Sharpe's Siege

by Bernard Cornwell

  The senior French officers were gathered in the hovel that was Calvet’s command post. They stared at the map, avoiding each other’s eyes, and were glad when Calvet, seeking a target for his anger, chose Pierre Ducos.

  ‘Tell me,’ Calvet said to Ducos, ‘exactly why men died today?’

  ‘They died,’ Ducos was quite unmoved by the general’s fury, ‘for a victory that France needs.’

  ‘Victory over what?’ Calvet asked scathingly. ‘A huddle of goddamn refugees who use quicklime?’ He stared belligerently at Ducos. ‘We agree their plans for a landing are foiled, so why don’t I let this Sharpe moulder behind his walls?’ No one in the room thought it odd that a general should seek permission from a major, not when the major was Pierre Ducos with his odd power over the Emperor’s affections.

  ‘Because,’ Ducos said, ‘if Sharpe escapes, he will take evidence with him that would betray the Comte de Maquerre.’

  ‘Then warn de Maquerre!’ Calvet snapped. ‘Why should men die here for lack of a letter?’ Ducos did not reply, implying that Calvet trespassed on forbidden territory. The general banged a big, splayed hand on the map in a gesture of irritated frustration. ‘We should be down south, thumping Wellington, not pissing about with a bloody major! I’ll leave a Battalion here to pen the bugger in, then we can go south where we’re needed.’

  Pierre Ducos smiled thinly. The general spoke good military sense, but Pierre Ducos wanted Richard Sharpe in his power, and thus Ducos now played his final, winning card. ‘Can you suggest, General, the manner in which I explain to the Emperor how a British major, with less than two hundred men, defeated the great Calvet?’

  Those icy words stung. For a moment it seemed as if Ducos had said too much, but then Calvet gave a shrug of surrender. ‘I hope you’re right, Ducos. I hope the goddamns aren’t pouring men ashore at the Adour while we’re pissing about.’ He growled with impotent menace, then slapped a hand on the map. ‘So if it must be done,’ Calvet said, ‘then how do we prise this bastard out from his walls? I need a breach!’

  ‘You can have one, sir.’ To everyone’s surprise it was Commandant Lassan, returned safely from the failed northern attack, who spoke, and who now told Calvet that he had written no less than twelve times in the last eight years to the Minister of Marine, responsible for the coastal forts, complaining that the Teste de Buch’s main gateway was in danger of collapse. The stones had shifted so much that the gate pintles were a full inch out of true, and cracks had appeared in the guardroom walls. The Ministry, after the fashion of government departments, had done nothing. ‘The whole gateway can be collapsed,’ Lassan said.

  General Calvet believed him. He ordered the twelve-pounders to concentrate their fire on the archway; artillery fire to make an avalanche of stone that would spill into the ditch and provide a slope up which attackers could scramble. ‘That’s where our main attack goes in the morning.’ Calvet took a lump of charcoal and scrawled a thick arrow on the fortress plan. The arrow pointed at the gateway. ‘I shall lead that attack,’ Calvet growled, ‘while you,’ he gestured at an infantry colonel, ‘will make a demonstration here.’ He scored another arrow that aimed itself at the northern wall. ‘That’ll split their defenders.’ Calvet stared at his broad arrow and imagined the archway tumbling its stones into the ditch to make a bridge; he saw his men flooding over that barricade and taking their bayonets to this so-called ‘élite’ of Riflemen and Marines. ’We’ll parade the prisoners through Bordeaux to show what happens to scum who think they can defy France.‘

  ‘I insist,’ Ducos said, ‘that Major Sharpe is handed over to my department.’

  ‘You can have the bastard.’ Calvet looked back at the map and, with a sudden gesture, extended the larger arrow straight into the courtyard. ‘Tell the men that the enemy is low on ammunition. Tell them we killed half the bastards today, tell them there’s women and wine inside. Tell them there’s a medal each for the first ten men inside.’ Calvet looked at his scribbled arrow and remembered the sheer volume of fire that the goddamns had poured into his column. He remembered men screaming, clawing at their eyes, and he remembered the trails of blood across the fort’s esplanade.

  His men would remember just as clearly, and defeated men would be nervous about a renewed attack. Calvet needed something else, some new factor to change the second assault, and, with sudden energy, he scribbled marks in the sand-dunes by the channel. ‘If we put two twelves there,’ he asked the artillery colonel, ‘they can rake the breach till the last minute?’

