Sharpe's Triumph

by Bernard Cornwell

  "It's all a waste of time," Pohlmann grumbled to Dodd, 'but we have to attend." The Colonel was fixing his newly tied stock with a diamond studded pin.

  "And it isn't a time for any European opinion except mine, understand?"

  "Yours?" Dodd, who had rather hoped to make a case for boldness, asked dourly.

  "Mine," Pohlmann said forcibly.

  "I want to twist their tails, and I need every European officer nodding like a demented monkey in agreement with me."

  A hundred men had gathered under the dripping silk. Scindia, the Maharajah of Gwalior, and Bhonsla, the Rajah of Berar, sat on musnuds, elegant raised platform-thrones that were draped in brocade and sheltered from the intrusive rain by silk parasols. Their Highnesses were cooled by men waving long-handled fans while the rest of the durbar sweltered in the close, damp heat. The high-class brahmins, all in baggy trousers cut from gold brocade, white tunics and tall white turbans, sat closest to the two thrones, while behind them stood the military officers, Indian and European, who were perspiring in their finest uniforms. Servants moved unobtrusively through the crowd offering silver dishes of almonds, sweetmeats or raisins soaked in arrack. The three senior European officers stood together. Pohlmann, in a purple coat hung with golden braid and loops of chain, towered over Colonel Dupont, a wiry Dutchman who commanded Scindia's second compoo, and over Colonel Saleur, a Frenchman, who led the infantry of the Begum Somroo. Dodd lingered just behind the trio and listened to their private durbar. The three men agreed that their troops would have to take the brunt of the British attack, and that one of them must exercise overall command. It could not be Saleur, for the Begum Somroo was a client ruler of Scindia's, so her commander could hardly take precedence over her feudal overlord's officers, which meant that it had to be either Dupont or Pohlmann, but the Dutchman generously ceded the honour to the Hanoverian.

  "Scindia would have chosen you anyway," Dupont said.

  "Wisely," Pohlmann said cheerfully, 'very wisely. You're content, Saleur?"

  "Indeed," the Frenchman said. He was a tall, dour man with a badly scarred face and a formidable reputation as a disciplinarian. He was also reputed to be the Begum Somroo's lover, a post that evidently accompanied the command of that lady's infantry.

  "What are the bastards talking about now?" he asked in English.

  Pohlmann listened for a few seconds.

  "Discussing whether to retreat to Gawilghur," he said. Gawilghur was a hill fort that lay north and east of Borkardan and a group of brahmins were urging the army to retire there and let the British break their skulls against its cliffs and high walls.

  "Goddamn brahmins," Pohlmann said in disgust.

  "Don't know a damn thing about soldiering. Know how to talk, but not how to fight."

  But then an older brahmin, his white beard reaching to his waist, stood up and declared that the omens were more suitable for battle.

  "You have assembled a great army, dread Lord," he addressed Scindia, 'and you would lock it away in a citadel?"

  "Where did they find him?" Pohlmann muttered.

  "He's actually talking sense!"

  Scindia said little, preferring to let Surjee Rao, his chief minister, do the talking, while he himself sat plump and inscrutable on his throne.

  He was wearing a rich gown of yellow silk that had emeralds and pearls sewn into patterns of flowers, while a great yellow diamond gleamed from his pale-blue turban.

  Another brahmin pleaded for the army to march south on Seringapatam, but he was ignored. The Rajah of Berar, darker-skinned than the pale Scindia, frowned at the durbar in an attempt to look warlike, but said very little.

  "He'll run away," Colonel Saleur growled, 'as soon as the first gun is fired. He always does."

  Beny Singh, the Rajah's warlord, argued for battle.

  "I have five hundred camels laden with rockets, I have guns fresh from Agra, I have infantry hungry for enemy blood. Let them loose!"

  "God help us if we do," Dupont growled.

  "Bastards don't have any discipline."

  "Is it always like this?," Dodd asked Pohlmann.

  "Good God, no!" the Hanoverian said.

  "This durbar is positively decisive!

  Usually it's three days of talk and a final decision to delay any decision until the next time."

  "You think they'll come to a decision today?" Saleur asked cynically.

