Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters Read Online Free PDF Page B

not necessarily catastrophic, since the British battalions had deployed their companies in line abreast, so that their formation was only two soldiers deep. Only the most exceptional cannon ball could therefore carry off more than two men at a time. Every now and then, with the growling of sergeants making itself heard above the bombardment, the men shuffled a little from both wings towards the middle so that the gaps made by the French cannon were closed. It was vital to preserve a compact formation, both so that the battalion could fire effectively and so that it could defend itself against infantry and cavalry.
    At about 3 p.m., it became clear that a general advance had been ordered by the French generals Lapisse and Sebastiani, who began moving twenty-four battalions towards Sherbrooke’s eight. These two gentlemen had served long apprenticeships under their imperial master: having humbled Austrians, Prussians and Russians, they were skilled exponents in the French art of war. They had drawn up their forces in two waves. The first, of twelve battalions, marched forward with companies in line, matching the British formations. Behind this first echelon were the other battalions, deployed in columns, each of about forty to fifty men across the front and nine deep. Each of these French battalions had its own company of light soldiers and they were sent ahead of both waves. They ran forward taking potshots, ducking down in cover while they reloaded and then moving off again.
    The French intent, with both the skirmisher fire and the artillery that had preceded it, was as much to unsettle the British troops as it was to kill them. Napoleon’s victories had demonstrated that this long-range firing often unbalanced an enemy: many soldiers would begin shooting back perhaps at two hundred yards or even further, others might leave the ranks and try to save themselves. In this way, those facing a French charge would be goaded into a spontaneous, ineffective, long-range musket fire which would do nothing to check the onslaught, which in turn would so damage the defender’s nerve that they often ran away before the Emperor’s advancing regiments reached them. If not, a close-range French volley and the bayonet would usually decide the matter.
    Sherbrooke’s men watched the French formations moving down to the Portina in front of them, and loaded. Each man took a cartridge, and bit the top off the paper packet of gunpowder. He trickled some of the powder into a small pan on the right of his musket’s barrel and then snapped shut the metal lid that covered this priming. Then the remaining powder, the bulk of it, was poured down the barrel, the paper packet scewed up and placed into the same hole, followed by the musket ball itself. The soldier then drew the ramrod from under the barrel, using it to force the ball down to the bottom so that powder, paper and ball were packed snug together.
    While he was performing these actions, the soldier kept the hammer or cock sprung back in a half-open position: half-cock. On loading the cartridge, he would make the weapon ready by bringing it up to his chest and pulling the hammer back to full distance (you did not want to go off at half-cock). On hearing the command ‘Present!’ he would bring the musket up to the firing position.
    When the order to fire was eventually given, he would pull the trigger, causing the hammer of his weapon to fly forward with the flint itheld striking the cover. This in turn produced a spark that ignited the initial priming charge; which, burning through a small hole on the side of the barrel in a fraction of a second, then caused the main explosion which sent the ball out of the weapon and towards the enemy.
    General Sherbrooke had given very strict orders that his men should not fire until the enemy was just fifty yards away. It should be a single volley, and it should be followed by a cheer and a charge with fixed bayonets. Sherbrooke’s orders showed that he