Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege

by Bernard Cornwell

  Sharpe turned. The west wall was ready. He could do no more there. That was his refuge, the place where he must hold the French just long enough to get his men down to the boats. He turned back to see the French skirmishers, red shoulder-wings darkened by rain, running clumsily up the glacis slope. He wondered if Calvet had sent men to the north who might cut between the west wall and the water and so bar the Riflemens’ escape.

  The French were nervous now. Some would be hoping that the rain had destroyed every rifle charge, but the veterans would know that even in this rain some guns would spark. They began to hurry, eager to get this first shock over. The skirmishers were spreading on the glacis and the first muskets banged smoke from the lip.

  ‘Charge! Charge!’ Calvet roared the words like a challenge as he led his ‘grumblers’, his veterans, through the gap in the glacis.

  They charged. The column lost its order now. Some men, the timorous, sheltered in the outer ditch and pretended to fire upwards, but most, the brave, swarmed along the road towards the chaos of stone that was their shattered bridge to revenge.

  Sharpe looked at Frederickson. ‘Now!’ Frederickson’s men, ripping rags from locks, stood to fire directly over the breach’s summit, while from the ramparts every man who could fire a weapon knelt or stood. ‘Fire!’

  Perhaps half the guns fired, while on the other weapons the leather-gripped flints sparked on to damp powder. Sharpe’s rifle kicked back, then he was shouting at the men who guarded the broken edge of the battlement.

  The lead torn from the church roof and not needed for bullets had been piled on the ramparts with cobblestones, dead howitzer shells, and broken masonry. It was all hurled down at the attackers. The French muskets were as useless as the defenders’ rifles. One carefully protected charge of dry powder might spark, but once that was gone it was hopeless to think of reloading in this rain.

  Riflemen stood and hurled missiles and the attack faltered. There were dead at the breach’s foot, put there by Frederickson’s volley, but then the living, roared on by Calvet, surged over the bodies. A lead sheet sliced into a man’s skull and a howitzer shell bounced on the stones.

  ‘On! On!’ Calvet was alive. He did not know how many had died, but he felt the old joy of battle and his huge voice plucked men up the ramp of stones. He swung his sword at the cheval-de-frise and staggered sideways as a cobblestone hit his skull. ‘The Emperor! The Emperor!’

  A tide of men scrambled on the breach. An officer, armed with an expensive percussion cap pistol that was proof against the rain, fired upwards and a Rifleman toppled from the ramparts and was torn apart by bayonets.

  ‘Push!‘ Calvet was shoving the cheaal-de frise forward, forcing a gap. A howitzer shell, thrown from the ramparts, hit his left arm, stunning it, but he could see a space at the end of the spiked beam and he jumped for it. His sword-arm was still good and he pointed the way as he breasted the breach’s summit. ’Charge!‘

  The flood of men, pushed from behind and desperate to escape the rain of missiles from above, flowed over the breach.

  Harper watched them. He saw the general, saw the gaudy golden braid and plucked the rag away from the seven-barrelled gun’s lock. He pulled the trigger and three Frenchmen were hurled backwards on the inner face of the breach. Calvet, who had been leading the dead men, survived.

  ‘Fire!’ Frederickson, given the blunderbusses, bellowed the order and three of the six guns belched their stone scraps at the enemy.

  A Frenchman was impaled on one of the bayonets jammed between stones and, despite his desperate screams, was trampled further on to the blade by his comrades. Other men, sobbing and struggling, had been forced on to the cheval-de-frise that now lay canted on the breach’s inner face. Yet most men survived to leap down on to the courtyard’s cobbles.

  ‘Back! Back!’ Frederickson’s men were not there to contest the breach, but to guard the ramp. They went backwards, appalled by the scrabbling tide of men who surged into the fortress.

  Sharpe, seeing that the breach was lost, blew a two-fingered whistle. ‘Back! Back!’ His men ran down the ramparts.

  At the foot of the stone ramp, facing the collapsed gateway, was the single cannon. Its capsquare was broken, but the barrel was charged with the last of the garrison’s dry powder and rammed with metal scraps, stone fragments, and rusty nails. A trail of powder had been trickled into its vent, then covered with a patch of oilcloth.

