Sharpe's Waterloo

CHAPTER 8

The Prince of Orange, blithely disregarding that nearly half of his troops had fled the field, greeted the Duke of Wellington with good news. “We’re holding the woods!” he announced in a tone that implied victory was thereby guaranteed.

The Duke, returning from Ligny where the Prussians waited for Napoleon’s attack, cast a cold eye on the fugitives who streamed northwards towards Brussels, then turned a grave face on the excited Prince. “The woods?” The Duke’s polite request for a more precise report was icy.

“Over there.” The Prince pointed vaguely towards the right flank. “Isn’t that so, Rebecque?”

Rebecque deferred to Sharpe, who had actually visited the right flank. “Prince Bernhard’s brigade retreated into the woods, sir. They’re holding the tree line.”

The Duke nodded curt acknowledgement, then urged his horse a few paces forward so he could survey the ruin he had inherited from the Prince of Orange. The Belgian troops had been driven from all the forward farms and, even more disastrously, had failed to garrison Gemioncourt. French cavalry, artillery and infantry had already advanced as far as the stream and it couid only be a matter of moments before they thrust a strong attack at the vital crossroads. The only good news was that Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar’s men held the woods on the right, thus denying the French the shelter of the trees as they attacked the crossroads, but that slim advantage would count for nothing unless the Duke could construct another defensive line to protect the highway.

The materials for that line were at last arriving. The Riflemen that Harper had seen were the vanguard of Sir Thomas Picton’s Fifth Division. The rest of that division was now marching through the crossroads and past the remnants of the dispirited Belgians.

“I promised Blücher we’d march to his aid,” the Duke greeted Sir Thomas Picton, “but only if we weren’t attacked here.” A French gun fired a ranging shot from Gemioncourt and the ball skipped off the road, past the Duke and crashed into a wall of the farm at the crossroads. “It seems the Prussians will have to fight without us today,” the Duke said drily, then gestured towards the fields which lay to the left of Quatre Bras. “Your men to line the road there, Sir Thomas, with your right flank in front of the crossroads.”

Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton, a burly and bad-tempered man who had fought gallantly through Spain, glared at the Duke. „I’ll not take orders from that bloody little Dutch boy.“

“You will take orders from me, Picton, and not from His Royal Highness. I quite agree. May I trouble you now to obey those orders?”

Picton, dressed in a top hat and a civilian coat that looked like a farmer’s cast-off, obeyed. His infantry marched through the disorganized Dutch battalions and took their station just south of the Nivelles road. Closest to the crossroads was the 92nd, a Highland battalion in kilts, cath-dath hose and black plumed bonnets. Next to them were more Highlanders, the 42nd or Black Watch, who wore a dark plaid and red hackles, and whose officers flaunted vultures’ feathers in their caps and carried lethal broadswords. Next to them were the 44th, the East Essex, placid country men in coats of yellow-faced scarlet. All three battalions were veterans, immune to French drums and French cheers, and content to smoke their short clay pipes as they waited to see what the day would bring from the long fields of rye.

The French batteries had been moved forward from Frasnes to the slopes above Gemioncourt. Their gunners now made the last adjustments to their cannons’ elevating screws, while the infantry, which had taken the battlefield’s centre with scarce a scratch to themselves, rested in the rye. The French seemed to have no sense of urgency, perhaps believing the battle for Quatre Bras already won. Seven miles to the east another and larger battle had begun, evidenced by the sudden and overwhelming sound of cannon salvos that rolled and punched across the intervening countryside. The Emperor had launched his attack on the Prussians.

The first batteries of British artillery reached Quatre Bras and were ordered to unlimber at the crossroads. Almost immediately the gunners came under strong musket-fire from French skirmishers who had crept forward in the long rye. The enemy Voltigeurs were especially thick in the wedge of field between the highway and the woods where Saxe-Weimar’s men kept up their stubborn resistance. The Highlanders sent their light companies forward to beat back the French.

Sharpe was a skirmisher himself and he watched the light companies’ battle with a professional eye. The job of the skirmisher was simple enough. A battle line was a mass of close-packed men who could fire a deadly weight of metal in disciplined volleys, but to upset those men and thin their ranks, the skirmishers were sent ahead like a swarm of wasps to sting and unsettle them. The best way to defeat the skirmishers was with other skirmishers, the two swarms meeting in a private battle between the lines. It was a battle that the British were accustomed to winning against the French, but today the French seemed to have deployed far more skirmishers than usual. The Highlanders made a spirited attack, but were held up at the field’s margin by the sheer weight of French musket-fire that smoked and flickered out of the rye.

“There’s thousands of the buggers!” Harper had never seen a French skirmish line so overwhelming in numbers.

“I thought you were staying out of trouble?” Sharpe had to raise his voice over the sound of the French fire.

