Sharpe's Fury - 11 (34 page)

And at the foot of the hill, where the pine tree wood straggled to its end, General Dilkes’s brigade formed in two ranks. There was the second battalion of the First Foot Guards, three companies of the second battalion of the 3rd Foot Guards, two companies of riflemen, and half of the 67th Foot, which had somehow got tangled with Dilkes’s men and, rather than try to rejoin the rest of their battalion, had stayed to fight with the guardsmen and sweeps. General Dilkes drew his sword and twisted its tasseled pendant about his wrist. His orders were to take the hill. He looked up and saw the slope crawling with wounded men from Browne’s command. He also saw that his men were frighteningly outnumbered and he doubted that the French could be driven from the summit, but he had his orders. Sir Thomas Graham, who had given those orders, was close behind the bright colors of the 3rd Foot Guards, the Scotsmen, and now looked anxiously at Dilkes as if suspecting that he was delaying the order to attack. “Take them forward!” Dilkes said grimly.

“Brigade will advance!” the brigade major bellowed. A drummer boy gave a tap, then a roll, took a deep breath, and began beating the time. “By the center!” the brigade major shouted. “March!”

They climbed.

G
ENERAL
L
EVAL,
while his colleague, General Ruffin, attacked the hill, advanced toward the pinewood. He had six battalions that, between them, had four thousand men who marched on a wide front. Leval kept two battalions behind the four who advanced in columns of divisions. French battalions had only six companies, and a column of divisions was two companies broad and three deep. Their drummers beat them on.

Colonel Wheatley had two thousand men to fight the four thousand and he began in disarray. His units had been in march order when the order to turn right and prepare to fight arrived, and there had been confusion among the pines. Two companies of Coldstream Guards were marching among Wheatley’s men, but there was no time to send them south to join Dilkes’s units, where they belonged, so they marched to battle under Wheatley. Half of the 67th from Hampshire was missing. Those five companies had found themselves under Dilkes’s command, while the remaining five companies were in their rightful place with Wheatley. It was, in short, chaos, and the thickness of the pines meant that battalion officers were unable to see their men, but the company officers and sergeants did their job and took the redcoats east through the trees.

The first to emerge from the pines were four hundred riflemen and three hundred Portuguese skirmishers who came at the run. Many of their officers were on horseback and the French, astonished to see an enemy come from the wood, thought cavalry was about to attack. That impression was strengthened when ten gun teams, totaling eighty horses, burst from the trees on the left of the French front. They followed a track that led to Chiclana, but once out of the trees they slewed hard right to throw up sand and dust. The nearest two French battalions, seeing only horses in the dust, formed square to repel cavalry.

The gunners jumped off the limbers, lifted the cannon trails, and aimed the barrels as the horses were taken back to the cover of the pines. “Use shell!” Major Duncan shouted. Shells were brought from limbers, and officers cut the fuses. They cut them short because the French were close. The French were also in sudden confusion. Two battalions had formed square, ready-to-receive, nonexistent cavalry, and the rest were hesitating when the British guns opened fire. Shells screamed across the three hundred yards of heath, each leaving its small wavering trail of fuse smoke, and Duncan, sitting his horse well to the side of the batteries so that their muzzle smoke did not hide his view, saw the blue-uniformed men knocked violently aside by the shells, then the explosions in the hearts of the squares. “Good! Good!” he shouted, and just then the skirmish line of riflemen and cacadores opened fire, their rifles and muskets crackling, and the French seemed to recoil from the fusillade. The front ranks of the columns returned the fire, but the skirmishers were scattered across the whole French front and were small targets for clumsy muskets, while the French were in close order and the rifles could hardly miss. The twin batteries on the right of the British line fired again. Then Duncan saw French horse teams being whipped across the heath. He counted six guns. “Load round shot!” he called. “Traverse right!” Men levered the cannon trails with handspikes to change their aim. “Hit their guns!” Duncan ordered.

