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

by Bernard Cornwell

  McCandless was shouting at the crowds, and using the threat of his sword to make a passage. There were plenty of men in the streets who might have opposed the Colonel’s party, and some of those men still had weapons, but none made any threatening move. Ahmednuggur’s surviving defenders only wanted to live, while the civilians had been plunged into terror. A crowd had invaded a Hindu temple where the women swayed and wailed in front of their garlanded idols. A child carrying a birdcage scurried across the road and McCandless wrenched his horse aside to avoid trampling the toddler, and then a loud volley of musketry sounded close ahead. There was a pause, and Sharpe imagined the men tearing open new cartridges and ramming the bullets into their muzzles, and then, exactly at the moment he expected it, the second volley sounded. This was not the ragged noise of plundering men blasting open locked doors, but a disciplined infantry fight. “I warrant that fight’s at the north gate!” McCandless called back excitedly.

  “Sounds heavy, sir,” Sharpe said.

  “It’ll be panic, man, panic! We’ll just ride in and snatch the fellow!” McCandless, so close to his quarry, was elated. A third volley sounded, and this time Sharpe heard the musket balls smacking against mud walls or ripping through the thatched roofs. The crowds were suddenly thinner and McCandless drove back his spurs to urge his big gelding closer to the firefight. Sevajee was alongside him, tulwar shining, and his men just behind. The city walls were close to their right-hand side, and ahead, over a jumble of thatched and slate roofs, Sharpe could see a blue-and-green-striped flag flying over the ramparts of a square tower like the bastion that crowned the south gate. The tower had to be above the north gate, and he kicked his horse on and hauled back the cock of his musket.

  The horsemen cleared the last buildings and the gate was now only thirty yards ahead on the far side of an open, paved space, but the moment McCandless saw the gate he wrenched his reins to swerve his horse aside. Sevajee did the same, but the men behind, Sharpe included, were too late. Sharpe had thought that the disciplined volleys must be being fired by redcoats or sepoys, but instead two companies of white-jacketed soldiers were barring the way to the gate and it was those men who were firing to keep the space around the gate clear for other white-coated companies who were marching in double-quick time to escape the city. The volleys were being fired indiscriminately at civilians, redcoats and fugitive defenders alike, their aim solely to keep the gate free for the white-coated companies that were under the command of an unnaturally tall man mounted on a gaunt black horse. And just as Sharpe saw the man, and recognized him, so the left-hand company aimed at the horsemen and fired.

  A horse screamed. Blood spurted fast and warm over the cobbles as the beast fell, trapping its rider and breaking his leg. Another of Sevajee’s men was down, his tulwar ringing as it skittered across the stones. Sharpe heard the whistle of musket balls all about him and he tugged on the reins, wrenching the mare back towards the alley, but she protested his violence and turned back towards the enemy. He kicked her. “Move, you bitch!” he shouted. “Move!” He could hear ramrods rattling in barrels and he knew it would only be seconds before another volley came his way, but then McCandless was beside him and the Scotsman leaned over, seized Sharpe’s bridle and hauled him safely into the shelter of an alley.

  “Thank you, sir,” Sharpe said. He had lost control of his horse and felt ashamed. The mare was quivering and he patted her neck just as Dodd’s next volley hammered its huge noise through the city. The balls thumped into the mud-brick walls, shattered tiles and tore handfuls out of the palm thatch. McCandless had dismounted, so Sharpe now kicked his feet from the stirrups, dropped from the saddle and ran to join the Colonel at the mouth of the alley. Once there, he looked for Dodd through the clearing smoke, found him and aimed the musket.

  McCandless hurriedly pushed the musket down. “What are you doing, man?”

  “Killing the bugger, sir,” Sharpe snarled, remembering the stench of blood at Chasalgaon.

  “You’ll do no such thing, Sergeant,” McCandless growled. “I want him alive!”