“I am.”

Then get back!“

Even more French skirmishers were pushing forward so that all along the line of Picton’s division the redcoats were falling and the Sergeants had begun their litany of battle. “Close up! Close up!” The light companies were helpless against such a horde of enemy skirmishers. Twice the Duke sent whole battalions forward in line to sweep the French Voltigeurs away, but as soon as the British battalion resumed its station the enemy skirmishers crept back and their musket smoke blossomed again from the rye’s margin. The cartridge wadding from the French guns had begun small fires in the dry crops. The flames crackled palely in the strong sunlight, adding yet more smoke to the thickening cloud of powder smoke.

Cavalry reached the crossroads. They came down the Nivelles road in a cheerful jingle of curb chains. The horsemen were Dutch-Belgians and Brunswickers. The black-coated Brunswick-ers were commanded by their own Duke who led a charge into the wedge of field that lay to the west of the highway. The French skirmishers fled the Duke of Brunswick’s sabres like mice fleeing a scourge of cats, but then the death’s head horsemen came across a French infantry brigade that was concealed in the tall crops beyond the stream. The brigade had formed squares and blasted the German horsemen with volleys of musket-fire so that the cavalry milled about in confusion, men and horses dropping, until, bleeding and baulked, they were forced to retire. Some galloped for safety into the wood, others retreated through the rye to the crossroads. The Duke of Brunswick was dead.

The Prince of Orange had been inspired by the success of the Brunswickers. He galloped past Sharpe. “Come on, Sharpe! Come on! That’s the way to clear them off!”

“Stay here,” Sharpe warned Harper, then kicked his heels back to follow the Prince who was eagerly ordering his own newly arrived cavalry into two ranks. The black-coated Brunswickers, some with bloodied sabres, reinforced the Dutch-Belgians who followed their Prince out into the wide expanse of field where the French skirmishers still raked the redcoats with musket-fire. The Prince had drawn his ivory-hilted sabre which he now waved above his head as a signal for the two lines to quicken into a trot.

The horses plunged into the smoking rye. The French skirmishers, rightly terrified of the curved blades, fled precipitately and the British infantry cheered as their tormentors were driven away.

Sharpe rode with Rebecque and the other staff officers between the two Dutch ranks, while the Prince cantered ahead of the horsemen. The Prince was happy. This was war! He had been cheered by the redcoats, proof that his heroism was appreciated. His horse curvetted prettily and the sun reflected off his sabre’s polished blade. The French skirmishers were running in terror from him, fleeing like game from the beaters, and in a moment he would order the full gallop and he imagined the thrill of breaking through the enemy lines, then sabring the gunners and pouncing on the French baggage. Europe would learn that a new military power had risen: William, Prince of Orange!

Still the swarm of French skirmishers retreated before the Prince. A few Frenchmen stopped to fire at their pursuers, but they dared not pause long for fear of the sabres and thus their wild shooting did no damage. The fleeing Frenchmen splashed through the stream and ran past Gemioncourt farm. There seemed to be no French columns ahead, just the inviting field of rye climbing to the low crest where the French gunners waited to be cut down by the Prince’s sabres. Lieutenant Doggett, riding next to Sharpe, nervously drew his sword. “I’ve never fought on horseback.”

“Just concentrate on staying in the saddle, and try not to chop your horse’s ears off.”

“Yes, sir.” Doggett gave his horse’s ears a rather speculative look.

“Don’t chop with your sword,” Sharpe continued his last minute tuition, “but stab with it. And keep your horse moving! If you stand still in a melee, you’ll be dead.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Prince seemed to have no fear, but trotted through the ford straight towards the French guns, which stood silent on the skyline. He was wondering why he had not thought to have had a huge banner of orange silk made; a banner that would follow him on a battlefield to terrify the enemy. He turned to look for Rebecque, intending to order the Chief of Staff to have just such a banner made, but instead he saw that the entire first rank of his horsemen had come to an ignominious halt at the far bank of the stream.

“Come on!” the Prince shouted at them. “Follow me!”

Not a man nor a horse moved, and the second rank of horsemen stopped a few paces behind the first.

The Prince turned back to his front and saw why. A brigade of French light cavalry had appeared beside the enemy guns. The enemy horsemen were Lancers and Hussars, gaudy in green, scarlet and blue, who now spread ahead of the cannons to make their own two lines of attack. The French standard bearers carried guidon flags, while each Lancer had a small red and white swallow-tailed flag attached just beneath his weapon’s slender blade. The French cavalry were outnumbered by the Prince’s force, but they still advanced with a jaunty confidence. It would be sabre against sabre and sabre against lance.

