Whose Business Is to Die (40 page)

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The sergeant was right, and there was simply a lull over the battlefield as the armies reformed and prepared to fight again. The Spanish regiments had held up the entire French army for almost an hour. They had stood when all save one of Colborne’s battalions were slaughtered on their flank. They had even stood when some of the oncoming redcoats from the rest of the Second Division had fired into the straggle of lancers and the Spanish battalions beyond them.

The Spanish had held their ground and given the rest of the army a chance, but they were weary and low on ammunition. There was little trace of formal lines, or of ranks and files. Men had clustered together, closing up to the centre as casualties mounted, and each battalion had become a mass of a few hundred stubborn men loading and firing as fast as they could. General Blake and Marshal Beresford at last found each other and ordered them to withdraw behind the approaching six battalions of redcoats. At the same time Marshal Soult gave orders for his second division to advance through the battered leading division, and so for a short while the fighting stopped.

Colborne and Williams arrived at the improvised square of the 2/31st just as the new British battalions opened out to let the Spanish retire through them.

‘Know that we are ordered to do this!’ a young Spanish officer called out to them as he passed, leading fifty or so powder-stained men who had become detached from the other survivors of the battalion.

Captain Dunbar was with the 2/31st, his hat gone and his hand bandaged, but otherwise unscathed.

‘You look like Banquo’s ghost,’ he said to Williams with thin humour, but his face looked as strained as the colonel’s. Their own battalion had been one of those slaughtered, its Colours snatched by the French.

Some of the Spanish would not withdraw. Several dense clusters of men refused to retreat, and so as the two remaining brigades of the Second Division advanced their line became broken. Closest to them was Major General Houghton’s brigade,
the general himself riding at their head and still wearing a green frock coat. The 1/29th was on the right, next to them, and the much-flogged Steelbacks of the 1/57th in the centre, both battalions with yellow facings and a yellow field on their Regimental Colours. On the left was the 1/48th, and Williams wondered whether they had heard of the grim fate of their second battalion. He could just glimpse the other brigade in line beyond them, commanded by Major General Lumley until this morning and now presumably led by the senior lieutenant colonel.

Colborne sent Williams to Major General Houghton. Shells began to fall as he cantered his captured horse across the slope. A shot struck the 1/29th, ripping off the leg of a front rank man and smashing the foot of the soldier behind.

‘Close up!’ called the sergeant standing behind the company.

Williams had to wait as another group of Spanish infantry shuffled to the rear. One of them dropped as a musket ball slammed into the square of his back. A few voltigeurs were on the crest given up when the Spanish were ordered to retire.

A ball whipped past Houghton’s round face as Williams rode up and reported. There were grim expressions as he told the general and his staff what had happened to the three battalions. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Colborne wishes to say that he will keep the Thirty-first in close column to guard your flank in case the cavalry should return.’

Houghton nodded. ‘Are they steady?’

‘As a rock, sir,’ Williams said. For all the horror at the devastation they had witnessed, he had seen more anger on the faces of the 2/31st. Men were saying that the Polish lancers had killed redcoats as they surrendered and stabbed even those prisoners they had taken.

‘They were all drunk,’ one man had said.

‘They were promised gold for every man they killed,’ another claimed. Williams could never understand how such rumours sprang up and spread like the fires that had burned through the dry grass at Talavera and scorched the wounded.

‘No quarter to those buggers,’ several men had said.

‘You need have no fear for your flank, sir,’ Williams added, remembering their savage expressions.

‘Good.’ The major general’s servant appeared, bearing his scarlet uniform coat with its blue collar and cuffs and gold lace. Houghton passed the man his cocked hat, began to unbutton his jacket, and for a few moments stood out in his white shirt.

A shell burst near the centre of the 1/57th, flinging four men down. Another reeled out of the line, the right side of his face a mangled ruin. The battalion’s commander was busy adjusting the dressing of the line, which had become a little untidy as they deployed, one company ending up behind another instead of alongside it. As he rode along the line a fragment from another shell hit his horse in the head. It sank down to its knees, but the lieutenant colonel remained upright, standing on his own feet once they touched the ground. Still giving orders to re-form the line, he stepped free.

