"Withdraw! Withdraw!" The two battalions had no hope of holding the village and so, almost overrun by the enemy, the redcoats and Portuguese ran back through the village. It was a poor place with a tiny church no bigger than a dissenting chapel. The grenadier companies of both battalions formed ranks beside the church. Ramrods scraped in barrels. The French were in the village now, their columns breaking apart as the infantry found their own paths through the alleyways and gardens. The cavalry was closing on the village's flanks, looking for broken ranks to charge and decimate. The leading French attackers came into sight of the church and a Portuguese officer gave the order to fire and the two companies hurled a volley that choked the narrow street with dead and wounded Frenchmen. "Back! Back!" the Portuguese officer shouted. "Watch your flanks!"
A roundshot splintered part of the church roof, showering the retreating grenadiers with shards of broken tile. French infantry appeared in an alleyway and spilt out to make a crude firing line that brought down two caзadores and a redcoat. Most of the two battalions were clear of the village now and retreating towards the other seven battalions that were formed in square to deter the circling French cavalry. That cavalry feared it would be cheated of its prey and some of the horsemen charged Poco Velha's withdrawing garrison. "Rally, rally!" a redcoat officer called as he saw a squadron of cuirassiers wheel around to charge at his men. His company shrank into the rally square, a huddle of men forming an obstacle large enough to deter a horse from charging home. "Hold your fire! Let the buggers get close!"
"Leave him be!" a sergeant shouted when a man ran out of the rally square to help a wounded comrade.
"Hive! Hive!" another captain shouted and his men rallied into a hasty square. "Fire!" Maybe a third of his men were loaded and they loosed a ragged volley that made one horse scream and rear. The rider fell, crashing heavily to earth with all the weight of his breastplate and back armour dragging him down. Another horseman rode clear through the musket balls and galloped wildly along the face of the crude square. A redcoat darted out to lunge at the Frenchman with his bayonet, but the rider leaned far from his saddle and screamed in triumph as he whipped his sword across the infantryman's face.
"You bloody fool, Smithers! You bloody fool!" his captain shouted at the blinded redcoat who was screaming and clutching a face that was a mask of blood.
"Back! Back!" the Portuguese Colonel urged his men. The French infantry had advanced through the village and was forming an attack column at its northern edge. A British galloper gun fired at them and the roundshot skipped on the ground and bounced up to crack into the village houses.
"Vive l'Empereur!" a French colonel bellowed and the drummer boys began to sound the dreaded pas de charge that would drive the Emperor's infantry onwards. The two allied battalions were streaming in clumps across the fields pursued by the advancing infantry and harried by horsemen. One small group was ridden down by lancers, another panicked and ran towards the waiting squares only to be hunted down by dragoons who held their swords like lances to spear into the redcoats' backs. The two largest masses of horsemen were those that stalked the colour parties, waiting for the first sign of panic that would open the clustered infantrymen to a thunderous charge. The flags of the two battalions were lures to glory, trophies that would make their captors famous throughout France. Both sets of flags were surrounded by bayonets and defended by sergeants carrying spontoons, the long, heavy, lance-headed pikes designed to kill any horse or man daring to thrust in to capture the fringed silk trophies.
"Rally! Rally!" the English Colonel shouted at his men. "Steady, boys, steady!" And his men doggedly worked their way westwards while the cavalry feinted charges that might provoke a volley. Once the volley was fired the real charge would be led by lancers who could reach across the infantry's bayonets and unloaded muskets to kill the outer ranks of defenders. "Hold your fire, boys, hold your fire," the Colonel called. His men passed close to one of the outcrops of rock that studded the plain and for a few seconds the redcoats seemed to cling to the tiny scrap of high ground as though the lichen-covered stone would offer them a safe refuge, then the officers and sergeants moved them on to the next stretch of open grassland. Such open land was heaven-sent for horsemen, a cavalryman's perfect killing ground.
Dragoons had unholstered their carbines to snipe at the colour parties. Other horsemen fired pistols. Bloody trails followed the redcoats and caзadores as they marched. The hurrying French infantry were shouting at their own horsemen to clear a line of fire so that a musket volley could tear the defiant colour parties apart, but the horsemen would not yield the glory of capturing an enemy standard to any foot soldier and so they circled the flags and blocked the infantry fire that might have overwhelmed the retreating allied infantrymen. Marksmen among the British and Portuguese picked their targets, fired, then reloaded as they walked. The two battalions had lost all order; there were no more ranks or files, just clusters of desperate men who knew that salvation lay in staying close together as they edged their way back towards the dubious safety of the Seventh Division's remaining battalions who still waited in square and watched aghast as the boiling maelstrom of cavalry and cannon smoke inched ever nearer.
"Fire!" a voice shouted from one of these battalions and the face of a square erupted with smoke to shatter an excited troop of sabre-wielding chasseurs. The retreating infantry had come close to the other battalions now and the horsemen saw their first chance of fame slipping away. Some cuirassiers wound their swords' wrist straps tight, called encouragement to one another and then spurred their big horses into the gallop as a trumpeter sounded the charge. They rode booted knee to booted knee, a phalanx of steel and horse flesh designed to batter the nearest colours' defenders into broken shreds that could be slaughtered like cattle. This was a lottery: fifty horsemen against two hundred frightened men and if the horsemen broke the rally square then one of the surviving cuirassiers would ride back to Marshal Massйna with a king's flag and another would carry the bullet-scarred remnants of the 85th's yellow colour and both would be famous.
"Front rank, kneel!" the 85th's Colonel shouted.
"Take aim! Wait for it!" a captain called. "Damn your eagerness! Wait!"
The redcoats were from Buckinghamshire. Some had been recruited from the farms of the Chilterns and from the villages of Aylesbury's vale, while most had come from the noisome slums and pestilent prisons of London which sprawled on the county's southern edge. Now their mouths were dry from the salt gunpowder of the cartridges they had bitten all morning and their battle had shrunk to a terrifying patch of foreign land that was surrounded by a victorious, rampaging, screaming enemy. For all the men of the 85th knew they might have been the last British troops alive and now they faced the Emperor's horse as it charged at them with plumed men holding heavy swords and behind the cuirassiers a tangled mass of lancers, dragoons and chasseurs followed to snap up the broken remnants of the colour party's rally square. A Frenchman screamed a war cry as he rammed his spurs hard back along his horse's flanks and, just as it seemed that the redcoats had left their one volley too late, their Colonel called the word.
"Fire!"