Sharpe's Waterloo (51 page)

‘South Essex! Halt!' The voice filled the space between the blood-reeking mud and the smoke. ‘Sergeant Harper!'

‘Sir!' Harper's voice answered from the rear of the battalion.

‘You will kill the next man who takes a step backwards, and that includes officers!'

‘Very good, sir!' Harper's voice held a convincing edge of anger as an implicit promise that he would indeed murder any man who took another backwards pace.

Sharpe stood in front of the battalion and with his back to the French column. His horse, which d‘Alembord had been riding, was being held by a sergeant in the Grenadier Company. Sharpe suspected the man had been ready to mount and flee from the expected defeat, and now the Sergeant stared with fear and defiance at Sharpe. ‘Bring the horse here!' Sharpe called to the Sergeant, but not angrily, instead keeping his voice almost matter-of-fact as though there was not a damned great column of victorious French infantry storming across the ridge's crest not a pistol's shot behind him. ‘Bring the horse here! Quickly now!' Sharpe wanted to be on horseback so that every man in the battalion could see him. These soldiers had no colours any more, they had precious few officers any more, so they must be able to see who led them and see that he was not flinching from the drum-driven threat which pounded so close.

‘Form ranks! Hurry now!' Sharpe dropped his rifle into the saddle holster, then pulled himself awkwardly into the saddle. He was secretly flinching because he expected a volley of French musketry to chop him and the horse brutally down, but he had to show calmness in front of the frightened battalion. They knew him, they trusted him, and Sharpe knew they would fight like the gutter-born bastards they were if they were just given a chance and given leadership. He thanked the Sergeant for bringing the horse, then, as he fiddled his left foot into the stirrup, he turned to stare at the four shaken ranks. ‘Make sure you're loaded!' He turned the horse so he could see the enemy. Christ, but they were close! They were marching towards the open space to the right of the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers, a space left by a panicking battalion that had evidently fled. Sharpe toyed with the idea of marching his own men into that gaping hole, but he knew he was too late. The French had almost pierced the British line, so now they must be attacked on their open right flank.

A mounted French officer was riding on that open flank and he pointed with his sword at Sharpe, doubtless showing his men a target, and the sight of the French officer's confident expression angered Sharpe who, to show his utter disdain, turned away from the enemy to face his own men. ‘We're going to advance! Then we're going to give those poxy bastards some volley fire!' He looked along the apprehensive ranks; powder stained, bloodied and ashamed, but they were steady now and had their muskets loaded. This might be a shrunken and half defeated battalion, but to Sharpe it was a weapon that he could fight with a lethal precision. He blinked as a musket bullet slapped close past his face, then grinned as he drew his long sword. He wanted the men to see his pleasure, because this was the moment when a soldier had to take a perverse delight in killing. Remorse and pity could come later, for they were the luxuries of victory, but now these scum must kill and the enemy must fear the joy of their killing. Sharpe held the sword high, then dropped its point towards the enemy. ' ‘Talion will advance! Sergeant Harper! If you please!'

‘ 'Talion!' the Irishman's voice was huge and confident, the voice of a man unworriedly doing his job, ‘Talion! Forward! March!

They marched. It was only seconds since they had been retreating and their ranks had been shaking loose into chaos, but now, given leadership, they went towards the conquering Guard. Sharpe stood his horse still to let the battalion divide either side of him, and only then did he walk forward, a horseman advancing in the centre of the marching battalion. He saw that a Brunswick infantry battalion was raking the far flank of the French column, but the fire was not sufficent to stop the Guard, only to deflect it towards the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers. There were still no troops facing the column's head, while the rear ranks of the great formation were clumsily spreading outwards to form a musket line that was designed to drown the ridge's shaken defenders with volley fire. Behind the Guard a swarm of cavalry and lesser infantry was pressing up the lower slope, ready to turn a British defeat into rout and slaughter.