  Harper stood by the cannon. Beside it, sheltered in a hole beneath the stone ramp, was a torch made of twisted straw, rags and pitch. He plucked it out and whirled it through the air so that the flames were fanned into a sudden, rain-sizzling blaze.

  ‘Now!’ Frederickson, halfway up the ramp with his men, shouted the order.

  Harper plucked the oilcloth free and jammed the burning concoction of dripping pitch and straw on to the venthole. He saw the powder spark and threw himself sideways.

  The cannon fired.

  It recoiled viciously and the barrel, ramming with all the force of the dirty powder inside it, tore itself off the carriage, but not before the charge, spreading like duckshot, emptied itself into the courtyard.

  The stones and metal scraps flayed into the French. A shower of blood momentarily rivalled the rain, then the barrel clanged down on to the carriage’s right wheel, snapping spokes as if they were matchwood, and Harper was scrambling up the ramp and shouting for his axe.

  Men screamed in the yard. Men had been blinded, evis cerated, torn ragged. Calvet had instinctively thrown himself flat and now listened to the horror about him. ‘Charge!’ He scrambled up. ‘Charge!’

  He could see how few defenders were left to face him, but at least they were Riflemen, the British elite, and he would capture these last few as a token of his victory. ‘Charge!’

  Men, made courageous by the paucity of the defenders and roused to gallantry by the general’s voice, obeyed. From among the wounded and the dead, from the clinging smoke of the cannon, a pelting, yelling mass of men emerged. Calvet led them.

  ‘Now!’ Frederickson had the last seven lime-barrels at the head of the ramp. Sergeant Rossner threw one, it bounced, split open, then, spewing powder that was turned to instant whitewash by the rain, slammed into the first rank of Frenchmen. A man screamed as the barrel pinned him against the broken gun-carriage and as limewash flayed at his eyes.

  Frederickson looked behind him. Sharpe’s men, using the dry cover of the citadel where captured French ammunition had been stored, were holding the southern wall. Minver’s men, with agonizing slowness, were being rowed towards the Thuella.

  A second lime barrel thumped down the slope, then a third. More Frenchmen were scrambling on to the walls to attack the citadels, but the men in those small fortresses had the last dry charges and they forced the attackers into the cover of the embrasures.

  ‘Now!’ A fourth barrel bounced and struck a man full in the chest.

  A pistol fired from the courtyard and Rossner grunted as the bullet hit his arm.

  ‘Go!’ Frederickson pushed him towards the sea. ‘Go!’ More Frenchmen were coming, clawing at the ramp, fighting past the smashed gun carriage, over the broken barrel strakes, and across the bodies of their own wounded. The foot of the ramp was a grotesque mixture of whitewash and blood like a painter’s accident.

  ‘Now!’ The fifth barrel went, then the sixth.

  Sharpe had come to the head of the ramp. He could see Minver’s men scrambling up the Thuella’s side, but the French could not be held for long. Some were trying to climb the inner wall to the ramparts, using debris from the burned offices as scaling ladders, and Sharpe ran back to stop them. He drove his sword down once, twice, and a man screamed as the blade raked his face.

  ‘Now!’ The last barrel was thrown by Harper. It did not bounce, but flew full tilt to smash into a fresh charge of men. The Thuella’s boats had still not started their return journey.

  ‘Swords!’ Frederickson shouted the order.

  The French, e
xhilarated by their victory in the breach and seeing that no more barrels could plunge into their ranks, charged. A single rank of Riflemen, sword-bayonets in place, awaited them.

  Then Harper broke the line.

  With a shout that filled the whole courtyard with its echo, Patrick Harper charged down the stone slope. He carried the great, bright-bladed axe, and in his veins there was the keening of a thousand Irish warriors. He was shouting in his Gaelic now, daring the French to have at him, and the leading Frenchmen dared not.

  Harper was six feet four, a giant, and had muscles like a mainmast’s cables. He did not attack cautiously, feeling for his enemy’s weakness, but screamed his challenge at the full run. The axe took two men with its first blow then Harper turned the blade as though it weighed less than a sword, brought it back, blade dripping blood, while his voice, chanting its ancient language, drove the Frenchmen backwards.

  A French captain, eager for glory and knowing that the ramp must be taken, lunged, and the axe-blade slit his belly open to the rain. Harper screamed triumph, defying the French, daring them to come to challenge his blade. He stopped a few feet from the bottom of the ramp, victorious, and the rain dripped pink from the broad-bladed axe that he held in his right hand. He laughed at the French.

