Run Them Ashore (38 page)

A man’s throat grew parched, dried by the saltpetre in the gunpowder from all the times he bit a cartridge, and his shoulder was sore. The enemy was a brooding presence somewhere behind the clouds of smoke, and he would never know if any of his balls struck home. Comrades he had messed with for years fell around him, dying with a grunt or sigh, or sometimes with a look of surprise. Wounded men moaned or screamed, and still he went on loading and firing, loading and firing, sorry for them, but glad it was not him.

‘
Vive l’empereur!
’ Marshal Victor himself rode to the front, waving his plumed hat and yelling at his beloved soldiers to charge and win the day. The two nearest columns stopped firing, and the men walked forward, drums beating a confused rhythm, but then some of the bluecoats were flung back as they were
struck, and the leading companies stopped, men reaching for cartridges.

It hung in the balance, everything on a knife edge. Williams could remember how men were left stunned from the noise of their own and the enemy’s fire, confused and lonely even when surrounded by other men in the same uniform. All it would take was a bold charge by either side and if their officers or any brave men could just persuade them to run hard at the enemy then the other side would give way.

‘Bills!’ Pringle called. Williams had not seen him coming along the line. ‘Mr Williams,’ the captain continued more formally. ‘We must form the battalion and advance. Give those fellows something else to think about. Gather as many men and form them in close order here. You will be the centre of the line and everyone else will dress off you.’

He was off, shouting at men and pointing for them to join Williams. A handful responded, pushing themselves up warily and walking towards the Welshman. To his relief MacAndrews cantered up the slope to him, the sides of his horse now flecked with sweat.

‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Just what I was coming to order.’

‘Pringle’s idea, sir.’

‘Then well done, Billy.’ The major walked his horse to stand in front of the half-dozen men. ‘Round up some more. I’ll stand out as a better marker. Flank Battalion,’ he roared. ‘To me!’

The sound of heavy firing came from their right, the French columns and British lines little more than twenty or thirty yards apart, but neither able to push on those last steps. Instead they kept firing, and men in blue and red kept falling on either side.

Williams found Evans, still with the other two loading for him.

‘Battalion is to form up,’ he said. ‘Over there by the major.’ The sergeant looked surly, but then he did most of the time, and Williams ran on to the next group as if to imply that there was no question of his order being disobeyed. He found Flattery and Ryan, the veteran with a piece of torn shirt tied around his thigh, but both got up and went back to rally with the others.

Six men grew into ten, then fifteen and then thirty, and more were coming. Sergeants Dobson and Evans were both there, as was a young but confident NCO from the 82nd. Pringle returned with still more men, and an ensign from the 9th came from the other direction with more. Soon there were two ranks apiece of twenty-four men with a sergeant at each end of the front rank. A corporal and the sergeant from the 82nd along with all the officers save Pringle and MacAndrews stood behind the little line. Williams was at the far right, trying to work out what was happening in the great fight further along the slope.

‘Flank Battalion!’ The major called out the warning order so that men were waiting ready to respond to the command. It was no more than an under-strength company, but they had begun as a battalion and would end the battle that way, for good or ill. ‘Forward march!’

The smoke cleared, and Williams saw General Graham riding along the front of the First Guards. The grey-haired Scotsman was using his sword to flick up the muzzle of any man about to fire. Williams had read of such things, but had never seen anyone doing so bold and dangerous a deed. French bullets kept knocking men down all along the line, but as the redcoats fell the old general rode on without a scratch.

The Flank Battalion went up the hill. There was an enemy column some way ahead and to their right, waiting to support the main attack, and a line of cannon pointing along the slope, but still masked by their own men. A thin line of skirmishers was in front of them; as soon as the line started moving, bullets snapped towards them. Ryan fell, blood gushing in a fountain from his throat, and Flattery stepped over the fallen man, walking stolidly up the hill. Men in red began to appear, coming out from cover. Redcoats fell, but the Flank Battalion grew bigger as it climbed the slope. Now there were seventy men, the newcomers shoved into ranks regardless of their regiment or company.

A cheer – a British cheer so different from the sound of a French attack or indeed one by Spanish or Portuguese troops – came from the right. The First Guards surged up the slope
towards the columns, and beyond them the other Guards and the 2/67th charged as well, bayonets down.

