More British horsemen arrived, thudding up through the cannon smoke to find the guns captured, the gunners dead or dying, and a mass of cavalry wheeling impotent among the limbers. They had charged to glory, and reached nowhere. The French infantry barred the promised road to Paris, and now that infantry began firing volleys that, even at two hundred yards, found targets.
“Time to go home, I think.” A Scots Grey captain, his sword bloody to the hilt, walked his horse past Lord John whose tired horse cropped at a patch of grass behind a gun. Lord John was staring at the nearest infantry and wondering when the charge would resume.
“Go home?” Lord John asked in surprise, but the Scotsman had already spurred northwards towards the British ridge and safety.
“Withdraw!” another officer shouted. A Scottish trooper, his horse killed by a musket-ball, ran among the guns to find a riderless horse that he managed to corner and mount. He wrenched the beast’s head towards the valley and spurred hard for safety.
Lord John looked back to the enemy infantry again, and this time a shredding wind thinned the veil of smoke and he saw the whole French army spread in front of him. He felt an eruption of fear and pulled on his reins. His horse, tired and heaving for breath, turned reluctantly. The British charge was over.
The French charge was about to begin. Their cavalry rode out from the right of their line. They were all fresh horsemen; Lancers and Hussars, the light cavalry of France whose officers knew their grim business to perfection.
They did not charge the mass of broken British horse on the ridge, instead they cantered into the valley to cut off the troopers’ retreat.
The British, riding back from the undamaged guns, cleared the smoke and saw the waiting enemy. “Shit!” A Life Guard raked back with his spurs and his horse lumbered into an unwilling canter. It was a race that the heavy British cavalry was doomed to lose. In ones and twos, in scattered groups, in panic, they fled northwards to the far crest where their own infantry waited.
The French trumpets sounded.
The Red Lancers led the charge. Some were Poles, still faithful to the Emperor, but most were Dutch-Belgians, fighting for the flag they loved, and now they lowered their swallow-tailed pennants and flung their fresh horses at the panicked British.
“Run! Run!” The panic among the British was absolute now. Men forgot the glory and sought only the far shelter, but they were too late.
The Lancers crashed into the flank of the fleeing mass. The lances, held rigid against the body by the pressure of the Lancers’ right elbows, drove home. Men fell screaming from horses. The Lancers rode over their victims, tugged the blades free, then brought them forward as they spurred after other fugitives. Behind the Lancers came Hussars with sabres so that any man who escaped the lance was cut down by the curved blades.
Lord John saw the slaughter to his right, but his horse was still running free. A riderless horse galloped past him and his own horse seemed to match its stride. The holly hedge was a hundred yards in front of him. He could see British light cavalry coming from the ridge, riding to rescue the remnants of the heavy brigade.
“Go on!” He slashed back with his sword as though it was a whip. A Scots Grey was over the hedge. A Lancer chased the man, lunged, but the Scot swerved, backswung, and the Lancer reeled bloodily away. Lord John looked behind and saw two of the red devils pursuing him. He savaged his horse with his spurs. Fear was in his throat like a sour vomit. There was to be no glory, no captured Eagle, no radiant moment of heroism that would make his name famous; there was just a desperate scramble for life across a muddy field.
Then, from his right, he saw a slew of the Red Lancers charging at him. Their horses’ teeth were bared yellow, while the riders seemed to leer at him above the bright wickedness of their spears. Lord John was pissing himself with fear, but he knew he must not give up. If he could just charge through their line and jump the hedge, they might abandon their pursuit.