Kings and Emperors (37 page)

I'm
such
a sham,
he told himself;
but I've gotten good at it, play-actin' for people's benefit, by now
.
They
all
are,
he thought, glancing down the company front to see how the soldiers were taking the French approach. Everyone in sight, even the French, were playing bold and brave! There were some pale faces, some gulps of awe, and some fondling of talismans, but they
looked
ready.

What a
damn-fool
idea this is,
he further thought, shaking his head over his stupidity for coming ashore;
this is the
last
time I take part in a shore battle! By choice, I hope!

He reached the left flank of the infantry company, into open ground where one of the sheltering companies would form when called up to the line. It felt very lonely and vulnerable to be out there on his own, of a sudden, and he understood a common soldier's assurance of having others at his sides, and his rear-rank man backing him up.

Boom-boom-boom, buh-buh-buh-boom-boom-boom “Vive l'Empereur!”
; it was very close now, the nearest column panting and gasping for air as it struggled to climb the slope to the British lines. Musketry erupted downslope from the skirmishing companies as they fired, then fell back, re-loading on the go. The front of the column looked to be about two hundred yards away, and Lewrie nodded, then un-slung his Ferguson, looked for an officer to target, and put the butt to his shoulder, looking down the barrel.

There! He spotted a French officer with a dark red sash round his waist, his sword out and waving to urge them on. He had one of those long mustachios. Lewrie drew his weapon back to full cock, and took aim. The late Major Patrick Ferguson, inventor of his rifled musket who had died at the Battle of King's Mountain in the American Revolution, might have intended long-range accuracy, but he hadn't done much by way of improving front and rear sights to achieve it.

Lewrie held aim above the officer's shako, drew a breath and let it slowly out, then pulled the trigger, just as the officer turned to face his men and march backwards to say something to them. The bullet, fired downhill, didn't follow the usual descending arc, and struck him square between the shoulder blades, punching the Frenchman facedown dead.

Here,
that's
cheerin'!
Lewrie told himself as he opened the breech and tore a fresh cartidge open with his teeth. In a trice, he was loaded again, seeking a new target, and finding one, this one a senior officer with lots of gold-lace on his coat and a fore-and-aft bicorne on his head, adorned with egret plumes. He aimed smaller, this time, taking advantage of the flatter trajectory of a round fired downhill, holding only a foot above the egret plumes and firing. He hit the officer full in the cheek below his left eye and saw the back of his head explode into his soldiers' faces!

A very young junior officer stepped forward to lead, and he went down with a bullet in his chest; then it was a great, hulking older sergeant who stepped out in front, bull-roaring defiance and courage loud enough to be heard over the din of gunfire, and Lewrie shot him just above his shirt collar and neck-stock, driving the man to his knees in surprise, and fountaining gouts of blood from his mouth.

“Up, form line, odd-numbered companies!” some senior British officer was shouting. “Up, form line and stand ready! Front ranks will kneel!”

The skirmishers were back on the crest and taking their places at the left flanks of their regiments. Grenadier companies were forming at the right ends, and the line companies were now shoulder-to-shoulder. Lewrie got off two more quick shots as the French got within one hundred yards, and beginning to swing out into a firing line.

Haven't shot this well in years!
he congratulated to himself as he tore open another cartridge;
I may take up duck-hunting, next!

He'd run out of obvious officers in front of the French column, so he settled for a tall soldier in the centre of the first rank, and dropped him with a shot just below his brass cross-belt plate.

“Get out of the way, you bloody damned fool! We volley, and we will cut you down!” someone was shouting behind him.

Lewrie assumed that that was addressed at him and spun about to realise that he was looking down the muzzles of over six hundred levelled muskets. “Oh,
shiiitt
!” he yelled as he hastily flung himself to the ground!

“Front ranks … fire!” came a second later, and all Hades erupted. The whole ridge roared with noise, and spurting powder smoke blanked out his view, from an ant's level, of an entire regiment delivering a massed volley. “Second rank, fire!” and by then all that he could make out were trouser legs and boots below the smoke pall.

