The brigades spilled across the slope of Mont Saint Jean, seven regiments strong, Life Guards, Horse Guards, Dragoon Guards and Dragoons, broad-shouldered tall men on big horses, forming up three ranks deep. These men, scarlet-coated, helmets plumed with horsehair seemed to stand like the knights of yore on their steeds. Yet, even as they were doing so, a galloper rode up to the head of the King's Dragoon Guards, bearing orders from the commander of the brigade.
"COLONEL POTTER! Colonel Potter! Lord Somerset begs to inform you that my lord the Earl of Uxbridge commands him not to delay mustering the First and Second Brigades. We're to move off immediately en echelon with the Union Brigade and clear the French off the west side of the farmhouse!"
"And the Second Lifeguards?" Colonel Potter snapped. "Where's our reserve?"
"Lord Uxbridge has moved them to the east side of the road and La Haye Sainte, they'll be attached to the Union Brigade." the response came.
Harry drew himself up in the saddle, about to let fly at the hapless messenger, then muttered a curse to himself, sinking back into his seat, realising that shooting the messenger was bad form. He settled for a sharp nod and a terse response. Looking to his right, his Regiment was already drawn up in battle order, dressed to right on the senior regiment, the First Lifeguards.
"Very well. Convey my regards to Lord Somerset." he ordered. "The First Dragoon Guards will be readied to charge. Did he perchance tell you what we'll be up against?"
"Four Battalions of the Line behind La Haye Sainte, and immediately ahead two regiments of cuirassiers, the First and Fourth." the messenger replied, before spurring his horse and cantering away.
Flashes of a balmy summer in Paris with Lord Wellington. The almost gladiatorial spectacles in the cuirassier's training grounds. Men who were their sworn foe, the most hospitable of hosts, even of conquerors. The mighty First Regiment of Cuirassiers, the pride of the French heavy cavalry, and their commander. Colonel Potter had thought himself bedevilled by his own mind, until his investigations found the name beneath the armour, Colonel Comtesse Delacour. A sword-wielding warrior queen like something out of myths of pre-Roman times. It had been a happy time for the two soldiers, building genuine respect and, indeed, in the warm nights, warmer affection too.
Silver-polished steel had given way to silver hair, the profanities and indecipherable noises that fighters elicited from each-other in the arena found a new use in the bedchamber. Perhaps it had been a dream only, passing by in a single season. A fool's dream, as now, his Dragoon Guardsmen and her Cuirassiers would face across the battlefield. He could only hope that she was not among those he would face, because he had no cause to excuse himself from his duty.
Harry leaned forward on his saddle pommel and murmured a brief prayer for him, his men, and even for those they would be fighting. Then he rose up in the stirrups, his voice cutting through the battle-noise.
"Colour Party, if you would." he commanded, a grim smile coming to his face as at last the standard of the 1st Dragoon Guards picked up with the wind and flew proudly against the rolling gunsmoke.
Somerset, commanding the Brigade from the front of the First Lifeguards would undoubtedly see the regimental colours of the First Dragoon Guards unfurl in the breeze. Then the bugle call came, and he knew his duty.
"REGIMENT WILL ADVANCE TO THE FRONT AT A WALK. MARCH!" he barked, the bugler picking up the order, his instrument relaying it in the fashion every man there knew.
Already moving forward at the walk, the men strained at the reins, hands waiting at sword-hilts, their heavy black horses snorting with anticipation and fear, the riders little better. Many would mutter a prayer, others gripped their swords in readiness with white knuckles beneath their gauntlets, teeth gritted.
They came over the crest, a bugle calling the trot, as there, not a hundred yards away, their horses up to their shins in ploughsoil, at an angle to the British horse, were the greatest cavalry in Europe, stopped to mill about, stooping over the pathetic remnants of a Hanoverian infantry battalion. With a cry of 'DRAW SWORDS' and the command to break into a canter, Harry spurred his horse through the trot, his sword readily finding his hand, coming to rest on his shoulder. A ragged volley of musketry from the French infantry beyond the farmhouse brought down a tenth of the first rank, but could not stop the earth-shaking tide of horses and men.
The clash came suddenly, the King's Dragoon Guards hitting the left flank of the First Cuirassiers. Harry drove his sword through a cuirassier's throat, well above his breastplate, drawing it out with a twist. Another found himself and his fallen horse under the hooves of the British cavalry. The Cuirassiers scattered, their famed strength nothing when out of formation and unmaneuverable. The Dragoon Guardsmen suffered too, the lance-like thrusting swords of the cuirassiers outreaching the British backswords, but unable to cut and often closed in too close to thrust, the Frenchmen were thrown down.
