Sharpe's Battle

by Bernard Cornwell

  Masséna saw his blue coats gain the far skyline and he felt a great burden drop from his soul. Sometimes, he thought, the hardest part of being a general lay in the necessity of disguising worry. All day he had pretended a confidence he had not altogether felt, for the wretched Major Ducos had been right when he said that Wellington loved nothing better than defending a hill, and Masséna had watched Fuentes de Onoro's hill and worried that his brave men would never spill over its lip to the rich harvest of victory beyond. Now they were over, the battle was won, and Masséna had no further need to hide his anxiety. He laughed aloud, smiled on his entourage and accepted a flask of brandy with which to toast his victory. And victory was sweet, so sweet. "Send

  Loup forward," Masséna now commanded. "Tell him to clear the road through the village. We can't deliver supplies through streets choked with dead. Tell him the battle's won so he can take his whore with him if he can't bear to untie her apron strings from round his neck." He laughed again for life was suddenly so very very good.

  There were two battalions standing ready near the church; one famous and the other infamous. The famous battalion was the 74th, Highlanders all, and known for their hard steadiness in battle. The Scotsmen were eager to take revenge for the losses suffered by their sister regiment in Fuentes de Onoro's bloody streets and to help them was the 88th, the infamous battalion, reckoned to be as near ungovernable as any regiment in the army, though no one had ever complained about their ability in battle. The 88th was a hard brawling regiment, its men as proud of their fighting record as of their homeland, and that homeland was the wild, bleak and beautiful west of Ireland. The 88th were the Connaught Rangers and now, with the 74th from the Scottish mountains, they would be sent to save Wellington's army.

  The French hold on the ridge's crest was tightening as more men reached the road's summit. There was no time to deploy the Scots or Irish into line, only to throw them forward in column of sections at the very centre of the enemy's line. "Bayonets, boys!" an officer shouted, then the two battalions were running forward. Pipes played the Scotsmen on and wild cheers marked the

  Connaught advance. Both regiments went fast, eager to get the moment over. The thin mingled line of allied infantry split to let the columns through, then fell in behind as the front ranks of the Irish and Scots slammed into the advancing French. There was no time for musketry and no chance for men to hold back from hand-to-hand fighting. The French knew that victory was theirs if they could just defeat this last enemy effort, while the Scots and Irish knew that their only chance of victory depended on them throwing the French off-the ridge's crest.

  And so they struck home. Most infantry would have checked their charge a few paces short of an enemy line to pour in a volley of musketry in the hope that the enemy would retreat rather than accept the challenge and horror of hand- to-hand fighting, but the Highlanders and the men of Connaught offered the

  French no such chance. The front ranks charged bodily into the French attackers and used their bayonets. They screamed war cries in Gaelic and Erse, they clawed and spat and clubbed and kicked and stabbed and all the time more men piled in behind as the rear ranks of the columns collapsed onto the fight.

  Highland officers slashed with their heavy claymores, while the Irish officers stabbed with the lighter infantry sword. Sergeants drove spontoons hard into the mass of Frenchmen, skewering them with the pikehead, twisting it free and driving it forward again. Inch by inch the counterattack advanced. This was fighting as the Highlanders had always known it, hand to hand and smelling your enemy's blood as you killed him, and it was the kind of fighting for which the Irish were as feared in their own army as among the enemy. They thrust forward, at times so close packed with the enemy that it was the sheer weight of men rather than the edge of their weapons that forced progress. Men slipped and sprawled on the bodies that lay on the saddle's lip, but the press of men behind thrust the men in front onwards and suddenly the French were going back down the steep hill and their grudging retreat became a spilling flight for the safety of the houses.

  Riflemen retook the knoll of rocks as Portuguese soldiers hunted down and killed the voltigeurs inside the church. Irishmen and Scotsmen led the wild, screaming, bloody countercharge down through the graveyard and for a moment it seemed as though the ridge, the battle and the army were saved.

  Then the French struck again.

  Brigadier Loup understood that Masséna would not offer him a chance to make a name in the battle, but that did not mean he would accept the Marshal's animosity. Loup understood Masséna's distrust and did not particularly object, for he believed that a soldier made his own chances. The art of advancement was to wait patiently until an opportunity offered itself and then to move as fast as a striking snake, and now that his brigade had been ordered to its menial task of clearing the main road through and beyond the village of

  Fuentes de Onoro the Brigadier would watch for any opportunity that would allow him to release his superbly trained and hard-fighting men to a task more suited to their skills.

  His journey across the plain was placid. The fighting boiled at the top of the pass above the village, but the British guns seemed not to notice the advance of a single small brigade. A couple of roundshot struck his infantrymen, and one case shot exploded wide of his grey dragoons, but otherwise the Loup

  Brigade's advance was untroubled by the enemy. The brigade's two infantry battalions marched in column either side of the road, the dragoons flanked them in two large squadrons while Loup himself, beneath his savage wolf-tailed banner, rode in the centre of the formation. Juanita de Elia rode with him.