  The artillery colonel was already doubtful of his guns’ ability to bring down an archway in just a few hours. Even huge siege guns, twice the size of his twelve-pounders, could take weeks to shatter a well-built rampart, and now Calvet wanted to take two of the guns away from the breaching battery. ‘And even if I moved two guns, sir, how do we protect the crews from the Riflemen?’ Calvet wanted the two guns placed within two hundred yards of the ramparts.

  Calvet grunted an acknowledgement. The closest howitzer fired, thumping the hovel with a punch of sound and air, and the beat of the great gun’s firing jarred a scrap of reed from the thatched roof. It fell on to Calvet’s map, landing on the channel. ‘If I had a ship there,’ Calvet mused aloud, ‘it would win the day. But I don’t have a ship, so your two gun-crews will have to take their dead and keep firing.’ He stared belligerently at the artilleryman.

  ‘But you can have a ship.’ Ducos spoke softly from his place beside the fire.

  Calvet swung round to face the small major. ‘A ship?’

  ‘There is an American,’ Ducos said, ‘and he has a ship.’

  ‘Then fetch him!’ Calvet crossed out his new gun positions and drew the outline of a ship around the fleck of straw. ‘Fetch him, Ducos! And tell our ally he has to fight! Fetch him!’

  Killick, summoned from Gujan, leaned over the General’s map table. He saw that Calvet wanted the southern wall bombarded. A ship, moored off the fort’s south-western angle, could fire till the very final second of an assault, long after the twelve-pounders in the mill would have been forced into silence for fear of hitting their own attacking column. The Thuella’s gunfire, coming at right-angles to the line of attack and aimed at the breach, would force the defenders away from that vulnerable point. Such a floating battery, Killick saw, would be a guarantee of victory to demoralized men. The American nodded. ‘It could be done.’

  ‘At dawn?’ Calvet asked.

  Killick drew on his cigar. ‘It could be done, but not by me. I have taken an oath not to fight against the British.’ There was silence, except for the sudden percussion of an howitzer that shook more dust free from the roof. Killick shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen.’

  ‘An oath?’ Ducos’ voice was sharp with scorn.

  ‘An oath,’ Killick repeated. ‘Major Sharpe spared my life in return for that oath,’ the American grinned, ‘and as the promise wasn’t made to a lady, it has to be honoured.’

  Killick’s levity stung Ducos. ‘One does not keep oaths to savages. You, of all people, should know that.’

  ‘Is that why you didn’t send me the copper sheeting?’ Killick stared with dislike at Ducos. ‘Don’t lecture me, Major, about keeping promises.’

  The copper sheeting had never come, but the schooner had been patched with coffin-elm and smeared with pitch. The job had been done faster than Cornelius Killick had dared hope.

  The topmasts had been swayed up on tackles and lashed into place. Tangled shrouds had been sorted, cleated, and winched home. The Thuella, that had given the appearance of a dead and burning ship, lived again.

  That very morning, as Frenchmen died in a fort’s gateway, anchors had been laid in the Gujan channel and, at high tide, the windlasses had hauled the empty hull off the mud. The Thuella had slipped into the water. In just a few seconds, an ungainly and grounded hulk had become a slender craft shivering to the touch of wind and waves. Her figurehead had been bolted into place. Meat and water and flour and bread and wine an
d biscuit and onions and more wine were taken aboard. The carpenter had sounded the bilges and, though some water was leaking through the repaired hull, he had declared the pumps could take care of the seepage.

  ‘So, yes,’ Killick now said, ‘the Thuella can be moored in the channel tomorrow morning, General, but it can’t fire a shot. I’ve taken an oath.’

  Calvet, eager to harness the Thuella’s firepower, smiled. ‘Major Sharpe forfeited all honour, Captain Killick, when he chose to use quicklime against my troops. You may therefore consider yourself released from any undertakings of honour made with him.’

  Killick, who had already expressed profound disgust at the use of quicklime, now shook his head. ‘I think I’m the best judge of my own honour, General.’

