There was no sense in inviting battle from a much stronger enemy; it was better to delay any fighting in the hope of more allied troops arriving to even the numbers who faced each other south of Frasnes.
The sky above Quatre Bras was dirtied by the camp-fires, but to the east the rising sun betrayed a much vaster quantity of rising woodsmoke. That larger smear in the sky showed where the Prussian army faced the main force of the French and where the day’s real battle would be fought. The French would be trying to defeat the Prussians before the British and Dutch could come to their aid, while the Prussians, to be certain of victory, needed Wellington’s troops to march from Quatre Bras and assault the Emperor’s left flank. But that rescue mission had been stopped dead by the presence of the twenty thousand Frenchmen encamped in Frasnes who had been sent by the Emperor to make sure that the allied armies did not combine. All that the French needed to do was take the crossroads at Quatre Bras. Sharpe reckoned it could not take the enemy longer than an hour to overrun the fragile line of Dutch-Belgian troops, and in one further hour they could have fortified the crossroads to make them impassable to the British.
The French were thus one hour from victory; just one hour from separating the allied armies, yet as the sun climbed higher and as the smoke of the dying fires thinned, the French made no move to advance on the crossroads. They did not even follow the retreating Dutch skirmishers, but seemed content to let the morning’s skirmish die to nothing. Sharpe looked to the north and west, searching for the tell-tale drifts of dust that would speak of reinforcements hurrying towards the threatened crossroads. No dust showed above the roads yet, evidence that the French had plenty of time to make their attack.
The Prince of Orange arrived three hours after dawn, excited at the prospect of action. “Morning, Sharpe! A bright one, isn’t it! Rebecque, all well?”
Rebecque attempted to tell the Prince how his troops were deployed, but the Prince was too restless merely to listen. “Show me, Rebecque, show me! Let’s go for a gallop. All of us!” He gestured to his whole staff who dutifully fell in behind Rebecque and the Prince as they spurred away from the crossroads,towards the south. The Prince waved happily at a party of soldiers who drew water from the stream, then twisted in his saddle to shout at Sharpe. “I expected to see you at the ball last night, Sharpe!”
“I arrived very late, sir.”
“Did you dance?”
“Regrettably not, sir.”
“Nor me. Duty called.” The Prince galloped past the deserted Gemioncourt farm, through a bivouacked Dutch brigade, and did not rein in till he had passed the forward Dutch picquets and could see clear down the paved highway into the village of Frasnes. There had to be some enemy skirmishers close by, yet the Prince blithely ignored their threat. His staffofficers waited a few yards to the rear as the young man stared towards the enemy encampment. “Sharpe?”
Sharpe walked his horse forward. “Sir?”
“How many of the devils are facing us, would you say?”
Very few enemy troops were actually in sight. A battery of guns stood at the edge of the village, some cavalry horses stood unsaddled in the street beyond, and a battalion of infantry was bivouacked in a field to the right of the guns, but otherwise the enemy was hidden, and so Sharpe stuck with his earlier estimate. “Twenty thousand, sir.”
The Prince nodded. “Just what I’d say. Splendid.” He smiled genially at Sharpe. “And just when are you going to appear in a Dutch uniform?”
Sharpe was taken aback. “Soon, sir.”
“Soon? I’ve been requesting that small courtesy for weeks! I want to see you in proper uniform today, Sharpe, today!“ The Prince shook an admonishing finger at the Rifleman then took out his telescope to stare at the battery of French guns. It was hard to see what calibre the cannon were for the air was already hot enough to shimmer and blur the details df the far guns. ”It’s going to be a hot day,“ the Prince complained. His yellowish skin glistened with sweat. He was in a blue uniform coat that was thickly encrusted with gold loops and edged with black astrakhan fur. At his hip hung a massively heavy sabre with an ivory hilt. The Prince’s vanity had made him dress for a winter’s campaign on what threatened to be the summer’s hottest day yet.
