‘Well done, Acland.Your men have made good time.’
Acland was a dour, thin man, somewhat older than his commander, but he was gratified by the comment and smiled.
‘Yes, sir. The lads are keen to have a go at the French.’
‘And I am sure their keenness will be amply rewarded.’They shared a short laugh before Arthur raised his riding crop and pointed down the slope. ‘Now then, I would like your Light Companies at the bottom of the ridge.The rest of your men are to stay up here and lie down.’
‘Lie down?’ Acland frowned. ‘But the day’s barely started, sir.’
‘Easy, Acland. I am not indulging their indolence, merely trying to make them less of a ready target for enemy bullets.’
Acland was from the old school and he shook his head doubtfully. ‘I’m not sure about that, sir. It’s best to make ’em stand up to enemy fire. Last thing we want is to encourage any sense of self-preservation in the beggars.’
‘While I agree with you, it is a fact that soldiers are less easy for his majesty to come by than they are for the Emperor. So let us preserve them as we may. Now, when those fellows of Junot’s advance on the ridge, you must bide your time and wait for them to come well within range.Then have your men rise up and shoot them down.Then, in with the bayonet, when you judge the moment is ripe.’
‘Aye.’ Acland nodded. ‘That’ll please my boys well enough!’
‘Then a good day to you!’ Arthur spurred his horse and galloped on for a final inspection of his other brigades before returning to his command post. By the time he returned to the crest of the small hill south of Vimeiro, the enemy had swung round to the west and was forming columns in readiness to launch their assault. Arthur glanced north and was satisfied that the army was ready to repel any attacks they might face.The two brigades on the right flank were concealed behind the crest of Vimeiro Hill, on which twelve cannon had been positioned to cover the slopes. Down below, in the cover of boulders and folds in the ground, crouched the light infantry and two companies of rifles. Arthur nodded to himself with satisfaction. Now he would put his ideas to the test and see just how formidable the French assault columns really were.
A dull boom echoed up the slope and he saw a puff of smoke some half a mile from the foot of the ridge. Abruptly several more guns opened fire and kicked up small explosions of dirt, rock and small branches as the grapeshot tore up the ground along his skirmish line. After a few more rounds the French guns fell silent and a moment later the enemy skirmishers advanced to duel with their British counterparts. A steady crackle of musket and rifle fire drifted up the slope as the skirmishers of both sides contested the foot of the hill. Then, as weight of numbers began to tell, the British fell back, scurrying from cover to cover as they fired on their pursuers. A deep drum roll and tinny blare of trumpets carried across from the French lines as the assault columns edged forward and began to tramp up the slope behind their skirmishers.
‘And here they come,’ Somerset muttered casually.
There was a low fold in the ground just in front of the British cannon and the riflemen took shelter there as the other skirmishers ran back to their battalions and joined the main battle line. Then, as the first of the French skirmishers came into plain view, closely followed by the heads of the assault columns, the British guns opened fire. Arthur watched with keen interest the effects of the three howitzers he had deployed alongside the other guns. They were firing the newly developed shells designed by an artillery officer named Shrapnel, which were fused to burst over the heads of the enemy, spraying out scores of small iron shards. As Arthur watched, the first of the shells burst in a white puff over the leading ranks of the nearest column and at once a score of men went down.
‘Not bad,’ he mused, impressed by the effect. He could imagine the moral effect of being struck down from above as well as from the front, and made a mental note to fully endorse Shrapnel’s innovation when he had the opportunity. Meanwhile the columns tramped forward remorselessly, straight into the withering hail of the case shot blasting out from the British guns. As each cone of shot struck home it was as if a giant fist punched into the French columns, knocking men down like skittles. Despite the terrible carnage Arthur could not help admiring the élan of the enemy as the gaps were swiftly filled with fresh men and the columns continued up the slope, urged on by the relentless beating of drums and shouts of encouragement from officers and sergeants.
As the front rank of the enemy came within musket range, the British gun crews fired one last shot and then fell back, running for the cover of the hill crest. At once the French began to jeer and shout their contempt and their pace increased now that they no longer had to fear being cut down by case shot. Ahead of them lay the abandoned guns and a short distance beyond them a small group of British officers on horseback.
Arthur raised his arm, glancing left and right to make sure that he had the attention of the two brigades either side of him, and then swept his arm forward. Orders were bellowed out and the men of the two brigades rose up from the ground, dressed their ranks and then advanced over the crest.To the French it looked as if they had risen up from the earth, and the assault column’s pace faltered even as the slope began to level out beneath the leading ranks.
The British officers barked out the command, ‘Halt! . . . Make ready to fire!’
The long thin line, two men deep, stopped dead, and then over two thousand muskets were lowered so that their muzzles pointed down the slope at the French, no more than fifty paces away.
‘Cock your weapons!’
A ragged clicking rippled along the line, and then there was a pause, and a stillness that reminded Arthur of the tense anticipation between the flash of lightning and the crash of thunder.
‘Fire!’
The roar was like a multitude of hammers striking a sheet of steel, and flame and smoke burst out along the British line. From his position slightly above and behind his men Arthur saw the terrible impact of the first volley as the heads of the French columns collapsed, leaving a crumpled line of blue-coated bodies across the bloodstained ground.
‘Fire by companies!’
The flanks of the British brigades advanced round the heads of the French columns and then a rolling series of volleys crashed out as one company after another fired into the enemy. The French struggled to deploy from column into line amid the chaos of tumbling bodies and the whirr of lead passing through the air all around them. There was only the briefest of delays between the volleys, and the near continuous destruction being wrought on the French ranks shattered their cohesion and broke their spirit. Inevitably, they began to give way. Succeeding companies refused to advance into the place of their fallen comrades, and even began to edge back, down the slope.