The South Essex followed the Regimienta towards the horsemen. Like the Spanish the British line was a hundred and fifty yards wide, its four ranks tipped with bayonets, the company officers riding or walking with drawn swords. The Spanish had halted, some four hundred yards up the road, and Simmerson had no choice but to stop the Battalion to find out what the Regimienta intended. Hogan joined Sharpe and nodded at the two Regiments.
‘Not joining in the battle?’
‘I think it’s a private party. Captain Sterritt and I are guarding the bridge.’
Sterritt, a mild man, smiled nervously at Sharpe and Hogan. Like his Colonel he was appalled at the appearance of these veteran soldiers and secretly frightened that the enemy might prove to be as tough and carefree as the Rifleman or the Engineer. Hogan was wiping his hands on a piece of rag and Sharpe asked him if the job was finished.
‘Aye. It’s all done. Ten kegs of powder snuggled down, fuses laid, and the hole filled in. As soon as these gallant soldiers get the hell out of the way I can find out whether it works or not. Now what’s happening?’
The Spanish were forming square. A good Battalion could march from line into square in thirty seconds but the Spanish took four times as long. It was the proper formation when faced by attacking cavalry, but as the French showed no lunatic inclination to charge four times their own number the Spanish convolutions were hardly necessary. Sharpe watched as the officers and sergeants harried and chivvied their men into the rough semblance of a square, a slightly lopsided square, but it would do. Sharpe remembered the three women. He could not see them with the Regimienta, and he looked round to see them watching decorously from the river-bank. One of them saw his glance and raised a gloved hand.
‘It’s a good job the French don’t have those guns.’
Hogan raised his eyebrows. ‘I’d forgotten that rumour. That would heat things up.’
There was no more fatal combination than cavalry and artillery for men on foot. Infantry in square were totally safe from cavalry; all the horsemen could do was ride round and round the formation, hacking uselessly at the bayonets. But if the cavalry were supported by cannons the square became a deathtrap. Grapeshot would blast holes in the ranks; the cavalry would ride into the gaps and slice down with their sabres. Sharpe looked at the skyline. There were no guns.
Simmerson had watched the Regimienta form their square. He was obviously nonplussed. It must have occurred to him that he could not attack the French, so the French had to attack him. There was a pause in proceedings. The Spanish had formed their rough square on the right of the track; Simmerson gave his orders and with a marvellous precision the South Essex demonstrated, on the left, how a Battalion should form a square. Even at half a mile Sharpe could see the horsemen clapping ironically.
Now there were two squares, the Spanish nearer the French, and still the horsemen made no move. Time passed. The sun climbed higher in the sky, the grassland shivered in the haze, the French horses lowered their necks and cropped at the thin pasture. Captain Sterritt, guarding the bridge with his company, became plaintive.
‘Why don’t they attack?’
‘Would you?’ Sharpe asked.
Sterritt looked puzzled. Sharpe could understand why. Simmerson was looking increasingly foolish, he had marched to war with drawn sword and unfurled banners and the enemy was refusing to fight. Now he was stranded, like a beached whale, in a defensive square. It was virtually impossible to make an ordered march while in a square formation; it was easy enough for the leading edge, they marched forwards, but the sides had to step sideways, and the rear edge walk backwards, all of them fighting off encircling horsemen. It was not impossible, Sharpe had done it, but when survival depends on doing the impossible then men will find a way. Simmerson wanted to move but he did not want his neat, ordered square to be torn out of alignment as he advanced. He could have resumed the line formation but then he would look even more foolish for having formed a square at all. So he stayed where he was and the French looked on, filled with wonderment at the strange antics of the enemies.
‘Someone’s got to do something!’ Captain Sterritt frowned in bewilderment. War was not supposed to be like this! It was glory and victory, not this humiliation.
‘Someone’s doing something!’ Hogan nodded at the South Essex. A horseman had been released from the square and was galloping towards the bridge.
‘It’s Lieutenant Gibbons.’ Sterritt raised a hand to his Colonel’s nephew, who pulled his horse to a violent stop. His features were stern, filled with the seriousness of the moment. He looked down on Sharpe.
