The sound of the battle changed abruptly. The shelling stopped. The great marching squares were close to the crest of the Medellin, and the French gunners were afraid of hitting their own men. For a moment there was just the drumming, the sound of thousands of boots hitting the hillside in unison, and suddenly a great cheer as the French infantry thought they had won. It was easy to see why they thought victory was in their grasp. There was no enemy in front of them, just the empty skyline, and the skirmish line had scrambled back over the crest to join their Battalions. They had done their job. They had kept the Voltigeurs from the British line, and the French cheer died away as the British orders rang out and suddenly the hilltop was lined two deep with waiting men. It still looked ridiculous. Three great fists, enormous masses, aimed at a tenuous two-deep line, but the look was deceptive; mathe-matics in this situation was all.
The column nearest Sharpe was headed for the 66th and the 3rd. The two British Battalions were outnumbered two to one, but every redcoat on the crest could fire his musket. Of the hundreds of Frenchmen who climbed in the column only a few more than a hundred could actually fire back and Sharpe had seen it happen too often to have any doubts about the outcome. He watched the order given, saw the British line appear to take a quarter turn to the right as they brought their muskets to their shoulders, and watched as the French column instinctively checked in the face of so many guns. The drums rattled, the French officers shouted, a kind of low growl came from the columns, swelled to a roar, to a cheer, and the French charged towards the summit.
And stopped. The slim steel blades of the British officers swept down and the relentless volleys began. Nothing could stand in the way of that musket fire. From right to left along the Battalions the platoon volleys flamed and flickered, a rolling fire that never stopped, the machine-like regularity of trained troops pouring four shots a minute into the dense mass of Frenchmen. The noise rose to the real crescendo of battle, the awesome sound of the ordered volleys and mixed with it the curious ringing as the bullets struck French bayonets. Sharpe looked to his left and saw the South Essex watching. They were too far away for their muskets to be of any use, but he was glad that Simmerson’s raw troops could see a demonstration of how practised firepower won battles.
The drumming went on, the boys banging their instru-ments frenetically to force the column up the slope and, incredibly, the French tried. The instinct of victory was too strong, too ingrained, and as the front ranks were de-stroyed by the murderous fire, the men behind struggled over the bodies to be thrown backwards in turn by the relentless bullets. They faced an impossible task. The column was stuck, hunched against the storm, soaking up an incredible punishment but refusing to give in, to accept defeat. Sharpe was amazed, as he had been at Vimeiro, that troops could take such punishment but they did and he watched as the officers tried to organise a new attack. The French, too late, tried to form into line, and he could see the officers waving their swords to lead the rear ranks into the open flanks. Sharpe held his rifle up.
“Come on!”
His men cheered and followed him across the hillside. There was little danger that the French could form line but the appearance of a couple of hundred skirmishers on the flank would deter them. The Germans of the Legion went with Sharpe’s company and they all stopped a hundred paces from the struggling mass of Frenchmen and began their own volleys, more ragged than the ordered fire from the crest, but effective enough to repel the Frenchmen who were bravely trying to form a line. The Germans began fixing bayonets; they knew the column could not stand the fire much longer, and Sharpe yelled at his own men to fix blades. The sound of drums faded. One boy gave a further determined rattle with his sticks, but the distinctive rhythm of the charge faded away and the attack was done. The crest of the hill rippled with light as the 66th fixed bayonets; the volleys died, the British cheered and the French were finished. Broken and smashed by musket fire they did not wait for the bayonet charge. The mass split into small groups of fugitives, the Eagles dropped, the blue ranks broke and ran for the stream.