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town until noon.’
    ‘Is the view better from there?’ asked Wyndham, grinning as broadly as ever.
    ‘I doubt it. It seems the town is blocked so we had best get through in case we are needed in a hurry. Get them moving, please. Quick as you can.’
    Wyndham emptied the remains of his tea on the grass. ‘Thank you for the tea, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Very good, it was. But now we must be off. Rouse the men, please, and we’ll find away through the town. Pass the word that we’ll rest on the other side. That should lift their spirits.’
    ‘I will, Captain,’ replied Dawson, straightening his jacket around his midriff, ‘although a barrel of gin would lift them more.’
    The battalion was soon on its way again. This time Macdonell rode at the head of the column. If the town was really blocked, he wanted to assess for himself how bad it was.
    It did not take him long to realise that it was very bad. He ordered Harry to halt the column on the edge of the town, dismounted and tethered his horse. The main street was a melee of men, horses and wagons on their way to Brussels, the lanes and alleys off it entirely blocked by carts and animals whose owners had taken refuge from the lines of retreating and advancing soldiers. Local carters and shopkeepers bawled and cursed and jostled the retreating soldiers. Just as in Enghien, carts were overturned and urchins crawled about in search of plunder. Further north the shouts had been shouts of encouragement. Here ancient crones shouted insults, accusing the cowardly British of leaving them to be robbed and raped by the French. A small boy darted forward to kick an infantryman’s bandaged leg. Another threw a handful of stones at a wagon carrying the wounded. Both disappeared down dark alleys before they could be caught.
    These were the troops who were stationed near Charleroi and had taken the full force of the French attack. Among the wounded, the lucky ones were being comforted by their women. Most had to suffer alone. There was little sound of distress, as if all energy had been expended. Instead, those whocould be propped up sat and stared blankly into the distance. The rest lay silently, many curled up like babes asleep. Very few of the bloodied faces and shattered bodies looked capable of surviving the journey to Brussels. Beside them the walking wounded struggled to keep up, some holding on to the side of a wagon, others, their eyes bandaged, with a hand on a comrade’s shoulder. Among the British were Nassauers, Germans and Netherlanders in their black and green uniforms.
    There was a sharp shove in the small of Macdonell’s back. He lurched forward and narrowly avoided colliding with a limping lieutenant wearing the badge of the 3rd Infantry Division. The exhausted man was using his musket as a crutch. His left trouser leg was red from waist to ankle. Macdonell apologised and asked where they had come from. ‘East of Nivelles,’ the lieutenant mumbled, where, he said, there had been heavy fighting. The wagons were taking the wounded and the women back to Brussels. ‘The Hanoverians are behind us,’ he added. ‘They have had a bloody time of it. They were caught in the open by Lancers before they could form square. The devils were hiding in the woods.’ He was slurring his words and looked ready to drop. ‘God be with you if you are heading that way, sir.’ It was little more than a whisper. The wretched man was wounded not only in body but also in mind. He would not reach Brussels.
    Macdonell had seen French Lancers at their murderous work at Maida. Deceptively elegant in their blue uniforms, often with yellow collars and facings, they had ripped the heart out of an entire infantry battalion before it could form defensive squares, spearing the fleeing men with their lances,cutting and slashing with their sabres and butchering the wounded as they lay helpless on the ground. They had revelled in their ferocity, sparing not a man and shrieking for joy as they