Sharpe’s rifles Read online

  “How long?” Dunnett asked testily.

  “An hour? No longer.”

  The Riflemen waited. They had done this a score of times in the last two weeks, and doubtless they would do it a score of times again. They were the sting in the army’s tail. If they were lucky this day no Frenchman would bother them, but the probability was that, sometime in the next hour, the enemy vanguard would appear. That vanguard would be cavalry on tired horses. The French would make a token attack, the Riflemen would fire a couple of volleys; then, because neither side had an advantage, the French would let the greenjackets trudge on. It was soldiering; boring, cold, dispiriting, and one or two Riflemen and one or two Frenchmen would die because of it.

  The Riflemen formed in companies to bar the road west of the bridge. They shivered and stared east. Sergeants paced behind their ranks. The officers, all of whom had lost their horses to the cold, stood in front of their companies. No one spoke. Perhaps some of the men dreamed of the Navy’s ships that were supposed to be waiting for them at the end of this long road, but more likely their thoughts were of nothing but cold and hunger.

  The Lieutenant who had been made into the Battalion’s Quartermaster wandered aimlessly onto the stone bridge and stared into the stinging sleet. He was now the closest man to the enemy, twenty paces ahead of the greenjacketed line, and that piqued Major Warren Dunnett who saw an Unspoken arrogance in the Lieutenant’s chosen position. “Bugger him.” Dunnett crossed to Captain Murray’s side.

  “He’s harmless.” Murray spoke with his customary mildness.

  “He’s a jumped-up bloody nothing.”

  Murray smiled. “He’s a damned efficient Quartermaster, Warren. When did your men last have so much ammunition?”

  “His job is to arrange my bed for tonight, not loiter here in the hope of proving how well he can fight. Look at him!” Dunnett, like a man with an itching sore that he could not stop scratching, stared at the Quartermaster. “He thinks he’s still in the ranks, doesn’t he? Once a peasant, always one, that’s what I say. Why’s he carrying a rifle?”

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  The rifle was the Quartermaster’s eccentricity, and an unfitting one, for a Quartermaster needed lists and ink and quills and tally-sticks, not a weapon. He needed to be able to forage for food or ferret out shelters in apparently overcrowded billets. He needed a nose to smell out rotten beef, scales to weigh ration flour, and stubbornness to resist the depredations of other Quartermasters. He did not need weapons, yet the new Lieutenant always carried a rifle as well as his regulation sabre. The two weapons seemed to be a statement of intent; that he wanted to fight rather than be a Quartermaster, yet to most of the greenjackets the weapons were a rather pathetic pretension carried by a man who, whatever his past, was now nothing more than an ageing Lieutenant.

  Dunnett stamped his cold feet on the road. “I’ll send the flank companies back first, Johnny. You can cover.”

  “Yes, sir. Do we wait for our horse?”

  “Bugger the cavalry.” Dunnett offered the infantryman’s automatic scorn of the mounted arm. “I’m waiting five more minutes. It can’t take this long to clear some bloody guns off the road. Do you see anything, Quartermaster?” The question was asked mockingly.

  “No, sir.” The Lieutenant took off his shako and pushed a hand through hair that was long, black, and made greasy by days of campaigning. His greatcoat hung open and he wore neither scarf nor gloves. Either he could not afford them, or else he was boasting that he was too tough to need such comforts. That arrogance made Dunnett wish that the new Lieutenant, so eager for a fight, would be cut down by the enemy horsemen.

  Except there were no enemy horsemen in sight. Perhaps the rain and the wind and the God-damned bloody cold had driven the French to shelter in the last village. Or perhaps the drunken women had proved too irresistible a lure. Whichever it was, there were no Frenchmen in sight, just sleet and low clouds driven to turmoil by a freshening wind.

  Maj’r Dunnett swore nervously. The four companies seemed alone in a wilderness of rain and frost, four companies of forgotten soldiers in a lost war, and Dunnett made up his mind that he could wait no longer. “We’re going.”

  Whistles blew. The two flank companies turned and, like the walking dead, shambled up the road. The two centre companies stayed at the bridge under Captain Murray’s. command. In five minutes or so, when the flank companies had stopped to provide cover, it would be Murray’s turn to withdraw.

