The pikes and bayonets were stiffened, but she did not come down upon them directly. Instead she struck the ground before the front ranks, so heavily many of the men were flung off their feet, and turning round roared full in all their faces. It was a moral assault only, but a dragon the size of a large barn roaring less than ten paces away might make the bravest man blanch. Bayonets wavered and dipped, and then twenty riflemen stood up on her back and fired a terrible and concentrated volley into the stunned ranks.

A knot of men fell, opening a vulnerable gap in the wall of the square, and the dragon thrust her massive foreleg into the open space and swept it along the line, all the way to the corner of the square, crushing and knocking down men and pikes like blades of grass. Temeraire roared furiously and dived towards her, but one of the Garde de Lyon flung itself into his path.

‘That,’ Temeraire said furiously, ‘is quite enough; the soldiers are smaller still than you.’ He seized the little dragon's neck in his jaws and with a jerk of his head broke it in a single dreadful snap. He let the beast fall out of the sky, a little scrap of scarlet and blue, his small handful of crewmen scattering like falling leaves through the air.

However, the Garde de Lyon had bought the necessary time with its life. Below, the Grand Chevalier had got off the ground again and with an escort of joyfully roaring Pêcheurs and Pou de Ciels was already flying back to the shelter of her lines. ‘The coward,’ Temeraire said bitterly, watching her escape behind the cover of French artillery. The square was trying desperately to re-form, some soldiers even crawling back to their places on hands and knees, too dazed yet to stand, dragging their muskets along behind them.

Laurence heard the horns, thin and reedy, and everywhere the French were suddenly advancing. The knot of fishing huts on the British left flank, now came suddenly under a savage bombardment. The fresh enemy dragons flung themselves over it, casting down loads of munitions, until a rush of infantry poured over the low encircling fences and charged into the huts, one after another. Black smoke poured out of the windows as the British colours came down.