Sharpe’s Honour

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I need you, sir.’

  La Marquesa smiled. ‘Go on. I’ll wait.’

  Sharpe unlocked the door. ‘I only just got here, Peter!’

  The tall, elegant Captain, who was more than a little drunk, bowed lavishly to Sharpe. ‘Your presence is demanded, sir. You’ll forgive me, ma’am?’

  They stopped at the stair’s head. Half the Battalion were in the dining room that was littered with broken plates and discarded cutlery. Sharpe doubted whether three-quarters of these men had ever eaten in such style. Someone had discovered, in a locked chest, a French tricolour that was being paraded noisily about the room. Most of the men were drunk. Some were asleep. Only at the head table was there a hint of decorum, and even there, not much.

  Sergeant Patrick Harper presided. Next to him, resplendent in white, with a veil of lace that had been taken from the French baggage park, sat Isabella. About her throat was a necklace of diamonds. Sharpe doubted whether her husband would let her wear it again, at least not till they were safely away from the thieves of the British army.

  Sharpe had never seen a man so frightened as Harper. He had shaken in the cathedral. Sharpe had given his Sergeant two big glasses of whisky, but even they had not stopped his fear. ‘It’s ridiculous, sir! Getting married.’

  ‘Women like it, Patrick.’

  ‘Why do they need us? Why don’t they just do it and tell us afterwards. Christ!’

  ‘Are you sure you want to go through with it?’

  ‘And let her down? Of course I’ll do it!’ He was indignant. ‘I just don’t have to enjoy doing it!’

  He was enjoying himself now. He was drunk, better fed than a soldier had a right to be, and with a pretty, pregnant, dark-eyed girl beside him.

  ‘It’s astonishing,’ Captain d’Alembord observed, ‘how she keeps him in order.’

  Sharpe smiled. He was a Major again, reinstated to his rank, and in temporary command of the South Essex. The command would only be temporary. He had not served long enough as a Major to be given the next rank, and so he must wait, with these men, to see who replaced Lieutenant Colonel Leroy.

  Wellington, furious almost beyond words at the looting of the baggage park, had spared praise for Sharpe. The Inquisitor, his bruises explained as a tumble down his stairs, had provided the Generalissimo with a list of those men who had offered support to a peace with France. Already those men were being visited, were listening to quiet arguments that were not quite threats, but which were unmistakeable just the same.

  The Inquisitor had offered another explanation of the Marques’ death, an explanation listened to in silence by those Spanish officers brought to hear it. They had looked at Sharpe, at Wellington, and a few, seeing the jest inherent in what they saw, had laughed.

  La Marquesa, who had provoked a smile from Wellington’s anger, had taken her fortune from the Inquisitor’s house. She had been promised safe conduct as soon as the roads to the frontier were cleared of the last French garrisons. Wellington, as ever susceptible to a pretty face, had listened to her account of the treaty and rewarded her treachery by restoring her wealth. She would go home, and Sharpe was back where he belonged; with his men.

  He had eaten with them this night, made an embarrassing speech to them, and laughed when they had cheered the Marquesa and, because of her dress, shouted at her to jump up and down. Now, standing at the stair’s head with Captain d’Alembord, he felt a surge of affection for these soldiers whose life was so hard and whose pleasures so few and who knew how to take both hardship and pleasure in their stride. He looked at Captain d’Alembord. ‘Why did you need me?’

  ‘We just thought you’d gone to bed early, sir. Thought you might like to drink another toast.’

  Sharpe laughed. He went down the stairs and listened to the cheers and laughter of his men, saw the worried hotel proprietor who winced every time another plate or glass broke, and he walked up to the head table, reached for a bottle of champagne, smiled at Angel who had been given a place of honour, then turned back to the stairs.

  ‘Where are you going, sir?’ a voice shouted.

  He did not reply, instead he waved the champagne, took the stairs two at a time, and the cheers, jeers, and whistles wafted him up to the landing, and the suggestions were thick about him as he turned at the top, raised the bottle, and bowed to them. He motioned for silence that was a long time coming, but finally the faces stared up at him, flushed with drink, and grinning broadly at the Major who had come back from the dead to lead them to victory.

  He wondered what he should say. Wellington, in his rage at the men who had plundered the baggage park, had called his army ‘the scum of the earth’. Sharpe laughed aloud, He was proud of them.

  ‘Talion?’ He paused. They waited. ‘Morning parade at seven o’clock, married men included. Goodnight.’

  He turned, laughed, and their insults followed him to the door of his room.

  He went inside. The first thing he saw was a pair of shoes lying on their side. Beyond the shoes was a cream dress, fallen on the floor.

  She was in bed. She smiled at the champagne, then at him, and Richard Sharpe, leaning on the locked door, thought that this was what had driven him across Spain to this city. This woman, treacherous as sin, who would love and betray him in the same moment. She was as faithful as a morning mist, as hard as a sword-bayonet, and that, he thought, made her a suitable reward for a soldier.

  He unbuckled his sword, dropped it on a chair, and sat on the bed. The Marquesa pulled his face to hers, kissed him, and put her hands to the buttons of his jacket. She was the whore of gold, she was the enemy, and she had known that this man, in the cause of her greed, would give to her his sword, his strength, and even his life. He would give her all that he had, all but for the one small thing that she had wanted; the one small thing she could not take; Sharpe’s honour.

  Historical Note

  ‘The material captured,’ wrote Charles Oman in his great History of the Peninsular War, ‘was such as no European army had ever laid hands on… since Alexander’s Macedonians plundered the camp of the Persian king after the battle of Issus.’

  ‘Many of our men,’ wrote Commissary Schaumann, ‘and particularly those who found diamonds, became rich people that day.’

