“Hold them,” he shouted, ‘hold them and beat them.” The Juah flowed behind his men, while in front of them the shadows stretched long across Assaye’s battle-littered farmlands.
Then the pipes sounded again, and Pohlmann turned his horse to look at the right-hand end of his line and he saw the tall black bearskins and the swinging kilts of the damned Scottish regiment coming forward again. The sun caught their white crossbelts and glinted from their bayonets. Beyond them, half hidden by the trees, the British cavalry was threatening, though they seemed to be checked by a battery of cannon on the right of Pohlmann’s line. The Hanoverian knew the cavalry was no danger. It was the infantry, the unstoppable red-jacketed infantry, that was going to beat him, and he saw the sepoy battalions starting forward on the Highlanders’ flank and he half turned his horse, thinking to ride to where the Scottish regiment would strike his line. It would hit Saleur’s compoo, and suddenly Pohlmann could not care less any more. Let Saleur fight his battle, because Pohlmann knew it was lost. He stared at the y78th and he reckoned that no force on earth could stop such men.
“The best damned infantry on earth,” he said to one of his aides.
“Sahib?”
“Watch them! You’ll not see better fighting men while you live,” Pohlmann said bitterly, then sheathed his sword as he gazed at the Scots who were once again being battered by cannon fire, but still their two lines kept marching forward. Pohlmann knew he should go west to encourage Saleur’s men, but instead he was thinking of the gold he had left behind in Assaye. These last ten years had been a fine adventure, but the Mahratta Confederation was dying before his eyes and Anthony Pohlmann did not wish to die with it. The rest of the Mahratta princedoms might fight on, but Pohlmann had decided it was time to take his gold and run.
Saleur’s compoo was already edging backwards. Some of the men from the rearward ranks were not even waiting for the Scots to arrive, but were running back to the River Juah and wading through its muddy water that came up to their chests. The rest of the regiments began to waver. Pohlmann watched. He had thought these three compoos were as fine as any infantry in the world, but they had proved to be brittle. The British fired a volley and Pohlmann heard the heavy balls thump into his infantry and he heard the cheer from the redcoats as they charged forward with the bayonet, and suddenly there was no army opposing them, just a mass of men fleeing to the river.
Pohlmann took off his gaudily plumed hat that would mark him as a prize capture and threw it away, then stripped off his sash and coat and tossed them after the hat as he spurred towards Assaye. He had a few minutes, he reckoned, and those minutes should be enough to secure his money and get away. The battle was lost and, for Pohlmann, the war with it. It was time to retire.
CHAPTER 12
Assaye alone remained in enemy hands for the rest of Pohlmann’s army had simply disintegrated. The great majority of the Mahratta horsemen had spent the afternoon as spectators, but now they turned and spurred west towards Borkardan while to the north, beyond the Juah, the remnants of Pohlmann’s three compoos fled in panic, pursued by a handful of British and Company cavalry on tired horses. Great banks of gunsmoke lay like fog across the field where men of both armies groaned and died. Diomed gave a great shudder, lifted his head a final time, then rolled his eyes and went still. The sepoy trooper, charged with guarding the horse, stayed at his post and waved the flies away from the dead Diomed’s face.
The sun reddened the layers of gunsmoke. There was an hour of daylight left, a few moments of dusk, and then it would be night, and Wellesley used the last of the light to turn his victorious infantry towards the mud walls of Assaye. He summoned gunners and had them haul captured enemy cannon towards the village.