‘Ready!’ a Corporal shouted.
‘Stand back!’ The officer put his hands to his ears. ‘Fire!’
The cannon crashed back again. This time it had to be run forward, dragged through the muddy scars of its first two firings. Musket-balls from the French skirmishers were whiplashing close, but the gun’s smoke protected the crew as they reloaded.
‘Double shot! Double shot!’ A gunner officer galloped his horse behind the battery. ‘Double shot!’ The officer, galloping clear of the smoke, had seen the closest column’s inexorable progress up the slope and knew it was time to raise the stakes.
This time, instead of loading with roundshot alone, the gunners rammed a canister of musket-balls on top of the roundshot. Now each blast would spread a halo of deadly bullets about the heavy missile.
‘Fire!’
The canister shredded, punched apart by the roundshot, and a great gap was ripped bloody in the nearest French column. The Emperor’s men were leaving a trail of blood and bodies now, but the attack was still massive and heavy. The French galloper guns were firing from the valley’s floor, seeking the British nine-pounders behind their screen of smoke. French cavalry had advanced onto the flanks of the outermost columns, protecting them from the threat of British horsemen. This was how war should be fought; the three arms supporting each other and victory just a drumbeat away across a ridge top which, to the advancing French, seemed almost empty. They saw the cannons and their smoke, and they saw the flitting silhouettes of the retreating skirmishers, and they saw a handful of mounted officers waiting beyond the crest, but they saw no enemy lines because the redcoats still lay flat, still hidden, still waiting. Some Frenchmen, those who had never fought Wellington, dared to hope that the ridge was only defended by guns, but the veterans of Spain knew better. The Goddamn Duke always hid his men behind a hillcrest if he could. In a moment, those veterans knew, the Goddamns would show themselves. That was what the French called the British soldiers, the Goddamns. It was not an affectionate nickname, but nor was it demeaning like the British name for the French; the Crapauds were the ‘toads’, but the Goddamns were men who would curse God and there was something chilling in that thought.
The French drums paused. ‘Vive l’Empereur!’
‘Fire!’ Another double-shotted volley smashed down the slope, and this time a British gunner officer heard the distinctive hailstone rattle as the canister balls struck the infantry’s muskets. ‘We’re hitting them now, boys!’ A wet fleece hissed as it plunged into the hot barrel.
On the ridge the British infantry officers watched and waited. The drums were loud, while at the back of the French columns men were singing. The British battalion bands were also playing behind the ridge, making it a cacophonous battle of music that the French were winning as more and more men joined in to sing the Marseillaise, ‘Allons, enfants de la patrie,le jour de gloire est arrivé!’ The burnished Eagles were bright over the great marching masses that seemed to soak up the murderous gun-fire. A roundshot would butcher through the files, but the ranks closed up and marched on. The French officers, their swords drawn, urged their men on. They only needed to endure a few more seconds of hell, a few more blasts of the guns, then they would carry their bayonets over the ridge to vengeance.
But first, because Wellington’s lines always beat the French columns, the surprise had to be unveiled.
‘Deploy!’ The French officers shouted the command. The columns were now less than a hundred paces from the crest of the British ridge. The Voltigeurs had fallen back to join the columns’ ranks and the British skirmishers had gone to join the line, so from this moment on it would be main force against main force. ‘Deploy!’
The rearmost ranks of the columns began to spread outwards. This was the surprise, that the column would suddenly become a line, but a line thicker and heavier than the British. Every French musket would be able to fire, and there would be far more French muskets. The defenders’ line would not overlap the column, but would be overwhelmed by it. The French would fire their killing volley, then they would charge home. The day of glory had arrived.
The easternmost French column advanced on Papelotte, driving Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar’s men back to the sturdiest of the farm buildings. The westernmost column, advancing athwart the paved highway, swept either side of La Haye Sainte, driving the Riflemen back from their sandpit.
