Sharpe's Triumph: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803

by Bernard Cornwell

  “A damned shame,” Wellesley said, “but a fine gift. Pure Arab blood, McCandless.”

  Most of the pure Arab blood seemed to be on Sharpe, but the General was delighted with the horse’s sudden improvement. Indeed, Sharpe had never seen Wellesley so animated. He grinned as he watched the horse, then he told the orderly to walk Diomed up and down, and he grinned even more widely as he watched the horse move. Then, suddenly aware that the men about him were taking an amused pleasure from his own delight, his face drew back into its accustomed cold mask. “Obliged to you, Sharpe,” he said yet again, then he turned and walked towards his tent. “McCandless! Come and give me your news!”

  McCandless and Sevajee followed the General and his aides into the tent, leaving Sharpe trying to wipe the blood from his hands. The dragoon orderly grinned at him. “That’s a six-hundred-guinea horse you just bled, Sergeant,” he said.

  “Bloody hell!” Sharpe said, staring in disbelief at the dragoon. “Six hundred!”

  “Must be worth that. Best horse in India, Diomed is.”

  “And you look after him?” Sharpe asked.

  The orderly shook his head. “He’s got grooms to look after his horses, and the farrier to bleed and shoe them. My job is to follow him into battle, see? And when one horse gets tired I give him another.”

  “You drag all those six horses around?” Sharpe asked, astonished.

  “Not all six of them,” the dragoon said, “only two or three. But he shouldn’t have six horses anyway. He only wants five, but he can’t find anyone to buy the spare. You don’t know anyone who wants to buy a horse, do you?”

  “Hundreds of the buggers,” Sharpe said, gesturing at the encampment. “Every bleeding infantryman over there for a start.”

  “It’s theirs if they’ve got four hundred guineas,” the orderly said. “It’s that bay gelding, see?” He pointed. “Six years old and good as gold.”

  “No use looking at me,” Sharpe said. “I hate the bloody things.”

  “You do?”

  “Lumpy, smelly beasts. I’m happier on my feet.”

  “You see the world from a horse’s back,” the dragoon said, “and catch women’s eyes.”

  “So they’re not entirely useless,” Sharpe said and the orderly grinned. He was a happy, round-faced young man with tousled brown hair and a ready smile. “How come you’re the General’s orderly?” Sharpe asked him.

  The dragoon shrugged. “He asked my Colonel to give him someone and I was chosen.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “He’s all right,” the orderly said, jerking his head towards Wellesley’s tent. “Don’t crack a smile often, leastwise not with the likes of you and me, but he’s a fair man.”

  “Good for him.” Sharpe stuck out his bloodied hand. “My name’s Dick Sharpe.”

  “Daniel Fletcher,” the orderly said, “from Stoke Poges.”

  “Never heard of it,” Sharpe said. “Where can I get a scrub?”

  “Cook tent, Sergeant.”

  “And riding boots?” Sharpe asked.

  “Find a dead man in Ahmednuggur,” Fletcher said. “It’ll be cheaper than buying them off me.”

  “That’s true,” Sharpe said, then he limped to the cook tent. The limp was caused by the sore muscles from long hours in the saddle. He had purchased a length of cotton cloth in the village where they had spent the night, then torn the cloth into strips that he had wrapped about his calves to protect them from the stirrup leathers, but his calves still hurt. God, he thought, but he hated bloody horses.

  He washed the worst of Diomed’s blood from his hands and face, diluted what was on his uniform, then went back to wait for McCandless. Sevajee’s men still sat on their horses and stared at the distant city that was topped by a smear of smoke. Sharpe could hear the murmur of voices inside the General’s tent, but he paid no attention. It wasn’t his business. He wondered if he could scrounge a tent for his own use for it had already rained earlier in the day and Sharpe suspected it might rain again, but Colonel McCandless was not a man much given to tents. He derided them as women’s luxuries, preferring to seek shelter with local villagers or, if no peasant house or cattle byre was available, happily sleeping beneath the stars or in the rain. A pint of rum, Sharpe thought, would not go amiss either.

