But the Dutch horsemen refused to charge. They sat lumpen in their saddles, their doughy faces stubborn and sullen. They stared blankly at the churning strike of shot and shell and no words would persuade them to spur into the quagmire of mud, fire and iron. The Prince, told of their cowardice, pretended not to hear. Instead he just stared at the farm of La Haye Sainte that was now besieged by an overwhelming throng of French infantry. The British cannons on the crest by the elm tree were pouring roundshot into the French ranks, and a battery of howitzers was lobbing shrapnel into the valley, but the French infantry seemed to soak up the punishment as they edged ever closer to the beleaguered farm. La Haye Sainte’s orchard was already captured, and the French had brought cannon down the road to pour shot after shot into the besieged farm buildings.
The Prince knew that the centre of the Duke’s line would be open to disastrous attack if the farm fell. Suddenly he knew he must save the farm. The glory of the idea blossomed in his mind. Fulfilment of the idea would utterly obliterate any shameful memory of the Red Germans, or of the sullen Dutch cavalry. The Prince saw his chance of glory and renown. He would rescue the farm, hold the line’s centre, and win the battle. “Rebecque!”
In the eastern half of the valley, in the dangerous re-entrant from where the Dutch-Belgians had fled at the first approach of the French, the First Battalion of the 27th Regiment of the Line now stood in square and suffered. They were the Inniskillings, and their only shelter was the screen of smoke that the French gunners created before their own cannon, but the enemy artillery had the Inniskillings’ range and, even though fired blind, roundshot after roundshot crashed into the Irish ranks. Their Colonel ordered another issue of rum and the Sergeants doggedly closed the thinning ranks, but there was nothing else anyone could do except stand and die, and that the Irish did.
They might have deployed out of square, but the Emperor made sure his cavalry was always threatening and so the Irish were forced to stay in their vulnerable square like a great fat target for the gunners and the Voltigeurs who infeated the eastern half of the valley as thickly as they swarmed in the west.
Some of those Voltigeurs, fearful that a French victory and pursuit might take them away from the rich plunder of the battlefield, took care to enrich themselves before the British line shattered. The dead and injured of the British heavy cavalry littered the valley floor and, though the pockets of many of the casualties had been hastily searched already, the Voltigeurs had the luxury of time in which they could slit the uniform seams or tear out the greasy -helmet liners where men liked to hide their precious gold coins. Some of the French skirmishers carried pliers which they used to extract fine white teeth that Parisian dentists would buy to make into dentures.
One fortunate Frenchman found a cavalryman’s body that sported a fine pair of brown-topped, silk-tasselled boots. He first took the spurs off the heels, then tugged at the right boot. The body jerked, cried aloud, and a horrid face in which the eyes were nothing but crusts of blood-stared wildly and blindly towards the Frenchman.
“You frightened me!” the Voltigeur chided the wounded man cheerfully.
“For God’s sake, kill me.” Lord John Rossendale, half-crazed with pain, spoke in English.
“You just stay still,” the Voltigeur said in French, then dragged off his lordship’s expensive boots. He noted that the Englishman’s breeches were made of the finest whipcord and though the right thigh had been slashed by a blade the breeches would doubtless mend well, and so the Voltigeur undid the waist buttons and dragged the breeches free. Lord John, his broken thigh grating with each tug, screamed foully.
“Noisy bugger!” The Voltigeur rolled the breeches into a ball that he thrust inside his jacket. Then, fearing that Lord John’s scream might have attracted the untimely attraction of his Sergeant, the Frenchman ostentatiously loaded his musket and, pretending to be merely doing his job, used Lord John as a rest for the barrel that he aimed towards the beleaguered Inniskillings. “Mind the bang!” the Voltigeur said happily, then fired.