Sharpe's Fury - 11 (36 page)

Which lurched forward and shouted, “
Vive l’empereur!
”

CHAPTER 12

S
IR
T
HOMAS
G
RAHAM BLAMED
himself. If he had put three British battalions on the summit of the Cerro del Puerca, then it would never have fallen to the French. Now it had, and he had to trust Colonel Wheatley to hold the long line of the pinewood while Dilkes’s men corrected Sir Thomas’s mistake. If they failed, and if the French division came down the hill and swept northward, then they would be in Wheatley’s rear and a massacre would follow. The French had to be driven off the hill.

General Ruffin had four battalions at the crest of the hill and held two specialist battalions of grenadiers in reserve. Those men no longer carried grenades; instead they were among the biggest men in the infantry and renowned for their fighting savagery. Marshal Victor, who knew as well as Sir Thomas Graham that the hill was the key to victory, had ridden to join Ruffin; from the summit, beside the ruined chapel, Victor could see Leval’s division edging forward toward the pinewood. Good. He would let them fight on their own and bring Ruffin’s men down to help them. The beach was mostly empty. A brigade of Spanish infantry was resting not far from the village, but for some reason, they were taking no part in the fight while the rest of the Spanish army was a long way to the north and, as far as the marshal could see through his telescope, not bothering to stir themselves.

Ruffin’s front line of four battalions numbered just over two thousand men. Like the Frenchmen on the heath they were in columns of divisions while beneath them on the hill were hundreds of bodies, the remnants of Major Browne’s battalion. Beyond those corpses were redcoats who had evidently come to retake the Cerro del Puerco. “Fifteen hundred Goddamns?” Victor estimated the newcomers.

“I reckon so, yes,” Ruffin said. He was a huge man, well over six feet tall.

“I do believe those are the English guards,” Victor said. He was gazing at Dilkes’s brigade through his telescope and could clearly see the blue regimental color of the First Foot Guards. “They’re sacrificing their best,” the marshal added cheerfully, “so let’s oblige them. We’ll sweep the bastards away!”

The bastards had begun to climb the hill. There were fourteen hundred of them, mostly guardsmen, but with half of the 67th on the right and, beyond the Hampshire men and closest to the sea, two companies of riflemen. They came slowly. Some had marched at the double for more than a mile to reach the hill’s foot and, after a sleepless night on the move, were tired. They did not follow Major Browne’s route to the top, but climbed closer to the beach where the hill was much steeper and the French cannons could not depress sufficiently to fire at them, at least not while they were on the lower slope. They came in a line, but this part of the hill was broken by trees and rough ground, and the line quickly lost its formation so that the British appeared to come in a formless straggle stretched about the hill’s northwestern quadrant.

Marshal Victor accepted a drink of wine from an aide’s canteen. “Let them get almost to the top,” he suggested to Ruffin, “because the cannon can shred them there. Give them a gift of canister, a volley of musketry, then advance on them.”

Ruffin nodded. It was exactly what he had planned to do. The hill was steep and the British would be breathless by the time they had climbed three-quarters of its flank, and that was when he would hit them with cannons and muskets. He would blast holes in their ranks, then release the four battalions of infantry down the hill with bayonets. The British would be swept away, and their fugitives would be in chaos by the time they reached the hill’s foot, and then the infantry and dragoons could hunt them down the beach and through the pinewood. The grenadiers, he thought, could then be sent to assault the southern flank of the other British brigade.

The redcoats clambered upward. Sergeants made efforts to keep the line straight, but it was hopeless on such broken ground. French voltigeurs, the skirmishers, had come a small way down the hill and were firing at the attackers. “Don’t return their fire!” Sir Thomas shouted. “Save your lead! We’ll give them a volley when we reach the top! Hold your fire!” A voltigeur’s bullet snatched Sir Thomas’s hat clean off without touching his white hair. He kicked his horse on. “Brave boys!” he shouted. “Up we go!” He was riding among the rearmost men of the Third Foot Guards, his beloved Scotsmen. “This is our land, boys. Let’s clear the rascals away!”

Major Browne’s men, those who survived, were still on the hill and still firing upward. “Here come the Guards, boys!” Browne shouted. “Now I’ll insure all your lives for half a dollar!” He had lost two-thirds of his officers and over half his men, but he shouted at the survivors to close up and join the flank of the First Foot Guards.