  ‘You are a civilian,’ Pierre Ducos, despite his small size, was endowed with a voice of unusual authority, ‘and by your own account, Mr Killick, you have trafficked with the enemy. I presume you do not wish to undergo a long period of questioning at the hands of French authorities?’ Killick said nothing. The other French officers, even Calvet, were made uneasy by the threat, while Ducos, sensing that he had an advantage over the tall, handsome American, smiled. ‘If Mr Killick does not offer some satisfactory explanation of his actions on French soil then I will use my authority to seek such an explanation.’

  ‘My explanation ...’ Killick began.

  Ducos interrupted him. ‘Your explanations are best given with grapeshot at dawn. Do I have your oath, Mr Killick, that you will be there? Or must I investigate you?’

  The American’s quick temper flared. ‘I was captured, you little bastard, because I volunteered to defend your bloody fort.’

  ‘And you lost not a man killed,’ Ducos said chillingly, ‘and you were released within hours. I think those circumstances deserve investigation.’

  Killick looked to Calvet, but saw that the French general was powerless to countermand the thin, bespectacled major. The American shrugged. ‘I cannot be there at dawn.’

  ‘Then I will order your arrest,’ Ducos said.

  ‘I can’t be there at dawn, you bastard,’ Killick growled, ‘because the tide won’t serve. I’ve got twenty miles of shallow water to negotiate. Unless you can threaten God into a premature high-tide?’ He stared defiance at Ducos, then looked at the map. ‘One hour after dawn. No sooner.’

  ‘But one hour after dawn,’ Ducos was relentless in victory, ‘you will be moored off the fortress and bombarding the walls with grapeshot?’ He had seen a flicker of hope on Killick’s face, and knew the American was thinking that, once on board his ship, Pierre Ducos would be powerless to impose his will. ‘I want your promise, Mr Killick, your oath.’ Ducos had seized a piece of paper and, using the general’s charcoal, scrawled big letters that formed a confession that Killick had unlawfully entered into a treaty with the enemy, and a promise that, as recompense, the Thuella would bombard the fortress until surrender or victory ended the morning’s engagement. He thrust the paper forward. ‘Well?’

  Killick knew that if he did not sign Ducos would use his authority to detain him. Liam Docherty would not sail without Killick and the Thuella would stay in the Bassin, a hostage to Ducos’ whim. In the embarrassed silence the American took the charcoal and scrawled his name. ‘One hour after dawn.’

  Ducos, triumphant, witnessed the piece of paper. ‘You had better make your preparations, Mr Killick. Should you be tempted to break this oath, I promise you that your name will be known throughout America as that of a man who abandoned his allies and ran away from a fight. It is not pleasant, Mr Killick, to have one’s name remembered for ever in the lists of traitors. First Benedict Arnold, then Cornelius Killick?’ For a second the look on Killick’s face persuaded Ducos that he had said too much, then the American nodded meekly.

  Outside the hovel, Killick swore. The guns thumped from their pits and the first heavy rain, drumming from the north, began to fall. That rain, the American knew, was likely to last through the night, making rifles or muskets difficult to fire. The French now had the advantage of rain, so why did they need his ship?

  ‘What will you do?’ Henri Lassan asked.

  ‘Christ knows.’ Killick threw the remains of his cigar into the mud where it was snatched up by a sentry. The American stared at the low profile of the fort that gouted smoke with each burst of an howitzer shell. ‘Is it worse to betray an enemy or an ally, Henri?’

  Henri Lassan, who hated what Ducos had done, shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to fire high,’ Killick said, ‘and hope Major Sharpe will forgive me.’ He paused, wondering what carnage was being done inside the cauldron of the fort’s walls where the smoke pulsed from the relentless shells. ‘The bastard’s my enemy, Henri, but I can’t help liking the bugger.’

  ‘I fear that if Major Ducos had his way,’ Lassan said, ‘Major Sharpe will be dead by this time tomorrow.’

  ‘So I suppose it doesn’t matter what I do.’ The American gazed at the embattled fortress. ‘You believe in prayer, my friend, perhaps you’d better pray for my soul.’

  ‘I already pray for it,’ Lassan said.

  ‘Because my honour,’ Killick said softly, ‘is bargained away. Goodbye, my friend! Till the dawn.’

  So the French had two allies; rain and an American, and their victory was thus made certain.