  The Riflemen liked Captain John Murray. He was a proper gentleman, they said, and it was a fly bastard who could fool him; but if you were straight with him, then the Captain would treat you fair. Murray had a thin and humorous face, quick to smile and swift with a jest. It was because of officers like him that these Riflemen could still shoulder arms and march with an echo of the elan they had learned on the parade ground at Shorncliffe.

  “Sir!” It was the Quartermaster who still stood on the bridge and drew Murray’s attention to the east where a figure moved in the sleet. “One of ours,” he called after a moment.

  The single figure, staggering and weaving, was a redcoat. He had no musket, no shako, nor boots. His naked feet left bloodstains on the road’s flint bed.

  “That’ll learn him,” Captain Murray said. “You see, lads, the perils of drink?”

  It was not much of a joke, merely the imitation of a preacher who had once lectured the Battalion against the evils of liquor, but it made the Riflemen smile. Their lips might be cracked and bloody with the cold, but a smile was still better than despair.

  The redcoat, one of the drunks abandoned in the last village, seemed to flap a feeble hand towards the rearguard. Some instinct had awoken and driven him onto the road and kept him travelling westwards towards safety. He stumbled past the flensed and frozen carcass of a horse, then tried to run.

  “Ware cavalry!” the new Lieutenant shouted.

  “Rifles!” Captain Murray called, “present!”

  Rags were snatched from rifle locks. Men’s hands, though numb with the cold, moved quickly.

  Because, in the white mist of sleet and ice, there were other shapes. Horsemen.

  The shapes were grotesque apparitions in the grey rain. Dark shapes. Scabbards, cloaks, plumes and carbine holsters made the ragged outlines of French cavalry. Dragoons.

  “Steady, lads, steady!” Captain Murray’s voice was calm. The new Lieutenant had gone to the company’s left flank where his mule was hobbled.

  The redcoat twisted off the road, jumped a frozen ditch, then screamed like a pig in a slaughteryard. A Dragoon had caught the man, and the long straight sword sliced down to open his face from brow to chin. Blood speckled the frosted earth. Another horseman, riding from the other flank, hissed his steel blade to cut into the fugitive’s scalp. The drunken redcoat fell to his knees, crying, and the Dragoons rode over him and spurred towards the two companies which barred the road. The small stream would be no obstacle to their charge.

  ‘Serrez! Serrez!“ The French word of command came clear to the Riflemen. It meant ’close up!” The Dragoons bunched, booted knee to booted knee, and the new Lieutenant had time to see the odd pigtails which framed their faces before Captain Murray shouted the order to fire.

  Perhaps eighty of the rifles fired. The rest were too damp, but eighty bullets, at less than a hundred yards, shattered the single squadron into a maelstrom of floundering horses, falling men, and panic. The scream of a dying horse flayed the cold day.

  “Reload!”

  Sergeant Williams was on the right flank of Murray’s company. He seized one of the damp rifles which had not fired, scooped the wet sludge from its pan, and loaded it with dry powder from his horn. “Pick your targets! Fire as you will!”

  The new Lieutenant peered through the dirty grey smoke to find an enemy officer. He saw a horseman shouting at the broken cavalry. He aimed, and the rifle bruised his shoulder as he fired. He thought he saw the Frenchman fall, but could not be sure. A ride
rless horse galloped away from the road with blood dripping from its saddle-cloth.

  More rifles fired. Their flames spat two feet clear of the muzzles. The French had scattered, using the sleet as a screen to blur the Riflemen’s aim. Their first charge, designed only to discover what quality of rearguard faced them, had failed, and now they were content to harass the greenjackets from a distance.

  The two companies that had retreated westwards under Dunnett had formed now. A whistle blew, telling Murray that he could safely fall back. The French beyond the bridge opened a ragged and inaccurate fire with their short-barrelled carbines. They fired from the saddle, making it even less likely that their bullets would find a mark.

  “Retire!” Murray shouted.

  A few rifles spat a last time, then the men turned and scrambled up the road. They forgot their hunger and desperate tiredness; fear gave them speed, and they ran towards the two formed companies who could hold another French charge at bay. For the next few minutes it would be a cat and mouse game between tired cavalry and cold Riflemen, until either the French abandoned the effort, or British cavalry arrived to drive the enemy away.