  Sharpe cursed, but did not shoot. Dodd, he saw, was very calm. He had caused another massacre here, but this time he had been killing Ahmednuggur’s civilians to prevent them from crowding the gateway, and his killers, the two white-coated companies, still stood guard on the gate even though the remaining companies had all vanished into the sunlit country beyond the archway’s long dark tunnel. So why were those two companies lingering? Why did Dodd not extricate them before the rampaging sepoys and Highlanders caught up with him? The ground ahead of the two rearguard companies was littered with dead and dying fugitives and a horrid number of those corpses and casualties were women and children, while more weeping and shrieking people, terrified by the volley fire and equally frightened of the invaders spreading into the city behind them, were crammed into every street or alley that opened onto the cleared space by the gate.

  “Why doesn’t he leave?” McCandless wondered aloud.

  “He’s waiting for something, sir,” Sharpe said.

  “We need men,” McCandless said. “Go and fetch some. I’ll keep an eye on Dodd.”

  “Me, sir? Fetch men?”

  “You’re a sergeant, aren’t you?” McCandless snapped. “So behave like one. Get me an infantry company. Highlanders, preferably. Now go!”

  Sharpe cursed under his breath, then sprinted back into the city. How the hell was he expected to find men? There were plenty of redcoats in sight, but none was under discipline, and demanding that looters abandon their plunder to go into another fight would like as not prove a waste of time if not downright suicidal. Sharpe needed to find an officer, and so he bullied his way through the terrified crowd in hope of discovering a company of Highlanders that was still obeying orders.

  A splintering crash directly above his head made him duck into a doorway just seconds before a flimsy balcony collapsed under the weight of three sepoys and a dark wooden trunk they had dragged from a bedroom. The trunk split apart when it hit the street, spilling out a trickle of coins, and the three injured sepoys screamed as they were trampled by a rush of soldiers and civilians who plunged in to collect the loot. A tall Scottish sergeant used his musket butt to clear a space about the broken trunk, then knelt and began scooping the coins into his upturned bearskin. He snarled at Sharpe, thinking him a rival for the plunder, but Sharpe stepped over the Sergeant, tripped on the broken leg of one of the sepoys, and shoved on. Bloody chaos!

  A half-naked girl ran out of a potter’s shop, then suddenly stopped as her unwinding sari jerked her to a halt. Two redcoats hauled her back towards the shop. The girl’s father, blood on his temple, was slumped just outside the doorway amidst the litter of his wares. The girl stared into Sharpe’s eyes and he saw her mute appeal, then the door of the shop was slammed shut and he heard the bar dropping into place. Whooping Highlanders had discovered a tavern and were setting up shop, while another Highlander was calmly reading his Bible while sitting on a brass-bound trunk he had pulled from a goldsmith’s shop. “It’s a fine day, Sergeant,” he said equably, though he took care to keep his hand on his musket until Sharpe had safely gone past.

  Another woman screamed in an alley, and Sharpe instinctively headed towards the terrible sound. He discovered a riotous mob of sepoys fighting with a small squad of white-jacketed soldiers who had to be among the very last of the city’s defenders still in recognizable uniforms. They were led by a very young European officer who flailed a slender sword from his saddle, but just as Sharpe caught sight of him, the officer was caught from behind by a bayonet. He arched his back, and his mouth opened in a silent scream as his sword faltered, then a mass of dark hands reached up and hauled him down from his white-eyed horse. Bayonets plunged down, then the officer’s blood-soaked uniform was being rifled for money.

  Beyond the dead officer, and also on horseback, was a woman. She was wearing European clothes and had a white net veil hanging from the brim of her straw hat, and it was her sc
ream that Sharpe had heard. Her horse had been trapped against a wall and she was clinging to a roof beam that jutted just above her head. She was sitting side-saddle, facing the street and screaming as excited sepoys clawed at her. Other sepoys were looting a pack mule that had been following her horse, and she turned and shouted at them to stop, then gasped as two men caught her legs. “No!” she shouted. A small riding whip hung from a loop about her right wrist and she tried letting go of the roof beam and slashing down with the leather thong, but the defiance only made her predicament worse.

