JК
Sharpes Battle :: Корнуэлл Бернард
Страница: 191 из 244A second division of infantry marched to support the men who were already turning the allies' southern flank and were now marching due north towards the road that led from Fuentes de Onoro tothe fords across the River Coa.
Opposite Fuentes de Onoro itself the French main gun batteries opened fire. The cannon had been dragged to the tree line and roughly embrasured with felled trunks to give their crews some protection from the British guns on the ridge. The French fired common shell, iron balls filled with a fused powder charge that cracked apart in a burst of smoke to shatter the casing on the plateau's skyline, while short-barrelled howitzers lobbed shells into the broken streets of Fuentes de Onoro to fill the village with the stench of burned powder and the rattle of exploded iron. During the night a battery of mixed four- and six-pounder guns had been moved into the gardens and houses on the stream's eastern bank and those guns opened up with roundshot that cracked fiercely on the defenders' walls. The voltigeurs in the gardens fired at British loopholes and cheered whenever a roundshot brought down a length of wall or collapsed a broken roof onto a room of crouching redcoats. A shell set light to some collapsed thatch and the flames crackled up to spread thick smoke across the upper village where riflemen sheltered behind the cemetery's gravestones. French shells drove into the burial ground, overturning headstones and grubbing up the earth around the graves so that it looked as though a herd of monstrous pigs had been truffling the soil to reach the buried dead.
The British guns returned a sporadic fire. They were holding the bulk of their ammunition for the moment when the French columns were launched across the plain towards the village, though every now and then a case shot exploded at the tree line to make the French gunners duck and curse. One by one the aim of the French guns was shifted from the ridge onto the burning village where the spreading smoke gave evidence of the damage being done. Behind the ridge the redcoat battalions listened to the cannonade and prayed they would not be asked to go down into the maelstrom of fire and smoke. Some chaplains raised their voice over the sound of the cannon as they read Morning Prayer to the waiting battalions. There was a comfort in the old words, though some sergeants barked at the men to mind their damned manners when they tittered at the line in the day's epistle which enjoined the congregation to abstain from fleshly lusts. Then they prayed for the King's Majesty, for the royal family, for the clergy, and only then did some chaplains add a prayer that God would preserve the lives of His soldiers on this Sabbath day on the border of Spain.
Opposite Fuentes de Onoro itself the French main gun batteries opened fire. The cannon had been dragged to the tree line and roughly embrasured with felled trunks to give their crews some protection from the British guns on the ridge. The French fired common shell, iron balls filled with a fused powder charge that cracked apart in a burst of smoke to shatter the casing on the plateau's skyline, while short-barrelled howitzers lobbed shells into the broken streets of Fuentes de Onoro to fill the village with the stench of burned powder and the rattle of exploded iron. During the night a battery of mixed four- and six-pounder guns had been moved into the gardens and houses on the stream's eastern bank and those guns opened up with roundshot that cracked fiercely on the defenders' walls. The voltigeurs in the gardens fired at British loopholes and cheered whenever a roundshot brought down a length of wall or collapsed a broken roof onto a room of crouching redcoats. A shell set light to some collapsed thatch and the flames crackled up to spread thick smoke across the upper village where riflemen sheltered behind the cemetery's gravestones. French shells drove into the burial ground, overturning headstones and grubbing up the earth around the graves so that it looked as though a herd of monstrous pigs had been truffling the soil to reach the buried dead.
The British guns returned a sporadic fire. They were holding the bulk of their ammunition for the moment when the French columns were launched across the plain towards the village, though every now and then a case shot exploded at the tree line to make the French gunners duck and curse. One by one the aim of the French guns was shifted from the ridge onto the burning village where the spreading smoke gave evidence of the damage being done. Behind the ridge the redcoat battalions listened to the cannonade and prayed they would not be asked to go down into the maelstrom of fire and smoke. Some chaplains raised their voice over the sound of the cannon as they read Morning Prayer to the waiting battalions. There was a comfort in the old words, though some sergeants barked at the men to mind their damned manners when they tittered at the line in the day's epistle which enjoined the congregation to abstain from fleshly lusts. Then they prayed for the King's Majesty, for the royal family, for the clergy, and only then did some chaplains add a prayer that God would preserve the lives of His soldiers on this Sabbath day on the border of Spain.