Williams watched, letting the little Flank Battalion go on ahead, for he knew this would decide the day. If the British stopped to fire again, then they might never manage another charge, and there were more Frenchmen and they had the advantage of height. It was always easier to charge down than up a slope; in fact for a man burdened with his pack it was difficult to stop at all once he began running down a hill.

The French broke. Marshal Victor screamed at them, but the men in the rearmost companies could not see what was happening. They heard the great roar of a cheer and imaginations filled with thoughts of vengeful enemies coming through the smoke. They ran, and then the companies ahead of them crumbled into a stream of bluecoats flowing to the rear, and finally the companies at the front of each column followed them. General Ruffin was down, pinned by the weight of his dying horse, and the redcoats rushed up the slope, bayonets glinting, and General Graham rode with them, cheering them on. The enemy had gone. Some began to cluster together again in line with the supporting battalions, and so the Guards and the 2/67th halted and began to fire. The bluecoats went back.

A cannon fired, leaping back with the violence of the explosion, and a tin of canister swept through the nearest files of the Guards. Another gun captain touched the match to the priming tube and more of the redcoats were tumbled over, but artillery officers had seen the approaching Flank Battalion and shouted out orders to limber up and retire.

MacAndrews had one hundred and thirty-five men in his little line. Williams had caught up, and he could not understand how the Flank Battalion men appeared as if from nowhere. Some must have hidden well, and not bothered to fire at the enemy, for he had thought far more were dead or gone, and yet here they were, coming to rejoin the ranks.

‘Fix bayonets!’ MacAndrews must have suspected that a lot of men had dispensed with the clumsy blades while they were
shooting. They made a musket ungainly, and worse still could take the skin off the knuckles of a clumsy man as he reloaded.

‘Charge!’ The Scotsman urged his horse on, his own sword thrusting out ahead of him as he led them towards the nearest cannon. He had not given the men time to fix their bayonets, but that did not matter because the gunners were in no mood to fight. A few voltigeurs fired, and a grenadier from the 9th was hit in the shin and fell forward on to his face. Most of the skirmishers fled, but one stumbled as he ran. Two men in the yellow facings of the 9th clubbed him with the butts of their muskets as he lay, and kept striking until the man stopped moving.

The gunners were hauling the heavy eight-pounder back to the low limber as MacAndrews reached them. His horse reared as an artilleryman in shirtsleeves swung a heavy ramrod. The mare went back, but MacAndrews drove it to the side and slashed down before the man could raise the clumsy weapon again. The gunner dropped the ramrod and clutched at the gaping wound across his face. Dobson was there, and shot one of the crewmen before driving his bayonet into another. The rest raised their hands as the drivers took the team and limber away at a jerky canter.

Men cheered, but MacAndrews was shouting at them to reform in front of the captured gun. A company of French
Legère
had wheeled away from the main battalion and were forming to face his men.

‘Get back in line,’ Dobson shouted, and Evans was pushing redcoats back into place, snarling at them when they did not respond immediately.

An officer’s sword swept down, and the
Legère
vanished behind a bank of smoke. The range was long, and most of the shots went high, but Murphy hissed in pain as a ball nicked his arm. Another shot threw up cotton and a puff of wool as it burst through the shoulder wing of a light bob from the 82nd. The man gasped in surprise, and then there was a deeper grunt from the man in the rear rank, another light infantryman but this time from the 9th, as the bullet punched through his ribs and into his lungs.

‘Present!’ MacAndrews’ horse stirred, its ears flicking back and forth and its eyes rolling.

‘Fire!’ he shouted. About half of the men were loaded, and the volley was more like the crackle of burning wood than a roll of thunder.

‘Charge!’ he called. Men lurched forward through their own smoke, all feeling suddenly tired, but still they went with the Scotsman and they managed a thin cheer. Williams shouted as loud as he could, drawing out the cry, and others were yelling with him. It was less a formation than a scatter of men, only a few of them still able to run, and the rest jogging or lumbering along.

The
Legère
went back. Their battalion was giving way as the Guards closed on them, and the isolated company did not want to be left behind, so their captain shouted at them to retire. MacAndrews took his men to where the French had stood and halted. They were all breathing hard, even though they had not come very far.

To their right the First Guards were re-forming, with the other units beyond them. The French were retreating, some of their battalions grudgingly and others fleeing with no real order. The Guards had taken another of the guns, but the remaining six went back with the infantry. Some of the redcoats were cheering as General Graham galloped along the lines and went to see how his other brigade was faring. Even the Flank Battalion jerked from their exhaustion and yelled out as the Scotsman went past, raising a crop in acknowledgement.

