Sharpe's Triumph: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Hire ox carts, sir.” Sharpe had long perfected the way to address unhelpful officers. He gave them precise answers, added nothing unnecessary and always sounded confident.

  “With what? Promises?”

  “Money, sir.” Sharpe tapped his haversack where he had the bag of rupees.

  “Christ, they trust you with money?”

  Sharpe decided not to respond to that question, but just stared impassively at the canvas. Chasalgaon, he decided, was not a happy place. It was a small fort built on a bluff above a river that should have been overflowing its banks, but the monsoon had failed and the land was cruelly dry. The fort had no ditch, merely a wall made of cactus thorn with a dozen wooden fighting platforms spaced about its perimeter. Inside the wall was a beaten-earth parade ground where a stripped tree served as a flagpole, and the parade ground was surrounded by three mud-walled barracks thatched with palm, a cookhouse, tents for the officers and a stone-walled magazine to store the garrison’s ammunition. The sepoys had their families with them, so the fort was overrun with women and children, but Sharpe had noted how sullen they were. Crosby, he thought, was one of those crabbed officers who were only happy when all about them were miserable.

  “I suppose you expect me to arrange the ox carts?” Crosby said indignantly.

  “I’ll do it myself, sir.”

  “Speak the language, do you?” Crosby sneered. “A sergeant, banker and interpreter, are you?”

  “Brought an interpreter with me, sir,” Sharpe said. Which was overegging the pudding a bit, because Davi Lal was only thirteen, an urchin off the streets of Seringapatam. He was a smart, mischievous child whom Sharpe had found stealing from the armory cookhouse and, after giving the starving boy a clout around both ears to teach him respect for His Britannic Majesty’s property, Sharpe had taken him to Lali’s house and given him a proper meal, and Lali had talked to the boy and learned that his parents were dead, that he had no relatives he knew of, and that he lived by his wits. He was also covered in lice. “Get rid of him,” she had advised Sharpe, but Sharpe had seen something of his own childhood in Davi Lal and so he had dragged him down to the River Cauvery and given him a decent scrubbing. After that Davi Lal had become Sharpe’s errand boy. He learned to pipeclay belts, blackball boots and speak his own version of English which, because it came from the lower ranks, was liable to shock the gentler born.

  “You’ll need three carts,” Crosby said.

  “Yes, sir,” Sharpe said. “Thank you, sir.” He had known exactly how many carts he would need, but he also knew it was stupid to pretend to knowledge in the face of officers like Crosby.

  “Find your damn carts,” Crosby snapped, “then let me know when you’re ready to load up.”

  “Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.” Sharpe stiffened to attention, about-turned and marched from the tent to find Davi Lal and the six privates waiting in the shade of one of the barracks. “We’ll have dinner,” Sharpe told them, “then sort out some carts this afternoon.”

  “What’s for dinner?” Private Atkins asked.

  “Whatever Davi can filch from the cookhouse,” Sharpe said, “but be nippy about it, all right? I want to be out of this damn place tomorrow morning.”

  Their job was to fetch eighty thousand rounds of prime musket cartridges that had been stolen from the East India Company armory in Madras. The cartridges were the best quality in India, and the thieves who stole them knew exactly who would pay the highest price for the ammunition. The princedoms of the Mahratta Confederation were forever at war with each other or else raiding the neighboring states, but now, in the summer of 1803, they faced an imminent invasion by British forces. The threatened invasion had brought two of the biggest Mahratta rulers into an alliance that now gathered its forces to repel the British, and those rulers had promised the thieves a king’s ransom in gold for the cartridges, but one of the thieves who had helped break into the Madras armory had refused to let his brother join the band and share in the profit, and so the aggrieved brother had betrayed the thieves to the Company’s spies and, two weeks later, the caravan carrying the cartridges across India had been ambushed by sepoys not far from Chasalgaon. The thieves had died or fled, and the recaptured ammunition had been brought back to the fort’s small magazine for safekeeping. Now the eighty thousand cartridges were to be taken to the armory at Seringapatam, three days to the south, from where they would be issued to the British troops who were readying themselves for the war against the Mahrattas. A simple job, and Sharpe, who had spent the last four years as a sergeant in the Seringapatam armory, had been given the responsibility.

