It was a hot day, and as the men worked they could hear the percussive thumping of the guns to the south. From the top of their ladders they could see the growing cloud of dirty smoke that climbed over the battlefield. They chuckled at the sight, relieved that it was not they who were being shot at, nor their homes being invaded by soldiers, and not their land being ridden ragged by cavalry.
The chateau windows were open and white curtains stirred in the small breeze that offered a slight measure of relief from the stifling heat. A plump woman came to one of the upstairs windows where she rested her arms on the sill and stared at the strange conical smoke canopy that grew in the far southern sky. On the main highway that ran through the valley east of the chateau she could see a stream of soldiers marching south. The men,wore red, and even at this distance she could see they were hurrying. “Better them than us, eh, ma’am?” one of the apple pickers shouted.
“Better them than us,” the woman agreed, then crossed herself.
“We’ll get rain tomorrow,” one of the men remarked, but the others took no notice. They were too busy picking apples. Tomorrow, if it did not rain, they were supposed to finish the haymaking down in the valley’s bottom, and there was a flock of sheep to be sheared as well, while the day after tomorrow, thank the good Lord, they would have a day off because it was Sunday.
More British troops arrived at Quatre Bras, but they had to be sent to the flanks which were under increasing pressure from the French. Sharpe, after scraping home in front of the French cavalry, had been sent through the wood to find Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. The Prince, a dour tough man, had been holding his position, but his ammunition was running low and his men were being killed by the ever-present skirmishers. Newly arrived British infantry were sent to support him, while yet more redcoats were sent to help the Rifles on the left flank who were also under heavy attack from a brigade of French infantry.
“Why don’t they attack our centre with infantry?” Doggett asked Sharpe, who had rejoined Harper behind the crossroads.
“Because they’re being led by a cavalryman.” An Hussar prisoner had revealed that it was Marshal Ney who led the French troops at Quatre Bras. Ney was called `the bravest of the brave’, a red-haired cavalryman who would have ridden through the pits of hell without a murmur, but who had yet to launch an infantry attack against the battered defenders at the crossroads.
“You have to understand something about cavalrymen, Mr Doggett,” Harper explained. “They look very fine, so they do, and they usually take all the credit for any victory, but the only brains they’ve got are the ones they keep in their horses’ heads.”
Doggett blushed. “I wanted to be a cavalryman, but my father insisted I joined the Guards.”
“Don’t worry,” Harper said cheerfully, “the Guards aren’t our brightest lads either. God save Ireland, but just look at those poor boys.”
The poor boys were the Highlanders beyond the crossroads who could only stand and be slaughtered by the French guns. They were in square, which made them a tempting target for the French artillerymen, and they dared not relinquish the formation for fear of the French cavalry that watched them like hawks. The Scotsmen could only stand while the roundshot slammed into the files, and each shot that struck home killed two or three men, sometimes more. Once Harper saw a roundshot strike the flanking face of a square and ten men went down in a single bloody smear. The British artillery at the crossroads was being saved for any French infantry attack, though once in a while a gun would try to hit a French cannon. Such counter-battery fire was almost always wasted, but as the infantry’s suffering dragged on the Duke ordered more of it simply to help the morale of the redcoats.
“Why don’t we do something?” Doggett asked plaintively.
“What’s to do?” Harper asked. “The bloody Belgians won’t fight, so we haven’t got any cavalry. It’s called being an infantryman, Mr Doggett. Your job is to stand there and get slaughtered.”