  “Sergeant Sharpe!” Wellesley’s familiar voice broke into his thoughts and Sharpe turned to see his old commanding officer coming from the big tent.

  “Sir!” Sharpe stiffened to attention.

  “So Colonel McCandless has borrowed you from Major Stokes?” Wellesley asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Sharpe said. The General was bareheaded and Sharpe saw that his temples had turned prematurely grey. He seemed to have forgotten Sharpe’s handiwork with his horse, for his long-nosed face was as unfriendly as ever.

  “And you saw this man Dodd at Chasalgaon?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “Repugnant business,” Wellesley said, “repugnant. Did he kill the wounded?”

  “All of them, sir. All but me.”

  “And why not you?” Wellesley asked coldly.

  “I was covered in blood, sir. Fair drenched in it.”

  “You seem to be in that condition much of the time, Sergeant,” Wellesley said with just a hint of a smile, then he turned back to McCandless. “I wish you joy of the hunt, Colonel. I’ll do my best to help you, but I’m short of men, woefully short.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the Scotsman said, then watched as the General went back into his big tent which was crammed with red-coated officers. “It seems,” McCandless said to Sharpe when the General was gone, “that we’re not invited to supper.”

  “Were you expecting to be, sir?”

  “No,” McCandless said, “and I’ve no business in that tent tonight either. They’re planning an assault for first light tomorrow.”

  Sharpe thought for a moment that he must have misheard. He looked northwards at the big city wall. “Tomorrow, sir? An assault? But they only got here today and there isn’t a breach!”

  “You don’t need a breach for an escalade, Sergeant,” McCandless said. “An escalade is nothing but ladders and murder.”

  Sharpe frowned. “Escalade?” He had heard the word, but was not really sure he knew what it meant.

  “March straight up to the wall, Sharpe, throw your ladders against the ramparts and climb.” McCandless shook his head. “No artillery to help you, no breach, no trenches to get you close, so you must accept the casualties and fight your way through the defenders. It isn’t pretty, Sharpe, but it can work.” The Scotsman still sounded disapproving. He was leading Sharpe away from the General’s tent, seeking a place to spread his blanket. Sevajee and his men were following, and Sevajee was walking close enough to listen to McCandless’s words. “Escalades can work well against an unsteady enemy,” the Colonel went on, “but I’m not at all convinced the Mahrattas are shaky. I doubt they’re shaky at all, Sharpe. They’re dangerous as snakes and they usually have Arab mercenaries in their ranks.”

  “Arabs, sir? From Arabia?”

  “That’s where they usually come from,” McCandless confirmed. “Nasty fighters, Sharpe.”

  “Good fighters,” Sevajee intervened. “We hire hundreds of them every year. Hungry men, Sergeant, who come from their bare land with sharp swords and long muskets.”

  “Doesn’t serve to underestimate an Arab,” McCandless agreed. “They fight like demons, but Wellesley’s an impatient man and he wants the business over. He insists they won’t be expecting an escalade and thus won’t be ready for one, and I pray to God he’s right.”

  “So what do we do, sir?” Sharpe asked.

  “We go in behind the assault, Sharpe, and beseech Almighty God that our ladder parties do get into the city. And once we’re inside we hunt for Dodd. That’s our job.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sharpe said.

  “And once we have the traitor we take him to Madras, put him on trial and have him hanged,” McCandless said w
ith satisfaction, as though the job was as good as done. His gloomy forebodings of the previous night seemed to have vanished. He had stopped at a bare patch of ground. “This looks like a fair billet. No more rain in the offing, I think, so we should be comfortable.”

  Like hell, Sharpe thought. A bare bed, no rum, a fight in the morning, and God only knew what kind of devils waiting across the wall, but he slept anyway.

  And woke when it was still dark to see shadowy men straggling past with long ladders across their shoulders. Dawn was near and it was time for an escalade. Time for ladders and murder.

