Those columns began to step over the dead and dying skir-mishers. The drummer boys, deep in the heart of each column, drove their sticks down as if their youthful fervour could drive this vast assault clear on to Brussels itself.
This was the old way of war, the Emperor’s way, the attack in column that relied on sheer weight to smash through the enemy’s battle line. Yet the French were not fools, and enough of them had fought against British muskets to know that the old way had never worked against the red-coated lines. The British were just too fast with their guns, and every fast musket in a British line could fire at the attacking column, whereas only the men in the first two ranks of the French formation could return the fire, so every time the British had met the columns, the British had won. The British line looked so very frail, but it overlapped the column and drowned it in fire. Against the troops of other nations the column worked beautifully, but the British had learned to pour a destructive blast of musketry that turned the columns into butchers’ messes.
So this time the French would do it differently. This time they had a surprise of their own, something to counter the overlapping line and the overpowering musket-fire.
But that surprise must wait till the two sides were close enough to stare into each other’s eyes. That confrontation was still some minutes away for the British lines were still in hiding, and the French columns still had to climb the gentle slope in the face of the waiting guns.
“Fire!” The gunner officers shouted along the ridge.
The portfires touched the fire to the quills of mealed powder that flashed the flame down to the charge in the fabric bags, and the guns crashed back on their trails, their wheels jumping clear out of the mud before smashing down yards back from where they had started.
Smoke instantly blotted the ridge.
The nine-pounder balls screamed down the hill and slashed into the marching files. One ball could kill a score of men. The missiles drove into the massed ranks; flensing, smashing, breaking tones, spattering flesh and blood deep into the heavy masses.
“Close up! Close up!” the French Sergeants shouted.
The marching ranks clambered over the writhing bodies to close the ranks. The drummers beat harder and faster, quickening the bloody moment. The men in the centre raised their bayonet-tipped muskets as they cheered their hero. ” Vise I’Emperor!”
On the ridge the gun crews worked like whipped slaves. The spongeman, his rammer tipped with a soaking wet sleeve of fleece, forced the wet material down the smoking barrel. The gun had to be cleared of the scraps of still burning powder and canvas that could ignite and explode the next charge. The sudden compression of air as the rammer thrust with the fleece could explode the residues of unburnt powder that was caked to the breech walls, so a gunner, wearing a leather thumbstall, pressed his thumb over the vent to stop the airflow.
The wet fleece was dragged clear and the loader shoved the new charge bag into the barrel, then topped it with the roundshot and wad grommet. The spongeman reversed his rammer and thrust the shot home, shouting as it reached the breech. The shout alerted the ventsman that the charge was ready. He rammed his spike down the touchhole to pierce the canvas powder bag, then thrust the quill of finely mealed powder into the hole he had made. The rammer was already soaking the fleece in a bucket of water, ready for the next shot as the two remaining gunners of the crew heaved on a handspike to lever the gun’s trail round so that the loaded barrel pointed through the smoke of the last shot at the approaching enemy.
“Ready!” a Corporal shouted.
“Stand back!” The officer put his hands to his ears. “Fire!”
The cannon crashed back again. This time it had to be run forward, dragged through the muddy scars of its first two firings. Musket-balls from the French skirmishers were whiplashing close, but the gun’s smoke protected the crew as they reloaded.