From somewhere beyond the high-road a bugle called the familiar running triplets of the order to open fire. ‘That’s the signal, my boys! Let’s go!’ Dunnett had waited six years to avenge himself on the French and now, his sabre drawn, he led the Riflemen over the crest.
The appearance of the Rifles was so sudden that the closest French skirmishers were trapped. The sword-bayonets rammed down, were kicked free, then carried on. Dunnett shouted an incoherent challenge and slashed madly with his sabre, not striking anyone, but hissing the blade so fiercely through the smoky air that the French scrambled to escape such an apparent maniac. The fifty Riflemen on the far side of the road attacked with the same sudden and vicious desperation, driving the panicked Voltigeurs down the long slope. The mad charge stopped a hundred yards short of La Haye Sainte as the Riflemen abandoned the pursuit of the French to take up their firing positions. First, before aiming, they unclipped their sword-bayonets so that the heavy blades would not unbalance their rifles.
Each man had loaded carefully. They had cleaned their rifle barrels by the old expedient of pissing down the barrels, sluicing the caked powder deposits loose, then pouring out the fouled liquid. Then, when the barrels had dried, and using the extra-fine powder they carried in their horns, the Riflemen had charged their rifles. They had wrapped their bullets in a scrap of greased leather that not only helped the bullet grip the spiralling lands in the barrel, but, when the weapon was fired, expanded to block any of the exploding gas escaping past the bullet through the barrel’s grooves. It took over a minute to load a rifle so meticulously, but the resultant shot would be as accurate as any weapon in the world.
Now, in the brief space and time they had won, the Riflemen aimed at the gunners who were visible above the hedge of La Haye Sainte’s kitchen garden. The range was a hundred yards; a simple rifle shot, but misted by the drifting smoke. The gunners in the garden were too busy serving their guns to be aware of the threat.
Dunnett did not hurry his men. He must have been tempted to urge them to fire quickly, for the French skirmishers were regrouping at the foot of the slope, but instead he trusted his men and they did not disappoint him.
The first rifles crashed their brass butts into shoulders bruised raw by a day’s fighting. White smoke spurted across the slope. The French skirmishers began firing uphill and two Greenjackets lurched backwards. Other Riflemen still took careful aim. A gunner stared over his rammer at the slope and a bullet took him in his open mouth. A French artillery officer spun backwards, half clambered up, then began crawling under his gun’s trail. More rifles fired. The officer slumped flat. A handful of gunners fled to the farmhouse where they crowded and obstructed each other in the narrow door, and where they were struck by a flail of rifle-fire. Those Greenjackets who had already fired reloaded, not with the fine powder and wrapped bullet, but by tap loading with a normal cartridge. Then they turned their weapons on the skirmishers.
‘Withdraw!’ Dunnett, the executions neatly carried out, shouted at his men.
‘Got the bastard!’ Harper shouted.
‘Where?’
‘Look at the tree, then left thirty yards.’
Sharpe was downhill of Harper. ‘Kneel down. Aim your rifle at the farm.’
Harper, bemused, obeyed. He braced his left leg forward, knelt on his right knee, and aimed his rifle at the kitchen garden which seemed to be filled with dead artillerymen. The first Riflemen were already running uphill. ‘Hurry, for Christ’s sake!’ Harper muttered.
Sharpe lay flat on the ground and thrust his rifle between Harper’s right thigh and left calf. Now Sharpe was effectively hidden from the staff officers close to the Prince who were all staring at the slaughtered gunners in the farm’s garden. The Prince’s horse was sideways on to the valley, presenting the Prince’s left shoulder to Sharpe’s rifle sights.
Sharpe had not had time to load with the good powder, or wrap a ball in leather. Instead he was using the commonplace coarse-powder cartridge, but if God was good this evening then an ordinary musket cartridge would suffice to avenge a thousand dead men and perhaps to save the lives of a thousand more.
‘God save Ireland,’ Harper hissed, ‘but will you bloody hurry yourself?’
‘Don’t fire till I do,’ Sharpe said calmly.
‘We’ll bloody die together if you don’t hurry!’ Sharpe and Harper were almost the last Riflemen on the slope. The rest were sprinting back to safety, while the enraged Voltigeurs were hurrying after them. Harper changed his aim to point his rifle at a French officer who seemed particularly lively.
