The voltigeurs were scrambling uphill now because the British line was getting closer. Very nearly there, Victor thought. He would let them come almost to the top of the hill because that would bring the line right into the face of his six guns. He took a last glance north at Leval’s men and saw they were pressing closer to the pinewood. In half an hour, he thought, this small British army would have collapsed. It would take at least another hour to re-form the troops, then they would assault the Spanish at the beach’s end. How many flags would they send to Paris? A dozen? Twenty? Maybe enough to furnish all the emperor’s beds.
“Now, sir?” The battery commander asked.
“Wait, wait,” Victor said, and, knowing victory was his, turned and waved at the two grenadier battalions that he had held in reserve. “Forward!” he shouted to their general, Rousseau. This was no time to keep troops in reserve. Now was the moment to throw all his men, all three thousand of them, at fewer than half their number. He plucked an aide’s elbow. “Tell the bandmaster I want to hear the ‘Marseillaise’!” He grinned. The Emperor had banned the ‘Marseillaise,’ disliking its revolutionary sentiments, but Victor knew the song had retained its popularity and would inspire his soldiers to the slaughter of their enemies. He sang a line to himself, “Le jour de gloire est arrivé,” then laughed aloud. The battery commander looked up at him with surprise. “Now,” Victor said, “now!”
“Tirez!”
The guns fired, obliterating the view of the beach, of the sea, and of the distant white city in a bellying cloud of smoke.
“Now!” General Ruffin called to his battalion commanders.
Muskets hammered back into French shoulders. More smoke filled the sky.
“Fix bayonets!” the marshal shouted, and waved his white-plumed hat toward the cannon smoke. “And forward, mes braves! Forward!”
The band played, the drummers beat, and the French went to finish their job. The day of glory had arrived.
COLONEL VANDAL was some way north of Sharpe. The colonel was in the center of his battalion, which formed the left flank of the French line, and Sharpe, out by Duncan’s guns, was at the right flank of the British line, which still overlapped the thicker, larger French formation. “This way,” he shouted to his riflemen and ran behind the two companies of the 47th who were now down to one large company, and then behind the half battalion of the 67th until he was opposite Vandal.
“It’s grim work!” Colonel Wheatley had again ridden up behind Sharpe. This time he was talking to Major Gough, who commanded the 87th that was now on Sharpe’s left. “And no damned dons to help us,” Wheatley went on. “How are your fellows, Gough?”
“My men are staunch, sir,” Gough said, “but I need more of them. Need more men.” He had to shout over the din of the volleys. The 87th had lost four officers and over a hundred men. The wounded were in the pines, and more were joining them as the French musket balls slammed home. The file-closers were shouting at men to close on the center and so the 87th shrank. They still fired back, but their muskets were being fouled with powder residue and every cartridge was harder to load.
“There are no more men,” Wheatley said, “unless the Spanish come.” He glanced along the enemy line. The problem was simple enough. The French had too many men and so they could replace their casualties while he could not. He could outfight them man to man, but the French advantage in numbers was starting to matter. He could wait in hope that Lapeña would send reinforcements, but if none came then he must inevitably be whittled down, a process that would go faster and faster as his line shrank.
“Sir!” an aide shouted, and Wheatley looked to see that the Spanish officer who had ridden to summon reinforcements was returning.
Galiana curbed his horse by Wheatley and, for a heartbeat, looked too upset to talk. Then he blurted out his news. “General Lapeña refuses to move,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir.”
Wheatley stared at the Spaniard. “Good God,” he said in a surprisingly mild tone, then looked back to Gough. “I think, Gough,” he said, “that we have to give them steel.”
Gough looked at the throng of Frenchmen through the smoke. The 87th’s colors just above the colonel’s head were twitching as the bullets struck them. “Steel?” he asked.
“We have to do something, Gough. Can’t just stand here and die.”
Sharpe had lost sight of Vandal. There was too much smoke. He saw a Frenchman stoop to the body of a fallen Portuguese skirmisher and rummage through the dead man’s pockets. Sharpe knelt, aimed, and fired. When the rifle smoke cleared he saw the Frenchman on all fours, head down. He reloaded. He was tempted to ram the ball down naked rather than wrapping it in its greased leather patch. He thought the French might charge at any moment and the thing to do now was to kill them fast, to pour fire at them, and a naked ball in a rifle was quick to load. At this distance the inaccuracy did not matter. But if he saw Vandal again he wanted to be sure of his shot and so he took a leather patch, wrapped the ball, and rammed it down the rifled barrel. “Look for their officers,” he told his men.
A pistol sounded beside Sharpe and he looked to see that Captain Galiana had dismounted and was now reloading the small weapon. “Fire!” the lieutenant commanding the closest company of the 87th shouted and the muskets blasted out smoke. A man fell back from the front rank, a hole black in his forehead.
“Leave him be!” a sergeant shouted. “He’s a dead ’un! Reload!”
“Fix bayonets!” the shout came from just behind the 87th and was repeated down the line, getting fainter as the order traveled north. “Fix bayonets!”
“God save Ireland,” Harper said. “This is desperate.”
“Not much choice,” Sharpe said. The French were winning by sheer numbers. They were pressing forward, and Colonel Wheatley could either retreat or attack. To retreat was to lose, but to attack was at least to test the French.
“Swords, sir?” Slattery asked.
“Fix swords,” Sharpe said. It was no time to worry about whether this was his fight or not. The battle trembled. Another French volley slammed into the red ranks. Then two gouts of canister slashed away the blue-coated men who had fired the shots. An Irish boy was screaming horribly, rolling in front of the ranks with bloody hands clutching his groin. A sergeant silenced him with a merciful blow of a musket butt to the skull.
“Forward now! Forward!” a brigade major bellowed.
“The 87th will advance!” Gough shouted. “Faugh a ballagh!”
“Faugh a ballagh!” the surviving men of the 87th responded, and went forward.
“Steady, boys!” Gough shouted. “Steady!”
But the 87th did not want to be steady. A quarter of their number was either dead or wounded, and they had a seething anger against the men who had punished them in the last hour, and so they went eagerly. The sooner they were at the enemy, the sooner that enemy would die, and Gough could not hold them. They began to run, and as they ran they sounded a high-pitched scream, terrifying in itself, and their seventeen-inch bayonets were bright in the sun, which was almost at its winter zenith.
“Forward!” The men to Sharpe’s right were keeping pace with the 87th. Duncan’s gunners handspiked their cannon around to rake the flank of the French line.
“And kill! And kill!” Ensign Keogh was shouting at the top of his voice. He carried his slim sword in one hand and gripped his cocked hat in the other.
“Faugh a ballagh!” Gough bellowed.
French muskets roared horribly close and men were torn backward, blood spraying their neighbors, but the charge could not be stopped now. All along the line the redcoats were going forward with bayonets because to stay still was to die and to retreat was to lose. They numbered fewer than a thousand now, and they were attacking three times their number. “Get into them! Get into them!” an officer of the Cauliflowers shouted. “Kill them, kill them!”