The sultry air pressed heavily on the men who guarded the farms that marked the perimeter of the Dutch position. If that perimeter was broken, there was still the Gemioncourt farm by the ford which could be an anchor to a defensive line, but once Gemioncourt was captured there was nothing between the French and the crossroads. Sharpe prayed that the French would go on waiting, and that the British troops who were marching desperately to reinforce the outnumbered defenders at Quatre Bras reached the crossroads in time.
By eight o’clock the French had still not attacked. At nine o’clock the Dutch troops still waited. Atten the Duke of Wellington reached the crossroads and, content that nothing yet threatened the Dutch troops, galloped eastwards to find the Prussians.
The morning inched onwards. It seemed impossible that the French still hesitated. At intervals an enemy horseman might appear at the edge of the village to gaze through a spyglass at the Dutch positions, but no attacks followed such reconnaissances, no skirmishers wormed their way through the fields, and no cannon crashed shell or roundshot at the fragile Dutch lines.
At midday the French still waited. The heat was now oppressive. The western clouds had thickened and the old wounds in Sharpe’s leg and shoulder began to ache; a sure prophecy of rain. He lunched with the Prince of Orange’s staff in the remains of an orchard behind the farm at the crossroads. Harper, of whose status none of the Dutch was quite certain, shared the princely cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs and red wine. The Prince, momentarily forgetting his orders for Sharpe to change into Dutch uniform, dominated the luncheon conversation as he eagerly expressed his wish that the French would attack before the Duke returned from his meeting with the Prussians, for then the Prince could defeat the enemy with only the help of his faithful Dutch troops. The Prince dreamed of a great Netherlands victory, with himself as its hero. He saw pliant girls offering him the laurels of victory before they fainted before his conquering feet. He could not wait to begin such a triumph, and prayed that the French would offer him the chance of glory before the arrival of any British reinforcements.
And in the early afternoon, and before the hurrying British reinforcements could reach the crossroads, the Prince’s wish was granted. An enemy cannon banged its signal.
And the French, at last, were advancing to battle.
“Was that a gun? I swear that was a gun. Would you say that was a gun, Vine?” Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Ford, commanding officer of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, twisted in his saddle and stared anxiously at his senior Major who, because he was deaf, had heard nothing. Major Vine, thus unable to confirm or deny the sound which had so alarmed his Colonel, merely offered a bad-tempered scowl as a reply, so Colonel Ford looked past him to seek the opinion of the Captain of his light company. “Was that a gun, d’Alembord? Would you say that was a gun?”
D’Alembord, his head aching with hangover, still wore his white dancing breeches and buckled shoes from the night before. He did not want to speak to anyone, let alone Ford, but he made an effort and confirmed that the Colonel had indeed heard a cannon’s report, but very far away and with its sound much muted by the humid air.
“We’re going to be late!” Ford worried.
Just at this moment d’Alembord did not care how late they would be. He just wanted to lie down somewhere very dark and very cool and very silent. He wished the Colonel would go away, but he knew Ford would keep pestering until he received some reassurance. “The brigade marched on time, sir,” he told the worried Ford, “and no one can expect more of us.”
“There’s another gun! D’you hear it, Vine? There! And another! ’Pon my soul, d’Alembord, but it’s begun, it’s begun indeed!“ Ford’s eyes, behind their small thick spectacles, betrayed excited alarm. Ford was a decent man, and a kind one, but he had a worrying nervousness that aggravated d’Alembord’s patience. The Colonel fretted about the opinions of senior officers, the diligence of his junior officers, and the loyalty of his non-commissioned officers. He worried about the spare ammunition, about the ability of the men to hear orders in battle, and about the morality of the wives who followed the marching column like a gypsy rabble. He agonized about losing his spectacles, for Ford was as short-sighted as a mole, and he worried about losing his battalion’s colours, and about losing his hair. He was ever anxious about the weather and, when he could think of nothing else to be anxious about, he became worried that he must have forgotten something important that should have been causing him worry.
