roundshot through their ranks as they retreated, leaving a scatter of blue-uniformed bodies in their wake.
As the French passed out of range of the British guns, they fell silent one after another and the cavalry withdrew and re-formed further down the valley to wait for the next French attack. Somerset joined his commander shortly afterwards, his face ashen and streaked with grime from the powder smoke of the desperate fight down on the plain.
Arthur greeted him with a faint smile. ‘I was beginning to fear you might have become a casualty. Where have you been?’
‘I stayed with Mackenzie’s brigade through the attack, sir.’
‘Ah, yes, I must remember to tender my thanks to him. That was a fine stand he and his men made.’
‘Mackenzie is dead, sir.’
‘Dead?’ Arthur’s expression hardened. ‘A pity.’
Somerset cleared his throat and continued hoarsely. ‘Together with seven hundred of his men. Cameron is dead as well. He was shot on the other side of the Portina.’
‘I see.’ Arthur nodded sadly.‘This is only the start of a long list, I fear. But we have no time to mourn them now. Later, after the battle. The French may still be game enough for another attempt to break us.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Somerset stiffened his spine and sat as erect as he could in his saddle. ‘I understand.’
As he spoke there was a ripple of flashes along the French line as their cannon fired again, bombarding the men on the ridge and spread across the plain towards Talavera. It was late in the afternoon, and Arthur was reeling with exhaustion and a blinding headache from the glare of the day’s sunlight. He knew that his men must share his condition and would be in poor shape to continue the fight. As the sun sank towards the horizon behind the British, the shadow of the ridge stretched across the rolling landscape and over the French troops massed opposite. Even though the enemy guns continued firing, there was no sign of another attack. The enemy simply stood and waited as the light started to fail.
‘Do you think they will make another attempt tonight?’ asked Somerset.
‘It is likely,’ Arthur replied. ‘Hill’s division must stay in position in case they do. I’d be obliged if you would ride to him and let him know that he may stand his men down, but they must be ready to fight again at a moment’s notice.’
‘Very well, sir.’ Somerset saluted and turned his horse down the slope to Hill’s command post.
The French guns continued firing while there was light, and then fell silent. An uneasy stillness fell across the battlefield, and men whose ears had rung with the sound of cannon and muskets all day seemed stunned by the quiet of the gathering night. Only the faint cries of the wounded and the occasional whinny of stricken horses broke the spell. Then, as the men of the British army sat on the ground in their regiments, a faint glow flickered into life at the bottom of the ridge. Flames licked up amid the dry grass, and the fire quickly spread across the lower slopes. Some wadding from one of the French guns must have caused the blaze, Arthur realised. At first he welcomed the fire. It would show up any attempt by the enemy to take the ridge under cover of darkness, and possibly impede them. But then a thin wail of terror reached his ears. There were more cries for help and then screams of agony from lower down the slope.
‘It’s the wounded,’ Somerset said quietly.‘There must be hundreds of men out there, ours and theirs. We have to send men to save them, sir.’
‘No,’Arthur said firmly, and then swallowed to try to ease the dryness in his throat. ‘We cannot afford to have men looking for the wounded if there is another attack. There’s nothing we can do for them.’
As the fire spread the screams increased and cut through the night so that, even as exhausted as they were, few of the men on the ridge could sleep. Satisfied that there were no signs of a new attack being prepared by the enemy, Arthur made a quick tour of his command and offered words of encouragement to the gaunt figures he came across. Most of the men seemed too numb to continue the battle and when he returned to the ridge Arthur lay down on the ground and tried to rest. But his mind would not be still. When the morning came he had little doubt that his army would face another onslaught such as the one they had endured that day.
He rose just before dawn and stood, straining his eyes and ears for any indication that the French were preparing for another attack. As the eastern horizon grew more distinct the first bugles sounded from the French camp, and then the faint cries of command and the crack of whips as the artillery crews moved their guns.
The light continued to strengthen as Arthur tried to concentrate his thoughts on what needed to be done to prepare for the first attack. Then, as he stared towards the French positions, he frowned. The artillery batteries had gone. There were no lines of infantry and cavalry massing for attack. Only a handful of enemy horsemen remained on the far side of the Portina, keeping watch on the British line.
‘What the devil?’ For a moment Arthur was struck by a terrible anxiety as he wondered if the French were attempting to move through the hills to the north to try to cut him off from his lines of communication back to Portugal. Then, as the first rays of the sun filtered out across the landscape, he saw the French army. Dense columns of men, horses, cannon and wagons, marching to the east, back in the direction of Madrid. It was a while before his mind, dulled with exhaustion, finally grasped the truth.
‘They’re retreating . . . By God, they’re retreating,’ he muttered to himself. The British had won the battle after all. There was no elation in his heart. None. Only relief, and that soon faded as the morning light revealed the terrible cost of victory spread across the still smouldering lower slopes of the ridge and out on to the plain towards Talavera.
THE BATTLE OF WAGRAM
Chapter 8
‘This will do,’ Napoleon nodded. ‘Mark it down, Massйna.’
‘Yes, sire.’ Massйna took his pencil from behind his ear and carefully noted the location on the folded map he was holding, then quickly tucked it away again before they attracted the attention of the Austrian sentries on the opposite bank, scarcely a hundred paces away. Napoleon and Massйna had borrowed the jackets and caps of two sergeants and set out without an escort in order not to provoke scrutiny of their reconnaissance work.
They were selecting the sites for the series of pontoon bridges that were to be thrown across the final stretch of the Danube. The first attempt to cross at the end of May had ended in a humiliating reverse that had cost thousands of lives, including that of Marshal Lannes. Napoleon’s enemies across Europe had been greatly encouraged by the news from Austria. The only way to retrieve the situation was to deliver a crushing blow against Archduke Charles and his army.
The difficulty was that the Danube separated Napoleon from his prey. In addition, the Austrian army had erected a formidable array of field fortifications in a wide arc that stretched across most of the bank that faced Lobau. The enemy had made no moves to carry the fight to Napoleon and seemed content to sit and wait for him.
With all Europe watching the conflict, Napoleon was determined to make another attempt to cross the river, and this time the result would be very different.
Every soldier that could be spared had been summoned to Vienna, where the army steadily increased in size until over a hundred and sixty thousand men had gathered to take part in the attack on Archduke Charles. The troops left to guard the army’s communications with France were thinly stretched and if only one more of the European powers chose to intervene on the side of Austria then there would be little to stand in their way.
Meanwhile Lobau was turned into a fortress. By the end of June over a hundred and thirty cannon were sited in batteries covering the far bank. Two strong bridges had been constructed across the main channel of the Danube as well as three new pontoon bridges. Stakes had been driven into the river bed upstream of the bridges to ensure that they would be protected from any Austrian fireships or floating rams. There was to be no dependence on a single, vulnerable bridge across the river this time.
The enemy had made no attempt to intervene. The French had even managed to land a force across the river to seize the salient on which the hamlet of Mьhlau stood. Within hours the French engineers had thoroughly fortified