The French came to a halt two hundred yards from the immobile Dutch cavalry. The Lancers formed the front rank while the Hussars reined in fifty paces behind. For a few seconds the two bodies of cavalry just stared at each other, then the Prince raised his heavy sabre high over his head. “Charge!”

He shouted it in a fine loud voice. At the same instant he spurred forward and lowered his sabre’s point, but then realized that his men had not moved from the stream bank. The staff officers had dutifully begun to follow the Prince, but the Belgian horsemen had stayed obstinately still.

“Charge!” the Prince shouted again, but again no one moved. Some officers tried to urge their men forward, but those few who were forced ahead soon pulled aside and stopped again.

“Bloody hell.” Sharpe drew his sword, then looked at Simon Doggett. “In a few seconds, Lieutenant, this is going to be a Goddamned bloody shambles. Ride like hell for the crossroads when it starts. Don’t look back, don’t slow down, and don’t try and play games with Lancers.”

“Yes, sir.”

Doggett glanced left and right, but the Belgians would not close on the Frenchmen. Just a year ago these Belgians had been a part of the French army, and they had no wish to kill their old comrades. Some of the Belgian horsemen pulled their horses’ heads round to demonstrate their unwillingness to charge.

The French horses snorted, tossed their heads and trampled the rye. The Lancers held their eight-foot-long weapons vertically so that the red and white flags made a brave show against the sky. Sharpe hated lances. He had been captured at lance point in India and still bore the scar on his chest. Some men preferred fighting lances to sabres, claiming that once the lance point was evaded, the Lancer was dead meat, but Sharpe had never felt easy facing the razor-sharp and narrow-bladed spears.

Then, with a deliberate slow menace, and apparently without any order being given, the whole front rank of the French cavalry swung their lance points down into the charge.

The sight of the blades dropping was enough for the Belgian horsemen. They wrenched their horses about, rammed back their spurs, and fled. The staff officers tried to rally the nearest horsemen, but it was hopeless.

Sharpe pulled Doggett’s bridle round. “Get out of here! Ride!”

The Prince had already fled. Rebecque was staring at the enemy through eyes made swollen and watery by hay fever. A French bugle sounded loud and mocking, starting the Lancers on their pursuit.

“Come on, Sharpe!” Rebecque shouted.

Sharpe had already turned his horse. He saw the Prince ahead of him, head down and galloping. He spurred his own horse, hearing the crash of the galloping enemy horses behind. The enemy’s trumpet calls filled the sky with threat.

It was a race. The quickest of the French horses swiftly overtook the slower Belgians. Lances were drawn back and thrust forward into unprotected backs. Men screamed, arched their spines, and fell. Hooves drummed up great chunks of soil. A Dutchman cut blindly at a Lancer and, to his own surprise, knocked the man backwards from his saddle. A. bleeding horse limped. A Brunswicker tumbled from his saddle, scrambled to his feet, and was immediately cut down by an Hussar’s sabre. The Hussars were catching up with the slower Dutch-Belgian horsemen now and their sabres slashed into necks and laid open ribs. Blood slicked the rye straw. Hundreds of broken Dutch-Belgian horsemen streamed northwards towards the crossroads and the enemy rode among.them, screaming to keep the panic bubbling, killing and slashing when they could.

The Duke of Wellington rode forward to stop the rout, but the Dutch-Belgian cavalry ignored him, parting about his staff in a flood of sweating horses and frightened men. The French were racing up behind and on the flanks.

“Get back, sir!” a staff officer shouted at the Duke who still swore and shouted at the panicked Belgians. All the Duke could see was a chaos of dust, burning rye, blood and frightened horsemen, until, clear in the panicked swirl, he suddenly saw the bright gleam of

French helmets and lance blades. The Duke turned his horse and spurred hard. There was no escape on the road, for that was crowded with fugitives, so instead he galloped straight towards the solid ranks of the gand. There were Frenchmen to his left and right, trying to cut ahead of the Duke. Two Lancers were behind, rowelling their horses’ flanks bloody in an attempt to reach him. Copenhagen, the Duke’s horse named for one of his early victories, stretched out his neck. The Highlanders were in four standing ranks that bristled with bayonets. No horse would charge home into such a thickly packed formation, but the Duke was shouting at the Scotsmen, “Down! Down! Down!”

Four files of men dropped to the ground. Copenhagen gathered himself, jumped, and the Duke sailed safely over the sixteen crouching men.

“Fire!” a Highlander officer shouted, and a volley of musketry slashed into the French pursuers. The two Lancers died instantly, their horses flailing bloodily along the ground almost to the feet of the front rank. “Reload!” The officer who shouted the fire orders had been one of the men dancing above the crossed swords in the Duchess’s ballroom the night before. “Fire!” An Hussar’s face disappeared in blood as his wounded horse reared. Man and beast fell screaming into the path of a galloping Lancer. The Lancer’s horse tumbled, legs breaking, while its rider sprawled unhurt. The lance, driven deep into the soil, quivered. “Reload!” the Scots officer shouted.

