expected to die. He was sad about that, but his duty was to stay on his feet, to walk the line, to shout encouragement, and to wait for the canister or musket ball that must end his life. “Come cheer up, my lads!” he sang. “’Tis to glory we steer, to add something more to this wonderful year; to honor we call you, not press you like slaves, for who are so free as the sons of the waves?” A corporal fell back, brains spilling from his forehead. The man must have been dead, but his mouth still moved compulsively until Browne leaned down and pushed the chin gently up.
Blakeney, his adjutant, was still alive and, like Browne, miraculously unwounded. “Our brave allies,” Blakeney said, touching Browne’s elbow and gesturing back down the hill. Browne turned and saw that the Spanish brigade that had fled from the hill was resting not a quarter mile away, sitting in the dunes. He turned away. They would either come or not, and he suspected they would not. “Should I fetch them?” Blakeney asked, shouting over the noise of the guns.
“You think they’ll come?”
“No, sir.”
“And I can’t order them,” Browne said. “I don’t have the rank. And the bastards can see we need help and they ain’t moving. So let the buggers be.” He walked on. “You’re holding them, boys!” he shouted. “You’re holding them!”
And that was true. The French had broken Browne’s attack. They had shattered the red ranks, they had ripped the Gibraltar Flankers apart, but the French were not advancing down the slope to where Browne’s survivors would have made easy meat for their bayonets. They fired instead, tearing more bullets into the broken battalion while the redcoats, the men from Lancashire and the Holy Boys from Norfolk and the Silver Tails from Gloucestershire, shot back. Major Browne watched them die. A boy from the Silver Tails reeled back with his left shoulder torn away by the razor-edged remnants of the canister’s casing so that his arm hung by sinews and broken ribs poked white through the red mess of his shattered chest. He collapsed and began to gasp for his mother. Browne knelt and held the boy’s hand. He wanted to stanch the wound, but it was too big, so the major, not knowing how else to comfort the dying soldier, sang to him.
And at the foot of the hill, where the pine tree wood straggled to its end, General Dilkes’s brigade formed in two ranks. There was the second battalion of the First Foot Guards, three companies of the second battalion of the 3rd Foot Guards, two companies of riflemen, and half of the 67th Foot, which had somehow got tangled with Dilkes’s men and, rather than try to rejoin the rest of their battalion, had stayed to fight with the guardsmen and sweeps. General Dilkes drew his sword and twisted its tasseled pendant about his wrist. His orders were to take the hill. He looked up and saw the slope crawling with wounded men from Browne’s command. He also saw that his men were frighteningly outnumbered and he doubted that the French could be driven from the summit, but he had his orders. Sir Thomas Graham, who had given those orders, was close behind the bright colors of the 3rd Foot Guards, the Scotsmen, and now looked anxiously at Dilkes as if suspecting that he was delaying the order to attack. “Take them forward!” Dilkes said grimly.
“Brigade will advance!” the brigade major bellowed. A drummer boy gave a tap, then a roll, took a deep breath, and began beating the time. “By the center!” the brigade major shouted. “March!”
They climbed.
GENERAL LEVAL, while his colleague, General Ruffin, attacked the hill, advanced toward the pinewood. He had six battalions that, between them, had four thousand men who marched on a wide front. Leval kept two battalions behind the four who advanced in columns of divisions. French battalions had only six companies, and a column of divisions was two companies broad and three deep. Their drummers beat them on.
Colonel Wheatley had two thousand men to fight the four thousand and he began in disarray. His units had been in march order when the order to turn right and prepare to fight arrived, and there had been confusion among the pines. Two companies of Coldstream Guards were marching among Wheatley’s men, but there was no time to send them south to join Dilkes’s units, where they belonged, so they marched to battle under Wheatley. Half of the 67th from Hampshire was missing. Those five companies had found themselves under Dilkes’s command, while the remaining five companies were in their rightful place with Wheatley. It was, in short, chaos, and the thickness of the pines meant that battalion officers were unable to see their men, but the company officers and sergeants did their job and took the redcoats east through the trees.
