An Act Of Courage h-7

by Allan Mallinson

  For a full twenty minutes the Sixth bore the fire. Shot fizzed, whistled and buzzed over them, or tore through flesh as if it were paper. Dragoons took shelter behind their grounded troopers. Hervey did likewise. He felt ashamed, but then a mare was disembowelled not twenty yards from him, her dragoon sheltering unscathed, and he stopped feeling and began praying.

  The silence came as suddenly as had the cannonade. Dragoons jumped to their feet without an order, getting horses up, throwing on saddles. Then came the rattle of musketry.

  ‘Mount!’

  It was more an understanding than a command. No corporal shouted, no serjeant barked; the lines seemed to form and dress of their own accord. The lieutenant-colonel had but one decision to make: carbines or sabres.

  To a man, the Sixth were itching to draw swords. Through the olive groves were the enemy – and, beyond, the guns which had just felled their comrades. Going at them with cut and thrust was what they wanted, the way they liked, at a good lick, knee-to-knee, spurs dug in.

  But Lord George Irvine was no mere sabreur. If the French broke through the Guards the other side of the olive groves, then it would be volley-fire that would check them, not slashing and hacking among the trees.

  ‘Carbines!’

  Dragoons began priming firelocks, and the officers withdrew to the flanks. Hervey wished he had one: a pistol served well at three lengths, but no further. He went through the motions with his service pair, however; he might as well add to the volley, and, anyway, the drill quietened the mind. Hearing a battle rather than seeing it was a strange thing. A tutored ear ought to be able to read its course: what could he make of it? The musketry was ragged, and all along the line in both directions. He imagined voltigeurs were skirmishing the length of the Portiña, with counter-fire from the light companies, and single, aimed shots from the Sixtieth’s riflemen and the German Legion. Then came a terrific volleying – by battalion, it sounded like: double rank, five hundred muskets discharged as one, and then the rear rank advancing and giving another volley while the first calmly reloaded, ready to begin again. He had seen them, at practice and in earnest. They drilled like a machine, deafened the more and smoke-grimed with each discharge, lips blackened and mouths parched with every bite of a cartridge, but working on mechanically, ramrods clattering like flying shuttles in a power-mill, as if the noise and the smoke actually helped them forget themselves. And then the French volleys in reply: weaker, for they advanced in column and could not deploy so many muskets, but plenty of them still.

  He could not, would not, picture the effect of those volleys, French or British; his sole thought now was whether the Guards would throw back the columns. Was it possible the French could break through those lines of red? He had seen the infantry volleying at Corunna: unless the artillery had knocked them down, he could not see how anything could breach those red walls. But that was the question: how well had the Guards weathered the storm of shot?

  Out from the olive groves trotted Major Joseph Edmonds on his barb, calm yet determined-looking. Lord George Irvine had posted him with the divisional commander to read the battle on his behalf. The eyes of every man in the Sixth were on him: was it success the other side of the trees, or was it destruction?

  ‘Well, Edmonds?’ asked Lord George, calmly.

  ‘The Guards have thrown them back. Sherbrooke’s going to order the advance. I believe we ought to be moving forward. Cotton’s man is telling him the same.’

  General Cotton was fifty yards away, conferring with his staff. He turned, lofted his sword and signalled the advance.

  ‘You don’t think it over already, Edmonds?’

  ‘I think not, Colonel. There are plenty of reserves the other side of the Portiña, and a great host of chasseurs uncommitted still. Sherbrooke’ll have to judge his advance carefully.’

  Hervey and the rest of them were straining to hear the exchange, but the orders came soon enough.

  ‘Regiment will advance!’

  They surged forward into the olive groves as the cannonading began again. This time the shot went another way. Hervey wondered why.

  Out of the trees, the other side, a view of the field at last, smoke everywhere. He gasped at what he saw. Before them were two lines of red – bloodied red – men lying where they had fallen. Not shoulder-to-shoulder, thank God, but in lines quite distinct, as if they had fallen at attention. Beyond, between the lines and the Portiña, it looked like a patchwork of earth-brown and blue – bloodied blue (and bloodied earth, too). It was not possible to advance in a straight line without trampling a dead or dying Frenchman.