  Rifleman Cooper cut the hobble of the Quartermaster’s mule and dragged the recalcitrant beast up the road. Murray gave the mule a cut on its backside with his heavy sword, making it leap forward. “Why don’t you let it go?” he shouted at the Lieutenant.

  “Because I damn well need it.” The Lieutenant ordered Cooper to take the mule off the road and up the northern hillside to clear the field of fire for Dunnett’s two companies. The greenjackets were trained to the skirmish line, to the loose chain of men who took shelter and sniped at the enemy, but on this retreat the men in green formed ranks as tight as the redcoats and used their rifles for volley fire.

  “Form! Form!” Sergeant Williams was shouting at Murray’s company. The French advanced gingerly to the bridge. There were perhaps a hundred of them, a vanguard mounted on horses that looked desperately tired and weak. No horse should have been campaigning in this weather and on these bitter mountain roads, but the Emperor had launched these Frenchmen to finish off the British army and so the horses would be whipped to death if that meant victory. Their hooves were wrapped in rags to give purchase on slippery roads.

  “Rifles! Fix swords!” Dunnett shouted. The long sword-bayonets were tugged from scabbards and clipped onto the muzzles of the loaded rifles. The command was probably unnecessary. The French did not look as though they would try another charge, but fixed swords was the rule for when facing cavalry, so Dunnett ordered it.

  The Lieutenant loaded his rifle. Captain Murray wiped moisture from the blade of his Heavy Cavalry sword which, like the Lieutenant’s rifle, was an eccentricity. Rifle officers were expected to wear a light curved sabre, but Murray preferred the straight-bladed trooper’s sword that could crush a man’s skull with its weight alone.

  The enemy Dragoons dismounted. They left their horses at the bridge and formed a skirmish line that spread either side of the road. “They don’t want to play,” Murray said chidingly, then he twisted round in hope of a glimpse of the British cavalry. There was none.

  “Fall back by companies!” Major Dunnett shouted. “Johnny! Take your two back!”

  “Fifty paces, go!” Murray’s two companies, accompanied by the Quartermaster and his mule, stumbled back the fifty yards and formed a new line across the road. “Front rank kneel!” Murray shouted.

  “We’re always running away.” The speaker was Rifleman Harper. He was a huge man, an Irish giant in a small-statured army, and a troublemaker. He had a broad, flat face with sandy eyebrows that now were whitened by frozen sleet. “Why don’t we go down there and choke the bastards to death. They must have bloody food in those bloody packs.” He twisted round to stare westwards. “And where the hell’s our bloody cavalry?”

  “Shut up! Face front!” It was the Quartermaster who snapped the order.

  Harper gave him a lingering look, full of insolence and disdain, then turned back to watch Major Dunnett’s companies withdraw. The Dragoons were dull shapes in the middle distance. Sometimes a carbine fired and the wind snatched at a smear of grey smoke. A greenjacket was hit in the leg and swore at the enemy.

  The new Lieutenant guessed it was now about two hours before midday. This fighting retreat should be over by early afternoon, after which he would have to hurry ahead to find some cattleshed or church where the men could spend the night. He hoped a commissary officer would appear with a sack of flour that, mixed with water and roasted over a fire °f cowdung, would have to suffice as supper and breakfast. With luck a dead horse would provide meat. In the morning, the men would wake with stomach cramps. They would again form ranks; they would march, then they would turn to fight off these same Dragoons.

  Dragoons who now seemed happy to let the Riflemen slip away. “They’re not very eager today,” the Lieutenant grumbled.

  “They’re dreaming of home,” Murray said wistfully. “Of chicken and garlic in a pot, good red wine, and a plump girl in bed. Who wants to die in a miserable place like this if that’s waiting for you?”

  “We’ll retire by column of half companies!” Dunnett, convinced that the enemy would not risk closing the gap, planned to turn his back on them and simply march away. “Captain Murray? Your men first, if you please.”

  But before Murray could give an order, the new Lieutenant’s voice called in urgent warning,“

  “Ware cavalry behind!”

  “They’re ours, you fool!” Dunnett’s distaste for the Quartermaster could not be disguised.

  “Oh, Christ!” Murray had turned to look up the road along which the four companies must retreat. “Rear rank! About turn! Major Dunnett! They’re crapauds!”

