Sharpe's Siege

by Bernard Cornwell

There was a horrid and embarrassed silence in the cabin. Every man there, except for the young Captain Bampfylde, knew the bitter pangs of promotion denied, and each man knew they were watching Sharpe’s hopes being broken on the wheel of the Army’s regulations. The assembled officers looked away from Sharpe’s evident hurt.

  And Sharpe was hurt. He had rescued that Battalion. He had trained it, given it the Prince of Wales’s name, then led it to the winter victories in the Pyrenees. He had hoped, more than hoped, that his command of the Battalion would be made official, but the Army had decided otherwise. A new man would be appointed; indeed, Wigram said, the new commanding officer was daily expected on the next convoy from England.

  The news, given so coldly and unsympathetically in the formal setting of the Vengeance’s cabin, cut Sharpe to the bone, but there was no protest he could make. He guessed that was why Wigram had chosen this moment to make the announcement. Sharpe felt numbed.

  ‘Naturally,’ Bampfylde leaned forward, ‘the glory attached to the capture of Bordeaux will more than compensate for this disappointment, Major.’

  ‘And you will rejoin your Battalion, as a major, when this duty is done,’ Wigram said, as though that was some consolation.

  ‘Though the war,’ Bampfylde smiled at Sharpe, ‘may well be over because of your efforts.’

  Sharpe stirred himself from the bitter disappointment. ‘Single-handed efforts, sir? Your Marines are poxed, my Battalion can’t come, what am I supposed to do? Train cows to fight?’

  Bampfylde’s face showed a flicker of a frown. ‘There will be Marines, Major. The Biscay Squadron will be combed for fit men.’

  Sharpe, his belligerence released by Wigram’s news, stared at the young naval captain. ‘It’s a good thing, is it not, that the malady has not spread to your sailors, sir? You seemed to have a full ship’s company as I came aboard?’

  Bampfylde stared like a basilisk at Sharpe. Colonel Elphinstone gave a quick, sour laugh, but Wigram slapped the table like a timid schoolmaster calling a rowdy class to order. ‘You will be given troops, Major, in numbers commensurate to your task.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Enough,’ Wigram said testily.

  The question of Sharpe’s troops was dropped. Instead Bampfylde talked of a brig-sloop that had been sent to watch the fortress and to question any local fishermen who put to sea. The presence of the American privateer was discussed and Bampfylde smiled as he spoke of the punishment that would be fetched on Cornelius Killick. ‘We must regard that doomed American as a bonus for our efforts.’ Then the talk went to naval signals, far beyond Sharpe’s competence to understand, and again he wondered about that fortress. Even under-manned a fortress was a formidable thing, and no one in this wide cabin seemed interested in ensuring that he was given a proper force. At the same time, as the voices buzzed about him, he tried to assuage the deep pain of losing the command of his Battalion.

  Sharpe knew the regulations disqualified him from commanding the Battalion, but there were other Battalions commanded by majors and the regulations seemed to be ignored for those men. But not for Sharpe. Another man was to be given the superb instrument of infantry that Sharpe had led through the winter’s battles and, once again, Sharpe was adrift and unwanted in the Army’s flotsam. He reflected, bitterly, that if he had been a Northamptonshire Sharpe, or a Wiltshire Sharpe, with an Honourable tag to his name and a park about his father’s house, then this would not have happened. Instead he was a Middlesex Sharpe, conceived in a whore’s transaction and whelped in a slum, and thus a fit whipping-boy for bores like Wigram.

  Colonel Elphinstone, sensing that Sharpe was miles away again, kicked the Rifleman’s ankle and Sharpe recovered attentiveness in time to hear Bampfylde inviting the assembled officers to dine with him.

  ‘I fear I can’t.’ Sharpe did not want to stay in this cabin where his disappointment had shamed him in front of so many officers. It was a petty motive, pride-born, but a soldier without pride was a soldier doomed for defeat.

  ‘Major Sharpe,’ Bampfylde explained with ill-concealed scorn, ‘has taken a wife, so we must forgo his company.’

  ‘I haven’t taken a wife,’ Elphinstone said belligerently, ‘but I can’t dine either. Your servant, sir.’

  The two men, Sharpe and Elphinstone, travelled back to St Jean de Luz in Bampfylde’s barge. Elphinstone, swathed in a vast black cloak, shook his head sadly. ‘Bloody madness, Sharpe. Utter bloody madness.’