“They’re fools,” Marshal Victor said, more in puzzlement than in scorn. Fifteen hundred men hoped to take a two-hundred-foot hill garrisoned by artillery and by close to three thousand infantry? Well, their foolishness was his opportunity. “Give them your volley as soon as the artillery has fired,” he told Ruffin. “Then run them down the slope with bayonets.” He spurred across to the battery. “Wait till they’re at half-pistol shot,” he told the battery commander. At that range none of the guns could miss. It would be slaughter. “What are you loaded with?”

“Canister.”

“Good man,” Victor said. He was gazing at the lavish regimental colors of the First Foot Guards, and he was imagining those two flags being paraded through Paris. The emperor would be pleased! To have the flags of the king of England’s own guards! The emperor, he thought, would probably use the flags as tablecloths, or perhaps as sheets on which to bounce his new Austrian bride, and that thought made him laugh out loud.

The voltigeurs were scrambling uphill now because the British line was getting closer. Very nearly there, Victor thought. He would let them come almost to the top of the hill because that would bring the line right into the face of his six guns. He took a last glance north at Leval’s men and saw they were pressing closer to the pinewood. In half an hour, he thought, this small British army would have collapsed. It would take at least another hour to re-form the troops, then they would assault the Spanish at the beach’s end. How many flags would they send to Paris? A dozen? Twenty? Maybe enough to furnish all the emperor’s beds.

“Now, sir?” The battery commander asked.

“Wait, wait,” Victor said, and, knowing victory was his, turned and waved at the two grenadier battalions that he had held in reserve. “Forward!” he shouted to their general, Rousseau. This was no time to keep troops in reserve. Now was the moment to throw all his men, all three thousand of them, at fewer than half their number. He plucked an aide’s elbow. “Tell the bandmaster I want to hear the ‘Marseillaise’!” He grinned. The Emperor had banned the ‘Marseillaise,’ disliking its revolutionary sentiments, but Victor knew the song had retained its popularity and would inspire his soldiers to the slaughter of their enemies. He sang a line to himself, “
Le jour de gloire est arrivé
,” then laughed aloud. The battery commander looked up at him with surprise. “Now,” Victor said, “now!”

“
Tirez!
”

The guns fired, obliterating the view of the beach, of the sea, and of the distant white city in a bellying cloud of smoke.

“Now!” General Ruffin called to his battalion commanders.

Muskets hammered back into French shoulders. More smoke filled the sky.

“Fix bayonets!” the marshal shouted, and waved his white-plumed hat toward the cannon smoke. “And forward,
mes braves!
Forward!”

The band played, the drummers beat, and the French went to finish their job. The day of glory had arrived.

C
OLONEL
V
ANDAL
was some way north of Sharpe. The colonel was in the center of his battalion, which formed the left flank of the French line, and Sharpe, out by Duncan’s guns, was at the right flank of the British line, which still overlapped the thicker, larger French formation. “This way,” he shouted to his riflemen and ran behind the two companies of the 47th who were now down to one large company, and then behind the half battalion of the 67th until he was opposite Vandal.

“It’s grim work!” Colonel Wheatley had again ridden up behind Sharpe. This time he was talking to Major Gough, who commanded the 87th that was now on Sharpe’s left. “And no damned dons to help us,” Wheatley went on. “How are your fellows, Gough?”

“My men are staunch, sir,” Gough said, “but I need more of them. Need more men.” He had to shout over the din of the volleys. The 87th had lost four officers and over a hundred men. The wounded were in the pines, and more were joining them as the French musket balls slammed home. The file-closers were shouting at men to close on the center and so the 87th shrank. They still fired back, but their muskets were being fouled with powder residue and every cartridge was harder to load.

“There are no more men,” Wheatley said, “unless the Spanish come.” He glanced along the enemy line. The problem was simple enough. The French had too many men and so they could replace their casualties while he could not. He could outfight them man to man, but the French advantage in numbers was starting to matter. He could wait in hope that Lapeña would send reinforcements, but if none came then he must inevitably be whittled down, a process that would go faster and faster as his line shrank.

“Sir!” an aide shouted, and Wheatley looked to see that the Spanish officer who had ridden to summon reinforcements was returning.