  Batteries thundered left and right, French and British – it made no difference: the noise was stupefying. It actually seemed to penetrate, like a bullet: he could feel it. Jessye felt it too. She stood stock-still, mane on end, ears back. This was battle fiercer by far than Corunna. He began shivering. It was infernal, ghastly, like a representation of hell. If only could they draw their swords and charge into the mêlée – anything but just sitting here!

  Hervey struggled to make sense of things, for every gun, French and British, seemed to be turned on the same place. Those on the Cerro de Cascajal fired in enfilade at the British as they plunged in pursuit into the bed of the Portiña, while those in the bastion of Pajar de Vergara were enfilading from the other direction as the French clambered out.

  What he did not see, next, for the thickening smoke and fountains of earth, was the sudden reverse. The lines of red, disordered by the scramble across the Portiña, and by the artillery, and by the headlong chase beyond, stopped dead in their tracks, as if they had run up against a giant wall.

  The batteries ceased firing abruptly as the gunners tried to realign their pieces. The smoke cleared just enough for Hervey to see red coats – and then many more blue, swarming like wasps on fallen plums, so that he was certain every red coat would disappear.

  Then through the smoke he saw General Mackenzie’s brigade rising from the Portiña, advancing in support of the Guards. Seeing the tide turning in front of them, they halted and ported arms, knowing perfectly what must come.

  Lord George Irvine perceived that the battle was changing too. ‘Return carbines! Draw swords!’

  Now there were redcoats running back, Guards and Line alike, and the French pursuing. General Mackenzie’s brigade let their reeling comrades through, then presented muskets when the line of fire was clear. They volleyed. It was like a whipcrack among errant hounds. The French wavered then halted. Behind the brigade, the Guards were re-forming, and the Line regiments too. Hervey could scarce believe it: they had looked so broken. Soon there were rolling volleys tearing into the mass of bluecoats. One whole division began giving way – slowly at first, retiring steadily, but then at the double. They fell back so quickly that they exposed the right flank of the division next to them.

  General Cotton saw his chance. ‘Brigade will advance!’

  Lord George Irvine raised his sword and pointed it towards the French, turning his head to look for the acknowledgement of his squadron leaders. Every man cheered.

  The brigade billowed forward in line, a picture of eagerness. They crossed the Portiña at the trot; and then there was no holding the pace. They took off at the charge, three regiments in line, directly into the open flank of the left-most division.

  It was Hervey’s first time against infantry. He pointed rather than lofted his sabre, as the manual prescribed, and dug in his spurs – if only to encourage himself against the bayonets. The steel could yet impale every last one of them. Could impale them – if the French formed square, or even threw out a flank.

  But they didn’t. Instead, the dragoons fell on a cowering column, the muskets shielding faces rather than thrusting.

  The slaughter was easy at first, the points of five hundred sabres finding their mark, if not all fatally. Hervey took a man in the shoulder, and then made a powerful cut against another who was crouching with his musket on-guard, catching the side of his head and slicing o
ff the ear before cutting through the stock and into the neck. Soon there were too many men on the ground, horses unable or unwilling to press on. Everywhere, the French were throwing down their arms and shouting for quarter, while others at the rear of the column were taking cover among the scattered olive trees. Some were trying to re-form, bravely, volleying as best they could before retiring. Dragoons lunged at them all the harder, as if their pride were affronted.

  ‘Rally! Rally! Rally!’

  It was all Hervey could hear. He began shouting himself: ‘Rally! Rally! Rally!’

  He saw a man fall dead from the saddle close by, and realized there was musketry yet, though it was impossible to hear.

  ‘Rally! Rally! Rally!’

  He saw the troop quartermaster using the flat of his sword against his dragoons with as much vigour as he had used the edge against the French, and cursing them worse, until somehow the squadrons began to re-form at last. There was cheering from the infantry behind them, certain the day was now theirs.

  Back from the smoky melee, in full view of all, appeared Corporal Armstrong, leaning from the saddle, fist clenched firmly on the epaulette of a général de division. General Cotton cantered over, saluted the Frenchman with his sword, then turned to Lord George Irvine. ‘Lord George,’ he called, boisterously, and for a good part of the Sixth to hear. ‘Have the general escorted to the rear by two cornets.’ Then he scowled and pointed at Armstrong. ‘And make that man serjeant!’

