On the ridge above the farm a British gunner officer gave the elevating screw of his nine-pounder a last half twist. The fabric bag of gunpowder was crushed in the breech by its roundshot. A stiff quill stood proud of the touchhole. The quill, which was filled with a finely mealed gunpowder, had been rammed hard down into the fabric bag so that the fire would flash deep down into the charge. The gun was pointing downhill, so the roundshot had to be restrained from rolling out of the barrel by a grommet wad; a circle of rope that had been rammed hard up against the shot. When the gun was fired the rope would be annihilated in the explosion. The officer, satisfied that the roundshot would plunge murderously into the ap’proaching French column, stepped well back. The firer stood with his smoking portfire by the gun’s right wheel, while the other six men of the crew waited for the orders to reload.
Red-coated and green-jacketed skirmishers ran over the top of the British ridge, then down the long slope where they spread into the skirmishing chain. Riflemen crouched in the rye and dragged back their weapons’ flints. The job of the British skirmishers was to hold the French Voltigeurs away from the vulnerable gun crews. Whistles sounded as the light company officers dispersed their men. The Voltigeurs were wading through the half-crushed crops like men struggling through waist-deep water.
A bugle ordered the men in green jackets to open fire. The Baker rifle, with its seven grooves twisting a quarter turn in the barrel, had both a longer range and a deadlier accuracy than the smoothbore musket. The Emperor had refused to arm his Voltigeurs with rifles, claiming that the far quicker rate of musket-fire more than compensated for the loss of range and accuracy, but his officers now paid for that decision, for they were the Riflemen’s target. “Kill the officers!” the Greenjacket Sergeants ordered their men. “Don’t waste your powder! Find their officers and kill the scum!” The first French officers were falling, flung backwards by the force of the spinning balls.
“Run! Run!” a French officer shouted at his men and the Voltigeurs sprinted forward to shorten the range and overwhelm the Riflemen with the threat of their bayonets.
The redcoats opened fire. The muskets made a heavier coughing sound than the sharper crack of the rifles. The French were firing now; so many muskets crashing on both sides that the skirmish sounded as though a horde of small boys were dragging sticks along park railings. Patches of white smoke drifted and coalesced above the slope. This was the private war of the light infantryman; a bitter war fought in the shrinking gap between the columns and the waiting British guns.
A Rifleman fired, and immediately ran back behind his partner who advanced at a crouch, loaded rifle ready to protect his partner who laboriously rammed the bullet down past the tight-gripping grooves of the rifle’s barrel.
“Watch left, Jimmy!” a sergeant shouted in warning. “There’s a Jack Pudding and I want the bastard dead!”
Before the French officer could be killed a group of his blue-coated skirmishers dashed forward with bayonets fixed to their muskets.
“Back, lads! back!” The Rifles, so slow to reload, were vulnerable to such determined rushes, but they fell back through the crouching figures of a redcoat light company who suddenly rose out of the rye and fired a blast of musketry that threw down a half-dozen of the Frenchmen. A ragged answering volley splintered the thigh of a red-coated lieutenant who swore, fell, and watched in disbelief as his blood soaked his white breeches. Two of his men seized the shoulders of his coat and unceremoniously dragged the Lieutenant back up the slope towards the surgeons.
All across the valley’the skirmishers fought, but the French Voltigeurs far outnumbered their opponents and slowly, bitterly, the redcoats and Riflemen retreated. Behind them, beyond the crest of the ridge, the rest of the British infantry waited. They were lying flat, hidden both from the light French guns and from the mass of the four advancing columns. The hidden British battalions were in two ranks; a perilously thin formation that would soon have to stand and face the crashing impact of the advancing columns.