  Spoilage, Sharpe was thinking while his men boiled a cauldron of river water on a bullock-dung fire. That was the key to the next few days, spoilage. Say seven thousand cartridges lost to damp? No one in Seringapatam would argue with that, and Sharpe reckoned he could sell the seven thousand cartridges on to Vakil Hussein, so long, of course, as there were eighty thousand cartridges to begin with. Still, Major Crosby had not quibbled with the figure, but just as Sharpe was thinking that, so Major Crosby appeared from his tent with a cocked hat on his head and a sword at his side. “On your feet!” Sharpe snapped at his lads as the Major headed towards them.

  “Thought you were finding ox carts?” Crosby snarled at Sharpe.

  “Dinner first, sir.”

  “Your food, I hope, and not ours? We don’t get rations to feed King’s troops here, Sergeant.” Major Crosby was in the service of the East India Company, and though he wore a red coat like the King’s army, there was little love lost between the two forces.

  “Our food, sir,” Sharpe said, gesturing at the cauldron in which rice and kid meat, both stolen from Crosby’s stores, boiled. “Carried it with us, sir.”

  A havildar shouted from the fort gate, demanding Crosby’s attention, but the Major ignored the shout. “I forgot to mention one thing, Sergeant.”

  “Sir?”

  Crosby looked sheepish for a moment, then remembered he was talking to a mere sergeant. “Some of the cartridges were spoiled. Damp got to them.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” Sharpe said straight-faced.

  “So I had to destroy them,” Crosby said. “Six or seven thousand as I remember.”

  “Spoilage, sir,” Sharpe said. “Happens all the time, sir.”

  “Exactly so,” Crosby said, unable to hide his relief at Sharpe’s easy acceptance of his tale, “exactly so,” then he turned towards the gate. “Havildar?”

  “Company troops approaching, sahib!”

  “Where’s Captain Leonard? Isn’t he officer of the day?” Crosby demanded.

  “Here, sir, I’m here.” A tall, gangling captain hurried from a tent, tripped on a guy rope, recovered his hat, then headed for the gate.

  Sharpe ran to catch up with Crosby who was also walking towards the gate. “You’ll give me a note, sir?”

  “A note? Why the devil should I give you a note?”

  “Spoilage, sir,” Sharpe said respectfully. “I’ll have to account for the cartridges, sir.”

  “Later,” Crosby said, “later.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sharpe said. “And sod you backwards, you miserable bastard,” he added, though too softly for Crosby to hear.

  Captain Leonard clambered up to the platform beside the gate where Crosby joined him. The Major took a telescope from his tail pocket and slid the tubes open. The platform overlooked the small river that should have been swollen by the seasonal rains into a flood, but the failure of the monsoon had left only a trickle of water between the flat grey rocks. Beyond the shrunken river, up on the skyline behind a grove of trees, Crosby could see red-coated troops led by a European officer mounted on a black horse, and his first thought was that it must be Captain Roberts returning from patrol, but Roberts had a piebald horse and, besides, he had only taken fifty sepoys whereas this horseman led a company almost twice that size. “Open the gate,” Crosby ordered, and wondered who the devil it was. He decided it was
probably Captain Sullivan from the Company’s post at Milladar, another frontier fort like Chasalgaon, but what the hell was Sullivan doing here? Maybe he was marching some new recruits to toughen the bastards, not that the skinny little brutes needed any toughening, but it was uncivil of Sullivan not to warn Crosby of his coming. “Jemadar,” Crosby shouted, “turn out the guard!”

  “Sahib!” The Jemadar acknowledged the order. Other sepoys were dragging the thorn gates open.

  He’ll want dinner, Crosby thought sourly, and wondered what his servants were cooking for the midday meal. Kid, probably, in boiled rice. Well, Sullivan would just have to endure the stringy meat as a price for not sending any warning, and damn the man if he expected Crosby to feed his sepoys as well. Chasalgaon’s cooks had not expected visitors and would not have enough rations for a hundred more hungry sepoys. “Is that Sullivan?” he asked Leonard, handing the Captain the telescope.

  Leonard stared for a long time at the approaching horseman. “I’ve never met Sullivan,” he finally said, “so I couldn’t say.”