He could hear the balls rushing overhead like a swarm of bees, screams and shouts from the French down-slope, even the meaty thumps of bullets tearing into enemy bodies.

“Front ranks … level!”

He stayed where he was, wishing that he could dig deeper, for though British troops were the only ones in the world who actually practiced at live musketry, the Tower musket, “Brown Bess,” had even more rudimentary sights than his Ferguson, and the command was “Level,” not “Take Aim.” Rapidly delivered massed volleys at sixty to seventy-five yards was the desired effect, “shotgunning” fire in the foe's general direction! And, as he'd seen at the firing butts at Gibraltar, some soldiers did not even
bother
to aim, turning their heads as far from the flash and smoke in the priming pans as possible, with their muskets pointed in the general direction. He heard one ball hum disturbingly close to his head, just inches above him, and squirmed to make himself flatter.

He also had another desperate urge to pee!

“Regiment will … advance!” some senior officer bawled out. “Fix … bayonets.”

Captains of companies shouted their own orders for the first ranks to stand, and to fix bayonets, and close ranks.

“Regiment … twenty paces forward … march!”

Marching men weren't likely to be shooting, or so he thought, so Lewrie warily got to his feet, still lost in the powder smoke fog, hearing the swish of boots through grass, and the tramp of marching men in lock-step, the pace being called out by sergeants.

He wanted to be out of their way, but had no clue as to where to go. An instant later and he was blundered into by a young Private who let out a screech of fright, almost dropping his musket.

“Frog!” the soldier squeaked, “A Frenchie, roight 'ere!”

“British officer!” Lewrie shouted back, almost nose-to-nose.

“Sykes, ye silly sod!” his Sergeant yelled. “Pick up yer damn musket!”

Lewrie turned sideways to sidle 'twixt the soldiers of the first rank, then their rear-rank mates, all of whom were laughing at their unfortunate companion.

“Silence in the bloody ranks!” an officer demanded.

The two-deep line of troops seemed to be marching into clearer air, so Lewrie ambled along behind them a little way as the regiment began to descend the crest of the ridge.

“Regiment will halt! Load cartridge! By platoons, level … fire!” a senior officer ordered very loudly. Lewrie looked around to see a Colonel near him, a short fellow who was on his tiptoes, hopping in the air to see downslope past his soldiers, which Lewrie found a funny sight.

The regiment, and the others on that part of the ridge, opened fire down on the struggling French column, and any hope of a view of the results was blotted out. The platoon volleys rippled down the regimental line, four rounds per man per minute, from the Grenadier Company on the right to the Light Company on the left, repeated as soon as the right of the line was re-loaded. Now and then, one better-trained company's volley didn't sound like a long crackle, but a muted
Chuff!
as every trigger was pulled at the same second.

That Colonel bulled his way through the ranks of his taller soldiers, drew his sword, and cried “Cease fire! Poise bayonets, and … Charge!” as he rushed out ahead of his men, whirling his sword about and shrieking like a banshee. With wild, feral howlings, his troops raced down the hill with him, and Lewrie was left alone at the crest of the ridge, again.

“Bugger
that
for a game o' … soldiers,” he said aloud, wishing no part of the melees to come.

But, it was an awesome sight to see. The French drummers were whacking away on their skins with urgency, but the column was having no more of it. The front six or seven ranks, thirty or so men across, had been shot to a reef of dead and wounded against which the French behind could make no progress. There looked to be an attempt to fan out from column to line and respond with musketry, but that had also been shot to a halt, and when the British regiment began its charge downhill with wickedly sharp bayonets, all order dissolved, and the French turned their backs and began to scramble over each other to get away, some tossing aside their muskets in their haste.

