NCOs cursing as they tried to keep the lines in decent shape. A dragoon on the left lost control of his trooper. It took off, flattening like a greyhound from the slips. Poor wretch, he thought, struggling himself to keep Stella in check: if he ever got back in one piece there would be the very devil to pay with his serjeant.

He did not hear General Stewart shout ‘Charge!’ Nor the bugle. But the hussars in front suddenly let go the check reins and thrust their sabres in the air, exactly as the manual prescribed.

‘Hold hard!’ bellowed Colonel Reynell, determined to keep the supports in hand. ‘Hold hard!’

Hervey held hard for all he was worth, first with one hand, then with two. He heard the carbines, saw the smoke, glimpsed the red plumes. And then it was a mêlée worse than Sahagun.

Reynell led the line straight in. Hervey reined hard right to drive deep into a gap, ready either to cut with his sabre or bring it to the guard if any should be bold enough to challenge. He saw a
chasseur
hacking at one of the Eighteenth’s men, lunged and brought his sabre down. Cut Two: left, diagonal right. He cleaved the head open from ear to chin.

There was no time to admire the work, nor to be repulsed by it; a sabre front nearside threatened the same to him. Up went his own to the Head Protect, blade horizontal across the top of his Tarleton, edge upwards, point left. Before he could lock his wrist the French sabre struck, driving his into the Tarleton’s mane. But it slid off Hervey’s blade and down, giving him the split-second’s advantage to follow through.