Sharpe's Escape (18 page)
The drummers kept up their monotonous rhythm. A round of shrapnel, designed to burst in the air and slam its load of bullets down and forward, exploded above the right-hand column and the drums momentarily ceased as a dozen boys went down and the men behind were spattered with their blood. "Close up!" a sergeant shouted and a shell banged behind him and a hat went spiraling up in the air and fell on the road with a heavy thump because half the man's head was still inside. A drummer boy, both legs broken and his belly slit by shell fragments, sat and kept up his drumming as the files went past him. The men patted his head for luck, leaving him to die among the vines.
Ahead of the columns the new French skirmishers deployed and their officers shouted them up the hill to close the range and so swamp the hated greenjackets with musket fire. The Baker rifle was a killer, but a slow one. To fire it accurately a man was supposed to wrap each ball in a greased leather patch, then ram it down on the charge, and ramming a patched bullet was hard work and made a rifle slow to load. A man could shoot a musket three times while a rifleman reloaded. Time could be saved by forgetting the patch, but then the ball did not grip the seven lands and grooves spiraling inside the barrel and the weapon became little more accurate than a musket. The reinforced voltigeurs climbed and the sheer weight of their fire forced the riflemen and cazadores back, then more Portuguese skirmishers joined the fight, the whole of the 1st cazadores, but the French countered with three more companies of blue-jacketed troops who ran out of the columns and broke down the vines to climb up to where the powder smoke dotted the hillside. Their muskets added more smoke and their bullets pressed the brown- and green-jacketed men back. A rifleman, shot in the lungs, was draped over one of the chestnut stakes holding the vines and a voltigeur drew his bayonet and stabbed the wounded man until he stopped twitching, then searched his pockets for coins or plunder. A sergeant pushed the voltigeur away from the corpse. "Kill the others first!" he shouted. "Get uphill!" The French fire was overwhelming now, a drenching of lead, and the cazadores and riflemen scrambled up to the village itself where they took cover behind low stone walls or in the windows of the small cottages from which shards of broken tiles cascaded as the roofs were spattered by French musketry and by the fragments of shell casing fired by the French guns in the valley. The voltigeurs were shouting, encouraging each other, advancing in rushes, pointing out targets. "
Sauterelle! Sauterelle!
" a sergeant shouted, pointing at a rifleman of the 95th. The shout meant "grasshopper," the French nickname for the green pests who dodged and shot, moved and reloaded, shot and moved again. A dozen muskets fired at the man who vanished in an alley as the tile pieces clattered behind him.
The French skirmishers were all about the village's eastern margin, enveloping it in musketry, and small groups ran up to the houses and fired at shadows in the smoke. The road was blocked with handcarts where it entered the village, but a company of French troops charged the makeshift barricade which spat smoke and flame as rifles fired from behind the carts. Three Frenchmen went down, but the rest reached the obstacle and fired at the greenjackets. A shell exploded overhead, driving down two more Frenchmen and shattering tiles on a roof. The first handcart was pulled away and the French poured through the gap. Rifles and muskets spat at them from windows and doors. More voltigeurs climbed garden walls or charged into alleyways and over dung heaps. British, Portuguese and French shells were exploding among the houses, smashing walls and filling the narrow lanes with smoke and with shrieking shards of metal and broken tile, but the voltigeurs outnumbered the riflemen and the cazadores and, because they were inside the village, the rifles lost the advantage of long-range accuracy, and the blue-coated men pushed forward, advancing group by group, clearing houses and gardens. The road was cleared as the last carts were dragged away. The column was close to the village now and the voltigeurs were hunting the last cazadores and riflemen from the upper houses. One cazador, trapped in an alley, swung his unloaded musket like a club and put down two Frenchmen before a third lunged a bayonet into his belly. The village had been abandoned by its inhabitants and the voltigeurs plundered the small houses, taking whatever small possessions the villagers had left in their haste to leave. One man fought another for possession of a wooden bucket, a thing not worth a sou, and both died when cazadores shot them through a window.