  "They'll have to," Pohlmann said.

  "They can't keep this army together for much longer. We're running out of forage! We're stripping the country bare." The soldiers were still receiving just enough to eat, and the cavalrymen made certain their horses were fed, but the camp followers were near starvation and in a few days the suffering of the women and children would cause the army's morale to plummet. Only that morning Pohlmann had seen a woman sawing at what he had assumed was brown bread, then realized that no Indian would bake a European loaf and that the great lump was actually a piece of elephant dung and that the woman was crumbling it apart in search of undigested grains. They must fight now.

  "So if we fight," Saleur asked, 'how will you win?"

  Pohlmann smiled.

  "I think we can give young Wellesley a problem or two," he said cheerfully.

  "We'll put the Rajah's men behind some strong walls where they can't do any damage, and we three will line our guns wheel to wheel, hammer them hard for their whole approach, then finish them off with some smart volleys. After that we'll let the cavalry loose on their remnants."

  "But when?" Dupont asked.

  "Soon," Pohlmann said, 'soon. Has to be soon. Buggers are eating dung for breakfast these days." There was a sudden silence in the tent and Pohlmann realized a question had been addressed to him. Surjee Rao, a sinister man whose reputation for cruelty was as widespread as it was deserved, raised an eyebrow to the Hanoverian.

  "The rain, Your Serene Excellency," Pohlmann explained, 'the rain deafened me so I could not hear your question."

  "What my Lord wishes to know," the minister said, 'is whether we can destroy the British?"

  "Oh, utterly," Pohlmann said as though it was risible to even ask the question.

  "They fight hard," Beny Singh pointed out.

  "And they die like other men when fought hard in return," Pohlmann said dismissively.

  Scindia leaned forward and whispered in Surjee Rao's ear.

  "What the Lord of our land and the conqueror of our enemy's lands wishes to know," the minister said, 'is how you will beat the British?"

  "In the way that His Royal Highness suggested, Excellency, when he gave me his wise advice yesterday," Pohlmann said, and it was true that he had enjoyed a private talk with Scindia the day before, though the advice had all been given by Pohlmann, but if he was to sway this durbar then he knew he must let them think that he was simply repeating Scindia's suggestions.

  "Tell us, please," Surjee Rao, who knew full well that his master had no ideas except how to increase the tax yields, asked suavely.

  "As we all know," Pohlmann said, 'the British have divided their forces into two parts. By now both those small armies will know that we are here at Borkardan and, because they are fools eager for death, they will both be marching towards us. Both armies lie to our south, but they are separated by some miles. They nevertheless hope to join together, then attack us, but yesterday, in his unparalleled wisdom, His Royal Highness suggested that if we move eastwards we shall draw the enemy's eastern most column towards us and so make them march away from their allies. We can then fight the two armies in turn, defeat them in turn, and then let our dogs chew the flesh from their carcasses. And when the last enemy is dead, Excellency, I shall bring their General to our ruler's tents in chains and send their women to be his slaves." More to the point, Pohlmann thought, he would capture Wellesley's food supplies, but he dared not say that in case Scindia took the words as a criticism. But Pohlmann's bravado was rewarded by a scatter of applause that was unfortunately spoiled as a whole section of the tent
roof collapsed to let in a deluge of rain.

  If the British are doomed," Surjee Rao asked when the commotion had subsided, 'why do they advance on us?"

  It was a good question, and one that had worried Pohlmann slightly, though he believed he had found an answer.

  "Because, Excellency," he said, 'they have the confidence of fools.

  Because they believe that their combined armies will prove sufficient.

  Because they do not truly understand that our army has been trained to the same level as their own, and because their General is young and inexperienced and too eager for a reputation."

  "And you believe, Colonel, that we can keep their two armies apart?"

  If we march tomorrow, yes."

  "How big is the British General's army?"

  Pohlmann smiled.

  "Wellesley has five thousand infantrymen, Excellency, and six thousand cavalry. We could lose as many men as that and not even notice they were gone! He has eleven thousand men, but the only ones he relies on are his five thousand infantry. Five thousand men! Five thousand!" He paused, making sure that everyone in the tent had heard the figure.