  Sanjit Pandee was killadar of the city, which meant that he commanded Ahmednuggur’s garrison in the name of his master, Dowlut Rao Scindia, Maharajah of Gwalior, and in principle every soldier in the city, though not in the adjacent fortress, was under Pandee’s command. So why had Major Dodd ejected Pandee’s troops from the northern gatehouse and substituted his own men? Pandee had sent no orders, but the deed had been done anyway and no one could explain why, and when Sanjit Pandee sent a message to Major Dodd and demanded an answer, the messenger was told to wait and, so far as the killadar knew, was still waiting.

  Sanjit Pandee finally summoned the courage to confront the Major himself. It was dawn, a time when the killadar was not usually stirring, and he discovered Dodd and a group of his white-coated officers on the southern wall from where the Major was watching the British camp through a heavy telescope mounted on a tripod. Sanjit Pandee did not like to disturb the tall Dodd who was being forced to stoop awkwardly because the tripod was incapable of raising the glass to the level of his eye. The killadar cleared his throat, but that had no effect, and then he scraped a foot on the firestep, and still Dodd did not even glance at him, so finally the killadar demanded his explanation, though in very flowery terms just in case he gave the Englishman offense. Sanjit Pandee had already lost the battle over the city treasury which Dodd had simply commandeered without so much as a by-your-leave, and the killadar was nervous of the scowling foreigner.

  “Tell the bloody man,” Dodd told his interpreter without taking his eye from the telescope, “that he’s wasting my bloody time. Tell him to go and boil his backside.”

  Dodd’s interpreter, who was one of his younger Indian officers, courteously suggested to the killadar that Major Dodd’s attention was wholly consumed by the approaching enemy, but that as soon as he had a moment of leisure, the Major would be delighted to hold a conversation with the honored killadar.

  The killadar gazed southwards. Horsemen, British and Indian, were ranging far ahead of the approaching enemy column. Not that Sanjit Pandee could see the column properly, only a dark smudge among the distant green that he supposed was the enemy. Their feet kicked up no dust, but that was because of the rain that had fallen the day before. “Are the enemy truly coming?” he inquired politely.

  “Of course they’re not bloody coming,” Dodd said, standing upright and massaging the small of his back. “They’re running away in terror.”

  “The enemy are indeed approaching, sahib,” the interpreter said deferentially.

  The killadar glanced along his defenses and was reassured to see the bulk of Dodd’s regiment on the firestep, and alongside them the robed figures of his Arab mercenaries. “Your regiment’s guns,” he said to the interpreter, “they are not here?”

  “Tell the interfering little bugger that I’ve sold all the bloody cannon to the enemy,” Dodd growled.

  “The guns are placed where they will prove most useful, sahib,” the interpreter assured the killadar with a dazzling smile, and the killadar, who knew that the five small guns were at the north gate where they were pointing in towards the city rather than out towards the plain, sighed in frustration. Europeans could be so very difficult.

  “And the three hundred men the Major has placed at the north gate?” Sanjit Pandee said. “Is it because he expects an attack there?”

  “Ask the idiot why else they would be there,” Dodd instructed the interpreter, but there was no time to tell the killadar anything further because shouts from the ramparts announced the approach of three enemy horsemen. The emissaries rode beneath a white flag, but some of the Arabs were aiming their long-barreled matchlocks at the approaching horsemen and the killadar quickly sent some aides to tell the mercenaries to hold their fire. “They’ve come to offer us cowle,” the killadar said as he hurried towards the south gate. Cowle was an offer of terms, a chance for the defenders to surrender rather than face the horrors of assault, and the killadar hoped he could prolong the negotiations long enough to persuade Major Dodd to bring the three hundred men back from the north gate.

  The killadar could see that the three horsemen were riding towards the south gate which was topped by a squat tower from which flew Scindia’s gaudy green and scarlet flag. To reach the tower the killadar had to run down some stone steps because the stretch of wall just west of the gate possessed no firestep, but was simply a high, blank wall of red stone. He hurried along the foot of the wall, then climbed more steps to reach the gate tower just as the three horsemen reined in beneath.

  Two of the horsemen were Indians while the third was a British officer, and the three men had indeed come to offer the city cowle. If the killadar surrendered, one of the Indians shouted, the city’s defenders would be permitted to march from Ahmednuggur with all their hand weapons and whatever personal belongings they could carry. General Wellesley would guarantee the garrison safe passage as far as the River Godavery, beyond which Pohlmann’s compoo had withdrawn. The officer finished by demanding an immediate answer.

