Sharpe's Havoc

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Only between the sheets,” Soult said genially. “Tell her,” he went on, “that she has nothing to fear. The British cannot cross the river, and if they try they will be repulsed. In a few weeks we shall be reinforced.” He paused so that the translation could be made and hoped he was right in saying that reinforcements would come soon or else he did not know how he was to continue his invasion of Portugal. “Then we shall march south to taste the joys of Lisbon. Tell her we shall have peace by August. Ah! The cook!”

  A plump Frenchman with extravagant mustaches had come into the room. He wore a blood-streaked apron with a wicked-looking carving knife thrust into its belt. “You sent for me” he sounded grudging-”sir.”

  “Ah!” Soult pushed back his chair and rubbed his hands. “We must plan supper, Sergeant Deron, supper! I intend to sit sixteen, so what do you suggest?”

  “I have eels.”

  “Eels!” Soult responded happily. “Stuffed with buttered whiting and mushrooms? Excellent.”

  “I shall fillet them,” Sergeant Deron said doggedly, “fry them with parsley and serve the fillets with a red wine sauce. Then for an entree I have lamb. Very good lamb.”

  “Good! I do like lamb,” Soult said. “You can make a caper sauce?”

  “A caper sauce!” Deron looked disgusted. “The vinegar will drown the lamb,” he said indignantly, “and it is good lamb, tender and fat.”

  “A very delicate caper sauce, perhaps?” Soult suggested.

  The guns rose to a sudden fury, shaking the windows and rattling the crystal peardrops of the two chandeliers above the long table, but both the Marshal and the cook ignored the sound. “What I will do,” Deron said in a voice which suggested that there could be no discussion, “is bake the lamb with some goose fat.”

  “Good, good,” Soult said.

  “And garnish it with onions, ham and a few cepes.”

  A harassed-looking officer, sweating and red-faced from the day’s heat, came into the room. “Sir!”

  “A moment,” Soult said, frowning, then looked back to Deron. “Onions, ham and some cepes?” he repeated. “And perhaps we might add some lardons, Sergeant? Lardons go so well with lamb.”

  “I shall garnish it with a little chopped ham,” Deron said stoically, “some small onions and a few cepes.”

  Soult surrendered. “I know it will taste superb, quite superb. And Deron, thank you for this breakfast. Thank you.”

  “It would have been better eaten when it was cooked,” Deron said, then sniffed and went from the room.

  Soult beamed at the cook’s retreating back, then scowled at the newcomer who had interrupted him. “You’re Captain Brossard, are you not? You wish some breakfast?” The Marshal indicated with a butter knife that Brossard should take the seat at the end of the table. “How’s General Foy?”

  Brossard was an aide to Foy and he had no time for breakfast nor indeed to offer a report on General Foy’s health. He had brought news and, for a second, he was too full of it to speak properly, but then he controlled himself and pointed eastward. “The British, sir, they’re in the seminary.”

  Soult stared at him for a heartbeat, not quite believing what he heard. “They are what?” he asked.

  “British, sir, in the seminary.”

  “But Quesnel assured me there were no boats!” Soult protested. Quesnel was the city’s French governor.

  “None on their bank, sir.” All the boats in the city had been pulled from the water and piled on the quays where they were available for the French to use, but would be of no use to anyone coming from the south. “But they’re nevertheless crossing,” Brossard said. “They’re already on the hill.”

  Soult felt his heart miss a beat. The seminary was on a hill that dominated the road to Amarante, and that road was his lifeline back to the depots in Spain and also the connection between the garrison in Oporto and General Loison’s men on the Tamega. If the British cut that road then they could pick off the French army piece by piece and Soult’s reputation would be destroyed along with his men. The Marshal stood, knocking over his chair in his anger. “Tell General Foy to push them back into the river!” he roared. “Now! Go! Push them into the river!”

  The men hurried from the room, leaving Kate and Christopher alone, and Kate saw the look of utter panic on her husband’s face and felt a fierce joy because of it. The windows rattled, the chandeliers shivered and the British were coming.