  It began to rain. Sharpe wished he was alone with his misery.

  ‘You’re disappointed, aren’t you?’ Elphinstone remarked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wigram’s a bastard,’ Elphinstone said savagely, ‘and you’re to take no bloody notice of him. You’re not going to Bordeaux. Those are orders.’

  Sharpe, stirred from his self-pity by Elphinstone’s ferocious words, looked at the big Engineer. ‘So why are we taking the fort, sir?’

  ‘Because we need the chasse-marées, why else? Or were you dozing through that explanation?’

  Sharpe nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

  The rain fell harder as Elphinstone explained that the whole Arcachon expedition had been planned simply to release the three dozen chasse-marées that were protected behind the fortress guns. ‘I need those boats, Sharpe, not to waltz into bloody Bordeaux, but to build a bloody bridge. But for Christ’s sake don’t tell anyone it’s a bridge. I’m telling you, because I won’t have you gallivanting off to Bordeaux, you understand me?’

  ‘Entirely, sir.’

  ‘Wigram thinks we want the boats for a landing, because that’s what the Peer wants everyone to think. But it’s going to be a bridge, Sharpe, a damned great bridge to astonish the bloody Frogs. But I can’t build the bloody bridge unless you capture the bloody fort and get me the boats. After that, enjoy yourself. Go and ambush the high road, then go back to Bampfylde and tell him the Frogs are still loyal to Boney. No rebellion, no farting about, no glory.’ Elphinstone stared gloomily at the water which was being pocked by the cold rain into a resemblance of dirty, heaving gunmetal. ‘It’s Wigram who’s got this bee in his bonnet about Bordeaux. The fool sits behind a bloody desk and believes every rumour he hears.’

  ‘Is it a rumour?’

  ‘Some precious Frenchman pinned his ear back.’ Elphinstone plucked his cloak even tighter as the barge struggled against the current sweeping about the sandbar. ‘Michael Hogan didn’t help. He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Elphinstone sniffed. ‘Damned shame he’s ill. I can’t understand why he encouraged Wigram, but he did. But you’re to take no notice, Sharpe. The Peer expects you to take the fortress, let bloody Bampfylde extract the boats, then come back here.’

  Sharpe stared at Elphinstone and received a nod of confirmation. So Wellington was not unaware of Wigram’s plans, but Wellington was putting his own man, Sharpe, into the operation. Was that, Sharpe wondered, the reason why he had lost his Battalion?

  ‘It wouldn’t matter,’ Elphinstone went on, ‘except that we need the bloody Navy to carry us there, and we can’t control them. Bampfylde thinks he’ll get an earldom out of Bordeaux, so stop the silly bugger dead. No rising, no rebellion, no hopes, no glory, and no bloody earldom.’

  Sharpe smiled. ‘There’ll be no fortress unless I have decent troops, sir.’

  ‘You’ll get the best I can find,’ Elphinstone promised, ‘but not in such numbers that might tempt you to invade Bordeaux.’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  The oarsmen were grunting with the effort of fighting the tide’s last ebb as the barge rounded the harbour’s northern mole. Sharpe understood well enough what was happening. A simple cutting out expedition, necessitating the capture of a coastal fort, was needed to release the chasse-marées, but ambitious officers, eager to make a name for themselves in the waning months of the war, wished to turn that mundane operation into a flight of fancy. Sharpe, who would make the reconnaissance inland, was ordered t
o blunt their hopes.

  The steersman pomted the boat’s prow towards a flight ofgreen-slimed steps. The white-painted barge, in smoother water now, cut swiftly towards the quay. The rain became tempestuous, slicking the quay’s stones darker and drumming on the top of Sharpe’s shako.

  ‘In oars!’ the steersman shouted.

  The white bladed oars rose like wings and the craft coasted in a smooth curve to the foot of the steps. Sharpe looked up. The harbour wall, sheer and black and wet, reared above him like a cliff. ‘How high is that?’ he asked Elphinstone.

  The Colonel squinted upwards. ‘Eighteen feet?’ Then Elphinstone saw the point of Sharpe’s question and shrugged. ‘Let’s hope Wigram’s right and they’ve stripped the Teste de Buch of defenders.’

