“Present!” The Guards Colonel had seen that the French charge was now returning, and he would give the horsemen more fire as they tried to regain their own lines. The thunder of their hooves became louder, then the first frightened men appeared. “Fire!” A white Carabinier’s uniform seemed to turn instantly red. A horse collapsed, rolled and broke its rider’s leg. Another wounded man was clinging to the mane of his horse, his face white with terror as he desperately ran through the staggered walls of fire. The unhorsed Lancer was ridden over by his own men. He screamed as he fell and as the hooves pounded his flesh to jelly.
“Fire!” a Guards Lieutenant called.
The flood of horsemen flowed past, this time retreating, and Sharpe had a glimpse of a red-haired man in the gorgeous uniform of a Marshal of the Empire, his hat gone, screaming at his troops. Riderless horses had joined the fleeing mob. A few cavalrymen ran among the horses, some of them trying to grab the reins of a free horse.
“Fire!” A pigtailed Dragoon with a broken sword slumped over his horse’s neck, but somehow clung on. Sharpe could smell blood and leather and horse-sweat. The uniforms were flecked with mud. The horses’ eyes rolled white as they galloped and their breath pumped loud and harsh.
The horsemen went as they had come. As soon as the last Frenchmen had passed, the British gunners sprinted out of the squares to regain their undamaged guns. A few cannon had been left loaded with canister and the portfires touched the quills to send barrels of the killing musket-halls at the rumps of the fleeing cavalry. The ground between the squares was a slaughteryard where the dead and the dying lay among rye stalks hammered into the mud that was thick with hoofprints and horse dung.
“Sad, really.” The Guards Major offered Sharpe a pinch of snuff.
“Sad?”
“Wonderful looking horses!” The Major, who was clearly so popular with his men, proved to have a rather melancholy demeanour when he was no longer performing for them. “A damned pity to throw good horseflesh away, but what can one expect of a paltry gunner like Bonaparte? Do you care for snuff?”
“No. Thank you.”
“You should. It clears out the lungs.” The Major snapped his box shut, then vigorously sniffed the powder off his hand. Some of his Guardsmen had run forward to plunder the French corpses and the Major shouted at them to put the wounded horses out of their misery before they robbed the dead. A Cuirassier with a musket bullet in his thigh was dragged back into the square. A Guardsman picked up the wounded man’s glittering helmet with its long horsehair plume and, replacing his shako with the gaudy headgear, pranced along the square’s face in a grotesque parody of a barrack gate whore. His comrades cheered him.
“I suppose”, the Major smiled at the soldier’s mockery, “that Monsewer’s damned guns will start up again?”
But instead it was the British guns on the crest that fired. The sound of the volley told Sharpe that the cannon had been double shotted and the frantic speed with which the crews reloaded was a warning that the cavalry were again approaching up the ridge’s front slope.
“My God! The bastards haven’t had enough!” the Major said incredulously, then cheered up as he realized he would have another chance to encourage his men. “Mademoiselle Frog is coming back for more, boys! You must have treated her well last time, so give her the same treatment again!”
The cavalry was indeed returning, and this time there were even more horsemen. Reinforcements must have been sent across the valley and it now seemed as though all the cavalry of France was to be hurled in one desperate charge at the British squares. The horsemen streamed over the ridge, and the guns by the squares gave them a greeting of canister before the gunners again ran with their precious implements to the square’s safety.
“Hold your fire!” The Guards Major peered through the cannons’ smoke. “Wait for it, lads! Wait for it! Fire!”
The muskets could not miss. The heavy balls thudded into men and horses, piercing breastplates and helmets, turning the majesty of plume and pelisse into screaming pain. There was also pain inside the squares, where those men wounded by the cannon-fire and not given time to retreat to the forest’s edge, still sheltered. The battalion officers rode between the wounded, shouting encouragement to each face of their square as the French horsemen flowed past.