For he had seen the grey uniforms. Loup was here after all and his brigade was a part of Massйna's army which had spent the whole day preparing for the attack that would surely come with the returning sun.
Sharpe watched his enemy, then straightened from the gun barrel and closed the glass. His head spun with the effects of the wine, but he was not so drunk that he did not feel a shudder of fear as he thought of what would come across those cannon-scarred fields when the sun next shone on Spain.
Tomorrow.
CHAPTER IX
The horsemen came out of the mist like creatures from nightmare. The Frenchmen rode big horses that galloped through the marshland to explode water with every stride, then the leading squadrons reached the higher ground about the village of Nave de Haver where the Spanish partisans had bivouacked and the sound of the French cavalry's hooves turned into a thunder that shook the earth itself. A trumpet urged the horsemen on. It was dawn and the sun was a silver disc low in the fogbank that veiled the eastern fields from which death was erupting.
The Spanish sentinels fired one hasty volley, then retreated before the overwhelming enemy numbers. Some of the partisans were asleep after standing guard through the night, and they woke only to stumble out from their requisitioned houses and be cut down with slashing blades and dipping lance heads. The partisan brigade had been placed in Nave de Haver to watch the allies' southern flank and no one had expected them to face a full French attack, but now the heavy cavalry was streaming in through the alleys and crashing their big horses through the gardens and orchards beside the huddle of houses that lay so far to the south of Fuentes de Onoro. The partisan commander shouted at his men to withdraw, but the French were slashing at defenders as they frantically tried to reach their frightened horses. Some men refused to retreat, but ran at the enemy with all the passionate hatred of the guerrillero. Blood spilt on the streets and splashed on the house walls. One street was blocked when a Spaniard shot a dragoon's horse and the beast fell thrashing to the cobbles. The Spaniard bayoneted the rider, then was hurled backwards as a second horse, unable to stop its charge, tripped and stumbled over the bleeding corpses. A knot of Spaniards fell on the second horse and its rider. Knives and swords hacked down, then more partisans scrambled over the dying, bloody beasts to fire a volley at the milling riders trapped by the carnage. More Frenchmen fell from their saddles, then a troop of lancers entered the street behind the Spanish defenders and the lance heads dropped to the level of a man's waist as the horses were spurred forward. The Spaniards, trapped between dragoons and lancers, tried to fight back, but now it was the turn of the French to be the killers. A few partisans escaped through the houses, but only to find the streets beyond the back doors were also filled with blood-crazed horsemen in glittering uniforms being urged to the slaughter by the frantic, joyous notes of the trumpeters.
Most of Nave de Haver's Spanish defenders fled into the mists west of the village where they were pursued by cuirassiers in high black-plumed helmets and shining steel breastplates. The big swords hacked down like meat axes; one such blow could cripple a horse or crush a man's skull. To the north and south of the cuirassiers, troops of lightly mounted chasseurs а cheval raced like steeplechasers to cut off the Spaniards. They whooped hunting calls. The chasseurs carried light, curved sabres that slashed wicked wounds across their enemies' heads and shoulders. Unhorsed Spaniards reeled in agony across the meadows and were ridden down by horsemen practising their sword cuts or lance thrusts. Dismounted dragoons hunted through the houses and cattle sheds of Nave de Haver, finding the survivors one by one and shooting them with carbines or pistols. One group of Spaniards took refuge in the church, but the copper-helmeted dragoons forced their way in through the priest's door at the back of the sacristy and fell on the defenders with swords. It was Sunday morning and the priest had hoped to say a Mass for the Spanish troops, but now he died with his congregation as the French ransacked the small, blood-soaked church for its plate and candlesticks.