  Crosby snatched back the telescope. “Give the bastard a salute when he arrives,” Crosby ordered Leonard, “then tell him he can join me for dinner.” He paused. “You too,” he added grudgingly.

  Crosby went back to his tent. It was better, he decided, to let Leonard welcome the stranger, rather than look too eager himself. Damn Sullivan, he thought, for not sending warning, though there was a bright side, inasmuch as Sullivan might have brought news. The tall, good-looking Sergeant from Seringapatam doubtless could have told Crosby the latest rumors from Mysore, but it would be a chilly day in hell before Crosby sought news from a sergeant. But undoubtedly something was changing in the wider world, for it had been nine weeks since Crosby last saw a Mahratta raider, and that was decidedly odd. The purpose of the fort at Chasalgaon was to keep the Mahratta horse raiders out of the Rajah of Hyderabad’s wealthy territory, and Crosby fancied he had done his job well, but even so he found the absence of any enemy marauders oddly worrying. What were the bastards up to? He sat behind his table and shouted for his clerk. He would write the damned armory Sergeant a note explaining that the loss of seven thousand cartridges was due to a leak in the stone roof of Chasalgaon’s magazine. He certainly could not admit that he had sold the ammunition to a merchant.

  “What the bastard did,” Sharpe was saying to his men, “was sell the bloody stuff to some heathen bastard.”

  “That’s what you were going to do, Sergeant,” Private Phillips said.

  “Never you bleeding mind what I was going to do,” Sharpe said. “Ain’t that food ready?”

  “Five minutes,” Davi Lal promised.

  “A bloody camel could do it faster,” Sharpe grumbled, then hoisted his pack and haversack. “I’m going for a piss.”

  “He never goes anywhere without his bleeding pack,” Atkins commented.

  “Doesn’t want you thieving his spare shirt,” Phillips answered.

  “He’s got more than a shirt in that pack. Hiding something he is.” Atkins twisted round. “Hey, Hedgehog!” They all called Davi Lal “Hedgehog” because his hair stuck up in spikes; no matter how greasy it was or how short it was cut, it still stuck up in unruly spikes. “What does Sharpie keep in the pack?”

  Davi Lal rolled his eyes. “Jewels! Gold. Rubies, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and pearls.”

  “Like sod he does.”

  Davi Lal laughed, then turned back to the cauldron. Out by the fort’s gate Captain Leonard was greeting the visitors. The guard presented arms as the officer leading the sepoys rode through the gate. The visitor returned the salute by touching a riding crop to the brim of his cocked hat which, worn fore and aft, shadowed his face. He was a tall man, uncommonly tall, and he wore his stirrups long so that he looked much too big for his horse, which was a sorry, sway-backed beast with a mangy hide, though there was nothing odd in that. Good horses were a luxury in India, and most Company officers rode decrepit nags. “Welcome to Chasalgaon, sir,” Leonard said. He was not certain he ought to call the stranger “sir,” for the man wore no visible badge of rank on his red coat, but he carried himself like a senior officer and he reacted to Leonard’s greeting with a lordly nonchalance. “You’re invited to dine with us, sir,” Leonard added, hurrying after the horseman who, having tucked his riding crop under his belt, now led his sepoys straight onto the parade ground. He stopped his horse under the flagpole from which the British flag drooped in the windless air, then waited as his company of red-coated sepoys divided into two units of two ranks each that marched either side of the flagpole. Crosby watched from inside his tent. It was a flamboyant entrance, the Major decided.

  “Halt!” the strange officer shouted when his company was in the very center of the fort. The sepoys halted. “Outwards turn! Ground firelocks! Good morning!” He at last looked down at Captain Leonard. “Are you Crosby?”

  “No, sir. I’m Captain Leonard, sir. And you, sir?” The tall man ignored the question. He scowled about Chasalgaon’s fort as though he disapproved of everything he saw. What the hell was this? Leonard wondered. A surprise inspection? “Shall I have your horse watered, sir?” Leonard offered.

  “In good time, Captain, all in good time,” the mysterious officer said, then he twisted in his saddle and growled an order to his company. “Fix bayonets!” The sepoys pulled out their seventeen-inch blades and slotted them onto the muzzles of their muskets. “I like to offer a proper salute to a fellow Englishman,” the tall man explained to Leonard. “You are English, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Too many damned Scots in the Company,” the tall man grumbled. “Have you ever noticed that, Leonard? Too many Scots and Irish. Glib sorts of fellow, they are, but they ain’t English. Not English at all.” The visitor drew his sword, then took a deep breath. “Company!” he shouted. “Level arms!”