Major General Houghton slipped one arm into the sleeve of his uniform coat and pulled it on. With a slap a musket ball struck the chest of his ADC’s horse. The beast gave a sigh and the rider sprang off, calling for another mount.

Stewart rode up, bandaged on the arm and around his ankle. Houghton had just put on his hat and now raised it in greeting.

‘Now, boys, those French blackguards think that they can beat true Englishmen!’ Stewart raised his voice and waved his sword in the air. A shell exploded near by and muck pattered down on the rump of his horse, but the general ignored it. ‘We shall show them the error of such notions and drive them off that ridge!’ He pointed his sword at the crest. ‘Now is the time – let us give three cheers!’

The response was immediate, the three battalions yelling out their challenge to the enemy. Williams joined in, his lips painful. With all the Spanish back behind them, apart from a few stubborn groups still firing on the crest, the six battalions of redcoats marched up the gentle slope. The voltigeurs fired a few more shots as they came and men dropped, but then the French skirmishers fell back down the far slope. As the British advanced,
more and more of the enemy guns on the further knoll were able to see them.

A shell wounded both ensigns carrying the flags of the 1/29th and killed one of the sergeants protecting them. The other NCOs held the Colours aloft until new officers arrived to hold them. The heavy ball from a twelve-pounder struck a man from the 1/57th in the chest, destroyed his shoulders and much of his arms, flung his head into the air, and then went on to decapitate his rear rank man.

‘Close up! Close up!’

The lines reached the crest.

‘Battalion, halt!’

There were French columns no more than thirty yards down the slope, most of them fresh troops from the supporting division, although several of the battalions that had fought the Spanish had refused to retire. In front of Houghton’s brigade the ground was especially crowded, columns packed together too closely to deploy into line, and four-pounder cannon or voltigeurs in the few gaps they had left.

‘Make ready.’

French cannon fired from the higher knoll to the south, the four-pounders sprayed blasts of canister from close range and the infantry fired up the slope, many of the men in the rear ranks pointing their muskets over the heads of those in front. Men slumped forward or were flung back by the force of flying metal, but there were so many cries of pain that they merged into the roar of fire.

The British lines staggered as they were flayed with this deluge of fire, and now bodies in red coats dropped among the layer of Spanish dead and wounded.

‘Steady, lads, steady!’ officers told their men.

‘Close up, close up!’ Sergeants shoved men to cover the holes torn by the enemy.

‘Present!’ Muskets came up to shoulders all along the three lines. Williams guessed that the other brigade was engaged just as heavily, but he could not see them. Thick smoke wafted up the slope, making it hard to see the French.

‘Fire!’ The sound always made him think of some strong man ripping apart heavy cloth or canvas. More smoke added to the clouds, and he could only imagine the devastation as fifteen hundred heavy lead balls slammed into the French columns.

The redcoats reloaded. A roundshot bounced in front of the 1/29th, only brushing against the thigh of one of the captains but ripping his leg open and snapping the bone. Behind him a corporal lay on the grass, clutching at his stomach.

‘Close up!’

Two drummers helped the captain to the rear, one of the men a tall negro. Williams knew that the 29th were very proud of their band.

The British were firing platoon volleys, sections of each company shooting in turn so that fire rippled along the line. Every now and again the wind parted the cloud to reveal the enemy columns still there and still firing, but most of the time each side blazed away at an invisible menace beyond the smoke.

Williams did not think that he was needed and so watched, as if this would somehow help the men slowly being consumed in this slaughter yard. The redcoats loaded and fired, loaded and fired, the routine an unthinking habit, and within a few minutes the ordered platoon volleys degenerated into a free fire as each man worked at his own pace. They did not speak, barely noticed what happened around them, but simply raised their firelocks, shot into the thick smoke and reloaded.

‘Steady, lads!’ The officers had little to do apart from set an example and show calm. A young ensign was dragged back behind the line, both legs gone beneath the knees and pieces of white bone sticking out from the stumps. He was little more than a boy and tears streamed down his face.

