A chorus of clicks sounded along the line as the men thumbed back the musket firing hammers; the sound almost drowned out by the crashing roll of the French drums beating out the pas de charge. They were only eighty yards away now and Arthur could see the taut expressions on the faces of the leading men. Even as he watched, one of them raised his musket and fired at once. A flash, a puff of smoke and a whipping sound as the ball passed some distance above Arthur's head. Beside him, Fitzroy flinched.
'Give the order, Arthur.'
'Not yet.'
The column tramped forwards, and now the redcoats could see the endless mass of blue uniforms stretching out behind until the enemy ranks were swallowed up by the mist. Arthur was thankful that the rest of them were hidden from his men's view. More shots were fired from the head of the column and the first casualty of the engagement gave a sharp cry and toppled back a short distance from Arthur.
'Steady lads!' he called out as calmly as possible. 'Hold your fire.'
When the enemy had closed another ten yards Fitzroy could no longer contain himself.
'For pity's sake, Arthur! Give the order.'
'Quiet, damn you!' he hissed back. 'Control yourself, man!'
He waited a moment longer, then raised his arm stiffly. 'Ready!'
The cry echoed along the line. There was a brief moment of silence as even the French braced themselves for the first volley.
'Fire!'
In little more than a second, hundreds of firing hammers slammed down on to their firing pans and ignited the charges in the long musket barrels. Orange flashes spat out from the muzzles and a swirling white blanket engulfed the space immediately in front of the British line. From his vantage point atop his horse, Arthur stood in his stirrups and saw the front ranks of the French column disintegrate as men were struck down in a broad swathe, and those behind stopped dead. By some miracle the heavily braided officer survived the volley, but his cockaded hat was snatched off his head and carried back ten paces before it struck the ground. For a moment he was too stunned to react; then he turned on his men and urged them on, over the bodies of their dead and injured comrades. Behind them the drums rattled out the advance and the column edged forwards.
No time had been wasted on the British side and as soon as the first volley was discharged the men in the front rank began to reload their muskets. They snatched out a paper cartridge, biting the end off and saving a fraction of the powder for the firing pan before the rest went down the barrel, and was rammed home. Then the ball was inserted and packed down on top.The veterans were quickest and held their arms ready in less than twenty seconds.
'Rear rank ready!' Arthur called out, and waited for the order to be repeated down the line. 'Fire!'
The second volley crashed out and once again stopped the French column dead, no more than twenty-five yards away – so close that Arthur could see every detail as a ball struck a man in the face; his head snapping back amid a red haze. Arthur instantly dismissed the image and bellowed out his next order.
'Fire by companies!'
The shattering impact of the first two massed volleys now gave way to rolling fire that rippled along the British line with almost no interval and the heavy musket balls progressively shredded the foremost ranks of the enemy column. Only a handful of shots were fired in return and Arthur was glad to see no more than a score of his men were down.
'Keep it up lads!' Fitzroy was yelling close by, his voice tight with excitement. 'Keep it up!'
Over the acrid cloud of burned gunpowder, Arthur saw that the road ahead of him was heaped with blue-uniformed bodies. And still the enemy officer survived, even though a ball had creased his scalp and a sheet of blood flowed down his face and spattered the white facings on his uniform. He was screaming at his men to charge home, but as each wave of men struggled to clamber over the growing tangle of French bodies, they in turn were struck down and added to the obstacle. More than a hundred men were already dead and dying, and still they came on, shouting with foolhardy courage as they threw themselves at the muzzles of the redcoats' muskets. Arthur could only wonder at the suicidal valour of the revolutionaries. They had to be mad, he told himself. Only madness could make men take such punishment. And still they came on. Still they died, dozens at a time.
At last the charmed life of the French officer could no longer defy the terrible odds and two or three bullets struck him in the chest and hurled him back on to the ground. His sword spun a few feet to one side before the point embedded itself in the soft ground and it wavered from side to side for a moment. A groan rose up from the French ranks and suddenly they were no longer moving forward to take the place of their dead and injured comrades. As the withering British fire continued to strike them down, the French infantry began to back away, a step at a time at first, then more hurriedly until the column receded down the slope and then disintegrated into a formless mass along the fringes of the mist. The drums fell silent
'Cease fire!' Arthur called out. 'Cease fire, damn you!'
It took a while for the order to be passed along the line, and enforced by the sergeants, before the rattle of musketry died away. After the dreadful din of the volleys there was a sudden hush over the battlefield, broken by the groans and cries of the injured, who writhed feebly amid the bodies heaped a short distance in front of the British line. The thrill and excitement that had burned in Arthur's veins moments earlier turned to shame and disgust as he beheld the carnage through the thinning smoke. He had no idea it could look like this. So many brave fellows in their fine uniforms mangled and torn apart. He felt faint for an instant and tore his gaze away. Beyond the pile of bodies he could see the French general and his staff surveying the scene.Their shock was palpable, even at this distance. For a moment they were still. Then the general reached a hand up and doffed his cap at the British line, before turning his horse away and following his men back into the mist.
'Good God,' Fitzroy said quietly. 'We did it. We turned them back.'
'For now,' Arthur replied. 'They'll return. Next time you can be sure they'll use their artillery on us before throwing another column forward.' He turned his head and looked at the low ground behind the British line. 'If only we had a hill or fold in the land to shelter the men. That and another brigade or two, and some artillery of our own and we could hold them here indefinitely.'
'You're wishing for the moon, Arthur,' said Fitzroy bitterly. 'We're on our own. So we had better quit this place, before the Frogs can turf us off it.'
'Yes,' Arthur nodded, unable to hide his disappointment. 'Tell Coulter he's got the rearguard duty. Have the rest of the brigade form up on the road.We'll have to fall back towards headquarters. That's all we can do now. Still,' he mused as he stared at the dead enemy officer, sprawled on his back, 'it's been most instructive. Most instructive indeed.'
Fitzroy stared at him, then laughed.
The colonel stiffly drew himself up in the saddle. 'What's so confoundedly funny?'
'It's you, Arthur.' Fitzroy bit down on his hysteria, now that he could see that he had pricked his friend's pride. 'I'm sorry. It's just that you have a peculiar way of reacting to events at times. "Most instructive." Why, Arthur, anyone would think you were on some school playing field, not a battlefield.'
The young colonel eyed him seriously for a moment. 'There's more truth in that than you know.'
Chapter 85
The redcoats were pushed back relentlessly, across the Meuse, then across the Waal, where they finally had a line of defence that even the wild enthusiasm of the revolutionary armies could not overcome.There, the exhausted British soldiers sat in their camps and kept watch on the enemy across the wide expanse of the river.The main bulk of the French army then turned east, rolling up the Austrian forces and hurling them back across the Rhine as the tricolour rose above the city of Cologne. Despite news of such defeats the British could only feel relief that the weight of the enemy forces had been transferred to the hapless Austrians. It was strange, Arthur mused, that he felt it himself: a sense of satisfaction that their allies were being punished for their tardiness in fighting the French, and their wilful abandonment of the Duke of York and his men. At the same time, the wider situation looked hopeless for the allies, though they were allies only in name now. The diplomatic bickering over the financial aid Britain should contribute and the disagreements over the eventual spoils of war continued even though defeat followed defeat.