  She had insisted on witnessing the battle's closing stages and Marshal

  Masséna's confident assurance that the battle was won had persuaded Loup it was safe enough for Juanita to ride at least as far as the Dos Casas's eastern bank. The paucity of British artillery fire seemed to vindicate Masséna's confidence.

  Loup dismounted his dragoons outside the village gardens. The horses were picketed in a battered orchard where they would remain while the dragoons cleared the road east of the stream. There were not many obstructions here to slow the progress of the heavy baggage wagons carrying Almeida's relief supplies, merely one collapsed wall and a few blackening corpses left from the

  British gunfire, so once the dragoons had cleared the passage they were ordered to cross the ford and start on the larger job inside the village proper. Loup ordered Juanita to stay with the horses while he marched his two battalions of infantry around the village's northern flank so that they could begin clearing the main street from the top of the hill, working their way down to meet the dragoons coming up from the stream. "You don't have to be careful with the wounded," he told his men, "we're not a damned rescue mission. Our job is to clear the street, not nurse injured men, so just throw the casualties aside until the doctors arrive. Just clear the way, that's all, because the sooner the road's clear the sooner we can put some guns on the ridge to finish off the Goddams. To work!"

  He led his men up around the village. A few scattered skirmishers' bullets came from the heights above to remind the grey-clad infantry that this was still not a battle won and Loup, striding eagerly ahead of his men, noted that the fighting was still very close to the plateau's lip, and then a great cheer from the ridge announced that the battle could yet be lost.

  For the cheer marked the moment when a phalanx of red-coated infantry drove in the French attack and thrust it back across the crest. Now, beneath their bright flags, the British counterattack was storming down the slope towards the village. French voltigeurs were abandoning the high rocks and fleeing down the slope to find safety behind the village's stone walls. A sudden panic had gripped the leading French grenadiers who were giving ground to the vengeful redcoats, but Loup felt nothing but elation. God, it seemed, was working to a different plan than Marshal André Masséna. The street clearance could wait, for suddenly Loup's opportunity had come.

  Providence had placed his
brigade on the left flank of the Irish counterattack. The redcoats were screaming down the hill, bayoneting and clubbing their enemies, oblivious of the two waiting battalions of fresh infantry. Behind the Irish came a disorganized mass of allied infantry, all sucked pell-mell into this new battle for mastery of Fuentes de Onoro's blood- glutted streets.

  "Fix bayonets!" Loup called and drew his own straight-bladed dragoon sword. So

  Masséna had thought to keep his brigade from glory? Loup turned to see that his pagan banner of wolf tails hanging from an eagle's cross-bar was held high, and then, as the counterattacking British troops poured into the village streets, he ordered the advance.

  Like a whirlpool that sucked every scrap of flotsam into its destructive vortex, the village had again become a place of close-quarter killing. "Vive l'Empereur!" Loup shouted, and plunged into the fight.

  Sharpe eased the green jacket off the dead rifleman. The man had been one of the sharpshooters on the rocky knoll, but he had been shot by a voltigeur at the high point of the French attack and now Sharpe pulled the bloody jacket off the stiff, awkward arms. "Perkins! Here!" He threw the green jacket to the rifleman. "Get your girl to shorten the sleeves."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Or do it yourself, Perkins," Harper added.

  "I'm no good with a needle, Sarge."

  "That's what Miranda says too," Harper said, and the riflemen laughed.

  Sharpe walked to the rocks above the village. He had brought his riflemen back unscathed from their errand to the Light Division, only to find that Major

  Tarrant had no new orders for him. The battle had become a vicious fight over mastery of the village, its graveyard and the church above, and men were not using ammunition so much as sword, bayonet and musket stock. Captain Donaju had wanted permission to join the men firing at the French from the crest's ridge, but Tarrant had been so worried by the proximity of the attackers that he had ordered the Real Companïa Irlandesa to stay close to the ammunition wagons that he was busily having harnessed to their horses or oxen. "If we must retreat," he had told Sharpe, "it'll be chaos! But a man must be ready."

  The Real Companïa Irlandesa made a thin line between the wagons and the fighting, but then the attack of the 74th Highlanders and the Connaught

  Rangers had eased Tarrant's urgency.

  "Pon my soul, Sharpe, but it's hot work." Colonel Runciman had been hovering around the ammunition wagons, fidgeting and worrying, but now he came forward to catch a glimpse of the turmoil in the village beneath. He gave his horse's reins to one of the riflemen and peered nervously over the crest at the fighting beneath. It was hot work indeed. The village, left reeking and smoking from the earlier battles fought through its streets, was once again a maelstrom of musket smoke, screams and blood. The 74th and 88th had driven deep into the labyrinth of houses, but now their progress was slowing as the

  French defences thickened. The French howitzers on the other stream bank had begun lobbing shells into the graveyard and upper houses, adding to the smoke and noise. Runciman shuddered at the horrid sight, then stepped back two paces only to stumble on a dead voltigeur whose body marked the deepest point of penetration reached by the French. Runciman frowned at the body. "Why do they call them vaulters?" he asked.

