It was not just the guns. The defenders hurled anything that would kill from the ramparts. Stone lumps, the size of a man’s head, crashed down into the ditch; gun-shells, their fuses cut to a quarter inch and lit by hand, fizzed down and sent red hot fragments scything on the ditch’s floor, and even kegs of powder, fused and lit, were rolled down the breach slope. Sharpe watched one barrel, bouncing and tumbling, its fuse spinning madly red, finally leap into the ditch and explode in the face of a dozen Riflemen who were running for the Santa Maria breach. Only three lived, blinded and screaming, and one of them wandered, insensate with pain, into the burning timbers that blocked the path to the new breach. Sharpe fancied he could hear the man’s dying screams bubble with the flames, but there were so many dying, and so much noise, that he could not be certain.
The noise of the living in the ditch was a growl and, suddenly, it rose to a sound of fury and Sharpe looked right to see a wave of men, Riflemen and red-jackets, charging forward. He groaned. They had stormed their way up the ravelin’s sloping face, desperate for victory, and the burgeoning attack spread out on the diamond’s top flat surface and ran with levelled bayonets towards the new breach. The French were waiting. Guns that had not fired were touched with flame, the grapeshot ripped in from three sides and the attack died in a dancing horror as men were struck as by contrary iron winds. A few lived, ran on, and found that the ravelin led to another sheer drop, into another ditch before the breach and, as they hesitated, the French infantry dropped them with musket fire and there was nothing but bodies left on the ravelin’s top, bodies that had fallen and left unrecognizable dark smears on the stone.
The guns were winning the night. The ditch was blocked by fire. Men could not go right or left because of the flaming timbers that jammed the main ditch on either side of the two bastions, just as the approaches to the third breach were blocked. The four fires, fed with fresh timber from the walls, defined where the British could go, a space that was terrible with gunfire. Yet still more men went over the edge, hurrying down the ladders as if there was some safety in the milling, scrambling horde that bulged at the edges as fresh groups charged towards a breach. The ditch was filling with men, hundreds and hundreds of men, shouting men, holding their bayonets above the crush, and the grapeshot would lick down and clear a space of the living and the space would be filled again as men trampled the dying. The guns would belch again, and again, and the metal scraps turned the ditch into a charnel house. Still they went forward, incoherently brave, trying to reach an enemy they could not see or touch, and they died as they cursed and struggled forward.
They went in small groups and Sharpe, crouched on the glacis, watched as an officer or Sergeant led them forward. Mostly they died in the ditch, but some, at last, reached the breach and clambered upwards. A dozen men would go and, in seconds, there would be six, and three would reach the stone and begin to climb while the men on the glacis lip, next to Sharpe, knelt up and fired their muskets at the walls as if they could clear the path for the scrambling men. Sharpe wondered if the French were playing with them. Sometimes no gun would fire on the small, desperate groups, even though guns swept the approach to the breach, and he would watch them struggle, higher and higher until, casually almost, the enemy would pluck them off the stone, tumble them dead, and a new high-tide mark of blood was marked on the breach. Once a man even reached the Chevaux de Frise, he swept at the sabre blades with a musket, bellowing defiance, and then he was hit by an unseen French infantryman and he fell, twisting like a rag doll, down the slope and the French jeered him and poured fire down.
Sharpe went right, looking for the Fourth Division and the South Essex, but the ditch was a massive sink of death, of weird shadows cast by the fires, and he could make out no faces in the packed crowd that was filling the space between the ravelin and glacis. Men sheltered behind parapets made from the dead, others clumsily reloaded muskets and fired them uselessly at the towering stone that crushed them with fire. He ran for a minute, right on the edge of the glacis, stumbling on the uneven paving and hearing the canister above him, in front of him, yet he was untouched. Small groups of men were on the glacis lip, Light Companies mostly, who rammed and fired, rammed and fired, hoping that their bullets might ricochet from an embrasure and kill a Frenchman. The canister flung them backwards, ragged down the slope, and beyond the bodies, in the darkness, more men waited for the orders that would send them running to the light, to the ditch, to the hundreds of dead. Sharpe had never seen so many dead.
