Inferno

Chapter 74

Light infantry companies were detached and moved forward quickly in extended order. The logic of war dictated that, as the prime objective of the engagement was the destruction of any threat that lay in the British rear, it was necessary to pursue and annihilate the broken horde.

They pushed forward to the road. It was chaos – corpses, abandoned guns, prisoners wandering dazed and helpless taken by the score.

Shocked, Maynard saw who he and his fellows had been fighting. Not soldiers, they were rustic country folk taken up by the militia, long-haired farmhands and pig-herders in odd pieces of uniform over fustian and woollen breeches. Others wore red-and-green-striped jackets with wide hats not seen in England since the last Charles.

This was no glorious victory. These citizens had been defending their homeland and were wildly ill-matched against the veteran redcoats, who were now mercilessly hunting them down.

Maynard kept his men pressing forward towards the town. On the road there were pitiful relics of the encounter discarded by the fleeing militia: improvised weapons, a scythe tied to a pole, broken muskets, a rusty lance. Knapsacks, bundles and, most poignant of all, many wooden clogs that had been cast off for the owners to run faster. Even their ‘cavalry’ had been riding plough-horses that now grazed contentedly in the fields.

They approached a hamlet, the warm yellow and red of Danish houses attractive in the sunshine. A severe church tower dominated a rise to the south behind some trees over a churchyard, and to the right was a small square.

The tap of a musket sounded ahead and a tell-tale puff of smoke rose over a ditch. Without waiting for orders Sergeant Heyer motioned for two to double away and take the sniper from the side but there were more shots. One of his men was dropped by a hit and in the general firing a bullet closely missed Maynard with a savage whaap. He gulped: as an officer he was a prime target.

They pushed forward to a low wall and looked over warily as a message came from Adams: he was advancing on the right and would be obliged if Maynard would move up on the left.

Before a safe passage had been identified there was the sound of distant horns blending into one – a harsher tone than that of their own. It was from the opposite end of the town and into view burst a squadron of the King’s German Legion cavalry.

Their appearance caused all firing to cease, and in the distance the fleeing militiamen stopped in their tracks, mesmerised by the thundering mass. It was fatal – the Hanoverians brutally sabred those they could reach and drove the rest screaming into side-streets and houses, where some tried to retrieve their honour by firing from an upper floor.

Wellesley’s main force arrived, and enraged Highlanders were sent to batter their way in to finish this nonsense. In a short time the streets were cleared.

They regrouped in the little square, and word was brought that the last resistance could prove harder to crush. The churchyard, whose perimeter walls were old and massively thick, held the last fighting remnants of the Danish force and, it was rumoured, their general.

It was a hopeless defiance. In rapid, decisive moves, the churchyard was isolated. The British troops did not press an attack: they kept under cover until a pair of six-pounder guns of the horse artillery arrived and efficiently set up opposite.

A demand of capitulation was sent in.

Before long a white flag was waved and Generalmajor Oxholm emerged at the head of his men. To all intents and purposes all resistance on the island of Sj?lland had ceased. Only the city of Copenhagen and its garrison were left and all hope of relief for it was now summarily extinguished.