For the moment the British were in scarcely better order than the retreating French. Six hundred of the redcoats lay forever still or moaning softly on the top and slope of the hill, more than a third of the men who had attacked. There were almost as many dead and wounded Frenchmen scattered in the grass, and now that the sound of firing had faded the air was full of cries for help, cries for mothers or friends, and wordless whimpers of pain.

Pringle looked around him and then at Williams. It had been
so close, so very close and it could so easily have been the French who had charged on to glory.

‘Bills,’ he said, ‘how the hell did we get away with that?’

31

M
ajor Duncan’s guns kept firing through their own smoke and the blacker smoke of the grass fires started ahead of them by their wadding. None of the cannon was still manned by all the crewmen who had been there at the first shot. Behind the battery was a long row of wounded, and there were redcoats from the 47th helping to drag the heavy cannon back into place before firing and drivers from the artillery train were filling the places of the dead and wounded. Hanley saw the sergeant who had knocked down the pine tree ram the charge down one barrel and wondered whether it was the same gun.

‘Pour it in, keep firing!’ Duncan had little to do, for the targets were obvious and the enemy columns now little more than eighty yards away. They had hesitated when the British battalions of Wheatley’s Brigade first appeared at the treeline, but the long pause as the redcoats sorted themselves out had given the enemy the chance to press closer. Musket fire ripped along the front of the nearest column, pitching a man from the 47th into the muddy puddles made by the constant rolling back of the gun. A gunner pulled the man out of the way, before the gun captain set off the charge and the heavy carriage sprang back again.

There was nothing for him to do here, so Hanley headed towards the formed infantry in time to see the angry Major Gough of the 2/87th telling the commander of the Coldstream Guards to ‘Damn your precedence, sir. My regiment will lead off !’ The major’s battalion was in the centre of the line, and still numbered six hundred and fifty men even though several dozen of the Irishmen had been cut down while the senior officers bickered.

To the right was the other wing of the 2/67th in their yellow facings. To the left of the Irish Battalion were the neat ranks of tall Coldstream Guardsmen, two hundred of them in two companies. On the far left Hanley saw the red cross on white Regimental Colour of his own 106th. Before he knew it he was jogging towards them, seeking comfort in the familiar faces.

‘
Vive l’empereur! Vive l’empereur!
’ It was the first time today he had heard the French chanting. Four battalion columns were bearing down on the thin British line, with two more following in support. Leval’s Division marched confidently and kept good formation, the men resplendent in their best uniforms. Hanley saw a group of senior officers riding ahead of the supports. A man on a tall bay with an abundantly plumed hat was no doubt the divisional commander, and near him was a shorter officer wearing a green uniform and riding a grey horse.

Hanley wondered what to do. Sinclair was over there and he was sure Wharton and the admiral would be very happy to hear that the Irishman was taken or dead. He wished Williams was here, or better still Dobson. He was sure they could find a way to reach the man in all the confusion of battle.

‘
Vive l’empereur! Vive l’empereur!
’ The drums were beating the hypnotic sound of the charge. For a moment three of the leading columns halted and fired, but then they were moving again, coming ever closer.

Men had fallen all along the British line, but the redcoats were also marching forward at last, feet swishing through the long grass and stirring the fallen pine needles of many years. They walked in silence, save for the sergeants rebuking any man who lost his dressing.

‘
Vive l’empereur! En avant, mes amis!
’ Ahead of the closest column a French officer was almost dancing as he went at the enemy, swinging his sword around in great circles and shouting to his men of honour and glory.

‘Steady, lads!’ British officers tried to sound calm, as if victory was only to be expected.

The drums kept beating, and three of the columns stopped again to fire.

‘Close up!’ the sergeants called. Only the French battalion marching at the 2/87th kept coming on and held its fire. It was ahead of the others by twenty yards or so. Hanley hurried on, but kept looking back over his shoulder to watch the enemy until he loped up behind the far right flank of his own 106th. The right was the place of honour, where the Grenadier Company would have stood had they not been a mile away with MacAndrews on Barrosa Hill. Instead Truscott tipped a finger to his hat in greeting.

