Rifles - Mark Urban [35]
Ney was moving with twenty-five thousand troops on the four thousand or so of Craufurd’s Light Division. The crackling of musketry between the leading voltigeurs and the rifle picket announced that the action was beginning. For weeks, the better-informed men of Wellington’s army had been worrying about the risks of keeping the Light Division east of the Coa. Major Charles Napier, a clever officer attached to Craufurd’s staff, had written in his journal on 2 July: ‘If the enemy was enterprising we should be cut to pieces … we shall be attacked some morning and lose many men.’ On 16 July, disturbed that they had still not withdrawn, he wrote: ‘Why do we not get on the other side of the Coa? … our safety has certainly been owing to the enemy’s ignorance of our true situation.’ Wellington himself had echoed these views, with orders to Craufurd not to risk a battle with the rest of the British Army across the Coa and therefore unable to support him.
As the French brigades marched forward that morning of 24 July, drums beating, Craufurd had one more chance. It would still take time – perhaps even an hour or two – for Ney to bring up the columns of his main force and shake them into their battle line, ready for the assault. All the time the drums sent their repetitive signal – a refrain the riflemen nicknamed ‘Old Trousers’. This could allow the Light Division to get away – for even the 43rd, furthest from the bridge, were not much more than two miles from it. Craufurd decided to stand. He sent his aide-de-camp, Major Napier, around the battalion commanders, telling them they must hold their ground while some wagons of artillery ammunition and other supplies were taken across the bridge.
Seeing hundreds of French skirmishers moving up through the rocky terrain, the outlying pickets began running back towards their supports – some were cut off, the French bagging their first prisoners. O’Hare’s company was formed up, rifles rested on stone walls, ready to give covering fire to the pickets running towards them. As they caught sight of the first Frenchmen, bobbing and ducking among the trees and drystone walls, they started finding their targets, leading them, squeezing the trigger and watching them drop with a yelp or a slap of metal on flesh. But these tirailleurs were no recruits. They moved with a mutual confidence born of years of campaigning, timing their dash from one bit of cover to another during moments when they calculated their enemy would be reloading. Some were good shots too: Lieutenant Coane, falling wounded with a ball in his guts, was sent to the rear.
This contest between light troops had been going on for an hour when the main assault columns closed up and began their evolution into attack formation. Simmons observed: ‘The enemy’s infantry formed line and, with an innumerable multitude of skirmishers, attacked us fiercely; we repulsed them; they came on again, yelling with drums beating, frequently with the drummers leading, often in front of the line, French officers like mountebanks running forward and placing their hats on their swords and capering about like madmen.’
A company or two of Rifles, totalling perhaps 120 men, would stand no hope of defending themselves against whole battalions of French, each one four times their number. Ney’s men had been able to get some of the cannon up too, and they were beginning to belch fire. O’Hare knew that his boys would be slaughtered or overwhelmed if they did not fall back. He ordered half his company, Lieutenant Coane’s platoon (under Simmons now), to move to a new defensive line, while Lieutenant Johnston’s covered them.
Craufurd’s line could defend itself better for as long as its flanks were anchored; the left or northern one on Almeida fortress, with its heavy artillery, the right on the Coa gorge. As the Rifles were pushed back, though, the French commanders could see a gap opening on the British left. Some squadrons of the