What Lewrie had seen through his telescope of the first two-column attack to the West was being repeated close up here. It was an un-controlled rout, a stampede of survivors, that ran back downhill. Off to Lewrie's left, the other column that had come uphill alongside this one was also retiring, though in better order. Over there, the British troops had not launched a charge, but had kept up a steady rolling fire that stopped that column in its tracks and decimated it, convincing its surviving officers that staying and dying was futile. Those French soldiers were skulking off to the rear, defeated, and pursued by derisive cheers and curses from the victors.

Downslope, now that the gunsmoke was clearing, the regiment had stopped its charge, having run out of Frenchmen available to skewer, butt-stroke, or shoot. They were coming back to the ridgeline laden with quickly snatched souvenirs; shakoes or brass regimental shako plates, the short infantryman's swords, the
sabre-briquets,
bloodied epaulets torn off dead men's shoulders, pipes and tobacco purses, and what little solid coin they could find in dead Frenchmen's pockets, no matter how officers and sergeants railed against the practice.

Young subalterns were crowing and congratulating each other in high spirits, passing leather or metal flasks of brandy to toast their success. Lewrie had not brought any of his aged American corn whisky, so he had to settle for several gulps of water from his borrowed canteen.

“Saw you, sir, potting away at the Frogs,” one Lieutenant brayed. “Get any?”

“A few, thankee,” Lewrie replied, “just before I had t'throw myself flat so I'd not get shot, then nigh got trampled. So much for the French and their famous columns.”

“By God, you're right, sir, absolutely right!” the young officer crowed. “Why, I can't recall the French
ever
being stopped so surely.”

“I'll thankee for my flask back, Snowden,” another young man grumbled. “Stopped? Here and there, rarely, on a
part
of a battlefield one of their attacks might have been held off, but never like this. Let them keep it up, and we'll slaughter the entire lot of them by sundown, hah hah!” he boasted, then took a deep sip from his flask.

“If they've the bottom t'keep it up,” Lewrie cautioned, wishing for some of their camaraderie, and a sip of something stronger than water. “They've most-like never known defeat. Bashed straight through the Spanish, the Portuguese, Austrians, and God knows who else. I'd expect their soldiers're not feelin' all that plucky anymore.”

“By God, he's right, gentlemen!” the one named Snowden cried. “We could inflict the first defeat that ‘Boney's' ever suffered!”

“Well, there was Egypt, and the Holy Lands,” another quipped. “Maybe Marshal Junot will send Paris a letter
calling
it a victory!”

“See to your men, sirs!” a Major snarled at them as he passed. “There's wounded to be seen to, and the day's not over, not by a long chalk. Leftenant Acklin?”

“Sir?” the young fellow who'd demanded his flask back replied, stiffening.

“You will take command of the Light Company,” the Major said. “Captain Ford's wounded, and doesn't look long for this world. Belly wound, the worst kind. Off with you, now.”

The subalterns scattered, shame-faced, as the regimental bands-men and the regiment's wives went past to begin recovering the wounded and the dead. Walking wounded, aided by their mates, began to struggle to the top of the ridge from their charge, some chattily happy to have taken survivable wounds, yet most ashen, and fearful of what they faced with the surgeons. Some whimpered, some wept, and some unharmed soldiers shared tears with them over the loss of good friends.

And the day was not over, Lewrie realised as he heard trumpets or bugles, and turned to look down over the ridge to the land below. Another pair of those massive French columns were forming up to make a fresh attempt near the village of Vimeiro, and a whole three fresh columns were assembling farther to the East. He pulled out his watch and found that it was not quite ten in the morning.

“I need a sit-down, somewhere,” he muttered.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

There was no way that Lewrie could walk all the way to where the fresh French attacks would come; that would be asking too much of a sailor's legs. Un-employed, he drifted to the back slope of the ridge to see if his horse was still there, or had galloped off in fear. It was restive, but glad for some stroking and nose rubs, and the men who served as grooms had provided it with oats and water, and assured him that his mount was fine.

Further down the slope, on a flattish ledge, the surgeons were doing their grim best under a series of canvas awnings, shirtsleeves rolled to their elbows yet still bloody, their leather aprons from upper chests to their knees slick with gore.