Sharpe aimed at the Prince’s belly. The Young Frog was no more than a hundred paces away, close enough for Sharpe to see the ivory hilt of his big sabre. The rifle bullet would fall a foot over a hundred paces, so Sharpe raised the muzzle a tiny fraction.
‘For the love of Ireland, will you bloody kill the bastard?’
‘Ready?’ Sharpe said. ‘Fire!’
Both men fired together. Sharpe’s rifle hammered his shoulder as smoke gouted to hide the Prince.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ Harper saw his target plucked backwards, and now he hauled Sharpe to his feet and both men sprinted away towards the crest. Sharpe had just staged an assassination in full view of an army, but no one shouted at him and no one gaped in astonishment because no one, it seemed, had noticed a thing. A French roundshot screamed low overhead. A Voltigeur’s bullet clipped Sharpe’s sword scabbard and thudded into the ground.
Sharpe began laughing. Harper joined him. Together they reeled over the crest, still laughing. ‘Right in the bloody belly!’ Sharpe said with undisguised glee.
‘With your bloody marksmanship, you probably killed the Duke.’
‘It was a good shot, Patrick.’ Sharpe spoke as fervently as any young Rifleman first mastering the complex weapon. ‘I felt it go home!’
Major Warren Dunnett saw the two Riflemen grinning like apes and assumed they shared his pleasure at a task well done. ‘A successful venture, I think?’ Dunnett said modestly, but he was clearly eager for praise.
Sharpe gave it gladly. ‘Very. Allow me to congratulate you, Dunnett.’ The efficient Greenjacket foray had taken the French cannon at La Haye Sainte out of the battle. Their gunners were dead, cut down by the best marksmen in either army.
Sharpe led Harper to the rear of a British battery from where he could see Rebecque and a group of other Dutch officers helping the Prince away. The Prince had slumped sideways, and was only being held in his saddle by the support of his Chief of Staff. ‘Harry!’ Sharpe shouted at Lieutenant Webster, the Prince’s only remaining British aide. ‘What happened, Harry?’
Webster spurred across to Sharpe. ‘It’s bad news, sir. The Prince was hit in the left shoulder. It isn’t too serious, but he can’t stay on the field. One of those damned skirmishers hit him, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Sharpe spoke with obvious remorse.
‘It is indeed bad news, sir.’ Webster offered sympathetic agreement. ‘But his Highness will live. They’re taking him to the surgeons, then back to Brussels.’
Harper was trying not to laugh. Sharpe scowled. ‘A pity.’ His voice was fervent. ‘A damned bloody pity!’
‘It’s decent of you to be so upset, sir, especially after the way he’s treated you,’ Webster said awkwardly.
‘But you’ll present my regards, Lieutenant?’
‘Of course I will, sir.’ Webster touched his hat, then turned to ride after the wounded Prince.
Harper grinned and mocked Sharpe with imitation. ‘It was a good shot. I felt it go home.’
‘The bugger’s gone, hasn’t he?’ Sharpe said defensively.
‘Aye,’ Harper admitted, then looked ruefully along the British line. ‘And it won’t be long before we’re all gone either. I’ve never seen the like, nor have I.’
Sharpe heard the Irishman’s despair of victory and was tempted to offer agreement, except that a small part of Sharpe refused to give up hope even though he kne
w victory would need a miracle now. The British army was reduced to a ragged line of shrunken, bleeding battalions who crouched in the mud near to the ridge’s crest that was crowned with smoke and riven by the explosions of mud thrown up by the continuing cannonade. Behind the battalions the rear of the ridge was empty but for the dead and the dying and the broken guns. At the edge of the forest the ammunition wagons burned to ash. There were no reserves left.
The two Riflemen trudged through the smoke towards the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers while the French cannon, all but for the two that had been emplaced in La Haye Sainte’s garden, fired on. The valley was shrouded by the cloud of smoke which flickered with the unearthly light of the guns.
By La Belle Alliance a tentative drum tap sounded. There was a pause as the drummer rammed the leather rings down the white ropes to tighten his drumskin, then the sticks sounded a jaunty and confident flurry. There was another pause, a shouted order, and a whole corps of drummers began to beat the pas de charge.