His words of welcome were lost when a great rippling volley drowned out everything else. The 2/87th had stopped some sixty yards from the French column and fired. Men in blue jackets with white fronts were flung back in the leading two companies, but then the survivors steadied the line and brought muskets up to their shoulders. The volley was not quite so loud, for fewer men were firing. Yet it fell mainly on the centre of the red line, and there men staggered or jerked as they were struck by the heavy lead balls.

‘Halt!’ Lieutenant Colonel FitzWilliam was normally a soft-spoken man, but now his voice carried easily over the shouts and firing to their right. There was a French column no more than fifty yards ahead of them, its two leading companies delivering an irregular fire. One of Truscott’s men yelped as a ball drove into his leg. He fell on the grass, screaming.

‘Quiet, you rogue, it’s nothing,’ shouted a sergeant. ‘Don’t show us up in front of the Frogs.’

The man looked more angry than abashed, but stopped anyway.

‘Fix bayonets!’

Hanley drew his sword. It always felt odd to hold the thing, some remaining pacific impulse stubbornly resisting his martial calling. Truscott and his subalterns drew their own blades. The young ensign whose name Hanley could not remember swished it back and forth until he noticed one of the sergeants glaring
at him. The boy blushed like a child caught scrumping by his schoolteacher.

The French were trying to form line, the companies in the second and third lines parting so that they could march and deploy on the flanks of the leading division.

‘Present!’ With a long series of rattles and slaps the muskets of almost seven hundred men came up to their shoulders.

‘Now, my boys, be sure to fire at their legs and spoil their dancing!’ Men chuckled, looking at each other in surprise at their colonel’s words.

‘Silence in the ranks!’ bawled the sergeants as they stood in the rear, half-pikes ready to straighten the dressing by forcing men back into place with their six-foot staffs.

‘Fire!’

Smoke blotted the French from sight, but from the end of the line Hanley saw a glimpse of the enemy formation as dozens of men fell.

A howl – there was no other word for it – burst out from the centre of the army, as the 2/87th flung themselves at the enemy. The cry turned into what Hanley thought were words, but he could not make them out. All along the British line the battalions were going forward, but none went as fast as the Irish.

‘Charge!’ FitzWilliam spurred his horse into the smoke and was gone.

The 106th cheered and followed him. It was the first time that their lieutenant colonel had led them into battle, but the men liked him and were confident in themselves. Hanley charged with them, but then a man was pitched back from the company, tripping the officer, so that he landed hard on the ground. He was winded and had let go of his sword – Williams was always telling him to wind the cord around his wrist so that he would keep it even if his fingers let go.

Musket shots rattled like the sound of a child dragging a stick along a rail fence. Hanley pushed himself up, chest still sore. His sword was stuck in the ground, its blade a little bent. He grabbed
it and saw that the regiment was only thirty yards or so ahead of him, Truscott standing beside his company as the men reloaded.

Hanley caught up, and saw that the French had gone back but rallied and now were a misshaped mass, neither quite a column or a line. They had given way, but not run, and they were loading and firing as each man was ready. The young ensign was calling encouragement to the men when a ball hit his fist as he raised it to wave his sword. He screamed, a horrible piercing scream, and as he was helped to the rear Hanley saw that it had driven into his knuckles.

‘My sword,’ the boy sobbed. ‘I must not leave my sword.’

‘Do not worry, I shall preserve it,’ Truscott told him. ‘It will be waiting for you when you return.’

A man twisted as he fell back from the rear rank, blood and pieces of tooth spilling out from a hole in his cheek. The 106th fired at the enemy and all across the field there were shouts and shots as the British advanced and the French clung stubbornly on. Hanley saw General Graham, horseless and hatless, urging the Coldstream Guards to pour more fire into the French. The elderly Scotsman must have just arrived which suggested that the fighting was over on the hill.

Hanley did not hear the order, but again the men around him started to cheer and the 106th lowered their bayonets and charged. He joined in the yell, running beside Truscott, and he saw the French give way a little more, what little was left of their formation seeping away.

Yet once again they did not go far, and when they stopped the irregular mass still would not give in and resumed its heavy fire. A man in the front rank of the company was hit in the belly and flung back, knocking down his rear rank man, who cursed him until he saw how badly his friend was hurt. Beside him a redcoat turned his head just before he was struck and the ball smashed his left eye and broke his nose.

‘My man, you should not have stayed behind.’ Truscott spoke to a greenjacket lying in the grass with his rifle at the ready. The
95th had long since retired after their noble efforts holding up the enemy advance and it was curious to find one still here.

