Brothers in Arms. Iain Gale

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СКАЧАТЬ wholly forgiven and ever-faithful Marshal.

      Vendôme turned to the group of officers. ‘Come, gentlemen. Chevalier, if you please. D’Evreux. All of you. This is no time for lunch or gossip. Dinner is at an end. Come on. We have much work to do and a battle to win.’

      There can be few more spectacular sights on any field of battle than that of a brigade of cavalry in full cry, and Steel was thankful for the diversion. With the French gunners having gauged their range, his men were beginning to suffer more than the psychological hurt of their tortured minds which had plagued them for the last few hours of waiting on this hill. Now at least there was something to offer them as amusement.

      Steel and Slaughter, Hansam, Williams and as many of the company as were able to find a suitable vantage point watched, with the rest of the battalion’s front rank and other regiments close to the front of the brigade, as from the Allied left wing rank upon rank of high-stepping cavalry broke out across the field. They advanced sedately at first, at a slow trot, and then, when their intention became evident to the enemy, broke into a canter and a gallop, coming on steadily towards the French right flank.

      Steel looked towards their goal and saw, sitting quite still and apparently unaware across the Ghent road, a glorious body of French cavalry; dragoons and horse in elaborate blue and red coats. They seemed utterly oblivious to the men moving towards them at an increasing pace. Steel could only assume that they had been informed by their commander that the ground to their right was impassable. The Frenchmen must have seen the Hanoverian horse assembling to begin their advance. He pictured their squadron commanders, sitting high and proud on some of the finest horses to be found in France, laughing in genial conversation, although they must have been quite aware of the movement on their flank. He watched them. He too had gauged the lie of the land and had noticed the marshes that ringed the position, presuming them impassable.

      He found Williams and Hansam standing at his side. ‘Well, gentlemen, what d’you make of that then? Have our generals gone quite mad? First they keep us here the best part of the day, and now it seems they intend to send the best of our cavalry into a bog.’

      Williams, apparently ignoring or unaware of Steel’s comments, spoke with curious and undisguised reverence as he stared at the cavalry’s advance. ‘It’s quite brilliant. Incredible.’

      Steel looked at him quizzically. ‘Tom? Is it catching, this madness? Don’t bring it near me. What the devil are you talking about? You can see as well as I that that ground is utterly unsuited to cavalry. It’s a marsh, for God’s sake. Why, even the foot would be hard pressed to pass through that quagmire. It’s madness.’

      Williams spoke in a tone appropriate to his junior position, yet firm in its purpose. ‘No, sir, it’s not mad. You see, that marsh is not what it seems. I had the truth of it this morning from Harrington. I don’t think you know him. He’s a cornet in Hay’s Dragoons, attached to the staff. Sound fellow.’

      ‘Get on with it.’

      ‘Sorry, sir. Fact is, though, it’s firm ground. As firm as that on which we stand ourselves.’ He stamped his foot. ‘It merely looks like a bog from the sheen of water that it keeps on its surface. Like oil floating in a bath, if you know what I mean.’

      Steel stared at him and wondered quite when the young man had taken a bath in scented oils.

      Williams continued. ‘Harrington says the engineers told him it could support a train of artillery and more. It’s brilliant, sir. D’you see? For the French are not aware of the truth of the matter. They’ll be cut to ribbons.’

      Steel looked again and saw that now several of the French cavalry officers were pointing in the direction of the advancing Germans. They were laughing. He presumed that they would be mocking the decision of the Hanoverian commander to send his horse into a marsh. ‘Christ almighty. You’re right. Look at them, Henry. They don’t know. Haven’t a clue. They’ll be caught off their guard. D’you see? It is brilliant. Well done, Tom.’

      The Hanoverian horse were advancing at the gallop now, for, as usual on the field, the sheer weight of man and horse together did not allow them to break into a full charge. But Steel knew that they would still have more than sufficient momentum to smash into the French line with full effect. The French for their part still had not moved, even though the enemy were now apparently crossing the impassable marsh. As Steel looked on, though, he noticed some of the French officers beginning to turn their horses away from the assembly and to rejoin their squadrons and troops. Within a few moments he realized that the French would learn the salient lesson that in battle there can never be any substitute for diligent intelligence. It was a lesson that would cost many of them their lives.

      He recognized the Hanoverians now, General Jørgen Rantzau’s brigade of dragoons, part of Cadogan’s own command, a blaze of white-uniformed German mercenaries in English pay whom he knew bore no love for the French or their Swiss allies stationed behind them, all of them mounted uniformly on huge bay horses. Eight squadrons of Hanoverian horse, some twelve hundred men. A sparkle of flashing light caught his eye, and Steel saw the sun glint off the long, straight cavalry swords which rested on their right shoulders, honed, he guessed, to an edge like a butcher’s cleaver and constructed specifically so that the slightest motion exerted at the hilt might make the blade fall like a hammer on whatever lay below: flesh, bone or sinew. He looked on, horribly fascinated, as the Hanoverian horse closed with the French, who still had not moved. He watched closely and saw the final moment at which the French at last realized their peril. He kept looking as in a horrible instant there was a commotion in their still static ranks. He saw the sudden movements as the unflappable officers screamed useless commands to wheel to the right, to face the oncoming enemy. To draw sabres. But it was too little and too late to save the French, and now, as the white-coated Hanoverians on the big horses drove on relentlessly, the final act of horror unfolded before him.

      A noise burst across the valley, which to the new recruits in the regiment sounded curiously like the crackle of a fire in a hearth. Steel recognized it instantly as the sound of musketry. Two hundred muskets had opened up from a battalion of French infantry arrayed in line to the right of the cantering Hanoverian dragoons. They sang out in a concerted volley, belching smoke and flame, and a few of the Hanoverians seemed to leap in the saddle as they were struck and toppled from their mounts, a fair number of which also went down in the hail of bullets. But the volley had less effect than it might have done due to the pace of the fast-moving horsemen who rode on oblivious, for such now was their fury that most did not even notice the musketry any more than one might acknowledge the annoying bite of a mosquito. Steel watched as the dragoons kept going in their headlong rush, drawing ever closer to the panic-stricken target of the French horse astride the road. This, he thought, was precisely what these men had been trained to do. This was the moment of which any horseman and dragoon dreamed but never believed would actually happen – to find an army’s weakness, catch it off guard and exploit it at speed. It was textbook stuff and almost unbelievably simple, and when executed properly, as here, imbued with a savage grace.

      Then Rantzau’s men were up and in the French lines, scattering the enemy in all directions, moving through them like a scythe through corn, their huge blades falling relentlessly on skulls and necks and, held á point, skewering troopers where they sat helpless while the attackers’ horses kicked and flared their nostrils and bit at the enemy’s chargers, and even the riderless mounts of the men who had fallen still bowled into the French and added their weight and fury to the chaos and carnage of the mêlée.

      Steel could hear his men cheering now as they watched the enemy in their death agonies. There was no room for mercy in war, he thought. No pity here, now. There were merely winners and losers – the dead, the dying and those who managed to remain alive for one more day. The French cavalry were lost. Twenty squadrons of them were swept to oblivion because of one man’s refusal СКАЧАТЬ