To tell the French that the Imperial Guard was about to fight.
The Emperor left La Belle Alliance, deigning to ride his white horse down the high road almost as far as La Haye Sainte. He stopped a few yards short of the captured farmhouse and watched his beloved Guard march past. To Napoleon’s immortals would go the last honour of this day. The undefeated Guard would cross the pit of hell and break the final remnants of a beaten army.
The Guard marched with bayonets fixed. The flash of French cannon-fire reflected off the thicket of steel blades and from the glossy black sheen of their bearskin hats. The Guard wore the bearskins undecorated for battle, but each man had a waxed canvas sheath, eighteen inches long, strapped to his sabre-briquet, and in the sheaths were the plumes which they would fix to the bearskins for their victory parade in Brussels.
Seven battalions of the Guard marched past the Emperor. With them went the light and powerful horse-drawn eight-pounder cannon that would give the Guard close support when they reached the ridge.
The Guard’s drummers drove the column on. Above them, bright in the valley’s gloom, the spread wings and hooked claws of the Eagles glistened. The Guard carried their colours attached to the Eagles and the stiff silk flags made bright spots of colour against the black bearskins. The Guard were equipped with the finest muskets from the French armouries, their cartridges were packed with the best powder of the Paris mills, and their bayonets and short sabres were sharpened like razors. These were the unbeaten heroes of France marching to victory.
Yet the Guard had never fought Wellington’s infantry.
They cheered as they passed their Emperor. He nodded pleased recognition at men deep in the marching ranks, and raised a hand in benediction to them all. Not an hour before this moment two battalions of the Guard had driven a whole Corps of Prussians out of Plancenoit, now seven full battalions would march against an enemy abraded to breaking point. The last of the Empire’s cavalry rode on the Guard’s flanks and, as the huge column headed deep into the smoke and heat on the valley’s floor, the skirmishers flocked towards it and formed ranks to follow the Guard. Fifteen thousand infantry would make this last triumphant attack.
And it would be a triumph, for the Guard had never failed. But the Guard had never fought the redcoats either.
The Guard left the highway and slanted to their left after they had passed the Emperor. They would cross the fields and climb the slope midway on the British right, following the path made by the cavalry. The drums beat them on. They were led by Marshal Ney, bravest of the brave, who had already had four horses shot from beneath him this day, but who now, on his fifth horse, drew his sword and took his place at the column’s head.
The Guard marched across the field of dead, beneath the gun smoke, to seek the scarred and blackened ridge where the scum of Britain waited. The battle had come to its moment of truth, and the Emperor, his Guard gone to war, turned slowly back to wait for victory.
The Duke galloped along the right of his line. He could see French cavalry at the foot of the slope, but he dared not form his infantry into square for he had seen the approaching Guard and knew he must meet it in line. ‘Form into four ranks!’ he shouted at the remains of Halkett’s brigade. ‘Then lie down again! Four ranks! Lie down!’
The French cannon-fire was fitful now. The redcoats lay down, not to escape the sporadic cannonade, but so they would stay hidden till the very last moment of the Guard’s attack. Only the British officers could see over the ridge’s crest to where the French infantry was a dark shadow slashed by the slanting brightness of their bayonets. The column crept across the valley floor, seemingly propelled by the massive array of drums that beat the pas de charge and only paused to let the Guard give the great shout of the Empire at war: ‘Vive l’Empereur!’
Colonel Joseph Ford gazed with despair at the great assault. Next to him, and still mounted on Sharpe’s horse, Peter d’Alembord gripped the saddle’s pommel. The right side of his saddle-cloth was soaked with blood that had seeped from his bandaged wound. The leg throbbed hugely. He felt weak, so that the shadow of the advancing Guard under the smoke’s shadow seemed to swim before his eyes. He wanted to call out for help for he knew he was losing strength and he suspected the surgeon had cut a blood vessel, but he would not give in; not now, not at this desperate moment when the enemy infantry was at last making its final assault.
‘Sir! Colonel Ford, sir!’ A staff officer from brigade, mounted on a limping horse, came to the rear of the battalion. ‘Colonel Ford, sir?’