‘Grenadier Company! Halt! ‘Talion will wheel to the right! Right wheel!' Sharpe was taking a risk that his men would understand and obey the difficult order in the noise and heat and fear. It would have been simpler just to halt the battalion and to fire obliquely at the French column, but such a compromise would have stranded the left half of the battalion a long way from the enemy. Yet if the battalion wheeled in good order they would sweep round like a swinging gate to face the enemy's unfolding flank. The Grenadier company, on the right of the line, stayed still as the remaining companies hinged on them. ‘At the double!' Sergeant Huckfield hurried the light company who had the furthest to go.

The wheeling line was ragged, but that did not matter. They were carrying their muskets to face the French, and Sharpe felt the exultation of handling a battalion in battle. He could see apprehension on the face of the mounted French officer who understood exactly what horror was about to be unleashed on his men.

‘Halt!' Sharpe stopped the swinging battalion fifty paces from the column's flank. The whole battle was now reduced to a few dirty paces of smoke-fogged air. ‘Present!' The battalion's heavy muskets came up. Sharpe waited a heartbeat. He saw the Guards' mouths open to chant their litany of praise for the Emperor, but before they could make a sound, Sharpe at last gave the order.

‘Fire!'

He heard the old sound, the blessed sound, the splintering crash of a battalion's muskets spitting bullets, and he saw the deploying wing of the column jerk as the bullets struck home. A few Frenchmen fired back, but they were still marching and their muskets were unbalanced by the fixed bayonets and so their fire went wild. The mounted officer was down, his horse thrashing on the ground as he crawled away. Harper was shouting at the battalion to reload. Simon Doggett, still on horseback, was firing a pistol over the battalion's head. Ramrods rattled in musket barrels as the men desperately thrust bullets down onto powder.

Sharpe's battalion threatened the Imperial Guard's right, while on their left flank the Brunswickers fired another volley, but directly in front of the column was nothing but a broken mass of redcoats. The British cavalry closed on the frightened men, but, before the sabres could be used on the redcoats, the Duke was suddenly among them, and somehow the redcoats were stopped and turned by his confident voice. Staff officers rode among the fugitives, order was shaken out of their chaos, muskets were levelled, and a ragged volley sheeted flames at the column's head. The Guard, assailed on three sides, halted and shrank away from the musketry.

Sharpe watched the central ranks of the column pushing against the motionless men ahead. ‘Fire!' Sharpe gave the French right flank another bellyful of bullets. The column was still trying to advance, and the rearmost ranks were swinging obliquely out to form the musket line, and Sharpe sensed that the whole fate of this battle hung on the next few seconds. If the French could be made to move forward over their own dead then they could flood the ridge with their revenge and the fragile British line would shatter. Yet if this column could be driven backwards then the British line would earn a respite in which night or the Prussians might snatch survival from defeat.

‘Forward! Forward! Forward!' a French voice shouted huge and desperately in the column's centre. The drums were still beating their message of victory.
‘Vive l'Empereur!'

‘Forward! Forward for the Emperor!'

‘Fix bayonets!' Sharpe shouted in response.

The battalion, already reloading, dropped their half-torn cartridges and clawed their bayonets free. They slotted the blades on to blackened muzzles. The French drums sounded desperately close. Sharpe spurred ahead of the battalion. His horse was nervous and slick with sweat, and his long sword was still stained with the blood he had drawn in the yard at Hougoumont. He saw the French column push over the bodies of the men his last volley had killed, and he wondered whether he had enough bayonets to break these confident Frenchmen apart, but there was only one way to discover that answer and Sharpe suddenly felt the old excitement of battle, and the mad joy of it, and he raised his long bloodied blade high and ordered his battalion forward. ‘Charge!'

The survivors of the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers charged with all the fury of bitter men who had taken hell all day and who now faced the pristine, untouched favourites of an Emperor who had been sheltered from death till this moment. They charged with bloodied and powder-stained faces, and they screamed like furies as they carried their long blades forward.

The flank of the column tried to retreat from the charge, but the Frenchmen only pressed against the ranks behind that still tried to advance to the drumbeat. The sound of the drums was menacing, yet even the men sheltered in the very heart of the column knew that something was wrong. Their left flank was dying from the Brunswicker volleys, the Duke had rallied the redcoats in their front, and now Sharpe's men struck home on the right.

