An Infamous Army

by Georgette Heyer

"Och, sir, let the puir bodies gang!" shouted a sergeant of the Gordons. "We dinna want furriners hired to fight for us!"

The three companies of the 95th Rifles, posted on the knoll and in the sandpit in front of Kempt's right, were firing steadily into Bourgeois' and Donzelot's columns, advancing on either side of them; and two of Ross's 9-pounders, guarding the chaussee, caused Bourgeois' brigade to swerve away from La Haye Sainte to its right, where it was thrown against Donzelot's division, and advanced with it in one unwieldy mass. The riflemen stood their ground until almost hemmed in by the sea of French, but were forced at last to abandon the sandpit and retreat to the main position.

Bylandt's men had forced their way right to the rear, and although Byleveld's troop had extricated itself from the melee and was in the front line again, firing into the head of the column already starting to deploy in the valley, over two thousand Dutch - Belgians had deserted from the line, leaving three thousand men of Picton's decimated division to face the charge of thirteen thousand Frenchmen.

Picton, wasting no time in trying to bring Bylandt's men to the front again, deployed Kempt's brigade into an attenuated two-deep line, to fill the breach. Below, in the hollow road and the cornfields beyond it, the French columns were also trying to deploy in the constricted space afforded for such a movement. The whole valley swarmed with blue-coated infantry, struggling in the press of their own numbers to get into line. The front ranks charged up the banks of the hedge concealing the British troops, shouting and cheering, confident that the flight of the large body of troops in their front had left the field open to them through the Allied centre. Picton's voice blared above the roar of cannon: "Rise up!"

The men of Kempt's brigade, crouched behind the hedge, leaped to their feet; the French saw the bank crowned by a long line of red, overlapping their column on either side. Every musket was at the present; a volley riddled the advancing mass; and as the French recoiled momentarily under it, Picton roared: "Charge! Hurrah!" and Kempt's warriors, with the British cheer the French had learned to dread, charged with bayonets levelled.

To the east of Donzelot, Marcognet's column was surging up the bank to where Pack's Highlanders waited, a little drawn back from the crest. "Ninety second! Everything has given way in front of you!" Pack shouted. "You must charge!"

A yell of "Scotland ever!" answered him. The skirl of pipes soared above the din, and the men of the Black Watch, the Royals, and the Gordons, all with the deaths of comrades to avenge, hurled themselves through the hedge at the advancing column.

In Kempt's brigade, the Camerons, attacked by a devastating crossfire from Bourgeois' column on their right, began to give way. Picton shouted to one of Uxbridge's aides-de-camp: "Rally the Highlanders!" The next instant he fell, shot through the right temple. Captain Seymour rode forward to obey this last command, but it was the Duke, watching the crash of the two armies from the high ground in the centre, who galloped before him into the thick of the fight, and succeeded in rallying the Camerons and the hard pressed riflemen.

"Stand fast, Ninety-fifth! We must not be beaten!" he shouted. "What will they say in England?"

A ragged cheer answered him; he re-formed the 79th himself, and directed them to fire upon the column that had driven them back, only withdrawing out of the heat of the battle when he saw that they stood firm.