A French cavalry officer, brass helmet shielded with canvas and with a black cloak covering his gaudy uniform, suddenly swung up into his saddle. He spurred ahead of the convoy, doubtless drawn to the town beyond the river where wineshops would be open and fires burning in brick hearths.
‘Damn.’ Sharpe said it under his breath. The man could not help but see the ambush and he would spring it fifty yards too soon. But nothing went as planned in war, and the disadvantage must be taken, then ignored. ‘Deal with the bugger, Patrick. Wait till he sees us.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Harper thumbed back the cock of his rifle.
Sharpe looked at Palmer. ‘On my order we advance. Two files.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘No shouting, no cheering.’ French and Spanish troops cheered as they advanced, but the silence of a British attack was an eerie and unsettling thing. The Marines, white-faced, crouched low. One crossed himself, while another, his eyes shut, seemed to be praying silently.
The French officer kicked his horse into a trot. The man had a cigar which dribbled smoke, and his broad, open face looked cheerfully at the sodden, misty countryside. He glanced at the farm, bent to pluck his cloak loose of his stirrup leather where it had wrapped itself as he mounted, then saw the red coats and white crossbelts where the Marines were concealed in the hedge-shadow that was still white with frost.
He was so astonished that he kept coming, mouth opening to shout an inquiry, and when he was still some fifteen yards short of the hedgerow, Harper shot him.
The rifle bullet struck a cuirass hidden by the cloak. The ball, squarely hitting the steel, punctured the armour and deflected upwards, through the Frenchman’s throat and into his brain. Blood, bright as dawn, fountained from the man’s open mouth.
‘In line!’ Sharpe bellowed. ‘Advance!’
The horse, terrified, reared.
The Frenchman, still incongruously holding his cigar, toppled backwards in the saddle. He was dead, but his knees still gripped the horse’s flanks and, when the beast plunged its forefeet back down, the corpse nodded forward in a grotesque obeisance to the Marines who were scrambling from the ditch to form a double-line across the road.
‘Forward!’
The horse turned, eyes showing white, and the dead Frenchman seemed to grin a bloodshot grin at Sharpe before the horse whirled the ghastly face away. The body slumped to the left, fell, but the man’s boot was fast caught in the stirrup and the corpse was dragged, bouncing, behind the bolting horse.
‘Hold your fire!’ Sharpe cautioned the Marines. He wanted no nervous man to waste a musket shot. He drew his sword. ‘Double!’
The remaining cavalry had stopped, appalled. The waggons, with their vast weight, still trundled forward. The infantry seemed oblivious of the ambush’s opening shot.
The Marines, their breath misting, ran up the road that was marked with great splashes of blood. Sharpe’s boot crushed the dead cavalry officer’s fallen cigar.
Two cavalrymen hauled carbines from their saddle holsters. ‘Halt!’ Sharpe shouted.
He stood to one side of the road. ‘Front rank kneel!’ That was not entirely necessary, but a kneeling rank always steadied raw troops and Sharpe knew that these Marines, for all their willingness, had small experience in land fighting. ‘Captain Palmer? Fire low, if you please.’
Palmer, a naval cutlass in his hand, seemed startled at Sharpe’s sudden courtesy in allowing him to give the order to fire. He cleared his throat, measured the distance to the enemy, saw how the handful of cavalry were already climbing into saddles and spreading on to the verges, and shouted the order. ‘Fire!’
Fifty musket balls crashed out of fifty muzzles. ‘Reload!’ a sergeant shouted. Lieutenant Fytch, a heavy brass-hilted pistol in his right hand, jiggled up and down on the balls of his feet with excitement.
Harper had gone right to clear the filthy, yellowish cloud of musket smoke. He saw six horses down, legs kicking on the roadway’s stone. Two men had fallen, while two others crawled towards the beechwood. An ox from the leading waggon was bellowing with pain.
A carbine banged, then another. Far to the convoy’s rear the French infantry were hurrying down the verges, officers shouting. The ox-waggons, brake blocks squealing, were juddering to a clumsy halt.
Harper was looking for officers. He saw one, a cavalryman with drawn sabre, who was bellowing at his men to form line and charge.
It took Harper twenty seconds to reload the Baker Rifle. Another Marine volley hammered forward, this one doing less damage because the redcoats, unsighted by their musket smoke, fired blind. Harper had the rifle at his shoulder, the officer in his sights, and he pulled the trigger.