‘Do you hear?’

Hanley knelt beside the rifleman, and the movement saved him because a ball sang through the air where his head had been an instant before. The greenjacket still did not move, but there was not a scratch on him. Hanley patted his shoulder, and the motion was enough to make the man’s shako fall to the side. A ball had entered his forehead and the back of his skull was gone, a ghastly mixture of grey matter, bone and hair pooled in his cap.

‘Good God,’ Truscott said. ‘And he looked so lifelike.’

‘The rifle appears to be loaded.’

‘Thomas,’ Truscott called to one of his men. ‘You are the finest shot. Take this rifle and see if you can take revenge for its poor master.’

Corporal Thomas stepped out from the rear rank, slinging his musket over his shoulder.

‘How about that bold fellow?’ Truscott suggested, gesturing with his sword at a French officer near the front of the mass ahead of them. The man was brandishing a gilded eagle on a blue staff, making the tricolour flag flap as he tried to get the men to rally and attack. Each French regiment had an eagle, given to them by Napoleon, and carried by the first battalion.

‘No, the green rascal on horseback!’ Hanley said, and made sure that Thomas could see Sinclair with another mounted officer near the flank of the enemy battalion. ‘Knock that treacherous bugger down and I’ll give you ten guineas.’

Thomas laid his own firelock down and raised the rifle, hefting it to get a sense of its balance. Shots whipped past or flicked through the grass, but he ignored them and took careful aim.

Hanley saw Sinclair turn, recognise him, and his mouth opened to shout. Then Thomas fired, his discharge muted with all the other shots close and far. The officer beside Sinclair fell back in his saddle, arms flung wide as a dark stain spread above his heart.

Sinclair grinned at him – Hanley could see the mocking triumph even at this distance – and then spurred away.

‘Charge! Come on the One Hundred and Sixth!’ This time Hanley caught FitzWilliam’s shout and he began to yell as all the redcoats somehow found the strength to go forward again. The French mass dissolved at last as the British rushed at it – one moment solid and the next instant a crowd cascading to the rear. Hanley saw a group of men led by the colonel going for the eagle, but before they were close it was spirited away and dipped, so that it could no longer be seen in the press.

The slow and the reluctant stayed and a few were caught, the long bayonets doing their work, but most surrendered and the rest escaped. Everywhere the French were giving way.

Sinclair knew the battle was lost. He was still not quite sure how it had happened, for he had not seen any Spanish and he was sure the French outnumbered the redcoats. Somehow they had still been driven back. He galloped back to find General Leval in the hope that the reserve battalions could still save the day, although he knew in his heart that the chance was gone.

‘
Faugh A Ballagh!
’ The shout was so unexpected that he reined in violently, his horse twisting its head in discomfort as he tugged at its bit. ‘
Faugh A Ballagh!
’

A battalion of redcoats with deep green facings were yelling the cry as they drove back a column of the 8ième Ligne. The French infantry had left it to the last minute before they broke before the onslaught, but when the second battalion ran they went straight into a confused mass of their own first battalion. Men collided, pressed up against each other, and it turned into a tightly packed mob, unable to move.

‘
Faugh A Ballagh!
’ It was so odd to hear the Gaelic, a tongue to which he had not been born, but had learned and come to love. ‘Clear the way!’ they shouted, and the men of the 2/87th cleared the path with bayonets and the butts of their muskets. The Frenchmen could not run and so the Irishmen killed them, and went on killing them.

‘
Faugh A Ballagh!
’ The men of the 87th had been mauled by the French before Talavera, and now they saw that enemy at their
mercy and found that they had little. Sinclair saw a man whose musket had broken grab a Frenchmen and wrestle him to the ground, where he pounded his skull with a rock.

The eagle of the 8ième Ligne was in the press, Sinclair could see it protected by a knot of moustached veterans who were not running. It was just a plain blue staff, for the regiment had left the flag in store, but the men who protected it were NCOs chosen for their courage even if they often lacked the education to command. A surge of Irishmen led by an ensign came at them, and the lad dodged the halberd of one of the eagle guard and thrust his slim sword through the body of the officer carrying the precious standard. The man died, and for a moment the young ensign had hold of the blue staff. One of the guards fired a pistol, which missed the officer and killed a private running up to help him. Then another Frenchman jabbed with his bayonet, and the ensign arched his back away as he screamed, until another bayonet took him in the throat.