A French work party dragged the corpses out of the village's main street so that the advancing artillery could pass through. It took half an hour's work before the guns could crash and rattle between the blood-splashed houses. The first guns were the light and mobile cannon of the horse artillery; six-pounder guns dragged by horses ridden by gunners resplendent in gold and blue uniforms. Larger cannons were coming behind, but the horse artillery would lead the attack on the next village upstream where the British Seventh Division had taken its position. Infantry columns followed the horse artillery, battalion after battalion marching beneath their gilded eagles. The mist was burning off to show a village smoking with abandoned cooking fires and reeking of blood where the victorious dragoons were remounting their horses to join the pursuit. Some of the infantry tried to march through the village, but staff officers forced them to go around Nave de Haver's southern flank so that none of the battalions would be slowed by plundering. The first aides galloped back to Massйna's headquarters to say that Nave de Haver had fallen and that the village of Poco Velha, less than two miles upstream, was already under artillery fire. A second division of infantry marched to support the men who were already turning the allies' southern flank and were now marching due north towards the road that led from Fuentes de Onoro to the fords across the River Coa.
Opposite Fuentes de Onoro itself the French main gun batteries opened fire. The cannon had been dragged to the tree line and roughly embrasured with felled trunks to give their crews some protection from the British guns on the ridge. The French fired common shell, iron balls filled with a fused powder charge that cracked apart in a burst of smoke to shatter the casing on the plateau's skyline, while short-barrelled howitzers lobbed shells into the broken streets of Fuentes de Onoro to fill the village with the stench of burned powder and the rattle of exploded iron. During the night a battery of mixed four- and six-pounder guns had been moved into the gardens and houses on the stream's eastern bank and those guns opened up with roundshot that cracked fiercely on the defenders' walls. The voltigeurs in the gardens fired at British loopholes and cheered whenever a roundshot brought down a length of wall or collapsed a broken roof onto a room of crouching redcoats. A shell set light to some collapsed thatch and the flames crackled up to spread thick smoke across the upper village where riflemen sheltered behind the cemetery's gravestones. French shells drove into the burial ground, overturning headstones and grubbing up the earth around the graves so that it looked as though a herd of monstrous pigs had been truffling the soil to reach the buried dead.
The British guns returned a sporadic fire. They were holding the bulk of their ammunition for the moment when the French columns were launched across the plain towards the village, though every now and then a case shot exploded at the tree line to make the French gunners duck and curse. One by one the aim of the French guns was shifted from the ridge onto the burning village where the spreading smoke gave evidence of the damage being done. Behind the ridge the redcoat battalions listened to the cannonade and prayed they would not be asked to go down into the maelstrom of fire and smoke. Some chaplains raised their voice over the sound of the cannon as they read Morning Prayer to the waiting battalions. There was a comfort in the old words, though some sergeants barked at the men to mind their damned manners when they tittered at the line in the day's epistle which enjoined the congregation to abstain from fleshly lusts. Then they prayed for the King's Majesty, for the royal family, for the clergy, and only then did some chaplains add a prayer that God would preserve the lives of His soldiers on this Sabbath day on the border of Spain.
Where, three miles south of Fuentes de Onoro, the cuirassiers and chasseurs and lancers and dragoons were met by a force of British dragoons and German hussars. The horsemen clashed in a sudden and bloody mкlйe. The allied horse were outnumbered, but they were properly formed and fighting against an enemy force strung out by the excitement of the pursuit. The French faltered, then retreated, but on either flank of the allied squadrons other French horsemen raced ahead to where two battalions of infantry, one British and one Portuguese, waited behind the walls and hedges of Poco Velha. The British and German cavalry, fearing that they would be surrounded, hurried out of danger's way as the excited French horse ignored them and charged at the village's defenders instead.
'Fire!' a caзador colonel shouted and ragged smoke whiplashed from the garden walls. Horses screamed and fell, while men were plucked backwards from saddles as the musket and rifle balls cracked straight through the cuirassiers' steel breastplates. There was a frantic trumpet call and the charging French horse checked, turned and rode back to re-form, leaving behind a tideline of struggling horses and bleeding men. More French horsemen were arriving to join the attack; imperial guardsmen mounted on big horses and carrying carbines and swords,