Black powder flared, flaming debris lashed his cheek, then he unslung the seven-barrelled gun and jumped sideways again. The officer was turning away, hand clasped to a shoulder, but a half dozen cavalrymen were coming forward, sabres drawn and spurs slashing back at thin flanks.
“Ware cavalry, sir!‘ Harper shouted to Palmer then, hearing the wooden ramrods of the Marines still rattling in barrels, he fired his volley gun.
The impact threw him backwards, but the noise of the seven-barrelled gun, like a small cannon, seemed to stun the tiny battlefield. Two cavalrymen were snatched from their saddles, a horse swivelled to throw its rider, and the cavalry’s small threat was finished. Then, beyond the wounded horses and the scatter of the day’s first dead, the leading two Companies of French infantry appeared in front of the waggons. Their muskets were tipped with bayonets.
Frederickson opened fire.
The volley, stinging from the flank, flayed into the first infantry ranks, and Frederickson was bellowing commands as though he held more men under orders. The French were glancing nervously towards the beechwood as Captain Palmer loosed his third volley.
The mist remnants were thick with smoke now. The stench of blood mingled with powder-stink.
Sharpe had joined Harper. Minver’s men, slower to deploy, were firing from the left.
‘Stop loading!’ Sharpe shouted at the Marines. ‘Front rank up! Fix swords!’ The headache was forgotten now in the greater urgencies of life and death.
‘Bayonets, sir,’ Harper muttered. Only Green Jackets, who carried the sword bayonet, used the order to fix swords.
‘Bayonets! Bayonets! Captain Palmer! I’ll trouble you to go forward!’
Sharpe could sense this whole battle now, could feel it in his instincts and he knew it was won. There was an exultation, an excitement, a feeling that no other experience on God’s earth could bring. It could bring death, too, and wounds so vile that a man would shudder in his sleep to dream of them, but war also gave this supreme feeling of imposing the will on an enemy and taking success in the face of disaster.
The French outnumbered Sharpe by three or four to one, but the French were dazed, disorganized, and shaken. Sharpe’s men were keyed to the fight, ready for it, and if he struck now, if he behaved as though he had already won, then this half stunned enemy would break.
Sharpe looked at the Marines. ‘Advance. At the double! Advance!’
The cavalry was gone, destroyed by the seven-barrelled gun and by Frederickson’s sharpshooters. Dead and wounded horses lay in the fields, dropped by rifle-fire, and their surviving riders had fled to the safety of the waggons that offered some small shelter from the bullets. In front of the waggons a rabble of infantry was being shaken into line and Sharpe’s Marines, coming from the smoke with muskets tipped with bayonets, charged them.
If the enemy held, Sharpe knew, then the Marines would be slaughtered.
If the enemy held, then each Marine would be faced with three or four bayonets.
It would only take one enemy officer, one of those blue-coated men on horseback, to survey Sharpe’s feeble charge and the Marines were done for.
‘Charge!’ Sharpe shouted it as though the volume of his voice alone would breed extra men to face down the enemy line that, uneven though it was, bristled with blades.
‘Fire!’ Frederickson, good Frederickson, had understood all. He had formed his Company into ranks, taken them from the trees’ cover and now, at sixty yards range, poured a controlled volley of rifle fire into the infantry’s flank.
That volley, with Sharpe’s stumbling charge, broke the French. Just as scared Frenchmen began to see the paucity of the attacking force, so another enemy appeared and another voice was shouting charge, and then the sight of the bayonets, as it so often did, engendered panic.
The French infantry, mostly young conscripts who had no stomach for a fight, broke and fled. An officer beat at them with the flat of his sabre, but the French were running backwards. The officer turned, drew a pistol, but a rifle bullet buried itself in his belly and he folded forward, eyes gaping, and one of Frederickson’s Riflemen grasped the bridle as the officer fell sideways to the cold earth.
‘Form at the first waggon’s rear!’ Sharpe yelled it to Palmer as they ran forward. The Marines’ line was now broken by the necessity for men to step around the dead and dying on the ground. Harper, who could not bear to see an animal suffer, picked up a fallen French pistol and shot a wounded, screaming horse between the eyes.
