A distant crackling sound made Sharpe turn. The village of Fuentes de Onoro was a mile away now and the sound seemed to be coming from its narrow, death-choked streets where a plume of smoke climbed into the sky. More gunsmoke showed at the plateau's edge, evidence that the French were still attacking the village. Sharpe turned back to look at the tired, hot cavalrymen who spread across the plain. He was looking for grey uniforms and seeing none.
'Time to go, sir?' Hagman called, hinting that the riflemen would be cut off if Sharpe did not withdraw soon.
'Back we go,' Sharpe said. 'Run to that column.' He pointed to some Portuguese infantry.
They ran, easily reaching the Portuguese before a half-hearted pursuit of vengeful chasseurs could get close to the riflemen, but the chasseurs' small charge attracted a flow of other cavalrymen, enough to make the Portuguese column shake itself into square. Sharpe and his men stayed in the square and watched as the cavalry streamed around the battalion. Brigadier General Craufurd had also taken shelter in the square and now observed the surrounding French from under the battalion's colours. He looked a proud man, and no wonder. His division, which he had disciplined into becoming the best in all the army, was performing magnificently. They were outnumbered, they were surrounded, yet no one had panicked, not one battalion had been caught deployed in column, and not one square had been rattled by the horsemen's proximity. The Light had saved the Seventh Division and now it was saving itself with a dazzling display of professional soldiering. Pure drill was defeating French verve, and Massйna's attack, which had swept around the British right flank with overwhelming force, had been rendered utterly impotent. 'You like it, Sharpe?' Craufurd called from his horse.
'Wonderful, sir, just wonderful.' Sharpe's compliment was heartfelt.
'They're scoundrels,' Craufurd said of his men, 'but the devils can fight, can't they?' His pride was understandable, and it had even persuaded the irascible Craufurd to unbend and indulge in conversation. It was even a friendly conversation. 'I'll put a word in for you, Sharpe,' Craufurd said, 'because a man shouldn't be disciplined for killing the enemy, but I don't suppose my help will do you any good.'
'It won't, sir?'
'Valverde's an awkward bugger,' Craufurd said. 'He don't like the British, and he won't want Wellington given a Spanish Generalisimo's hat. Valverde reckons he'd make a better Generalisimo himself, but the only time the bugger fought the French he pissed his yellow pants yellower and lost three good battalions doing it. But it ain't about soldiering, Sharpe, it's about politics, all about damned politics, and the one thing every soldier should know is not to get tangled up in politics. Slimy bastards, politicians, should all be killed. Every last damned one of them. I'd tie the whole bloody pack of lying bastards to cannon muzzles and blow them away, blow them away! Fertilize a field with the bastards, dung the world with the breed. Them and lawyers.' The thought of the twin professions had put Craufurd into a bad mood. He scowled at Sharpe, then twitched his reins to take his horse back towards the battalion's colours. 'I'll speak for you, Sharpe.'
'Thank you, sir,' Sharpe said.
'Won't help you,' Craufurd said curtly, 'but I'll try.' He watched the nearest French cavalry move away. 'I think the buggers are looking for other meat,' he called to the Portuguese battalion's Colonel. 'Let's march on. Should be back in the lines for luncheon. Day to you, Sharpe.'
The Seventh Division had long reached the safety of the plateau and now the leading battalions of the Light Division climbed the slope under the protection of British artillery. The British and German cavalry, that had charged again and again to hold off the hordes of French horsemen, now walked their weary and wounded horses up the hill where riflemen with dried mouths and bruised shoulders and fouled rifle barrels trudged towards safety. The French horsemen could only watch their enemy march away and wonder why in over three miles of pursuit across country made by God for cavalrymen they had not managed to break one single battalion. They had succeeded in catching and killing a handful of redcoat skirmishers in the open land at the bottom of the ridge, but the overall price of the morning's fight had been dozens of dead troopers and scores of butchered horses.
The last of the Light Division columns climbed the hill beneath its colours where bands played to greet the battalion's return. The British army that had been so dangerously divided was now whole again, but it was still cut off from home and it still faced the larger of the two French attacks.
For in Fuentes de Onoro, whose streets were already choked with blood, a whole new French attack was following the drums.
Marshal Massйna felt annoyance as he watched the two parts of the enemy's army recombine. Good God, he had sent two divisions of infantry and all his cavalry and still they had let the enemy slip away! But at least all the British and Portuguese forces were now cut off from their retreat across the Coa so that now, when they were defeated, the whole of Wellington's army must try to find safety in the wild hills and deep gorges of the high borderland. It would be a massacre. The cavalry which had frittered away the morning so uselessly would hunt the survivors through the hills, and all that was needed to begin that wild and slaughterous chase was for Massйna's infantry to break through the last defences above Fuentes de Onoro.
The French now held the village and the graveyard. Their leading soldiers were just feet beneath the ridge's summit that was crowned with redcoats and Portuguese blasting volleys that foun-tained soil among the graves and rattled sharply against the village walls. The surviving Highlanders had retreated to the ridge with the Warwickshire men who had lived through the mauling fight in the streets and now they had been joined by Portuguese ca
Massйna now tried to make the victory certain by sending forward ten fresh battalions of infantry. Wellington, he knew, could defend the slope above the village only by bringing in men who were guarding other parts of the ridge. If Massйna could weaken another section of the ridge it would open an alternative path to the plateau, but to do that he must first turn the saddle of grassland above the village into a place of death. The French reinforcements crossed the plain in two great columns and their appearance provoked the fire of every British cannon on the ridge. Case shot slashed across the stream to burst in livid smoke, roundshot crashed through the ranks while shells lobbed from the short-barrelled howitzers fizzed to leave smoky trails arcing in the sky before cracking open in the columns' hearts.
Yet still the columns came. Drummer boys beat them on and the eagles showed bright above as they marched past the dead of the previous attacks. It seemed to some of the French that they walked towards the very gate of hell, towards a smoke-wreathed maw spitting flame and stinking from three days of death. To north and south the meadows lay in spring freshness, but on the banks of Fuentes de Onoro's stream there was nothing but blasted trees, burned houses, fallen walls, dead, dying and screaming men, and on the plateau's crest above the village there was just smoke and more smoke as the cannons and rifles and muskets hammered at the men waiting to make their huge assault.
The battle had been shrunken to this one place, to these last few feet of the slope above Fuentes de Onoro. It was midday and the sun was fierce and the shadows short as the ten new battalions broke their ranks to run through the gardens and down the eastern bank of the stream. They splashed through the water and ran up into streets choked with bloody bodies and groaning, slow-moving wounded men. The fresh attackers cheered as they ran, encouraging themselves and the waiting French infantry to one last, supreme effort. They filled the streets, then they burst in huge streams from the alley and laneway entrances at the top of the village, and there were so many attackers that the last of the newly arrived columns were still crossing the stream as the leading companies swarmed over the graveyard wall and up into the volley fire. Men fell to the allied volleys, but more men came behind to clamber over the dead and the dying and to struggle across the graves. Other men ran up the road alongside the cemetery. One whole battalion swerved to the right to fire up at the riflemen on the rocky knoll and their musket fire overwhelmed and drove the greenjackets back from the boulders. A Frenchman climbed to the knoll's summit where he waved his hat before pitching down with a rifle bullet in his lungs. More Frenchmen
