Before them, their comrades lay in bloodied heaps. A third, ragged volley sent them fleeing from the French line, back to where a line of officers stood with drawn swords, and behind them a line of impassive grenadiers with lowered bayonets. A short distance beyond the grenadiers stood a body of Russian cavalry, still unbloodied and ready to charge.As the first of the Russian soldiers slowed to a halt the officers raised their swords and bellowed orders for their troops to rally to their colours and re-form, beating the slower men into place with the flats of their blades. Force and discipline soon reasserted control and, as Napoleon watched, the Russian Guard formed into a dense column, ready to renew the attack.

Then he sensed the ground rumbling beneath his mount, and turning his head he saw Bessières and the first of the Imperial Guard cavalry squadrons, with a battery of horse guns, gallop over the crest of the Heights and make for the right flank of Vandamme’s remaining line. Bessières came charging towards Napoleon and slewed his horse to a halt.

‘Sire? Your orders?’

Napoleon thrust his arm out towards the Russian column. ‘Charge them immediately. They must be broken at any cost. Any cost. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sire.’

‘Then go!’

Bessières saluted, and spurred his horse forward, pounding along behind the rear of Vandamme’s division as he re-joined his men. Riding to the front of the cavalry column, whose mounts breathed through flared nostrils and stamped and pawed the frozen ground, Bessières stood in his stirrups and raised his sword towards the heavens. He paused a moment and then swept the point down until it aimed directly at the Russian Guard. A bugle call shrilled out, and the squadrons rippled forward in a trot, hooves rumbling over the hard ground. The distance to the enemy was short and the slope lent the cavalry extra momentum as the pace increased into a gallop, and then, fifty yards from the Russians, they charged. Drawn swords glittered above the flickering horsehair crests on their gleaming helmets and then, as Napoleon and the men of Vandamme’s division watched in breathless awe, Bessières’s cavalry plunged into the dense mass of the first battalion of Russian infantry. Swords plunged down, flickered up, spattering gleaming crimson droplets, and the air was filled with the cries of men, the sharp whinnies of wounded horses and the crackle of musket and pistol fire.