Run Them Ashore (37 page)

30

W
illiams ran from the shelter of a clump of bushes to a dip in the ground, musket balls flicking the grass as he went. Sergeant Evans and two men were crouched in the dip. One of the soldiers had the yellow facings of the 9th Foot, and Britannia on his brass belt-plate. The Flank Battalion was now a thin line of men lying or crouching behind any cover they could find.

Evans put his head over the top and took a moment to aim before he pulled the trigger and fired up the slope. He ducked back, handing the firelock to one of the two redcoats and taking the man’s loaded weapon. He gave a curt nod to the lieutenant as he pulled the hammer back to full cock. The grass just above him twitched as a bullet clipped it. The sergeant winked at the man from the 9th, and then bobbed up again to fire at the enemy.

‘Don’t know why they haven’t chased us away, sir,’ he said to Williams once he was back down in cover. Evans handed the firelock to the other redcoat. ‘Reckon I’m the best shot,’ he added in explanation.

‘They must think our supports are near,’ Williams suggested, for he knew as well as the sergeant that the Flank Battalion would crumble and flee if the French came forward. ‘Or they want to hold on to the high ground and meet any attack there.’ He could not think of any other reason, and experience had taught him that it was rare for the French to give the enemy any relief when they had them at their mercy.

‘So what are we to do?’ the sergeant asked him.

‘Stay as long as we can, let ’em know we’re still here, and wait for supports.’

‘And they’re coming?’ Evans’ eyes flicked to the two redcoats. The man from the 106th’s Light Company was young and clearly stunned by all that had happened.

‘They’re coming. The Guards and the Sixty-seventh.’

‘Huh, bloody Guards, I’ve shit ’em,’ the sergeant said gruffly. He did not appear to have any particular opinion of His Majesty’s 67th Foot.

‘Hang on, and we’ll beat them yet,’ Williams said, as much to the privates as the gruff Evans, but he thought he saw approval in the sergeant’s grim face. He sprinted away, hoping that he would be a poor mark for any voltigeur at this long range. Each time he found a couple of redcoats he stopped and encouraged them. The companies were mixed all together, and half the officers were down along with quite a few NCOs. He recognised only a handful of the men, but they were glad to see someone and be assured that they were not fighting a lost cause on their own.

‘Supports are coming,’ he kept telling them. It was hard to tell how much time had passed since the Flank Battalion’s attack had been so savagely ripped to shreds. Twenty minutes at least, and maybe half an hour, but to men clinging to any scrap of cover it seemed like most of the day. Some did not fire, but simply cowered like animals in a storm, hands gripping their firelocks so tightly that their knuckles were white.

‘Come on, lad, fire!’ he called to one boy, lying on his own behind a bush which had already lost branches to musket shots. ‘Load your musket.’ The boy was a grenadier, and had the red facings of his own regiment, but he must have joined after Williams was sent back to Spain. He struggled, and then it came to him. ‘Come on, Flattery, load.’

The use of his name stirred the lad from his horror. Williams smiled, patting the young soldier on the back. ‘Well done. That’s it, draw cartridge.’ The officer was smiling and standing up straight above the thin shelter of the bush. The French had not closed, and with all the smoke drifting on the hillside, he would just have to hope that no one was able to hit him. Now
and then a ball flicked through the air near enough to feel the wind of its passage, but neither man was hit.

Step by step he went through the drill for loading, giving each order in turn. The boy’s confidence came slowly, as the movements brought back memories of hours of training, safe and secure with his comrades around him rather than alone on a bare hillside.

‘That’s it, Flattery, well done. Slide the ramrod back. Now pull back the hammer. Present!’ The young grenadier knelt behind his bush. ‘Fire!’

The boom was bigger than normal, a blow to the ears, and Williams guessed that the firelock already had a ball and charge in it. He had not thought of that, and was glad there had not been more otherwise the barrel could easily have exploded.

‘Well done, you’re a good soldier, now do it again.’ He went through each order a second time, and by the end the lad was anticipating them, but he kept on talking for the boy needed to know that he was not alone.

After the second shot, Williams told the grenadier to follow him and he ran on another ten yards to where a Light Company veteran was resting his musket on a boulder to take careful aim.

‘Ryan,’ he said. ‘This is Flattery, another gallant Irishman like yourself. He can serve as your rear rank man – the man’s a demon shot.’ The youngster glowed with pride and knelt down beside the older soldier.

