Sharpe's Waterloo (44 page)

Again the cavalry retreated, allowing the British gunners to reoccupy their undamaged batteries. Some French skirmishers had climbed the ridge either side of the cavalry's path, but there were not enough Voltigeurs to trouble the squares. Some French gunners opened fire in the pause between cavalry charges and their rounds did more damage than all the horsemen had achieved. The gunners were forced to stop their cannonade as the stubborn cavalry wheeled back to charge the squares again. Between each charge a few redcoats were allowed out of the squares to bring back plunder: an officer's gilded sword, a handful of coins, a silver trumpet with a gorgeously embroidered banner. One sergeant unstrapped a dead Dragoon's leopard-skin helmet, only to throw it down with disgust when he saw the leopard skin was merely dyed cloth. Another man laughed to find a small and bedraggled bunch of faded violets stuck in the buttonhole of a dead Dragoon General whose white moustache was splashed with blood.

Sharpe and Harper used one of the pauses between the French charges to canter out from the Guards' square. It was partly curiosity which drove them. Other staff officers similarly rode between the formations and past the heaps of French dead to discover how other battalions were faring. Sharpe and Harper sought their old battalion and finally spotted the yellow regimental colour of the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers above the lingering musket smoke. The colour bore the badge of a chained eagle to commemorate the trophy that Sharpe and Harper had captured at Talavera. The redcoats cheered as the two Riflemen trotted out of the misting smoke and into the square's embrace.

‘You don't mind if we shelter here, do you?' Sharpe politely asked Ford.

Ford was clearly nervous of Sharpe's motives in seeking out his old battalion, but he could hardly refuse his hospitality and so nodded his reluctant consent. The Colonel nervously plucked off his glasses and scrubbed at their lenses with his sash. For some reason the spectacles seemed misted and he wondered if it was some strange effect caused by the thickness of powder smoke. Major Vine glared at the Riflemen, fearing that Sharpe had again come to take command as he had at Quatre Bras.

Peter d‘Alembord, dismounted, was still unwounded. He smiled at Sharpe. ‘I don't mind this malarkey! They can try this nonsense all day and night!'

The French tried the nonsense again, and again achieved nothing. They had been lured to the attack by the mistaken apprehension of a British withdrawal, yet, though they had learned their mistake, they seemed incapable of abandoning the suicidal attacks. Again and again they attacked, and again and again the muskets flamed and smoked and the tired horses fell screaming and quivering. Close to Sharpe, between the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers and a square of the King's German Legion, a French Hussar officer struggled to unbuckle his expensive saddle. Both squares left him undisturbed. The girth of the saddle was trapped by the horse's dead weight, but at last the officer tugged it free and the Germans gave him an ironic cheer. The Frenchmen trudged away with his burden. Two riderless horses trotted down the rear face of Ford's square, but none of his men could be bothered to retrieve the trophies, even though a reward was offered for captured horses. A wounded Cuirassier, divested of his armour, limped southwards. ‘Hey! Frenchie! Get yourself a horse, you silly bugger!' Private Clayton shouted at him.

‘Why are the bloody fools persisting?' Harry Price asked Sharpe.

‘Pride.' Sharpe did not even have to think about his answer. These were the horsemen of France and they would not limp back to their own lines to confess failure. Sharpe remembered moments like this from his own experience; at Badajoz the French had filled a stone-faced ditch with British dead, yet still the infantry had attacked the breach. In the end that obstinate pride had brought victory, but these blown horses with their tired riders were now incapable of breaking a square.

Sharpe edged his horse close behind his old light company. Weller was still alive, so was Dan Hagman and Clayton. ‘How is it, lads?'

Their mouths were dry from biting into the cartridges, their lips were flecked with unburned powder, and sweat had carved clean rivulets down their faces which were blackened by the smoke and smuts from the powder exploding in their musket pans. Their fingernails were bleeding from dragging back the heavy flints, yet they grinned and gave an ironic cheer when Sharpe handed down a canteen of rum from his saddle. Colour Sergeant Huckfield had a pocket of spare flints which he doled out to those men whose old ones had been chipped away by repeated firing.

‘I know how the gentry feel now,' Dan Hagman said to Sharpe.

‘How come, Dan?'

