Sharpe's Waterloo

Sharpe was among the staff officers who trotted their horses down the Charleroi road, past the Gemioncourt farm by the ford, and so on up the shallow hill until they reached the infantry brigade which guarded against any frontal attack up the high road.

The French guns were firing at the flanks of the Prince’s position; aiming at the farmhouses to east and west. Nothing seemed to be moving on the road itself, though Sharpe supposed the French must have some skirmishers concealed in the fields of long rye.

“They’ll be coming straight up the middle, won’t they?”

Sharpe turned to see that Harper had joined him. “I thought you were staying well away from any danger?”

“What danger, for God’s sake? No one’s firing at us now.” Harper had rescued the cold carcass of a roast chicken from the Prince’s interrupted lunch, and now tossed Sharpe a leg. “They look bloody strange, don’t they?”

He was referring to the brigade of Dutch-Belgian infantry that was spread in four ranks either side of the road to block a direct attack from Frasnes. The strangeness lay in the metis’ uniforms which were the standard French infantry uniforms. Only the eagle badge on their shakos had been changed, replaced by a ‘W for King William of the Netherlands, but otherwise the Dutch-Belgians were dressed exactly like the men they were doubtless about to fight.

“You know what to do?” the Prince asked the brigade commander in his native French.

“If we can’t hold them, sir, we fall back on Gemioncourt.”

“Exactly!” The farm by the ford was the last bastion before the vital crossroads. Loopholes had already been made in the stone walls of Gemioncourt’s huge barns which, like the buildings of so many of the isolated farms in the low countries, were joined together and protected by a high stone wall, making the whole farm into a massively strong fortress.

“Something’s stirring, eh?” The Prince, reverting to English, was elated by an outburst of musket-fire which sounded from somewhere in front of the Dutch line. The musketry was not the huge eruptions of platoon fire, but rather the smaller sporadic snapping of skirmishers which betrayed that the French Voltigeurs were closing on the Dutch light troops, but both sets of skirmishers were well hidden from the Prince and his staff by the tall crops.

“Fu

“Did you miss it?”

“Never thought I would,” the Irishman said sadly, “but I did.”

Sharpe remembered the familiar skill with which he had killed the French Lieutenant in this very rye field. “It’s the thing we’re good at, Patrick. Maybe we’re doomed to be soldiers forever?”

“You maybe, but not me. I’ve a tavern and a horse-thieving trade to keep me busy.” Harper frowned at the Belgians in their French uniforms. “Do you think these buggers will fight?”

“They’d bloody better,” Sharpe said grimly. The brigade, with its supporting artillery, was all that lay between the French and victory. The Dutch-Belgians certainly looked prepared to fight. They had trampled down the rye ahead of their line to make a killing ground some sixty yards deep and, judging by the sound of their musketry, the Dutch-Belgian skirmishers were fighting with a brisk energy.

The two wings of the Dutch-Belgian brigade stretched a half-mile on either side of the highway while, athwart the road itself, was a battery of six Dutch nine-pounder ca

“Four-legged bastards, off to the right,” Harper said warningly, and Sharpe turned to see a troop of enemy cavalry trotting towards the Dutch right flank. The horsemen were green-coated Lancers with high helmets topped with forward sweeping black plumes. They were still a good distance off, at least a half-mile, and were not yet any threat to the Prince’s troops.

The Prince had positioned himself just behind the six guns of the Dutch battery. Rebecque, staying close to his master, gravely inspected one of the ca

The Prince’s horse whi

“Stand ready!” The Prince, unable to bear the quiet, spurred his horse towards the closest Belgian battalion. “You’ll see the enemy infantry soon!” he shouted at the men. “A few volleys will see them off, so stand firm!”

“The bloody gu

“Probably,” Sharpe said. He patted his horse’s neck.

Rebecque suddenly sneezed again and, as if it had been a word of command, the French batteries resumed their ca

The French gu

The French batteries fired another volley. Sharpe saw the blossoming smoke a fraction before the sound punched the air. More men were struck in the Dutch battalions, but most balls went overhead for the French gu

“You should go back to the crossroads,” Sharpe told Harper.

“Aye, I will.” Harper did not move.

The Prince cantered towards the Dutch-Belgian battalions on the right-hand side of the road. He had drawn his massive sabre. He called for Rebecque to accompany him. The Baron, his eyes streaming with the hay fever, sneezed once more and the French guns magically ceased fire.

Men wounded by the ca

Then the French drums began.

“I never thought I’d hear Old Trousers being played again,” Harper said wistfully. It was the sound of French infantry being drummed to the attack. A mass of drums was being beaten, but the drummers, like the approaching infantry, were hidden by the tall crop of rye. There was something curiously menacing in the repetitive drumbeats that seemed to come from nowhere.

Then Sharpe saw the far crops being trampled flat and he knew that each patch of collapsing rye betrayed the advance of a French column. He counted three formations directly to the front. Each column was a solid formation of men aimed like a battering ram at the Dutch line. A crash of musketry off to the right flank betrayed that the farms to the west were under attack, but here in the centre, where the road led enticingly to the crossroads, the enemy was still hidden. Hidden but not silent. The drums suddenly paused and the columns shouted their great war cry. “Vive I’Emper-eur!“ The sound of that cheer stopped the Dutch band cold. The musicians lowered their instruments and stared into the concealing field where the rye seemed to move as though an invisible giant’s footsteps crushed it down.