  The brigade retired in good order, leaving the Portiña to the infantry. Hervey tried to fathom the French attack. If it had been but a demonstration, to tie down men in the centre while Joseph Bonaparte moved against the flank, it had been a bloody and determined one. Hadn’t Martyn said that the French would press the Spanish instead? But what did he, Hervey, know of a general action? Corunna had been nothing to what he had just seen. And although they had checked the assault – thrown it back, indeed – the day was not over, and it certainly was not yet theirs. The fight continued on the right, evidently, with the redoubt at Pajar de Vergara thundering away again. Was it now the turn of General Campbell’s flank brigade, and the Spanish? Hervey wondered how soon it would be before the Sixth were called to support them. He looked at his watch (he was determined to give the most accurate account in his journal). It was four o’clock. Where could the day have gone?

  A galloper sped along the front of the brigade, throwing up dust knee-high as he reined hard to a halt in front of General Cotton and handed him a written order.

  ‘Norbury – one of Payne’s men,’ said Cornet Laming knowingly. ‘I wonder what our division commander wants.’

  ‘I expect we’re to go once more,’ said Hervey.

  The squadron leaders were already closing on Lord George Irvine as General Cotton rode up again.

  ‘Lord George, General Payne desires me to send a regiment to the left to reinforce Anson in the north valley. That, apparently, is where Wellesley believes the principal attack will come. The Spaniards are sending a division, and Albuquerque’s cavalry too. Fane’s heavies will go as well, as soon as may be able. How many did you lose just now?’

  Lord George tilted his head, as if to say he was uncertain. ‘Forty-odd, but I think we’ll have the most of them back before evening.’

  ‘Very well. You know where is Anson, and the ground there. I should be obliged if you went at once.’

  Lord George touched the peak of his Tarleton. ‘Of course, General.’ Then he gave the briefest of orders to the squadron leaders.

  Sir Edward Lankester returned to his squadron and repeated the brigadier’s instructions word for word. Hervey could scarcely believe their luck in being singled out. This was indeed a general action on the grand scale, and he, Cornet Matthew Hervey, only lately an ink-fingered boy at Shrewsbury School, was to be in the middle of it! With what pride might he write home that evening!

  ‘To the left, form, in column of threes!’

  The Sixth began the manoeuvre by which they would leave General Cotton’s command to come under Colonel Anson’s. Hervey felt his stomach churning. He could hardly contain his delight.

  ‘Walk-march!’

  The bugle repeated the commands. Every trooper was on its toes, sensing they would have another good go soon.

  ‘Trot!’

  Jessye, and four hundred and something others, could hardly wait for the leg when the bugle repeated the Cs, and the regiment began forging back the way it had come only that morning. Except that it might have been an age ago.

  They were riding away from the sound of the guns rather than towards. It felt strange. But it was not long before Hervey realized he could hear the guns on the Cerro de Cascajal again – not just the muzzle-roar but the shot too, and louder by the minute, so that in twenty, as they broached the Cerro de Medellin in the same place as they had in the morning, it sounded as if every gun east of the Portiña was firing onto that flank. He wondered if the French expected to pound the Second Division from the ridge. Would the battle continue into the night, therefore? What would happen then? Before, he had supposed that a contest was decided – finished – by last light. But so regular was the French artillery, and so numerous their infantry, he could easily imagine the ‘machine’ continuing through the night, just as did the factories’ – the power-looms and the steam-hammers. During the retreat to Corunna they had scarcely had a night’s sleep for alarms and excursions, but those had been small affairs, fifty sabres or so. Here, tens of thousands were moving about the field with the facility of hundreds. The British infantry fired like a machine; was it too fanciful to describe the manoeuvring of the French thus?

  Over the Cerro de Medellin, descending now its north slope, the Sixth saw what was the reason for their new orders. When they had left the valley in the morning, it was empty. Now there were so many French – two divisions, by Lieutenant Martyn’s rapid reckoning – that it seemed another army had been hiding and awaiting its moment.