Williams went on, going along the thin skirmish line that was all that was left of the Flank Battalion. The French infantry kept firing, but they did not advance and the enemy guns had been silent for a long time, waiting for better targets. Then a cannonball tore through the air above his head and he followed the noise to see it bounce on the edge of the field and skip upwards to knock a branch off one of the trees. Infantrymen in red were coming from the forest.

MacAndrews appeared, still mounted and still unscathed. ‘They’re here,’ the Scotsman said. ‘They’ve taken their damned
time about it, but they are here.’ A musket ball struck the ground by his horse’s feet and the animal shied away.

‘Good. You stay and keep the men shooting, Williams,’ he said as he cooed to calm the beast. ‘Pringle is to your right, and Captain Douglas of the Eighty-second is to the right of him. A lieutenant from the Ninth is to your left, and the Lord only knows where everyone else is. Still, that is one and a half Scotsmen, counting yourself, two and a half if you include me, and that should be enough to keep back all the hosts of Midian put together.’

Williams grinned. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said and could see the major was encouraging him just as he had been encouraging the men. No doubt as they spoke the general was telling his colonels how lucky he felt to have them with him – and the French were doing the same.

‘I need to make sure the Guards and the others come up on our left, where the approach is more sheltered. Look after the lads, and I’ll be back.’ MacAndrews leaned down to pat his shoulder, and then set his horse running down the slope. The animal streaked away, happy to flee from the noise.

The lieutenant went back to checking the line, talking and praising as he passed each little group, and leading any man on his own to find companions. He thought the French fire was slackening, and that meant they were preparing to meet the new attack. It would have been good to push the skirmish line forward and distract them, but he could see the men would not move. This time he walked – if MacAndrews could ride then he could surely walk – to the left until he met a subaltern from the 9th. The Flank Battalion was still there, battered and stunned, but it was still there and it kept firing up the low hill.

‘Hot work, sir,’ a familiar voice said as he went back down the scattered line. Dobson was there, his head bandaged, but like Evans with several men loading for him. Williams did not recognise any of them, and two of the three were from the other regiments.

‘Hotter for the Frogs up there,’ he replied.

‘Oh, aye, bet they’re really scared now.’ The sergeant fired up the slope. ‘One less to worry about.’

They could barely see the French through the drifting smoke.

‘You’d be lucky to hit the hill,’ Williams told him.

‘The cheek of the man. Do you know this young rip used to be my rear rank man?’ The redcoats were wide eyed and disbelieving.

‘It’s true. The sergeant taught me everything I don’t know.’

A ball ripped the officer’s cocked hat from his head.

‘Well, I didn’t manage to teach you to keep your bloody head down, did I, sir,’ the veteran told him.

‘I cannot have paid enough attention.’ He bent forward and scooped the hat back up, but could not resist sticking his finger through the holes. ‘Right through,’ he said ruefully. ‘Stay with the sergeant, lads, and he’ll see you through.’

‘That’s right.’ He heard Dobson’s deliberately loud whisper as he moved on. ‘Stick with me and if you’re smart you’ll be a sergeant before long. If you’re stupid you might even become an officer.’

The French battery boomed from above him. The noise sounded different, and he wondered whether the enemy guns had moved. They were firing at the First Foot Guards, but the redcoats were not an easy target as they weaved their way up the slope, dipping down into gullies and behind folds in the land. MacAndrews must have reached them, or their own officers seen the safer path, because they were advancing to the right of the Flank Battalion. Further beyond them was a smaller unit without Colours, and more redcoats next to them.

A few guardsmen fell – Williams saw one file collapse in ragged ruin as a roundshot smashed down both men, but most of the cannonballs bounced over their heads. The line was two deep, some six hundred men strong, and when they crossed the steep gully to begin climbing the slope, the ranks fell into disorder. As they went up the slope there were more ditches, boulders and bushes in their path, and short stretches where a few men had to go round or almost scramble up on hands and knees. It must
have broken the sergeant major’s heart to see such disarray, but the Foot Guards made only brief pauses to redress their ranks and then pressed on, the formation bent and crooked. In the centre, their crimson Colours dipped as the young ensigns struggled to bear their weight.

