The French infantry, mostly young conscripts who had no stomach for a fight, broke and fled. An officer beat at them with the flat of his sabre, but the French were running backwards. The officer turned, drew a pistol, but a rifle bullet buried itself in his belly and he folded forward, eyes gaping, and one of Frederickson’s Riflemen grasped the bridle as the officer fell sideways to the cold earth.
“Form at the first waggon’s rear!” Sharpe yelled it to Palmer as they ran forward. The Marines’ line was now broken by the necessity for men to step around the dead and dying on the ground. Harper, who could not bear to see an animal suffer, picked up a fallen French pistol and shot a wounded, screaming horse between the eyes.
A carbine, fired by a dismounted cavalryman, threw down a Marine. Minver’s men shot the cavalryman, six bullets striking at once and flinging him down like a puppet that lay suddenly still and bloodied on the pale grass.
There were fugitives under the first waggon. One still had a musket and Sharpe, thinking it loaded, struck with his sword to knock it clear. The boy, terrified, screamed, but Sharpe had gone on, jumping blue-jacketed dead. Ahead, in a foul panic, a mass of infantry tumbled in pell mell retreat. An officer, emerging from a coach, shouted at them, and some, braver than the rest, slowed, turned, and formed a new line.
“Captain Frederickson!”
“I see them, sir!”
Sharpe ran behind the rear of a waggon. On this left side of the road, where Minver’s men stayed in hiding, a full Company of French infantry was formed in three ranks. “60th!” Sharpe had to shout twice to Minver as Frederickson’s volley drowned his first shout. “Flank attack! Flank attack!”
Palmer’s Marines were panting. Some had reddened bayonets, and others stabbed at Frenchmen cowering beneath the heavy waggon, but Palmer and his sergeants pushed them into line and shouted at them to load muskets.
The French Company fired first.
The range was seventy yards, too long for muskets, but two Marines were down, a third was screaming, and the others still thrust with wooden ramrods at powder and bullets. Sharpe supposed the Marines used wooden ramrods because metal rods would rust at sea, then forgot the idle speculation as more enemy bullets thumped into the heavy timber of the waggons. Stragglers from the first Company had joined the ranks where French muskets tipped up as the enemy began to reload.
“Aim!” Palmer shouted.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Sharpe took station at the head of the Marines. He made his voice steady. There was a time to rouse men in battle and a time to calm them. “Marines will advance. At the march! Forward!” Sharpe was taking the Marines down the left flank of the waggons, leaving Frederickson to control the right side of the road.
Minver’s Riflemen were showing themselves on this French flank, green-jacketed men who appeared from behind trees and farm buildings, men who worked forward in the skirmishing chain, each man covering his partner, and their fire nibbled at the flank of the French Company.
A French officer looked sideways, judging whether to turn a file to flick the Riflemen away with a controlled volley, then he looked forward to where the redcoats advanced.
This was no mad charge, meant to panic, but a slow, steady advance to show confidence. Sharpe wanted to close the range, he wanted this volley of musketry to kill. He watched the enemy’s movements. Ramrods, new and bright-metalled, flashed as they were raised. He heard the scraping rattle as they plunged downwards into muskets held between clenched knees. “Marines! Halt!”
The boots of the men who advanced on the road crashed to attention. The sound seemed unnaturally loud.
Minver’s men still fired, their bullets spinning constantly from the flank. Carbine bullets, fired by dismounted cavalrymen, buzzed past Sharpe. An ox, oblivious of the carnage around, staled on the road and the smell of the steam pricked at Sharpe’s nostrils. “To your front! Aim!” Sharpe wanted this slow and sure. He wanted the Frenchmen to see the shape of their death before it came. He wanted them scared.
The Marine line seemed to take a quarter turn to the right as the muskets went into the shoulders. One or two men who had not yet cocked their pieces pulled back the flints and the clicks seemed ominous.
Sharpe walked to the flank of the Marine formation and raised his sword. Some of the French were priming their muskets, but most were staring nervously at the small line of redcoats who seemed so deliberate and savage. Sharpe let them wait, giving their imaginations time to torment them.
Harper came to stand alongside Sharpe. He had his rifle loaded, aimed, and he waited for the order. To Harper’s eyes these Frenchmen were boys, the scrapings of a countryside to bring Napoleon’s armies up to strength. These were not the moustached, experienced veterans who had died in the appalling Spanish battles, but conscripts dragged unwilling from school or farm to die in a cause that was doomed anyway.
The conscripts primed their pieces. Some had forgotten to take their ramrods out of their musket barrels, but it did not matter.
“Aim low!” Sharpe’s voice was harsh. He knew most troops fired high. “Aim at their balls! Fire!” The sword swept down.
The volley smashed out, the sound of the muskets deafening as the heavy weapons leaped back into bruised shoulders. The smoke, stinking of rotten eggs, made its fog.
“Lie down!” Sharpe shouted. He saw astonished faces and his voice rose in anger. “Lie down! Lie down!”
The Marines, puzzled, dropped flat. Sharpe knelt to one side of the rolling, poisonous cloud of musket smoke.
The French Company had shaken as the volley struck home. Just like a man punched in the belly the whole Company seemed to fold, then the officers and sergeants, shouting orders, pushed the ranks back into place and Sharpe saw how the rear files had to step over the writhing and the dead left by the Marine’s well-aimed volley.
The French commander ignored the Riflemen on his flank. They could be dealt with after the redcoats. „Tirez“
For a new Company, unblooded, it was a good response. Sixty or seventy muskets fired at the gunsmoke, but the Marines were flat and the conscripts fired high.
“Go for them! Go!” Sharpe was triumphant now. This one Company had been the last danger, but he had drawn their sting by laying his men flat. “On your feet! On your feet! Go! Cheer, you bastards!“ This was the moment for noise, the moment for terror.
The Marines, who a second before had been the target for a controlled, tight volley, scrambled unscathed to their feet and charged. They yelled as if they were boarding an enemy ship. Lieutenant Fytch fired his pistol wildly, then tried to drag his heavy sword from its scabbard.
The conscripts, staring through their own musket-smoke, saw the unharmed enemy coming with long bayonets and, like the first two Companies at the convoy’s head, broke.
Some were slow, and those the Marines caught and pinned to the ground with bayonets. A mounted officer, scarlet-faced and furious, charged at the redcoats, but Sharpe lunged with his sword, caught the horse’s hindquarters and the beast turned, teeth snapping, as the officer hacked down with his infantry sword.
The blades met, clashed, and the shock ran up Sharpe’s arm. The horse reared, lashed with its hooves as it was trained to do, but Sharpe backswung the sword into the beast’s mouth as he was trained to do.
The animal twisted, the officer kicked his feet out of the stirrups and, as the horse fell to one side, nimbly threw himself clear. The horse collapsed off balance, lips bleeding, then scrambled to its feet as if nothing was amiss.
“Surrender,” Sharpe said to the officer.
The reply, whatever it meant, did not signify surrender. The Frenchman’s sword blade flickered out in an expert lunge. The man’s horse was now cropping the grass and the Frenchman reached with his spare hand for its bridle.