The French were being held. Someone had organised the survivors of the British square, and there was a kneeling front rank, its muskets jammed into the turf, bayonets reaching up at the chests of the horses. The sabres cut ineffectively at the angled muskets; there were shouts, screams of men and horses, a veil of powder smoke in which flashes of flame and steel ringed the colours. As he walked, the great sword held low in his hand, he could see riderless horses trotting round the melee where Chasseurs had been shot or dragged from the saddles. Some of the French were on foot, scything their blades or even tearing with bare hands at the British ranks. An officer of the South Essex forced his horse out of the ring, the ranks closing instantly behind him. He was hatless, his face unrecognisable under a mask of blood. He wrenched his horse into a charge and lunged his slim, straight sword into the body of a Chasseur. The blade stuck. Sharpe watched him tug at the handle, his crazed fanaticism turning to fear, and in an instant a Frenchman showed how it should be done, his sabre neatly spearing into the Englishman’s chest; the blade turned, easily drawn out as the red-coated officer fell with his victim. Another Chas-seur, on foot, hacked blindly at the unyielding ranks. A soldier parried the blow, jabbed forward with the bayonet, and the Frenchman was dead. Well done, thought Sharpe, the point always beats the edge.
A bugle call. He looked right and saw the French reserve walk forward. They advanced deliberately towards the carnage round the colours. They held no sabres, and Sharpe knew what was in the mind of the French Colonel. The British square, or what was left of it, had held and the light cavalry sabres could not break it. But Chasseurs, unlike most cavalry, carried carbines, and they planned to pour a volley from close range into the red-coated ranks that would tear them apart and let the swordsmen into the gap. He increased his pace but knew they could not reach the colours before the fresh cavalry, and he watched, sickened, as with meticulous discipline some of the hacking swordsmen wheeled their mounts away from the crude square to give the carbines a field of fire. The horsemen picked their way through the dead and wounded. Sharpe saw the British feverishly loading muskets, skinning their knuckles on the barrels, but they were too late. The French stopped, fired, wheeled to let a second rank stop and hurl their volley at the South Essex. A few muskets replied, one Chasseur toppled to the ground, a ramrod wheeled wickedly through the air as some terrified soldier shot it from his half loaded musket. The French volleys tore the front ranks apart; a great wound was opened in the red formation, and the enemy poured in their curved blades to hold it apart and claw deeper into the infantry, where they could snatch and win the greatest prize a man could win on the battlefield.
Sharpe’s men were among the bodies now. He stepped over a British private whose head had been virtually severed by a sabre cut. Behind him someone retched. He remembered that most of the men of the South Essex had never seen a battle, had no real idea what weapons did to man’s flesh. The survivors of the square were falling back towards him, retreating from the wounded edge, losing cohesion. He saw the colours dip and rise again, caught a glimpse of an officer screaming at the men, urging them to fight back at the horses that lashed with their hooves and carried the terrible sabres. There was so little time. More Frenchmen were fighting on foot, trying to beat aside the bayonets and force their way to the flag-staffs, to glory. Then he had his own problems. He saw a French officer tugging and hitting at his men; Sharpe’s company had been spotted, and the Frenchman knew what a hundred loaded muskets could do to the packed horsemen who were concentrated round the flags. He pulled some of the men out of the fight, aligned them hurriedly, and launched them against the new danger. He had only managed to scrape together a dozen men and horses. Sharpe turned.