Harry spotted a dragoon withdrawing, his horse bleeding from a dozen wounds and the broken blade of a French cuirassier's sword embedded in his sword-shoulder. He spotted the boy's sword, a big affair, Reddel-made, half the size again of his own officer's 'undress' mounted service sword, and knew that it would serve him better than his own.
"Here boy!" Harry barked, sheathing his sword and undoing the snake-clasp belt handing it off to him, and taking the bigger trooper's sword from the wounded dragoon. "Take it and get to the rear!"
He could only hope the boy could get through, but in the meantime he set about doing fresh murder with the bigger sword, hewing the cuirassiers from the saddle, cutting at their horse and harness, riding at them with such violence as to deal their horse a body-blow, or to bludgeon them with the sword guard. Swords and cuirasses, men and horse passed by him, his own horsemen falling behind. The brute blade in his hand skittered off armour, but the backswing bit into more than cloth.
Then, like the Moses and the Red Sea, the waves parted, and there lay before him the 1er Cuirassier's colour party. Harry only hesitated for but a moment. With a few blows he could shatter the cuirassiers, scattering them to the four winds, routed and prisoner, dead and wounded. All he needed was that colour, taken or destroyed. A little part of the ghastly bloodshed on this field would be over. He put spurs to flank and his charge surged forward. One Frenchman and his horse were sent into the mud with just the impact of the charging dragoon, another found an end at the point of his sword.
One though, an officer, clad in an old, scarred cuirass without markings such as an officer should have, met his charge with equal ferocity. He reeled in the saddle, the unmarked steel of the cuirassier's narrow thrusting blade passing him by only a handswidth, though he quickly threw their blade off with a broad parry of his own, and cut up as they closed. The blade missed their neck, and instead cut the cuirassier's helmet strap from the helmet itself. A sheet of silver-gold hair tumbled from the helmet as it slid off the officer's head.
Harry reeled in the saddle, this time for quite another reason. He knew the officer. He knew her well, and suddenly the blade in his hand felt like lead, not steel. To raise it up afresh would be a herculean task, given the weight on his soul.
"DELACOUR! LOWER YOUR SWORD! YOUR REGIMENT IS SHATTERED, THE FOURTH HAVE BROKEN." he yelled, near begging her to surrender. "THERE'S NO HOPE, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR COLOUR, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THROW DOWN YOUR SWORD."
Her response was sad but steady, and for all that she did not raise her voice, it could be heard easily.
"Do not ask me to dishonour myself. The First do not surrender." she wheeled her horse about to face him afresh. "CUIRASSIERS, BATS TOI!"
She spurred her horse forward, hair flashing silver under the sun. His mount, the great beast near blown, gave staggering steps forward, but all the same, he could give as good as he got and better. From an orphan boy on the street to regimental sword master, to officer, and finally to commanding his own regiment, he was no beginner study.
The exchange was fast, he threw aside her thrust again, his riposte skittering off her steel breastplate, and hauling back his sword, he cut down with terrific force, praying that if his blade felt flesh that it would be cleanly done and suffering spared, but once again, steel clashed against steel, the blunt impact was all that he could give. Certainly she had no taste for it, a cry that cut at his soul as her horse surged away. It was just in time, the battle had waxed and waned, and the Lifeguards wheeling into the flank of the melee, coming to the aid of their comrades.
With the trap snapping shut, the cuirassiers were shattered, though their commander and the colour withdrew. The King's Dragoon Guards had paid a high price, many men fallen, more were scattered, half their strength charging across the Charleroi road into the flank of the French infantry line. It was all that Colonel Potter could do to rally the remnants of his regiment and follow, smashing into the advancing lancers and chasseurs.
Eventually, though sore wounded from a lance-thrust, missing his horse-hair plumed helmet and much of the insignia of rank torn from his jacket, he would be able to gather up three squadrons of the dragoons. They pulled back to the ridge of Mont Saint Jean, and then down the reverse slope as the Allied infantry fell back. It was only a short time later that the most awful sight greeted the few cavalrymen still on the crest of the ridge. The full might of the French horse, drawn up, over forty squadrons led by the glittering tide armour-clad cuirassiers and carabiniers, advancing like an ocean wave on a thin shore of scarlet-coated British infantry.
The remnants of the two heavy brigades withdrew yet further, joining the remaining British light dragoons and the Allied cavalry as a backstop behind the squares of Allied infantry. The battle was joined with shattering volleys of musketry, the French cavalry streaming through, only to be met by the remnants of the Household and Union Brigades, who charged into their flanks. It was at this point, bearing the regimental guidon in one gauntleted hand, that the Colonel of the King's Dragoon Guards met a familiar foe.