He was still fifty yards from the Trinidad, but he could see that its breach was no better than the Santa Maria. The foot of the breach was smeared with bodies, its approaches bare of the living, though small groups of men dashed from the shadows of the ravelin and screamed defiance as they clawed at the stones and were blasted away. Bugles sounded to the right, the shouts of officers and Sergeants, and there was the South Essex! He saw them flowing up the glacis in close column and his Company, Rymer’s Company, lined the ditch and fired their ineffectual muskets at the wall’s height while the other men scrambled at the ladders, flung themselves on hay-bags, frantic in their haste. Men bunched at the ditch’s edge, the guns hammered from the wall, their hot breath hard on the glacis, and Sharpe saw the Battalion shudder like a wounded thing, reform, smash itself under new impacts. But they were over, scrambling in the ditch and he saw Windham, his cocked hat gone, scything his sword towards the breach, and new guns fired until the sound of the city was like a weight of solid thunder.
They died in dozens, but still they went towards the breach, and more men came from the ditch, from other Regiments, and they tried, and pushed, and fought, and scrambled up the stone till it seemed they had to win for there was not enough shot in the world to kill so many men. The gunners rammed and fired, loaded and fired, and the powder kegs banged down the slope, and the shells were thrown, fuses lit, so the dark explosions splintered the men, and they died and it was done. The dead choked the living, the breach had won. A few men, very few, still lived and struggled upwards, shredding their hands on the nailed boards laid down the upper slope, and Sharpe saw Leroy, sword in hand, cigar inevitably between his teeth, look up into the night, so slow, and then he fell, tumbling, fell, screaming into the ditch. A last man reached the sword blades, the very top, he clawed at them, blood on his hands, and then he shook, quivered, filled with a dozen bullets and the highest man, dead on the Trinidad, slid down, blood on stone, till he was caught.
The survivors were behind the ravelin, digging into the dead, and the French mocked them. ‘Come to Badajoz, English.’
Sharpe had not been with them. He knelt, fired once at the wall, and watched the death of the Battalion; Collett, Jack Collett, neck severed by a roundshot, even Sterritt, poor, worried Sterritt, a hero now, killed in the ditch at Badajoz.
‘Sir?’ A voice curiously calm in the torment of sound. ‘Sir?’
He looked up. Daniel Hagman, strange in red coat, stood over him. He stood up. ‘Daniel?’
‘You’d better come, sir.’
He went towards the Light Company, close to him now and still on the glacis, and he saw in the ditch where men had drowned in the deep water. The black humps of their bodies broke up the ripples in red and dark patterns. The guns were quieter now, saving their anger for the fools who would come from behind the ravelin. The breaches were empty of all but the dead. The huge fires roared, greedy for the lumber that was tossed from the walls, and an army was dying between their flames.
‘Sir?’ Lieutenant Price, his eyes stark with the horror, ran to Sharpe. ‘Sir?’
‘What?’
‘Your Company, sir.’
‘Mine?’
Price pointed. Rymer was dead, a tiny wound, an insignificant wound, red on his pale forehead. He lay backwards on the slope, arms wide, staring at nothing, and Sharpe shuddered when he remembered how he had wanted this Company, and thus this man’s death, and now it was given to him.
So easy. It was all done? Out
of the horror, the pulverizing fire and iron that smothered the south-east corner of Badajoz, death had given Sharpe back what had once been his. He could stay on the glacis, firing at the night, safe from the carnage, a Captain again, the Company his, and men would account him a hero because he had lived through Badajoz.
A musket ball whirred past his head, making him jerk back, and there was Harper, the red jacket discarded, huge in a blood-stained shirt, and the Irish face was stone hard. ‘What do we do, sir?’
Do? There was only one thing to do. A man did not go into a breach to fight for a company, not even a Captaincy. Sharpe looked over the ditch, over the scoured ravelin and there, untouched by blood, was the third breach, the new breach, the unattacked breach. A man went first into a breach for pride, nothing else, just pride. A poor reason, paltry even, but enough, perhaps, to win a city. He looked up at Harper. ‘Sergeant. We’re going to Badajoz.’