Sharpe slashed back with his heels, the horse leaped forward, and his sword crashed down like an axe. The blade drove a long splinter from a parrying musket, then hacked down again to thump through a bearskin and drive a Frenchman to his knees. The horse screamed and reared as a bayonet stabbed its chest, but then the redcoats swarmed past Sharpe to carry their blades at the enemy. The Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers had a score to settle, and so they ripped into the Emperor's immortals with a savagery that only men atoning for a moment's cowardice could show.

Sharpe's horse was wounded, but not fatally. It screamed with fear or pain as he crashed a musket aside with his sword then lunged at the Frenchman's face. The man recoiled from the blade, then went down beneath the bayonets of two snarling redcoats who thrust hard to force their blades through the Frenchman's heavy blue greatcoat. The enemy were sweating and edging back. The column was so closely packed that the French had no space to use their weapons properly. Sharpe's men were keening as they killed, crooning a foul music as they lunged and stabbed and gouged and fought across the dead. Sharpe's horse half stumbled on a corpse and he flailed with the sword to find his balance. The ridge stank of blood and sweat and powder smoke. A vast crash announced that Harper had fired his volley gun point blank into the ranks of the Guard, and now the Irishman threw himself into the space his bullets had made. He widened the space by stabbing with his sword-bayonet, each vicious thrust accompanied by a Gaelic war-cry.

Lieutenant Doggett, still on horseback, shouted at the files to give way then crashed his horse hard into the French ranks and stabbed down with his slim sword. He was screaming madly, covering his terror with a sound mad enough for a smoking field of blood. Ahead of Sharpe an Eagle swayed over the bearskin hats. He slashed his sword towards it, but the French ranks were so close that he could not force a path towards the trophy. He swore at a man as he killed him, then drove the sword into a moustached, sun-tanned face and twisted the steel to flense the man's cheek away. ‘The Eagle! The Eagle!' Sharpe screamed, then cursed the men who barred his way. Beneath and beside Sharpe the bayonets stabbed and twisted, but suddenly the enemy's gilded standard vanished, plucked backwards from the ridge top as the Emperor's Guard began their retreat. The drums had fallen silent and the immortal undefeated Guard were running away.

They ran. One moment they had been trying to fight, the next they were shouting that the day was lost and they were scrambling backwards from the bloody bayonets with panic and fear on their moustached faces, and the redcoats, panting and bloodied like hounds at their kill, watched in silence as the enemy élite fled. The Guard had been defeated by a remnant of red-coated killers who had sprung from the mud to maul an emperor's glory.

‘Don't give them a chance to stand!' A commanding voice rose clear among the smoke and chaos. The Duke, cantering his horse behind the victorious battalions, was staring intently at the fleeing French. ‘Don't let them stand! Go forward now! See them off our land!' Typically there was an edge of impatience in the Duke's voice as though his men, having performed the miracle of defeating the Imperial Guard, had disappointed him by not yet converting that defeat into rout. Yet, equally typically, the Duke's eye had missed nothing and he was not graceless at this moment of salvation. ‘Mr Sharpe! I am beholden to you! That is your battalion now! So take it forward!'

“Talion!' Sharpe had no time to savour his reward. Instead he had to straighten his line to face the valley where the French were still massed, and from where their next attack would surely come. ‘Light company stand firm! Right flank forward! March!'

The battalion wheeled left to face the enemy again. They had to negotiate the bodies of the French dead and dying. A man called for his mother, wailing foully until the slice of a bayonet stilled his voice. A wounded horse, its rump a mess of blood and torn flesh, galloped across the slope in front ofSharpe. “Talion will advance!' The Sergeants and Corporals echoed Sharpe's order. Sharpe could not tell if any officers were left, though he saw Simon Doggett was still alive and he heard Patrick Harper's voice, and then the smoke cleared from the ridge's crest and Sharpe advanced his men to the very edge of the valley and, amazingly, miraculously, they saw that there would be no more French attacks for the enemy had not just retreated, but had been broken.