A carbine, fired by a dismounted cavalryman, threw down a Marine. Minver’s men shot the cavalryman, six bullets striking at once and flinging him down like a puppet that lay suddenly still and bloodied on the pale grass.
There were fugitives under the first waggon. One still had a musket and Sharpe, thinking it loaded, struck with his sword to knock it clear. The boy, terrified, screamed, but Sharpe had gone on, jumping blue-jacketed dead. Ahead, in a foul panic, a mass of infantry tumbled in pell mell retreat. An officer, emerging from a coach, shouted at them, and some, braver than the rest, slowed, turned, and formed a new line.
‘Captain Frederickson!’
‘I see them, sir!’
Sharpe ran behind the rear of a waggon. On this left side of the road, where Minver’s men stayed in hiding, a full Company of French infantry was formed in three ranks. ‘6oth!’ Sharpe had to shout twice to Minver as Frederickson’s volley drowned his first shout. ‘Flank attack! Flank attack!’
Palmer’s Marines were panting. Some had reddened bayonets, and others stabbed at Frenchmen cowering beneath the heavy waggon, but Palmer and his sergeants pushed them into line and shouted at them to load muskets.
The French Company fired first.
The range was seventy yards, too long for muskets, but two Marines were down, a third was screaming, and the others still thrust with wooden ramrods at powder and bullets. Sharpe supposed the Marines used wooden ramrods because metal rods would rust at sea, then forgot the idle speculation as more enemy bullets thumped into the heavy timber of the waggons. Stragglers from the first Company had joined the ranks where French muskets tipped up as the enemy began to reload.
‘Aim!’ Palmer shouted.
‘Hold your fire! Hold your fire!’ Sharpe took station at the head of the Marines. He made his voice steady. There was a time to rouse men in battle and a time to calm them. ‘Marines will advance. At the march! Forward!’ Sharpe was taking the Marines down the left flank of the waggons, leaving Frederickson to control the right side of the road.
Minver’s Riflemen were showing themselves on this French flank, green-jacketed men who appeared from behind trees and farm buildings, men who worked forward in the skirmishing chain, each man covering his partner, and their fire nibbled at the flank of the French Company.
A French officer looked sideways, judging whether to turn a file to flick the Riflemen away with a controlled volley, then he looked forward to where the redcoats advanced.
This was no mad charge, meant to panic, but a slow, steady advance to show confidence. Sharpe wanted to close the range, he wanted this volley of musketry to kill. He watched the enemy’s movements. Ramrods, new and bright-metalled, flashed as they were raised. He heard the scraping rattle as they plunged downwards into muskets held between clenched knees. ‘Marines! Halt!’
The boots of the men who advanced on the road crashed to attention. The sound seemed unnaturally loud.
Minver’s men still fired, their bullets spinning constantly from the flank. Carbine bullets, fired by dismounted cavalrymen, buzzed past Sharpe. An ox, oblivious of the carnage around, staled on the road and the smell of the steam pricked at Sharpe’s nostrils. ‘To your front! Aim!’ Sharpe wanted this slow and sure. He wanted the Frenchmen to see the shape of their death before it came. He wanted them scared.
The Marine line seemed to take a quarter turn to the right as the muskets went into the shoulders. One or two men who had not yet cocked their pieces pulled back the flints and the clicks seemed ominous.
Sharpe walked to the flank of the Marine formation and raised his sword. Some of the French were priming their muskets, but most were staring nervously at the small line of redcoats who seemed so deliberate and savage. Sharpe let them wait, giving their imaginations time to torment them.
Harper came to stand alongside Sharpe. He had his rifle loaded, aimed, and he waited for the order. To Harper’s eyes these Frenchmen were boys, the scrapings ofa countryside to bring Napoleon’s armies up to strength. These were not the moustached, experienced veterans who had died in the appalling Spanish battles, but conscripts dragged unwilling from school or farm to die in a cause that was doomed anyway.
The conscripts primed their pieces. Some had forgotten to take their ramrods out of their musket barrels, but it did not matter.
‘Aim low!’ Sharpe’s voice was harsh. He knew most troops fired high. ‘Aim at their balls! Fire!’ The word swept down.
The volley smashed out, the sound of the muskets deafening as the heavy weapons leaped back into bruised shoulders. The smoke, stinking of rotten eggs, made its fog.
