JК
Sharpes Havoc :: Корнуэлл Бернард
Страница: 181 из 242Muskets crashed, smoke thickened, the balls plucked at men in the column’s front ranks and put them down and the men advancing behind lost their cohesion as they tried not to step ontheir dead or wounded colleagues.
„Fire low!” a sergeant of the Buffs called to his men. „Don’t waste His Majesty’s lead!”
Colonel Waters was carrying spare canteens about the roof for men who were parched by biting the cartridges. The saltpeter in the gunpowder dried the mouth fast and men gulped the water between shots.
The column attacking the seminary’s western face was already shredded. Those Frenchmen were being assailed by rifle and musket fire, but the cannonade from the southern bank of the river was far worse. Gunners had rarely been offered such an easy target, the chance to rake the flank of an enemy’s infantry column, and they worked like demons. Spherical case cracked in the air, shooting fiery strands of smoke in crazy trajectories, round shots bounced and hammered through the ranks and shells exploded in the column’s heart. Three drummers were hit by case shot, then a round shot whipped the head off another drummer boy, and when the instruments went silent the infantrymen lost heart and began to edge backward. Musket volleys spat from the seminary’s three upper floors and the big building now looked as though it was on fire because powder smoke was writhing thick from every window. The loopholes fet-ted flame, the balls struck wavering ranks, and then the French in the western column began to retreat faster and the backward movement turned to panic and they broke.
Some of the French, instead of retreating to the cover of the houses on the valley’s far side, houses that were even now being struck by round shot so that their rafters and masonry were being splintered and the first fires were burning in the wreckage, ran to join the northern attack which was shielded by the seminary from the cannon fire. That northern column kept coming. It was taking dreadful punishment, but it was soaking up the bullets and musket balls, and the sergeants and officers continually pushed men into the front ranks to replace the dead and the wounded. And so the column came ponderously uphill, but no one in the French ranks had really thought what they would do when they reached the hilltop where there was no door facing them. They would have to skirt the building and try to break through the big gates leading to the garden and when the men in the front ranks saw no place to go they simply stopped advancing and began shooting instead. A ball plucked at Sharpe’s sleeve. A newly arrived lieutenant of the Northamptonshire regiment fell back with a sigh, a bullet in his forehead. He lay on his back, dead before he fell, looking strangely peaceful.
„Fire low!” a sergeant of the Buffs called to his men. „Don’t waste His Majesty’s lead!”
Colonel Waters was carrying spare canteens about the roof for men who were parched by biting the cartridges. The saltpeter in the gunpowder dried the mouth fast and men gulped the water between shots.
The column attacking the seminary’s western face was already shredded. Those Frenchmen were being assailed by rifle and musket fire, but the cannonade from the southern bank of the river was far worse. Gunners had rarely been offered such an easy target, the chance to rake the flank of an enemy’s infantry column, and they worked like demons. Spherical case cracked in the air, shooting fiery strands of smoke in crazy trajectories, round shots bounced and hammered through the ranks and shells exploded in the column’s heart. Three drummers were hit by case shot, then a round shot whipped the head off another drummer boy, and when the instruments went silent the infantrymen lost heart and began to edge backward. Musket volleys spat from the seminary’s three upper floors and the big building now looked as though it was on fire because powder smoke was writhing thick from every window. The loopholes fet-ted flame, the balls struck wavering ranks, and then the French in the western column began to retreat faster and the backward movement turned to panic and they broke.
Some of the French, instead of retreating to the cover of the houses on the valley’s far side, houses that were even now being struck by round shot so that their rafters and masonry were being splintered and the first fires were burning in the wreckage, ran to join the northern attack which was shielded by the seminary from the cannon fire. That northern column kept coming. It was taking dreadful punishment, but it was soaking up the bullets and musket balls, and the sergeants and officers continually pushed men into the front ranks to replace the dead and the wounded. And so the column came ponderously uphill, but no one in the French ranks had really thought what they would do when they reached the hilltop where there was no door facing them. They would have to skirt the building and try to break through the big gates leading to the garden and when the men in the front ranks saw no place to go they simply stopped advancing and began shooting instead. A ball plucked at Sharpe’s sleeve. A newly arrived lieutenant of the Northamptonshire regiment fell back with a sigh, a bullet in his forehead. He lay on his back, dead before he fell, looking strangely peaceful.