‘When all the game is driven towards them, and all the rich buggers have to do is aim and fire? It's just like that, innit? Not that I mind. Silly buggers can line up all day to be shot so far as I care.' Because so long as the French cavalry were around the squares, so long the dreaded French artillery could not fire at the redcoats.

The horsemen came again, though by now men and beasts were too tired and too wary to charge home. A mass of enemy cavalry walked their horses to within sixty yards of the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers and stopped beside a battery of abandoned guns. The horses were sweating and their ribs heaving, yet the cavalry had still not given up hope of breaking the infantry. If brute force would not work, then subtlety might, and every few minutes a group of the cavalry would spur forward in an attempt to provoke a volley from the square's face. If such feint attacks could empty the deadly muskets there was a chance that the remaining horsemen could hack their way through the unloaded ranks with their heavy swords. Lancers, with their long and deadly reach, could easily break a square from a standing horse, but not if the muskets were loaded.

But the battalion was too canny to take the bait. Instead they jeered insults at the French. Some of the horsemen trotted away to find another square, hoping their discipline would be poorer. The great cavalry assault had reached stalemate. The cavalry, too proud to retreat, were unable to charge, and so they stood their horses just out of effective volley range and tried to bluff the infantry into firing. Hundreds of Frenchmen were dead or dying, yet thousands remained in the saddle, enough to keep alive the desperate hope of victory. Sometimes an officer managed to spur a group into a full-blooded charge and the muskets would spit their flames again, more horses would go down again, and then the stalemate resumed.

‘Hold your fire! Hold it!' d‘Alembord was suddenly shouting at the square's rear face. ‘Open ranks!'

Three horsemen had spurred across the field and now took shelter among the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers. Sharpe, turning in his saddle, saw the Duke of Wellington nodding a curt greeting at Ford who frantically began polishing his lenses. Sharpe looked back to the front where the horsemen still stood threateningly, but did not charge. Two of the Lancers, frustrated and embittered by the stalemate, threw their lances like javelins, but the missiles fell harmlessly short of the front rank. The redcoats jeeringly invited the horsemen to come and get their toys back. Another Lancer jabbed his lance point at a cannon's blackened vent, and achieved nothing.

‘Wasting their time.' The Duke's voice sounded just behind Sharpe.

Sharpe turned to see that the Duke was talking to him. ‘Yes, sir.'

The Duke's face betrayed neither hope for his army's survival, nor despair for its defeat. He had lost most of his cavalry to a foolish charge, many of his allies had run away, and he was left with scarce half the men he had paraded at the day's beginning, but he looked calm, even detached. He offered Sharpe the ghost of a smile; an acknowledgement of how many battlefields the two men had shared across the years. A more perceptive man than Sharpe might have read some message in the Duke's seeking the companionship of a veteran soldier, but Sharpe merely felt his usual awkwardness when he was in the company of his old commanding officer. ‘So what do you make of the man?' the Duke asked.

‘The man' was clearly the Emperor. ‘I'm disappointed,' Sharpe answered shortly.

The reply amused the Duke. ‘He might please you yet. He's throwing bits and pieces at us to see what we're made of, but doubtless he'll put a real attack together sooner or later.' The Duke looked at the closest enemy horsemen, a mix of Cuirassiers, Hussars and Lancers. ‘Fine-looking devils, aren't they?'

‘They are, sir.'

The Duke suddenly astonished Sharpe by giving his great whoop of a laugh. ‘I was in another square over there and a major was telling his men to make faces at the rogues! “Pull faces,” he shouted! Can you believe it? Pull faces! We shall have to add that order to the drillbook.' He laughed again, then shot a look at Sharpe. ‘Is Orange keeping you busy?'

‘He's dismissed me, sir.'

The Duke stared disapprovingly for a heartbeat, then gave another neighing laugh which made the nearest redcoats look round in astonishment at their Commander-in-Chief. ‘I always thought he was a fool to pick you. I told him you were an independent-minded rogue, but he wouldn't listen. At his age they always think they know best.' The Duke looked back to the French horsemen who still showed no inclination to close on the square. ‘If those rascals don't intend to charge, I might make a run for it.'

‘Your Grace?' Sharpe could not resist a question as the Duke turned his horse away. ‘The Prussians, sir?'