  God alone knew how, but a new enemy had appeared behind. There was no time to wonder where they had come from, only to turn and face the three fresh squadrons of Dragoons. The French cavalry rode with open cloaks which revealed their pink-faced green coats. They carried drawn swords. They were led, curiously, by a chasseur; an officer in the red coat, scarlet pelisse and black fur hat of the Emperor’s Imperial Guard. Alongside him, mounted on a big roan, was an equally strange figure; a man dressed in a black riding coat and boots that were gleaming white.

  Dunnett gaped at the new enemy. Riflemen frantically reloaded empty weapons. The Quartermaster knelt, braced his rifle by looping its sling about his left elbow, and fired at the chasseur.

  He missed. Rifleman Harper jeered.

  A trumpet sounded from the enemy. There was death in its shrill note.

  The chasseur’s sabre was raised. Beside him the man in the civilian coat drew a long slim sword. The cavalry broke into the trot and the new Lieutenant could hear the hooves on the frozen ground. The Regiment of Dragoons still rode in squadrons that could be distinguished by the colour of their horses. The first squadron was on black horses, the second on bays, and the third on chestnuts; it was an arrangement common in peacetime, but rare in battle that swiftly diluted the pattern with remounts. The trumpeters were on greys, as were the three men who carried the guidons on their long staffs. The small flags were bright against the low clouds. The Dragoons’ long swords were even brighter, like blades of pale ice.

  Major Dunnett realized his Riflemen were in danger of annihilation. “Rally square! Rally! Rally!”

  The greenjackets contracted into the rally square; a clumsy formation whereby men crowded together for protection against cavalry. Any man who found himself in the front rank knelt and jammed his rifle butt into the turf so that his sword-bayonet’s blade could be held rigid. Others reloaded their rifles, skinning their frozen knuckles on the sword-bayonets’ long blades as they rammed the charges home. Rifleman Cooper and his mule sheltered in the middle of the square.

  The chestnut squadron wheeled from the rear of the French charge, drew carbines, and dismounted. The other two squadrons spurred into the canter. They were still a hundred paces away and would not rowel their horses to the gal
lop till they were very close to their target.

  “Fire!” Dunnett shouted.

  Those Riflemen who had reloaded fired.

  A dozen saddles were emptied. The Riflemen jostled each other, shaking themselves into ranks so that the rally square became a real square from which every rifle could fire. There were three ranks of them now, each plumed with bayonets.

  “Fire!” More rifles spat, more cavalry fell, then the chasseur officer, instead of pressing the charge home, wheeled his horse away and the two squadrons sheered off to unmask the dismounted men who now opened fire with their carbines. The first Dragoons, the company which had waited by the bridge, closed on the square’s eastern face.

  The rally square made a perfect target for the dismounted

  Dragoons. If the Riflemen shook themselves into line to sweep the makeshift infantry away, then the mounted cavalry would spur their horses back into motion and the greenjackets would become mincemeat. The chasseur Colonel, the Lieutenant thought, was a clever bastard; a clever French bastard who would kill some good Riflemen this day.

  Those Riflemen began to fall. The centre of the square soon became a charnel house of wounded men, of blood, screams and hopeless prayer. The rain was stinging harder, wetting the rifle pans, but enough black powder fired to spit bullets at the enemy who, crouched in the grass, made small and elusive targets.

  The two mounted squadrons had wheeled away to the west, and now reformed. They would charge along the line of the road, and the frozen steel of their heavy straight swords would burn like fire when it cut home. Except, so long as the Riflemen stayed together, and so long as their unbroken ranks bristled with the pale blades, the horsemen could not hurt them. But the enemy carbines were taking a fearful toll. And when enough Riflemen had fallen the cavalry charge would split the weakened square with the ease of a sword shattering a rotten apple.

  Dunnett knew it, and he looked for salvation. He saw it in the low cloud which misted the hillside just two hundred yards to the north. If the greenjackets could climb into the obscuring shroud of those clouds, they would be safe. He hesitated over the decision. A Sergeant fell back into the square, killed clean by a ball through his brain. A Rifleman screamed as a bullet struck his lower belly. Another, shot in the foot, checked his sob of pain as he methodically reloaded his weapon.