  “Well, well, well! We have Rifles among our congregation! We are blessed indeed. I didn’t know any of the 95th were attached to the 1st Brigade.” The speaker was a burly, rubicund man with a balding head and an affable face. If it were not for his uniform he would have looked like a friendly farmer and Sharpe could imagine him in an English market town, leaning on a hurdle, prodding plump sheep and waiting for a livestock auction to begin. “You are most welcome,” he told Sharpe.

  “That’s Daddy Hill,” Harris told Pendleton.

  “Now, now, young man,” General Hill boomed, “you shouldn’t use an officer’s nickname within his earshot. Liable to get you punished!”

  “Sorry, sir.” Harris had not meant to speak so loudly.

  “But you’re a rifleman so you’re forgiven. And a very scruffy rifleman too, I must say! What is the army coming to when we don’t dress for battle, eh?” He beamed at Harris, then fished in his pocket and brought out a handful of almonds. “Something to occupy your tongue, young man.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  There were now two generals on the seminary roof. General Hill, commander of the 1st Brigade, whose forces were crossing the river and whose kindly nature had earned him the nickname of “Daddy,” had joined Sir Edward Paget just in time to see three French battalions come from the city’s eastern suburbs and form into two columns that would assault the seminary hill. The three battalions were in the valley, being pushed and harried into their ranks by sergeants and corporals. One column would come straight up at the seminary’s facade while the other was forming near the Amarante road to assault the northern flank. But the French were also aware that British reinforcements were constantly arriving at the seminary and so they had sent a battery of guns to the river bank with orders to sink the three barges. The columns waited for the gunners to open fire, probably hoping that once the barges were sunk the gunners would turn their weapons onto the seminary.

  And Sharpe, who had been wondering why Sir Arthur Wellesley had not put guns at the convent across the river, saw that he had worried about nothing, for no sooner did the French batteries appear than a dozen British guns, which had been parked out of sight at the back of the convent terrace, were wheeled forward. “That’s the medicine for Frenchmen!” General Hill exclaimed when the great row of guns appeared.

  The first to fire was a five-and-a-half-inch howitzer, the British equivalent of the cannon that had bombarded Sharpe on the watchtower hill. It was loaded with a spherical case shot, a weapon that only Britain deployed, which had been invented by Lieutenant Colonel Shrapnel and the manner of its working was kept a closely guarded secret. The shell, which was packed with musket balls about a central charge of powder, was designed to shower those balls and the scraps of its casing down onto enemy troops, yet to work properly it had to explode well short of its target so that the shot’s forward momentum carried the lethal missiles on to the enemy, and that precision demanded that the gunners cut their fuses with exquisite skill. The howitzer’s gunner had that skill. The howitzer boomed and rocked back on its trail, the shell arced over the river, leaving the telltale wisp of fuse smoke in its wake, then exploded twenty yards short and twenty feet above the leading French gun just as it was being unlimbered. The explosion tore the air red and white, the bullets and shattered casing screamed down and every horse in the French team was eviscerated, and every man in the French gun crew, all fourteen of them, was either killed or wounded, while the gun itself was thrown off its carriage.

  “Oh dear,” Hill said, forgetting the bloodthirsty welco
me with which he had greeted the sight of the British batteries. “Those poor fellows,” he said, “dear me.”

  The cheers of the British soldiers in the seminary were drowned by the huge bellow of the other British guns opening fire. From their eyrie on the southern bank they dominated the French position and their spherical case, common shells and round shot swept the French guns with dreadful effect. The French gunners abandoned their pieces, left their horses squealing and dying, and fled, and then the British guns racked their elevating screws or loosened the howitzer quoins and started to pour shot and shell into the massed ranks of the nearest French column. They raked it from the flank, pouring round shot through close-packed files, exploding case shot over their heads and killing with a terrible ease.

  The French officers took one panicked look at their broken artillery and ordered the infantry up the slope. Drummers at the heart of the two columns began their incessant rhythm and the front rank stepped off as another round shot whipped through the files to plough a red furrow in the blue uniforms. Men screamed and died, yet still the drums beat and the men chanted their war cry, “Vive I’Empereur!”

  Sharpe had seen columns before and was puzzled by them. The British army fought against other infantry arrayed in two ranks and every man could use his musket, and if cavalry threatened they marched and wheeled into a square of four ranks, and still every man could use his musket, but the soldiers at the heart of the two French columns could never fire without hitting the men in front.

