The Fourth Division did not get past the hill. From behind it, coming out to Sharpe’s right, the counter-attack rose from the small patch of dead ground next to the hill’s western end. The French columns came forward. Twelve thousand men, their Eagles aloft, their blades as thick as the wheat they trampled flat, and Sharpe heard, through the guns, the drums of the French beating the pas-de-charge. This was war as France had taught the world war. This was the mass attack, the irresistible force, driven by blurred drumsticks, the collection of men turned into a great human battering ram that would be marched against the enemy to smash through the enemy’s centre and make a hole through which the cavalry would pour and tear at the flanks.
The British line, two deep, could usually stop the column. Sharpe had seen it happen a dozen times and there was a cold mathematical logic to the process. A column was a great filled rectangle of men and only the men on its outer edges could use their muskets. Each man in the British line could fire and, even though the column had more men than the line, the line would always win the firefight. The frightening thing about the column was its size, and that scared unsteady troops, overawed them, but it was vulnerable to good troops. The column took the punishment, as Sharpe had seen other columns take punishment, and again he was amazed by the French soldiers who stayed so steady under horrific bombardment. Cannon balls struck the columns and successive ranks soaked up the balls’ passages, and shrapnel cracked over their heads, yet still the column moved. The drums never stopped.
This was the might of France, the pride of France, the tactic of the world’s first conscript army, and this column, Clausel’s counter-attack, ignored cold mathematical logic. It was not defeated by the line.
It pushed the Fourth Division back. The British had fired their clockwork volleys, the muskets flashing rhythmically through the smoke cloud, and Sharpe had seen the Light Companies go back to their Battalions, form line, and join in the musket fight. The Fourth Division was awed by the column. Perhaps the British had seen too much blood at Badajoz, had thought that any man who lived through that ditch had no right to die on a summer’s field, and they took a step back before reloading, and the step became two, and the columns still came on and the officers shouted, the Sergeants tried to dress the ranks, but the lines went backwards.
The drummers paused to let the thousands of voices chant their war cry. “Vive 1’Empereur!” And the drums started again, the old rhythm that Sharpe knew so well. Boom-boom, boom-boom, boomaboom, boomaboom, boom-boom. That rhythm had sounded from Egypt to Russia, had driven the columns to rule Europe, and between each phrase the drummers paused, the shout went up, and the column came on as the drummer boys, tight in the column’s centre, let the sticks fall again. With each shout the bayonets went up in the air and splintered the slanting sunlight into twelve thousand shards and to the left of the column, in the space between the two strange hills, the French cavalry hacked into the remnants of the Portuguese.
“No.” Sharpe spoke to himself. Hogan saw his right hand gripping and re-gripping the sword handle.
The Fourth Division were beaten. Some men climbed the lower slopes of the Lesser Arapile, some the slopes of the Teso San Miguel, while some took refuge in the village. The column carved through the defeated Battalions, ignoring them, marching steadily on towards the small valley that led to the very heart of the British line. Some of the Fourth Division, like the South Essex, still went backwards in front of the column, but they were beaten, and the column came to the small valley and the guns, on either side of the French, poured death into their ranks. The British roundshot lanced at the column, the shrapnel exploded above it, but still the Frenchmen closed up, marched on, stepped over their dead, and they left a trail of mangled, shot-torn bodies in their wake like a blood-slime beneath the smoke.
The noise was the noise of French victory. The drums, the cheers, the guns that could not stop them, and the noise filled the valley as the French Battalions went towards the distant landmark of the new Cathedral’s largest tower. The Eagles were bright above their heads.
Wellington’s messengers galloped at break-neck speed down the slope. They went to the Sixth Division, the new Division, the Division that had taken so long to take the fortresses, and it was the only Division between Clausel and victory. The Fourth Division had been beaten and now the Sixth had to win or else Clausel would have plucked victory from disaster.
Battles rarely start quickly. Sometimes it was difficult to know when a skirmish had become a battle, yet the height of a battle was easily determined. When the Eagles were flying and the drums were sounding, when the guns of both sides were in frenzy, then the battle was fully joined. It had yet to be won and Sharpe, who had watched the South Essex go backwards through the smoke-torn valley, could not bear that it might be won or lost without him. He shook off Hogan’s restraining arm, called for his horse, and went down into the smoke.
CHAPTER 22
From the ridge crest there had been a pattern to the battle, often disguised, always shrouded by smoke, but a recognisable pattern. The French left had been broken, the centre had yielded and then delivered a splintering counter-attack, while the French right, like the British left, was still in reserve. Wellington was hooking his attacks from the west, one by one, but Clausel had forced a new pattern and was even now daring to hope for victory. Once in the valley there was no pattern. It was familiar, for Sharpe had been on many battlefields, but for the men who loaded and fired, who looked desperately into the smoke banks for a sign of danger, the valley was a place without pattern or reason. These men could not know that the French left was broken, would not know that the blood was drying to a crust on the flanks of the Heavy Dragoon horses, they only knew that this valley was their fighting place; the ground where they must kill or be killed.
It was a confused place, but it had a simplicity that Sharpe needed. He had been fooled by La Marquesa and his foolishness had led to the escape of his enemy. He had been outwitted by the clever people of the secret war, but in this valley there was a simple job to do. He knew that La Marquesa would be hearing the guns like an echo of last night’s thunder. He knew she must know that he had turned the tables on her, lied through his love as she had lied through hers, and he wondered if she thought of him.
Politics, strategy, cleverness and guile had brought on this battle. Now it was up to the soldiers.
He could see to his right where the Sixth Division marched in small columns towards the great French column. It would be, perhaps, two minutes before the new Division formed its two deep line and the muskets could try again to stop the massive French attack, and he knew there was a job for the South Essex in that short time. The Battalion were at the valley’s end, the Grenadier Company hard against the Teso San Miguel and acting as a hinge. The other nine companies were swinging back in the face of the French and the Light Company, on the left of the line, were swinging fastest and loading slowest. Sharpe could see Major Leroy, commanding the left five Companies, swearing at them and gesturing. Sharpe understood why. If the small Battalion line swung fully back to the hillside then the column could pour out into the open ground of the British rear. Leroy wanted to hold the South Essex, force the column to edge to its right and thus straight onto the muskets of the Sixth Division. The South Essex was like a desperately frail breakwater that had to force a tidal wave away from empty ground and into a channel prepared for it.