Sharpe's Siege

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘A hundred. Perhaps more if the seas were calm.’

  ‘And they have forty. Enough for four thousand men.’ Ducos stared at the map on his table. ‘So where will they come, Captain?’

  The American leaned over the table. Rain tapped on the window and a draught lifted a corner of the map that Killick weighted down with a candlestick. ‘The Adour, Arcachon, or the Gironde.’ He tapped each place as he spoke its name.

  The map showed the Biscay coast of France. That coast was a sheer sweep, almost ruler straight, suggesting long beaches of wicked, tumbling surf. Yet the coast was broken by two river mouths and by the vast, almost landlocked Bassin d‘Arcachon. And from Arcachon to Bordeaux, Ducos saw, it was a short march, and if the British could take Bordeaux they would cut off Marshal Soult’s army in the south. It was a bold idea, a risky idea, but on a map, in an office in winter, it seemed to Ducos a very feasible one. He moved the candle away and rolled the map into a tight tube. ’You would be well advised, Captain Killick, to be many leagues from Arcachon if the British do make a landing there.‘

  ‘Then send me some copper.’

  ‘It will be dispatched in the morning,’ Ducos said. ‘Good day to you, Captain, and my thanks.’

  When the American was gone Ducos unrolled the map again. The questions still nagged at him. Was the display in St Jean de Luz’s harbour merely a charade to draw attention away from the east? Ducos cursed the man who had not replied to his letter, and wondered how much credence could be put on the words of an American adventurer. North or east, bridge or boats? Ducos was tempted to believe the American, but knowing an invasion was planned was useless unless the landing place was known. Yet one man might still tell him, and to know the answer would bring a victory, and France, in this bitter, wet winter of 1814, was in need of a victory.

  ‘Looking for us, sir?’ A midshipman in a tarred jacket stood at the top of weed-slimed watersteps on St Jean de Luz’s quay.

  ‘Are you the Vengeance?’ Sharpe looked apprehensively at the tiny boat, frail on the filth-littered water, that was to carry him to the Vengeance. Sharpe had received a sudden order, peremptory and harsh, that offered no explanations but merely demanded his immediate presence on the quay where a boat from His Majesty’s ship Vengeance would be waiting.

  Four grinning oarsmen, doubtless hoping to see the Rifle officer slip on the steep stone stairs, waited in the gig. ‘The captain would have sent his barge, sir,’ the midshipman said in unconvincing apology, ‘but it’s being used for the other gentleman.’

  Sharpe stepped into the rocking gig. ‘What other gentlemen?’

  ‘No one confides in me, sir.’ The midshipman could scarce have been more than fourteen, but he gave his orders with a jaunty confidence as Major Sharpe crouched on the stern thwart and wondered which of the ships moored in the outer harbour was the Vengeance.

  It seemed to be none of them, for the midshipman took his tiny craft out through the harbour entrance to buck and thump its bows in the tide-race over the sandbar. Ahead now, in the outer roads, a flotilla of naval craft was anchored. Amongst them, and towering over the other vessels like a behemoth, was a ship of the line. ‘Is that the Vengeance?’ Sharpe asked.

  ‘It is, sir. A 74, and as sweet a sailor as ever was.’

  The midshipman’s enthusiasm seemed misplaced to Sharpe. Nothing about the Vengeance suggested sweetness; instead, moored in the long swell of the grey ocean, she seemed like a brutal mass of timber, rope and iron; one of the slab-sided killers of Britain’s deep-water fleet. Her chequered sides were like cliffs, and the ponderous hull, as Sharpe’s gig neared the vast craft, gave off the rotten stench of tar, unwashed bodies and ordure; the normal odour of a battleship becalmed.

  The midshipman shouted orders, oars backed, the tiller was thrown across, and somehow the gig was laid alongside with scarce a bump of timber. Above Sharpe now, water dripping from its lower rungs, was a tumblehome ladder leading to the maindeck. ‘You’d like a sling lowered, sir?’ the midshipman asked solicitously.

  ‘I’ll manage.’ Sharpe waited as a wave lifted the gig, then jumped for the rain-slicked ladder. He clawed at it, held on, then scrambled ignominiously up to the greeting of a bosun’s whistle.

  ‘Major Sharpe! Welcome aboard.’

