“Back the way we came,” the General said, ‘and fairly briskly, I think.”
This was the second time in one day that Sharpe had been pursued by Mahratta cavalry, but the first time he had been mounted on a small native horse and now he was on one of the General’s own chargers and the difference was night and day. The Mahrattas were at a full gallop, but Wellesley and his two companions never went above a canter and still their big horses easily outstripped the frantic pursuit. Sharpe, clinging for dear life to the mare’s pommel, glanced behind after two minutes and saw the enemy horsemen pulling up. So that, he thought, was why officers were willing to pay a small fortune for British and Irish horses.
The three men dropped into the valley, climbed its farther side and Sharpe saw that the British infantry had now advanced from the road to form its line of attack along the low ridge that lay parallel to the road, and the redcoat array looked pitifully small compared to the great enemy host less than a mile to the west. Instead of a line of heavy guns, there was only a scatter of light six-pounder cannon and a single battery of fourteen bigger guns, and to face Pohlmann’s three compoos of fifteen thousand men there were scarcely five thousand red-coated infantry, but Wellesley seemed unworried by the odds. Sharpe did not see how the battle was to be won, indeed he wondered why it was being fought at all, but whenever the doubt made his fears surge he only had to look at Wellesley and take comfort from the General’s serene confidence.
Wellesley rode first to the left of his line where the kilted Highlanders of the 778th waited in line.
“You’ll advance in a moment or two, Harness,” he told their Colonel.
“Straight ahead! I fancy you’ll find bayonets will be useful. Tell your skirmishers that there are cavalry about, though I doubt you’ll meet them at this end of the line.”
Harness appeared not to hear the General. He sat on a big horse as black as his towering bearskin hat and carried a huge claymore that looked as if it had been killing the enemies of Scotland for a century or more.
“It’s the Sabbath, Wellesley,” he finally spoke, though without looking at the General. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work, but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work.” The Colonel glowered at Wellesley.
“Are you sure, man, that you want to fight today?”
“Quite sure, Colonel,” Wellesley answered very equably.
Harness grimaced.
“Won’t be the first commandment I’ve broken, so to hell and away with it.” He gave his huge claymore a flourish.
“You’ll not need to worry about my rogues, Wellesley, they can kill as well as any man, even if it is a Sunday.”
“I never doubted it.”
“Straight ahead, eh? And I’ll lay the lash on any dog who falters. You hear that, you bastards! I’ll flog you red!”
“I wish you joy of the afternoon, Colonel,” Wellesley said to Harness, then he rode north to speak with his other five battalion commanders. He gave them much the same instructions as he had given Colonel Harness, though because the Madrassi sepoys deployed no skirmishers, he simply warned them that they had one chance of victory and that was to march straight into the enemy fire and, by enduring it, carry their bayonets into the Mahratta ranks. He told the commanding officers of the two sepoy battalions in the second line that they would now need to join the front line.
“You’ll incline right,” he told them, ‘forming between Corben’s 78th and Colonel Orrock’s picquets.” He had hoped to attack in two lines, so that the men behind could reinforce those in front, but the enemy array was too wide and so he would need to throw every infantryman forward in one line. There would be no reserves. The General rode to meet Colonel Wallace who today would command a brigade of his own 74th Highlanders and two sepoy battalions which, with Orrock’s picquets, would form the right side of the attacking force. He warned Wallace of the line’s extension.