“In time we will.” Charlie Weller still had a robust faith in victory.

Another musket bullet went within inches of Clayton’s head. He shivered helplessly. “If I’m a dead ‘un, Charlie, you’ll look after Sally, won’t you?” Clayton’s wife, Sally, was by far the prettiest wife in the battalion. “She likes you, she does,” Clayton explained his apparent generosity.

“You’re going to be all right.” Charlie Weller, despite the hiss and crash of bullet and shell, felt a frisson of excitement at the thought of Sally.

“Sweet God, I’ve had enough of this!” Clayton looked round to see what officers still lived. “Bloody hell! Major Vine’s a dead ‘un! Good riddance to the bastard.”

“Look to your front, Private Clayton!” Sergeant Huckfield touched the New Testament in his top pocket, and prayed that the damned French skirmishers would soon run out of ammunition.

Colonel Joseph Ford almost vomited as he tried to wipe away the globules of Major Vine’s brains that smeared his breeches. Ford was feeling horribly alone; one major was dead, the other was wounded and gone to the surgeons, and ail around him his precious battalion was being chewed to pieces by the guns and the skirmishers. He took off his spectacles and rubbed frantically at the lens, only to discover that his sash was thickly smeared with scraps of Major Vine’s brains. Ford gasped for horrified breath and knew he was going to vomit helplessly. -“:

“It’s nothing to do with me!” a harsh voice suddenly spoke from beside Ford’s horse, “but I’d suggest a fifty-pace advance, give the bastards one good volley, then retire.”

Ford, his impulse to vomit checked by the voice, frantically pulled on the smudged eyeglasses and found himself staring into the sardonic face of Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe. Ford tried to say something in reply, but no sound came.

“With your permission, sir?” Sharpe asked punctiliously.

Ford, too frightened to open his mouth, just nodded.

“South Essex!” Sharpe’s thunderous voice startled the nearest men. It did not matter that he had inadvertently used the battalion’s old name, they knew who they were and who, at last, was giving them direction in the middle of horror. “Front rank! Fix bayonets!”

“Thank Christ for bloody Sharpie,” Clayton said fervently, then half crouched to hold his musket between his knees as he pulled out his bayonet and slotted it onto his musket.

Sharpe thrust between the files of Number Five Company, placing himself in the very centre of the battalion’s front rank. “Talion will advance fifty paces! At the double! By the right! March!” As the men started forward, Sharpe drew his long sword. “Come on, you buggers! Cheer! Let the bastards know you’re coming to kill them! Cheer!”

The battalion ran forward, bayonets outstretched. And they cheered. They knew Sharpe, they had followed him into battle before, and they liked to hear that voice shouting commands. They trusted him. He gave them confidence and victory. They cheered even louder as the mass of startled skirmishers on the ridge’s crest upped and fled from their sudden advance. Sharpe had run ahead of them to stand with his drawn sword on the very lip of the crest.

“Halt!” Sharpe’s voice, trained as a sergeant, instantly silenced and stopped the shrunken battalion. Ahead of them the French Voltiguers were dropping into new firing positions.

Sharpe turned to face the battalion. “Front rank kneel! Aim at the buggers! Don’t throw away this volley! Find your man and kill the bastard! Aim for their bellies!” He pushed his way between two men of the kneeling front rank then turned to look at the French. He saw a Voltigeur’s musket pointing directly at him and he knew that the Frenchman was taking careful aim. He also knew he could not duck or dodge, but just had to trust in the French musket’s inaccuracy. “Aim!” he shouted. The Frenchman fired and Sharpe felt the wind of the ball on his check like a sudden hot blow. “Fire!”

The massive volley crashed down the slope. Perhaps twenty Frenchmen died, and twice as many were wounded. “Light company! Stay where you are and reload! Front rank, stand! No one told you to run!” Sharpe remained on the crest. Behind him a man was lying dead, struck in the head by the bullet intended for Sharpe. “Light company! Chain formation, quick now!”

The battalion’s skirmishers spread along the crest. Their new Captain, Jefferson, jiggled impatiently, wanting to be away from this exposed ridge where the roundshot slashed and thudded, but Sharpe was determined that the Company’s volley would have an effect. The men finished reloading their muskets, then knelt. The surviving French skirmishers were creeping forward again, filling the gaps torn by the battalion volley. “Wait for the order!” Sharpe called to his old Company. “Find your targets! Clayton!”

“Sir?”

“There’s an officer on your right. A tall bugger with a red moustache. I want him dead or I’ll blame you for it! Company!” He paused a second. “Fire!”

The smaller volley did more damage, though whether the moustached officer was shot, Sharpe could not tell. He shouted at the men to retire to battalion. The manoeuvre had gained a few moments’ respite, nothing more, but it was better to hit back than simply endure the galling punishment of the enemy skirmishers.

Sharpe lingered at the crest a few more seconds. It was not bravado, but rather curiosity because, five hundred paces to his left, he could just see two red-coated infantry battalions of the King’s German Legion advancing in column. They marched towards La Haye Sainte with their colours flying, presumably to drive away the French infantry who clustered about the farm.

He would have liked to have watched longer, but the enemy was creeping back towards the crest, and so Sharpe turned and walked back to the battalion. “Thank you for the privilege, Colonel!” he shouted to Ford.

Ford said nothing. He was in no mood to appreciate Sharpe’s tact, instead he felt slighted and diminished by the Rifleman’s competence. Ford knew that he should have given the orders, and that he should have taken the battalion forward, but his bowels had turned to water and his mind was a haze of fear and confusion. He had fought briefly in southern France, but he had never seen a horror like this; a battlefield where men were dying by the minute, where his battalion shrank as the files closed over the gaps left by the dead, and where it seemed that every man must die before the field’s appetite for blood was slaked. Ford snatched off his fouled spectacles and scrubbed their lenses on a corner of his saddle-cloth. The white smoke and cannon’s glare melded into a smear of horror before his eyes. He wished it would end, he just wished it would end. He no longer cared if it ended in victory or defeat, he just wanted it to end.

But the Emperor had only just started to fight.

The Duke of Wellington no longer troubled himself about the Prince of Orange. At the battle’s commencement, when some niceties of polite usage persisted, the Duke had taken care to inform the Prince of any orders involving those troops nominally under the Prince’s command, but now in the desperate moments of pure survival the Duke simply ignored the Young Frog.

Which did not mean that the Prince considered himself redundant. On the contrary, he saw his own genius as the allies’ sole hope of victory and was prepared to use the last shreds of his authority to achieve it. Which meant La Haye Sainte must be saved, and to save it the Prince ordered the remnants of the and Infantry Brigade of the King’s German Legion to attack the besieging French.

Colonel Christian Ompteda, the brigade commander, formed his two battalions into close column of companies, ordered them to fix bayonets, and then to advance into the suffocating mix of heated air and bitter smoke that filled the valley. The German objective was the field to the west of La Haye Sainte where the French skirmishers were pressing close and thick on the beleaguered farm.