The French were recovering now. The two battalions in square had realized their mistake and were deploying back into columns. Aides were galloping among the battalions, ordering them to march on, to fire, to break the thin skirmish line with concentrated volleys of musket fire. The drums began again, beating the
pas de charge
and pausing to let the men shout “
Vive l’empereur!
” The first effort was feeble, but officers and sergeants bellowed at the men to shout louder, and the next time the war cry was firm and defiant. “
Vive l’empereur!
”

“
Tirez!
” an officer shouted, and the front ranks of the 8th of the line poured a volley at the Portuguese skirmishers on their front. “
Marchez! En avant!
” Now was the time to accept the casualties and crush the skirmishers. The British cannon had switched their fire to the French battery, so no more shells slammed into the ranks. “
Vive l’empereur!
” The eight ranks behind the leading men of each column stepped over the dead and dying. “
Tirez!
” Another blast of musketry. Four thousand men were marching toward seven hundred. The French battery fired canister across the front of the columns and the grass bowed violently as though it were being swept by a sudden gust of wind. Portuguese cacadores and British riflemen were scooped up, bloodied and thrown down. The skirmish line was retreating now. The French muskets were too close and the six enemy cannon enfiladed them. There was a brief respite as the French gunners, about to be masked by the advancing columns, seized the drag ropes and, despite the round shot slamming about them, dragged their guns a hundred paces forward. They fired again and more skirmishers were turned to bloody rags. The French scented victory and the four leading battalions hurried. Their fire was ragged because it was hard to load while marching, and some men fixed bayonets instead. The British skirmishers ran back, almost to the wood’s edge. Duncan’s two left hand guns, seeing the danger, slewed around and blasted canister across the face of the nearest French battalion. Men in its leading ranks went down in a bloody haze as though a giant reaper’s hook had savaged them.

Then, suddenly, the wood’s edge was thick with men. The Silver Tails were on the left of Wheatley’s line and next to them were the two orphaned companies of Coldstreamers. Gough’s Irish were on the right of the Guards, then the remaining half of the 67th, and last, next to the guns, two companies of the Cauliflowers, the 47th.

“Halt!” The shouts echoed along the tree line.

“Wait!” a sergeant bellowed. Some men had raised their muskets.

“Wait for the order!”

“Form on your right! On your right!”

It was a confusion of voices, of officers shouting from their horses, of sergeants reordering ranks tumbled by the chaotic rush through the trees. “Look at that, boys! Look at that! Joy in the morning!” Major Hugh Gough, mounted on a bay gelding from County Meath, rode behind his battalion of the 87th. “We’ve got target practice, my lovelies,” he shouted. “Wait a while, though, wait a while.”

The newly arrived battalions recovered their dressing. “Take them forward! Take them forward!” Wheatley’s aides shouted, and the two-deep line paced onto the heath toward the dead and dying skirmishers. A French round shot skimmed through the 67th, cutting one man almost in half, spraying twelve others with the dead man’s blood, and taking the arm of a man in the rear rank. “Close up! Close up!”

“Halt! Present!”

“
Vive l’empereur!
”

“Fire!”

The inexorable rules of mathematics now imposed themselves on the fight. The French outnumbered the British by two to one, yet the leading four French battalions were in columns of divisions, which meant that each battalion was arrayed in nine ranks and had, on average, about seventy-two men in a rank. Four battalions with leading ranks of seventy-two men made a frontage of fewer than three hundred muskets. True, the men in the second rank could fire over their comrades’ shoulders, but even so, Leval’s four thousand men could only use six hundred muskets against the British line in which every man could fire, and Wheatley’s line was now fourteen hundred men strong. The skirmishers, who had done their job of delaying the French advance, ran to the flanks. Then Wheatley’s line fired.

The musket balls smacked into the heads of the French units. The redcoats were hidden by smoke behind which they reloaded. “Fire by platoons!” officers called, so now the rolling volleys would begin, half a company firing at once, then the next half, so that the bullets never stopped.

“Fire low!” an officer shouted.

Canister slashed through the smoke. A man reeled away, an eye gone, his face a mask of blood, but there was much more blood in the French battalions where the bullets were turning the front ranks into charnel rows.