A mixture of French and Dutch-Belgian cavalry galloped at the infantry line. The Belgians, desperate for safety, spurred through the gaps between the battalions and the French horsemen rode with them. The redcoats suddenly realized that there were enemy horsemen in their rear.

The Black Watch was ordered to form square. The wings of the battalion curved backwards and inwards, but the enemy Lancers were already behind the line and spurring into the space between the wings. They saw the Scottish colours and rammed their lances forward at the men who protected the great silk banners. Two Scottish officers faced them on horseback. One Lancer went down under a claymore’s strike, his skull split down to his coat collar. Colonel Macara was shouting at his flanks to close and, by sheer brute strength, the two ends of the line forced themselves inwards to make a crude square. A dozen enemy Lancers were trapped inside the formation. One lunged at the Colonel, but Macara knocked the lance aside then rammed his claymore forward. “Platoon, fire!” he shouted while his sword was still killing the Lancer. Other Lancers were being dragged from their saddles by vengeful Scottish soldiers who stabbed down with bayonets. Outside the square the horsemen veered away from the platoon volleys, while inside the square the trapped Lancers were butchered. The colours were safe, and the pipes had never stopped playing.

The neighbouring battalion, the East Essex, stayed in their line. They, like the Scots, had been in four ranks, but their Colonel simply turned his rear rank about and opened fire front and rear, killing Dutch-Belgians and French horsemen indiscriminately. One band of determined French cavalry spurred hard from the rear in a furious attempt to capture the battalion’s colours. The spears chopped down two British sergeants, a sabre slashed a redcoat aside, then a Lancer rammed his long blade into the eye of the Ensign carrying the regimental flag. Ensign Christie fell, but he held tight to the big yellow silk banner as he collapsed. Two Hussars attacked the fallen Christie, leaning down from their saddles to hack at the sixteen-year-old with their sabres.

Redcoats scrambled forward, climbing over their own dead and wounded. A Lancer tried to pick up the colour with his weapon’s point, but Christie hung on grimly. The two Hussars grunted as they chopped at him with their sabres. A musket shot killed one Frenchman, the other parried a bayonet thrust, then stabbed down at Christie a last time.

Another musket hammered and the Hussar was plucked out of his saddle like a puppet jerked on strings. A knot of red-coated officers and men surged over the prone Christie, driving the last enemy away. A Lancer had speared a corner of the flag and now jerked his lance up to tear a fragment of the yellow silk away, but even that trophy was denied the French. Three muskets flamed and the Lancer toppled backwards from his horse.

“Close up! Close up!” the Sergeants shouted. A crashing volley cleared a space in front of the battalion. The air was thick with the foul powder smoke, rank with the stench of blood, and loud with the noise of screaming horses and men. A loose horse galloped wildly across the face of the line, streaming blood. A Lancer staggered away on foot and was dropped by a musket bullet. The French horsemen were turning and riding away, trying to escape the musket volleys.

Ensign Christie was alive, still with the colour gripped to his body that had been slashed with more than twenty sabre and lance wounds. His men made a litter of muskets and blankets and carried him back to the surgeons who had set up for business in the barn by the crossroads. The colour, its bright yellow silk slashed by steel and stained with Christie’s blood, was raised again. The French cavalry, like an ebbing tide of blood, reformed a quarter mile away. The crossroads had held.

The Black Watch dragged the dead Lancers from inside their square and dumped the bodies as a kind of rampart to trip any more charging horses. Men reloaded their muskets. The wounded limped back to the surgeons. One man fell to his knees, vomited blood, then collapsed.

The French had come perilously close to breaking the British line apart. Some of the Hussars and Lancers, who had ridden to the rear of the red-coated battalions, had galloped along the road they were trying to capture, and had only retreated back through the intervals between the battalions because there were not enough — horsemen to hold the temporarily captured road. It now seemed to the French that one more effort would surely succeed, and that the red-coated infantry would break just like the Dutch-Belgian horsemen had broken. The trumpets screamed for that second effort which, to ensure success, was strengthened with eight hundred Cuirassiers; the grosfreres, big brothers, of the French army. The Cuirassiers wore steel breastplates, helmets and backplates, and rode the heaviest horses of all the French cavalry. A big brother, his armour and his horse weighed more than a ton. The grosfreres, their armoured steel reflecting the sun like silver fire, would lead the second charge and crush the infantry by sheer weight and terror.