  Edward Costello, a Rifleman, reckoned that he made about a thousand pounds on the evening of the battle, helped by a ‘few whacks of my rifle’.

  The plunder of Vitoria was truly spectacular. In military terms it was stunning; all the French guns save two, a hundred and fifty-one in all, and of the two guns the French did manage to salvage, one was lost during the retreat. But it was not the guns that the soldiers were interested in acquiring.

  No one truly knows the value of the plunder. I suspect the figure of five million pounds is a low estimate, and it could well have been seven million. In today’s money that translates to something like £154,000,000 ($234,000,000). Much of it was in such ‘non-negotiable’ items as paintings by Rubens, though even those had their uses as tarpaulins. Eventually the paintings were recovered and some of them, presented to Wellington by the restored King Ferdinand VII, can be seen at Stratfield Saye or at Apsley House in London. One object that was never recovered was the Crown of Spain.

  Some of the plunder was extremely negotiable, and not just the gold. Schaumann, a German officer in Wellington’s army, who was one of the men who enjoyed the victory feast in the hotel, particularly noted the number of captured women, many of them dressed in specially tailored cavalry uniforms. Schaumann, who had a particular and discriminating eye for women during the campaign, noted how, in the plunder, the French women instinctively found one enemy soldier to whom, in exchange for protection, they offered their allegiance. Those who, like the Marquesa, wanted to return to France with their belongings, were given safe conduct and an escort. The words, ‘we are a walking brothel’ were spoken to Wellington by a captured French officer.

  Wellington himself reckons that th
e British soldiers took one million pounds worth of gold coin (and they were third into the baggage-park after the fleeing French and the citizens of Vitoria), while he, for the military chest, received only one hundred thousand silver dollars. Among the other trophies were King Joseph’s silver chamberpot (still used, though for drinking purposes, by the cavalry regiment that captured it), and also Marshal Jourdan’s baton which Wellington sent to the Prince Regent. The Prince returned the compliment, ‘you have sent me the staff of a French Marshal, and I send you in return that of England’. Except, that no such English staff existed, one had to be designed, and thus Wellington became a Field Marshal.

  An extremely unhappy Field Marshal after his victory. He was furious with the men for plundering the baggage, describing them in a phrase for which he has been attacked ever since; ‘the scum of the earth’. Many of his soldiers doubtless were (but by no means all) and those people who cite the phrase as evidence that Wellington despised the men who fought for him usually forget that he was fond of adding, ‘but it is wonderful what fine fellows we have made of them’. Wellington had cause to be angry (he was hoping to use the French treasure to pay for the campaign), but in defence of the ‘scum’ it is very hard to see how any soldier, paid a shilling a day, could resist the field of gold that waited for them to the east of Vitoria. Yet many did; some regiments kept their order and marched straight through it, so I have no excuses to offer for Sharpe and Harper.

  The Inquisition was banned by the Spanish Junta, and reinstated by King Ferdinand in 1814. I have no evidence that the Inquisition was involved in the politics that accompanied the restoration of Ferdinand, but it seemed a fitting idea. The Spanish Inquisition was finally dissolved in 1834.

  The thought that a restored Ferdinand VII might make peace with France and expel the British is not fiction. It formed the basis of the Treaty of Valencay, signed by Ferdinand and Napoleon, and there was support for it among those Spaniards who wished to restore their Empire and defeat the new liberals. In the end the treaty was never fulfilled. Napoleon kept his side of the bargain (by restoring Ferdinand and releasing all Spanish prisoners), but Ferdinand VII was prevented (by public opinion as much as anything else) from making the peace with France that would have expelled Wellington’s army and allowed his own to reconquer the Spanish empire abroad.

  The battle of Vitoria was not the largest battle fought in the Peninsula, but it had the most far-reaching consequences. At a time when the fortunes of Napoleon seemed to be rising after his huge defeat in Russia, the battle encouraged the northern allies to continue the fight, leading to the great northern victory at Leipzig in the following year.

  The battle also ejected the French from Spain, except for the garrisons of three fortresses. Eight thousand Frenchmen and five thousand of Wellington’s men were casualties. The plundering of the baggage and the night of drink that followed the battle effectively stopped any pursuit by the British and so the remnant of Joseph’s army managed to reach France, struggling up the steep tracks of the Pyrenees north of Pamplona.

  Burgos Castle is still in ruins (it was mined for destruction and the mines, as described in the novel, went off prematurely, though no one knows why). Vitoria is now a much enlarged industrial city, though the central hill, with the narrow streets circling about the cathedral, looks much today as it did in 1813. The battlefield is still recognisable, at least to the west of the town. The river follows the same course, the bridges are there, and the Arinez Hill provides a superb viewpoint. The area of Gamarra Mayor, where the fighting was among the heaviest (the British lost 500 casualties in taking the village and trying to cross the bridge) is sadly much changed.

  One happy circumstance to note is that Vitoria, rare among cities in Spain, marks the contribution Wellington’s army made to the liberation with a quite magnificent statue that shows Wellington with his men. It is a truly fantastic confection, appreciated by an army of pigeons, and also by the citizens of Vitoria who are fond of it in the same way that Londoners like the Albert Memorial. In most cities in Spain, where Wellington’s men died for that country’s freedom, you look in vain for any memorial that acknowledges the gratitude that Vitoria so lavishly bestows.

  It was a great victory. Wellington, when he started the campaign, had turned at the border of Portugal, raised his hat, and prophetically said goodbye to a country. ‘I will never see you again.’ Now, as a result of the battle of Vitoria, he is threatening a different country; France itself.

  So Sharpe and Harper will march again.