lurk behind the second rank. There is some movement amongst the captains, who command the companies: three of them have left their stations on their companies’ right and are pacing about in front. One has had a word with the soldier in the round hat, and is stalking down the ranks intent on further mischief.
The officers carry slim, straight gilt-hilted swords and show their status by crimson silk sashes, knotted over their left hips, and their rank by fringed epaulettes. Some have pistols tucked into their sashes or slung in open-topped leather holsters. The sergeants have simpler swords and also wear sashes, but theirs bear a broad central stripe of the same hue as collar and cuffs. They carry half-pikes, whose broad blades tip nine-foot ash hafts.
There is clearly something different about the two companies on each flank. In both cases their sergeants carry muskets and their officers curved sabres. The soldiers wear lace-embellished wings on their shoulders and the officers a more elaborate version in gold braid. The right flank company sports white shako pom-poms, for these are the battalion’s grenadiers, and the white commemorates the smoke of the grenades their forefathers threw. They are noticeably bigger men than their comrades in the other companies, and have an unmistakable air to them. At the other end of the line the pom-poms are green: this is the light company, containing the battalion’s best shots. Although its soldiers may lack the swagger of the grenadiers, there are several keen-eyed countrymen amongst them, and we may just see – as, indeed, one of the file-closing sergeants already has – that a hare’s paw is protruding from one man’s haversack. There has already been murder this morning, and there will be more before nightfall.
Behind the file-closers stand the drummers, grouped behind their companies, yellow tunics faced with red and laced with much white worsted. In the centre rear are two mounted officers, a major, the battalion’s second-in command, on the right and the adjutant, the commander’s personal staff officer, on the left. Further back stand a dozen pioneers, equipped with shovel and axe. The ‘band of music’ stands to the rear, but today the musicians have laid aside their instruments and are ready to act as stretcher-bearers, although their stretchers are simply sewn blankets looped between two stout poles. The battalion’s surgeon and his assistant, in dour anticipation of business to come, have unpacked their instruments from their mule and have blankets and water to hand.
In the centre the battalion’s colours jut sharply above the line. Both are of embroidered silk. One, the king’s colour, is the Union flag, and the other, the regimental colour, is the now-familiar yellow with the national flag in the upper corner where it joins the staff. The regiment’s number, wreathed in laurel, is in the colour’s centre. The pike is tipped by a spear point, now ornamental, from which hangs a long double tassel. Although at present the colours rest with their butts on the ground, the two young officers who bear them have broad shoulder-belts, with a strategically situated metal-lined pouch to support them when they are carried.
And young is indeed the word. The ensign bearing the Regimental colour cannot be more than sixteen, and seems in the grip of some powerful emotion. He is as white as a sheet, and though he is standing stiff and straight he is swallowing more than a boy ought. His comrade with the king’s colour is altogether more cheery. He is a big lad, and has already outgrown his tunic: lanky wrists and grubby shirt-cuffs protrude from its sleeves, and it is tight across his chest. His beefy face wears an unconcerned grin, and he seems to have enjoyed a whispered joke with the non-commissioned officer to his rear. Behind each officer stands a pike-armed sergeant: the one behind the regimental colour has inched forward till he is nearly touching its ensign, and is whispering, between clenched teeth: ‘Steady sir, steady: waiting is the hardest part, and ‘twill all be well when the ball opens.’
The officer who we might suppose has something to do with opening the ball is the lieutenant colonel commanding the battalion. He is a surprisingly young man – no more than thirty – on a little chestnut mare, standing on the gentle crest about a hundred yards in front of his men. He looks intently into the valley on its far side and occasionally glances to his left where, 400 yards away, his brigade commander, responsible for another three battalions all tucked in behind the same slope, sits astride his horse with two other mounted officers.
Although Hobden and his five hundred comrades cannot see what is happening on the other side of the hill, they can certainly hear it For half an hour now the distant popping of musketry has swollen to an almost continuous roar, interspersed with the thump of cannon. There is a good deal of shouting, the occasional anguished yell, and, more particularly of late, the clear notes of a bugle. Some minutes ago a cannon ball skidded over the crest, its force almost spent, sending up a shower of gravel as it bounded its way to a halt away to the battalion’s left. Wounded men, in red, dark green and Portuguese grey homespun, have been drifting back over the ridge for some time. Some are going well, limping along with sticks or walking briskly with a bound-up arm, but there are already some chilling sights: one man comes past slowly, wordlessly clutching his belly, and another has lost part of his face to a vicious sword-cut. The noise intensifies, and separate drumbeats soon coalesce into a steady sound. One of the officers present, unversed in musical minutiae of flams and paradiddles, will later describe it as: ‘the rum dum, the rum dum, the rum dum dummadum dum dum.’ It becomes louder and louder. Old soldiers exchange knowing glances, and some risk a sergeant’s ire by muttering ‘look sharp, for here comes here comes old trousers,’ their nickname for the pas de charge, the call beaten by the drummers accompanying French infantry going forward at the quickstep. There are soldiers on the crest-line now, riflemen in dark green, moving in pairs, one kneeling to fire into the valley while his comrade scurries back. The British skirmishers, who have borne the brunt of the fighting so far, have been driven in.
The brigade commander doffs his cocked hat, and waves it unmistakably. The colonel turns his horse, walks it easily back to his battalion, and halts in front of the front rank. ‘Thirty-Seventh,’ he shouts, and officers and men respond by bracing up, swords and muskets tight in between body and right arm. ‘Battalion will shoulder…Arms!’ On the last word muskets are tossed across the body so that their brass butt-plates now rest in the left hand, and the ensigns raise their colours, dropping their staffs into the pouches on their colour-belts. ‘By the centre…March.’ And they step off, as one man, with the left foot, boots swinging low over the earth in 30-inch steps at 75 paces to the minute. The drums tap out the step as the line moves forward, men looking in to the centre to get their dressing from the colours, file closers chivvying here and there to ensure that the rear rank stays well closed up.
As the battalion crosses the crest it is greeted by a vision of hell. Clouds of thick smoke, the product of a battle between opposing skirmishers which the enemy seems to have won, cannot conceal the fact that the valley is full of blue-clad French troops, now coming on, up the slope, in thick columns. And they are coming on in the bravest style, their drummers hammering out the pas de charge, officers shouting encouragement, and men whooping ‘Vive L’Empereur‘. One little spark is actually marching backwards, his shako raised on his sword-point, yelling that the Emperor will reward those who fight bravely. The nearest French column is three full battalions strong, stacked company behind company on a two-company front, fifty yards wide and almost twice as deep. The voltigeurs – equivalent of the 37th’s light company – have been skirmishing ahead of the column and some now begin to peck away at the British line from close range: with the clatter of a tinker’s pack one front-rank redcoat drops his musket, briefly kneels over it and then falls flat. The French grenadiers are leading their regiment, just as their British equivalents would be if the roles were reversed. They are big, stern men with red ornaments to their shakos, a forest of facial hair and the glitter of military dandysim: gold earrings, and silver ornaments on their clubbed hair. At least one British soldier is frankly shocked: ‘Their hats, set round with feathers, their beards long and black, gave them a fierce look. Their stature was superior to ours; most of us were young. We looked like boys; they looked like savages.’1 The French are used to winning, and indeed think that they have all but won today. They have brushed aside some British riflemen and Portuguese caçadores, and there