  Sharpe used his musket butt to hammer his way through the sepoys. He was a good six inches taller than any of them, and much stronger, and he used his anger as a weapon to drive them aside. He kicked a man away from the slaughtered officer, stepped over the body, and swung the musket butt into the skull of one of the men trying to pull the woman from her horse. That man went down and Sharpe turned the musket and drove its muzzle into the belly of the second sepoy. That man doubled over and staggered backwards, but just then a third man seized the horse’s bridle and yanked it out from the wall so fast that the woman fell back onto the roadway. The sepoys, seeing her upended with her long legs in the air, shouted in triumph and surged forward and Sharpe whirled the musket like a club to drive them backwards. One of them aimed his musket at Sharpe who stared him in the eyes. “Go on, you bastard,” Sharpe said, “I dare you.”

  The sepoys decided not to make a fight of it. There were other women in the city and so they backed away. A few paused to plunder the dead European officer, while others finished looting the woman’s pack mule which had been stripped of its load and grinning sepoys now tore apart her linen dresses, stockings and shawls. The woman was kneeling behind Sharpe, shaking and sobbing, and so he turned and took her by the elbow. “Come on, love,” he said, “you’re all right now. Safe now.”

  She stood. Her hat had come off when she fell from her horse and her disheveled golden hair hung about her pale face. Sharpe saw she was tall, had an impression that she was pretty even though her blue eyes were wide with shock and she was still shaking. He stooped for her hat. “You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards, you do,” he said, then shook the dust off her hat and held it out to her. Her horse was standing free in the street, so he grabbed the beast’s bridle then led woman and animal to a nearby gateway that opened into a courtyard. “Have to look after your horse,” he said, “valuable things, horses. You know how a trooper gets a replacement mount?” He was not entirely sure why he was talking so much and he did not even know if the woman understood him, but he sensed that if he stopped talking she would burst into tears again and so he kept up his chatter. “If a trooper loses his horse he has to prove it’s died, see? To show he hasn’t sold it. So he chops off a hoof. They carry little axes for that, some of them do. Can’t sell a three-footed horse, see? He shows the hoof to his officers and they issue a new horse.”

  There was a rope bed in the courtyard and he led the woman to it. She sat and cuffed at her face. “They said you wouldn’t come for three more days,” she said bitterly in a strong accent.

  “We were in a hurry, love,” Sharpe said. She had still not taken the hat so he crouched and held it close to her. “Are you French?”

  She nodded. She had begun to cry again and tears were running down her cheeks. “It’s all right,” he said, “you’re safe now.” Then he saw the wedding ring on her finger and a terrible thought struck him. Had the white-coated officer been her husband? And had she watched him hacked down in front of her? “That officer,” he said, jerking his head towards the street where sepoys were kicking at doors and forcing shuttered windows with their firelocks, “was he your husband, love?”

  She shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said, “no. He was a lieutenant. My husband is a captain.” She at last took the hat, then sniffed, “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Sharpe said, “except you had a nasty fright. It’s all right now.”

  She took a deep breath, then wiped her eyes. “I seem to be crying always.” She looked into Sharpe’s eyes. “Life is always tears, isn’t it?”

  “Not for me, love, no. Haven’t had a weep since I was a kid, not that I can remember.”

  She shrugged. “Thank you,” she said, gesturing towards the street where she had been assailed by the sepoys. “Thank you.”

  Sharpe smiled. “I didn’t do anything, love, ‘cept drive the buggers off. A dog could have done that as well as me. Are you all right? You weren’t hurt?”

  “No.”

  He patted her hand. “Your husband went without you, did he?”

  “He sent Lieutenant Sillière to fetch me. No, he didn’t. Major Dodd sent Sillière.”

