Prussian cavalry scouts reached Plancenoit, a village that lay just a cannon-shot behind the French right flank. Far to the east of Plancenoit, yet clearly visible to the French staff officers, were columns of Prussian infantry.
The presence of Blucher’s men spelt the failure of the Emperor’s strategy; the two armies had not been prised apart, yet their new conjunction was tenuous and the Prussians were not yet advancing in overwhelming force, but only in a fragile line of march. It would take hours for them to assemble an attack, and in those hours the Emperor knew he could break the British before turning on the Prussians.
The destruction of the British needed to be absolute and certain. An attack by a corps of infantry had failed, and Marshal Ney had broken the cavalry in futile onslaughts on the British squares, so now the Emperor stirred himself to bring order to the chaotic assaults. The greatest part of his infantry was still uncommitted, and among them was the elite of his army. The Emperor’s own Imperial Guard was waiting.
No man but a veteran who had displayed uncommon valour in the Empire’s battles could join the Guard. Guardsmen were paid more than other troops, and uniformed in more splendour. In return, more was expected of them, yet the Guard had always given it. The Guard had never been defeated. Other French troops might grumble at the Guard’s privileges, but when the bearskins and long coats marched, victory was certain. The Guards wore side-whiskers and moustaches, ear-rings and powdered pigtails as marks of their prowess. To be a Grenadier of the Guard a man had to be six feet tall, an elite of an elite.
The Guard were the Emperor’s ‘immortals’, passionate in their loyalty to him, and fearsome in battle for him. When Bonaparte had been defeated and sent to Elba the Guard had been ordered to disband, but rather than surrender their colours they had burned the silk flags, crumbled the ash into wine, and drunk the mixture. Some of the immortals had gone into exile with their Emperor, but now they had returned and been reunited with their old comrades and been given new colours to fly beneath new Eagles. The Guard was the elite, the undefeated, the immortals of the Empire, and the Guard would deliver the final lethal blow that would obliterate the British.
But not yet. It was only six o’clock, there were more than three hours of daylight left, and the Prussians were far from ready to fight, so there was time for the Emperor to wear the British down yet further. He ordered the Guard to prepare itself for battle, but not to advance beyond La Belle Alliance. Then, contemplating the smoking ruin that had been a valley of farmland, he stared fixedly at La Haye Sainte. That farm was the bone sticking in the French craw. The Riflemen behind its walls were raking the flank of every French attack, and protecting the batteries at the centre of the British line. The farm must be taken so the British line would be stretched ever more thinly, and then the Guard would ram home the victory.
The Emperor had stirred himself, and now the British would learn just how he could fight.
All along the British line the flail of the cannon-fire struck and killed. The British battalions were ordered to lie down, but the French gunners had the range to perfection now and their round-shot skimmed the ridge to plough bloody furrows through the prone ranks. British guns were shattered; their barrels blasted off carriages and their wheels splintered. Shells exploded on the ridge to add their burden of smoke to the thickening air. Burning ammunition wagons added their stench to the sour smell of blood.
This was how an emperor fought. He would kill and kill and kill with his guns, and when the British were screaming to be released from the torrent of death he would send their quietus in the hands of his immortals.
The air quivered with the impact of the guns. Sharpe, abandon-ing his mare into Harper’s care, walked forward from the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers as far as the ridge’s crest where the percussion of the heavy French artillery was like a succession of physical punches in the belly. The roundshot plucked at the thick skeins of smoke, grazed the ridge to fleck the sky with mud, then screamed and whined and hummed and crashed home behind him. In twenty-two years Sharpe had never known a cannonade like it, nor had he ever breathed air so heated and thickened by smoke and flame that to stand at the valley’s rim was like facing the open door of some gigantic and red-hot kiln. The rye crop on the crest, where it had not been obliterated into quagmire, had been trampled to the consistency of the woven mats he remembered from India.
