“Good Lord, a sailor, up here?” an Army Captain brayed, and let out a guffaw. “Lost your way, old man?”
“The French don’t seem all that eager t’oblige me at sea any longer, so I thought I’d see how they fight on land, sir,” Lewrie told him in a genial manner.
“Well, you’ll see a fine show in an hour or so,” the Captain said with a twinkle of eager anticipation. “Horsley, sir,” he said to name himself, and his regiment.
“Captain Lewrie, of the Sapphire,” Lewrie said in return. “Who are those people in green down yonder?”
“The Rifles, sir, the ‘Greenjackets,’” Horsley told him with a roll of his eyes. “Think they hung the moon, they do. They fight like skirmishers, in pairs, march at the quick-step, and consider themselves chosen, above the common run of soldiers. They’re armed with Baker rifles, which are considered to be quite accurate, but damned slow to load. I’ve tried one, and it’s the very Devil to get a ball rammed down with a greased leather patch round it. Might as well use a hammer, haw! They specialise,” he imparted with a scowl, “at picking off officers and senior sergeants, at nearly two hundred yards, and God help us do they give the French the idea to emulate them. I see you came well-armed, sir. Well, you just might need all of that, do the French get up close. A custom musket, is it?”
“A breech-loading Ferguson rifled musket, sir,” Lewrie told him. “Got it at Yorktown, when I was a pup.”
“Egads, a Ferguson! I’ve never seen one. Might I?” Horsely pleaded, and Lewrie handed it over, explaining how it loaded.
“With hard practice, I could get off five or six shots each minute,” Lewrie told him, “though I’ve not had call for such speed in ages. Two hundred yards’ range is average.”
“We’ve trained our lads to get off four a minute,” Horsley said as he handed the Ferguson back, “but, they can manage more if they spit the ball down the muzzle and rap the butt on the ground to settle it all at the breech, with no need for the ram rod. Aha! Look there!”
Lewrie looked in the direction Horsley was pointing, and saw a French Tricolour flag at the head of a long column of fours, and the glint of a shiny symbol on a pole, as it emerged from the far trees, the advance regiment or brigade of an entire army.
“Eagles,” Captain Horsley said.
“Eagles?” Lewrie asked.
“Bonaparte issues all his regiments a silver spread eagle as a mark of distinction,” Horsley explained, “not just to units which have done something grand and brave. His Imperial eagles, d’ye see. Makes them think they’re as grand as his pampered Grenadiers, and it’s said they’d rather die than lose one, like the eagles of the old Roman legions. Be a grand thing to take one. Maybe today’s the day, hey?”
“How come most of your regiment’s back below the crest?” Lewrie asked, most of his attention drawn to the sight of more French regiments emerging and forming all along the lower ground, with hordes of brilliantly uniformed cavalry trotting up alongside, and artillery in the rear.
“Oh, that’s His Nibs’s orders,” Horsley said with another roll of his eyes. “A queer way to fight, if you ask me, waiting ’til the last moment to rush up, form line, and give them volleys, but, what’s a fellow to do if a General tells you to.” Horsley pulled a pocket watch out and flipped the lid open. “A little past nine of the morning. We may have ourselves a battle by ten. Ehm, a slight suggestion, Captain … Lewrie did ye say? I’ve left my mount down behind the ridge line, and it might be good for you to do so. A mounted man is a grand target for the French artillery, and you might draw a bit too much attention to my men who are in the open.”
“I’ll just ride on, have a look-see,” Lewrie decided, bidding Horsley a good morning, and ambling on Eastwards.
He rode on to the next regiment, staying near the crest of the ridge so he could witness as much of the field as possible, now and then drawing rein to use his telescope. It was frustrating, for his pocket telescope was much narrower and shorter than the glasses used aboard ship, the “fetch ’em ups.” The view in the ocular was narrower, too.
“Wot th’ bastards doin’, Corp?” a soldier just behind the crest of the ridge called out to another soldier who stood in plain view.
“Formin’ up in bloody blocks!” the Corporal shouted back.
“Silence in the ranks!” some officer snapped.
Lewrie’s attention was drawn to what the French were doing, as well, and he couldn’t quite understand it. Regiment after regiment were coming together, elbow to elbow, rank after rank, creating dense blocks that looked to be thirty men across the front file, and fifty or more in depth. Other soldiers with bright green epaulets, as opposed to the men in the masses who wore red epaulets, were loosely drawn up on either flank and out in front of the massed blocks, and there were some cavalry troops between, a bewildering array of brass helmets with leopard skins, long horsehair plumes, some in polished back-and-breast armour, some in shakoed headgear, intricately laced and multi-buttoned dolman jackets, with pelisses thrown back over their shoulders. There were even lancers in silly-looking helmets that put Lewrie in mind of exaggerated hats worn by Oxford dons!
“Ah, good morning to you, sir,” yet another infantry officer said in greeting as Lewrie ambled up near his Light Company. “They seem to have brought it all, don’t you think? Lancers, Hussars, Dragoons, even Cuirassiers, but no Grenadiers au Cheval. Those would be with Napoleon himself, his mounted Grenadier Guards. You’d know ’em by their tall bearskin hats. Don’t know why, but the French call ’em Les Gros Talons, the ‘Big Heels.’ Oh well, no matter. Cavalry is just for show, today. We have the slope of them, and they’ll find it difficult to get up with us.”
Lewrie was relieved that this officer didn’t make a jape about a sailor being out of his element, and he did sound knowledgeable, so Lewrie at last dis-mounted and walked over to him.
“Why are they making those big blocks?” Lewrie asked.
“Ah, that’s their way, isn’t it?” the Light Company Captain rejoined with a titter. “They always attack in large columns, several of them abreast of each other, and so far, they’ve been unstoppable. Ask the Dutch, the Austrians, and the Russians. Look closely at the centre of each column. See the drummers, all the flags, and eagles?”
Lewrie raised his telescope and found the Tricolours, other banners displayed on horizontal cross-pieces which bore wreathed N’s for “Napoleon,” and those silver eagles.
“Out in front and on the flanks, those fellows with the green epaulets, those are their voltigeurs, and tirailleurs,” the Captain said. “Light infantry, much like our Light Companies. Voltigeurs … it means ‘Leapers,’ or maybe ‘Grasshoppers.’ Who’d be a Grasshopper, I ask you?” he said with another titter. “Never live it down! Tirailleurs, well … ‘Shooters’ is close, but if the French had any sense, they’d issue rifled weapons, not smoothbore muskets.”
“Let’s hope they don’t, sir,” Lewrie said, faking a shiver, “else our own officers get knocked off quicker than theirs.”
“Oh, then we can’t have that!” the Army officer said with another of his titters, almost a bray this time. “How else would our troops be controlled? We fight battles, not Irish riots. Ah, I believe that the curtain is about to go up. Look there, over to the right.”
French artillery was in position, the gunners had done all their fiddling with train and elevation, the barrels were loaded, and sudden spurts of yellowish-white smoke gushed from the muzzles, silently at first, the ground-shaking explosions coming a second or two later and rattling the ground, preceded by the howl of roundshot that climbed the scale as they neared, then keening away as most of the shot went soaring over the top of the ridge line. Some few lucky shots landed just short to graze along the crests, but most struck well below the positioned regiments on the ridge and ploughed into the ground with great gouts of thrown-up earth.