Then, at last, the blessed sound of raking volleys, of the platoon fire, as the troops of the Legion and the Guards tore apart the heads of the French columns and shattered them, drove the ranks back, destroyed the leading troops, hammering the volleys into the out-gunned columns. Sharpe could see nothing. The Dutch Battalion had marched into the gap onto the flank of the 7th Battalion of the King’s German Legion and stopped. The Germans were fighting on two fronts, ahead of them, and to the side where the South Essex should have been, and Sharpe could give them little help. The Voltigeurs had disap-peared, back into the column to swell its numbers, and Sharpe and his company, black-faced and exhausted, were left in the centre of the gap watching the rear of the enemy column as it tried to roll up the flank of the Germans.
“Why don’t they march on?” Lieutenant Knowles was beside him, bleeding from the scalp, and with the face, suddenly, of a veteran.
“Because the other columns are being defeated. They don’t want to be left on their own.” He accepted a drink from Knowles’ canteen; his own was shattered, and the water was wonderfully cool in his parched throat. He wished he could see what was happening but the sound, as ever, told its own story. The drumming from the twelve French columns faltered and stopped; the cheers of the British rose into the air; the volleys paused while bayonets scraped from scabbards and clicked onto muskets. The cheers became vengeful screams, and from the top of the Medellin the General Officers watched as the first line of the French attack disintegrated and the line of Germans and Guardsmen chased them backwards, pursuing the shattered columns at bayonet point across the stream, past the horse artillery which had simply been abandoned by the enemy without firing a shot.
“Oh God,” Sharpe groaned in disbelief.
“What?” Knowles looked towards the stream, behind the backs of the Dutch Battalion who were marooned in the middle of the field, to where the victorious Germans were in trouble. The first French columns had fled, broken and defeated, but at the stream was a second line of columns, as large as the first, and the shattered Frenchmen found shelter behind the waiting guns of their reserve. The German and British troops, their blood roused, bayonets wet but muskets unloaded, ran straight into the fire of the reserve French troops, and it was the turn of the British to be shattered by musket volleys. They turned and fled, in total disorder, and behind them the second line of columns, reinforced with the survivors of the first, struck up the drumbeats and started to march into a plain where Simmerson’s gap had been widened to half a mile and where the only British troops were running in disorder.
Sir Henry, safe with the South Essex at the back of the Medellin, saw the second French advance and breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment he had been terrified. He had watched the French columns creep over the plain, the dust rising behind them, the Voltigeurs pushing ahead of them. He had seen the sun flash silver off thousands of bayonets and burn gold off thousands of badges as the trumpets and drums drove the Eagles of twelve columns right up to the stretched British line. And stop. The musketry had gone up and down the British line like a running flame, its thunder drowning all other sounds, and from his vantage point on the hillside Simmerson watched as the columns shook like standing corn struck by a sudden wind as the volleys smashed into them. Then the columns had crum-bled, broken, and run, and he could hardly believe that such a thin line could throw back such an attack. He watched, dumbfounded, as the British cheered, as the Union flags went forward, as the bayonets reached for the blue enemy and came back red. He had expected defeat, and in its place saw victory; he had expected the French to carve their way through the British line as though it did not exist, and instead the British were driving twice their number in bloody chaos before them, and with them went his dreams and hopes.