  "And we have eighty thousand men. Five against eighty!"

  "He has guns," the minister observed sourly.

  "We have five guns for every one of his. Five against one. And our guns are bigger and they are served just as well as his."

  Scindia whispered to Surjee Rao who then demanded that the other European officers give their advice, but all had been forewarned by Pohlmann to sing his tune. March east, they said, draw one British army into battle, then turn on the other. The minister thanked the foreign officers for their advice, then pointedly turned back to the brahmins for their comments. Some advised that emissaries should be sent to Holkar, begging his help, but Pohlmann's confidence had worked its magic and another man indignantly demanded to know why Holkar should be offered a share in the glory of victory. The tide of the durbar was turning in Pohlmann's favour, and he said nothing more, but nor did he need to.

  The durbar talked all day and no course of action was formally agreed, but at dusk Scindia and the Rajah of Berar conferred briefly, then Scindia took his leave between rows of brahmins who bowed as their ruler passed. He paused in the huge tent's doorway while his servants brought the palanquin that would preserve him from the rain.

  Only when the palanquin was ready did he turn and speak loudly enough for all the durbar to hear.

  "We march east tomorrow," he said, 'then we shall ponder another decision. Colonel Pohlmann will make the arrangements." He stood for a second, looking up at the rain, then ducked under the palanquin's canopy.

  "Praise God," Pohlmann said, for he reckoned that the decision to march eastwards was sufficient to bring on battle. The enemy was closing all the time, and so long as the Mahrattas did not run northwards, the two sides must eventually meet. And if Scindia's men went eastwards then they would meet on Pohlmann's terms. He rammed on his cocked hat and stalked from the tent, followed by all the European officers.

  "We'll march east along the Kaitna!" he said excitedly.

  "That's where we'll march tomorrow, and the river bank will be our killing ground." He whooped like an excited child.

  "One short march, gentlemen, and we shall be close to Wellesley's men, and in two or three days we'll fight whether our lords and masters want it or not."

  The army marched early next morning. It covered the earth like a dark swarm that flowed beneath the clearing clouds alongside the muddy River Kaitna which slowly deepened and widened as the army followed it eastwards. Pohlmann gave them a very short march, a mere six miles, so that the leading horsemen had reached Pohlmann's chosen campsite long before dawn and by nightfall the slowest of the Mahratta infantry had reached a small, mud-walled village that lay just two miles north of the Kaitna. Scindia and the Rajah of Berar pitched their lavish tents just outside the village, while the Rajah's infantry was ordered to barricade the streets and make loopholes in the thick mud walls of the outermost houses.

  The village lay on the southern bank of the River Juah, a tributary of the Kaitna, and south of the village stretched two miles of open farmland that ended at the steep bank of the River Kaitna. Pohlmann placed his best infantry, his three compoos of superbly trained killers, south of the village on the high bluff of the Kaitna's northern bank, and in front of them he ranged his eighty best guns.

  Wellesley, if he wished to reach Borkardan, must come to the Kaitna and he would find his path blocked by a river, by a fearsome line of heavy guns, by an array of infantry and, behind them, like a fortress, a village crammed with the Rajah of Berar's troops. The trap was laid.

  In the fields of a village called Assaye.

  The two British armies were close to each other now, close enough for General Wellesley to ride across country to see Colonel Stevenson, the commander of the second army. The General rode with his aides and an escort of Indian cavalry, but they saw no enemy on their way westwards across a long flat plain greened by the previous day's rain. Colonel Stevenson, old enough to be Wellesley's father, was alarmed by his General's high spirits. He had seen such elation in young officers before, and seen "it crushed by humiliating defeats brought on by overconfidence.

  "Are you sure you're not hurrying too much?" he asked.

  "We must hurry, Stevenson, must." Wellesley unrolled a map onto the Colonel's table and pointed to Borkardan.

  "We hear they're likely to stay there, but they won't stay for ever. If we don't close on them now, they'll slip away."

  "If the bastards are that close," Stevenson said, peering at the map, 'then maybe we should join forces now?"