The Riflemen of the King’s German Legion who garrisoned the farm itself were safe enough, for La Haye Sainte’s walls were of thick stone, well loopholed, and the column had no intention of assaulting such a makeshift fortress. Yet now the farm proved its deadly worth as the garrison flayed the passing column with rifle-fire. The French ranks were blown ragged; assailed by volleys from the flank and double-shotted cannon from their front. In desperation the French ordered the farm attacked. A swarm of infantry broke down the hedges of the kitchen garden and orchard, forcing the defenders back towards the elm tree on the ridge behind. Not that their retreat mattered, for most of the German garrison was safe behind the stone walls of the farm buildings from where they kept up the stinging volleys that had already stalled and broken the attack of the westernmost column.
Wellington’s breakwaters were working. Two of the French columns had been stopped, yet the central two columns were still crashing majestically and seemingly unstoppably up the wide bare slope between Papelotte and La Haye Sainte. The Duke, knowing that those central columns were the real danger, rode to where their attack would strike home.
The Prince of Orange took the Duke’s place beside the elm tree and stared in horror at the turmoil that raged about La Haye Sainte. The Prince did not see that the farm had effectively broken one whole column of French infantry; instead he only saw a white-walled building lapped by smoke and ringed by enemies. Worse, he saw a stream of King’s German Legion Riflemen running in headlong retreat from the farm. Wellington was nowhere in sight, which meant that fate and history had placed the Prince at this vantage point. He gnawed his fingernails as he stared, then knew he must not hesitate. La Haye Sainte could not fall! And if it had already fallen, then it must be retaken! He turned to see a Hanoverian battalion of his corps not far behind the ridge. The Hanoverian infantry wore British-style redcoats and were known to all the army as the Red Germans. ‘Tell the Red Germans to advance!’ the Prince snapped at Rebecque.
‘Sir?’ Rebecque had been flinching from the sight of the double-shotted cannons’ execution of the closest Frenchmen, and had no idea what the Prince meant by his order.
‘The Red Germans, Rebecque! They are to advance on the farm and recapture it. Tell them to form line and to advance. Now!’
‘But, sir, the farm has not fallen and -’
‘Do it! Now!’ the Prince screamed at his Chief of Staff.
Rebecque silently wrote the order, handed it to the Prince for signature, then sent an aide to the Red Germans. The Hanoverians deployed into line, then, to the tap of a drum, marched forward with fixed bayonets. They came over the ridge top and, with their colours hoisted high behind their centre companies, swept down onto the French who still milled ineffectually about La Haye Sainte’s loopholed walls.
‘That’s how it’s done!’ the Prince exulted. ‘Give them steel! Give them steel!’
‘Are you sure the French cavalry are gone, sir?’ Rebecque asked very quietly.
‘You must be bold! Boldness is all! Oh, well done!’ The Prince applauded because the Hanoverians had cleared the kitchen garden and were now working their way down the farm’s open flank to the west. They were still in line and were firing steady volleys that drove the French infantry backwards.
The French infantry retreated, but their cavalry advanced. That cavalry had been held deep in the valley’s floor, safe from the double-shotted British cannon, but now the left flank guard saw a line of enemy redcoats deployed in the rye. French swords rasped out of scabbards. It seemed that God was smiling on the cavalrymen this day.
The trumpets sounded.
br />
Les gros frères, the Cuirassiers, led the charge while the pigtailed Dragoons rode behind the heavy horsemen. The British gunners were aiming at the remnants of the column’s flank and, besides, were too obscured by smoke to see the cavalry’s threat. The Hanoverians, firing fast volleys, were blinding themselves with smoke, but then the men of the right-hand companies heard the thudding of the hooves and stared in panic through the powder smoke to see the first glints of steel armour and raised swords.
‘Cavalry!’
‘Form square!’
