Sharpes Havoc   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

And went toward the French.

The 4th Leger, counted as one of the best infantry units in Soult’s army, broke and the two cavalry regiments broke with them. The three regiments had been well posted, dominating a slight ridge that ran athwart the road as it approached the Ponte Nova, but the sight of the Brigade of Guards and the constant smack of rifle bullets and the stinging blows of the twin three-pounders had finished the French rearguard.

Their task had been to halt the British pursuit, then withdraw slowly and destroy the repaired Ponte Nova behind them, but instead they ran.

Two thousand men and fourteen hundred horses were converging on the makeshift roadway across the Cavado. None tried to fight. They turned their backs and they fled, and the whole dark panicked mass of them was crushed against the river’s bank as the Guards came up behind.

„Move the guns!” Sir Arthur spurred his horse toward the gunners whose weapons had scorched two wide fans of grass in front of the barrels. „Move them up!” he shouted. „Move them up! Keep at them!” It was beginning to rain harder, the sky was darkening and forked lightning slithered above the northern hills.

The guns were moved a hundred yards nearer the bridge and then rolled up the southern slope of the valley to a small terrace from where they could slam their round shot into the crowded French. Rain hissed and steamed on the barrels as the first rounds crashed out and the blood flickered its red haze above the broken rearguard. A dragoon’s horse screamed, reared and killed a man with its flailing hooves. More round shots slammed home. A few Frenchmen, those at the back who knew they would never reach the bridge alive, turned back, threw down their muskets and held up their hands. The Guards opened ranks to let the prisoners through, closed ranks and loosed a volley that punched into the rear of the French rabble. The fugitives were jostling, pushing and fighting their way onto the bridge and the congestion on the unbalustraded roadway was so great that men and horses were forced off the edge to fall screaming into the Cavado, and still the two guns kept at them, slamming shots onto the Ponte Nova itself now, bloodying the rafters and the felled trunks that were the rearguard’s only escape. The round shots drove more men and horses off the span’s unprotected edges, so many that the dead and dying made a dam beneath the bridge.