The Generals

The army was just completing its deployment when General Harris rode up.

‘Wellesley!’ He smiled as he greeted his subordinate, then gestured to the men drawn up on either side.‘You’re a step ahead of me. I got your message and my men are forming to your right. Baird’s brigade will be closest to you. I had thought to camp for the night and tackle them tomorrow. But, as we have the enemy in sight, it would be foolish not to give him a thrashing.’

Arthur felt a surge of relief at his superior’s words, and nodded. ‘Very well, sir. What are your plans?’

‘Nothing clever. No need to do much more than let good training and stout hearts have their way. We’ll advance on the ridge and take it. The cavalry will screen our flanks and keep Tipoo’s rascals at bay with those galloper guns you allocated to our lads.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘All right then, Wellesley. I’ll be off to take up position in the centre. As soon as you hear our guns fire, you can begin to advance. Don’t waste any time. We have to force the enemy to fight before they lose their nerve.’

Once the general had gone, Arthur and Fitzroy rode up and down the line to make sure that the men were properly spaced. Almost at once there was the crack of a light gun away to the right.

Fitzroy muttered, ‘Bloody hell, that was quick. If it was the signal, that is.’

Arthur glanced to the right and saw that Baird’s brigade had started forward. ‘Well, if it wasn’t the signal, it is now.’ He filled his lungs and called out, ‘Fix bayonets!’

The men neatly reached for their bayonets, drew them out and slotted them on to the ends of their muskets. Back in Europe bayonets would only be fixed once it was clear that any exchange of fire was over. But here in Mysore, where the enemy cavalry could appear and disappear in an instant, Arthur decided that his men might only have the chance to fire once before they were charged.

‘The line will advance, at the quick step!’

The men advanced as one, weapons resting on their shoulders as they stamped through the calf-high grass towards the ridge. Once again, Arthur rode down the line and returned to the 33rd, delighted to see that they had pulled ahead of Baird’s brigade. Up ahead of them the men of Tipoo’s army were chanting their war cries, and brandishing their weapons. The artillery on the hill continued to fire, and as the gap narrowed they drew first blood as a ball ricocheted off the hard-baked soil and ploughed through a file of men on the flank of Baird’s brigade. Arthur tore his eyes away from the mangled bodies sprawling on the ground and looked ahead to calculate the point at which he would order his men to deploy into a firing line as they closed on the enemy. There was a slight fold in the ground three hundred yards from the nearest enemy unit and as soon as the 33rd reached it Arthur shouted the order to form line. At once the regiment slowed and the rear companies doubled obliquely to the left and forward to catch up with the right flank until, in a matter of minutes, the whole regiment was in a line, two men deep. The sepoy battalions formed up on the left, in echelon, as the 33rd continued forwards.

Arthur felt a surge of pride as he watched. The years of training and nurturing his men were paying off handsomely. There had been skirmishes before but this was their first pitched battle as part of an army, and suddenly he felt a thrill of pleasure and excitement that he had never experienced before. All those years of playing at being a soldier, and being painfully aware of it, fell away from him and at last Arthur truly felt that he belonged in uniform and that this was his calling.

There was a great roar from the crest of the hill and Arthur instantly abandoned his reverie as he saw a large mass of Tipoo’s men, perhaps as many as three thousand, surge forward down the slope, directly towards the men of the 33rd Foot.This was it then, he realised. The moment for which he had been preparing his men, and himself. The redcoats did not hesitate for an instant when they saw the wave of enemy warriors rushing towards them. Arthur was about to shout some words of encouragement to his men, but realised that none were needed.They knew their profession well enough to be above the influence of platitudes and homilies.Any words he offered would only be taken as a sign of his nervousness. Arthur smiled. He had no nerves, no fear in the slightest, just a desire to see the job done and done well.

The two sides closed on each other, andTipoo’s men came on with a heedless courage that Arthur could only admire. When they were no more than a hundred yards away Arthur reined Diomed in and shouted an order, straining his voice to be heard above the din of the charging enemy.

‘33rd! Halt! Make ready!’

On they came, now close enough for Arthur to make out individual features in the faces of the men gathering speed as they sprinted to close the distance with the thin line of redcoats.

‘Present!’

The glittering steel of the long barrels and the wicked spikes of the bayonets swept out towards the enemy. The lines were staggered so that the entire regiment would fire its volley as one. Just over sixty yards away the first of Tipoo’s soldiers missed a step as they eyed the wall of foreshortened musket barrels, and flinched before the imminent hail of lead shot.

‘Fire!’

The fizz from the priming pans was swallowed up in a great crash as flame stabbed from every musket in the regiment. Above the smoke, standing in his stirrups, Arthur saw the entire front of the enemy charge collapse as scores of men tumbled to the ground, or reeled back under the impact of the musket balls. So crushing was this first volley that the bodies of the dead and wounded formed a solid obstacle that stopped the charge in its tracks. More men slammed into the backs of those who had been forced to halt and knocked many more to the ground, in piles of tangled, struggling limbs.

‘Face front! . . . Advance!’

Arthur’s regiment marched forward, in step, towards the enemy, still trying to recover from the terrible effects of the volley fired at point-blank range. Now the relentless approach of the redcoats behind their gleaming bayonets proved to be too much for the nerves of the men who just a moment earlier had been charging towards the British line with such reckless exhilaration. Individuals, and then small groups, turned away and began to thrust back through the ranks of their comrades, fleeing up the slope. The sudden collapse in fighting spirit spread through the enemy like a wave and the entire formation broke and ran, many abandoning their weapons, and leaving their wounded comrades to their fate.

Arthur was about to order his men to charge when a pounding of hooves made him look to his right. Charging across the face of the slope was a brigade of cavalry from Harris’s column. Dragoons. Their sabres were out and flashing brilliantly in the sun as they charged home, tearing through Tipoo’s broken infantry and cutting them to pieces as they hacked and slashed at the men streaming up the hill.

‘33rd! Halt!’

With his regiment stilled, the rest of the units in the line caught up and took up their position on the flank. As the last of the cavalry continued the pursuit up the hill, Arthur turned his attention to the right flank. Baird’s brigade was still advancing and had pulled a short distance ahead of Arthur’s line.The centre regiment of the brigade, the King’s 74th Foot, was at the front of the line and as Arthur watched it broke into a trot as it neared the crest of the hill. Arthur frowned. The commander of the regiment was bound to get a roasting from Baird for letting his men disrupt the formation. Already, the tall figure of the brigade’s commander was visible galloping his mount forward to catch up with the 74th. But before Baird could reach them, the crest of the hill above was suddenly filled with horsemen as they poured forward, charging straight at the 74th. The regiment halted as one and just had time to loose off one volley before they were struck by the swarm of enemy cavalry. Arthur could just make out Baird as he reined in and took charge of his errant regiment. As the flanking regiments came forward they too were forced to halt and engage the enemy cavalry. The sounds of pistol and musket fire crackled across the slope of the hill and then Arthur saw that, behind the cavalry, a column of infantry had appeared. While their cavalry attacked the 74th they would have the chance to approach Baird’s infantry without coming under fire.Then it would be a question of hand to hand fighting in which the enemy would have a good chance of carrying off a victory against Baird’s men.