A Close Run Thing

so loud that it made the horses start even on this distant flank. Nero all but threw his rider, who had dropped the reins to record some detail in his sketchbook. Though Hervey could not see the guns because of the lie of the land and the smoke now drifting across the valley — nor, indeed, any fall of shot — he concluded somehow that the cannonade was directed on the centre of the line. To what purpose, however, he could not immediately discern. Canning, too, thought they must be directed at the very place they had bivouacked. ‘Why do they pound the centre, sir? Do they expect the duke will reinforce it?’

‘That could be so, yes, but it is now so late in the day that Bonaparte is chancing much by doing so. It will be telling with what he follows, for it is the very devil of a hard pounding.’

‘Will not all the infantry in the centre be carried away by shot?’ asked Canning incredulously.

‘If they were to stand in its way, yes,’ replied Hervey, ‘but the duke will have disposed them on the reverse of the slope. They will be sorely plagued there, but by no means as ill as if on the for’ard.’

Canning nodded, feeling foolish for not having come to that conclusion for himself. But the cannonading continued longer than ever Hervey had supposed likely — for a full half-hour or more. And the sound of the guns carried to Brussels, where the doors and windows shook, and to Antwerp. And even across the Channel to Kent where two days later, before news of the battle reached England, the Kentish Gazette would report that ‘A heavy and incessant firing was heard from this coast on Sunday evening in the direction of Dunkirk’.

‘Hervey, how will the French attack?’ asked Canning at length.

Hervey at first confessed himself puzzled. ‘Yet if they do assault the centre they must first break up the duke’s line, for the musketry of those battalions would be too great for advancing infantry to withstand. He may suppose, of course, that his artillery has shaken our infantry so badly that they will not stand. Bonaparte has, too, a fairish quantity of heavy cavalry, and if these move against the centre, then the brigades will have to form square, thereby reducing the number of muskets that can be brought to bear. He must support them with horse batteries, of course, or our own cavalry and artillery would frustrate him. But if he followed up at once with infantry in large numbers he might gain the crest.’

‘And what should we do then?’

‘Our orders are to stay in this place,’ replied Hervey cautiously. ‘And, indeed, if we abandon it, the French might very well take advantage and turn our flank, though I still cannot see how they dare risk doing so with the Prussians so close.’

‘Where are the Prussians, then, sir?’ asked Canning ingenuously.

‘We may be sure they are making best speed towards us, Canning. Do not be affeard of that.’

‘But, sir, if the French were about to gain the crest in the centre, what would be the good of our remaining here? Surely—’

‘Canning, your shrewdness does you credit, for that is the very question on which the battle might turn. And that is why we have generals.’

‘I see, sir,’ replied the cornet, reassured, while Hervey merely lapsed into thoughtful silence.

A quarter of an hour passed. Little could they make of what was happening in the centre because of the dense clouds of smoke drifting across the valley. But then, between the thunderous volleys, there came a different sound: cheering, shouting, drums, and soon, quite distinctly, although almost a mile away, cries of ‘Vive l’empereur!’ And as the cannonading fell away the distinctive beat of the drums could be made out: rum-dum, rum-dum, rummadum dummadum, dum, dum.

‘What is that, Hervey?’ asked Canning with a look of alarm.

‘It is called the pas de charge,’ he replied ominously, peering through his telescope, though still the powder-smoke was too thick to see whence the drumming came. And then the smoke cleared enough for there to be no doubt. ‘See there, Canning! That is how the French will attack — nay, do attack!’

Canning put his own telescope to his eye and gasped. ‘But …’

‘But what?’ said Hervey briskly.

‘But they come in great columns, like Greek phalanxes. And the cavalry — 1 can see lancers and cuirassiers — they are on the flanks. You said they must first make our infantry form square!’

‘Then, if our centre is intact, they will pay dearly. How fast can our infantry volley?’

‘I confess I do not know, sir, for I have never seen them,’ Canning replied sheepishly.

‘Twice in a minute. And they do so in two ranks only, instead of three, unlike every other army in the field: hence the duke can dispose of such a long line. How many do you count in those French columns?’

‘I cannot rightly see, for there are so many …’

Hervey peered even more intently through his telescope as the clouds of smoke cleared, the massed battery having halted its bombardment. ‘Well, Canning, unless I am very much mistaken those are not battalion but divisional columns. They will be even more susceptible to fire.’

Canning continued to study them. ‘But there seem to be hundreds so tight-packed that—’

‘That ball and case would ravage them. Ay, indeed, and our infantry will enfilade them, too. In those French divisions there are probably eight battalions — six hundred men to a battalion. They’ll front two hundred, twenty- five ranks deep or more.’

‘But why …?’

‘Suppose yourself for a moment to be standing in the path of one of those columns. Might you not be intimidated?’

‘Yes, sir, I fancy that I might.’

‘Well, that is how Bonaparte has swept so many from the field these past years. I tell you, Canning, it takes nerves of steel to stand your ground before such a machine!’

Hervey and Canning (every man in the Sixth, indeed) now watched with a mixture of exhilaration and dread as three divisional columns — all of fourteen thousand men — marched up the slope, astride the Brussels high road, towards the strongest part of the duke’s line, while a fourth veered towards Papelotte farm and the Nassauers below. Hervey could not at first believe it — a frontal assault, no manoeuvre, and this from the greatest proponent of that art in Europe! He felt somehow cheated that in their first direct encounter with Bonaparte they faced the tactics of the battering ram.

But with what magnificence did that assault unfold! The drums kept up the pas de charge, almost as intimidating as the cannon fire, which had now ceased. The solid ranks of Bonaparte’s blue-coated infantry, with their whitened crossbelts, forced their way through the uncut rye which covered the slopes. The duke’s guns began now to play on them, and gaps opened, to be sealed almost at once as the ranks closed up and pressed resolutely forward. A furious fire erupted from Papelotte farm below where the Sixth stood, as the Nassauers poured volley after volley into the column as it engulfed the buildings. Further towards the centre, Bylandt’s Dutch-Belgian brigade broke and fled, but the Cameron Highlanders, behind, rallied and met the French with a storm of musketry which kept them from making any progress beyond the crest. Not a man in the Sixth could have relished the situation of the duke’s infantry, yet their enforced inactivity made them fretful once more. Might they not have harried the columns at least? The dragoons began cursing, and even the horses champed at their bits.

But it seemed to Hervey, as he peered ever more intently through his telescope, that the momentum of the French attacks was broken. Some of the columns were at a standstill, and he could even see red-coated infantry on the forward slopes by La Haye Sainte. And then came a sight that at once both thrilled and agonized him in equal measure, for at that moment there was nowhere for a cavalryman to be but with the dense host of scarlet-coated horsemen, the Union and Household brigades with Uxbridge himself at the head, as they poured over the crest and down into the valley to set about the reeling columns. In an instant the greatest of battles would be over, and without the Sixth so much as drawing swords!

The ground shook with the thundering hoofs of heavy horses. He saw the Greys, their mounts so conspicuous amongst the browns and blacks of the other regiments, the tall bearskins of the dragoons themselves distinctive even at that distance. They were having the best of it, scything through the disintegrating ranks of French infantry and over-running an artillery battery which had misjudged its withdrawal! He saw their heavy sabres rising and falling — again and again and again — as they cut the gunners down. But then beyond he saw also what the Greys evidently had not — lancers and cuirassiers, in prodigious numbers, moving to the counter-charge, and he cursed the unfledged heavies, blind in their ardour. They would hear of the duke’s displeasure soon enough if they