It was much too late. The heavy horsemen fell on the open end of the Hanoverian line. The big Klingenthal swords, made of the best steel in Europe, hacked down, driven by the ton weight of man and horse. Grim faces, framed by the steel helmets, were flecked by the infantrymens’ blood as the horsemen carved a path into the battalion. The Red Germans broke, fleeing in panic from the thunder of the hooves and the lightning blades. The colour party took refuge in the farm’s garden, but most of the Hanoverians were caught in the open field and paid the price. Horsemen rode round the field, chasing the last refugees and cutting them down with merciless efficiency.
The Prince of Orange stared aghast from the elm tree. He saw a sword rise in the air, dripping blood from a death, then hack down to make another butcher’s sound. ‘Stop them, Rebecque!’ he said pathetically. ‘Stop them!’
‘Pray how, Your Highness?’
In the end the British gunners stopped the grisly business. The charge had brought the horsemen into the killing ground of the cannon and the double-shotted guns scoured the cavalry away from the field, but not before they had broken the Red Germans who lay with dreadful slashes, bleeding and twisting in the rye as they died. The Prince of Orange had struck again.
While to the east, where no farm protected the ridge, the two central columns of the French attack deployed into line, and drove on up to victory.
The Dutch-Belgian infantry at the re-entrant of the ridge took one close look at the nearest column and fled.
The British jeered the running men, but the Belgians did not care. Their sympathies were with the Emperor and so they ran to the forest and there, safe under its trees, waited for a French victory to restore Belgium to its proper throne.
The French drummers beat the pas de charge as the columns unfolded into the heavy musket line that would blast the ridge’s crest with fire.
‘Stand up!’ The order was British.
All along the ridge, like men springing full armed from the concealing earth, the redcoats stood. One moment the ridge had appeared empty, and the next it was crowned with a line of muskets.
‘Present!’
The French, so very close to the ridge top, had stopped for a heartbeat as their enemy had appeared so suddenly from the earth, but the French officers, seeing how hugely they outnumbered the Goddamns, screamed at the men to advance.
‘Fire!’
The first British volley crashed down the gentle slope. It was fired at just sixty paces and it slammed into the unfolding columns to crumple the front ranks back like lead soldiers swept down by a petulant child.
‘Reload!’
Men bit bullets from the tip of waxed paper cartridges, poured the powder into their musket barrels, wadded the powder with the cartridge paper, spat the bullets after, then rammed down hard with their ramrods. ‘Fire by platoons!’ a Major ordered. ‘Grenadier Company! Fire!’
The rolling volleys began, rippling along the hilltop in flame and smoke. The French fired back. Sir Thomas Picton roared an order and died as a bullet pierced his top hat and crashed into his skull. Highlanders and Irishmen and men from the shires bit the cartridges till their lips were black and their tongues sour with the salty taste of the gunpowder. They fired, scorching their cheeks with the flaming scraps spat from the musket locks.
‘Close up! Close up!’ The Sergeants dragged the dead and wounded back from the line, letting the men close in where the French bullets had struck.
A cannon fired, its canister splitting in bloody ruin among the deploying French, yet still the French came, more ranks advancing from the mist of smoke to thicken their bleeding dying line.
Redcoats scrabbled at their flints, tearing their fingernails as they cocked their weapons. The muskets kicked like mules. The French were still spreading into line, still advancing, and the drums were still driving them on. A French galloper gun opened fire, splaying a redcoat colour party into ruin. The French musket volleys were slow, but the Crapauds outnumbered the Goddamns and were clawing their bloody way towards the ridge’s crest and victory.
And then a trumpet called.
Lord John Rossendale, riding close to the Earl of Uxbridge, had watched the advance of the columns in sheer disbelief. He had heard of such attacks, and he had listened to men describe a French column, yet nothing had prepared Lord John for the way such an attack filled a landscape, or how its music made the skin crawl and stretched the nerves, or how irresistible such an assault seemed; as though each column was not made up of individual men, but instead was some ponderously articulated beast that crawled out of nightmare to ooze across the earth.