For a second time, he implored her to throw down her sword, and for a second time, she shamed him to ask of her such dishonour. Many of the allied infantry would see the grim battle, wheeling horses and flashing swords. The crack of a blade impacting a cuirass, the ring of blade-on-blade, they were once more locked in a mounted duel like warriors out of legend, and once more, the tides swept them apart, the matter unresolved.
Ten or more times the British heavy cavalry charged, though the combat was not repeated. On the last charge, once more, they met. La Haye Sainte had fallen to the French, a grand battery of cannons pounded the British position, killing infantrymen, horses and horsemen, irrespective of whether they were French, Belgian, Dutch, Hanoverian or British. Behind the rain of cannonfire came the blast of trumpets and the beat of drums, the great bearskins of the Garde Impériale signalling the climax of the battle. It was the roar of the guns, the tramp of boots and the crash of musket-volleys that meant that the final exchange of words between the Comtesse Delacour and Colonel Potter would never be heard by any, but they who crossed swords in that crucible of violence.
'The battle is lost, your allies rout, why do you fight on? For the love I bear you, throw down your sword.'
The King's Dragoon Guards would not surrender. Not even amidst this slaughter. Once more they came on, their great horses snorting in the gunsmoke, swords scarred and dulled, but ready to do terrible work all the same. The four-regiment brigade, now reduced in strength to little over a squadron, joined the charge. For a final time, the two soldiers crossed swords. They knew that one way or another, the die was cast, it only now stood for one of them to end it.
Nobody would see what happened, for the gunsmoke lay so thick as to make ghosts of those within it, with horses, some with and some without riders sweeping by, but one moment they were there, locked in a combat amidst the madness, like titans of ages past. Eruptions of earth from the impact of cannonballs dwarfed the duelling chevaliers, yet they remained unheeding. There was nothing beyond them, their mounts and their swords. The battle around them and the world as a whole ceased to exist. When the smoke cleared, the waves of horse and humanity finally driven off, the witnesses would be greeted by only churned up mud, bodies and carcasses where two warriors had been fighting.
-x-
That night, the roll calls were taken. From nearly six-hundred men at the beginning of the battle, the King's Dragoon Guards stood at a little over three-hundred men, over a hundred of whom were wounded unfit to fight, others had lost all their equipment, and mounts were few and far between, their fighting strength was reduced to fifteen mounted swords. At the first name on the roll call was repeated, all their shook their heads. A note, 'missing' would be written next to the name. Unlike some others, his name would never be crossed out, nor recovered wounded from the battlefield, unlike some of the hundred-and-twenty five missing.
Potter, H.J. Colonel commanding, 1st Dragoon Guards.
His badly-injured horse had shambled into the ruins of La Haye Sainte, the mighty beast having survived terrific blows, it had carried another injured dragoon to safety, giving up one last burden. His sword, recovered from an injured dragoon who had carried it from the battle, would be returned to England, placed in the regimental armoury left for time and dust. A man of few friends, and those few, his fighting comrades, he would be mourned in the way of soldiers, but, as an orphan, eventually forgotten to history.
-x-
In Paris, a widowed mother found a letter. A premonition set in ink. A key to a locked chest. In it, a gleaming cuirass, set with a golden compass rose on the front face. Wrapped in a silk sleeve that the widow could only open with trembling hands, she drew out a sheathed sword, unmistakeable when it was bared from the scabbard, the metre-long blade blued for the first third, engraved and gold-inlaid, double fullered and mounted on a gilded clamshell garde-de-bataille hilt.
Mounted on the inside of the lid of the chest was a painting, showing from behind to the right, a mounted cuirassier on a hillside at sunset, helmet plume lifted in the wind, mantle billowing and sword at rest on the shoulder. Only the roiling gunsmoke in the valley below gave a baleful purpose to the image.
Mamam. I know this will be my last fight. The last campaign in twenty years I have spent in a world at war. Perhaps I will return in time, to ride forward at our triumph. If I do not, fear not, for I have made my peace with it. Perhaps there is some sort of warrior's heaven. Keep my cuirass and pallasch, I'll use my old ones from when I first cut my hair like a boy and swore to the recruiter that my name was Fabien. Keep these, there may come a time when one of our family takes up my sword. Convey my good wishes to Marguerite d'Annelet, tell her that one of us had to remain behind, and that she would have made a fine cuirassier.
Remember me. Vive l'Empereur, and Vive la France.
Fleur Delacour. Colonel. Premier Régiment de Cuirassier.
