Sharpe's Battle

by Bernard Cornwell

  "Can't blame you, sir," Sharpe said, then turned as Sergeant Harper shouted for his attention. "You'll forgive me, General?"

  "Off you go, Sharpe, off you go."

  "Trade, sir," Harper said, jerking his head towards Major Tarrant who was gesticulating at a wagon driver.

  Tarrant turned as Sharpe came near. "The Light Division is ordered south,

  Sharpe, but its ammunition reserve is stuck to the north. We're to replace it.

  Would you mind if your rifles accompanied it?"

  Sharpe did mind. He instinctively wanted to stay where the battle would be fiercest and that was in Fuentes de Onoro, but he could not say as much to

  Tarrant. "No, sir."

  "In case they get bogged down, d'you see, and have to spend the rest of the day fighting off Frenchmen, so the General wants them to have a plenitude of ammunition. Rifle and musket cartridges, mixed. Artillery are looking after themselves. One wagon should do it, but it needs an escort, Sharpe. French cavalry are lively down there."

  "Can we help?" Captain Donaju had overheard Tarrant's hurried explanation of

  Sharpe's errand.

  "Might need you later, Captain," Tarrant said. "I have a feeling today's likely to be lively all round. Never seen the Frogs so uppity. Have you,

  Sharpe?"

  "They've got their tails up today, Major," Sharpe agreed. He looked up at the wagon driver. "Are you ready?"

  The driver nodded. His wagon was an English four-wheeled farm vehicle with high splayed sides to which were harnessed three Cleveland Bays in single file. "Had four beasts once," the driver remarked as Sharpe climbed up beside him, "but a Frenchie shell got Bess, so now I'm down to three." The driver had woven red and blue woollen braiding into the horses' manes and had decorated his wagon's flanks with discarded cap-plates and thrown horseshoes that he had nailed to the planking. "You know where we're going?" he asked Sharpe as

  Harper ordered the riflemen to climb onto the boxes of ammunition stacked on the wagon's bed.

  "After them." Sharpe pointed to his right where the plateau offered a gentler slope down to the southern lowlands and where the Light Division was marching south beneath its banners. It was Sharpe's old division, made up of riflemen and light infantry, and it regarded itself as the army's elite division. Now it was marching to save the Seventh Division from annihilation.

  A mile away, across the Dos Casas stream and close to the ruined barn that served as his headquarters, Marshal André Masséna saw the fresh British troops leaving the plateau's protection to march south towards the beleaguered redcoats and Portuguese. "The fool," he said to himself, then louder in a gleeful voice, "the fool!"

  "Your Majesty?" an aide inquired.

  "The first rule of war, Jean," the Marshal said, "is never to reinforce failure. And what is our whore-free Englishman doing? He's sending more troops to be massacred by our cavalry!" The Marshal put the telescope back to his eye. He could see guns and cavalry going south with the new troops. "Or maybe he's withdrawing?" he mused aloud. "Maybe he's making sure he can get back to

  Portugal. Where's Loup's brigade?"

  "Just north of here, Your Majesty," the aide answered.

  "With his whore, no doubt?" Massena asked sourly. Juanita de Elia's flamboyant presence with the Loup Brigade had drawn the attention and jealousy of every

  Frenchman in the army.

  "Indeed, Your Majesty."

  Massena snapped the telescope shut. He disliked Loup. He recognized his ambitions and knew that Loup would trample over any man to gain those ambitions. Loup wanted to be a marshal like Massena, he had even lost an eye like Massena, and now he wanted those grand titles with which the Emperor rewarded the brave and the lucky. But Massena would not help Loup secure those ambitions. A man remained a marshal by suppressing his rivals, not encouraging them, so this day Brigadier Loup would be given a menial task. "Warn Brigadier

  Loup," Massena told the aide, "that he's to untangle himself from his Spanish whore and be ready to escort the wagons through Fuentes de Onoro when our soldiers have opened the road. Tell him Wellington's shifting his position to the south and the road to Almeida should be open by midday, and that his brigade's job will be to escort the supplies into Almeida while the rest of us finish off the enemy." Massena smiled. Today was a day for Frenchmen to win glory, a day to capture a haul of enemy colours and to soak a river bank with the blood of Englishmen, but Loup, Massena had decided, would share no part of it. Loup would be a common baggage guard while Massena and the eagles made all

  Europe shudder with fear.

  The Seventh Division retreated towards a slight ridge of ground above the Dos

  Casas stream. They were retreating north, but facing south as they tried to block the advance of the massive French force that had been sent around the army's flank. In the distance they could see the two enemy infantry divisions re-forming their ranks in front of Poco Velha, but the immediate danger came from the enormous number of French cavalry that waited just outside the effective range of the Seventh Division's muskets. The equation facing the nine allied battalions was simple enough. They could form squares and know that even the bravest cavalry would be slaughtered if they tried to charge the mass of compacted muskets and bayonets, but infantry in square was cruelly vulnerable to artillery and musket fire; the moment the Seventh Division contracted into squares the French would batter the allied ranks with gunfire until the Portuguese and redcoats were shredded bloody and the cavalry could ride unchallenged over the crazed survivors.

