Four files of men dropped to the ground. Copenhagen gathered himself, jumped, and the Duke sailed safely over the sixteen crouching men.

“Fire!” a Highlander officer shouted, and a volley of musketry slashed into the French pursuers. The two Lancers died instantly, their horses flailing bloodily along the ground almost to the feet of the front rank. “Reload!” The officer who shouted the fire orders had been one of the men dancing above the crossed swords in the Duchess’s ballroom the night before. “Fire!” An Hussar’s face disappeared in blood as his wounded horse reared. Man and beast fell screaming into the path of a galloping Lancer. The Lancer’s horse tumbled, legs breaking, while its rider sprawled unhurt. The lance, driven deep into the soil, quivered. “Reload!” the Scots officer shouted.

A mixture of French and Dutch-Belgian cavalry galloped at the infantry line. The Belgians, desperate for safety, spurred through the gaps between the battalions and the French horsemen rode with them. The redcoats suddenly realized that there were enemy horsemen in their rear.

The Black Watch was ordered to form square. The wings of the battalion curved backwards and inwards, but the enemy Lancers were already behind the line and spurring into the space between the wings. They saw the Scottish colours and rammed their lances forward at the men who protected the great silk banners. Two Scottish officers faced them on horseback. One Lancer went down under a claymore’s strike, his skull split down to his coat collar. Colonel Macara was shouting at his flanks to close and, by sheer brute strength, the two ends of the line forced themselves inwards to make a crude square. A dozen enemy Lancers were trapped inside the formation. One lunged at the Colonel, but Macara knocked the lance aside then rammed his claymore forward. “Platoon, fire!” he shouted while his sword was still killing the Lancer. Other Lancers were being dragged from their saddles by vengeful Scottish soldiers who stabbed down with bayonets. Outside the square the horsemen veered away from the platoon volleys, while inside the square the trapped Lancers were butchered. The colours were safe, and the pipes had never stopped playing.

The neighbouring battalion, the East Essex, stayed in their line. They, like the Scots, had been in four ranks, but their Colonel simply turned his rear rank about and opened fire front and rear, killing Dutch-Belgians and French horsemen indiscriminately. One band of determined French cavalry spurred hard from the rear in a furious attempt to capture the battalion’s colours. The spears chopped down two British sergeants, a sabre slashed a redcoat aside, then a Lancer rammed his long blade into the eye of the Ensign carrying the regimental flag. Ensign Christie fell, but he held tight to the big yellow silk banner as he collapsed. Two Hussars attacked the fallen Christie, leaning down from their saddles to hack at the sixteen-year-old with their sabres.

Redcoats scrambled forward, climbing over their own dead and wounded. A Lancer tried to pick up the colour with his weapon’s point, but Christie hung on grimly. The two Hussars grunted as they chopped at him with their sabres. A musket shot killed one Frenchman, the other parried a bayonet thrust, then stabbed down at Christie a last time.

Another musket hammered and the Hussar was plucked out of his saddle like a puppet jerked on strings. A knot of red-coated officers and men surged over the prone Christie, driving the last enemy away. A Lancer had speared a corner of the flag and now jerked his lance up to tear a fragment of the yellow silk away, but even that trophy was denied the French. Three muskets flamed and the Lancer toppled backwards from his horse.

“Close up! Close up!” the Sergeants shouted. A crashing volley cleared a space in front of the battalion. The air was thick with the foul powder smoke, rank with the stench of blood, and loud with the noise of screaming horses and men. A loose horse galloped wildly across the face of the line, streaming blood. A Lancer staggered away on foot and was dropped by a musket bullet. The French horsemen were turning and riding away, trying to escape the musket volleys.

Ensign Christie was alive, still with the colour gripped to his body that had been slashed with more than twenty sabre and lance wounds. His men made a litter of muskets and blankets and carried him back to the surgeons who had set up for business in the barn by the crossroads. The colour, its bright yellow silk slashed by steel and stained with Christie’s blood, was raised again. The French cavalry, like an ebbing tide of blood, reformed a quarter mile away. The crossroads had held.

The Black Watch dragged the dead Lancers from inside their square and dumped the bodies as a kind of rampart to trip any more charging horses. Men reloaded their muskets. The wounded limped back to the surgeons. One man fell to his knees, vomited blood, then collapsed.

The French had come perilously close to breaking the British line apart. Some of the Hussars and Lancers, who had ridden to the rear of the red-coated battalions, had galloped along the road they were trying to capture, and had only retreated back through the intervals between the battalions because there were not enough — horsemen to hold the temporarily captured road. It now seemed to the French that one more effort would surely succeed, and that the red-coated infantry would break just like the Dutch-Belgian horsemen had broken. The trumpets screamed for that second effort which, to ensure success, was strengthened with eight hundred Cuirassiers; the grosfreres, big brothers, of the French army. The Cuirassiers wore steel breastplates, helmets and backplates, and rode the heaviest horses of all the French cavalry. A big brother, his armour and his horse weighed more than a ton. The grosfreres, their armoured steel reflecting the sun like silver fire, would lead the second charge and crush the infantry by sheer weight and terror.

But the infantry, expecting the charge, was ready. The musket volleys crashed smoke and flame, and punched their bullets clean through the armour plate. The Cuirassiers were tumbled down to the crushed rye as the musket volleys settled into their killing rhythm. Dying horses quivered on the compacted rye, while wounded Cuirassiers struggled to unburden themselves of helmets and armour before limping away. The Lancers and Hussars, seeing the slaughter of the armoured horsemen, did not press their own charge home.

“Cease fire! Reload!” the officers and sergeants called to the British squares. The regimental bands played on, while in the squares the colours hung heavy in the humid and smoke-stained air. The enemy cavalry, bloodied and beaten, pulled back to the stream. From the east came the sound of cannon, proof that the Prussians still fought their battle.

Then the French skirmishers crept forward and opened their galling fire again, and from beyond Gemioncourt the French twelve-pounder cannons opened fire on the British ranks. The enemy cavalry was still in sight, and not so very far off, and so the infantry was forced to stay in their squares as prime targets for the heavy French cannon.

It was time for the infantry to suffer.

On the roads leading to Quatre Bras from the west and north the hurrying British troops saw the growing canopy of smoke, and heard the incessant punch of the heavy guns. Carts were already travelling back to Brussels carrying wounded men who groaned in the afternoon heat while their blood dripped through the bottom-boards to stain the white road red. Other wounded men walked away from the battle, staggering in the sun towards their old bivouac areas. In Nivelles the townspeople huddled at their doors, listened to the noise of battle, and stared wide-eyed at the foully wounded soldiers who limped past. Some unwounded Belgian soldiers spread the news that the British were already beaten and that the Emperor was already on his way to Brussels.