  Sharpe saw an eager, ingratiating lieutenant who clearly expected to be recognized. Sharpe frowned. ‘You were with ...’

  ‘With Captain Bampfylde, indeed, sir. I’m Ford.’

  The elegantly clothed Ford made inconsequential conversation as he steered Sharpe towards the stern cabins. It was an honour, he said, to have such a distinguished soldier aboard, and was it possible that Sharpe was related to Sir Roderick Sharpe of Northamptonshire?

  ‘No,’ Sharpe was remembering Captain Bampfylde’s parting words in the Officer’s Club. Were those the reason for his summons here?

  ‘One of the Wiltshire Sharpes, perhaps?’ Ford seemed eager to place the Rifleman in a comforting social context.

  ‘Middlesex,’ Sharpe said.

  ‘Do mind your head,’ Ford smiled as he waved Sharpe under the break of the poopdeck. ‘I can’t quite place the Middlesex Sharpes.’

  ‘My mother was a whore, I was born in a common lodging-house, and I joined the Army as a private. Does that make it easier?’

  Ford’s smile did not falter. ‘Captain Bampfylde’s waiting for you, sir. Please go in.’

  Sharpe ducked under the lintel of the opened doorway to find himself in a lavishly furnished cabin that extended the width of the Vengeance’s wide stern. A dozen officers, their wine glasses catching the light from the galleried windows, sat around a polished dining table.

  ‘Major! We meet in happier circumstances.’ Captain Horace Bampfylde greeted Sharpe with effusive and false pleasure. ‘No damned American to spoil our conversation, eh? Come and meet the company.’

  Seeing Bampfylde in his ship made Sharpe realize how very young the naval captain was. Bampfylde must still lack two years of thirty, yet the naval captain possessed an ebullient confidence and a natural authority to compensate for his lack of years. He had a fleshy face, quick eyes, and an impatient manner that he tried to disguise as he made the introductions.

  Most of the men about the table were naval officers whose names meant nothing to Sharpe, but there were also two Army officers, one of whom Sharpe recognized. ‘Colonel Elphinstone?’

  Elphinstone, a big, burly Engineer whose hands were calloused and scarred, beamed a welcome. ‘You haven’t met my brother-in-arms, Sharpe; Colonel Wigram.’

  Wigram was a grey-faced, dour, bloodless creature who acknowledged the ironic introduction with a curt nod. ‘If you could seat yourself, Major Sharpe, we might at last begin.’ He managed to convey that Sharpe had delayed this meeting.

  Sharpe sat beside Elphinstone in a chair close to the windows that looked on to the big, grey Atlantic swells that scarcely moved the Vengeance’s ponderous hull. He sensed an awkwardness in the cabin, and he judged that there was disagreement between Wigram and Elphinstone, a judgment that was confirmed when the tall Engineer leaned towards him. ‘It’s all bloody madness, Sharpe. Marines have got the pox so they want you instead.’

  The comment, ostensibly made in a confiding voice, had easily carried to the far end of the table where Bampfylde sat. The naval captain frowned. ‘Our Marines have a contagious fever, Elphinstone; not the pox.’

  Elphinstone snorted derision, while Colonel Wigram, on Sharpe’s left, opened a leather-bound notebook. The middle-aged Wigram had the manner of a man whose life had been spent in an office; as though all his impetuosity and enjoyment had been drained by dusty, dry files. His voice was precise and fussy.

  Yet even Wigram’s desiccated voice could not drain the excitement from the proposals he brought to this council of war. One hundred miles to the north, and far behind enemy lines, was a fortress called the Teste de Buch. The fortress guarded the entrance to a natural harbour, the Bassin d‘Arcachon, which was just twenty-five miles f
rom the city of Bordeaux.

  Elphinstone, at the mention of Bordeaux, gave a scornful grunt that was ignored by the rest of the cabin.

  The fortress of Teste de Buch, Wigram continued, was to be captured by a combined naval and Army force. The expedition’s naval commander would be Captain Bampfylde, while the senior Army officer would be Major Sharpe. Sharpe, understanding that the chill, pedantic Wigram would not be travelling north, felt a pang of relief.

  Wigram gave Sharpe a cold, pale glance. ‘Once the fortress is secured, Major, you will march inland to ambush the high road of France. A successful ambush will alarm Mashal Soult, and might even detach French troops to guard against further such attacks.’ Wigram paused. It seemed to Sharpe, listening to the slap of water at the Vengeance’s stern, that there was an unnatural strain in the cabin, as though Wigram approached a subject that had been discussed and argued before Sharpe arrived.