  British and German cavalry came to the rescue first. The allied horse was outnumbered and could never hope to defeat the swirling mass of plumed and breastplated Frenchmen, but the hussars and dragoons made charge after charge that kept the enemy cavalry from harrying the infantry. "Keep them in hand!" a

  British cavalry major kept shouting at his squadron. "Keep them in hand!" He feared that his men would lose their sense and make a mad charge to glory instead of retiring after each short attack to re-form and charge again, and so he kept encouraging them to show caution and keep their discipline. The squadrons took turns to hold off the French cavalry, one fighting as the others retreated after the infantry. The horses were bleeding, sweating and trembling, but time after time they trotted into their ranks and waited for the spurs to throw them back into the fight. The men tightened their grips on sword and sabre and watched the enemy who shouted insults in an attempt to entice the British and Germans to a mad galloping assault that would open their tightly ordered ranks and turn the controlled charges into a frantic mêlée of swords, lances and sabres. In such a mêlée the French numbers were bound to win, but the allied officers kept their men in hand. "Damn your eagerness! Hold her in, hold her in!" a captain called to a trooper whose horse broke into a trot too early.

  The dragoons were the allied heavy cavalry. They were big men mounted on big horses and carried long heavy straight-bladed swords. They did not charge at the gallop, but rather waited until an enemy regiment threatened to charge and then they made their counter-charge at walking pace. Sergeants shouted at the men to hold the line, to keep close and curb their horses, and only at the very last moment, when the enemy was within pistol shot, did a trumpeter sound the charge and the horses would be spurred to a gallop and the men would scream their war cries as they hacked at the enemy horsemen. The big swords could do horrid work.

  They battered the lighter sabres of the French chasseurs aside and forced the riders to duck low over their horses' necks as they tried to avoid the butchers' blades. Steel clashed on steel, wounded horses screamed and reared, then the trumpet would call for the withdrawal and the allied horse would disengage and wheel away. A few French were bound to pursue, but the British and Germans were working close to their own infantry and any Frenchman tempted to pursue too close to the Portuguese and British battalions became easy meat for a company of muskets. It was hard, disciplined, inglorious work, and each counter-charge paid a price in men and horses, but
the threat of the enemy cavalry was checked by it and the nine infantry battalions marched steadily north because of it.

  The retreating Seventh Division's flanks were covered by the fire of the horse artillery. The gunners fired canister that could turn a horse and man into a mangled horror of flesh, cloth, leather, steel and blood. The guns would fire four or five rounds while the infantry retreated, then the horse teams were hurried forward, the gun's trail lifted into the limber's pintle, and the gunners would scramble onto the horses' backs and whip the animals into a frantic dash before the vengeful French cavalrymen could catch them. As soon as the team reached the protection of the infantry's muskets it would slew around to make the gun's skidding wheels throw up a fountain of mud or dust, and the gunners would slide off the horses' backs even before they had stopped running. The gun was unhitched, the horses and limber led away and in seconds the next round of canister would shriek down the field to drive another French squadron bloodily away.

  The French artillery concentrated their fire on the infantry. Their roundshot and shells whipped through the ranks, spraying blood ten feet high as the missiles plunged home. "Close up! Close up!" the sergeants shouted and prayed that the excitable enemy cavalry would mask their own guns and thus stop the bombardment, but the cavalry was learning to let the gunners and the French infantry do some of the work before the horsemen garnered all the glory. The

  French cavalry pulled aside to let the muskets and cannons fight the battle and to rest their horses while the Portuguese and British infantry died.

  And die they did. The roundshot whipped through the columns and musket fire raked the files to slow the already agonizingly slow retreat. The nine shrinking battalions left trails of crushed and bloodied grass as they crawled northwards and the crawl was threatening to come to a full halt when all that would be left of the division would be nine bands of survivors clustered round their precious colours. The French cavalry saw their enemy dying and were content to wait for the perfect moment to pounce and deliver the coup de grâce. One group of chasseurs and cuirassiers rode towards a slight rise in the ground where a long wood was planted. The cavalry's commander reckoned the wood would hide his men as they worked their way to the rear of the dying battalions and so give him a chance to launch a surprise attack that might capture a half-dozen flags in one glorious charge. He led the two troops up the slope, his men trailing behind, when suddenly the tree line exploded with gunsmoke. There were not supposed to be enemy troops among the trees, but the volley ripped the advancing cavalry into chaos. The cuirassier commander went backwards off his horse's rump with his breastplate holed three times. One of his boots was trapped in a stirrup and he screamed as his terrified and wounded horse dragged him bouncing across the grass to leave great splashes of blood. Then his foot came free and he twitched on the grass as he died. Eight other horsemen fell, some had merely been unhorsed and those men ran to find an unwounded mount while their comrades turned and spurred to safety.