Beyond them three companies of the 3rd Guards were not to be outdone by their sister regiment, and pressed on just as quickly. They were part of a composite battalion, but the men of the Coldstream Guards had gone astray as they hurried back through the forest and were now not far from Hanley, about to advance against another enemy with the other brigade. One wing of the 2/67th, with yellow facings on their coats, moved up on their flank, and they had a skirmish line of riflemen shielding them.

Some 1,400 redcoats advanced uphill against 2,000 Frenchmen, and the latter were determined that they would meet the charge. The enemy battery began to take more of a toll as the First Guards reached the more open slope, but then the French guns fell silent as the columns went forward to sweep the impudent British away. Drummers beat the
pas de charge
, and behind them the band still played. There were four battalions, two of them grenadiers with ornate shakos topped by high red plumes, and other companies wearing tall bearskin caps. The Emperor had ordered the expensive and old-fashioned headgear withdrawn, but regimental colonels jealously hoarded the ones they had or employed dark arts to hide the fact that they were buying new ones. The fur caps made the wearers look taller, just as the red epaulettes on their shoulders made them look broader. Moustached, suntanned, tall and square, the grenadier battalions looked just like the veterans they were. Beside them came two battalions of line infantry, and if less of an elite, these were still men who had humbled the armies of Europe.

‘
Vive l’empereur!
’ Williams heard the chant he had heard so many times before. The drummers gave two beats, then a roll, then another beat, and as they paused to begin again the French soldiers yelled out praise for the man who rewarded victory so
generously. Marshal Victor and General Ruffin rode just behind the four battalions, next to a fifth which came on in support. All were in column of divisions, with two companies in line three deep, then another pair of companies thirty yards behind them, and a third pair the same distance further back. From the front it looked like a succession of lines coming forward, as strong and inexorable as the breakers of an incoming tide.

‘
Vive l’empereur!
’ The chant was loud, for the moment drowning the music of the band. It was a concentrated attack, with neither room nor time to let the voltigeurs snipe at the enemy and weaken them. The ragged lines of redcoats were two-thirds of the way up the hillside, still disordered from the climb, and Marshal Victor would strike before they had a chance to recover. He had seen the English run before, when his men drove back the first line of Rosbifs at Talavera, including some of their King’s Guards, but then his columns had been stopped by the few reserves the English general had scraped together and placed in their path. Today, the Duke of Belluno could see that the redcoats had no reserves and so he would crush them.

‘
Vive l’empereur! Vive l’empereur!
’ The drums went silent as the two battalions in front of the First Guards halted at their commanders’ orders. A shouted command, and the leading companies fired a volley down the hillside. The already untidy line of redcoats shook as men were flung down. One of the Colours dropped for a moment, but was quickly picked up and raised aloft. Sergeants pushed men forward to fill the gaps in the front rank, and Williams could imagine the shouts as they did their work.

‘Present.’ The line of redcoats rippled as muskets came up to shoulders.

‘Fire!’ This time it was the columns that quivered, as the white fronts of men’s blue jackets blossomed red and soldiers dropped or were pitched back into the ranks behind.

Further down the hill, the 2/67th and the Third Guards fired at almost the same instant at the grenadiers bearing down on them.

‘
Vive l’empereur!
’ The drums started again, officers yelled at their men to go on, but the men were more interested in loading and firing at the enemy. Shouts and drumbeats died, and there was eerie quiet as soldiers on both sides went through the routine of loading. Half a minute later there were new volleys, less perfect this time, but more men were falling on either side. Then it was back to the old drills. Drop the musket’s butt to rest on the ground. Reach back for a cartridge. Some of the veterans had shifted their pouch round more to the front of their hip to make it easier. Take the paper cartridge and bite off the ball itself. Pull back the hammer to half-cock and flip open the pan, pouring a pinch of powder into it. Then the rest went down the muzzle with the paper as wadding. Spit the ball after it. Draw ramrod, thrust once to drive ball and charge down. Retrieve the ramrod, and turn it to slide back into place. Pull back the hammer to full cock, musket levelled again. Pull the trigger and feel it pound back against the shoulder, as the flint sparked, the powder in the pan went off and sometimes flung burning pieces against the cheek, the main charge going off in noise and smoke, and then drop the butt to the ground, reach back for the cartridge, on and on until the drills drove everything else from a man’s mind.