The gunners jumped off the limbers, lifted the cannon trails, and aimed the barrels as the horses were taken back to the cover of the pines. “Use shell!” Major Duncan shouted. Shells were brought from limbers, and officers cut the fuses. They cut them short because the French were close. The French were also in sudden confusion. Two battalions had formed square, ready-to-receive, nonexistent cavalry, and the rest were hesitating when the British guns opened fire. Shells screamed across the three hundred yards of heath, each leaving its small wavering trail of fuse smoke, and Duncan, sitting his horse well to the side of the batteries so that their muzzle smoke did not hide his view, saw the blue-uniformed men knocked violently aside by the shells, then the explosions in the hearts of the squares. “Good! Good!” he shouted, and just then the skirmish line of riflemen and cacadores opened fire, their rifles and muskets crackling, and the French seemed to recoil from the fusillade. The front ranks of the columns returned the fire, but the skirmishers were scattered across the whole French front and were small targets for clumsy muskets, while the French were in close order and the rifles could hardly miss. The twin batteries on the right of the British line fired again. Then Duncan saw French horse teams being whipped across the heath. He counted six guns. “Load round shot!” he called. “Traverse right!” Men levered the cannon trails with handspikes to change their aim. “Hit their guns!” Duncan ordered.
The French were recovering now. The two battalions in square had realized their mistake and were deploying back into columns. Aides were galloping among the battalions, ordering them to march on, to fire, to break the thin skirmish line with concentrated volleys of musket fire. The drums began again, beating the pas de charge and pausing to let the men shout “Vive l’empereur!” The first effort was feeble, but officers and sergeants bellowed at the men to shout louder, and the next time the war cry was firm and defiant. “Vive l’empereur!”
“Tirez!” an officer shouted, and the front ranks of the 8th of the line poured a volley at the Portuguese skirmishers on their front. “Marchez! En avant!” Now was the time to accept the casualties and crush the skirmishers. The British cannon had switched their fire to the French battery, so no more shells slammed into the ranks. “Vive l’empereur!” The eight ranks behind the leading men of each column stepped over the dead and dying. “Tirez!” Another blast of musketry. Four thousand men were marching toward seven hundred. The French battery fired canister across the front of the columns and the grass bowed violently as though it were being swept by a sudden gust of wind. Portuguese cacadores and British riflemen were scooped up, bloodied and thrown down. The skirmish line was retreating now. The French muskets were too close and the six enemy cannon enfiladed them. There was a brief respite as the French gunners, about to be masked by the advancing columns, seized the drag ropes and, despite the round shot slamming about them, dragged their guns a hundred paces forward. They fired again and more skirmishers were turned to bloody rags. The French scented victory and the four leading battalions hurried. Their fire was ragged because it was hard to load while marching, and some men fixed bayonets instead. The British skirmishers ran back, almost to the wood’s edge. Duncan’s two left hand guns, seeing the danger, slewed around and blasted canister across the face of the nearest French battalion. Men in its leading ranks went down in a bloody haze as though a giant reaper’s hook had savaged them.
Then, suddenly, the wood’s edge was thick with men. The Silver Tails were on the left of Wheatley’s line and next to them were the two orphaned companies of Coldstreamers. Gough’s Irish were on the right of the Guards, then the remaining half of the 67th, and last, next to the guns, two companies of the Cauliflowers, the 47th.
“Halt!” The shouts echoed along the tree line.
“Wait!” a sergeant bellowed. Some men had raised their muskets.
“Wait for the order!”
“Form on your right! On your right!”
It was a confusion of voices, of officers shouting from their horses, of sergeants reordering ranks tumbled by the chaotic rush through the trees. “Look at that, boys! Look at that! Joy in the morning!” Major Hugh Gough, mounted on a bay gelding from County Meath, rode behind his battalion of the 87th. “We’ve got target practice, my lovelies,” he shouted. “Wait a while, though, wait a while.”
The newly arrived battalions recovered their dressing. “Take them forward! Take them forward!” Wheatley’s aides shouted, and the two-deep line paced onto the heath toward the dead and dying skirmishers. A French round shot skimmed through the 67th, cutting one man almost in half, spraying twelve others with the dead man’s blood, and taking the arm of a man in the rear rank. “Close up! Close up!”
“Halt! Present!”
“Vive l’empereur!”
“Fire!”
The inexorable rules of mathematics now imposed themselves on the fight. The French outnumbered the British by two to one, yet the leading four French battalions were in columns of divisions, which meant that each battalion was arrayed in nine ranks and had, on average, about seventy-two men in a rank. Four battalions with leading ranks of seventy-two men made a frontage of fewer than three hundred muskets. True, the men in the second rank could fire over their comrades’ shoulders, but even so, Leval’s four thousand men could only use six hundred muskets against the British line in which every man could fire, and Wheatley’s line was now fourteen hundred men strong. The skirmishers, who had done their job of delaying the French advance, ran to the flanks. Then Wheatley’s line fired.
The musket balls smacked into the heads of the French units. The redcoats were hidden by smoke behind which they reloaded. “Fire by platoons!” officers called, so now the rolling volleys would begin, half a company firing at once, then the next half, so that the bullets never stopped.
“Fire low!” an officer shouted.
Canister slashed through the smoke. A man reeled away, an eye gone, his face a mask of blood, but there was much more blood in the French battalions where the bullets were turning the front ranks into charnel rows.
“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said. He had emerged from the wood at the right-hand side of the British line. Ahead of him, to his right, were Duncan’s guns, each one bucking back three or more paces with every shot. Beside the guns were the remnants of the Portuguese skirmishers, still firing, and to his left was the redcoat line. Sharpe joined the brown-coated Portuguese. They looked haggard. Their faces were powder stained and eyes white. They were a new battalion and had never been in battle before, but they had done their job and now the redcoats were firing volleys, yet the Portuguese had suffered horribly and Sharpe could see too many brown-coated bodies lying in front of the French battalions. He could also see greenjackets there, all on the left of the British line.
The French battalions were spreading their fronts. They were not doing it well. Each man tried to find a place to fire his musket, or else tried to find shelter behind braver colleagues, and sergeants were pushing them out in any order. Canister howled around Sharpe and he instinctively looked behind to make sure none of his men was hit. They were all safe, but a crouching Portuguese skirmisher close to Sharpe tipped onto his back with his throat torn open. “Didn’t know you were with us!” a voice called, and Sharpe turned to see Major Duncan on horseback.
“I’m here,” Sharpe said.
“Can your rifles discourage gunners?”
The six French cannon were to the front. Two were already out of action, struck by Duncan’s round shot, but the others were flailing the left of the British line with their hated canister. The problem of shooting at cannon was the vast cloud of filthy smoke that lingered after every shot, and the problem was made worse by the distance. It was long range, even for a rifle, but Sharpe pulled his men forward to the Portuguese and told them to fire at the French artillerymen. “It’s a safe job, Pat,” he told Harper, “not really fighting at all.”