‘You’re to report to the Colonel.’
‘Why?’
Gibbons looked astonished. ‘The Colonel wants you. Now!’
Hogan coughed. ‘Lieutenant Sharpe is under my orders. Why does the Colonel want him?’
Gibbons flung an arm towards the immobile French. ‘We need a skirmish line, Sharpe, something to sting the French into action.’
Sharpe nodded. ‘How far ahead of the square am I supposed to take my men?’ He spoke in sweet reasonableness.
Gibbons shrugged. ‘Near enough to move the cavalry. Hurry!’
‘I’m not moving.
Gibbons stared down at Sharpe. ‘I beg your pardon.’
‘I will not kill my men. I go more than fifty yards from that square and the French will ride us down like hares. Don’t you know that skirmishers fall back from cavalry?’
‘Are you coming, Sharpe?’ Gibbons made it sound like an ultimatum.
‘No.’
The Lieutenant turned to Hogan. ‘Sir? Will you order Lieutenant Sharpe to obey?’
‘Listen, laddie.’ Sharpe noticed that Hogan had broadened his Irish accent. ‘Tell your Colonel from me that the sooner he gets back over the bridge the sooner we can put a hole in it, and the sooner we get home. And, no, I will not instruct Lieutenant Sharpe to commit suicide. Good day, sir.’
Gibbons wrenched his horse round, tearing at its mouth with the bit, and clapped his spurs into its side, shouted something unintelligible at Sharpe or Hogan, and galloped back towards the impotent square in spurts of dust. Sterritt turned to them, appalled.
‘You can’t refuse an order!’
Hogan’s patience snapped. Sharpe had never heard the little Irishman lose his temper but the events had exasperated him. ‘Don’t you bloody understand? Do you know what a skirmish line is? It’s a line of men scattered in front of the enemy. They’ll be ridden down like scarecrows! Christ! What does he think he’s doing?’
Sterritt blanched in front of Hogan’s anger. He tried to placate the Engineer. ‘But someone’s got to do something.’
‘You’re quite right. They’ve got to get back over the bloody bridge and stop wasting our time!’
Some of Sterritt’s company began tittering. Sharpe felt his own patience snap. He ignored Sterritt’s presence.
‘Quiet!’
An embarrassed silence settled over the end of the bridge. It was broken by the giggling of the three Spanish women.
‘We can start with them.’ Hogan turned to them and shouted in Spanish. They looked at him, at each other, but he shouted again, insisting. Reluctantly they walked their horses past the Riflemen, past the officers, and back to the north bank.
‘That’s three less to get over the bridge anyway.’ Hogan looked at the sky. ‘It must be midday already.’
The French must have been as bored as anyone else. Sharpe heard the notes of a bugle and watched as they formed into four squadrons. They still faced the bridge, their leading squadron about three hundred yards beyond the Spanish square. Instead of the two long lines they efficiently made ranks of ten men; their commander ironically saluted the squares with his sword, and gave the order to move. The horsemen went into a trot; they circled towards the Spanish, kept on circling; they were turning to ride away, back up the hill and off to the east where they would rejoin Marshal Victor and his army waiting for Wellesley’s advance.
Th
e disaster happened when the French were at the closest point where a wide turn would take them to the Regimienta de la Santa Maria. In frustration or in pride, but in complete stupidity, the Spanish Colonel gave the order to fire. Every musket that could be brought to bear exploded in flame and smoke, the balls shot uselessly away. A musket was optimistically effective at fifty yards; at two hundred, the distance between the French and the Spanish, the volley was simply thrown away. Sharpe saw just two horses fall.
‘Oh Christ!’ He had spoken out loud.
There was a simple mathematics to what happened next. The Spanish had shot their volley and would take at least twenty seconds to reload. A galloping horse could cover two hundred yards in much less time. The French Colonel had no hesitation. His column was sideways to the Spanish, he gave his orders, the bugle sounded, and with a marvellous precision the French turned from a column of forty ranks of ten men each into ten lines of forty men. The first two spurred straight into the gallop, their sabres drawn; the others trotted or walked behind. There was still no reason for them to succeed. An infantry square, even without loaded muskets, was impervious to cavalry. All the men had to do was stay still and keep the bayonets firm and the horses would sheer away, flow down the sides of the square, and be blasted by the loaded muskets at the sides and backs of the formation.