  Because if the fort’s enceinte was defended Sharpe would have no chance, none, and his men would die so that the naval officer could blame the Army for failure. That was a chilling thought for a winter’s dusk in which the rain slanted from a steel-grey sky to pursue Sharpe through the alleys to where his wife sewed up a rent in his old jacket; his battle-jacket, the green jacket that he would wear to a fortress wall that waited for him in Arcachon.

  CHAPTER 3

  ‘I suppose,’ Richard Sharpe said harshly, ‘that the Army couldn’t find any real soldiers?’

  ‘That’s about the cut of it,’ the Rifle captain replied. ‘Mind you, I suppose the Army couldn’t find any real commanding officers either?’

  Sharpe laughed. Colonel Elphinstone had done his best, and that best was very good indeed for, if Sharpe could not take his own men into battle, then there was no unit he would rather lead than Captain William Frederickson’s men of the 60th Rifles. He took Frederickson’s hand. ‘I’m glad, William.’

  ‘We’re not unhappy ourselves.’ Frederickson was a man of villainous, even vile, appearance. His left eye was gone and the socket was covered by a mildewed patch. Most of his right ear had been torn away by a bullet while two of his front teeth were clumsy fakes. All the wounds had been taken on the battlefield.

  Frederickson’s men, with clumsy and affectionate wit, called him ‘Sweet William’. The 60th, raised to fight against the Indian tribes in America, was still known as the Royal American Rifles, though half the Company were Germans, a quarter were Spaniards enrolled during the long war, and the rest were British except for a single, harsh-faced man who alone justified his regiment’s old name. Sharpe had fought alongside this Company two years before and, seeing the bitter face, the name came back to him. ‘That’s the American. Taylor, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Frederickson and Sharpe stood far enough from the two paraded Companies so their voices could not be overheard by the men.

  ‘We might come up against some Jonathons,’ Sharpe said. ‘There’s some bugger called Killick skulking in Arcachon. Will it worry Taylor if he has to fight his countrymen?’

  Frederickson shrugged. ‘Leave him to me, sir.’

  Two Companies of the green-jacketed Riflemen had been given to Sharpe. Frederickson commanded one, a Lieutenant Minver the other, and together they numbered one hundred and twenty-three men. Not many, Sharpe thought, to assault a fortress on the French coast. He walked further along the quay with Frederickson, stopping by a fish cart that dripped bloody scales into a puddle. ‘Between you and me, William, it’s a mess.’

  ‘I thought it might be.’

  ‘We leave tomorrow to capture a fortress. It isn’t supposed to be heavily defended, but no one’s sure. After that, God knows what happens. There’s a madman who wants us to invade France, but between you and me we’re not.’

  Frederickson grinned, then turned and looked at the two Companies of Riflemen. ‘We’re capturing a fort all by our little selves?’

  ‘The Navy says a few Marines might be well enough to help us.’

  ‘That’s very decent of them.’ Frederickson stared at the great bulk of the Vengeance. Barges, propelled by huge sweeps, were taking casks of water from the harbour to the huge ship.

  ‘You’ll draw extra ammunition,’ Sharpe said. ‘The First Division’s paying for it.’

  ‘I’ll rob the bastards blind,’ Frederickson said happily.

  ‘And tonight you’ll do me the honour of dining with Jane and myself?’

  ‘I’d like to meet her.’ Frederickson sounded guarded.

  ‘She’s wonderful.’ Sharpe said it warmly, and Frederickson, seeing his friend’s enthusiasm, hoped that a new wife had not sapped Sharpe’s appetite for the bloody business that lay ahead at Arcachon.

  Commandant Henri Lassan thought he detected sleet in the dawn, but he could not be sure until he climbed to the western bastion and saw how the flakes settled briefly on the great cheeks of his guns before melting into cold rivulets of water. The guns were loaded, as they always were, but their muzzles and vent-holes were stoppered against the damp. ‘Good morning, Sergeant!’

  ‘Sir!’ The sergeant stamped his feet and slapped his hands against the cold.

  Lassan’s orderly climbed the stone ramp with a tray of coffee-mugs. Lassan always brought the morning guard a mug of coffee each and the men appreciated the small gesture. The Commandant, they said, was a gentleman.

  Children ran across the courtyard and women’s voices sounded from the kitchens. There should not be women in the fort, but Lassan had let the families of his gun crews take up the quarters vacated by the infantry who had gone to the northern battles. Lassan believed his men were less likely to desert if their families were inside the defences.