  "Vaulters?" Sharpe asked, not understanding the question.

  "Voltigeur, Sharpe," Runciman explained. "French for vaulter."

  Sharpe shook his head. "God knows, sir."

  "Because they jump like fleas, sir, when you shoot at them," Harper offered.

  "But don't worry yourself about that one, sir." Harper had seen the look of worry on Runciman's face. "He's a good voltigeur, that one. He's dead."

  Wellington was not far away from Sharpe and Runciman. The General was sitting on his horse on the bloody dip of land where the road crossed the ridge between the church and the rocks, and behind him was nothing except the army's baggage and ammunition park. To the north and west his divisions guarded the plateau against the French threat, but here, in the centre, where the enemy had so nearly broken through, there was nothing left. There were no more reserves and he would not thin the ridge's other defenders and so open a back door to French victory. The battle would have to be won by his Highlanders and

  Irishmen, and so far they were rewarding his faith by retaking the village house by bloody house and cattle shed by burning cattle shed.

  Then the grey infantry struck from the flank.

  Sharpe saw the wolf-tail banner in the smoke. For a second he froze. He wanted to pretend he had not seen it. He wanted an excuse, any excuse, not to go down that awful slope to a village so reeking with death that the air alone was enough to make a man vomit. He had fought once already inside Fuentes de

  Onoro, and once was surely enough, but his hesitation was only for a heartbeat. He knew there was no excuse. His enemy had come to Fuentes de Onoro to claim victory and Sharpe must stop him. He turned. "Sergeant Harper! My compliments to Captain Donaju and ask him to form column. Go on! Hurry!"

  Sharpe looked at his men, his handful of good men from the bloody, fighting

  95th. "Load up, lads. Time to go to work."

  "What are you doing, Sharpe?" Runciman asked.

  "You want to beat our court of inquiry, General?" Sharpe asked.

  Runciman gaped at Sharpe, not understanding why the question had been asked.

  "Why, yes, of course," he managed to say.

  "Then go over to Wellington, General," Sharpe said, "and ask his Lordship's permission to lead the Real Companïa Irlandesa into battle."

  Runciman blanched. "You mean... ?" he began, but could not articulate the horror. He glanced down at the village that had been turned into a slaughterhouse. "You mean... ?" he began again and then his mouth fell slackly open at the very thought of going down into that smoking hell.

  "I'll ask if you don't," Sharpe said. "For Christ's sake, sir! Gallantry forgives everything! Gallantry means you're a hero. Gallantry gets you a wife.

  Now for Christ's sake! Do it!" he shouted at Runciman as though the Colonel was a raw recruit.

  Runciman looked startled. "You'll come with me, Sharpe?" He was as frightened of approaching Wellington as he was of going towards the enemy.

  "Come on!" Sharpe snapped, and led a flustered Runciman towards the sombre knot of staff officers who surrounded Wellington. Hogan was there, watching anxiously as the tide of struggle in the village turned against the allies once again. The French were inching uphill, forcing the redcoats and the

  Portuguese and the German infantry back out of the village, only this time there were no ranks of muskets waiting at the crest of the ridge to blast the enemy as they climbed the road and overran the churned-up graveyard.

  Runciman hung back as the two men reached the staff officers, but Sharpe pushed his way through the horses and dragged the reluctant Colonel with him.

  "Ask him," Sharpe said.

  Wellington heard the words and frowned at the two men. Colonel Runciman hesitated, snatched off his hat, tried to speak and only managed an incoherent stutter.

  "General Runciman wants permission, my Lord-' Sharpe began coldly.

  "-To take the Irish into battle." Runciman managed to complete the sentence in a barely coherent rush. "Please, my Lord!"

  Some of the staff officers smiled at the thought of the Wagon Master General leading troops, but Wellington twisted in his saddle to see that the red- jacketed Real Companïa Irlandesa had formed column. It looked a pathetically small unit, but it was there, formed, armed and evidently eager. There was no one else. The General looked at Sharpe and raised an eyebrow. Sharpe nodded.

  "Carry on, Runciman," Wellington said.

  "Come on, sir." Sharpe plucked the fat man's sleeve to pull him away from the

  General.

  "One moment!" The General's voice was frigid. "Captain Sharpe?"

  Sharpe turned back. "My Lord?"

  "The reason, Captain Sharpe, why we do not execute enemy prisoners, no matte
r how vile their behaviour, is that the enemy will reciprocate the favour on our men, no matter how small their provocation." The General looked at Sharpe with an eye as cold as a winter stream. "Do I make myself clear, Captain Sharpe."

  "Yes, sir. My Lord."

  Wellington gave a very small nod. "Go."

  Sharpe dragged Runciman away. "Come on, sir!"

  "What do I do, Sharpe?" Runciman asked. "For God's sake, what do I do? I'm not a fighter!"

  "Stay at the back, sir," Sharpe said, "and leave everything else to me."