  Green-jacketed riflemen ran out of the woods to pillage the dead and wounded cavalrymen. The deeply bellied breastplates worn by the cuirassiers were valued as shaving bowls or skillets and even a bullet-holed breastplate could be patched up by a friendly blacksmith. More greenjackets showed at the woods' southern end, then a battalion of redcoats appeared behind them and with the redcoats came a squadron of fresh cavalry and another battery of horse artillery. A regimental band was playing "Over the Hills and Far Away" as yet more redcoats and greenjackets marched into view.

  The Light Division had arrived.

  The ammunition wagon lumbered across the fields in the wake of the fast- marching Light Division. One of the wagon's axles squealed like a soul in torment, an annoyance for which the driver apologized, "but I've greased her," he told Sharpe, "and greased her again. I've greased her with the best pig's fat rendered down, but that squeak still don't want to go away. It started the day our Bess got killed and I reckons that squeak is our Bess letting us know she's still kicking somewhere." For a time the driver followed a cart track, then Sharpe and his riflemen had to dismount and put their shoulders to the wagon's rear to help the vehicle over a bank and into a meadow. Once back on top of the ammunition boxes the greenjackets decided the wagon was a stage coach and began imitating the calls of the post horns and singing out the stops. "Red Lion! Fine ales, good food, we change the horses and leave in a quarter-hour! Ladies will find their convenience catered for in the passage behind the lounge." The wagon driver had heard it all before and showed no reaction, but Sharpe, after Harris had hollered for ten minutes about pissing in the passage, turned and told them all to shut the hell up whereupon they pretended to be cowed by him and Sharpe had a sudden pang of regret at the things he would miss if he were to lose his commission. Ahead of the wagon the rifles and muskets cracked. An occasional French round-shot that had been fired too high came bounding across the nearby fields, but the three horses plodded on as patiently as though they were harnessed to a plough instead of lumbering into battle. Only once did an enemy threaten and so force Sharpe's score of riflemen off the wagon to form a rank beside the road. A troop of fifty green-coated dragoons appeared way off to the west where their commander spotted the wagon and turned his men in for the attack. The wagon driver stopped the vehicle and was waiting with a knife poised in case he needed to cut the traces. "We takes the horses," he advised Sharpe, "and leaves the

  Frenchies to ransack the wagon. That'll keep the buggers busy while we makes off." His horses munched the grass contentedly while Sharpe measured the range to the French dragoons whose copper helmets glinted gold in the sunlight.

  Then, just when he had decided that he might be forced to take the wagon driver's advice and retreat, a squadron of blue-coated cavalrymen intervened.

  The newcomers were British light dragoons who tempted the French into a running fight of sword against sabre.

  The driver put away his knife and clicked his tongue, provoking the horses forward. The riflemen scrambled back aboard as the wagon swayed on towards a tree line that obscured the source of the growing powder smoke whitening the southern sky.

  Then a crash of heavy guns sounded to the north and Sharpe twisted on the wagon's box to see that the rim of the British-held plateau was thick with smoke as the main batteries fired thunderous volleys towards the east. "Frogs are attacking the village again," Sharpe said.

  "Nasty place to fight," Harper said. "Be glad we're out here instead, boys."

  "And pray the buggers don't cut us off out here," Sergeant Latimer added gloomily.

  "You've got to die somewhere, ain't that right, Mister Sharpe?" Perkins called out.

  "Make it your own bed, Perkins, with Miranda beside you," Sharpe answered.

  "Are you looking after that girl?"

  "She's not complaining, Mister Sharpe," Perkins said, thereby provoking a chorus of teasing jeers. Perkins still lacked his green jacket and was touchy about the loss of the coat with its distinguishing black armband denoting that he was a Chosen Man, a compliment that was paid only to the best and most reliable riflemen.

  The wagon lurched onto a deep-rutted farm track that led south through the trees towards the distant villages overrun by the French. The Seventh Division was marching north from the woods, going back to the plateau, while the newly arrived Light Division deployed across the broader road that led back into

  Portugal. The retiring battalions marched slowly, forced to the snail's pace by the number of wounded in their ranks, but at least they marched undefeated beneath flying colours.

  The wagon driver hauled on the reins to stop the horses among the trees where the Light Division had established a temporary depot. Two surgeons had spread their knives and saws on tarpaulins laid under holm oaks, while a regimental band played a few yards away. Sharpe told his riflemen to stay with the wagon while he sought orders.

  The Light Division was arrayed in squares on the plain between the trees and the smoking villages. The French cavalry trotted ac
ross the faces of the squares trying to provoke wasteful volleys at too long a range. The British cavalry was being held in reserve, waiting until the French horse came too close. Six guns of the horse artillery were firing at the French cannon while groups of riflemen were occupying the rocky outcrops that studded the fields.

  General Craufurd, the Light Division's irascible commander, had brought three and a half thousand men to the rescue of the Seventh Division and now those three and half thousand were faced by four thousand French cavalry and twelve thousand French infantrymen. That infantry was advancing in its attack columns from Poco Velha.

  "Sharpe? What the hell are you doing here? Thought you'd deserted us, gone to join the bumboys in Picton's division." Brigadier General Robert Craufurd, fierce-faced and scowling, had spotted Sharpe.