batteries of French artillery were firing blind into the fog, hoping their shells would rake the defenders at the ridge top.
‘God’s teeth!’ The exclamation was torn from Colonel Lawford who, peering down the slope, saw the horde of French skirmishers break out of the fog. The voltigeurs far outnumbered the British and Portuguese light companies, but those redcoats, cazadores and green-jackets fired first. Puffs of smoke jetted from the hillside. A Frenchman twisted and fell back and then the voltigeurs went down onto one knee and aimed their muskets. The volley splintered the morning, thickening the fog with powder smoke, and Sharpe saw two redcoats and a Portuguese go down. The second men of the allied skirmishing pairs fired, but the voltigeurs were too numerous and their musket fire was almost continuous and the red, green and brown jackets were falling back. The voltigeurs advanced in short rushes, at least two of them for every allied skirmisher, and it was plain the French were winning this early contest by sheer weight of numbers.
Lieutenant Slingsby and the South Essex light troops had deployed ahead of the battalion and now found themselves on the flank of the French advance. Ahead of them was mostly empty hillside, but the voltigeurs were thick to their right and for a few moments the company was able to stand and drive in that enemy flank, but a French officer saw what was happening and shouted for two companies to chase the redcoats and greenjackets away. ‘Back away now,’ Sharpe muttered. He was mounted on Portia, Slingsby’s horse, and the extra height gave him a clear view of the fight that was some three hundred paces away. ‘Back off!’ he said louder, and the Colonel gave him an irritated look. But then Slingsby understood the danger and gave eight whistle blasts. That told the light company to retreat while inclining to their left, an order that would bring them back up the slope towards the battalion, and it was the right order, the one Sharpe would have given, but Slingsby had his blood up and did not want to fall too far back too soon and thus yield the fight to the French and so instead of slanting back up the hill as he had ordered he ran straight across the slope’s face.
The men had started back up the ridge, but seeing the Lieutenant stay lower down, they hesitated. ‘Keep firing!’ Slingsby shouted at them. ‘Don’t bunch! Smartly now!’ A ball struck a rock by his right foot and ricocheted up to the sky. Hagman shot the French officer who had led the move against the South Essex and Harris put down an enemy sergeant who fell into a gorse bush, but the other Frenchmen kept advancing and Slingsby slowly backed away, yet instead of being between the French and the South Essex he was now on the enemy’s flank, and another French officer, reckoning that the South Essex’s light company had been brushed aside, shouted at the voltigeurs to climb straight up the hill towards the right flank of the South Essex line. Cannon opened fire from the ridge top, shooting from the left of the battalion down into the fog behind the voltigeurs. ‘They must have seen something,’ Lawford said, patting Lightning’s neck to calm the stallion, which had been frightened by the sudden crash of the six-pounders. ‘Hear the drums?’
‘I can hear them,’ Sharpe said. It was the old sound, the French pas de charge, the noise of attacking Eagles. ‘Old trousers,’ he said. That was the British nickname for the pas de charge.
‘Why do we call it that?’
‘It’s a song, sir.’
‘Do I want to hear it?’
‘Not from me, sir. Can’t sing.’
Lawford smiled, though he had not really been listening. He took off his cocked hat and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Their main body can’t be far off now,’ he said, wanting the confrontation over. The voltigeurs were no longer advancing, but shooting at the line to weaken it before the column arrived.
Sharpe was watching Slingsby who, seeing the French turn away from him, now seemed momentarily bereft. He had not done badly. All his men were alive, including Ensign Iliffe who, when he had returned Sharpe’s sword, had been pale with nervousness. The boy had stood his ground, though, and that was all that could be expected of him, while the rest of Slingsby’s men had scored some hits on the enemy, but now that enemy climbed away from the company. What Slingsby should do, Sharpe thought, was climb the hill and spread his men across the face of the South Essex, but just then the first of the columns came into view from the fog.
They were shadows first, then dark shapes, and Sharpe could make no sense of it, for the column was no longer a coherent mass of men, but rather groups of men who emerged ragged from the whiteness. Two more cannons opened fire from the ridge, their round shot banging through files of men to spray the fog with blood, and still more men came, hundreds of men, and as they came into the light they hurried together, trying to reform the column, and the cannons, reloaded with canister, blasted great jagged holes in the blue uniforms.
Slingsby was still out on the flank, but the sight of the column prompted him to order his men to open fire. The voltigeurs saw what was happening and dozens ran to cut off the light company. ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Sharpe said aloud, and this time Lawford did not look irritated, just worried, but Slingsby saw the danger and shouted at his men to retreat as quickly as they could. They scrambled up the slope. It was not a dignified withdrawal, they were not firing as they backed, but just running for their lives. One or two, furthest down the slope, ran downhill to hide in the fog, but the rest managed to scramble their way back to the ridge’s summit where Slingsby barked at them to spread along the battalion’s face.
‘Too late,’ Lawford said quietly, ‘too damn late. Major Forrest! Call in skirmishers.’
The bugle sounded and the light company, panting from their near escape, formed at the left of the line. The voltigeurs who had chased the light company off the column’s flank were firing at the South Essex now and the bullets hissed close to Sharpe, for most of the Frenchmen were aiming at the colours and at the group of mounted officers clustered beside the two flags. A man went down in number four company. ‘Close ranks!’ a sergeant shouted, and a corporal, appointed as a file closer, dragged the wounded man back from the ranks.
‘Take him to the surgeon, Corporal,’ Lawford said, then watched as the great mass of Frenchmen, thousands of them now visible at the swirling margins of the fog, turned towards his ranks. ‘Make ready!’
Close to six hundred men cocked their muskets. The voltigeurs knew what was coming and fired at the battalion. Bullets twitched the heavy yellow silk of the regimental colour. Two more men were hit in front of Sharpe and one was screaming in pain. ‘Close up! Close up!’ a corporal shouted.
‘Stop your bleeding noise, boy!’ Sergeant Willetts of five company growled.
The column was two hundred paces away, still ragged, but in sight of the crest now. The voltigeurs were closer, just a hundred paces away, kneeling and firing, standing to reload and then firing again. Slingsby had let his riflemen go a few paces forward of the line and those men were hurting the voltigeurs, taking out their officers and sergeants, but a score of rifles could not blunt this attack. That would be a job for the redcoats. ‘When you fire,’ Lawford called, ‘aim low! Don’t waste His Majesty’s lead! You will aim low!’ He rode along the right of his line, repeating the message. ‘Aim low! Remember your training! Aim low!’
The column was coalescing, the ranks shuffling together as if for protection. A nine-pounder round shot seared through it, sending up a long fast spray of blood. The drummers were beating frantically. Sharpe glanced left and saw the Connaught Rangers were closing on the South Essex, coming to add their volleys, then a voltigeur’s bullet slapped off the top of his horse’s left ear and twitched at the sleeve of his jacket. He could see the faces of the men in the column’s front rank, see their moustaches, see their mouths opening to cheer their Emperor. A canister from a nine-pounder tore into them, twitching files red and ragged, but they closed up, stepped over the dead and dying, and came on with their long bayonets gleaming. The Eagles were bright