  These columns both had around forty men in a rank and twenty in each file. The French used such a formation, a great battering block of men, because it was simpler to persuade conscripts to advance in such an array and because, against badly trained troops, the very sight of such a great mass of men was daunting. But against redcoats? It was suicide.

  “Vive I’Empereur!” the French shouted in rhythm with the drums, though their shout was half-hearted because both formations were climbing steep slopes and the men were breathless.

  “God save our good King George,” General Hill sang in a surprisingly fine tenor voice, “long live our noble George, don’t shoot too high.” He sang the last four words and the men on the roof grinned. Hagman hauled back the flint of his rifle and sighted on a French officer who was laboring up the slope with a sword in his hand. Sharpe’s riflemen were on the northern wing of the seminary, facing the column that was not being flayed by the British guns on the convent terrace. A new battery had just deployed low on the river’s southern bank and it was adding its fire to the two batteries on the convent hill, but none of the British guns could see the northern column, which would have to be thrown back by rifle and musket fire alone. Vicente’s Portuguese were manning the loopholes on the northern garden wall and by now there were so many men in the seminary that every loophole had three or four men so that each could fire, then step back to reload while another took his place. Sharpe saw that some of the redcoats had green facings and cuffs. The Berkshires, he thought, which meant the whole of the Buffs were in the building and new battalions were now arriving.

  “Aim at the officers!” Sharpe called to his riflemen. “Muskets, don’t fire! This order is for rifles only.” He made the distinction because a musket, fired at this range, was a wasted shot, but his riflemen would be lethal. He waited a second, took a breath. “Fire!”

  Hagman’s officer jerked back, both arms in the air, sword cartwheeling back over the column. Another officer was down on his knees clutching his belly, and a third was holding his shoulder. The front of the column stepped over the corpse and the blue-coated line seemed to shudder as more bullets slammed into them, and then the long leading French ranks, panicked by the whistle of rifled bullets about their ears, fired up at the seminary. The volley was ear-splitting, the smoke smothered the slope like sea fog and the musket balls rattled on the seminary walls and shattered its glass windows. The volley at least served to hide the French for a few yards, but then they reappeared through the smoke and more rifles fired and another officer went down. The column divided to pass the solitary tree, then the long ranks reunited when they were past it.

  The men in the garden began firing, then the redcoats crammed into the seminary windows and arrayed with Sharpe’s men on the roof pulled their triggers. Muskets crashed, smoke thickened, the balls plucked at men in the column’s front ranks and put them down and the men advancing behind lost their cohesion as they tried not to step on their dead or wounded colleagues.

  “Fire low!” a sergeant of the Buffs called to his men. “Don’t waste His Majesty’s lead!”

  Colonel Waters was carrying spare canteens about the roof for men who were parched by biting the cartridges. The saltpeter in the gunpowder dried the mouth fast and men gulped the water between shots.

  The column attacking the seminary’s western face was already shredded. Those Frenchmen were being assailed by rifle and musket fire, but the cannonade from the southern bank of the river was far worse. Gunners had rarely been offered such an easy target, the chance to rake the flank of an enemy’s infantry column, and they worked like demons. Spherical case cracked in the air, shooting fiery strands of smoke in crazy trajectories, round shots bounced and hammered through the ranks and shells exploded in the column’s heart. Three drummers were hit by case shot, then a round shot whipped the head off another drummer boy, and when the instruments went silent the infantrymen lost heart and began to edge backward. Musket volleys spat from the seminary’s three upper floors and the big building now looked as though it was on fire because powder smoke was writhing thick from every window. The loopholes fet-ted flame, the balls struck wavering ranks, and then the French in the western column began to retreat faster and the backward movement turned to panic and they broke.

