Richard Holmes - Redcoat - The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket

The officer who we might suppose has something to do with opening the ball is the lieutenant colonel commanding the battalion. He is a surprisingly young man – no more than thirty – on a little chestnut mare, standing on the gentle crest about a hundred yards in front of his men. He looks intently into the valley on its far side and occasionally glances to his left where, 400 yards away, his brigade commander, responsible for another three battalions all tucked in behind the same slope, sits astride his horse with two other mounted officers.

Although Hobden and his five hundred comrades cannot see what is happening on the other side of the hill, they can certainly hear it For half an hour now the distant popping of musketry has swollen to an almost continuous roar, interspersed with the thump of cannon. There is a good deal of shouting, the occasional anguished yell, and, more particularly of late, the clear notes of a bugle. Some minutes ago a cannon ball skidded over the crest, its force almost spent, sending up a shower of gravel as it bounded its way to a halt away to the battalion’s left. Wounded men, in red, dark green and Portuguese grey homespun, have been drifting back over the ridge for some time. Some are going well, limping along with sticks or walking briskly with a bound-up arm, but there are already some chilling sights: one man comes past slowly, wordlessly clutching his belly, and another has lost part of his face to a vicious sword-cut. The noise intensifies, and separate drumbeats soon coalesce into a steady sound. One of the officers present, unversed in musical minutiae of flams and paradiddles, will later describe it as: ‘the rum dum, the rum dum, the rum dum dummadum dum dum.’ It becomes louder and louder. Old soldiers exchange knowing glances, and some risk a sergeant’s ire by muttering ‘look sharp, for here comes here comes old trousers,’ their nickname for the pas de charge, the call beaten by the drummers accompanying French infantry going forward at the quickstep. There are soldiers on the crest-line now, riflemen in dark green, moving in pairs, one kneeling to fire into the valley while his comrade scurries back. The British skirmishers, who have borne the brunt of the fighting so far, have been driven in.

The brigade commander doffs his cocked hat, and waves it unmistakably. The colonel turns his horse, walks it easily back to his battalion, and halts in front of the front rank. ‘Thirty-Seventh,’ he shouts, and officers and men respond by bracing up, swords and muskets tight in between body and right arm. ‘Battalion will shoulder…Arms!’ On the last word muskets are tossed across the body so that their brass butt-plates now rest in the left hand, and the ensigns raise their colours, dropping their staffs into the pouches on their colour-belts. ‘By the centre…March.’ And they step off, as one man, with the left foot, boots swinging low over the earth in 30-inch steps at 75 paces to the minute. The drums tap out the step as the line moves forward, men looking in to the centre to get their dressing from the colours, file closers chivvying here and there to ensure that the rear rank stays well closed up.

As the battalion crosses the crest it is greeted by a vision of hell. Clouds of thick smoke, the product of a battle between opposing skirmishers which the enemy seems to have won, cannot conceal the fact that the valley is full of blue-clad French troops, now coming on, up the slope, in thick columns. And they are coming on in the bravest style, their drummers hammering out the pas de charge, officers shouting encouragement, and men whooping ‘ Vive L’Empereur ‘. One little spark is actually marching backwards, his shako raised on his sword-point, yelling that the Emperor will reward those who fight bravely. The nearest French column is three full battalions strong, stacked company behind company on a two-company front, fifty yards wide and almost twice as deep. The voltigeurs – equivalent of the 37th’s light company – have been skirmishing ahead of the column and some now begin to peck away at the British line from close range: with the clatter of a tinker’s pack one front-rank redcoat drops his musket, briefly kneels over it and then falls flat. The French grenadiers are leading their regiment, just as their British equivalents would be if the roles were reversed. They are big, stern men with red ornaments to their shakos, a forest of facial hair and the glitter of military dandysim: gold earrings, and silver ornaments on their clubbed hair. At least one British soldier is frankly shocked: ‘Their hats, set round with feathers, their beards long and black, gave them a fierce look. Their stature was superior to ours; most of us were young. We looked like boys; they looked like savages.’ 1The French are used to winning, and indeed think that they have all but won today. They have brushed aside some British riflemen and Portuguese caçadores, and there seems to be very few of the enemy to their front.

Raising his voice against the din, the colonel gives a long drawnout preparatory command of ‘Thirty-Seventh’ and follows it three paces later, with ‘Halt’. The drums cease on the instant, lending emphasis to the order, and the battalion stands steady, looking down, across open ground speckled with scrub oak and cork trees, at the head of the oncoming column only 300 yards away. The colonel rides round the right flank of his battalion, and takes station just behind the colours. It is not until the French have come another hundred yards, though now, very evidently, a little more slowly than before, as the moral effect of the line’s steadiness makes itself felt, that he shouts ‘Front rank: Make ready’. The drummers beat the short roll of the ‘preparative’; captains step back behind the second rank; the front rank’s muskets come up, still perpendicular, but now with the left hand to the walnut fore-end and the right just below the lock, with those callused thumbs resting on the flint-gripping jaws of the musket’s cock. The soldiers of the second rank step half a pace forward and to their right, in a movement called ‘locking on,’ so that, when their turn comes to fire, they will have space to do so.

The column is now less than a hundred yards away. Many features of its members can be clearly seen now. Its colonel has the cross of the Legion of Honour, and is having trouble with his horse, but keeps it going straight with short reins and sharp kicks. His officers and NCOs are desperately urging their men to close up: ‘ Serrez les rangs, serrez !’ For they know what is coming: it is too late – and too close to that line – to meet fire with fire, and so if they are to succeed the sheer momentum of their mass must not be lost. They are only fifty yards away, close enough now to see now that their enemy’s commander has a thin face and a sharp nose, when the command ‘Present…Fire’ rings out The British front rank fires a volley of shattering precision. Its muskets were carefully loaded in safety behind the crest: their flints and priming alike are fresh. Without delay the colonel orders: ‘Front rank: load and prime. Rear rank: Make ready…Present…Fire.’

In just over thirty seconds each rank has fired two volleys, a total of two thousand musket balls at a range so close that even the unreliable Brown Bess musket is hitting a mass target about once in every ten shots. The head of the column falls like corn before the reaper. Its colonel, an attractive target – not least to the man in the round hat, who has his own views on officers, British or foreign – has half a dozen fatal wounds within seconds. As men in the front ranks fall, their comrades further back are exposed to the winnowing blast of musketry. Men trip over the dead and dying. Some, deaf to the shouts of their own officers and NCOs, who know that if they are to win it will be by shock, not fire, stop to fire back, and others strive frantically to position themselves behind those in front.