The battalion's two ranks about-turned. What had been the rear rank was now the front rank, and both ranks had their backs to the slope and to the big, stalled column that was still exchanging fire with the ridge top. "Battalion will right wheel on number nine company!" Lawford shouted. "March!"
This was a test of a battalion's ability. They would swing like a giant door, just two ranks thick, swing around across rough country and across the bodies of their wounded comrades and the dying fires, and they must do it holding their ranks and files while under fire, and when they had finished, if they finished at all, they would form a musket line facing the new French columns. Those Frenchmen, seeing the danger, had checked their charge and started firing at the South Essex, allowing the Portuguese to reform on the half-battalion of redcoats who had been marching behind them on the road. "Dress on number nine!" Lawford shouted. "Start firing when you're in position!"
Number nine company, which had been the battalion's left flank when it had been facing downhill, was now the right flank company and, because it formed the hinge of the door, it had the smallest distance to march. It took only seconds for the company to be reformed and James Hooper, its Captain, ordered the men to load. The light company, which normally paraded outside number nine, was running behind the swinging battalion. "Get your fellows in front, Mister Slingsby!" Lawford shouted. "In front! Not behind, for God's sake!"
"Number nine company!" Hooper bellowed. "Fire!"
"Number eight company!" The next was in line. "Fire!" The outer companies were running, holding on to open cartridge boxes as they scrambled over the uneven turf. A man was hurled backwards, twitching from a bullet's strike. Lawford was riding up behind the swinging door, the colors following him. Musket balls hissed past him as the voltigeurs, closest to the battalion, shot at its officers. The light company, slightly downhill and on the flank of the battalion, began firing at the French, who suddenly saw that the South Essex would form an outflanking line that would soak them with dreaded British musketry, and the columns' officers began shouting at men to deploy into three ranks. The General on the white horse was shoving at men to hurry them into place and a ragged procession of French infantry, all of them remnants of the failed first attack, was coming up the hill to join the seven battalions that had breached the British line. The drummers were still beating their instruments and the Eagles had gained the heights.
"South Essex!" Lawford was standing in his stirrups. "Half-company fire from the center!"
The Portuguese who had broken in the face of the devastating French musketry were coming back to join the South Essex's line. Redcoats were also forming on that left flank. More battalions, brought from the peaceful southern end of the ridge, were hurrying towards the gap, but Lawford wanted to seal it himself. "Fire!" he shouted.
The South Essex had lost a score of men as they clumsily wheeled around on the summit's ridge, but they were in their ranks now and this was what they had been trained to do. To fire and reload. That was the essential skill. To tear off the ends of the thick cartridge paper, prime the gun, close the frizzen, upend the musket, pour the powder, put in the ball, ram the ball and paper, drop the ramrod into the barrel rings, bring the musket to the shoulder, pull the doghead to full cock, aim at the smoke, remember to aim low, wait for the order. "Fire!" The muskets smashed back into bruised shoulders and the men, without thinking, found a new cartridge, tore the end off with their blackened teeth, began again, and all the while the French balls came back and every now and then there would be a sickening thud as a ball found flesh, or a smack as it struck a musket stock, or a hollow pop as it punctured a shako. Then the musket was back up in the shoulder, the dog-head was back, the command came, and the flint drove onto the strike plate, flying the frizzen open as the sparks flashed down and there would be a pause, less than the time it took for a sparrow's heart to beat, before the powder in the gun fired and the redcoat's cheek would be burning because of the scraps of fiery powder thrown up from the pan, and the brass stock would hammer back into his shoulder, and the corporals were bellowing behind, "Close up! Close up!" Which meant a man was dead or wounded.
All the while the sound of the musketry flared out from the center, an unending noise like breaking sticks, but louder, much louder, and the French muskets were banging away, but the men could not see those because the powder smoke was thicker than the fog that had wreathed the ridge at dawn. And every man was thirsty because when they bit open the cartridges they got scraps of saltpeter from the gunpowder in their mouths and the saltpeter dried a man's tongue and throat so that he had no spit at all. "Fire!" and the muskets flamed, making the cloud of powder smoke suddenly lurid with fire, and the hooves of the Colonel's horse thumped close behind the rearward rank as he tried to see across the smoke, and somewhere else, way behind the ranks, a band was playing "The Grenadiers' March," but no one was really aware of it, only of the need to pull a new cartridge out and tear off the tip and get the damn musket loaded and get the damn thing done.
They were thieves and murderers and fools and rapists and drunkards. Not one had joined for love of country, and certainly not for love of their King. They had joined because they had been drunk when the recruiting sergeant came to their village, or because a magistrate had offered them a choice between the gallows and the ranks, or because a girl was pregnant and wanted to marry them, or because a girl did not want to marry them, or because they were witless fools who believed the recruiter's outrageous lies or simply because the army gave them a pint of rum and three meals a day, and most had been hungry ever since. They were flogged on the orders of officers who were mostly gentlemen who would never be flogged. They were cursed as drunken halfwits, and they were hanged without trial if they stole so much as a chicken. At home, in Britain, if they left the barracks respectable people crossed the street to avoid them. Some taverns refused them service. They were paid pitifully, fined for every item they lost, and the few pennies they managed to keep they usually gambled away. They were feckless rogues, as violent as hounds and as coarse as swine, but they had two things.
They had pride.
And they had the precious ability to fire platoon volleys. They could fire those half-company volleys faster than any other army in the world. Stand in front of these redcoats and the balls came thick as hail. It was death to be in their way and seven French battalions were now in death's forecourt and the South Essex was tearing them to ribbons. One battalion against seven, but the French had never properly deployed into line and now the outside men tried to get back into the column's protection and so the French formation became tighter and the balls struck it relentlessly, and more men, Portuguese and British, had extended the South Essex line, and then the 88th, the Connaught Rangers, came from the north and the Frenchmen who had gained the ridge were being assailed on two sides by enemies who knew how to fire their muskets. Who had practiced musketry until they could do it blindfolded, drunk or mad. They were the red-coated killers and they were good.
"Can you see anything, Richard?" Lawford shouted over the sound of the volleys.
"They won't hold, sir." Thanks to a vagary of the wind, a small gust that had moved the sluggish smoke a few yards, he had a better view than the Colonel.
"Bayonet?"
"Not yet." Sharpe could see the French were being hit brutally. The South Essex alone was shooting close to fifteen hundred musket balls every minute and they were now one of four or five battalions who had closed on the two French columns. Smoke thickened above the ridge, ringing the Frenchmen who stubbornly stayed on the summit. As ever, Sharpe was astonished by the amount of punishment a column could endure. It seemed to shudder under the blows, yet it did not retreat, it just shrank as the outer ranks and files died, and die they did under the terrible flail of the British and Portuguese musketry.