  ‘It is to be hoped,’ Wigram turned a page of his notebook, ‘that any prisoners you take in the ambush will provide confirmation of reports reaching us from the city of Bordeaux.’

  ‘Balderdash,’ Elphinstone said loudly.

  ‘Your dissent is already noted,’ Wigram said dismissively.

  ‘Reports!’ Elphinstone sneered the word. ‘Children’s tales, rumours, balderdash!’

  Sharpe, uncomfortably trapped between the two men, kept his voice very mild. ‘Reports, sir?’

  Captain Bampfylde, evidently Wigram’s ally in the disagreement, chose to reply. ‘We hear, Sharpe, that the city of Bordeaux is ready to rebel against the Emperor. If it’s true, and we profoundly hope that it is, then we believe the city might rise in spontaneous revolt when they hear that His Majesty’s forces are merely a day’s march away.’

  ‘And if they do rise,’ Colonel Wigram took up the thread, ‘then we shall ship troops north to Arcachon and invade the city, thus cutting France in two.’

  ‘You note, Sharpe,’ Elphinstone was relishing this chance to stir more trouble, ‘that you, a mere major, are chosen to make the reconnaissance. Thus, if anything goes wrong, you will carry the blame.’

  ‘Major Sharpe will make his own decisions,’ Wigram said blandly, ‘after interrogating his prisoners.’

  ‘Meaning you won’t go to Bordeaux,’ Elphinstone said confidingly to Sharpe.

  ‘But you have been chosen, Major,’ Wigram’s pale eyes looked at Sharpe, ‘not because of your lowly rank, as Colonel Elphinstone believes, but because you are known as a gallant officer unafraid of bold decisions.’

  ‘In short,’ Elphinstone continued the war across the table, ‘because you will make an ideal scapegoat.’

  The naval officers seemed embarrassed by the contretemps, all but for Bampfylde who had evidently relished the clash of colonels. Now the naval captain smiled. ‘You merely have to understand, Major, that your first task is to escalade the fortress. Perhaps, before we explore the subsequent operations, Colonel Wigram might care to tell us about the Teste de Buch’s defences?’

  Wigram turned pages in his notebook. ‘Our latest intelligence demonstrates that the garrison can scarcely man four guns. The rest of its men have been marched north to bolster the Emperor’s Army. I doubt whether Major Sharpe will be much troubled by such a flimsy force.’

  ‘But four fortress guns,’ Elphinstone said harshly, ‘could slice a Battalion to mincemeat. I’ve seen it!’ Implying, evidently truthfully, that Wigram had not.

  ‘If we imagine disaster,’ Bampfylde said smoothly, ‘then we shall allow timidity to convince us into inaction.’ The comment implied cowardice to Elphinstone, but Bampfylde seemed oblivious of the offence he had given. Instead he unrolled a chart on to the table. ‘Weight the end of that, Sharpe! Now! There seems to me just one sensible way to proceed.’

  He outlined his plan which was, indeed, the only sensible way to proceed. The naval flotilla, under Bampfylde’s command, would sail northwards and land troops on the coast south of the Point d‘Arcachon. That land force, commanded by Sharpe, would proceed towards the fortress, a journey of some six hours, and make an escalade while the defenders were distracted by the incursion of a frigate into the mouth of the Arcachon channel. ’The frigate’s bound to take some punishment,‘ Bampfylde said equably, ’but I’m sure Major Sharpe will overcome the gunners swiftly.‘

  The chart showed the great Basin of Arcachon with its narrow entrance channel, and marked the fortress of Teste de Buch on the eastern bank of that channel. A profile of the fort, as a landmark for mariners, was sketched on the chart, but the profile told Sharpe little about the stronghold’s defences. He looked at Elphinstone. ‘What do we know about the fort, sir?’