A shell traced its trail of smoke over his head. A roundshot ricocheted up from the ridge a dozen yards to his left. To his right, where the cavalry had advanced to their vain attacks, the slope was a horror of dead horses and men. A yellow dog dragged a length of gut from a corpse, though whether it was of man or beast Sharpe could not tell.
Beyond the slaughtered cavalry Sharpe could see the smoke illuminated by the flaring glow made by the burning chateau of Hougoumont. He could see nothing in the smoke to his left. Behind Sharpe the red-coated battalions had been deployed into line again, but all were lying flat so that for a strange moment he had the impression that he was the only man left alive on all the battlefield.
Then, in the valley’s smoke in front of him, he saw more live men; thousands of live men, skirmishers, Frenchmen, a swarm of Voltigeurs running forward in loose order and Sharpe knew that added to the ordeal of cannon-fire the battalions must now endure an onslaught of musketry. He turned and shouted a warning. “Skirmishers!”
The British light companies ran forward to take their places on the forward slope, but they were horribly outnumbered. Peter d’Alembord persuaded Ford to release a second company, and sent Harry Price’s men to face the Voltigeurs. Price had been a skirmisher himself once, and understood what was needed, but not all the skirmishers in Wellington’s army could have defeated such an overwhelming number of French Voltigeurs. Behind the French skirmishers were the remnants of their cavalry who had been advanced to check any British cavalry charge that might threaten the loose formation of Voltigeurs.
Peter d’Alembord had brought the two companies forward himself and, once they were deployed, he crossed to Sharpe’s side. The two officers strolled half-way down the forward slope, then stopped to stare at the vast spread of enemy troops. “Not a very encouraging sight,” d’Alembord said quietly.
The first muskets spat, yet for every British shot, two or three French muskets replied. To Sharpe’s left some Riflemen held up the French advance for a few moments, but the French overwhelmed them with musketry and the Greenjackets were forced back, leaving three men dead in the mud.
D’Alembord’s men were similarly suffering. “We’re going to have to let them take the slope!” he said to Sharpe, instinctively seeking the Rifleman’s approval.
“You haven’t much choice, Peter.” Sharpe was on one knee, his rifle at his shoulder. He fired at a French sergeant, but the muzzle smoke prevented him from seeing whether the bullet hit. He began to reload. A hundred yards to his right a line of Frenchmen was already near the ridge’s crest. Peter d’Alembord’s two companies were temporarily holding the skirmishers in their front, but they would soon be outflanked, and even as Sharpe rammed his next bullet home he saw a rush of blue-uniformed men force back a section of Harry Price’s company. Bullets were hissing and thrumming near Sharpe, presumably attracted by the sight of the two officers so close together.
Sharpe, his rifle reloaded, ran a few paces to his right, dropped to his knee, and looked for an enemy officer.
D’Alembord gave the smallest gasp. “Oh, God!”
“What is it?”
“Jesus Christ!” The blasphemy was uttered more in anger than in pain. D’Alembord had been hit, and the force of the blow had knocked him backwards, but he had somehow kept his footing even though the bullet had struck his right thigh. Now he staggered with his right hand clamped over the wound. Blood was seeping through his fingers. “It’s all right,” he said to Sharpe, “it doesn’t hurt.” He tried to take a pace forward, and almost fell. “It’s all right.” His face had gone pale with shock.
“Here!” Sharpe put an arm under d’Alembord’s shoulder and half carried him and half walked him up the slope.
D’Alembord was hissing with every step. “I’ll be all right. Leave me!”
“Shut up, Dally!”
Harper saw them as they crossed the ridge’s crest and galloped forward with Sharpe’s horse. “Take him back to the surgeons!” Sharpe called up to the Irishman, then gave d’Alembord a mighty heave that swung him painfully into the empty saddle. “Wrap your sash round the wound!” Sharpe told d’Alembord, then slapped the mare’s rump to speed her out of range of the skirmishers’ fire.
Sharpe turned back to the heated, choking air in the valley. The French were pressing everywhere. More frightening still, a column of enemy troops was marching towards La Haye Sainte, but that was not Sharpe’s