The smoke from the British guns made leprous clouds on the ridge top as the columns reached the village. The shells banged at the columns, but the files closed up and the men marched on and the drummers worked their sticks, pausing only so that the shout of "
Vive l'Empereur
" could tell Marshal Masséna, down in the valley where the French gunners hammered their own shells up towards the ridge's crest, that the attack continued.
The windmill on the ledge below the crest lay a third of a mile from the village. The voltigeurs cleared the last enemy skirmishers from Sula's western edge, sending them scurrying up the more open ground that lay between the village and the mill. One column skirted the village, pushing down fences and clambering over two stone walls, but the other marched right through Sula's center. At least half a dozen roofs were burning, their rafters set alight by shells. Another shell exploded in the heart of the main street, flinging aside half a dozen infantrymen in smoke, blood and flame, and smearing the whitewashed walls of the houses with spatters of blood. "Close up!" the sergeants shouted. "Close up!" The drums echoed from the bloodied walls, while up on the ridge the British officers heard the rousing cheer, "
Vive l'Empereur!
" The voltigeurs were climbing ever closer, and were now so thick on the ground that their musketry was almost as dense as volley fire. The British and Portuguese skirmishers had vanished, gone northwards into some trees that crowned the northern crest, and all that seemed to be ahead of the French was the ledge where the horsemen stood close to the mill. Bullets began smacking against the mill's white-painted stones. One of the artillery batteries was near the mill and its smoke helped to hide the horsemen, among whom was a small, scowling, black-haired, dark-faced man who was perched atop an oversize saddle on a horse that seemed much too big for him. He stared indignantly at the French as if their very presence offended him. Musket balls hummed past him, but he ignored them. An aide, worried by the intensity of the voltigeurs' fire, considered suggesting that the small man should ride back a few paces, but checked himself from speaking. Such advice to Black Bob Craufurd, commander of the Light Division, would be construed as arrant weakness.
The columns were in the open ground beneath the mill now and the voltigeurs were being whipped by blasts of canister that flattened the grass as if a sudden gale gusted from the west. More canisters were fired, each taking its handful of casualties, and the voltigeur officers ordered their men back to the columns. Their job was done. The British and Portuguese skirmishers had been driven back and victory waited at the ridge top, and that victory was close, so very close, because the ridge was empty except for the two batteries of guns and the handful of horsemen.
Or so the French thought. But behind the ledge, where a path ran parallel to the ridge's top, was dead ground, invisible from below, and in the concealment, lying down to protect themselves from the French artillery, were the 43rd and the 52nd. They were two light infantry battalions, the 43rd from Monmouthshire and the 52nd from Oxfordshire, and they reckoned themselves the best of the best. They had a right to that opinion, for they had been drilled to a savage hardness by the small, black-jowled man who scowled at the French from beside the mill. A gunner spun back from the muzzle of his nine-pounder, struck in the ribs by a French musket ball. He spat up blood, then his Sergeant dragged him away from the gun's high wheel and rammed a canister home. "Fire!" the gun Captain shouted, and the huge weapon slammed back, bucking up on its trail to spew a thundercloud of smoke in which the canister was torn apart to loose its load of musket balls into the French ranks. "Close up," the French sergeants shouted, and wounded men, leaving snails' traces of blood, crawled back to the village where the stone walls would protect them from the gut-slitting blasts of canister. Yet there was not enough canister to finish the columns. They were too big. The outer ranks soaked up the punishment, left their dead and dying, while the ranks behind stepped over the corpses. The hidden redcoats could hear the drums getting closer, could hear the shouts of the infantry and the sound of the musket balls whickering close overhead. They waited, understanding from the swelling noise that Black Bob was letting the enemy get close, very close. This was not to be a firefight at extreme musket range, but a sudden, astonishing slaughter, and then they saw the gunners of one British battery, who were taking a drenching of musketry from the front rank of the left-hand column, abandon their pieces and run back to safety. There was an odd silence then. Not a real silence, of course, for the drums were still beating and the blue-coated French were shouting their war cry, but one British battery was deserted, its guns left to the enemy, and the other was reloading and so for a moment it seemed strangely quiet.