But the infantry, expecting the charge, was ready. The musket volleys crashed smoke and flame, and punched their bullets clean through the armour plate. The Cuirassiers were tumbled down to the crushed rye as the musket volleys settled into their killing rhythm. Dying horses quivered on the compacted rye, while wounded Cuirassiers struggled to unburden themselves of helmets and armour before limping away. The Lancers and Hussars, seeing the slaughter of the armoured horsemen, did not press their own charge home.

“Cease fire! Reload!” the officers and sergeants called to the British squares. The regimental bands played on, while in the squares the colours hung heavy in the humid and smoke-stained air. The enemy cavalry, bloodied and beaten, pulled back to the stream. From the east came the sound of cannon, proof that the Prussians still fought their battle.

Then the French skirmishers crept forward and opened their galling fire again, and from beyond Gemioncourt the French twelve-pounder cannons opened fire on the British ranks. The enemy cavalry was still in sight, and not so very far off, and so the infantry was forced to stay in their squares as prime targets for the heavy French cannon.

It was time for the infantry to suffer.

On the roads leading to Quatre Bras from the west and north the hurrying British troops saw the growing canopy of smoke, and heard the incessant punch of the heavy guns. Carts were already travelling back to Brussels carrying wounded men who groaned in the afternoon heat while their blood dripped through the bottom-boards to stain the white road red. Other wounded men walked away from the battle, staggering in the sun towards their old bivouac areas. In Nivelles the townspeople huddled at their doors, listened to the noise of battle, and stared wide-eyed at the foully wounded soldiers who limped past. Some unwounded Belgian soldiers spread the news that the British were already beaten and that the Emperor was already on his way to Brussels.

The clouds thickened in the west, climbing ever higher and darker.

Twelve miles to the north of Quatre Bras, in the orchard of a farm called Hougoumont which, in turn, was close to the small village of Waterloo, some men were busy thinning the apple crop. They plucked the unripe fruit and tossed it into baskets, thus ensuring that the remaining apples would grow big and juicy. The discarded fruit would be fed to the pigs that lived in the yard of the chateau of Hougoumont.

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.”

“Patrick?” Sharpe had been staring up the Nivelles road. “Do you see what I see?”

Harper twisted in his saddle. “Bloody hell, sir, you’re right!” A further brigade of British infantry was arriving, and among the troops was the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. Sharpe and Harper spurred towards their old battalion.

Sharpe stood his horse beside the road and took off his hat as the leading company came abreast. It was his old company, the light, led by Peter d’Alembord. The men’s faces were pale with dust, through which the rivulets of sweat had driven dark trails. Daniel Hagman raised a cheer as Sharpe tossed them a full canteen of water. D’Alembord, his white dancing breeches stained from the wax with which his saddle had been polished, reined in beside the two Riflemen and looked dubiously towards the smear of smoke that marked the battlefield. “How is it?”

“It’s stiff work, Peter,” Sharpe admitted.

“Is Boney here?” It was the same question that nearly every newly arriving officer had asked, as though the presence of the Emperor would dignify the day’s death and dismemberment.

“Not so far as we know.” Sharpe saw that his answer disappointed d’Alembord.

The brigade halted while Sir Colin Halkett, its commander, discovered where his four battalions were wanted. Lieutenant-Colonel Ford and his two Majors, Vine and Micklewhite, walked their horses up the road until they came close to where Sharpe, d’Alembord and Harper chatted. Ford, myopically peering towards the cannon smoke, realized too late that he had come close to Sharpe, whose presence made him feel so uncomfortable and inadequate, but he put a brave face on the chance meeting. “It sounds brisk, Sharpe, does it not?”

“It’s certainly hard work, Ford,” Sharpe said mildly.

No one seemed to be able to find anything else to say. Ford smiled with a general benignity which he thought fitting to a colonel, while Major Vine scowled at the men of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers who had slumped on the roadside, and Major Micklewhite pretended to be enthralled by the enamel picture on the lid of his snuffbox. A sudden explosion was loud enough to penetrate the half-deaf ears of Major Vine who twisted round to see that a British gun limber, crammed with ready ammunition, had been struck by a French shell and was now spewing a thick skein of smoke and flames into the sky.

Colonel Ford had jumped at the sudden violence of the explosion, and now he gazed through his thick spectacles at the rest of the battlefield, which appeared as a threatening blur of trampled corn, blood, smoke, and the lumped bodies of the dead. Cannon-balls were ploughing through the slurry of rye and soil, spewing gouts of earth before bouncing into the bloody lines of Highlanders. “Dear God,” Ford said with rather more feeling than he had intended.

“Watch out for their skirmishers,” Sharpe advised drily. “They seem to have more of the bastards than usual.”

“More?” The tone to Ford’s voice betrayed the Colonel’s fear of taking his battalion into the cauldron beyond the crossroads.