  Some of the French, instead of retreating to the cover of the houses on the valley’s far side, houses that were even now being struck by round shot so that their rafters and masonry were being splintered and the first fires were burning in the wreckage, ran to join the northern attack which was shielded by the seminary from the cannon fire. That northern column kept coming. It was taking dreadful punishment, but it was soaking up the bullets and musket balls, and the sergeants and officers continually pushed men into the front ranks to replace the dead and the wounded. And so the column came ponderously uphill, but no one in the French ranks had really thought what they would do when they reached the hilltop where there was no door facing them. They would have to skirt the building and try to break through the big gates leading to the garden and when the men in the front ranks saw no place to go they simply stopped advancing and began shooting instead. A ball plucked at Sharpe’s sleeve. A newly arrived lieutenant of the Northamptonshire regiment fell back with a sigh, a bullet in his forehead. He lay on his back, dead before he fell, looking strangely peaceful. The redcoats had placed their cartridges and propped their ramrods on the red-tiled parapet to make loading quicker, but there were now so many on the roof that they jostled each other as they fired down into the dim mass of Frenchmen who were wreathed in their own smoke. One Frenchman ran bravely forward to fire through a loophole, but he was hit before he could reach the wall. Sharpe had fired one shot, then he just watched his men. Pendleton and Perkins, the youngest, were grinning as they fired. Cooper and Tongue were reloading for Hagman, knowing he was a better shot, and the old poacher was calmly picking off one man after the other.

  A cannonball screamed overhead and Sharpe twisted round to see that the French had placed a battery on the hill to the west, at the city’s edge. There was a small chapel there with a bell tower and Sharpe saw the bell tower vanish in smoke, then crumble into ruin as the British batteries at the convent hammered the newly arrived French guns. A Berkshire man turned to watch and a bullet whipped through his mouth, mangling his teeth and tongue and he swore incoherently, spitting a stream of blood.

  “Don’t watch the city!” Sharpe bellowed. “Keep shooting! Keep shooting!”

  Hundreds of Frenchme
n were firing muskets uphill and the vast majority of the shots were simply wasted against stone walls, but some found targets. Dodd had a flesh wound in his left arm, but he kept firing. A redcoat was hit in the throat and choked to death. The solitary tree on the northern slope was twitching as it was struck by bullets and shreds of leaf were flying away with the French musket smoke. A sergeant of the Buffs fell back with a bullet in his ribs, and then Sir Edward Paget sent men from the western side of the roof, who had already seen their column defeated, to add their fire to the northern side. The muskets flared and coughed and spat down, the smoke thickened, and Sir Edward grinned at Daddy Hill. “Brave bastards!” Sir Edward had to shout over the noise of muskets and rifles.

  “They won’t stand, Ned,” Hill called back. “They won’t stand.”

  Hill was right. The first Frenchmen were already backing down the hill because of the futility of shooting at stone walls. Sir Edward, exultant at this easy victory, went to the parapet to look at the retreating enemy and he stood there, gold braid catching the smoke-dimmed sun, watching the enemy column disintegrate and run away, but a few stubborn Frenchmen still fired and suddenly Sir Edward gasped, clapped a hand to his elbow and Sharpe saw that the sleeve of the General’s elegant red coat was torn and that a jagged piece of white bone was showing through the ripped wool and bloody mangled flesh.

  “Jesus!” Paget swore. He was in terrible pain. The ball had shattered his elbow and seared up through his biceps. He was half bent over with the agony and very pale.

  “Take him down to the doctors,” Hill ordered. “You’ll be all right, Ned.”

  Paget forced himself to stand straight. An aide had taken off a neckcloth and was trying to bind his General’s wound, but Paget shook him off. “The command is yours,” he said to Hill through clenched teeth.

  “So it is,” Hill acknowledged.

  “Keep firing!” Sharpe shouted at his men. It did not matter that the rifle barrels were almost too hot to touch, what mattered was to drive the remaining French back down the hill or, better still, to kill them. Another rush of feet announced that more reinforcements had arrived at the seminary for the French had yet to find any way of stopping the traffic across the river. The British artillery, kings of this battlefield, were hammering any French gunner who dared show his face. Every few moments a brave French crew would run to the abandoned guns on the quay in hope of putting a round shot into one of the barges, but every time they were struck by spherical case and even by canister, for the new British battery, down at the water’s edge, was close enough to use the deadly ammunition across the river. The musket balls flared from the cannons’ mouths like duck shot, killing six or seven men at a time, and after a while the French gunners abandoned their efforts and just hid in the houses at the back of the quay.