Rumours Of War

‘Return swords! Draw carbines!’

Out from the saddle buckets came the Paget carbines.

‘Load!’

Fortunate was the infantryman with his steady platform. Many a dragoon might have envied that as he took a cartridge from its pouch, bit off the end and clenched the ball between his teeth, struggling to keep his mount still as he tried to tip a little powder into the priming pan. Hervey, now in the front rank, drew his pistols ready-shotted. He looked left and right: one dragoon dropped a ball, cursed terribly and reached for another cartridge, but otherwise every man worked mechanically, and two hundred butts came to rest on the foreleg within an impressive ace of one another.

‘Front rank, present!’

A hundred barrels came up to the aim.

Hervey would swear he saw the chasseurs check. Yet at fifty yards surely the carbine could have little effect?

A few seconds more and they checked most decidedly; the trot faltered and then the whole line came to a halt.

Would they draw swords and charge? He thought they could do no other.

But the chasseurs made no motion. They stood as if on parade. Were they waiting for them to make the first move?

‘Sixth Light Dragoons, carry arms!’

As one, the carbines came down from the aim.

‘Sixth Light Dragoons, walk-march!’

That settled it! Reynell was not going to be bustled from the field. If the chasseurs wanted to wait out of carbine range then the regiment would close it. It was a bold move, an audacious move; some might say foolhardy. But Reynell would give no cause for complaint against the Sixth, off or on the field. No one, whatever Sir John Moore had them do in the days to come, would be able to say the Sixth lacked fight.

At forty yards Reynell held up his hand. ‘Halt!’

They all knew what would be the next order, but no man anticipated it. Strict drill was the imperative in the face of the enemy: a hundred carbines raised as one would have its effect.

But the Sixth faced not only a squadron. Beyond the stationary chasseurs, not a furlong away, looked the better part of a brigade. Hervey could not believe they had laboured a day and a night at the bridge when but a mile upstream, evidently, there was so serviceable a ford.

He made ready his holsters, and he had a mind to keep them open once he drew his pistols again, for there would be no time to spare before he needed a sabre in his hand to meet the charge.

‘Light Dragoons, present!’

Hervey levelled both pistols, his right hand through the reins, not a little anxious about his mare’s steadiness off the bit and a fusillade about to start her.

The pause was long. Or else it seemed to be. He held his breath.

But the chasseurs’ colonel simply brought the hilt of his sword to his lips, then down to his side.

Hervey heard the Frenchman call ‘retire’, and he heard the breath escaping from a dozen men around him. He felt relieved and cheated at the same time.

‘Carry carbines! Threes about!’

The ranks babbled with pride.

‘A good go, that, Mr Hervey, sir?’ came Armstrong’s cheery opinion.

‘Yes indeed, Corporal; very smart it was.’

But did the French not have the field now? Surely General Craufurd’s men could not have made it to Astorga yet? Hervey could not grasp what must be.

In two more furlongs he saw that Lord Paget had no intention of surrendering the field to the French. It even occurred to him that Paget had quite deliberately drawn the chasseurs across the Esla so as to be able to engage them on ground of his own choosing, with the river hemming them in. He had formed the Eighteenth at the narrowest point between the Esla and the birch wood that ran parallel to it, and Hervey saw their brigadier, Stewart, at the head, and the King’s Germans mustered with them. He could see too a squadron of the Tenth beyond, coming up fast from Benavente. He calculated Stewart would be able to dispose six hundred sabres, and only then did he realize that not only had Paget chosen his ground but he had fallen back onto his reserves. He smiled to himself; these were lessons that no amount of book-learning could take the place of.

The Sixth wheeled, tight, to halt rear of the Eighteenth, with the King’s Germans to their left and the Tenth’s squadron closing behind them to form a third, support, line.

There was no time for dressing. ‘The brigade will draw sabres and advance.’

General Stewart’s voice carried easily, but his trumpeter repeated the order.

‘Draw sabres!’

The rasping notice of a bloody fight put an edge to every nerve again. Hervey thrilled at the cautionary ‘brigade’, the first he had heard it – another of the rites of cavalry passage. No matter that the brigade numbered fewer sabres than the regiment had come to the Peninsula with; it would be an affair of four regiments.

‘Walk-march!’

The brigade advanced.

‘Trot!’

The horses stumbled and extended for a dozen yards until settling to the rhythm.

‘Gallop!’

Hervey could hear nothing but pounding hooves and NCOs cursing as they tried to keep the lines in decent shape. A dragoon on the left lost control of his trooper. It took off, flattening like a greyhound from the slips. Poor wretch, he thought, struggling himself to keep Stella in check: if he ever got back in one piece there would be the very devil to pay with his serjeant.

He did not hear General Stewart shout ‘Charge!’ Nor the bugle. But the hussars in front suddenly let go the check reins and thrust their sabres in the air, exactly as the manual prescribed.

‘Hold hard!’ bellowed Colonel Reynell, determined to keep the supports in hand. ‘Hold hard!’

Hervey held hard for all he was worth, first with one hand, then with two. He heard the carbines, saw the smoke, glimpsed the red plumes. And then it was a melee worse than Sahagun.

Reynell led the line straight in. Hervey reined hard right to drive deep into a gap, ready either to cut with his sabre or bring it to the guard if any should be bold enough to challenge. He saw a chasseur hacking at one of the Eighteenth’s men, lunged and brought his sabre down. Cut Two: left, diagonal right. He cleaved the head open from ear to chin.

There was no time to admire the work, nor to be repulsed by it; a sabre front nearside threatened the same to him. Up went his own to the Head Protect, blade horizontal across the top of his Tarleton, edge upwards, point left. Before he could lock his wrist the French sabre struck, driving his into the Tarleton’s mane. But it slid off Hervey’s blade and down, giving him the split-second’s advantage to follow through.

‘Left Give Point!’ he shouted, as if the master-at-arms were drilling him. It pierced the green chasseur cloth just above the kidneys. The man was dead in the saddle before Hervey could withdraw it.

It was an affair of minutes only. The work of the sword was exhausting as well as bloody, and the point at which men sensed the fight went against them came quickly. The French began breaking off. For them, now, it was flight, and for Stewart’s men pursuit. Chasseurs ran for the river as fast as their wearied horses could bear them. The pursuers spared them nothing unless they threw down their arms. Those who chose to dispute it and then at the last minute yield, found no quarter. The Sixth did not kill its captives, ever. But the interval between fighting and yielding could sometimes be too brief for blood to cool sufficiently. Hervey understood it now.

He galloped hard, no longer constrained to the supports, nor even to ride behind the brigadier. In the pursuit it mattered only that the enemy was given no chance to re-form. And that needed cold steel to press them. He gave Stella her head, and leaned as far forward in the saddle as the long stirrups allowed.