CHAPTER 25
Captain Robert Knowles crossed the bridge by the ruined mill and wondered at the calmness of the night. Beneath him the Rivillas stream whispered from the dam, ahead the huge castle blotted out the sky and, in the darkness, it seemed impossible that men could dare hope escalade the giant bastion. Wind rustled the new foliage in the trees that grew precariously on the steep hill that led up to the castle. Behind Knowles came his Company, carrying two ladders, and they paused with him at the foot of the slope, their excitement suppressed, and peered up at the looming walls. ‘Bloody high!’ A voice came from the rear rank.
‘Quiet!’
The Engineer officer who was guiding the Battalion was nervous and Knowles became annoyed at the man’s fidgeting. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘We’re too far over. We must go right.’
They could not go right. There were too many troops crowding at the hill’s base, and it would cause chaos if the battalions tried to re-align themselves in the darkness. Knowles shook his head irritably. ‘We can’t. What’s the problem?’
‘That.’ The Engineer pointed to his left. A huge shadow sprang from the dark rock, high over them, a shadow with a crenellated outline. The bastion of San Pedro. Knowles’s Colonel appeared beside him. ‘What’s the problem?’
Knowles pointed to the bastion, but the Colonel dismissed it. ‘We must do what we can. Are you all right, Robert?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The Colonel turned to the Light Company and raised his voice a little above a whisper. ‘Enjoy yourselves, lads!’
There was a growling from the ranks. They had been told that this attack was merely a diversion, not intended to succeed, but then General Picton had damned Wellington’s eyes and said that the Third Division did not make fake attacks. The Third Division would go all the way, or not at all, and the men were determined to prove Picton right. Knowles, for the first time, felt the seeds of doubt. They must climb a hundred feet of almost sheer rock, and then put ladders against a wall that looked forty feet high, and all the time under the guns of the defenders. He thrust the doubts away, trying, as he always did, to emulate Sharpe, but it was difficult, faced with the enormity of the castle, to feel confident. His worries were interrupted by hurrying footsteps and one of Picton’s aides was calling for the Colonel.
‘Here!’
‘Go, sir! And the General wishes you God speed.’
‘I’d rather he wished me a case of his claret.’ The Colonel slapped Knowles’s shoulder. ‘Off you go.’
Knowles could not draw his sabre. He needed both hands to cling to the rock hill, to pull himself up while his feet found desperate footholds. His Captaincy was heavy on his shoulders. He hurried, wanting to stay ahead of his men because he knew Sharpe would lead, and he imagined, as he climbed, the first heavy musket balls plummetting down to crush in the top of his skull. His men seemed to be so noisy! The ladders scraped on rock, on tree-trunks; the musket stocks banged on stone, the feet clattered pebbles loose, but still the castle was silent, the great shadow unrelieved by the gun flames. Knowles found himself thinking of Teresa, inside the city, and hoping, against all the evidence of the massive walls, that he could reach her first. He wanted to do something for Sharpe.
‘Faster!’ The shout was from one of his Sergeants, and Knowles, his thoughts elsewhere, snapped his head back and stared up. High above him, falling, falling, was the first carcass. The fire roared in the sky; it tumbled end over end, shedding sparks, and he watched, fascinated, as it plunged into a thorn tree that grew close by. The tree flared into flame and the first muskets banged from the castle wall. They seemed far away.
‘Come on!’
More fireballs and carcasses fell from the ramparts; some lodged in the narrow space by the wall’s foot, others fell in streaming shreds of fire down the rock slope and took men with them, screaming as the flames captured them, but Knowles climbed on and his men pressed behind. ‘Faster! Faster!’
A cannon crashed out its load from the San Pedro bastion and canister whipped through the trees and crackled on stone. There was a cry behind him, a shout of despair, and he knew a man had gone, but there was no time to worry about casualties, just to scramble upwards, the going easier as they neared the top, and Knowles felt the excitement of battle that would carry him past fear and into action.
‘Keep going!’ The Colonel, surprisingly agile for his years, overtook him and reached the space at the wall’s base first. He leaned down and helped Knowles up. ‘Get the ladders!’
