Harper stared at the column and cocked his gun. “God save Ireland.”
The surviving gunners of the British line rammed canister on top of roundshot, stabbed the spikes to break the powder bags, and rammed quills into blackened vents. The guns, and the redcoats, were ready.
And the Guard cheered.
CHAPTER 20
“Cheer, you bastards!” Marshal Ney raised his sword to catch the dying light.
The Guard cheered. They were the Emperor’s best.
Ney’s sword dropped to point towards the left and the great column split smoothly into two parts. The larger of the two newly formed columns would attack close to Hougoumont while the smaller would assault the ridge straight in front. The cavalry would follow the twin assaults, ready to pursue the broken enemy, while the great mass of other infantry would march at the rear of the attack to hold the ground the Guard captured.
The leading Guard battalions looked up, seeing nothing but a few mounted officers and a handful of guns at the top of the ridge.
They had begun their climb to victory. The slope was not steep. A man could run the slope without catching breath. Some men stumbled because the soil had been churned by the cavalry, but the ground was not so broken that the long ranks could not keep their order. Those ranks advanced slowly, even ponderously, as if to suggest that their victory was inevitable. And so, for them, it was. They were the immortals; the unbeaten. They were the Guard.
„Fire!“
The glowing slow-matches of the portfires touched the quills and the nine-pounders crashed back on their trails. The six-pounders, their barrels too light for double shotting, fired canister or roundshot alone.
The guns pierced their missiles deep into the two columns. Gunners swabbed and rammed, and when they looked up again the columns had closed ranks and were still marching forward, almost as though no men had died. The drums still sounded, and the French cheer was still as confident and just as menacing as before. The next quills were shoved into the vents, the gunners ducked aside, and the guns hammered back.
Colonel Ford watched in horrified disbelief. The smaller French column was marching to strike the ridge just to the right of his battalion, and he could see that the column was quite unstoppable. He saw the roundshot plunge into the long blue coats, and the cannon-balls seemed to do no damage at all. The Guard just soaked up the fire, sealed its ranks, stepped over its dead and injured, and marched stolidly on.
Sharpe had seen such columns before. He had seen them more, times than he could remember, but once again, as on all those other times, he marvelled at how the French infantry could take such punishment. With each strike of roundshot and canister the column seemed to quiver, but then it sealed up its ranks and kept on marching. Gun-fire would not stop these huge men, only musketry could do that. It would have to be volley fire, calm and fast; musketry that killed in bloody droves to pile the column’s leading ranks in rows of corpses.
The cannon fired again, pouring shot at pistol range into the closest column. Sixty Guardsmen marched in each rank. The foremost ranks were almost at the ridge’s crest while the rear ranks had yet to clear the obscuring smoke on the valley’s floor. Far to Sharpe’s right, where the British Guards waited, the larger column filled the whole slope with its dark menace, then Sharpe looked back to the nearer column as he waited for Ford to give the battalion the orders to stand and fire.
“ Vive I’Empereur!“ the Guard shouted, their voices close enough to sound hoarse and overwhelming.
D’Alembord glanced expectantly at Ford, but the Colonel had taken off his spectacles and was furiously rubbing them on the tail of his sash.
“For God’s sake, sir!” d’Alembord pleaded.
“Oh, my God!” Ford had suddenly realized that he was smearing Major Vine’s brains all over his spectacles. He whimpered and let the eyeglasses fall as though they were white hot. He whimpered again as the precious spectacles dropped into the mud.
“Sir!” d’Alembord swayed in the saddle.
“Oh, no! No!” Ford had evidently forgotten all about the Guard, but was instead leaning far out of his saddle in an attempt to reach his eyeglasses. “Help me, Major! My spectacles! Help me.”
D’Alembord took a deep breath. “Stand up!” His voice sounded weak, but the battalion had been waiting for the command and scrambled eagerly to their feet to see the enemy on their right front. Peter d’Alembord filled his lungs to shout the next order, but instead, in a gasp of pain, he toppled senseless from the saddle. His right leg was a mess of blood. The remnants of his breeches, his silk stocking, the bandage and his dancing shoe were all soaked in a slippery mess of blood. He fell on top of Colonel Ford’s spectacles, breaking them.
“No! No!” Ford protested. “My glasses! Major, please! I must insist! You’ll destroy my eyeglasses. Move, I beg you! My spectacles!” He screamed the last word in sheer despair, betraying his horror at this last tragedy in a day of madness.
The battalion gaped at the Colonel, then looked back to see a French eight-pounder gun slewing violently round behind its team of horses half-way down the slope. The gun’s wheels spewed mud ten feet into the air as the weapon slid to a halt. The gunners spiked the trail round as the horses were led away. Ford looked up from d’Alembord to see the vague shape of the cannon, its muzzle huge and black. The French column was a hundred paces to Ford’s right, its mens’ faces visible to him as pale blurs in the smoke. Worse, the column was beginning to unfold, its rear ranks marching outwards to form a broad line that would challenge and crush the British muskets.
The French cannon fired.
The canister crashed into the battalion’s four ranks. Seven men went down. Two screamed foully until a sergeant told them to stop their damned noise. Ford, racked by the screams, could take no more. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and his hands were shaking. He tried to speak, but no sound came. The nearest Frenchmen were just fifty yards away and, even without his spectacles, he could see their moustaches and the bright streaks that were their bayonets. He saw their mouths open to shout their war cry. “ Vive I’Empereur!”
The battalion to Ford’s right was edging backwards. They, like Ford’s men, were survivors of Halkett’s brigade who had so nearly died with the men of the 69th at Quatre Bras. Now, their nerves shredded and their officers mostly dead, they gave ground. The French were just too huge, too threatening, and too close.
“Vive I’Empereur!”
Ford’s men smelt their neighbours’ panic. They too shuffled backwards. They looked for orders, but their Colonel could not stop them. His saddle was wet, his bowels were churning and his muscles twitching helplessly. He could see death coming at him in a myopic blur of long blue coats. He wanted to cry, because he did not want to die.
While for the Guard, for the Emperor’s immortal undefeated Guard, victory was so sweet. „Vive I’Empereur!“
“Now, Maitland! Now’s your time!” The Duke had stationed himself behind the survivors of the British Foot Guards who faced the larger of the two French columns. The Duke, who had learned his trade as a battalion officer, could not resist giving the orders himself. “Stand up, Guards!”
To the French Guardsmen it seemed as though the line of redcoats rose out of the mud like the reviving dead. They suddenly stood to make a barrier across the path of the larger French column which, instinctively, checked. One moment the ridge had appeared empty, now, suddenly,“ an enemy had risen from the ravaged earth.
“Forward!” the French officers shouted, while at the back of the Imperial Guard’s column the battalions began to spread outwards to form the musket line which would overpower the handful of men who dared to oppose them.