  But a closer look would tell them different. As they halted behind Colonel Anson’s brigade, the officers took out their telescopes. Two divisions there might be, but they did not come on with the élan of those which had just attacked in the centre. There were Spanish troops on the north side of the valley, on the steep slopes of the Sierra de Seguilla, threatening their open right flank, and a British battery on the north-east shoulder of the Cerro de Medellin, able to enfilade them for much of their advance. And a mile to their front, tempting them, it seemed, to advance, were the Duke of Albuquerque’s cavalry. Little wonder the French came on gingerly, thought Hervey. Had they yet seen Anson’s brigade?

  He had not closed his telescope when a galloper sped down the slope from behind them, making straight for the brigadier. Hervey recognized him as one of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s – the same he had met in the grey dawn of that morning.

  ‘You’re very welcome, Gordon,’ said Colonel Anson, returning the salute. ‘What are we expected to make of those French yonder?’

  ‘The commander-in-chief desires that you attack them directly, Colonel.’

  ‘Does he, by Jove!’

  ‘He is of the opinion that they will not stand. One of the divisions is Ruffin’s, and they have been worsted twice already.’

  Colonel Elley, the cavalry division’s adjutant-general, was standing next to the brigadier. ‘If you can force them into squares, Anson, they’ll be cut up something savage by the Second Division’s guns.’

  Colonel Anson was not entirely convinced, though he was willing enough for a fight. If Fane’s heavies had arrived, as he had been told they would, there could be little doubting the outcome. But one brigade of cavalry against two divisions of infantry . . .

  ‘Very well, though I’m not certain of the ground. We shall advance with caution.’

  ‘I’ll spy out the ground for you,’ said Colonel Elley.

  Anson nodded gratefully, then called the commanding officers.

  His orders were simple enough, the object and the route appare
nt to every man, so that barely a minute later the brigade was trotting onto the plain and wheeling to the right in two lines.

  Hervey (and, he imagined, the other cornets) thrilled to the prospect of a second brigade action in a single day. And this time it would be a model, since the approach was a good three-quarters of a mile: they would do it as a field day, not like the scramble at the Portiña – all properly regulated and as the manual prescribed. Directing regiment was the 23rd Light Dragoons, looking exactly as his except for their yellow facings. Left were the 1st Hussars of the King’s German Legion, sitting tall with their ‘muff-caps’, as the dragoons called them; and the Sixth formed the support line. Hervey fancied there could be few finer sights than fifteen hundred sabres on the move.

  Ahead, he could see Colonel Elley already selecting the line of advance. It was unusual, he knew – not at all as the manuals prescribed. If any were to be in advance of a brigade it should be skirmishers, not a field officer. But the ground was open, there could be no voltigeurs concealed, and there were no chasseur skirmishers to harry him. And in any case, what did he know of the true practice of the brigade in the advance?

  ‘I wonder that Anson doesn’t select his own line of advance,’ said Lieutenant Martyn, as they settled to the trot.

  Hervey was pleased to have this affirmation of his own opinion. ‘Could it be the brigade’s not scouted forward? Surely not!’ Lieutenant Martyn could hardly contemplate so elementary a failure. His own troop had been about to ride the ground when the Sixth had been ordered back to the centre.

  * * *

  In five minutes, picking their way purposefully along Colonel Elley’s cleared line, they had covered half of one mile. The batteries on the Cerro de Cascajal now decided they were in range.

  The brigade saw the puffs of smoke long before they heard the reports, and the shot before the reports. The Twenty-third, seeing the line of fire, began veering left and increasing pace. The shot bounced harmlessly. The hussars of the German Legion, conforming to the directing regiment’s movement, likewise bore left, but after a minute or so came under a galling fire, if from extreme range, from tirailleurs at the foot of the Sierra de Seguilla, and they too quickened their pace. Colonel Anson found himself conforming rather than leading, so that, half a mile from their objective still, the whole brigade broke into a premature canter. Up on the Cerro de Medellin, the Second Division began cheering them – lines of redcoats with muskets and shakos held high. It seemed to urge on the Twenty-third to an even faster pace. Soon they were close to a gallop.