Rifles - Mark Urban [153]
With his men on the same side of the brambles as their enemy, they opened fire. For the French soldiers at the head of this column, this sudden hail of metal came as a shock. ‘We were saluted by a fusillade of extreme violence,’ wrote one French colonel, ‘it was the English who, hidden in the tall corn, fired onto us. Since, for the moment, we could not see where this firing was coming from, the column faltered somewhat.’ Seeing the effect of this murderous rifle fire, Picton threw his formed infantry forward. The kilted Black Watch and Camerons marched on, accompanied by several English or Irish battalions.
The French were thrown back some way, but soon rallied their forces. The thump of hooves announced the imminent arrival of cavalry and the voltigeurs at last began to move forward again, answering the 95th’s fire with fire. The French fusillade was becoming heavy, and Layton made his way over to Simmons to confer. As he arrived, a bullet smacked into the company commander’s wrist, leaving Layton’s hand hanging limply and blood pouring out of the wound. Simmons ripped off Layton’s shirtsleeve and began to bind it, advising him to go to the rear and find a surgeon. Layton, one of the few to soldier through the Peninsula without injury, took it personally: he looked in the direction from where the shot had come, telling Simmons, ‘You must hit the fellow first.’
Simmons ran forward at a crouch with one of the sergeants to take cover behind a tree stump just in front. The lieutenant readied his rifle, while the sergeant kept his eyes keenly on the spot where they expected the French sharpshooter to appear, so that he might direct the shot. When the Frenchman at last fired, the ball hit Simmons’s companion square in the forehead. The sergeant was hurled back several feet and his brains blown out of the back of his head. Simmons turned to see how his men might react to this loss, calling out to them, ‘Look at that glorious fellow, our comrade and brother soldier – he now knows the grand secret!’
The Rifles had put themselves in a particularly hot post, for they were under fire from hundreds of French light troops. Costello was hit too, a ball tearing off his trigger finger. Lieutenant Gairdner followed Layton to the rear, having been struck in the leg by a shot – his personal run of bad luck continuing from Badajoz and Vitoria.
With heavy French columns advancing now on the Quatre Bras junction, supported by cavalry, the Rifles would soon have to step aside. Several of their men had been killed in the initial skirmishing; those wounded included Private James Burke, that ‘wild untameable animal’ of the Peninsular sieges, who would die of the wounds received that day. The 95th took refuge in a wood close to the Namur road and to the flank of the main fighting, which raged between French divisions under Ney and the British infantry led forward not half an hour before by Picton.
Two of the British battalions, including the 42nd Highlanders or Black Watch, had advanced in line into some dead ground south of the Namur road. While this position sheltered them from artillery, it also gave them little time to react to the approach of enemy horse, who were now thrown on them by the French generals. This was the British Army’s first real brush with cuirassiers, the heavy cavalry in breastplates that Napoleon usually kept as a personal reserve. These big men came galloping through the smoke; on seeing the Highlanders, they bore down on them. Being caught in a two-deep line, the Scots were hardly able to defend themselves except by firing off a volley as the cuirassiers ploughed through their files, sabreing left and right as they passed: many of them were knocked flying by the flanks of the cuirassiers’ big chargers and some were trampled under hoof. The 42nd were then ordered to about-turn, where they gave the French another, slightly more effective volley and then belatedly attempted to form square, as the onslaught continued. Many riflemen witnessed this