‘Lie down!’ Sharpe shouted. He saw astonished faces and his voice rose in anger. ‘Lie down! Lie down!’
The Marines, puzzled, dropped flat. Sharpe knelt to one side of the rolling, poisonous cloud of musket smoke.
The French Company had shaken as the volley struck home. Just like a man punched in the belly the whole Company seemed to fold, then the officers and sergeants, shouting orders, pushed the ranks back into place and Sharpe saw how the rear files had to step over the writhing and the dead left by the Marine’s well-aimed volley.
The French commander ignored the Riflemen on his flank. They could be dealt with after the redcoats. ‘Tirez!’
For a new Company, unblooded, it was a good response. Sixty or seventy muskets fired at the gunsmoke, but the Marines were flat and the conscripts fired high.
‘Go for them! Go!’ Sharpe was triumphant now. This one Company had been the last danger, but he had drawn their sting by laying his men flat. ‘On your feet! On your feet!
Go! Cheer, you bastards!‘ This was the moment for noise, the moment for terror.
The Marines, who a second before had been the target for a controlled, tight volley, scrambled unscathed to their feet and charged. They yelled as if they were boarding an enemy ship. Lieutenant Fytch fired his pistol wildly, then tried to drag his heavy sword from its scabbard.
The conscripts, staring through their own musket-smoke, saw the unharmed enemy coming with long bayonets and, like the first two Companies at the convoy’s head, broke.
Some were slow, and those the Marines caught and pinned to the ground with bayonets. A mounted officer, scarlet-faced and furious, charged at the redcoats, but Sharpe lunged with his sword, caught the horse’s hindquarters and the beast turned, teeth snapping, as the officer hacked down with his infantry sword.
The blades met, clashed, and the shock ran up Sharpe’s arm. The horse reared, lashed with its hooves as it was trained to do, but Sharpe backswung the sword into the beast’s mouth as he was trained to do.
The animal twisted, the officer kicked his feet out of the stirrups and, as the horse fell to one side, nimbly threw himself clear. The horse collapsed off balance, lips bleeding, then scrambled to its
feet as if nothing was amiss.
‘Surrender,’ Sharpe said to the officer.
The reply, whatever it meant, did not signify surrender. The Frenchman’s sword blade Hickered out in an expert lunge. The man’s horse was now cropping the grass and the Frenchman reached with his spare hand for its bridle.
Sharpe lunged, knew that the man would counterattack, so immediately stepped back. The blade duly came for him, skewered thin air, and Sharpe’s heavy blade cracked down on to the sword hilt, driving the weapon down, and Sharpe stepped forward, brought his knee up, then used the ugly, iron guard of his sword to punch the officer’s face. ‘Surrender, you crapaud bastard!’
The officer was on the grass, sword forgotten and hands clutched to his crotch. He was gasping for breath, moaning, and Sharpe decided that constituted a surrender. He kicked the man’s sword into the ditch, pulled the horse towards him, and hauled himself clumsily into the saddle. He wanted the extra height to see what happened on his small, well-chosen battlefield.
The French had run. A Company of them were being organized a quarter mile north, but they posed no immediate problem. A few survivors still clung to the waggons, some died from bayonet thrusts, but most were being taken prisoner. The waggons were otherwise abandoned and Sharpe guessed their drivers, with other fugitives, had fled into the beech woods. ‘Captain Palmer?’
Palmer seemed astonished to see Sharpe on horseback. ‘Sir?’
‘One squad of men into the beech trees. Flush the damn place clear. Don’t be cautious about it! Scare the bastards!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Captain Frederickson!’ Sharpe twisted the horse towards the far side of the road. ‘Keep that Company busy!’ Sharpe pointed to the north. ‘Take half Minver’s men and press them, William, press them!’
There were picquets to be set on the flanks, the wounded to take into the shelter of the waggons, and the waggons themselves to explore. The two coaches, harness-horses shivering, were brought forward. One was empty, the other contained two women who sat, terrified, with smelling salts uncapped. ‘Put a guard on them, Captain Palmer! Unharness the horses.’ Sharpe would leave the women where they were, but the horses, like the oxen, would be scattered into the meadows. Some men would have advised killing the animals to deprive the French of their future use, but Sharpe could not bear to give that order.