“You might like to think about deploying an extra company as skirmishers,” Sharpe, well aware of Ford’s uncertainty, offered the advice as forcefully as he could without sounding patronizing, “but warn the lads to keep an eye open for the cavalry. They’re never very far away.” Sharpe pointed across the highway to where the stream fed a small lake behind Gemioncourt farm. “There’s a fold in the ground over there and it’s swarming with the evil buggers.”

“Quite so, quite so.” Ford took off his spectacles, cleaned them on the tasselled end of his red sash, then hooked the earpieces back into place. He stared through the newly cleaned glass but could see neither a fold in the ground nor any cavalry. He wondered whether Sharpe was deliberately trying to frighten him, and so, to show that he was quite equal to the prospect of fighting, Ford straightened his shoulders and turned his horse away. Vine and Micklewhite, like obedient hounds, followed their Colonel.

“He won’t take a blind bit of notice,” d’Alembord sighed.

“Then you watch out for the cavalry, Peter. They’re in something of a murderous bloody mood. There’s about three thousand of the bastards: Hussars, Lancers, and the Heavies.”

“You do cheer me up, Sharpe, you really do.” D’Alembord superstitiously touched the breast pocket which bulged with his fiancee’s letters. “Have you had your note from that bloody man yet?”

It took Sharpe a second or two to realize that d’Alembord was talking about Lord John Rossendale. He shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Oh, God. I suppose that means we’ll have to arrange a duel in the morning?”

“No. I’ll just find the bugger and cut his balls off.”

“Oh, splendid!” d’Alembord said in mock seriousness. “That should satisfy everyone’s honour.”

Orders came back to the battalion. The newly arrived brigade was to take up positions in the wedge of field in front of Saxe-Weimar’s wood, from where their musket-fire could rake across the flank of any French attack down the road. Sir Thomas Picton’s staff brought the orders which insisted that the four battalions were to form square in the rye.

Sharpe shook d’Alembord’s hand. “Watch those skirmishers, Peter!” He waved to Captain Harry Price who had once been his Lieutenant. “It’s hot work, Harry!”

“I’m thinking of resigning, sir.” Harry Price, too poor to own a horse, was sweating from the exertions of his long day’s march. “My father always wanted me to take holy orders, and I’m beginning to think I rejected his views too quickly. Good God, it’s Mr Harper!”

Harper grinned. “Good to see you, Mr Price.”

“I thought the army had discharged you.”

“It did.”

“You’re as mad as a bloody bishop! What are you doing here?” Harry Price was genuinely puzzled. “You could get hurt, you damned fool!”

“I’m staying well out of any trouble, so I am.”

Price shook his head at Harper’s foolishness, then had to hurry away as the battalion was ordered into the wood. The companies filed through the trees and so out into the sunlit rye field where, like the other three battalions in Halkett’s brigade, they formed square.

Sharpe and Harper walked their horses back to the crossroads where the Prince of Orange was fidgeting with the ivory hilt of his sabre. He was frustrated by the day’s setbacks. He had seen his infantry crumple at the first French attack, then watched his cavalry flee at the drop of a lance point, yet he blamed the day’s lack of success on anyone but himself or his countrymen. “Look at those men, for instance!” He pointed towards the four battalions of Halkett’s brigade which had just formed their squares on the flank of the wood. “It’s a nonsense to form those men in square! A nonsense!” The Prince turned irritably, looking for a British staff officer. “Sharpe! You explain it to me! Why are those men in square?”

“Too many cavalry, sir,” Sharpe explained gently.

“I see no cavalry!” The Prince stared across the smoke-shrouded battlefield. “Where are the cavalry?”

“Over there, sir.” Sharpe pointed across the field. “There’s a lake to the left of the farm and they’re hidden there. They’ve probably dismounted so we can’t see them, but they’re there, sure enough.”

“You’re imagining it.” Since losing his Belgian cavalry the Prince had been given nothing to do, and he felt slighted. The Duke of Wellington was ignoring him, reducing the Prince to the status of an honoured spectator. Well, damn that! There was no glory to be had in just watching a battle from behind a crossroads! He looked back at the newly deployed brigade that stood in its four battalion squares. “What brigade is that?” he asked his staff.

Rebecque raised an eyebrow at Sharpe, who answered. “Fifth Brigade, sir.”

“Halkett’s, you mean?” The Prince frowned at Sharpe.

“Yes, sir.”

“They’re in my Corps, aren’t they?” the Prince demanded.

There was a brief silence, then Rebecque nodded. “Indeed they are, sir.”

The Prince’s face showed outrage. “Then why wasn’t I consulted about their placement?”

No one wanted to answer, at least not with the truth which was that the Duke of Wellington did not trust the Prince’s judgement. Rebecque just shrugged while Sharpe stared at the smoke of the French guns. Harry Webster, beyond Rebecque, looked at his watch, while Simon Doggett slowly moved his horse back till he had left the group of embarrassed staff officers and was next to Harper’s horse. The Prince drew his sabre a few inches then rammed it back into its scabbard. “No one gives orders to my brigades without my permission!”