  ‘There she is, sir.’ The sergeant pointed through the sleeting rain.

  Lassan looked over the narrow Arcachon channel where the tide raced across the shoals. Beyond the sandbanks the surging grey waves were torn by wind into a maelstrom of broken white water amidst which, beating southwards, was a little ship.

  The ship was a British brig-sloop with two tall masts and a vast driver-sail at her stern. Her black and white banded hull hid, Lassan knew, eighteen guns. Her sails were reefed, but even so she seemed to plunge through the waves and Lassan saw how high the spray fountained from the brig’s stem. ‘Our enemies,’ he said mildly, ‘are having a disturbed breakfast.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The sergeant laughed.

  Lassan cradled his coffee mug. There was something vulnerable about his face, a drawn and frightened look that made his men protective of him. They knew Commandant Lassan wished to become a priest when this war ended and they liked him for it, but they also knew that he would fight as a soldier until the last shot of the war had been fired. Now he stared at the British brig. ‘You saw her last night?’

  ‘At sundown, sir,’ the sergeant was certain. ‘And there were lights out there at night.’

  ‘He’s watching us, isn’t he?’ Lassan smiled. ‘He’s seeing what we’re made of.’

  The sergeant slapped the gun as a reply.

  Lassan turned to stare thoughtfully into the fort’s courtyard. A warning had come from Bordeaux that he was to prepare for a British attack, but Bordeaux had sent him no men to reinforce his shrunken garrison. Lassan could man his big guns, or he could protect the landward walls, but he could not do both. If the British landed troops, and sent warships into the channel, then Lassan would be trapped between the hammer and the anvil. He turned back to stare at the British brig. If Bordeaux was right, that inquisitive craft was making a reconnaissance, and Lassan must deceive the watchers. He must make them think the fort was so thinly defended that a landing by troops would be unnecessary.

  Lieutenant Gerard came yawning from the green-painted door of the officers’ quarters. Lassan hailed him. ‘Lieutenant!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘No flag today! And no washing hung to dry on the barracks’ roof!’ Not that anyone was likely to dry washing in this weather.

  Gerard, his blue jacket unbuttoned above his braces, frowned. ‘No flag, sir?’

  ‘You heard me, Lieutenant! And no men in the embrasures, you hear? Sentries in the citadels only
.’

  ‘I hear you, sir.’

  Lassan turned back to see the brig-sloop tack into the rain-sodden wind. He saw a shiver of sails, a spume of foam, and he imagined the cloaked officers, their braid tarnished by salt, staring at the grey, crouching fort through their spyglasses. He knew that such little ships, sent to spy on the French coast, often stopped the fishing boats that worked close inshore. Today then, and every day for the next week, only those fishermen whom Henri Lassan trusted would be allowed past the guns of the Teste de Buch. They would be encouraged to take English gold, and encouraged to drink a glass of dark rum in English cabins, and encouraged to sell lobsters to blue-coated Englishmen, and in return they would tell a plausible lie or two on behalf of Henri Lassan.

  Then, with a roar from these great, passive guns that waited for employment, Henri Lassan would strike a blow for France.

  He smiled, pleased with his notion, and went to breakfast.

  Before dinner Sharpe faced a miserable and unhappy few moments. ‘The answer,’ he repeated, ‘is no.’

  Regimental Sergeant Major Patrick Harper stood in the small parlour of Jane’s lodgings and twisted his wet shako in thick, strong fingers. ‘I talked with Mr d’Alembord, sir, so I did, and he said I could come. I mean we’re only sitting around like washer-women in a bloody drought, so we are.‘

  ‘There’s a new colonel coming, Patrick. He needs his RSM.’

  Harper frowned. ‘Needs his major, too.’

  ‘He can’t lose both of us.’ Sharpe did not have the power to deny the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers the services of this massive Irishman. ‘And if you come, Patrick, the new man will only appoint a new RSM. You wouldn’t want that.’

  Harper frowned. ‘I’d rather be in a scrap if one’s going, sir, and Mr Frederickson wouldn’t take me amiss, nor would he.’

  Sharpe could not be persuaded. ‘No.’

  The huge man, four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, grinned. ‘I could take sick leave, sir, so I could.’

  ‘You have to be sick first.’