The cannon fired again, pouring shot at pistol range into the closest column. Sixty Guardsmen marched in each rank. The foremost ranks were almost at the ridge’s crest while the rear ranks had yet to clear the obscuring smoke on the valley’s floor. Far to Sharpe’s right, where the British Guards waited, the larger column filled the whole slope with its dark menace, then Sharpe looked back to the nearer column as he waited for Ford to give the battalion the orders to stand and fire.
” Vive I’Empereur!” the Guard shouted, their voices close enough to sound hoarse and overwhelming.
D’Alembord glanced expectantly at Ford, but the Colonel had taken off his spectacles and was furiously rubbing them on the tail of his sash.
“For God’s sake, sir!” d’Alembord pleaded.
“Oh, my God!” Ford had suddenly realized that he was smearing Major Vine’s brains all over his spectacles. He whimpered and let the eyeglasses fall as though they were white hot. He whimpered again as the precious spectacles dropped into the mud.
“Sir!” d’Alembord swayed in the saddle.
“Oh, no! No!” Ford had evidently forgotten all about the Guard, but was instead leaning far out of his saddle in an attempt to reach his eyeglasses. “Help me, Major! My spectacles! Help me.”
D’Alembord took a deep breath. “Stand up!” His voice sounded weak, but the battalion had been waiting for the command and scrambled eagerly to their feet to see the enemy on their right front. Peter d’Alembord filled his lungs to shout the next order, but instead, in a gasp of pain, he toppled senseless from the saddle. His right leg was a mess of blood. The remnants of his breeches, his silk stocking, the bandage and his dancing shoe were all soaked in a slippery mess of blood. He fell on top of Colonel Ford’s spectacles, breaking them.
“No! No!” Ford protested. “My glasses! Major, please! I must insist! You’ll destroy my eyeglasses. Move, I beg you! My spectacles!” He screamed the last word in sheer despair, betraying his horror at this last tragedy in a day of madness.
The battalion gaped at the Colonel, then looked back to see a French eight-pounder gun slewing violently round behind its team of horses half-way down the slope. The gun’s wheels spewed mud ten feet into the air as the weapon slid to a halt. The gunners spiked the trail round as the horses were led away. Ford looked up from d’Alembord to see the vague shape of the cannon, its muzzle huge and black. The French column was a hundred paces to Ford’s right, its mens’ faces visible to him as pale blurs in the smoke. Worse, the column was beginning to unfold, its rear ranks marching outwards to form a broad line that would challenge and crush the British muskets.
The French cannon fired.
The canister crashed into the battalion’s four ranks. Seven men went down. Two screamed foully until a sergeant told them to stop their damned noise. Ford, racked by the screams, could take no more. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and his hands were shaking. He tried to speak, but no sound came. The nearest Frenchmen were just fifty yards away and, even without his spectacles, he could see their moustaches and the bright streaks that were their bayonets. He saw their mouths open to shout their war cry. ” Vive I’Empereur!”
The battalion to Ford’s right was edging backwards. They, like Ford’s men, were survivors of Halkett’s brigade who had so nearly died with the men of the 69th at Quatre Bras. Now, their nerves shredded and their officers mostly dead, they gave ground. The French were just too huge, too threatening, and too close.
“Vive I’Empereur!”
Ford’s men smelt their neighbours’ panic. They too shuffled backwards. They looked for orders, but their Colonel could not stop them. His saddle was wet, his bowels were churning and his muscles twitching helplessly. He could see death coming at him in a myopic blur of long blue coats. He wanted to cry, because he did not want to die.
While for the Guard, for the Emperor’s immortal undefeated Guard, victory was so sweet. ,Vive I’Empereur!”