Sharpe's Waterloo

The Prince of Orange took the Duke’s place beside the elm tree and stared in horror at the turmoil that raged about La Haye Sainte. The Prince did not see that the farm had effectively broken one, whole column of French infantry; instead he only saw a white-walled building lapped by smoke and ringed by enemies. Worse, he saw a stream of King’s German Legion Riflemen ru

“Sir?” Rebecque had been flinching from the sight of the double-shotted ca

“The Red Germans, Rebecque! They are to advance on the farm and recapture it. Tell them to form line and to advance. Now!”

“But, sir, the farm has not fallen and — „

“Do it! Now!” the Prince screamed, at his Chief of Staff.

Rebecque silently wrote the order, handed it to the Prince for signature, then sent an aide to the Red Germans. The Hanoverians deployed into line, then, to the tap of a drum, marched forward with fixed bayonets. They came over the ridge top and, with their colours hoisted high behind their centre companies, swept down onto the French who still milled ineffectually about La Haye Sainte’s loopholed walls.

“That’s how it’s done!” the Prince exulted. “Give them steel! Give them steel!”

“Are you sure the French cavalry are gone, sir?” Rebecque asked very quietly.

“You must be bold! Boldness is all! Oh, well done!” The Prince applauded because the Hanoverians had cleared the kitchen garden and were now working their way down the farm’s open flank to the west. They were still in line and were firing steady volleys that drove the French infantry backwards.

The French infantry retreated, but their cavalry advanced. That cavalry had been held deep in the valley’s floor, safe from the double-shotted British ca

The trumpets sounded.

Les grosfrms, the Cuirassiers, led the charge while the pigtailed Dragoons rode behind the heavy horsemen. The British gu

“Cavalry!”

“Form square!”

It was much too late. The heavy horsemen fell on the open end of the Hanoverian line. The big Klingenthal swords, made of the best steel in Europe, hacked down, driven by the ton weight of man and horse. Grim faces, framed by the steel helmets, were flecked by the infantrymens’ blood as the horsemen carved a path into the battalion. The Red Germans broke, fleeing in panic from the thunder of the hooves and the lightning blades. The colour party took refuge in the farm’s garden, but most of the Hanoverians were caught in the open field and paid the price. Horsemen rode round the field, chasing the last refugees and cutting them down with merciless efficiency.

The Prince of Orange stared aghast from the elm tree. He saw a sword rise in the air, dripping blood from a death, then hack down to make another butcher’s sound. “Stop them, Rebecque!” he said pathetically. “Stop them!”

“Pray how, Your Highness?”

In the end the British gu

While to the east, where no farm protected the ridge, the two central columns of the French attack deployed into line, and drove on up to victory.

The Dutch-Belgian infantry at the re-entrant of the ridge took one close look at the nearest column and fled.

The British jeered the ru

The French drummers beat the pas de charge as the columns unfolded into the heavy musket line that would blast the ridge’s crest with fire.

“Stand up!” The order was British.

All along the ridge, like men springing full armed from the concealing earth, the redcoats stood. One moment the ridge had appeared empty, and the next it was crowned with a line of muskets.

“Present!”

The French, so very close to the ridge top, had stopped for a heartbeat as their enemy had appeared so suddenly from the earth, but the French officers, seeing how hugely they outnumbered the Goddamns, screamed at the men to advance.

“Fire!”

The first British volley crashed down the gentle slope. It was fired at just sixty paces and it slammed into the unfolding columns to crumple the front ranks back like lead soldiers swept down by a petulant child.

“Reload!”

Men bit bullets from the tip of waxed paper cartridges, poured the powder into their musket barrels, wadded the powder with the cartridge paper, spat the bullets after, then rammed down hard with their ramrods. “Fire by platoons!” a Major ordered. “Grenadier Company! Fire!”

The rolling volleys began, rippling along the hilltop in flame and smoke. The French fired back. Sir Thomas Picton roared an order and died as a bullet pierced his top hat and crashed into his skull. Highlanders and Irishmen and men from the shires bit the cartridges till their lips were black and their tongues sour with the salty taste of the gunpowder. They fired, scorching their cheeks with the flaming scraps spat from the musket locks.

“Close up! Close up!” The Sergeants dragged the dead and wounded back from the line, letting the men close in where the French bullets had struck.

A ca

Redcoats scrabbled at their flints, tearing their fingernails as they cocked their weapons. The muskets kicked like mules. The French were still spreading into line, still advancing, and the drums were still driving them on. A French galloper gun opened fire, splaying a redcoat colour party into ruin. The French musket volleys were slow, but the Crapauds outnumbered the Goddamns and were clawing their bloody way towards the ridge’s crest and victory.

And then a trumpet called.

Lord John Rossendale, riding close to the Earl of Uxbridge, had watched the advance of the columns in sheer disbelief. He had heard of such attacks, and he had listened to men describe a French column, yet nothing had prepared Lord John for the way such an attack filled a landscape, or how its music made the skin crawl and stretched the nerves, or how irresistible such an assault seemed; as though each column was not made up of individual men, but instead was some ponderously articulated beast that crawled out of nightmare to ooze across the earth.