Galiana curbed his horse by Wheatley and, for a heartbeat, looked too upset to talk. Then he blurted out his news. “General Lapeña refuses to move,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Wheatley stared at the Spaniard. “Good God,” he said in a surprisingly mild tone, then looked back to Gough. “I think, Gough,” he said, “that we have to give them steel.”

Gough looked at the throng of Frenchmen through the smoke. The 87th’s colors just above the colonel’s head were twitching as the bullets struck them. “Steel?” he asked.

“We have to do something, Gough. Can’t just stand here and die.”

Sharpe had lost sight of Vandal. There was too much smoke. He saw a Frenchman stoop to the body of a fallen Portuguese skirmisher and rummage through the dead man’s pockets. Sharpe knelt, aimed, and fired. When the rifle smoke cleared he saw the Frenchman on all fours, head down. He reloaded. He was tempted to ram the ball down naked rather than wrapping it in its greased leather patch. He thought the French might charge at any moment and the thing to do now was to kill them fast, to pour fire at them, and a naked ball in a rifle was quick to load. At this distance the inaccuracy did not matter. But if he saw Vandal again he wanted to be sure of his shot and so he took a leather patch, wrapped the ball, and rammed it down the rifled barrel. “Look for their officers,” he told his men.

A pistol sounded beside Sharpe and he looked to see that Captain Galiana had dismounted and was now reloading the small weapon. “Fire!” the lieutenant commanding the closest company of the 87th shouted and the muskets blasted out smoke. A man fell back from the front rank, a hole black in his forehead.

“Leave him be!” a sergeant shouted. “He’s a dead ’un! Reload!”

“Fix bayonets!” the shout came from just behind the 87th and was repeated down the line, getting fainter as the order traveled north. “Fix bayonets!”

“God save Ireland,” Harper said. “This is desperate.”

“Not much choice,” Sharpe said. The French were winning by sheer numbers. They were pressing forward, and Colonel Wheatley could either retreat or attack. To retreat was to lose, but to attack was at least to test the French.

“Swords, sir?” Slattery asked.

“Fix swords,” Sharpe said. It was no time to worry about whether this was his fight or not. The battle trembled. Another French volley slammed into the red ranks. Then two gouts of canister slashed away the blue-coated men who had fired the shots. An Irish boy was screaming horribly, rolling in front of the ranks with bloody hands clutching his groin. A sergeant silenced him with a merciful blow of a musket butt to the skull.

“Forward now! Forward!” a brigade major bellowed.

“The 87th will advance!” Gough shouted. “
Faugh a ballagh!
”

“
Faugh a ballagh!
” the surviving men of the 87th responded, and went forward.

“Steady, boys!” Gough shouted. “Steady!”

But the 87th did not want to be steady. A quarter of their number was either dead or wounded, and they had a seething anger against the men who had punished them in the last hour, and so they went eagerly. The sooner they were at the enemy, the sooner that enemy would die, and Gough could not hold them. They began to run, and as they ran they sounded a high-pitched scream, terrifying in itself, and their seventeen-inch bayonets were bright in the sun, which was almost at its winter zenith.

“Forward!” The men to Sharpe’s right were keeping pace with the 87th. Duncan’s gunners handspiked their cannon around to rake the flank of the French line.

“And kill! And kill!” Ensign Keogh was shouting at the top of his voice. He carried his slim sword in one hand and gripped his cocked hat in the other.

“
Faugh a ballagh!
” Gough bellowed.

French muskets roared horribly close and men were torn backward, blood spraying their neighbors, but the charge could not be stopped now. All along the line the redcoats were going forward with bayonets because to stay still was to die and to retreat was to lose. They numbered fewer than a thousand now, and they were attacking three times their number. “Get into them! Get into them!” an officer of the Cauliflowers shouted. “Kill them, kill them!”

The front rank of the French tried to step back, but the ranks behind thrust them on, and the redcoats struck. Bayonets rammed forward. Muskets fired at less than a yard’s range. A sergeant of the 87th was chanting as though he were training men at the barracks. “Lunge! Recover! Stance! Lunge! Recover! Stance! Not in his ribs, you bloody fool! In his belly! Lunge! Recover! Stance! In the belly, boys, in the belly! Lunge!”