“Cavalry!”
“Form square!”
It was much too late. The heavy horsemen fell on the open end of the Hanoverian line. The big Klingenthal swords, made of the best steel in Europe, hacked down, driven by the ton weight of man and horse. Grim faces, framed by the steel helmets, were flecked by the infantrymens’ blood as the horsemen carved a path into the battalion. The Red Germans broke, fleeing in panic from the thunder of the hooves and the lightning blades. The colour party took refuge in the farm’s garden, but most of the Hanoverians were caught in the open field and paid the price. Horsemen rode round the field, chasing the last refugees and cutting them down with merciless efficiency.
The Prince of Orange stared aghast from the elm tree. He saw a sword rise in the air, dripping blood from a death, then hack down to make another butcher’s sound. “Stop them, Rebecque!” he said pathetically. “Stop them!”
“Pray how, Your Highness?”
In the end the British gunners stopped the grisly business. The charge had brought the horsemen into the killing ground of the cannon and the double-shotted guns scoured the cavalry away from the field, but not before they had broken the Red Germans who lay with dreadful slashes, bleeding and twisting in the rye as they died. The Prince of Orange had struck again.
While to the east, where no farm protected the ridge, the two central columns of the French attack deployed into line, and drove on up to victory.
The Dutch-Belgian infantry at the re-entrant of the ridge took one close look at the nearest column and fled.
The British jeered the running men, but the Belgians did not care. Their sympathies were with the Emperor and so they ran to the forest and there, safe under its trees, waited for a French victory to restore Belgium to its proper throne.
The French drummers beat the pas de charge as the columns unfolded into the heavy musket line that would blast the ridge’s crest with fire.
“Stand up!” The order was British.
All along the ridge, like men springing full armed from the concealing earth, the redcoats stood. One moment the ridge had appeared empty, and the next it was crowned with a line of muskets.
“Present!”
The French, so very close to the ridge top, had stopped for a heartbeat as their enemy had appeared so suddenly from the earth, but the French officers, seeing how hugely they outnumbered the Goddamns, screamed at the men to advance.
“Fire!”
The first British volley crashed down the gentle slope. It was fired at just sixty paces and it slammed into the unfolding columns to crumple the front ranks back like lead soldiers swept down by a petulant child.
“Reload!”
Men bit bullets from the tip of waxed paper cartridges, poured the powder into their musket barrels, wadded the powder with the cartridge paper, spat the bullets after, then rammed down hard with their ramrods. “Fire by platoons!” a Major ordered. “Grenadier Company! Fire!”
The rolling volleys began, rippling along the hilltop in flame and smoke. The French fired back. Sir Thomas Picton roared an order and died as a bullet pierced his top hat and crashed into his skull. Highlanders and Irishmen and men from the shires bit the cartridges till their lips were black and their tongues sour with the salty taste of the gunpowder. They fired, scorching their cheeks with the flaming scraps spat from the musket locks.
“Close up! Close up!” The Sergeants dragged the dead and wounded back from the line, letting the men close in where the French bullets had struck.
A cannon fired, its canister splitting in bloody ruin among the deploying French, yet still the French came, more ranks advancing from the mist of smoke to thicken their bleeding dying line.
Redcoats scrabbled at their flints, tearing their fingernails as they cocked their weapons. The muskets kicked like mules. The French were still spreading into line, still advancing, and the drums were still driving them on. A French galloper gun opened fire, splaying a redcoat colour party into ruin. The French musket volleys were slow, but the Crapauds outnumbered the Goddamns and were clawing their bloody way towards the ridge’s crest and victory.