  “Dodd?” Sharpe asked.

  The woman heard the interest in Sharpe’s voice. “You know him?” she asked.

  “I know of him,” Sharpe said carefully. “Ain’t met him, not properly.”

  She studied Sharpe’s face. “You don’t like him?”

  “I hate him, Ma’am.”

  “I hate him, too.” She shrugged. “I am called Simone. Simone Joubert.”

  “It’s a pretty name, Ma’am. Simone? Very pretty.”

  She smiled at his clumsy gallantry. “You have a name?”

  “Richard Sharpe, Ma’am, Sergeant Richard Sharpe, King’s 33rd.”

  “Richard,” she said, trying it out, “it suits you. Richard the Lion-Heart, yes?”

  “He was a great one for fighting, Ma’am.”

  “For fighting the French, Sergeant,” she said reprovingly.

  “Someone has to,” Sharpe said with a grin, and Simone Joubert laughed and at that moment Sharpe thought she was the prettiest girl he had seen in years. Maybe not really pretty, but vivacious and blue-eyed and golden-haired and smiling. But an officer’s woman, Sharpe told himself, an officer’s woman.

  “You must not fight the French, Sergeant,” Simone said. “I won’t let you.”

  “If it looks like it’s going to happen, Ma’am, then I’ll let you know and you’ll have to hold me down.”

  She laughed again, then sighed. A fire had broken out not far away and scraps of burning thatch were floating in the warm air. One of the smuts landed on Simone’s white dress and she brushed at it, smearing the black ash into the weave. “They have taken everything,” she said sadly. “I had little enough, but it is gone. All my clothes! All!”

  “Then you get more,” Sharpe said.

  “What with? This?” She showed him a tiny purse hanging from her waist. “What will happen to me, Sergeant?”

  “You’ll be all right, Ma’am. You’ll be looked after. You’re an officer’s wife, aren’t you? So our officers will make sure you’re all right. They’ll probably send you back to your husband.”

  Simone gave him a dutiful smile and Sharpe wondered why she was not overjoyed at the thought of being reunited with her captain, then he forgot the question as a ragged volley of shots sounded in the street and he turned to see an Arab staggering in the gateway, his robes bright with blood, and an instant later a half-dozen Highlanders leaped onto the twitching body and began to tear its clothing apart. One of them slit the victim’s robes with his bayonet and Sharpe saw that the dying man had a fine pair of riding boots.

  “There’s a woman!” one of the looters shouted, seeing Simone in the courtyard, but then he saw Sharpe’s leveled musket and he raised a placatory hand. “All yours, eh? No trouble, Sergeant, no trouble.” Then the man twisted to look down the street and shouted a warning to his comrades and the six men took to their heels. A moment later a file of sepoys showed in the gateway under the command of a mounted officer. They were the first disciplined troops Sharpe had seen in the city and they were restoring order. The officer peered into the courtyard, saw nothing amiss, and so ordered his men onwards. A half company of kilted redcoats followed the sepoys and Sharpe assumed that Wellesley had ordered the picquets of the day into the city. The picquets, who provided the se
ntries for the army, were made up of half companies from every battalion.

  There was a well in the corner of the yard and Sharpe hauled up its leather bucket to give himself and Simone a drink. He brought up more water for the Frenchwoman’s horse, and just then heard McCandless shouting his name through the streets. “Here, sir!” he called back. “Here!”

  It took a moment or two for McCandless to find him, and when he did the Scotsman was furious. “Where were you, man?” the Colonel demanded querulously. “He got away! Clean away! Marched away like a toy soldier!” He had remounted his gelding and stared imperiously down on Sharpe from his saddle. “Got clean away!”

  “Couldn’t find men, sir, sorry, sir,” Sharpe said.

  “Just one company! That’s all we needed!” McCandless said angrily, then he noticed Simone Joubert and snatched off his hat. “Ma’am,” he said, nodding his head.