  "And if we do," the General said, 'it will take us twice as long to reach Borkardan." The two roads on which the armies advanced were narrow and, a few miles south of the River Kaitna, those roads followed passes through a small but steep range of hills. Every wheeled vehicle in both armies would have to be fed through those defiles in the hills, and if the two small armies combined the cumbersome business of negotiating the pass would take a whole day, a day in which the Mahrattas might escape northwards.

  Instead the two armies would advance separately and meet at Borkardan.

  "Tomorrow night," Wellesley ordered, 'y u camp here' he made a cross on the map at a village called Hussainabad - 'and we'll be here." The pencil made another cross at a village called Naulniah which lay four miles south of the River Kaitna. The villages were ten miles apart, and both about the same distance south of Borkardan.

  "On the twenty-fourth," Wellesley said, 'we march and join here." He dashed a circle about the village of Borkardan.

  "There!" he added, jabbing the pencil down and breaking its point.

  Stevenson hesitated. He was a good soldier with a long experience of India, but he was cautious by nature and it seemed to him that Wellesley was being headstrong and foolish. The Mahratta army was vast, the British armies small, yet Wellesley was rushing into battle.

  There was a dangerous excitement in the usually cool-headed Wellesley, and Stevenson now tried to rein it in.

  "We could meet at Naulniah," he suggested, thinking it better if the armies combined the day before the battle rather than attempt to make their junction under fire.

  "We have no time," Wellesley declared, 'no time!" He swept aside the weights holding down the map's corners so that the big sheet rolled up with a snap.

  "Providence has put their army within striking distance, so let us strike!" He tossed the map to his aide, Campbell, then ducked out of the tent into the day's late sunlight and there found himself staring at Colonel McCandless who was mounted on a small, bony horse.

  "You!"

  Wellesley said with surprise.

  "I thought you were wounded, McCandless?"

  "I am, sir, but it's healing." The Scotsman patted his left thigh.

  "So what are you doing here?"

  "Seeking you, sir," McCandless answered, though in truth he had come to Stevenson's army by
mistake. One of Sevajee's men, scouting the area, had seen the redcoats and McCandless had thought it must be Wellesley's men.

  "And what on earth are you riding?" Wellesley asked, pulling himself onto Diomed's back.

  "Looks like a gypsy nag, McCandless. I've seen ponies that are bigger."

  McCandless patted the captured Mahratta horse.

  "She's the best I can do, sir. I lost my own gelding."

  'For four hundred guineas you can have my spare. Give me a note, McCandless, and he's all yours. Aeolus, he's called, a six-year-old gelding out of County Meath. Good lungs, got a capped hock, but it don't stop him. I'll see you in two days, Colonel," Wellesley now addressed Stevenson.

  "Two days! We'll test our Mahrattas, eh? See if their vaunted infantry can stand some pounding. Good day, Stevenson!

  Are you coming, McCandless?"

  "I am, sir, I am."

  Sharpe fell in beside Daniel Fletcher, the General's orderly.

  "I've never seen the General so happy," Sharpe said to Fletcher.

  "Got the bit between his teeth," Fletcher said.

  "He reckons we're going to surprise the enemy."

  "He ain't worried? There are thousands of the buggers."

  "He ain't showing nothing if he is frightened," Fletcher said.

  "Up and at them, that's his mood."

  "Then God help the rest of us," Sharpe said.

  The General talked with McCandless on his way back, but nothing the Scotsman said diminished Wellesley's eagerness, even though McCandless warned him of the effectiveness of the Mahratta artillery and the efficiency of the infantry.

  "We knew all that when we declared war," Wellesley said testily, 'and if it didn't deter us then, why should it now?"

  "Don't underestimate them, sir," McCandless said grimly.

  "I rather hope they'll underestimate me!" Wellesley said.

  "You want that gelding of mine?"

  "I don't have the money, sir."

  "Oh come, McCandless! You on a Company colonel's salary! You must have a fortune stacked away!"

  "I've some savings, sir, for my retirement, which is not far off."

  "I'll make it three hundred and eighty guineas, seeing as it's you, and in a couple of years you can sell him for four hundred. You can't go into battle on that thing." He gestured at the Mahratta horse.