Then a curricle appeared at the tree’s edge, and Sharpe saw Vandal again.

ON THE Cerro del Puerco the French advanced to take their victory. The four battalions that had lined the hill’s summit came first, with the two grenadier battalions hurrying to join their left flank. The only worry of the general of the grenadiers, Rousseau, was that his men would arrive too late to share in the victory.

The British were still on the slope and their line was still ragged. They had been hit hard by the canister, though the French guns could no longer fire because the blue-coated infantry had advanced to mask the guns’ red-coated targets. But Victor knew the guns would not be needed. The emperor’s bayonets would seal this victory. The drummers beat the pas de charge and the eagles were lifted high as three thousand Frenchmen spilled over the northern crest of the hill and gave a cheer as they charged to victory.

They faced the British foot guards, half a battalion of men from Hampshire, two companies of riflemen, and the remnants of the flank companies who had marched to battle from Gibraltar. Those red- and green-coated men, outnumbered two to one, had marched all night and were downhill from the enemy.

“Present!” Sir Thomas Graham roared. He had miraculously survived the blast of canister that had snatched three Scotsmen from the ranks immediately in front of him. Lord William Russell had brought him back his battered hat and Sir Thomas now held it aloft, then brought it sharply down to point at the two unbroken columns that came charging from the hill with bayonets fixed. “Fire!”

Twelve hundred muskets and two hundred rifles fired. The range was mostly less than sixty paces, though it was a good deal more at the flanks, and the balls drove into the three hundred men in the leading rank of the French columns and stopped them. It was as though an avenging angel had struck the head of the French columns with a giant sword. Their front ranks were bloody and broken, and even men in the second ranks were down. The carnage was enough to halt the charge as men in the third and fourth ranks stumbled and fell on the dead and dying men in front of them. The redcoats could not see what their volley had done because the smoke of their own muskets shrouded them. They expected the two columns to burst through that smoke with bayonets and so they did what they were trained to do: they reloaded. Ramrods scraped in barrels. The proper order of files and ranks had been broken by the climb and though some officers shouted at companies to fire as platoons, most men just fired for their lives. They did not wait for an officer or a sergeant to time the rolling volleys; they just reloaded, brought up the musket, pulled the trigger, and then reloaded again.

The drill books insisted on at least ten actions to charge a musket. It began with Handle Cartridge First Movement and ended with the command to fire. In some battalions the drill sergeants managed to find as many as seventeen different actions, all of which had to be learned and mastered and practiced. Some men, a few, came to the training with an understanding of firearms. They were mostly country boys who knew how to charge a fowling piece, but it all had to be unlearned. It might take a recruit a whole minute, even longer, to load a musket, but by the time they donned the red coat and were sent to fight for their king, they could do it in fifteen or twenty seconds. This was, above all other things, the necessary skill. The guards on the hill could look superb and there was no infantry unit that looked more splendid when taking post outside St. James’s Palace or Carlton House, but if a man could not bite a cartridge, prime the lock, load the gun, ram it, and fire within twenty seconds, then he was not a soldier. There were nearly a thousand guardsmen still living on the hill, and they fired for their lives. They put shot after shot into the cloud of smoke and Sir Thomas Graham, mounted just behind them, could tell that they were hurting the French, not just hurting them but killing them.

The French had come in column again. They always came in column. This one was three hundred men wide and nine ranks deep, and that meant most of the French could not use their muskets while every redcoat and every greenjacket could fire his weapon. The balls converged on the French, they drove inward, and in front of the guards and in front of the men from Hampshire there were small flames in the grass where the wadding had started fires.

Sir Thomas held his breath. This was a moment, he knew, when orders would do nothing, when even to encourage the men would be a waste of breath. They knew what they were doing and they were doing it so well that he was even tempted to think he might snatch a victory from what had seemed like certain defeat. But then the crash of a well-orchestrated volley made him ride toward the right of his line and he saw the unbroken ranks of the French grenadiers coming downhill through the smoke of their opening volley. He saw the Scottish guards turning to take on this new enemy, and the riflemen, who were in more extended order around the seaward flank of the hill, drew closer together to pour their fire at the French reinforcements.

Sir Thomas still said nothing. He held his hat in his hand and he watched the grenadiers come down the slope. He saw how each man in the French ranks had a short saber as well as a musket. These were the enemy’s elite, the men chosen to do the hardest work, and they were coming fresh to the fight, but again they came in a column, and the right of his own line, without any orders from Sir Thomas or anyone else, had half turned toward them to give them the benefit of their training. The half battalion of the 67th was right in front of the grenadiers who, unlike the first four battalions, were not checked by the first shots to hit them, but kept coming.

And this, Sir Thomas knew, was how a column should fight. It was a battering ram, and though the head of the column must suffer horribly, the momentum of its mass should take it through an enemy to bloody victory. On battlefield after battlefield across a suffering Europe the emperor’s columns had taken their punishment and marched on to win. And this column, all of them elite troops, was coming downhill and getting ever closer. If it broke through the thin line of red and green, it would turn to its right and murder Sir Thomas’s men with sabers and musket butts. And still it came. Sir Thomas rode behind the 67th, ready to slash with his sword and die with his men if the grenadiers succeeded. Then an officer shouted the command to fire.

Smoke billowed in front of Sir Thomas. Then more smoke. The 67th was firing platoon volleys now, and the Sweeps were up on their right, not bothering to wrap their bullets with leather because at this range they could not miss, and so their fire was almost as quick as the redcoats beside them. On Sir Thomas’s left were his Scotsmen, and he knew they would not break. The noise of the musketry was like a great fire of dry wood. The air stank of rotten eggs. Somewhere a seagull cried, and far behind Sir Thomas the cannons crashed on the heath, but he could not spare a glance for what happened behind him. It was here and now that the battle would be decided. He suddenly realized he was holding his breath and he let it out, glanced at Lord William, and saw His Lordship staring wide-eyed and motionless into the musket smoke. “You can breathe, Willie.”

“Dear Lord,” Lord William said, letting out his breath. “You know there’s a Spanish brigade behind us?” he asked Sir Thomas.

Sir Thomas turned and saw the Spanish troops on the beach. They made no move to reinforce him and even if he ordered them up the hill he knew they would arrive too late to be of any help. This fight could not last that long and so he shook his head. “Damn them, Willie,” he said. “Just damn them.”