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 off 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.