“You don’t worry about what happens, Mr Doggett.” Harper’s voice was sombre as he rammed the last half-inch bullet into his seven-barrelled gun. “Once you hear the Old Trousers you just kill as many of the bastards as you can. Because if you don’t, then sure as eggs the bastards will kill you.”
Sharpe looked at Harper as the Irishman primed the big gun and tested the seating of its flint. “You shouldn’t be here.” he said.
“A bit bloody late to tell me that,” Harper smiled.
“You promised Isabella,” Sharpe said, but not forcefully. The truth was that he did not want Harper to leave. Bravery was not something that was inspired by king or country or even by battalion. Bravery was what a man owed his friends. It was keeping pride and faith in front of those friends. For Sharpe and Harper it was even habit; they had fought side by side for too long for either man to turn aside at the end.
And this moment seemed like the end. Sharpe had never seen a British army so worn down to fragility, nor an attack like the monstrous drum-driven column that now took shape in the gloom below. He tried to smile, as though to show Doggett that there was no real need to be frightened, but his lips had been cracked by the powder-dried air and all he achieved was a bloody grimace.
Harper stared at the column and cocked his gun. “God save Ireland.”
The surviving gunners of the British line rammed canister on top of roundshot, stabbed the spikes to break the powder bags, and rammed quills into blackened vents. The guns, and the redcoats, were ready.
And the Guard cheered.
CHAPTER 20
“Cheer, you bastards!” Marshal Ney raised his sword to catch the dying light.
The Guard cheered. They were the Emperor’s best.
Ney’s sword dropped to point towards the left and the great column split smoothly into two parts. The larger of the two newly formed columns would attack close to Hougoumont while the smaller would assault the ridge straight in front. The cavalry would follow the twin assaults, ready to pursue the broken enemy, while the great mass of other infantry would march at the rear of the attack to hold the ground the Guard captured.
The leading Guard battalions looked up, seeing nothing but a few mounted officers and a handful of guns at the top of the ridge.
They had begun their climb to victory. The slope was not steep. A man could run the slope without catching breath. Some men stumbled because the soil had been churned by the cavalry, but the ground was not so broken that the long ranks could not keep their order. Those ranks advanced slowly, even ponderously, as if to suggest that their victory was inevitable. And so, for them, it was. They were the immortals; the unbeaten. They were the Guard.
,Fire!”
The glowing slow-matches of the portfires touched the quills and the nine-pounders crashed back on their trails. The six-pounders, their barrels too light for double shotting, fired canister or roundshot alone.
The guns pierced their missiles deep into the two columns. Gunners swabbed and rammed, and when they looked up again the columns had closed ranks and were still marching forward, almost as though no men had died. The drums still sounded, and the French cheer was still as confident and just as menacing as before. The next quills were shoved into the vents, the gunners ducked aside, and the guns hammered back.
Colonel Ford watched in horrified disbelief. The smaller French column was marching to strike the ridge just to the right of his battalion, and he could see that the column was quite unstoppable. He saw the roundshot plunge into the long blue coats, and the cannon-balls seemed to do no damage at all. The Guard just soaked up the fire, sealed its ranks, stepped over its dead and injured, and marched stolidly on.
Sharpe had seen such columns before. He had seen them more, times than he could remember, but once again, as on all those other times, he marvelled at how the French infantry could take such punishment. With each strike of roundshot and canister the column seemed to quiver, but then it sealed up its ranks and kept on marching. Gun-fire would not stop these huge men, only musketry could do that. It would have to be volley fire, calm and fast; musketry that killed in bloody droves to pile the column’s leading ranks in rows of corpses.