And there, for a while, the attack stalled. The French had first filled the village with dead and wounded, then they had captured it, and now they held the graveyard too. Their soldiers crouched behind graves or behind their enemy's piled dead. They were just feet from the ridge's summit, just feet from victory while behind them, on a plain gouged by roundshot and scorched by shell and littered with the bodies of dead and dying men, still more French infantry came to help the attackers on.
The day needed just one more push, then the eagles of France would fly free.
The Light Division had formed its battalions into close columns of companies. Each company formed a rectangle four ranks deep and anything from twelve to twenty files wide, then the ten companies of each battalion paraded in column so that from the sky each battalion now resembled a stack of thin red bricks. Then, one by one, the battalion columns turned their backs on the enemy and began marching north towards the plateau. The French cavalry gave immediate pursuit and the air rang with a brassy cacophony as trumpet after trumpet sounded the advance.
"Form square on the front division!" the Colonel of the redcoat battalion nearest Sharpe shouted.
The Major commanding the battalion's leading division of companies called for the first brick to halt and for the second to form alongside it so that two of the bricks now made one long wall of men four ranks deep and forty men wide. "Dress ranks!" the sergeants shouted as the men shuffled close together and looked right to make sure their rank was ruler straight. While the leading two companies straightened their ranks the Major was calling orders to the succeeding companies. "Sections outward wheel! Rear sections close to the front!" The French trumpets were pealing and the earth was vibrating from the mass of hooves, but the sergeants' and officers' voices sounded coolly over the threat. "Outward wheel! Steady now! Rear sections close to the front!" The six centre companies of the battalion now split into four sections each. Two sections swung like hinged doors to the right and two to the left, the innermost men of each section reducing their marching pace from thirty to twenty inches, while the men swinging widest lengthened their stride to thirty-three inches and so the sections pivoted outward to begin forming the twin faces of the square whose anchoring wall was the first two companies. Mounted officers hurried to get their horses inside the rapidly forming square that was, in reality, an oblong. The northward face had been made by the two leading companies, now the two longer sides were formed by the next six companies wheeling outward and closing hard up, while the last companies merely filled in the vacant fourth side. "Halt! Right about face!" the Major in command of the rear division shouted to the last two companies.
"Prepare to receive cavalry!" the Colonel shouted dutifully, as if the sight of the massed French horse was not warning enough. The Colonel drew his sword, then swatted with his free hand at a horsefly. The colour party stood beside him, two teenage ensigns holding the precious flags that were guarded by a squad of chosen men commanded by hard-bitten sergeants armed with spontoons. "Rear rank! Port arms!" the Major called. The innermost rank of the square would hold its fire and so act as the battalion's reserve. The cavalry was a hundred paces away and closing fast, a churning mass of excited horses, raised blades, trumpets, flags and thunder.
"Front rank, kneel!" a captain called. The front rank dropped and jammed their bayonet-tipped muskets into the earth to make a continuous hedge of steel about the formation.
"Make ready!" The two inside ranks cocked their loaded guns, and took aim. The whole manoeuvre had been done at a steady pace, without fuss, and the sudden sight of the levelled muskets and braced bayonets persuaded the leading cavalrymen to sheer away from the steady, stolid and silent square. Infantry in square were just about as safe from cavalry as if they were tucked up at home in bed, and the redcoat battalion, by forming square so quickly and quietly, had made the French charge impotent.
"Very nice," Sergeant Latimer said in tribute to the battalion's professionalism. "Very nicely done. Just like the parade ground at Shorncliffe."
"Gun to the right, sir," Harper called. Sharpe's men were occupying one of the rocky outcrops that studded the plain and which gave the riflemen protection from the marauding cavalry. Their job was to snipe at the cavalry and especially at the French horse artillery which was trying to take advantage of the British squares. Men in square were safe from cavalry yet horribly vulnerable to shell and roundshot, but gunners were equally vulnerable to the accuracy of the British Baker rifles. A galloper gun had taken position two hundred paces away from Sharpe and the gun's crew was lining the barrel on the newly formed square. Two men lifted the ammunition chest off the gun's trail while a third double-shotted the gun's blackened barrel by ramming a round of canister on top of a roundshot.
Dan Hagman fired first and the man ramming the shot slewed round, then held onto the protruding rammer's handle as though it was his grip on life itself. A second bullet cracked off the cannon's barrel to leave a bright scratch in the jaded brass. Another gunner fell, then one of the gun's horses was hit and it reared up and kicked at the horse harnessed next to it. "Steady does it," Sharpe said, "take aim, boys, take aim. Don't waste the shots." Three more greenjackets fired and their bullets persuaded the beleaguered gunners to crouch behind the cannon and its limber. The gunners shouted at some green-coated dragoons to go and dig the damned riflemen out from their rocky eyrie. "Someone take care of that dragoon captain," Sharpe said.
"Square's going, sir!" Cooper warned Sharpe as Horrell and Cresacre fired at the distant horseman.
Sharpe turned and saw the redcoat square was shaking itself into a column again to resume its retreat. He dared not get too far away from the protection of the redcoats' muskets. His danger, like that facing every small group of riflemen who covered the retreat, was that his men might be cut off by the cavalry and Sharpe doubted that the long-suffering French horsemen would be willing to take prisoners this day. Any greenjacket caught in the open would most likely be used for sword or lance practice. "Go!" he shouted, and his men scrambled away from the rocks and ran for the cover of the redcoat battalion. The dragoons turned to pursue, then the leading ranks of horsemen were thrown sideways and turned bloody as a blast of canister fired from a British galloper gun smashed into them. Sharpe saw a clump of trees just to the left of the redcoat battalion's line of march and shouted at Harper to lead the men to the small wood's cover.
Once safe among the oaks the greenjackets reloaded and looked for new targets. To Sharpe, who had served on a dozen battlefields, the plain offered an extraordinary sight: a mass of cavalry was churning and spilling between the steadily withdrawing battalions, yet for all their noise and excitement the horsemen were achieving nothing. The infantry were steady and silent, performing the intricate drill that they had practised for hours and hours and which now was saving their lives, and doing it in the knowledge that just one mistake by a battalion commander would be fatal. If a column was just a few seconds too slow to form square then the rampaging cuirassiers would be through the gap on their heavy horses and gutting the imperfect square from the inside. A disciplined battalion would be turned in an instant into a rabble of panicking fugitives to be ridden down by dragoons or slaughtered by lancers, yet no battalion made any mistake and so the French were being frustrated by a superb display of steady soldiering.