“Cease fire, Mister Farley!” Lewrie yelled, as he saw Tarrant’s advanced soldiers rushing back. “Tell Grace he’s to broadside, now! Hurry! Tarrant’s given us a clear field!”
Down the ladderways that Midshipman went once more, his tongue lolling out and panting, to pass word to the upper gun-deck and the lower gun-deck, and the guns fell silent for about a minute, long enough for the smoke to blow clear and give gun-captains time, and unclouded views, to take their aim.
“By broadside … fire!” the cry came at last, and the ship shuddered to her bones.
“Come on, come on, come on!” Lewrie impatiently groaned as his view of the action ashore was blotted out for a long minute. His ears were ringing, despite the candle wax he’d stuffed into them, and his eyes were watering from the acrid gunpowder fumes, but he needed to see!
At last, the smoke had hazed thin enough for him to raise his telescope and grin at the sight. His beloved guns had smashed into the centre of the French line of battle, not just its right flank, and there were great gaps opened where men had stood moments before, now mangled and flung back with limbs missing, their chests and bowels torn open from the front rank to the rearmost. There had been a gay French Tricolour flag waving, surrounded by boy drummers pattering away with their sticks, and they had disappeared! Some daring soul retrieved the flag and hoisted it erect, at last, and the French line began to shuffle towards the centre, shortening itself as enemy soldiers returned to shoulder-to-shoulder alignment.
* * *
“Now that’s the way!” Col. Tarrant cheered as he watched the enemy line come to a stop to sort themselves out. The light troops in advance of their main line seemed to have forgotten what they were supposed to be doing, most of them turning to look back at the chaos. With the 94th’s Light Company skirmishers retired, it should have been their turn to fall back and join the rest of their regiment for the main assault, but they seemed averse to entering that maelstrom of artillery fire. French bugles summoned them, but they obeyed slowly, at the walk instead of the trot.
Another broadside from Vigilance moaned in, roundshot fired at that range behaving like proper field artillery, scything through the re-formed ranks, but also striking a bit short to bound up and smash through, taking down more soldiers.
“That’ll be the last of it, I imagine, Gittings,” Tarrant said as the last clouds of dust and dirt subsided. “The French are now too close to us for Lewrie to risk it. We will open at seventy yards, in platoon fire.”
* * *
“Cease fire, cease fire!” Lewrie was forced to order as the enemy got too near Tarrant’s regiment. “Where’s another place needin’ support, Mister Farley?”
“I don’t really see one, sir!” Farley shouted up to the poop deck where Lewrie stood. “There are some French infantry skulking just beyond our Marines, but we’ve shot them to pieces. There are more to the right of the town, where they were hidden, but they’re decimated, too, and going over to join the regiment opposing the Ninety-Fourth. And, there’s a sizable block of them along the top of that low ridge, but they aren’t moving yet. Their reserves, not yet committed?” he opined.
“Deck, there!” a Midshipman posted in the mainmast cross-trees shouted down. “Cavalry! A squadron, leaving the ridge to the right of the town!”
Lewrie looked for them and found them, a mass of horsemen moving at the trot by fours, and he was tempted to take them under fire, but they were just too far away at the moment, half-masked by the fires set in the town, and looked to be bound for Tarrant’s fight-to-come, as backup for that French regiment if Tarrant’s men broke.
“Well, just Goddammit!” he gravelled, whooshing out a frustrated breath at his sudden impotence.
“’Ware, sir,” Lt. Farley cried again, “it looks as if they’re going for our Marines. But the enemy’s too close for our fire.”
“Mine arse on a…!” Lewrie spat, glowering angrily. He would have to be an idle spectator as the Marines … his Marines!… were attacked!
* * *
“Be ready, Greenleaf!” Capt. Whitehead called out as the French companies stirred their courage up to step over the bodies of their dead and wounded and begin their advance on his position. “The best sharpshooters … lie prone and snipe! Go for the officers and the sergeants with stripes on their sleeves!”
Not much real accuracy could be expected from a smoothbore musket, the Tower musket especially, but in training at the 94th’s firing butts, some of his Marines had developed an eye for it. Now, those men threw themselves down to rest their weapons on their narrow-brimmed hats, cocked their firelocks, and waited for the French to come within range.
Bam! A single shot at about eighty yards took down an officer pacing ahead of his men with a sabre drawn and pointing the way. He put a hand to his chest and dropped. Bam! A grizzled older fellow with diagonal gold stripes on his sleeve dropped his musket as a ball shattered a thigh bone and swept him off his feet. A young Lieutenant who came dashing forward to replace his dead Captain gave out a loud shriek that the Marines could hear as his head exploded. A Corporal carrying his company pennant went down with a sudden red blossom of blood in the centre of his shirt and waist-coat, and several more were killed or badly wounded before they got within musket range.
“Front rank … fire!” Whitehead shouted, and over a dozen of the foe went down, but they were now halting and lifting their own muskets to level them. “Second rank, fire!” Whitehead shouted a tad louder, hoping to shake them and throw off their aim, but the French line was smothered with smoke as they pulled the triggers, and men to either side of Whitehead were thrown back or spun round.
“Steady, steady, reload and fire at will!” he roared, levelling his own musket.
“Kill the bastards, lads!” Lt. Greenleaf howled somewhere along the Marines’ line, and armed sailors volleyed with the Marines. Out away from the centre, and the most powder smoke, Greenleaf could see about thirty or so Frenchmen rushing out to the left, and through the tangled shore scrub, as if to get to the beach and flank their position. “’Ware, Dickson, mind your left!” Greenleaf shouted.