  ‘Sergeant!’ Sharpe bellowed. ‘Patrick!’

  The longboats, at last, were pushing back to the shore.

  ‘Patrick!’ Sharpe cupped his hands. ‘Come back!’

  Harper shouldered the axe. He turned, disdaining to run, and walked slowly up the stone ramp to where Frederickson waited. He turned there and stared down into the courtyard. The officer with the percussion pistol, its barrel charged with powder from a dry horn, slipped a percussion cap over the gun’s nipple, but Calvet, who recognized bravery when he saw it, shook his head. That Rifleman, Calvet thought, should be in the Imperial Guard.

  ‘Citadels!’ Sharpe’s shout was sudden in the odd silence that followed Harper’s lone attack. ‘Retreat! Retreat!’

  The Riflemen who had guarded the extremities of the west wall scrambled from their strongholds and ran to the ladders.

  Calvet, seeing it, knew his enemy was finished. ‘Charge!’

  ‘Back! Back! Back!’ Sharpe pushed his men away. Now the French could have the fort, but now came the worst moment, the difficult moment, the end of Sharpe’s battle and the race for the boats.

  The Riflemen had no time to queue at the ladders, instead they jumped from the walls and fell headlong in the sand. Sharpe waited, standing in one of the embrasures with his sword drawn. Harper came to his side but Sharpe snarled at him to go.

  The French charged over the bodies of the dead. They wanted revenge, but found an empty rampart. Empty but for the one officer, sword drawn, whose face was like death. That face checked them for a few seconds, enough to let Sharpe’s men scramble towards the sea’s edge.

  Then Sharpe turned and jumped.

  The landing knocked all the breath from him. He pitched forward, rifle falling from his shoulder, and his face hit the wet sand.

  A hand grabbed his collar and hauled him up. Harper’s voice shouted, ‘Run!’

  Sharpe’s mouth was filled with gritty sand. He spat. He stumbled on the body of one of the Frenchmen dumped on this strip of sand the day before, sprawled, then ran again. His shako was gone. Frenchmen were standing on the ramparts above while to his right, from the north, the cavalry appeared.

  The two longboats, oars rising and falling with painful slowness, inched towards the small breaking waves of the channel’s beach. The first Riflemen were in the water, wading towards the boats, reaching for them.

  Cornelius Killick, in the leading boat, bellowed an order and Sharpe saw the oars back, saw the clumsy boats swing, and he knew that Killick was turning the craft so that the wider sterns would face the shore.

  ‘Form line!’ Frederickson was shouting.

  Sharpe swerved towards the shout, pawing sand from his eyes. Thirty Riflemen were bumping into a crude line at the very edge of the sea. Sharpe and Harper joined it.

  ‘Front rank kneel! Present!’ Frederickson, as if on a battlefield, faced the cavalry with two ranks that bristled with blades. The leading horseman, an officer, leaned from his saddle to swing his sabre, but the light blade clanged along the sword bayonets like a child’s stick dragged on iron palings.

  ‘Back! Back!’ Sharpe shouted it.

  The small line marched backwards, step by step, into the sea. Waves drove at their calves, their thighs, and the shock of the cold water reached for their groins.

  Horsemen spurred into the sea. The horses, frightened by the blades and waves, reared.

  ‘Come on, you bastards!’ Killick shouted. ‘Swim!’

  ‘Break ranks!’ Sharpe shouted it. ‘Go!’ He stayed as rearguard. His rifle encumbered him and he let it drop into the water.

  A horseman swung a sabre at Sharpe and the Rifleman’s long sword, used with both Sharpe’s hands, broke the man’s forearm. The Frenchman hissed with pain, dropped his sabre, then his horse jerked back towards dry land. Another horseman was twisting his sabre’s point in a Rifleman’s neck. There was blood, splashes, and more yellow-teethed horses plunging into the foam. Harper, still holding the axe, swung it at the horseman who sheered clumsily away while the body of a Rifleman was tugged by the tide. Harper dragged the body towards the boats, not knowing that the man was already dead.

  The infantry had jumped from the ramparts and shouted at the cavalry to make way. Sharpe, teeth snarling, dared them to come. He taunted them. He stepped towards them, wanting one of them to try, just one.