  The sepoys brought their muskets to their shoulders and Leonard saw, much too late, that the guns were aimed at the troops of the garrison. “No!” he said, but not loudly, for he still did not believe what he saw.

  “Fire!” the officer shouted, and the parade ground air was murdered by the double ripple of musket shots, heavy coughing explosions that blossomed smoke across the sun-crazed mud and slammed lead balls into the unsuspecting garrison.

  “Hunt them now!” the tall officer called. “Hunt them! Fast, fast, fast!” He spurred his horse close to Captain Leonard and, almost casually, slashed down with his sword, ripping the blade hard back once it had bitten into the Captain’s neck so that its edge sawed fast and deep through the sinew, muscle and flesh. “Hunt them! Hunt them!” the officer shouted as Leonard fell. He drew a pistol from his saddle holster and rode towards the officers’ tents. His men were screaming their war cries as they spread through the small fort to chase down every last sepoy of Chasalgaon’s garrison. They had been ordered to leave the women and children to the last and hunt down the men first.

  Crosby had been staring in horror and disbelief, and now, with shaking hands, he started to load one of his pistols, but suddenly the door of his tent darkened and he saw that the tall officer had dismounted from his horse. “Are you Crosby?” the officer demanded.

  Crosby found he could not speak. His hands quivered. Sweat was pouring down his face.

  “Are you Crosby?” the man asked again in an irritated voice.

  “Yes,” Crosby managed to say. “And who the devil are you?”

  “Dodd,” the tall man said, “Major William Dodd, at your service.” And Dodd raised his big pistol so that it pointed at Crosby’s face.

  “No!” Crosby shouted.

  Dodd smiled. “I assume you’re surrendering the fort to me, Crosby?”

  “Damn you,” Crosby riposted feebly.

  “You drink too much, Major,” Dodd said. “The whole Company knows you’re a sot. Didn’t put up much of a fight, did you?” He pulled the trigger and Crosby’s head was snatched back in a mist of blood that spattered onto the
canvas. “Pity you’re English,” Dodd said. “I’d much rather shoot a Scotsman.” The dying Major made a terrible gurgling sound, then his body jerked uncontrollably and was finally still. “Praise the Lord, pull down the flag and find the pay chest,” Dodd said to himself, then he stepped over the Major’s corpse to see that the pay chest was where he expected it to be, under the bed. “Subadar!”

  “Sahib?”

  “Two men here to guard the pay chest.”

  “Sahib!”

  Major Dodd hurried back onto the parade ground where a small group of redcoats, British redcoats, were offering defiance, and he wanted to make sure that his sepoys took care of them, but a havildar had anticipated Dodd’s orders and was leading a squad of men against the half-dozen soldiers. “Put the blades in!” Dodd encouraged them. “Hard in! Twist them in! That’s the way! Watch your left! Left!” His voice was urgent for a tall sergeant had suddenly appeared from behind the cookhouse, a white man with a musket and bayonet in his hands, but one of the sepoys still had a loaded musket of his own and he twisted, aimed and fired and Dodd saw another mist of bright blood sparkle in the sunlight. The sergeant had been hit in the head. He stopped, looked surprised as the musket fell from his hands and as blood streamed down his face, then he fell backwards and was still.

  “Search for the rest of the bastards!” Dodd ordered, knowing that there must still be a score of the garrison hidden in the barracks. Some of the men had escaped over the thorn wall, but they would be hunted down by the Mahratta horsemen who were Dodd’s allies and who should by now have spread either side of the fort. “Search hard!” He himself went to look at the horses of the garrison’s officers and decided that one of them was marginally better than his own. He moved his saddle to the better horse, then led it into the sunlight and picketed it to the flagpole. A woman ran past him, screaming as she fled from the red-coated killers, but a sepoy caught and tripped her and another pulled the sari off her shoulder. Dodd was about to order them away from the woman, then he reckoned that the enemy was well beaten and so his men could take their pleasure in safety. “Subadar?” he shouted.