Yet, even as the columns filled him with dread, he marvelled at the calm of the men with whom he rode. The calmness, Lord John observed, came from the Duke, to whom men were irresistibly attracted as though his confidence would somehow communicate by proximity. The Duke watched the approaching columns with a keen eye, but still had time to laugh at some jest made by Alava, the Spanish commissioner. The only time Rossendale saw the Duke frown was when a brief shower of rain, gone almost as soon as it arrived, made him shake out his cloak and drape it round his shoulders. ‘I cannot bear a drenching, nor will I abide umbrellas,’ he spoke to Alava in French.
‘You could have a canopy held by four stout men?’ Alava, an old and valued friend from the Duke’s Spanish battles, suggested.
‘Like some Mohammetan potentate?’
The Duke gave his odd horse-neigh of a laugh. ‘That would serve very well! I like that notion! A Mohammetan canopy, eh?’
‘And a harem, why not?’
‘Why not, indeed?’ The Duke gently drummed his fingers on the small writing desk that was built onto the pommel of his saddle. To Lord John the gesture did not seem to be a nervous reaction, but rather to express the Duke’s impatience at the lumbering French columns. By now the enemy skirmishers were close enough to annoy the Duke’s party. Their bullets whiplashed and hummed about the horsemen. Two of the Duke’s aides were hit; one fatally just two paces to the Duke’s left. The Duke gave the dead man a glance, then frowned towards the French galloper guns. ‘They’ll never do a damn thing with those light cannon,’ he complained, as though his enemy’s inefficiency offended him, then, switching into French, he asked Alava whether he did not agree that the French were deploying more skirmishers than usual.
‘Definitely more,’ Alava confirmed, but with no more excitement in his voice than if he was sharing a day’s rough shooting with the Duke.
The Dutch-Belgians ran, which caused a compression of the Duke’s lips, but then, knowing what could and could not be mended, he simply ordered a British battalion into the gap. He rode further to his left, cantering his horse behind the waiting redcoats. The Earl of Uxbridge and his staff followed. The Duke frowned again as the French columns began to unfold into line, but the unexpected manoeuvre did not seem to rattle him. ‘Now’s your time!’ the Duke called to the nearest redcoat battalion.
The redcoats stood and the volleys began. Lord John, trailing with his master behind the Duke, saw how the French attempt to form line was never completed because of the destructive British fire. The French flanks would not wheel up the slope into the face of the musket volleys, so instead the whole enemy mass edged uphill in neither line nor column, but in a half-way formation instead. To Lord John’s untutored eye, and despite the momentary French confusion, it still looked like a frighteningly unequal battle; a mass of Frenchmen poised just beneath the thin and
fragile line of redcoats. The mass was also still advancing. Its leading ranks were being bled and beaten by the flail of the British volleys, but still the French pressed uphill, stepping over their dead, and shouting their war cry. Worse, the Cuirassiers who had just destroyed the Red Germans now rode west of the high road to escape the cannon-fire and threatened to attack the thin British line.
The Duke had seen it all, and understood it all. He turned to Uxbridge. ‘Your Heavies are ready, Uxbridge?’
‘Indeed they are, Your Grace!’
It took Lord John a moment to understand the elegance of the Duke’s solution. The French were poised on the brink of a shattering success. Their columns were inching uphill, and in a moment they would be reinforced by the heavy cavalry that would fall on the redcoat flank like a torrent of steel. The Duke’s line would be shattered, the French infantry would pour through, then more cavalry would stream across the valley to finish the rout.
Except that the Duke’s counter-stroke was ready. Horse would oppose horse and the British heavy cavalry would be unleashed on the Emperor’s gros frères. The King’s Own Household troops: the Life Guards and King’s Dragoon Guards and Blues, together with the Union Brigade of the Royals, the Scots Greys and the Inniskilling Horse would save the army.
Lord John turned his own horse, drew his borrowed sword, and raced after the Earl of Uxbridge. ‘Harry! You must let me come!’ This was the chance Lord John had prayed and waited for. He saw other staff officers, Christopher Manvell among them, hurrying to join their regiments. ‘For God’s sake, Harry, let me fight!’ Lord John pleaded again.