The smoke from the British guns made leprous clouds on the ridge top as the columns reached the village. The shells banged at the columns, but the files closed up and the men marched on and the drummers worked their sticks, pausing only so that the shout of "Vive l'Empereur" could tell Marshal Massena, down in the valley where the French gunners hammered their own shells up towards the ridge's crest, that the attack continued.
The windmill on the ledge below the crest lay a third of a mile from the village. The voltigeurs cleared the last enemy skirmishers from Sula's western edge, sending them scurrying up the more open ground that lay between the village and the mill. One column skirted the village, pushing down fences and clambering over two stone walls, but the other marched right through Sula's center. At least half a dozen roofs were burning, their rafters set alight by shells. Another shell exploded in the heart of the main street, flinging aside half a dozen infantrymen in smoke, blood and flame, and smearing the whitewashed walls of the houses with spatters of blood. "Close up!" the sergeants shouted. "Close up!" The drums echoed from the bloodied walls, while up on the ridge the British officers heard the rousing cheer, "Vive l'Empereur!" The voltigeurs were climbing ever closer, and were now so thick on the ground that their musketry was almost as dense as volley fire. The British and Portuguese skirmishers had vanished, gone northwards into some trees that crowned the northern crest, and all that seemed to be ahead of the French was the ledge where the horsemen stood close to the mill. Bullets began smacking against the mill's white-painted stones. One of the artillery batteries was near the mill and its smoke helped to hide the horsemen, among whom was a small, scowling, black-haired, dark-faced man who was perched atop an oversize saddle on a horse that seemed much too big for him. He stared indignantly at the French as if their very presence offended him. Musket balls hummed past him, but he ignored them. An aide, worried by the intensity of the voltigeurs' fire, considered suggesting that the small man should ride back a few paces, but checked himself from speaking. Such advice to Black Bob Craufurd, commander of the Light Division, would be construed as arrant weakness.
The columns were in the open ground beneath the mill now and the voltigeurs were being whipped by blasts of canister that flattened the grass as if a sudden gale gusted from the west. More canisters were fired, each taking its handful of casualties, and the voltigeur officers ordered their men back to the columns. Their job was done. The British and Portuguese skirmishers had been driven back and victory waited at the ridge top, and that victory was close, so very close, because the ridge was empty except for the two batteries of guns and the handful of horsemen.
Or so the French thought. But behind the ledge, where a path ran parallel to the ridge's top, was dead ground, invisible from below, and in the concealment, lying down to protect themselves from the French artillery, were the 43rd and the 52nd. They were two light infantry battalions, the 43rd from Monmouthshire and the 52nd from Oxfordshire, and they reckoned themselves the best of the best. They had a right to that opinion, for they had been drilled to a savage hardness by the small black-jowled man who scowled at the French from beside the mill. A gunner spun back from the muzzle of his nine-pounder, struck in the ribs by a French musket ball. He spat up blood, then his Sergeant dragged him away from the gun's high wheel and rammed a canister home. "Fire!" the gun Captain shouted, and the huge weapon slammed back, bucking up on its trail to spew a thundercloud of smoke in which the canister was torn apart to loose its load of musket balls into the French ranks. "Close up," the French sergeants shouted, and wounded men, leaving snails' traces of blood, crawled back to the village where the stone walls would protect them from the gut-slitting blasts of canister. Yet there was not enough canister to finish the columns. They were too big.
The outer ranks soaked up the punishment, left their dead and dying, while the ranks behind stepped over the corpses. The hidden redcoats could hear the drums getting closer, could hear the shouts of the infantry and the sound of the musket balls whickering close overhead. They waited, understanding from the swelling noise that Black Bob was letting the enemy get close, very close. This was not to be a firefight at extreme musket range, but a sudden, astonishing slaughter, and then they saw the gunners of one British battery, who were taking a drenching of musketry from the front rank of the left-hand column, abandon their pieces and run back to safety. There was an odd silence then. Not a real silence, of course, for the drums were still beating and the blue-coated French were shouting their war cry, but one British battery was deserted, its guns left to the enemy, and the other was reloading and so for a moment it seemed strangely quiet.
Then the French, who had been ripped by the round shot and torn by the dreadful canister, realized that the battery had been abandoned. They gave a great cheer and scrambled over rocks to touch the hot cannon, and officers shouted at them to ignore the guns. The guns could be taken away later, but for now all that mattered was to reach the crest and so win Portugal. Beneath them Marshal Massena wondered whether Henriette would find the beds in the monastery comfortable, and whether he would be named Prince of Portugal and whether his cook could find something palatable among the discarded British rations to make for supper. Pertinent questions all, for the Army of Portugal was on the very brink of victory.
Then Black Bob took a breath.
"Forward!" Sharpe called. He had concentrated the riflemen, British and Portuguese, on the spur's center from where they could pour an accurate fire on the voltigeurs crouching among the knoll's jumbled rocks. "Make it fast," he shouted. He knelt and fired his rifle, the smoke hiding whatever damage he did. "Forward! Forward!" If this damned attack was to be done, he thought, then do it quickly, and he chivvied the riflemen on, then beckoned at the redcoats and the rest of the Portuguese who advanced in a two-deep line behind. The guns helped. One was firing canister, the balls rattling on the rocks, while the second was cutting its fuses desperately short so that the shells exploded just above the knoll. It would be hell there, Sharpe thought. The French were being assailed by rifle fire, canister and shell fragments, yet they stubbornly clung to the promontory.