All this time the 13th Light were chewing on blades of grass and kicking their heels. Aides-de-camp and orderlies kept galloping up, wheeling their horses round once or twice to calm them, handing over a missive and immediately setting off again. More and more of them kept arriving and they were in more and more of a hurry.

‘The Redoubt! The Redoubt! The Redoubt!’ Saber began to chant.

His company took up the cry. A superstitious corporal, terror-stricken at the thought and appalled that no one was listening to his pleas, brandished the butt of his musket ready to smash Saber’s skull. The lieutenant had not noticed him because now all he could think of was ‘his’ Redoubt.

Margont grabbed the man by the sleeve. ‘That’s not a Russian. Control yourself.’

General Morand and his general staff galloped past the 13th Light. A few moments later, at about ten in the morning, the order was given to carry the Great Redoubt. The Morand Division began to march. Only the 30th of the Line and a battalion of the 13th Light were going to attack the Great Redoubt itself. The role of the other regiments was to take on the Russian troops deployed round about.

The infantry went forward perfectly aligned, coming under direct fire from the Great Redoubt. There was a buzzing that became a whistling sound, which got louder and louder, and then a breach appeared in the line. Another whistling sound and another gory void.

‘Close ranks! Close ranks!’ shouted the officers.

The soldiers moved closer together to fill the gaps but more shells exploded, more cannonballs struck them full in the chest or tore off their limbs, and there were more shouts of ‘Close ranks! Close ranks!’

Lefine had followed Margont. He had told a sergeant who was unhappy at seeing him leave the 84th for the day: ‘If you’re going to die, it might as well be with your friends.’

‘At this rate there soon won’t be any ranks left,’ he muttered.

‘Who cares? We’ll shout: “Close!”’ replied Margont.

‘Why are there so few of us to attack this redoubt? Who’s the fool who gave this order?’

‘Close ranks, Sergeant.’

‘Yes, well, the other regiments in the division could also close ranks with us! I hate the army, which is only reasonable since the army obviously hates me!’

Margont was looking straight ahead and thinking only of keeping the ranks close together.

Galouche was reciting a passage from the Bible: ‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’ The Apocalypse. It was an appropriate choice.

The cannonballs were raining down more and more heavily, dropping, killing, bouncing off the grass, dropping back down again, killing once more … At last, the enemy was close enough and the line charged forward, yelling as it went. Grapeshot swept away whole ranks in a deafening din. The infantrymen following leapt nimbly over the dead and wounded and took their places. The attackers were in a frenzied state. Fear, vengeance, hatred, a desire for glory, and an obsession with fighting to avoid thinking about those dying around them – all these feelings mingled to produce an excited, exhilarated, enraged sort of euphoria. The Russians positioned on the edges of the redoubt had been pushed back or wiped out.

Disorientated by the smoke surrounding the entrenchment – a warm fog that smelt of burnt gunpowder – Margont fell into a ditch. He tried to get up but other soldiers tumbled on top of him, screaming with fear. He struggled and quickly got back on his feet to avoid choking to death under a human shroud. He was suffocating and could hardly see. There were flashes of light: men were shooting one another inside the ditch itself. Terror-stricken Russians had hidden there and were firing at anything that moved, killing as many of their own men as of the enemy. They were swiftly slaughtered. The French gave one another a leg up to get out of what a grenadier from the 30th quite rightly called a ‘trap for prats’ and went back on the attack.

The French were entering the Great Redoubt through the gaps made for the cannon or those caused by French artillery fire. Other infantrymen were clinging to the earthworks, digging their feet in and climbing up as best they could before shooting at the Russians from the top or throwing themselves at them. Some of the gunners were no longer even defending themselves but reloading their gun and firing so as to blow dozens of Frenchmen to smithereens. The cannon fell silent, the shooting gradually died away.

When Margont entered the stronghold, he saw Saber stroking a cannon as if it were the muzzle of a horse.

‘You see, it was easy. I told you so!’

At that precise moment the Great Redoubt and the Three Flèches had been taken. The enemy line was seriously weakened. Ney and Murat asked for reinforcements so they could try to penetrate the Russian army. Napoleon sent them very few. He wanted to preserve his Guard. Sending it into the attack at this moment would probably ensure victory but not without sustaining very heavy losses. The situation was not yet clear and he feared a second battle the next day or the day after. Napoleon therefore wanted to win without deploying his Guard … if possible.

Seeing that all would be lost if he did not react, Kutuzov ordered a general counterattack, throwing considerable reserves into the fray. In the centre, the infantrymen of Lithuania, Ismailov and the Prince of Württemberg as well as the cuirassiers of Astrakhan and those of the Empress attacked the village of Semenovskaya while Barclay de Tolly and Bagration set about recapturing the entrenchments. On the Russian right, Hetman Platov’s Cossacks and Uvarov’s troopers went into action and, on the left, Olsuviev’s soldiers came to support Tuchkov’s in order to halt Poniatowski.

From the Great Redoubt a host of Russians could be seen, pressed shoulder to shoulder. Their courage bolstered by vodka, they formed a compact wall and were shouting ‘Huzza! Huzza!’ to thank the French for being kind enough to take them on. In the entrenchment, mainly occupied by the 30th of the Line because the other regiments were placed on either side of the position, the French were astounded. What was going on? Hadn’t they won? Wasn’t it all over? The French were firing from all sides but the Russians did not even slacken their pace. The seething green and white mass glinting with bayonets immediately swarmed over those who fell, giving the impression that the volley of fire had had no effect.

‘For God’s sake, are we firing at ghosts or what?’ someone swore.

Margont saw Saber and a few men knocking down the double stockade that closed off the gorge of the redoubt. They were pushing with both hands against the tree trunks spared by the cannonballs or leaning against the wood. It was difficult to work out quite why they were doing this. Didn’t they realise that the Russians were going to come back this way?

‘Stop these idiots or I’ll have them shot on the spot against their posts!’ yelled a colonel, pointing at Saber and his men with the tip of his sabre.

Margont pushed his way through the throng of fusiliers to get to his friend.

‘You’re mad. What are you doing?’

Saber had seized hold of a tree trunk, which he was gradually bending. He was so stubborn that even if three men had got hold of him to remove him forcibly, he would have taken his bit of the stockade with him.

‘The redoubt’s lost! We’re going to be swept up like dead leaves and the green coats will cling to this battery like limpets. The only way of getting back here will be a combined pincer attack, with the infantry head on and the cavalry to the rear. So we need to clear a path for our troopers!’