The battle was smouldering. It could ignite at any moment and Fate, who is the soldiers’ Goddess, was taking an interest in the sparks that flickered and threatened about the Arapiles. An artillery officer on the Lesser Arapile saw the case-shot leave the smoke, he saw it as the faintest trace of a grey pencil-like line in the air and then it exploded, just over the far edge of the Greater Arapile, and it was a black-grey air burst shot through with deep red and the ground beneath and ahead of the explosion was spattered by the lead balls and the shattered casing. Most went harmlessly to ground, some ricocheted off the hot stone, but two balls, with Fate’s malevolence, took Auguste Marmont in the side and France’s youngest Marshal was down. He was not killed, but he would not lead his army again this day, an army he had already pointed to destruction.

Wellington was far away. He had ridden to the Third Division and he had pointed them in a new direction, eastwards, and they had begun their march. The French marched west, thinking they were in a race to head off the British, but the British were coming towards them, and waiting behind them, and they could not know it. And the British, soured by the weeks of march and counter-march, of retreat, wanted to fight.

Between the Third Division and the Arapiles, hidden in a deep fold of ground, there were more British. Horsemen. The Heavy Cavalry, newly come from Britain and eager to try out their mounts and their long thirty-five inch straight blades, blades they said were too heavy for a swift parry, but wonderful for killing infantrymen.

The sun had bleached the plain pale. The killing ground was beginning to fill, as a stage might fill, but still it waited for the spark that would fan into a battle. It came in the west as the Third Division hit the head of the French column and to the men, up on the ridge by the farmhouse, it came as the distant muffled sound of muskets that were like a far-off thornbush fire. Smoke came from the west, and sound, and the dust that added to the smoke, and then the telescopes could make out a little of what was happening. The French column was being crumpled, thrown back, and the battle, that had started in the west was coming east, back to the Arapiles.

The French battalions recoiled. They were outnumbered, outgunned and outgeneralled. They had thought they were the vanguard of a march, and found they were the front line of a battle, and their defeat was about to become disaster.

Sharpe watched it. He hated the cavalry as all infantrymen hated cavalry and he was used to seeing the British cavalry ill-led and ineffective, but Fate was capricious to the French on that hot Spanish afternoon. The British Heavy Dragoons, some from the King’s own bodyguard, came on the French from the north. They wanted to fight. They came up from their dead ground in two ranks, trotting to keep their order, and the black horsetail plumes on their shining crested helmets rippled as they moved. Sharpe, watching through the glass, saw a shiver of light, a glitter, and the swords were up and the horsemen were booted knee to booted knee.

He did not hear the trumpet that put them into the canter, but he saw the line go faster, and still they kept their discipline, and he knew what they must be feeling. All men fear the moment of going into battle, but these men were on their big horses and the smell of the powder was in their nostrils and the trumpet was setting their blood on fire and the swords in their hands were hungry. The French were not ready. Infantry can form square and the textbooks say that no cavalry in the world can break a well-formed square, but the French had not known the danger and they were not in square. They were falling back from a massive infantry attack and they were firing and loading, cursing their General, when the earth shook.

A thousand horses, the best horses in the world, and a thousand swords came from the dust and the trumpets spurred the horsemen into the final charge, the moment when the horse is released to run like the devil and the line will stagger and bend, but it does not matter because the enemy is so close. And the horsemen, who had been given a target that every cavalryman dreamt of, opened their mouths in a triumphant scream and the great, heavy, edged blades came into the French with all the weight of man and horse. The fear had turned to anger, to craziness, and the British killed and killed, split the Battalions, rode down the French and the huge blades fell and the horses bit and reared, and the French, who could do no other, broke and ran.

The horses ran with them. The swords came from behind. The Heavy Dragoons drove paths of blood and dust through the fugitives and there was no difficulty in killing. The French had their backs to the horses so the swords could take them in the neck or over the skull and the horsemen revelled in it, snarled at their enemies, and the swords had so many targets. The musket sound had gone. It was replaced by the thunder of hooves, by screams, and by the cleaving sound of a butcher’s block.

Some French ran for help to the British infantry. The red ranks opened up, helped them in, because all infantry feared that moment when they were not in square and when the cavalry hit them at the full charge. The British soldiers shouted at the French, told them to run to the British lines, and the red-coated men watched in awe what the Heavy Dragoons were doing and knew that Fate could have decreed it otherwise and so they helped their enemy to escape the common enemy of all infantry. The spark had turned into a running flame.

Sharpe watched from the hill, privileged as a spectator, and he saw the French left wing chewed into fragments between the horses and the Third Division. He watched the Heavy Dragoons, superbly led, reform again and again, charge again and again, and they fought till the troopers were too weary to hold the heavy swords.

Eight French Battalions had been broken. An Eagle had been lost, five guns captured, and hundreds of prisoners, their faces blackened by the powder and their heads and arms sliced by the swords, had been taken. The French left had been split, shattered, and massacred. Now the horsemen were spent. Fate was not all on the British side. She had decreed the death of the Heavy Dragoons’ General who would never again be able to show British cavalry how to fight, but their job this day had been done. Their blades were thick with blood, they had ridden to glory, and they would remember the moments for ever when all a man had to do was lean right, cut down, and spur on.

Wellington was launching his attacks, one by one, from the west to the east. The Third Division had marched, then the cavalry, and now more men were launched onto the great plain. They came from both sides of the Teso San Miguel and they drove southwards, aiming at the hinge of the French line, its centre, dominated by the Greater Arapile. Sharpe watched. He saw infantry spread out from the small valley between the ridge and the Teso San Miguel and march past the village. Their colours had been stripped of the leather casings and they flew over the Battalions and Sharpe felt the pang of extraordinary pride that the sight of the colours gave every soldier.

The guns on the Greater Arapile shifted their aim, fired, and the first gaps were blown in the British lines, the Sergeants shouted at men to close up, close up, and they marched on, attacking in line, and Sharpe saw the yellow colour of the South Essex.

It was the first time ever that he had not fought with them and he felt a deep guilt as he watched his men, the skirmishers, run ahead into the wheat. He watched them fearful for them, and he knew that the wound still hurt, that the doctors had said that it could re-open and bleed, and that the next time it might fester and he would die.

Portuguese troops were marching for the Greater Arapile. The Fourth Division, survivors of the main breach at Bada-joz like Sharpe’s own South Essex, were marching to the right of the French hill. The shots kept coming. The French had arrayed guns on the plain beside the hill and the batteries bellowed at the British and Portuguese lines and the gaps appeared, were filled, and small knots of red or blue coated men were left behind on the trampled wheat. The French troops who had been attacking the village fell back in the face of the Fourth Division. It marched on, its colours high, and they threatened the French guns in the plain, the troops who retreated in front of them, and the troops who were coming back from the carnage in the west. Sharpe rested his telescope on Hogan’s shoulder and found his own men, paired in the wheat, and he saw Harper and kept him in the glass. The Sergeant was gesticulating to the Company, keeping them spread out, keeping them moving, and Sharpe felt a terrible guilt that he was not there. They would have to fight without him, and he could not bear the thought that some would die and that he might have saved them. He knew that there was little he could have done that Lieutenant Price and the Sergeants were not already doing, but that was small comfort.