  ‘Sir!’ a voice shouted from behind. ‘Sir!’

  Sharpe stepped backwards and, seeing it, the French attacked.

  A sergeant led them. He was old in war, toughened by years of campaigning, and he knew the Englishman would lunge.

  Sharpe lunged. The Frenchman jerked his musket aside, parrying, and bellowed his victory as he thrust forward.

  He was still shouting as Sharpe’s sword, which had been twisted over the bayonet’s stab, punctured his belly. Sharpe turned the blade, pushing, and the blood spewed into the breaking foam as the blade seemed to be swallowed by the big belly. Sharpe stepped back, jerked the sword, and the blade came free in a welter of new blood.

  ‘Sir!’

  He went backwards. Another horseman drove into the water and Sharpe swung his blade at the horse’s head, it reared, then a man came from his other side, an officer in a darker uniform, and Sharpe turned, parried a clumsy thrust, and drew his sword back for the killing thrust.

  ‘Not him! Not him!’ Killick shouted it.

  Sharpe checked his thrust.

  Lassan, knowing that he would not die on this day of rain and savagery, lowered his sword into the water. ‘Go.’

  Sharpe went. He turned and plunged further into the sea. The longboats were already pulling away. Men clung to the transom of the nearest boat while other men, safely in the craft, reached hands and rifles towards him.

  A pistol bullet spat in a plume beside Sharpe’s face. He was up to his chest now, half wading and half swimming, and he reached with his left hand, lunged, and caught an outstretched rifle barrel.

  ‘Pull!’ Killick shouted. ‘Pull!’

  A last cavalryman charged into the sea, but an oarblade, slapped down on to the water, frightened the horse. The French, their muskets made useless by rain, could only watch.

  Sharpe clung to the rifle with his left hand. The weapon’s foresight dug into his palm. The sword in his right hand was dragging him down, as was the heavy scabbard. He kicked with his feet, water slopped into his mouth and he gagged.

  ‘Pull! Pull! Pull!’ Killick’s voice roared over the clanking of the Thuella’s windlass that dragged the anchor clear of the channel’s silt. The sails were dropping into the small wind and the Thuella was stirring in the water.

  The boats bumped on the ship’s side and men pushed the Riflemen towards the deck. Someone took Sharpe’s col
lar and hauled him dripping and heavy into the longboat. ‘Up!’

  A ladder was built into the ship’s side. Sharpe, unsteady in the rocking longboat, thrust his sword into his scabbard that squirted water as the blade went home. He reached for the ladder, climbed, then American hands hauled him on to the Thuella’s deck. He had swallowed sea-water and, with a sudden spasm, he vomited it on to the scrubbed deck. He gasped for breath, vomited more, then lay, chest heaving, in the scuppers.

  He heard cheers, German and Spanish and British cheers, even American cheers, and Sharpe twisted, looked through a gunport, and saw the coastline already sliding past. French gunners were wrestling the twelve-pounders through wet sand, but too late and to no avail. The longboats were being towed at ropes’ ends, the Thuella’s wet sails were filling with a new, easterly breeze, and the French were left behind, impotent.

  They had escaped.

  EPILOGUE

  Cavalry was nervous on wet fields. French horsemen would summon courage, ride a few yards forward, then swerve away from a threatened British volley. Unseen artillery, firing at unseen targets, punched the drizzling air, while infantry, shivering in the February cold, waited for orders.

  Sharpe’s force, pushing four handcarts loaded with wounded, came to the skirmish from the north. A squadron of French cavalry saw them, wheeled right, then drew curved sabres for the charge.

  ‘Two ranks! Fix swords!’ Sharpe sensed the enemy would not press the charge home, but he went through the dutiful motions and the enemy officer, seeing the waiting bayonets, and not knowing that there was not a single loaded musket or rifle in the twin ranks, dutifully withdrew. The battle, if battle it was, seemed too scattered and tentative for a cavalry charge that might leave the horsemen exposed to a sudden counter-attack. Besides, Sharpe could see that the French were dreadfully outnumbered, outnumbered as heavily as he had been at the Teste de Buch. The enemy, scarce more than a heavy picquet line, was everywhere being pushed back before a burgeoning number of British and Portuguese troops.