  Elphinstone had been piqued by Bampfylde’s discourteous treatment and thus chose to use the technical language of his trade, doubtless hoping thereby to annov the bumptious naval captain. ‘It’s an old fortification, Sharpe, a square-trace. You’ll face a glacis rising to ten feet, with an eight counterscarp into the outer ditch. A width of twenty and a scarp of ten. That’s revetted with granite, by the way, like the rest of the damned place. Climb the scarp and you’re on a counterguard. They’ll be peppering you by now and you’ve got a forty foot dash to the next counterscarp.’ The colonel was speaking with a grim relish, as if seeing the figures running and dropping through the enemy’s plunging fire. ‘That’s twelve feet, it’s flooded, and the enceinte height is twenty.’

  ‘The width of that last ditch?’ Sharpe was making notes.

  ‘Sixteen, near enough.’ Elphinstone shrugged. ‘We don’t think it’s flooded more than a foot or two.’ Even if the naval officers did not understand Elphinstone’s language, they could understand the import of what he was saying. The Teste de Buch might be an old fort, but it was a bastard; a killer.

  ‘Weapons, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

  Elphinstone had no need to consult his notes. ‘They’ve got six thirty-six pounders in a semi-circular bastion that butts into the channel. The other guns are twenty-fours, wall mounted.’

  Captain Horace Bampfylde had listened to the technical language and understood that a small point was being scored against him. Now he smiled. ‘We should be grateful it’s not a tenaille trace.’

  Elphinstone frowned, realizing that Bampfylde had understood all that had been said. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘No lunettes?’ Bampfylde’s expression was seraphic. ‘Caponiers?’

  Elphinstone’s frown deepened. ‘Citadels at the corners, but hardly more than guerites.’

  Bampfylde looked to Sharpe. ‘Surprise and speed, Major! They can’t defend the complete enceinte, and the frigate will distract them!’ So much, it seemed, for the problems of capturing a fortress. The talk moved on to the proposed naval operations inside the Bassin d‘Arcachon, where more chasse-marées awaited capture, but Sharpe, uninterested in that part of the discussion, let his thoughts drift.

  He did not see Bampfylde’s plush, shining cabin, instead he imagined a rising grass slope, scythed smooth, called a glacis. Beyond the glacis was an eight foot drop into a granite faced, sheer-sided ditch twenty feet wide.

  At the far side of the ditch his men would be faced with a ten foot climb that would lead to a gentle, inward-facing slope; the counterguard. The counterguard was like a broad target displayed to the marksman on the inner wall, the enceinte. Men would cross the counterguard, screaming and twisting as the balls thumped home, only to face a twelve foot drop into a flooded ditch that was sixteen feet wide.

  By now the enemy would be dropping shells or even stones. A boulder, dropped from the twenty foot high inner wall, would crush a man’s skull like an eggshell, yet still the wall would have to be climbed with ladders if the men were to penetrate into the Teste de Buch. Given a month, and a train of siege artillery, Sharpe could have blasted a broad path through the whole trace of ditches and walls, but he did not have a month. He had a few moments only in which he must save a frigate from the terrible battering of the fort’s heavy guns.

  ‘Major?’ Abruptly t
he image of the twenty foot wall vanished to be replaced by Bampfylde’s quizzically mocking smile. ‘Major?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘We are talking, Major, of how many men would be needed to defend the captured fortress while we await reinforcements from the south?’

  ‘How long will the garrison have to hold?’ Sharpe asked.

  Wigram chose to answer. ‘A few days at the most. If we do find that Bordeaux’s ripe for rebellion, then we can bring an Army corps north inside ten days.’

  Sharpe shrugged. ‘Two hundred? Three? But you’d best use Marines, because I’ll need all of my Battalion if you want me to march inland.’

  It was Sharpe’s first trenchant statement and it brought curious glances from the junior naval officers. They had all heard of Richard Sharpe and they watched his weather-darkened, scarred face with interest.

  ‘Your Battalion?’ Wigram’s voice was as dry as old paper.

  ‘A brigade would be preferable, sir.’

  Elphinstone snorted with laughter, but Wigram’s expression did not change. ‘And what leads you to suppose, Major, that the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers are going to Arcachon?’

  Sharpe had assumed it because he had been summoned, and because he was the de facto commander of the Battalion, but Colonel Wigram now disabused him brutally.

  ‘You are here, Major, because you are supernumerary to regimental requirements.’ Wigram’s voice, like his gaze, was pitiless. ‘Your regimental rank, Major, is that of captain. Captains, however ambitious, do not command Battalions. You should be apprised that a new commanding officer, of due seniority and competence, is being appointed to the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers.’