“When I was in the ranks, Mr Doggett, we had a way of dealing with young gentlemen like His Royal Highness,” Harper said quietly. “

“You did?”

“We shot the little buggers.” Harper smiled happily.

Doggett stared into the battered and friendly face. “You did?”

“Especially buggers like him.” Harper nodded scornfully towards the Prince. “He’s nothing but a silk stocking full of shit.”

Doggett stared in horror at Harper. Doggett’s sense of propriety, as well as his natural respect for royalty, were outraged by the Irishman’s words. “You can’t say things like that!” he blurted out. “He’s royalty!”

“A silk stocking full of shit with a crown, then.” Harper was quite unmoved by Doggett’s outrage. “And if the little bugger doesn’t watch out, Mr Sharpe will feed his guts to the hogs. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it.”

“Murdered someone?” Doggett blurted out the question.

Harper turned innocent eyes on the Guards Lieutenant. “I know for a fact he’s rid the world of some bad officers. We all have! Don’t be shocked, Mr Doggett! It happens all the time!”

“I can’t believe it!” Doggett protested, but too loudly, for the sound of his voice made the Prince turn irritably in his saddle.

“Is something offending you, Mr Doggett?”

“No, sir.”

“Then get back here, where you belong.” The Prince looked back to the four battalions of Halkett’s brigade which were an itch to his wounded self-esteem. Closest to the crossroads, and just forward of _the Highlanders across the highway was a battalion of Lincolnshire men, the 69th, who were unknown to Sharpe. They had never fought in Spain, instead they had been a part of the disastrous expedition that had failed to free the Netherlands at the end of the previous war. Beyond them was the 30th, the Three Tens, a Cambridgeshire battalion which, like the 33rd next in line, had also been a part of the Dutch debacle. Furthest south was the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, the only veterans of the Spanish campaign in the brigade.

“So who ordered them to form square?” the Prince demanded petulantly.

No one knew, so Harry Webster was sent to discover the answer and came back after ten minutes to say that Sir Thomas Picton had deployed the brigade.

“But they’re not in Picton’s division!” The Prince’s pique had turned to a real anger that flushed his sallow face.

“Indeed not, sir,” Rebecque said gently, “but- „

“But nothing, Rebecque! But bloody nothing! Those men are in my corps! Mine! I do not give orders to brigades in Sir Thomas Picton’s division, nor do I expect him to interfere with my corps! Sharpe! My compliments to Sir Colin Halkett, and instruct him to deploy his brigade in line. Their task is to give fire, not cower like schoolboys from non-existent cavalry.” The Prince had taken a sheet of paper from his sabretache and was scribbling the order in pencil.

“But the cavalry — „Sharpe began to protest.

“What cavalry?” The Prince made a great fuss of pretending to stare across the battlefield. “There is no cavalry.”

“In the dead ground over- „

“You’re frightened of unseen horsemen on the left? But this brigade is on the right! Here, take this.” He thrust the written order at Sharpe.

“No, sir,” Sharpe said.

The bulbous eyes swivelled to stare in amazement at Sharpe. Rebecque hissed a warning at the Rifleman, while the other staff officers held their breath. The Prince licked his lips. “What did you say, Sharpe?” His voice was filled with horror and revulsion.

“I’m not taking that order, sir. You’ll kill every man jack of that brigade if you insist on it.”

For a second the Prince literally shook with rage. “Are you refusing to obey an order?”

“I’m refusing to take that order, sir, yes.”

“Rebecque! Suspend Colonel Sharpe from his duties. Have this order sent immediately.”

“You can’t — „Sharpe began, but Rebecque seized Sharpe’s bridle and tugged his horse out of the Prince’s reach. ”Rebecque, for God’s sake!“ Sharpe protested.

“He’s entitled!” Rebecque insisted. “Listen, by tomorrow he’ll have forgotten this. Give him an apology tonight and you won’t be suspended. He’s a good-hearted man.”

“I don’t give a damn for his heart, Rebecque. It’s those men I care about!”

“Rebecque!” The Prince turned petulantly in his saddle. “Has that order gone!”

“Immediately, sir.” Rebecque shrugged at Sharpe, then turned away to find another officer to carry the Prince’s command.

The order was sent. Sir Colin Halkett rode back to the Prince’s command post vehemently to protest the command, but the Prince would not be denied. He insisted that there was no danger of a French cavalry attack and that, by deploying in square, the brigade was sacrificing three-quarters of the firepower that might be needed to rake the-flank of a French infantry attack.