The musket balls smacked down, but the shot was an awkward one for the defenders; they had to lean right over the battlements and shoot straight down, almost at random, into the flaring light at the bottom of the wall. The cannons were far more dangerous, shooting from the San Pedro and from a smaller bastion to Knowles’s right, a bastion jutting from the castle wall. Canister scraped the wall, promising death to men on ladders, but that was a fear that had to be ignored.
‘Here!’ The first ladder loomed over the rock slope and Knowles ran to it, pulled it towards the wall, and more men were manhandling it, swinging it upwards, until it thumped against the battlements. The Colonel waved them on. ‘Good lads! The first one over gets the best whore in Badajoz!’
They cheered and the Colonel dropped, felled by a bullet from above, but they hardly noticed. ‘Me first! Me first!’ Knowles pushed through, boyish in his excitement. He knew that Sharpe would lead, and so must he, and he scrambled up the rungs, wondering what a fool he was, but his legs pumped automatically and it occurred to him, with sudden horror, that he had not even drawn his sabre. He looked up, saw the arms of defenders pushing at the ladder and he began to fall sideways. He shouted a warning, let go, and thumped down into a press of men. Miraculously not a single bayonet touched him. He picked himself up.
‘Are you hurt, sir?’ A Sergeant looked worriedly at him.
‘No! Get it up!’ The ladder was not broken. Another canister splintered on the wall, the men swung the ladder again and this time Knowles was not near enough to be first and he watched as his men began climbing. The first was shot from above, thrown clear by the second man, more pushed behind, and then the whole ladder with its human cargo disintegrated in splinters and flesh as a barrel-full of grapeshot, fired from the San Pedro bastion, found a full target. Stones were being hurled from the castle parapets that crashed into knots of men and bounced down the rock face. Suddenly Knowles’s Company seemed to be halved in strength, he felt the frustrations of defeat and looked frantically for the second ladder. It had gone, back down the slope, and then there were voices shouting at him. ‘Back! Back!’ He recognized his Major’s voice, saw the face, and he jumped into the shadows and left behind the broken ladders and bodies of the first attack beneath the triumphant shouts of the enemy.
‘Any news from the castle?’
‘No, my Lord.’ The Generals fidgeted. In front of them the south-east corner of Badajoz flickered with bright fire. The two soaring bastions, scarred by the unconquered breaches, framed the flames, fed them, and the smoke boiled scarlet into
the night. To the right, and seemingly far away, more fire glowed above the silhouetted castle and Wellington, cloaked and gloved, tugged nervously at his reins. ‘Picton won’t do it, y’know. He won’t.’
An aide-de-camp leaned closer. ‘My Lord?’
‘Nothing. Nothing.’ He was irritable, helpless. He knew what was happening in the great pit of fire ahead. His men were marching into it and could not get out the other side. He was appalled. The walls were three times bigger than Ciudad Rodrigo, the fight unimaginably worse, but he had to have the city. Kemmis, from the Fourth Division, pushed in by his side.
‘My Lord?’
‘General?’
‘Do we reinforce, sir?’ Kemmis was hatless, his face smeared with dirt as if he had been firing a musket himself. ‘Do we send in more men?’
Wellington hated sieges. He could be patient when he had to be, when he was enticing the enemy into a trap, but a siege was not like that. Inevitably this moment had to come, when the troops had to be ordered into the one, small, deadly point, and there was no escaping it unless the enemy was simply starved into submission and there had been no time for that. He had to have this city.
Sharpe! For a second the General was tempted to damn Sharpe, who had assured him the breaches were practical. But Wellington suppressed the thought. The Rifleman had said what Wellington had wanted him to say and even if he had not, then Wellington would still have sent in the troops. Sharpe! If Wellington had one thousand Sharpes then the city might be his. He listened gloomily to the sounds of battle. The French cheers were loud and he knew they were beating him. He could withdraw now and leave the dead and wounded to be recovered under a flag of truce, or he could send in more men and hope to turn the battle. He had to have the city! Otherwise there could be no march on Spain this summer, no advance to the Pyrenees, and Napoleon would be given another year of power. ‘Send them in!’
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy Page 23