‘My sword, I must have my sword,’ he pleaded with the drummers pulling him back.

‘Close up! Close up.’

Williams watched the battalions shrink away in front of his eyes. When men fell, others stepped or were pushed into their places and the lines closed towards their Colours in the centre.
Each time the line became shorter, and the gaps between battalions widened.

‘Steady. Pour it into them, boys!’

Major General Houghton kept calling out encouragement to his men until he was struck by a blast of canister from a four-pounder. He shook in the saddle, arms waving like those of a man having a fit, and his horse collapsed under him. Williams was near by and jumped down to help the ADC and some redcoats who clustered around the fallen general.

The ADC stared at him, his face pale, and shook his head. There must have been a dozen holes torn in the general’s coat, the material around them turning a deeper red as they watched.

‘Colonel Inglis,’ the general moaned, and then passed out. As they carried him back, the ADC rode to find the lieutenant colonel of the 1/57th and tell him that he was now in command of the brigade.

Some of the French guns on the higher knoll began to fire heavy canister, a dozen or so larger balls that had a longer range, even if they spread less widely.

Williams saw an officer of the KGL artillery coming across the slope.

‘Who is in command? the man asked. ‘Where shall I place my cannon?’

There was no sign of General Stewart in the drifting smoke. Lieutenant Colonel Inglis was already down, sitting behind his own battalion as a surgeon bandaged an awful wound in his neck.

‘Anywhere you can find a gap!’ Williams told the man. ‘Just fire at the enemy.’

As the man rode off a shell exploded, cutting down two drummers helping a wounded captain to the rear. Two of the 57th were cut down by the same cannonball, and the broken stump of one of their muskets impaled another redcoat in the chest.

‘Close up! Close up!’

The whole crest seemed to be carpeted with dead and wounded men, but only in the rare lulls in the firing could Williams hear the soft moaning of the terribly injured. He was not
sure how long he had stayed watching the action, but decided that he ought to report back to Colborne, although with the colonel and the brigade major as well as the 2/31st’s officers he doubted that there was much for him to do.

Thick smoke drifted slowly across the slope and he realised that he had gone too far to the right. Suddenly Marshal Beresford was close by, and the big man was riding past him, dragging along a Spanish officer by his golden epaulettes. Behind stood a column of infantry with yellow fronts to their brown jackets and wide-topped shakos like those of the French.

‘Will you not advance, you rascal!’ the marshal bellowed, and then let go of the officer. It was the colonel of this regiment and the man seemed too stunned to speak. His soldiers looked horrified and angry.

‘They will not advance, Williams,’ Colonel D’Urban said, appearing alongside. ‘It is quite shameful. We need to bring up fresh troops, but they refuse to go.’

Williams wondered whether the marshal had been less wild when he appeared and gave the order. Few men were likely to obey an instruction given in such a manner.

‘Have the Fourth Division arrived, sir?’ Williams asked.

‘They are here, but we cannot risk committing them in case …’ D’Urban did not finish and Williams wondered whether he meant in case they were needed to cover a retreat. From all he had seen the remainder of the Second Division was being devoured back on the crest.

‘Come, the Portuguese must do what the Spanish will not!’ Beresford shouted angrily, and then spurred away. D’Urban and the handful of other officers followed him.

Williams turned back more to the left, and managed to glimpse a redcoated battalion in close column which must be the 2/31st. He had never before seen an army commander appear so agitated, and D’Urban’s face had been drawn and gloomy. It seemed that the battle was truly lost.

32

T
he Fourth Division began to advance, even though no order had come instructing them to do so. Major General Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole had waited, watching the dreadful struggle unfold on the ridge ahead of them, but no word came and the hours had passed. His two brigades were rested and ready, but they were not summoned, so they could only wait. No word came from Marshal Beresford, except to tell them to move to support the cavalry and to stay in that position. They went forward a short distance and then waited, watching the low ridge ahead of them and following the battle as well as they could through the thick smoke.