Even as the sound of the last shot died away, Harness called for his men to fix bayonets and advance. Arthur rode forward with them, through the swirling smoke, emerging to see that the guns directly in front of the 78th had almost all been silenced. Miraculously, two full crews still remained, and still stood by their weapons, loading another round of grapeshot. As soon as he saw them, Harness increased the pace and the redcoats with their feathered bonnets and flapping kilts charged home. The Mahrattas snatched up their ramrods, handspikes and any other weapons that were to hand and threw themselves at the British. Despite their courage, the fight was over in a moment and the gunners lay where they had fallen around and under their cannon.
‘The 78th will re-form and reload!’ Harness yelled, and his men quickly closed up to face the block of enemy infantry behind the guns, barely more than a hundred yards away.The din of their shouted war cries and beaten drums contrasted sharply with the cool silence of the British ranks.
To his right, Arthur saw the battalion of sepoys halt to fire a volley at the gun crews in front of them and then they too charged home with the bayonet. Meanwhile, as the 78th began to advance again, the enemy infantry raised their muskets and fired a volley. The range was long and most shots missed, but some found their mark and men spun round and collapsed under the impact, before tumbling on to the trampled grass. Arthur felt the bay lurch beneath him and begin to topple to one side. Instantly he dropped the reins, kicked his feet free of the stirrups and threw himself clear just before the horse hit the ground and rolled over.The impact drove the breath from his lungs and for a moment he crouched on hands and knees, gasping for air.
‘Sir!’ A hand lifted him under the arm and pulled him up.‘Are you hurt?’
Arthur waved his hand as he struggled to breathe. ‘Fine . . . Just winded.’
He glanced round and saw that it was the young grenadier officer who had carried the bastion at Ahmadnagar, Lieutenant Campbell. ‘Thank you, Campbell. Now, my hat, if you please.’
The officer plucked it from the ground and handed it to Arthur. ‘I need to re-join my men, sir.’
‘By all means.’
Campbell trotted forward a few paces to catch up with his men just as Harness halted the 78th fifty paces from the enemy and calmly called out the order to fire another volley, as if it was just another parade ground exercise.
‘Fire!’
The volley thundered out and a withering storm of lead slashed through the Mahratta troops so that most of the men in the front line went down. This time there was no second volley and Harness immediately followed up with the order to charge with the bayonet. The enemy, having already witnessed the slaughter of the artillery crews, shuffled back several paces, and then the first of them turned to run, and in moments the panic was contagious and they broke and ran. With a roar of triumph the 78th ran after them, bayoneting the few who were brave enough to stand their ground.
As he caught his breath Arthur looked to the right and saw the sepoy battalion next in line charge home, and the panic from those men who had fled from the 78th communicated itself along the line so that those opposite the sepoys also broke and fled before the redcoats. Arthur felt a moment’s satisfaction at the sight of his plan bearing fruit. No native unit in India could have withstood the large, fierce men of the 78th, and once they broke Scindia’s line the other units had collapsed, just as Arthur had hoped they would. He turned to look for the groom who had been told to follow his general at a discreet distance with a remount. The man had already seen the bay fall and was trotting forward, leading Diomed by the reins. Retrieving his pistols, sabre and telescope from the dead bay, Arthur climbed into the saddle and ordered the groom to return to Maxwell’s reserve regiment of native cavalry.
From the vantage point of the saddle Arthur could see that Harness had managed to recall his men and the 78th was once again forming up as it waited for further orders. The Company officers were having less luck with their men who, having broken the Mahratta line, were excitedly running down and killing their enemies. For nearly a thousand yards the enemy line was destroyed and the ground between the two rivers was covered with figures streaming away from the British regulars and sepoys. To Arthur’s delight he estimated that thirty or forty guns had been captured. Without artillery, Scindia’s power would be broken and the best he could hope for was a war of brigandage against his British opponents.
Beyond the fleeing enemy Arthur noticed several large groups of Mahratta cavalry riding forward, heedlessly knocking aside their fleeing compatriots on the ground. He looked round and saw that the two four-pounders allocated to the 78th were trundling up a short way behind the regiment.Turning Diomed, he rode over to the officer in charge of the guns.
‘See those horsemen approaching? I want you to unlimber just ahead of the 78th and fire grape into any body of horsemen who venture within range, understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The Company officer saluted and turned to urge his contractors to goad the bullocks forward at a faster pace as the guns bumped across the uneven ground behind the limber. Once they were in position the crews quickly unhitched the trails, manhandled the guns round towards the advancing enemy horsemen and loaded with grapeshot. The first gun fired with a loud crack and the ground close to the nearest body of Mahratta horsemen was torn up. At once they stopped, wheeled their mounts round and galloped away until they were well out of range.
But even as Arthur began to feel that victory was firmly in his grasp the air reverberated with a sudden furious barrage of cannon fire from the direction of Assaye. His stomach clenched in anxiety. His orders had been clear enough: the place was to be avoided, yet there was no mistaking the direction of the cannonade. He spurred Diomed forward and rode to the sound of the guns.To his left the officers of the Company battalions had finally reined in their men and were forming them up to wait for new orders. In front and to the right of Arthur the ground was strewn with the bodies of Scindia’s men, together with a sprinkling of redcoats, a clear sign that Arthur’s confidence in the training, discipline and courage of his troops was not misplaced. He smiled as he took a moment’s pride in what had been achieved. Then his expression hardened as he reached the right flank of the British line and came across scores of redcoats sprawled across the bloodied ground; torn to pieces by grape and chain shot from the guns around Assaye.
It was clear what had happened. Some fool had blundered towards the village instead of closing on the main body of Scindia’s troops. With a sinking sensation he recalled Orrock’s appearance a little earlier on, when he had given the man his orders. It was too late to berate the man now; the damage was done. Looking around Arthur realised that hundreds of men had been cut down before the village. The survivors of Orrock’s pickets, and the 74th, which had been following him, had formed a square to protect them from the Mahratta cavalry that had charged from the enemy positions around Assaye, emboldened by the carnage their gunners had wrought on the British formations. The redcoats had held their own, firing volleys into the horsemen that swirled around them, all the time adding to the bodies of men and horses heaped about them. But already the Mahratta commanders were trying to gather their men in, ready to advance against the British flank from the direction of Assaye. Arthur saw the danger at once.
Five hundred yards behind the 74th’s square Maxwell’s cavalry stood formed and ready to charge. Arthur saw that Maxwell and his staff were advanced a hundred yards ahead of their men.There was not a moment to lose. Arthur snatched his hat from his head and waved it frantically from side to side to attract Maxwell’s attention. Then one of the staff officers edged his mount alongside Maxwell and pointed in Arthur’s direction. Arthur waited a moment until he was certain that his cavalry commander had seen him, and then drew his sabre and thrust it in the direction of the enemy forming up around Assaye. For a moment he was not sure that Maxwell had understood, and then the shrill notes of a trumpet carried across the battlefield and the dragoons and native cavalry eased forward into a trot, slowly gathering pace as they swept across the ground, bypassing the cheering men of the 74th, and then charged the horsemen and guns around Assaye. All along the line glinting steel glittered in the late afternoon sun as they drew their sabres and spurred their mounts into a full gallop to close the final gap between them and the Mahrattas. They were bigger men and far better mounted than their enemy, and the impetus of the charge shattered the Mahratta forces around Assaye. The men of Maxwell’s three regiments slashed about them as they carved a path through the enemy formations, striking down gunners, horsemen and the infantry at the other end of Scindia’s battle line.