Dickson needed no warning; he could see the enemy soldiers as they tried to thrash through the dense scrub. He had his twenty men huddled behind the 29-foot barge, weapons ready, but wasn’t sure when to fire, for he might only get off one volley before the French were upon them. Dammit, though, the French were too busy keeping their feet as they waded and stumbled through the shrub, their accoutrements getting hung up on every stout twig, and the sight was mightily tempting.
His heart was in his throat, his breath was rapid, and the hilt of his elegant sword felt slippery in his hand. It was Lt. Dickson’s first exposure to real combat, and it wasn’t even on the deck of a warship! It felt grossly unfair for him to play soldier on land. But he had to do something, the men were looking to him.
It took all he had to stand up and point his sword at the enemy.
“You men closest to the barge,” he yelled, “give them a volley!”
Firelocks were drawn back to full cock; sailors squinted down the barrels of their muskets to take rough aim.
“Fire!” Dickson shouted.
Five or six French soldiers had managed to thrash their way to the sandy beach beyond the scrub, and they now spotted the British behind the barge, but they were swept away by that rough volley delivered at about fourty yards’ range. The ones still in the shrub got wide-eyed and tried to bring their muskets up to shoot back.
“The rest of you, shoot at the bastards in the shrub!” Dickson yelled, remembering that he had an expensive pair of Manton pistols in his coat pockets, and fumbled one out with his left hand.
More French soldiers were hit, knocked back by .75 calibre balls, but they only fell atop the shrub, bouncing as the springy underbrush held them and resisted being crushed.
“Front men, you’re reloaded?” Dickson demanded, and got grunts and “Aye ayes” in response. “Front men, fire!”
More French soldiers went down, and the ones still unhurt began to turn about and retreat through the shrub, but making as little progress to the rear as they had when trying to attack.
“Come on, lads!” Dickson yelled, much encouraged. “Follow me! Fix your bayonets, pick up your cutlasses, and … repel boarders!”
It was the only thing he could think of as he left the shelter of the barge, ran round the bow, and sprinted towards the edge of the shrub, his Hessian boots twisting and turning at his ankles in the deep, soft sand of the upper beach. A Frenchman swung his musket his way, but Dickson brought up his pistol, cocked the lock with the back of his sword-hand wrist, and shot him in the chest, exulting that he had just killed someone, the first in his life.
His sailors began wading into the scrub themselves, having as difficult a passage as the enemy had had, howling and hurrahing with their bayoneted muskets out-thrust at the nearest fleeing Frenchmen, or slashing at their backs with cutlasses.
There had been thirty or so, Dickson estimated, now he had killed two, and his pistols were empty; five or six dead on the beach, ten or so draped over the scrub bushes, and the rest were fleeing as if mired in cold treacle. A smaller Ordinary Seaman at Dickson’s side used a dead Frenchman as a springboard to leap ahead of everyone else and drove the point of his cutlass into a soldier’s back, making him scream. Muskets went off and several more Frenchmen died at only ten yards’ range, and there were some who were holding their muskets in the air, butt up, trying to surrender. The few who managed to escape the scrub scampered away as fast as they could run, but a volley from Lt. Greenleaf’s party on the Marines’ flank shot them down, too.
It was suddenly very quiet, but for the moans and whimpers of the wounded and dying. At the top of the overwash at last, Dickson could see that the French attack had been broken, and about an hundred or so French soldiers were milling about far out of musket shot, near the burning houses where they had hidden themselves before the attack was sprung. He saw Marine Captain Whitehead, now hatless, and Lieutenant Greenleaf, his hands and face blackened with gunpowder grit, in a brief conference, which he thought he should join.
“Good Christ,” Capt. Whitehead rasped between gulps from his wood canteen. “For a minute there, I thought they’d have us all.”
“Got most of their leaders, and they didn’t have the will to stand and bear it,” Greenleaf said. “Must’ve killed or wounded half of them,” he added, sweeping an arm at the field beyond, where the bodies of French soldiers lay strewn in profusion, most grouped along the line where they had stopped and opened fire.
“I’ve lost nine dead, and six wounded,” Whitehead grimly said. “You, Greenleaf? Dickson?”
“Half my lot,” Greenleaf toted up. “Some damned good men.”
“I, ehm … I don’t know,” Dickson had to confess, turning to look down to the beach. He saw Midshipman Bingley helping a wounded sailor to a seat on the bow of the barge, and counted at least seven of his men on the ground.
“Best go see,” Whitehead told him.
“Good work, though,” Greenleaf said, “breaking up that attack.”
“Ship’s flyin’ a signal, sir,” Able Seaman John Kitch pointed out, wetting a rag from his canteen to wipe his face.
“Ah, our ship’s number, and … Recall,” Greenleaf read aloud. “The Captain must mean for us to get back aboard before the French try again. Whitehead, I’ll need half your Marines to help get that barge down there back in the water. Can the other half remain here and daunt the Frogs long enough for us to gather up the dead and the wounded?”
“Just the wounded,” Whitehead said with a negative shake of his head. “We’ll have to trust the French to bury our dead. But, we’ll gather up our weapons and gear. The Captain will have to read their names without interment into the sea. Wish it was different, but … bloody Hell.”
“Well, shit,” Greenleaf spat. He looked far out beyond the town to witness yet another road convoy get under way, the waggon and the cart wheels, and an host of hooves, begin to raise a cloud of dust.
Untouched, and as safe as houses.