The first to emerge from the pines were four hundred riflemen and three hundred Portuguese skirmishers who came at the run. Many of their officers were on horseback and the French, astonished to see an enemy come from the wood, thought cavalry was about to attack. That impression was strengthened when ten gun teams, totaling eighty horses, burst from the trees on the left of the French front. They followed a track that led to Chiclana, but once out of the trees they slewed hard right to throw up sand and dust. The nearest two French battalions, seeing only horses in the dust, formed square to repel cavalry.
The gunners jumped off the limbers, lifted the cannon trails, and aimed the barrels as the horses were taken back to the cover of the pines. “Use shell!” Major Duncan shouted. Shells were brought from limbers, and officers cut the fuses. They cut them short because the French were close. The French were also in sudden confusion. Two battalions had formed square, ready-to-receive, nonexistent cavalry, and the rest were hesitating when the British guns opened fire. Shells screamed across the three hundred yards of heath, each leaving its small wavering trail of fuse smoke, and Duncan, sitting his horse well to the side of the batteries so that their muzzle smoke did not hide his view, saw the blue-uniformed men knocked violently aside by the shells, then the explosions in the hearts of the squares. “Good! Good!” he shouted, and just then the skirmish line of riflemen and cacadores opened fire, their rifles and muskets crackling, and the French seemed to recoil from the fusillade. The front ranks of the columns returned the fire, but the skirmishers were scattered across the whole French front and were small targets for clumsy muskets, while the French were in close order and the rifles could hardly miss. The twin batteries on the right of the British line fired again. Then Duncan saw French horse teams being whipped across the heath. He counted six guns. “Load round shot!” he called. “Traverse right!” Men levered the cannon trails with handspikes to change their aim. “Hit their guns!” Duncan ordered.
The French were recovering now. The two battalions in square had realized their mistake and were deploying back into columns. Aides were galloping among the battalions, ordering them to march on, to fire, to break the thin skirmish line with concentrated volleys of musket fire. The drums began again, beating the pas de charge and pausing to let the men shout “Vive l’empereur!” The first effort was feeble, but officers and sergeants bellowed at the men to shout louder, and the next time the war cry was firm and defiant. “Vive l’empereur!”
“Tirez!” an officer shouted, and the front ranks of the 8th of the line poured a volley at the Portuguese skirmishers on their front. “Marchez! En avant!” Now was the time to accept the casualties and crush the skirmishers. The British cannon had switched their fire to the French battery, so no more shells slammed into the ranks. “Vive l’empereur!” The eight ranks behind the leading men of each column stepped over the dead and dying. “Tirez!” Another blast of musketry. Four thousand men were marching toward seven hundred. The French battery fired canister across the front of the columns and the grass bowed violently as though it were being swept by a sudden gust of wind. Portuguese cacadores and British riflemen were scooped up, bloodied and thrown down. The skirmish line was retreating now. The French muskets were too close and the six enemy cannon enfiladed them. There was a brief respite as the French gunners, about to be masked by the advancing columns, seized the drag ropes and, despite the round shot slamming about them, dragged their guns a hundred paces forward. They fired again and more skirmishers were turned to bloody rags. The French scented victory and the four leading battalions hurried. Their fire was ragged because it was hard to load while marching, and some men fixed bayonets instead. The British skirmishers ran back, almost to the wood’s edge. Duncan’s two left hand guns, seeing the danger, slewed around and blasted canister across the face of the nearest French battalion. Men in its leading ranks went down in a bloody haze as though a giant reaper’s hook had savaged them.
Then, suddenly, the wood’s edge was thick with men. The Silver Tails were on the left of Wheatley’s line and next to them were the two orphaned companies of Coldstreamers. Gough’s Irish were on the right of the Guards, then the remaining half of the 67th, and last, next to the guns, two companies of the Cauliflowers, the 47th.
“Halt!” The shouts echoed along the tree line.
“Wait!” a sergeant bellowed. Some men had raised their muskets.
“Wait for the order!”
“Form on your right! On your right!”