Then the French, who had been ripped by the round shot and torn by the dreadful canister, realized that the battery had been abandoned. They gave a great cheer and scrambled over rocks to touch the hot cannon, and officers shouted at them to ignore the guns. The guns could be taken away later, but for now all that mattered was to reach the crest and so win Portugal. Beneath them Marshal Masséna wondered whether Henriette would find the beds in the monastery comfortable, and whether he would be named Prince of Portugal and whether his cook could find something palatable among the discarded British rations to make for supper. Pertinent questions all, for the Army of Portugal was on the very brink of victory.
Then Black Bob took a breath.
"FORWARD!" SHARPE CALLED. He had concentrated the riflemen, British and Portuguese, on the spur's center from where they could pour an accurate fire on the voltigeurs crouching among the knoll's jumbled rocks. "Make it fast," he shouted. He knelt and fired his rifle, the smoke hiding whatever damage he did. "Forward! Forward!" If this damned attack was to be done, he thought, then do it quickly, and he chivvied the riflemen on, then beckoned at the redcoats and the rest of the Portuguese who advanced in a two-deep line behind. The guns helped. One was firing canister, the balls rattling on the rocks, while the second was cutting its fuses desperately short so that the shells exploded just above the knoll. It would be hell there, Sharpe thought. The French were being assailed by rifle fire, canister and shell fragments, yet they stubbornly clung to the promontory.
He slung his rifle. He did not have time to reload and, besides, he wanted the attack over quickly and so, in anticipation, he drew his sword. Why the hell did the bastards not run? "Forward!" he shouted and felt a ball smack past his cheek, the wind of it like a small hot puff of air. More smoke showed among the rocks as the voltigeurs opened on the riflemen, but none of the musket balls hit for the range was long. The rifles made a deeper, quicker noise than the muskets. "Forward!" Sharpe shouted again, conscious that Vicente had brought the three-company line close behind the skirmishers. The riflemen darted forward, knelt, aimed and fired, and a musket ball whipped through the heather to Sharpe's left. A Frenchman firing low, he thought, a man with experience, and he was a hundred paces from the knoll now and fear had dried his mouth. The enemy was hidden, his own men were in the open, and another ball went close enough for him to feel the wind of its passing. A cazador was down, clutching his right thigh, his rifle fallen in the heather. "Leave him!" Sharpe shouted at two men going to help the man. "Keep firing! Forward! Forward!" The noise of the big attack to the north was at full intensity, guns and muskets, then the two artillery pieces supporting Sharpe's attack fired together and he saw a shell burst right at the edge of the rocks and heard the canister strike stone and a Frenchman seemed to stand up slowly, his blue coat turning red before he jerked back down.
"Aim true!" Sharpe shouted at his men. In the excitement of battle there was a temptation to snatch at shots, to waste bullets, and he was close enough now to see the crouching enemy. Hagman fired, then took a loaded rifle from young Perkins and fired again. More musket smoke puffed from the rocks. God, they were stubborn! The riflemen ran another ten paces forward, knelt, fired and reloaded. Another cazador was hit, this time in the shoulder and the man stumbled down the spur's side. A ball hit Sharpe's shako, jerking it back on its cords so that it hung from his neck. Harper fired his rifle, then unslung the seven-barreled gun, anticipating the order to rush the rocks and Sharpe turned to find Vicente almost on his heels.
"Let me give one volley," the Portuguese said.
"Rifles!" Sharpe bellowed. "Down! Down!"
The riflemen flattened themselves, Vicente halted his men. "Present!" The orders in the Portuguese army were given in English, a concession to the many British officers. Sharpe edged into their ranks.
"Fire!" Vicente shouted, and the volley cracked on the spur, pumping out smoke, just as the two cannon fired and the knoll was suddenly a tangled hell of bullets, shell scraps and blood.
"Charge!" Sharpe shouted and he ran ahead, saw Ensign Iliffe off to his left with his saber drawn. The Portuguese were shouting as they advanced, their words indistinguishable, but plainly full of hate for the French. They all began to run. It was all fury now, fury and hate and terror and anger, and smoke showed in the rocks as the French fired and a man screamed behind Sharpe who found Harper beside him, the big man running clumsily, and they were just ten paces from the nearest rocks when suddenly a rank of a dozen Frenchmen stood up, an officer in their center, and presented muskets.