you. Look to it now. Smarten up. Dress your ranks.’
They were standing six deep now, rather than in the customary four ranks. Six ranks to push with sheer weight of numbers as deep as possible into the fortifications and through the men beyond. But six ranks that would give equally such easy sport to the enemy guns whose cannonballs, falling just short of the front man, would bounce up and through him before continuing to take down another five, ten, twenty in his wake. Slaughter barked the command:
‘Grenadiers. Fix …’ he drew breath.
With one motion the Grenadiers drew the newfangled blades from their sheaths fumbling with the unfamiliar fastenings. Slaughter finished:
‘… bayonets.’
With a rattle of metal against metal the company fixed the clumsy sockets on to the barrels of their fusils. A distant voice, the confident growl of General Goors, speaking in a slow and particular tone and loud to the point of hoarseness, rang out across the field.
‘The storming party will advance.’
The pause that followed, as Goors turned to his front seemed an eternity. And then his single word of command.
‘Advance.’
Along the line, the order was taken up by a hundred sergeants and lieutenants. Behind each regimental contingent two fifers began a tune that on the fifth bar, with a fast, rising roll, was taken up by the drummer boys. The familiar rattle and paradiddle of ‘the Grenadiers’ March’.
Then, with a great cheer, the line began to walk forward. Steel measured his pace. Not with the precision of the Prussians or the Dutch, who were always directed by their blessed manual of rules to walk into battle: ‘as slow as foot could fall’. But rather with the singular, slow step of the British infantry. A gentle step, as their own manual directed, designed to ensure that the men would not be ‘out of breath when they came to engage’. It was certainly an easy pace, he thought. But deadly. And under cannonfire quite the last way in which you would want to conduct yourself.
Walking forward now, as the enemy shot began to fly in earnest towards their lines, Steel felt his feet begin to sink into the soft ground. Weighed down by their bundles of faggots, the men soon found they could not gather pace. Four hundred yards, thought Steel. Good God. It seemed more like a mile now, stretching out before him up the hill. No hill now, but a mountain, from the top of which he saw guns belch more gouts of flame as the French artillery opened up with its full force. Ten, twenty roundshot at a time came leaping at them down the slope, finding a home in the ranks behind him. Steel heard the cries to his rear as his own men were blown to oblivion. He repeated a litany in his head: ‘Face the front. Keep looking to the front. Don’t be distracted. Don’t, for pity’s sake, look back.’
He heard Slaughter close behind him, through the cacophany of shot, bark another, familiar command: ‘Dress your ranks. Keep them steady. Corporal Jenkins. Your section. Keep it steady now, mind.’
Keep steady. It was madness in this hail of roundshot and grenades. But there was no other way. A cannonball flew past his left elbow. Steel felt the shockwave. Another roundshot came hurtling towards him and passed horribly close, before taking off the head of one of the second-rank men and continuing down the hill. To his left he could see Henry Hansam advancing at a similar walking pace. The drums were driving them forward now, hammering out their tattoo with frenzied rhythm. Momentarily forgetting his own advice, he looked behind. Saw Slaughter and next to him, his face covered in mud, his coat splashed with blood and brains from the man who had been killed beside him, yet still smiling through his fear, one of the infants of the company. A boy of barely sixteen. Steel grinned at him. He was a Yorkshire farmhand, if his memory served him right. Runaway, most like. He shouted through the cacophany:
‘Truman, isn’t it? All right lad?’
A bigger smile. That was good.
‘Don’t worry. You’re doing well. Not bad for your first battle. Sarn’t Slaughter, let’s get up there and show them how it’s done.’
Looking to his front he could see nothing but smoke and flying shot. The noise was indescribable. A familiar terror began to rise inside him. Like the sudden, illogical panic that could sweep through you when standing on a precipice. Must stay calm, he thought. The men must not see that I am afraid. There was a cold feeling now in the pit of his stomach. Feet like lead. I am not afraid. He bit his lip until he could taste the blood. Good. He was alive. He would live through this. Just put one foot in front of the other and walk forward. That was it. Slowly he began to advance, and got into an automatic rhythm. Easier now. He raised his sword. It was the right time to say something now. The words flew from him.
‘Grenadiers. Follow me.’
Again they started to climb the slope and with every pace more men fell, as more of the deadly black balls hurtled down towards them. Two hundred yards more now, he guessed. All they had to do was carry on and they’d be there. Just keep going. He was suddenly aware of a change in the rhythm of fire from the defences. Instantly, its cause became evident, as a hail of cannister shot – thirty iron balls blown from the cannon mouth in a canvas bag – slammed into the men standing to his left and took away a score of red-coated bodies. At the same instant a crash of musket fire signalled that the French infantry too had found their range. More men fell. Somewhere, through the drifting smoke to his left, another officer called out:
‘Charge. Charge, boys. God save the Queen.’
Steel saw the man fall, but his cry was taken up along the line and as one, the men broke into a trot. Steel too began to run. Breathing hard now, the smell of powder drifting strong and acrid into his nostrils. They passed through a mist of billowing white smoke. When they emerged on the other side of the cloud however, a sunken gulley appeared directly in front of him – from nowhere. Steel pulled up. He yelled at the men behind him to stop and found himself at the top of a muddy bank of a depth of four, perhaps five feet. Behind him the men came to a halt. All around him, and down along the line, he could hear the frantic shouts of corporals and sergeants. A corporal to his left was giving orders:
‘Right lads. This is it. Drop your fasheens. Over we go.’
As the men began to throw down their wooden bundles, Steel wondered. This could not be right. It was too soon. This was no defensive ditch. Merely a sunken track. He turned to the Corporal:
‘No, no. Don’t use them here. This is not the place. Carry on. Follow me.’
The man looked suprised, but it was too late. The front rank had already thrown their precious rolls of wood down into the lane. Men attempted to clamber across, but found the distance too great and slithered off into the mud. At the same time, cannonballs started to crash into their ranks. The French gunners had adjusted their range and were aiming directly for the thin stripe of the track. Some of the men began to panic; unsure of whether they should stand, use their fascines or drop down without them into the gulley. The more athletic managed to cross the makeshift wooden causeway, only to find themselves all the more prone to the hail of roundshot. Steel jumped down into the ditch and half clambered up the other side, using the bank as cover. He heard Slaughter’s booming voice.
‘Keep to your ranks. Dress your ranks.’
For they were ragged now. And to the Sergeant ragged ranks meant ragged discipline. Lack of confidence. Lack of nerve. Steel knew equally well that if their nerve went this soon, then the attack would just dissolve. But he could see too that, whatever Slaughter’s instinct, this was no time for parade-ground drill. He called up to the big Sergeant.
‘Jacob.
