“Hold your fire!” The Guards Major peered through the cannons’ smoke. “Wait for it, lads! Wait for it! Fire!”

The muskets could not miss. The heavy balls thudded into men and horses, piercing breastplates and helmets, turning the majesty of plume and pelisse into screaming pain. There was also pain inside the squares, where those men wounded by the cannon-fire and not given time to retreat to the forest’s edge, still sheltered. The battalion officers rode between the wounded, shouting encouragement to each face of their square as the French horsemen flowed past.

The cavalry had returned full of resolve to charge home, but the horses could not be forced to charge the squares that were now given the further protection of makeshift bastions formed of dead and dying horses and men. The new attack flowed about the squares just like the first, except this time the attack went more slowly because the horses were tiring. Those horses that had lost their riders during the first charge dutifully attacked with the second, dumbly obedient to their herd instincts even though those instincts took them up into the storm of canister and musket-fire.

Once again some Frenchmen pierced through the whole depth of arrayed squares, but only to discover the screen of waiting cavalry. This time, instead of risking the return journey through the alleys of musket-fire, some Cuirassiers swerved to their left to find another route back to the valley. They discovered a lane which ran behind the ridge and spurred along it, aiming for the open flank. The lane dropped into a deep cutting, its banks too steep and wet for any horse to climb, and at the cutting’s end was a barricade of felled trees put there to check any French attempt to attack in the other direction. The horsemen reined in and shouted at the men behind to turn back and find another way around the sunken lane.

Then British infantry appeared at the top of the embankments. These redcoats were fresh, posted to guard against a flank attack that had not happened, and now they found a helpless enemy under their muskets. They opened fire. Volley after volley plunged down into the steep-sided cutting. They fired without pity, firing until not a man nor horse was left whole, and only then did the infantry clamber down through their smoke to the heaps of stirring, crying, whimpering horror. They did not go to help their victims, but to plunder them.

The second charge died as the first had died, but the French were brave, and led by the bravest of the brave, and so they returned. The guns fired a last volley before the charge reached the squares, and this time a vagary of the shifting smoke let Sharpe see a group of charging horsemen blown apart like crops struck by a monstrous scythe. The gunners ran to safety with their rammers as the horses were spurred again at the squares’ faces. Again the muskets threw them back, and again the cavalry swerved away. It was sheer madness. Sharpe, not even bothering to unsling his rifle, watched in disbelief. The French were slaughtering their own cavalry, hurling them again and again at the unbroken squares of infantry.

Again the cavalry retreated, allowing the British gunners to reoccupy their undamaged batteries. Some French skirmishers had climbed the ridge either side of the cavalry’s path, but there were not enough Voltigeurs to trouble the squares. Some French gunners opened fire in the pause between cavalry charges and their rounds did more damage than all the horsemen had achieved. The gunners were forced to stop their cannonade as the stubborn cavalry wheeled back to charge the squares again. Between each charge a few redcoats were allowed out of the squares to bring back plunder: an officer’s gilded sword, a handful of coins, a silver trumpet with a gorgeously embroidered banner. One sergeant unstrapped a dead Dragoon’s leopard-skin helmet, only to throw it down with disgust when he saw the leopard skin was merely dyed cloth. Another man laughed to find a small and bedraggled bunch of faded violets stuck in the buttonhole of a dead Dragoon General whose white moustache was splashed with blood.

Sharpe and Harper used one of the pauses between the French charges to canter out from the Guards’ square. It was partly curiosity which drove them. Other staff officers similarly rode between the formations and past the heaps of French dead to discover how other battalions were faring. Sharpe and Harper sought their old battalion and finally spotted the yellow regimental colour of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers above the lingering musket smoke. The colour bore the badge of a chained eagle to commemorate the trophy that Sharpe and Harper had captured at Talavera. The redcoats cheered as the two Riflemen trotted out of the misting smoke and into the square’s embrace.

“You don’t mind if we shelter here, do you?” Sharpe politely asked Ford.

Ford was clearly nervous of Sharpe’s motives in seeking out his old battalion, but he could hardly refuse his hospitality and so nodded his reluctant consent. The Colonel nervously plucked off his glasses and scrubbed at their lenses with his sash. For some reason the spectacles seemed misted and he wondered if it was some strange effect caused by the thickness of powder smoke. Major Vine glared at the Riflemen, fearing that Sharpe had again come to take command as he had at Quatre Bras.

Peter d’Alembord, dismounted, was still unwounded. He smiled at Sharpe. “I don’t mind this malarkey! They can try this nonsense all day and night!”

The French tried the nonsense again, and again achieved nothing. They had been lured to the attack by the mistaken apprehension of a British withdrawal, yet, though they had learned their mistake, they seemed incapable of abandoning the suicidal attacks. Again and again they attacked, and again and again the muskets flamed and smoked and the tired horses fell screaming and quivering. Close to Sharpe, between the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers and a square of the King’s German Legion, a French Hussar officer struggled to unbuckle his expensive saddle. Both squares left him undisturbed. The girth of the saddle was trapped by the horse’s dead weight, but at last the officer tugged it free and the Germans gave him an ironic cheer. The Frenchmen trudged away with his burden. Two riderless horses trotted down the rear face of Ford’s square, but none of his men could be bothered to retrieve the trophies, even though a reward was offered for captured horses. A wounded Cuirassier, divested of his armour, limped southwards. “Hey! Frenchie! Get yourself a horse, you silly bugger!” Private Clayton shouted at him.

“Why are the bloody fools persisting?” Harry Price asked Sharpe.

“Pride.” Sharpe did not even have to think about his answer. These were the horsemen of France and they would not limp back to their own lines to confess failure. Sharpe remembered moments like this from his own experience; at Badajoz the French had filled a stone-faced ditch with British dead, yet still the infantry had attacked the breach. In the end that obstinate pride had brought victory, but these blown horses with their tired riders were now incapable of breaking a square.

Sharpe edged his horse close behind his old light company. Weller was still alive, so was Dan Hagman and Clayton. “How is it, lads?”

Their mouths were dry from biting into the cartridges, their lips were flecked with unburned powder, and sweat had carved clean rivulets down their faces which were blackened by the smoke and smuts from the powder exploding in their musket pans. Their fingernails were bleeding from dragging back the heavy flints, yet they grinned and gave an ironic cheer when Sharpe handed down a canteen of rum from his saddle. Colour Sergeant Huckfield had a pocket of spare flints which he doled out to those men whose old ones had been chipped away by repeated firing.

“I know how the gentry feel now,” Dan Hagman said to Sharpe.