‘Their cavalry picquets are in sight.' The Duke spoke very calmly, as though he had not been racked all day by fears of a Prussian betrayal. ‘I fear it will be some time before their infantry can close on us, but at least their picquets are in sight. We just need to hold fast.' The Duke raised his voice so that the whole square could hear his confidence. ‘We just have to hold fast now! I thank you for your hospitality, Ford!'

He galloped from the rear of the square, followed by the two staff officers who had managed to keep up with his progress. Some of the French horsemen spurred after the Duke, but gave up the chase when it was clear that his horse was a far better animal.

“Ware right! Present!' That was d'Alembord, warning of the approach of another mass of enemy cavalry who were making a final and hopeless attempt to justify the slaughtered men and horses who lay in bloody heaps about the stubborn squares.

The muskets flamed again, the ramrods clattered in hot barrels, and the volleys flickered red in the smoke. Somewhere a dying Hussar cried his woman's name aloud. A horse limped towards home, dragging a rear leg dripping with blood. The horse's saddle-cloth was decorated with an Imperial ‘N' embroidered in blue and golden threads. Beside the horse, and howling with pain though apparently unwounded, a dog loped southwards to seek its master among the retreating French cavalry. A Cuirassier, his face bitter with failure, slammed his sword down onto a British cannon's barrel. The steel rang like a hammer's blow on an anvil, but achieved nothing. The Cuirassier wrenched his horse around and spurred southwards.

The French cavalry had been beaten and, like a last exhausted wave that had failed to breach a sea wall, the horsemen ebbed back into the valley. They went slowly, bloodied and muddied, a golden horde turned into a defeated mob.

And the Emperor's guns, this day's best killers for the French, began to kill again.

Prussian cavalry scouts reached Plancenoit, a village that lay just a cannon-shot behind the French right flank. Far to the east of Plancenoit, yet clearly visible to the French staff officers, were columns of Prussian infantry.

The presence of Blücher's men spelt the failure of the Emperor's strategy; the two armies had not been prised apart, yet their new conjunction was tenuous and the Prussians were not yet advancing in overwhelming force, but only in a fragile line of march. It would take hours for them to assemble an attack, and in those hours the Emperor knew he could break the British before turning on the Prussians.

The destruction of the British needed to be absolute and certain. An attack by a corps of infantry had failed, and Marshal Ney had broken the cavalry in futile onslaughts on the British squares, so now the Emperor stirred himself to bring order to the chaotic assaults. The greatest part of his infantry was still uncommitted, and among them was the elite of his army. The Emperor's own Imperial Guard was waiting.

No man but a veteran who had displayed uncommon valour in the Empire's battles could join the Guard. Guardsmen were paid more than other troops, and uniformed in more splendour. In return, more was expected of them, yet the Guard had always given it. The Guard had never been defeated. Other French troops might grumble at the Guard's privileges, but when the bearskins and long coats marched, victory was certain. The Guards wore side-whiskers and moustaches, ear-rings and powdered pigtails as marks of their prowess. To be a Grenadier of the Guard a man had to be six feet tall, an elite of an elite.

The Guard were the Emperor's ‘immortals', passionate in their loyalty to him, and fearsome in battle for him. When Bonaparte had been defeated and sent to Elba the Guard had been ordered to disband, but rather than surrender their colours they had burned the silk flags, crumbled the ash into wine, and drunk the mixture. Some of the immortals had gone into exile with their Emperor, but now they had returned and been reunited with their old comrades and been given new colours to fly beneath new Eagles. The Guard was the elite, the undefeated, the immortals of the Empire, and the Guard would deliver the final lethal blow that would obliterate the British.

But not yet. It was only six o'clock, there were more than three hours of daylight left, and the Prussians were far from ready to fight, so there was time for the Emperor to wear the British down yet further. He ordered the Guard to prepare itself for battle, but not to advance beyond La Belle Alliance. Then, contemplating the smoking ruin that had been a valley of farmland, he stared fixedly at La Haye Sainte. That farm was the bone sticking in the French craw. The Riflemen behind its walls were raking the flank of every French attack, and protecting the batteries at the centre of the British line. The farm must be taken so the British line would be stretched ever more thinly, and then the Guard would ram home the victory.