Ford turned dully to face the officer, but said nothing.
‘What is it?’ d’Alembord managed to ask.
‘Colours to the rear,’ the staff officer said.
For a few seconds d‘Alembord forgot his wound and his nausea and his weakness. He forgot his fears because he had never heard of such an order, not once in all his years of fighting. ‘Colours to the rear?’ he finally managed to ask in a shocked voice.
‘General’s orders, sir. We’re not to give the Crapauds the satisfaction of capturing them. I’m sorry, sir, I really am, but it’s orders.’ He gestured to the rear area where the colours of other battalions were already being carried away. ‘Colour parties are to assemble behind our light cavalry, sir. Quickly, please, sir.’
D‘Alembord looked to where two sergeants held the battalion’s silk colours that had been riddled with musket-fire, blackened by smoke, and stained with blood. Seven men had died this day while holding the colours, but now the bright flags were to be rolled up, slid into their leather tubes, and hidden. D’Alembord thought there was something shameful in the gesture, but he supposed it was preferable to letting the French capture the colours of a whole army, and so he gestured the Sergeants to the rear. ‘You heard the order. Take them away.’
D‘Alembord’s voice was resigned. Till this moment he had harboured a shred of optimism, but the order to take the colours to safety proved that the battle was lost. The French had won, and so the colours would begin the British retreat. The Emperor might have his victory, but he would not be given the satisfaction of piling the captured colours amidst the jubilant crowds of Paris. The great squares of heavy fringed silk were carried away, going back to where the last British cavalry waited to gallop them to safety. D’Alembord watched the flags disappear into the smoke and felt bereft.
Sharpe also saw the flags being carried to the rear. He had come back to the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, but, not wanting to interfere with either Ford or d’Alembord’s command, he deliberately posted himself fifty paces from the battalion’s left flank. He loaded his rifle.
Harper, his rifle already reloaded, watched the Imperial Guard and crossed himself.
Lieutenant Doggett saw the two Riflemen return and rode his horse to join them. Sharpe looked up at him and shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant.’
‘You’re sorry, sir?’
‘The Prince wouldn’t listen to reason.’
‘Oh.’ Doggett, seeing the ruin of
his career, could say nothing more.
‘I hit the bugger in the shoulder, you see,’ Sharpe explained, instead of in the belly. It was just plain bad marksmanship. I’m sorry.’
Doggett stared at Sharpe. ‘You ...’ He could not finish.
‘But I wouldn’t worry,’ Sharpe said, ‘the bugger’s got enough to worry about without pissing all over your commission. And if you fight with us now, Lieutenant, I’ll make sure your Colonel gets a glowing report. And I don’t want to sound cocksure, but maybe my recommendation is worth more than the Prince’s?’
Doggett smiled. ‘Yes, sir.’
It seemed cocksure to even surmise survival. Doggett turned to look into the smoke-shot valley that was filled with the overwhelming enemy attack. An errant shaft of sunlight glinted brilliant gold from an Eagle. Beneath the gold the long dark coats and the tall black bearskins made the attackers seem like sinister giants. Cavalry, pennons and lances high, followed the huge column, while further back a shifting mass of shadows betrayed the advance of the rest of the French infantry. The drums were clearly audible beneath the louder percussion of the remaining French guns. ‘What happens now?’ Doggett could not help asking.
‘Those bastards in front are called the Imperial Guard,’ Sharpe said, ‘and their column will attack our line, and our line ought to beat the hell out of their column, but after that?’ Sharpe could not answer his own question, for this battle had already gone far outside his own experience. The British line should beat the French column, for it always had and it was an article of an infantryman’s faith that it always would, but Sharpe sensed that this column was different, that even if it initially recoiled from the volley fire it would somehow survive and bring on all the other enemy behind in one last cataclysmic attack. An empire and an emperor’s pride rode on this drum-driven attack.
‘You don’t worry about what happens, Mr Doggett.’ Harper’s voice was sombre as he rammed the last half inch bullet into his seven-barrelled gun. ‘Once you hear the Old Trousers you just kill as many of the bastards as you can. Because if you don’t, then sure as eggs the bastards will kill you.’
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