Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters by Mark Urban Page A

main resting place, was a second line of lookouts, the inlying picket in the northern part of the line, which was manned by O’Hare’s 3rd Company. The remainder of the battalion was sleeping, but fully clothed as usual, just behind their pickets, ready to act in support. These men slumbered under their greatcoats or blankets in a warren of little enclosures, bounded by stone walls, where the locals grew their grapes, apples and olives.
    As the sun began to warm the air, the ground returned a little of the night’s downpour to the atmosphere in a heavy mist that hung thickest in the hollows. Craufurd’s pickets stoked their fires and got going with a morning brew. Some riflemen came around with dry cartridges in case the rain had spoiled those in the sentries’ pouches. In the main part of the Rifles’ bivouac the reveille bugles had sounded, and captains were beginning to form their companies, calling out the muster roll.
    All of these telltale sounds travelled through the mist to the French scouts who were working their way across the upland. Marshal Ney had prepared himself for a tough contest. The spearhead of his force was made up of the Tirailleurs de Siège, light infantry picked from several regiments, who had formed into a special battalion weeks before, while Ney was attacking the fortress of Rodrigo. They would move forward with cavalry on their flanks and columns of infantry some distance behind.
    With the morning mist burning off, the riflemen on picket began to realise the magnitude of their crisis. One of the 95th’s subalterns noted: ‘As the morning fog cleared away we observed the extensive plains in our front covered with the French Army as far as the eye could reach.’ The alarm was given and roll-call broken off in the main bivouac, as men packed away their gear, took up their arms and began lining the stone walls of the orchards and vineyards where they had slept.
    Ney was moving with twenty-five thousand troops on the four thousand or so of Craufurd’s Light Division. The crackling of musketry between the leading voltigeurs and the rifle picket announced that the action was beginning. For weeks, the better-informed men of Wellington’s army had been worrying about the risks of keeping the Light Division east of the Coa. Major Charles Napier, a clever officer attached to Craufurd’s staff, had written in his journal on 2 July: ‘If theenemy was enterprising we should be cut to pieces … we shall be attacked some morning and lose many men.’ On 16 July, disturbed that they had still not withdrawn, he wrote: ‘Why do we not get on the other side of the Coa? … our safety has certainly been owing to the enemy’s ignorance of our true situation.’ Wellington himself had echoed these views, with orders to Craufurd not to risk a battle with the rest of the British Army across the Coa and therefore unable to support him.
    As the French brigades marched forward that morning of 24 July, drums beating, Craufurd had one more chance. It would still take time – perhaps even an hour or two – for Ney to bring up the columns of his main force and shake them into their battle line, ready for the assault. All the time the drums sent their repetitive signal – a refrain the riflemen nicknamed ‘Old Trousers’. This could allow the Light Division to get away – for even the 43rd, furthest from the bridge, were not much more than two miles from it. Craufurd decided to stand. He sent his aide-de-camp, Major Napier, around the battalion commanders, telling them they must hold their ground while some wagons of artillery ammunition and other supplies were taken across the bridge.
    Seeing hundreds of French skirmishers moving up through the rocky terrain, the outlying pickets began running back towards their supports – some were cut off, the French bagging their first prisoners. O’Hare’s company was formed up, rifles rested on stone walls, ready to give covering fire to the pickets running towards