Sharpe ran a few paces forward. With a dreadful certainty he knew what would happen. The Spanish soldiers were ill-led, frightened. They had fired a volley terrifying in its noise and smoke, but their enemy was suddenly on them, the horses baring their teeth through the veils of musket smoke, the riders tall in their stirrups, shrieking, sabres aloft, and galloping straight for them. Like beads off a burst string the Spanish broke. The French launched another two lines of cavalry as the first crashed into the panicked mass. The sabres fell, rose bloodied, and fell again. The Chasseurs were literally hacking their way into the packed square, the horses unable to move against the crush of screaming men. The third line of Frenchmen swerved away, checked their line, and launched themselves against the Spaniards who had broken clear and were running for their lives. The Spanish dropped their muskets, ran for safety, ran towards the South Essex.
The French were among them, riding along with the running men, hacking down expertly on the heads and shoulders of the fugitives. Behind them more lines of cavalry were trotting knee to knee into the attack. The French sabres came down right and left, more Spaniards broke from the mass, the colours went down, they were sprinting towards the British square, desperate for its safety. The South Essex could not see what was happening, only the Spanish coming towards them and the odd horsemen in the swirling dust.
‘Fire!’ Sharpe repeated the word. ‘Fire, you idiot.’
Simmerson had one hope for survival. He had to blast the Spanish out of his way; otherwise the fugitives would break into his own square and let the horsemen through after them. He did nothing. With a groan Sharpe watched the Spanish reach the red ranks and beat aside the bayonets as they scrambled to safety. The South Essex gave ground; they split to let the desperate men into the hollow centre; the first Frenchman reached the ranks, cut down with his sabre, and was blasted from the saddle by musket fire. Sharpe watched the horse stagger from bullet wounds; it crashed sideways into the face of the square, dragging down all four ranks. Another horseman came to the gap; he hacked left and right, then he too was plucked from his horse by a volley. Then it was over. The French came into the gap, the square broke, the men mixed with the Spanish and ran. This time there was only one place to go. The bridge. Sharpe turned to Sterritt.
‘Get your company out of the way!’
‘What?’
‘Move! Come on, man, move!’
If the company stayed at the bridge it would be swamped by fugitives. Sterritt sat on his horse and gaped at Sharpe, stunned and overwhelmed by the tragedy before him. Sharpe turned to the men.
‘This way! At the double!’
Harper was there. Dependable Harper. Sharpe led, the men followed, Harper drove them. Off the road and down the bank. Sharpe saw Hogan alongside.
‘Get back, sir!’
‘I’m coming with you!’
‘You’re not. Who’ll blow the bridge?’
Hogan disappeared. Sharpe ignored the chaos to his right, he ran down the bank, counting his steps. At seventy paces he judged they had gone far enough. Sterritt had disappeared. He whirled on them.
‘Halt! Three ranks!’
His Riflemen were there; they had needed no orders. Behind him he could hear screams, the occasional cough of a musket, but above all the sound of hooves and of blades falling. He did not look. The men of the South Essex stared past him.
‘Look at me!’
They looked at him. Tall and calm.
‘You’re in no danger. Just do as I say. Sergeant!’
‘Sir!’
‘Check the flints.’
Harper grinned at him. The men of Sterritt’s company had to be calmed down, their hysteria smoothed by the familiar, and the big Irishman went down the ranks, forcing the men to take their eyes off the slaughter ahead and look at their muskets instead. One of the men, white with fear, looked up at the huge Sergeant. ‘What’s going to happen, Sarge?’
‘Happen? You’re going to earn your money, lad. You’re going to fight.’ He tugged at the man’s flint. ‘Loose as a good woman, lad, screw it up!’ The Sergeant looked down the ranks and laughed. Sharpe had saved eighty muskets and thirty rifles from the rout, and the French, God bless them, were about to have a fight.