“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said. He had emerged from the wood at the right-hand side of the British line. Ahead of him, to his right, were Duncan’s guns, each one bucking back three or more paces with every shot. Beside the guns were the remnants of the Portuguese skirmishers, still firing, and to his left was the redcoat line. Sharpe joined the brown-coated Portuguese. They looked haggard. Their faces were powder stained and eyes white. They were a new battalion and had never been in battle before, but they had done their job and now the redcoats were firing volleys, yet the Portuguese had suffered horribly and Sharpe could see too many brown-coated bodies lying in front of the French battalions. He could also see greenjackets there, all on the left of the British line.

The French battalions were spreading their fronts. They were not doing it well. Each man tried to find a place to fire his musket, or else tried to find shelter behind braver colleagues, and sergeants were pushing them out in any order. Canister howled around Sharpe and he instinctively looked behind to make sure none of his men was hit. They were all safe, but a crouching Portuguese skirmisher close to Sharpe tipped onto his back with his throat torn open. “Didn’t know you were with us!” a voice called, and Sharpe turned to see Major Duncan on horseback.

“I’m here,” Sharpe said.

“Can your rifles discourage gunners?”

The six French cannon were to the front. Two were already out of action, struck by Duncan’s round shot, but the others were flailing the left of the British line with their hated canister. The problem of shooting at cannon was the vast cloud of filthy smoke that lingered after every shot, and the problem was made worse by the distance. It was long range, even for a rifle, but Sharpe pulled his men forward to the Portuguese and told them to fire at the French artillerymen. “It’s a safe job, Pat,” he told Harper, “not really fighting at all.”

“Always a pleasure to murder a gunner, sir,” Harper said. “Isn’t that right, Harris?”

Harris, who had been most vocal about not joining any fight, cocked his rifle. “Always a pleasure, Sergeant.”

“Then make yourself happy. Kill a bloody gunner.”

Sharpe stared toward the French infantry, but could see little because the smoke of the muskets drifted across their front. He could see two eagles through the smoke, and beside them the small flags mounted on the halberds carried by the men charged with protecting the eagles. He could hear the drummer boys still beating the
pas de charge
even though the French advance had stopped. The real noise was of musketry, the pounding cough of volley fire, the relentless noise, and if he listened hard he could hear the balls striking on muskets and thumping into flesh. He could also hear the cries of the wounded and the screams of officers’ horses put down by the balls. And he was amazed, as he always was, by the courage of the French. They were being struck hard, yet they stayed. They stayed behind a straggling heap of dead men, they edged aside to let the wounded crawl behind, they reloaded and fired, and all the time the volleys kept coming. Sharpe could see no order among the enemy. The columns had long broken into a thick line that spread wider as men found space to use their muskets, but even so the makeshift line was still thicker and shorter than the British line. Only the British and Portuguese fought in two ranks. The French were supposed to fight in three ranks when deployed in line, but this line was clumped together, six or seven men deep in some places.

A third French gun was struck. A round shot shattered a wheel and the gun tipped down as the gunners jumped out of the way. “Good shooting!” Duncan shouted. “An extra ration of rum for that crew!” He had no idea which of his guns had done the damage so he would give them all rum when the fighting was done. A gust of wind blew the smoke away from the French battery and Duncan saw a gunner rolling up a new wheel. Hagman, kneeling among the Portuguese, saw another gunner bring his linstock toward the closest French cannon, a howitzer. Hagman fired and the gunner vanished behind the short barrel.

The British had no music to inspire them. There had been no space on the ships to bring instruments, but the bandsmen had come, armed with muskets, and now those men did their usual battle job of rescuing the wounded, taking them back to the trees, where the surgeons worked. The rest of the redcoats fought on. They did what they were trained to do, and what they did was fire a musket. Load and fire, load and fire. Take out a cartridge, bite off the top, prime the lock with a pinch of powder from the bitten end of the cartridge, close the frizzen to keep the pinch in place, drop the musket butt to the ground, pour the rest of the powder down the hot barrel, thrust the paper on top as wadding, ram it down, and inside the paper was the ball. Bring the musket up, pull back the cock, remember to aim low because the brute of a gun kicked like a mule, wait for the order, pull the trigger. “Misfire!” a man shouted, meaning his lock had sparked, but the charge in the barrel had not caught the fire. A corporal snatched the musket away from him, gave him a dead man’s gun, then laid the misfired musket on the grass behind. Other men had to pause to change flints, but the volleys never stopped.