Johannes Meyer fired the musket and again completely missed the target. He’d also tamped too much powder down the barrel and almost blown his own head off. His cheek was hot and blackened from the exploding flintlock and his ears were ringing painfully. He dropped the musket to the ground. For the moment, the whole world was a giant tuning fork.

The sergeant instructor was yelling at him, but Johannes had his back turned and couldn’t hear a thing. Furious, the man began to stride over, whacking a long cane against his boots as he walked. The two soldiers on either side of Johannes backed away. Wolfie, further along the line and seeing what was happening, stepped out and stood to attention as the sergeant approached, hoping to distract him with a question, but the sergeant just pushed him roughly aside. Johannes, his hands clasped to his ears, turned to see the sergeant instructor suddenly right there in front of him. In the next instant, the sergeant’s cane went up and Johannes went to his knees, ears still ringing and now fresh pain exploding through his shoulder.

‘Get up!’ the sergeant instructor said. He’d hit Johannes so hard the cane had snapped in two and fractured the boy’s collarbone. ‘On your feet!’

Just then three horses galloped down the line of men: a French officer, flanked by two aides-de-camp. When they were level with the sergeant, the officer reined his horse hard and the animal whinnied and spun around, a huge chestnut stallion with black legs and a white blaze. The aides-de-camp pulled their animals up too, churning up the ground, and now all the men with their muskets could see the officer was a colonel-en-second, his plumed shako with a gold-braided chinstrap, his blue pelisse intensely buttoned, a dolman cape over his shoulder. Large silver spurs shone immaculately on his black hussar boots.

‘What’s going on here?’ he said. ‘What has this man done?’

The sergeant instructor stood to attention. ‘He is incapable of firing a musket, Colonel.’

‘Since when has it been taught with a cane, Sergeant?’ The colonel-en-second’s name was Josse-Fridolin-Jacques-Antoine-Félix-Séraphin-Stanislas de Freuler. He despised the barbaric Prussian disciplinary methods and had opposed the practice being maintained in the Grande Armée, but the Emperor had been convinced to allow his foreign regiments to keep their traditions.

‘I believe he is purposely refusing to obey simple instructions, Colonel,’ the sergeant said. He was a brute (that much was obvious), short and gnarled, with phlegmy grey eyes.