An Infamous Army Read online

  ‘Damn you, do I not know?’ Lavisse gasped.

  ‘Och, sir, let the puir bodies gang!’ shouted a sergeant of the Gordons. ‘We dinna want furriners hired to fight for us!’

  The three companies of the 95th Rifles, posted on the knoll and in the sandpit in front of Kempt’s right, were firing steadily into Bourgeois’ and Donzelot’s columns, advancing on either side of them; and two of Ross’s 9-pounders, guarding the chaussée, caused Bourgeois’ brigade to swerve away from La Haye Sainte to its right, where it was thrown against Donzelot’s division, and advanced with it in one unwieldy mass. The riflemen stood their ground until almost hemmed in by the sea of French, but were forced at last to abandon the sandpit and retreat to the main position.

  Bylandt’s men had forced their way right to the rear, and although Byleveld’s troop had extricated itself from the mêlée and was in the front line again, firing into the head of the column already starting to deploy in the valley, over two thousand Dutch-Belgians had deserted from the line, leaving three thousand men of Picton’s decimated division to face the charge of thirteen thousand Frenchmen.

  Picton, wasting no time in trying to bring Bylandt’s men to the front again, deployed Kempt’s brigade into an attenuated two-deep line, to fill the breach. Below, in the hollow road and the cornfields beyond it, the French columns were also trying to deploy in the constricted space afforded for such a movement. The whole valley swarmed with blue-coated infantry, struggling in the press of their own numbers to get into line. The front ranks charged up the banks of the hedge concealing the British troops, shouting and cheering, confident that the flight of the large body of troops in their front had left the field open to them through the Allied centre. Picton’s voice blared above the roar of cannon: ‘Rise up!’

  The men of Kempt’s brigade, crouched behind the hedge, leaped to their feet; the French saw the bank crowned by a long line of red, overlapping their column on either side. Every musket was at the present; a volley riddled the advancing mass; and as the French recoiled momentarily under it, Picton roared: ‘Charge! Hurrah!’ and Kempt’s warriors, with the British cheer the French had learned to dread, charged with bayonets levelled.

  To the east of Donzelot, Marcognet’s column was surging up the bank to where Pack’s Highlanders waited, a little drawn back from the crest. ‘Ninety-second! Everything has given way in front of you!’ Pack shouted. ‘You must charge!’

  A yell of ‘Scotland ever!’ answered him. The skirl of pipes soared above the din, and the men of the Black Watch, the Royals, and the Gordons, all with the deaths of comrades to avenge, hurled themselves through the hedge at the advancing column.

  In Kempt’s brigade, the Camerons, attacked by a devastating crossfire from Bourgeois’ column on their right, began to give way. Picton shouted to one of Uxbridge’s aides-de-camp: ‘Rally the Highlanders!’ The next instant he fell, shot through the right temple. Captain Seymour rode forward to obey this last command, but it was the Duke, watching the crash of the two armies from the high ground in the centre, who galloped before him into the thick of the fight, and succeeded in rallying the Camerons and the hard-pressed riflemen.

  ‘Stand fast, Ninety-fifth! We must not be beaten!’ he shouted. ‘What will they say in England?’

  A ragged cheer answered him; he re-formed the 79th himself, and directed them to fire upon the column that had driven them back, only withdrawing out of the heat of the battle when he saw that they stood firm.

  The guns on both sides had ceased fire as the French and the British troops met, but in the valley smoke lay thick, and muskets spat and crackled. The French were hampered by the size of their own columns, but although the men of Picton’s depleted division had checked their advance by the sheer ferocity of their charge, they could not hope to hold such overwhelming numbers at bay. West of the chaussée, the cuirassiers, having routed the Lüneberg battalion, re-formed under the crest of the Allied position. Ignorant of what the reverse slope of the ground concealed, they charged up the bank, straight at Ompteda’s men, hidden behind it. But the Germans had opened their ranks to permit the passage of cavalry through them. Before the cuirassiers had reached the crest, they heard the thunder of hooves above them, and the next instant the Household Brigade was upon them, led by Uxbridge himself, at the head of the 1st Life Guards.

  With white crests, and horses’ manes flying, the Life Guards came up at full gallop and crashed upon the cuirassiers in flank. The earth seemed to shudder beneath the shock. The Hyde Park soldiers never drew rein, but swept the cuirassiers from the bank, and across the hollow road in the irresistible impetus of their charge. Swords rang against the cuirasses; someone yelled above the turmoil: ‘Strike at the neck!’ and the cuirassiers, already a little disorganised by their encounter with the German infantry, were flung back in fighting confusion. The Life Guards and the 1st Dragoon Guards hurled their left flank past the walls of La Haye Sainte in complete disorder, and scattered Quiot’s brigade of infantry assailing the farm. The right flank of the cuirassiers swerved sharply to the east, and plunged down on to the chaussée to escape from the fury of six-foot men on huge horses, who seemed to have no idea of charging at anything slower than a full gallop. Not more than half their number had crossed the chaussée to the valley where Donzelot was driving his congested ranks against Kempt’s brigade, when the rest of the Household Cavalry, coming up on the left of the Life Guards, fell upon them in hard-riding squadrons, and crumpled them up. The abattis, so painstakingly built up by the riflemen, was scattered in an instant; the cuirassiers were cut down in hundreds, and the Dragoon Guards rode over them to charge full tilt into the column of French infantry pressing Kempt’s men back.

  At the same moment, an aide-de-camp rode up from the rear to the hedge beyond which Pack’s Highlanders were fighting fiercely with the men of Marcognet’s division. For one moment he stood there, closely observing the state of the battle raging in the valley; then he took off his cocked hat and waved it forwards.

  There was yell of: ‘Now then, Scots Greys!’ and the next instant the whole of the Union Brigade came thundering up the reverse slope. The French, disordered through their inability to deploy their enormous column before the Highlanders charged them, appalled hardly more by the fury of the kilted devils who rushed on them than by the unearthly music of the pipes playing Scots, Wha’ Hae in the hell of blood and smoke and clashing arms that filled the valley, heard the cavalry thundering towards them, and looked up to see great grey horses clearing the hedge above them.

  They fell back. In the valley, officers were shouting to the Gordons to wheel back by sections to let the cavalry pass through. The Scots Greys tightened their grips, and came slipping and scrambling down the bank shouting: ‘Hurrah, Ninety-second! Scotland for ever!’ as they caught sight of the red-feathered bonnets in the press and the smoke below.

  Greys, Royals, and Inniskillings, riding almost abreast, poured over the hedge and down into the seething valley. The Gordons were yelling: ‘Go at them, the Greys! Scotland for ever!’ and snatching at stirrup-leathers as the Greys rode through them, so that they too were borne forwards in this terrific charge. Somewhere, lost in the smoke, a pipe-major was coolly playing, Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye waukin’ yet? while all around sounded screams, shouts, musketry fire, and the clash of steel.

  Many of the horses and their riders were brought down by musketballs or the desperate thrust of bayonets, but the cavalry charge had caught Marcognet’s column unawares and in confusion. The Union Brigade rode over the column, lopping off heads with their sabres, while the Gordons, who had been carried forward with them, did deadly work with the bayonet. To the right, where Donzelot’s men had fought their way through Kempt’s thin lines to the crest of the position, the Royal Dragoons, unchecked by the frontal fire that met them, charged straight for the leading column of the division. The column faced about and tried to retreat over the hedge, but there was no time to get to safety before the Royals were in their midst,