  An hour before midnight the archway shuddered as the facing stones fell into the flooded ditch. Every shot thereafter worked more damage on the gateway, gouging out the rubble-filling and tipping the rampart’s pavement above the arch. Frederickson, carrying a hooded lantern, climbed the gate’s internal staircase to examine the extent of the destruction. He came out disgusted. ‘It’s going to fall. Surbedded work.’

  ‘Surbedded?’ Sharpe asked.

  ‘Stone laid against the grain.’ Frederickson paused as another roundshot thudded into the archway. ‘The stone’s cut vertically from the quarry and laid horizontally. It lets the water in. That gate’s a shoddy piece of building. They should be ashamed of it.’

  But if the French could not build, they could shoot. Even in the rain-curtained darkness the French gunners were hitting their target and Sharpe suspected that dark-lanterns must have been placed on the esplanade as aiming marks. Once in a while the French fired a light ball; a metal, cloth-wrapped cage filled with saltpetre, powder, sulphur, resin and linseed oil. The balls burned fiercely, hissing in the rain, showing the gunners what damage they had inflicted. That damage was more than sufficient to make Sharpe pull his sentries away from the ramparts by the arch, thus abandoning the gateway to the enemy’s artillery.

  Yet the rain did greater damage than the guns that night. At midnight, when Sharpe was going around the ramparts, a Marine sergeant found him. ‘Captain Frederickson says can you come, sir?’

  Frederickson was in the scorched cavern of the fort’s second magazine, which had been the least damaged by Bampfylde’s explosion. A lantern cast a dull, flickering glow on the blackened rear wall and on the pathetic hoard of powder and made-up cartridges that were Sharpe’s final reserve of ammunition. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Frederickson said.

  Sharpe swore. Water had seeped through the granite blocks of the magazine’s arched ceiling and soaked the powder so that the barrels were now filled with a dark grey, porridge-like sludge, while the home-made cartridges had come apart in a soggy mess of paper, lead, and wet powder. The captured French cartridges were also heavy with water and Sharpe swore again; swore foully, uselessly, and savagely.

  Frederickson fingered the wall over the barrels. ‘The explosion must have loosened the masonry.’

  ‘It was dry when we came,’ Sharpe said. ‘I checked!’

  ‘Rain takes time to seep through, sir,’ Frederickson said.

  Six Marines carried the powder to the stone gallery where the cooking fires burned. There the powder could be spread out and some of it would be dry by morning, but Sharpe knew that this disaster meant the end of his de
fiance.

  It was his own fault. He should have covered the powder with a tarpaulin, but he had not thought. There was so much he should have done. He should have foreseen that the enemy had mortars, he should have warned Palmer about the stone dam, he should have made a bigger sortie on the first night, he should have brought Harper’s cannons on to the wall where they would have been safer from the shells. He should have had water ready to fight the fires, he should, perhaps, never have fought at all.

  Sharpe sat in the cave of the magazine and a wave of despair hit him. ‘We used over half our good ammunition?’

  ‘Well over half.’ Frederickson was as unhappy as Sharpe. He sat opposite, knees drawn up, and the lantern threw the shadows of the two riflemen high on the arch of the magazine’s ceiling. ‘We might as well bring the wounded in here now. They’ll be more comfortable.’

  ‘Yes.’ But neither man moved. ‘There’s some French ammunition in the ready magazines, isn’t there?’ Sharpe asked.

  ‘Only fifty cartridges in each.’

  Sharpe picked up a shard of stone and scratched a square on the magazine floor. He marked the position of the gate on the southern side. ‘The question,’ he spoke slowly, ‘is whether they’re fooling us with the gate and plan to attack somewhere else, or not?’

  ‘They’ll come for the gate,’ Frederickson said.

  ‘I think so.’ Sharpe scratched marks over the gate. ‘We’ll put everyone there. Just leave Minver with a handful of men to guard the other walls.’

  Sharpe clung to the pathetic hope that a British brig, nosing up the enemy coast with the impunity that Nelson’s victories had given to the Navy, might see his strange flag. A brig, moored in the channel, could fire hell and destruction into an attacking French column. Yet in this weather, with this fitful, veering wind and the blotting, seething rain that bounced four inches high off the shattered cobbles of the yard, Sharpe knew no brig would come. ‘Your fellow might have reached our lines by now.’ He was clutching at straws, and he knew it.