CHAPTER 7
It was a shambles. Four minutes ago sixteen hundred infantry had been ranked on the field, officered and organised; now most of them were running for the bridge; they threw away muskets, packs, anything that might slow them down and bring the methodical sabres of the French closer to their heels. The French Colonel was good. He concentrated some of his men on the fugitives, driving them at a trot, cutting left and right as simply as on the practice field, driving the panicked mass to the killing ground at the bridge’s entrance. More horsemen had been ordered against the remnants of the British square, a huddle of men fighting desperately round the colours, but Sharpe could see more cavalry, standing motionless in two ranks, the French reserve which could be thrown in to sustain the attack or break any sudden resistance from the infantry.
There was no point in defending the bridge. It was well enough protected from the French by the turbulent mass of men struggling for its dubious safety. Sharpe guessed that perhaps a thousand men were trying to thread themselves on to a roadway just wide enough for an ox-cart. It was an unbelievable sight. Sharpe had seen panic on a battlefield before, but never quite like this. Less than a hundred horsemen were driving ten times their number in horrific flight. The crowd at the bridge could not move forward, the press of bodies was too great, but Spanish and British fought and seethed, clawed and shoved, desperate to escape the Chasseurs who cut at the fringes of the crowd. Even those who succeeded in pushing their way onto the bridge were not safe. Sharpe caught a glimpse of men falling into the water where the bridge was broken and where Hogan had destroyed the parapets. Other men, harried by sabres, joined the back of the crowd. The French had no chance of cutting their way through that immense barrier of bone and flesh; nor were they trying to get to the bridge. Instead the Chasseurs kept the panic boiling so that the men had no chance to reform and turn on their pursuers with loaded muskets and raised bayonets. The horsemen were almost lackadaisical in their sabre cuts. Sharpe saw one man cheerfully urging the fugitives on with the flat of his sword. It took effort to kill a man, especially if he was wearing his pack and had turned his back. Inexperienced horsemen swept their blades in impressive arcs that slammed into a soldier’s back; the victim would collapse, only to discover, astonished, that his injury was merely a sliced pack and greatcoat. The veteran Chasseurs waited until they were level with their targets and then cut backwards at the unprotected face, and Sharpe knew there would be far mo
re wounded than dead, horribly wounded, faces mangled by the blades, heads opened to the bone. He turned to his front.
Here there was proper fighting. The colours of the South Essex were still flying, though the men surrounding them had lost all semblance of a proper formation. They had been forced into a crude ring, pressed back by horsemen, and they fought off the sabres and hooves with sword and bayonet. It was a desperate fight. The French had thrown most of their men against the small band; they may have stood no chance of capturing the bridge, but inside the terrified ring was a greater prize. The colours. For the French to ride off the field with captured colours was to ride into glory, to become heroes, to know that the tale would be told throughout Europe. The man who captured the colours could name his own reward, whether in money, women, or rank, and the Chasseurs tried to break the British resistance with a savage fury. The South Essex were fighting back, no less desperate, their efforts fired by the fanatical determination that their flags should not fall. To lose the colours was the ultimate disgrace.
It had taken Sharpe only a few seconds to comprehend the utter chaos in front of him; there were no choices to be made; he would go forward towards the colours, hoping the ring of survivors could hold out against the horsemen long enough for his company to bring their muskets and bayonets into range. He turned to the men. Harper had done his work well. Riflemen were scattered through the ranks to bolster the frayed nerves of the men from Sterritt’s company. The men in green jackets grinned at Sharpe. The men in red stood appalled and nervous. Sharpe noted that Harper had put a file of Riflemen at each end of the company, the vulnerable flanks which would be the weakest points of his force and where only steady nerves and rigid bayonets would deter the swooping horsemen. Two nervous Lieutenants had been pushed into the files, and like the other men of Sterritt’s company they flicked their eyes at the crowd near the bridge. They wanted to run, they wanted the safety of the other bank, but Sharpe could also see two steady Sergeants who had seen battle before and calmly waited for orders.