“We mustn’t be cautious!” the Prince lectured the experienced Sir Colin. “Caution won’t win battles! Only daring. You will form line! I insist you form line!”

Sir Colin rode unhappily away while Sharpe, goaded beyond endurance by the Prince’s crowing voice, spurred forward. “Sir,” he said to the Prince.

The Prince ignored him. Instead he looked at Winckler, one of his Dutch aides, and deliberately spoke in English. “I can’t think why the Duke called his men the scum of the earth, Winckler. I think he must have meant his officers, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Winckler, a sycophantic man, smiled.

Sharpe ignored the provocation. “Permission to rejoin my old battalion, sir.”

The Prince gave the smallest, curtest nod.

Sharpe turned his horse away and spurred it forward. Hooves sounded loud behind him, making him twist in his saddle. “I thought you promised Isabella you’d stay out of trouble?”

“There isn’t any trouble yet,” Harper said. “When there is I’ll get the hell out of it, but till then I’ll keep you company.”

Harper followed Sharpe down the bank onto the Nivelles road where Sharpe exploded in rage. “Bastard! What a cretinous dirty-minded little Dutch bastard! I’d like to ram his poxed bloody crown up his royal arse.” Instead Sharpe snatched the tricorne hat off his head and ripped the black, gold and scarlet cockade of the Netherlands from its crown. He hurled the silken scrap into a patch of nettles. “Bastard!”

Harper just laughed.

They scrambled up the bank into the trampled field of rye. To their right the trees were heavy with leaf, though here and there a splintered branch showed where a French cannon-ball or shell had struck high. There was not much litter in this part of the field; merely the corpses of two dead Voltigeurs, a scatter of dead horses, and a discarded and undamaged Cuirassier’s breastplate that Harper dismounted to retrieve. “Useful, that,” he said as he tied the polished piece of armour to the strap of a saddlebag.

Sharpe did not reply. Instead, he watched as Sir Colin Halkett’s brigade staff ordered the four battalions out of square and into line. The regimental bands played behind the brigade. Sharpe saluted the colours of the 69th, the 30th and the 33rd. He felt a particular fondness for the 33rd, the Yorkshire regiment which he had joined as a sullen youth twenty-two years before. He wondered if their recruiters still carried oatcakes pierced on a sword, the curious symbol he’d seen as Sergeant Hakeswill had expounded to the sixteen-year-old Sharpe the benefits of an army life. Hakeswill was long dead, as were almost all the other men Sharpe remembered from the battalion, except for the Lieutenant-Colonel who had led the 33rd when Sharpe had first joined and who was now His Grace the Duke of Wellington.

The six hundred men of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers were deployed the furthest south, a full half-mile from the crossroads. Peter d’Alembord’s skirmishers were fifty yards in front of the battalion and having a hard time with the greater number of Voltigeurs. It seemed that Ford had not taken Sharpe’s advice to send out extra skirmishers, but was leaving d’Alembord’s men to cope as best they could. Sharpe, not wanting to interfere with Ford, reined in a good thirty yards behind the battalion, close to the tree line where the battalion’s band was playing. Mr Little, the rotund bandmaster, first greeted Sharpe with a cheerful grin, then with a quick and cheerful rendition of ‘Over The Hills and Far Away’, the marching song of the Rifles. Colonel Ford, who had just finished dressing his newly formed line, turned as the music changed. He blinked with surprise to see the two Riflemen, then nervously took off his spectacles and polished their round lenses on his red sash. “Come to see us fight, Sharpe?”

“I’ve come to see you die.” But Sharpe said it much too softly for anyone but Harper to hear. “Can I suggest you form square?” he said more loudly.

Ford was clearly confused. He had only just been ordered to form the battalion into line, and now he was being asked to revert to square? He put his spectacles back into place and frowned at Sharpe. “Is that an order from brigade?”

Sharpe hesitated, was tempted to tell the lie, but he had no written authority to prove the order, so he shook his head. “It’s just a suggestion.”

“I think we’ll manage quite well by following orders, Mr Sharpe.”

“A pox on you, too.” Again Sharpe spoke too softly for anyone but Harper to hear.

Mr Little’s bandsmen played merrily on while Colonel Ford took, his place behind the battalion’s colours and Sharpe slowly drew his long sword which he rested on his pommel.

The Prince, waiting behind the gun line at the crossroads, felt that at long last he was beginning to impose his youthful genius on the battle.

On the shallow southern crest above Gemioncourt a French cavalry scout stared in disbelief at the long exposed line of infantrymen that had been stationed in front of the woods. He.stared for a long time, seeking the implicit trap in the formation, but he could see none. He could only see men lined up for the slaughter and so, turning his horse, he spurred towards the dead ground.

While Sharpe and Harper, with two thousand two hundred men of Halkett’s Fifth Brigade, just waited.