  Sanjit Pandee hesitated. The cowle was generous, surprisingly generous, and he was tempted to accept because no man would die if he took the terms. He could see the approaching column clearly now, and it looked to him like a red stain smothering the plain. There would be guns there, and the gods alone knew how many muskets. Then he glanced to his left and right and he saw the reassuring height of his walls, and he saw the white robes of his fearsome Arabs, and he contemplated what Dowlut Rao Scindia would say if he meekly surrendered Ahmednuggur. Scindia would be angry, and an angry Scindia was liable to put whoever had angered him beneath the elephant’s foot. The killadar’s task was to delay the British in front of Ahmednuggur while Scindia gathered his allies and so prepared the vast army that would crush the invader. Sanjit Pandee sighed. “There can be no cowle,” he called down to Wellesley’s three messengers, and the horsemen did not try to change his mind. They just tugged on their reins, spurred their horses and rode away. “They want battle,” the killadar said sadly, “they want loot.”

  “That’s why they come here,” an aide replied. “Their own land is barren.”

  “I hear it is green,” Sanjit Pandee said.

  “No, sahib, barren and dry. Why else would they be here?”

  News spread along the walls that cowle had been refused. No one had expected otherwise, but the killadar’s reluctant defiance cheered the defenders whose ranks thickened as townsfolk climbed to the firestep to see the approaching enemy.

  Dodd scowled when he saw that women and children were thronging the ramparts to view the enemy. “Clear them away!” he ordered his interpreter. “I want only the duty companies up here.” He watched as his orders were obeyed. “Nothing’s going to happen for three days now,” he assured his officers. “They’ll send skirmishers to harass us, but skirmishers can’t hurt us if we don’t show our heads above the wall. So tell the men to keep their heads down. And no one’s to fire at the skirmishers, you understand? No point in wasting good balls on skirmishers. We’ll open fire after three days.”

  “In three days, sahib?” a young Indian officer asked.

  “It will take the bastards one day to establish batteries and two to make a breach,” Dodd forecast confidently. “And on the fourth day the buggers will come, so there’s nothing to get excited about now.” The Major decided to set an example of insouciance in the face of the enemy. “I’m going for breakfast,” he told hi
s officers. “I’ll be back when the bastards start digging their breaching batteries.”

  The tall Major ran down the steps and disappeared into the city’s alleys. The interpreter looked back at the approaching column, then put his eye to the telescope. He was looking for guns, but at first he could see only a mass of men in red coats with the odd horseman among their ranks, and then he saw something odd. Something he did not comprehend.

  Some of the men in the front ranks were carrying ladders. He frowned, then saw something more familiar beyond the red ranks and tilted the glass so that he could see the enemy’s cannon. There were only five guns, one being hauled by men and the four larger by elephants, and behind the artillery were more redcoats. Those redcoats wore patterned skirts and had high black hats, and the interpreter was glad that he was behind the wall for somehow the men in skirts looked fearsome.

  He looked back at the ladders and did not really understand what he saw. There were only four ladders, so plainly they did not mean to lean them against the wall. Maybe, he thought, the British planned to make an observation tower so that they could see over the defenses, and that explanation made sense and so he did not comprehend that there was to be no siege at all, but an escalade. The enemy was not planning to knock a hole in the wall, but to swarm straight over it. There would be no waiting, no digging, no saps, no batteries and no breach. There would just be a charge, a scream, a torrent of fire, and then death in the morning sun.

  * * *

  “The thing is, Sharpe,” McCandless said, “not to get yourself killed.”

  “Wasn’t planning on it, sir.”

  “No heroics, Sharpe. It’s not your job. We just follow the heroes into the city, look for Mister Dodd, then go back home.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So stay close to me, and I’m staying close to Colonel Wallace’s party, so if you lose me, look for him. That’s Wallace there, see him?” McCandless indicated a tall, bare-headed officer riding at the front of the 74th.

  “I see him, sir,” Sharpe said. He was mounted on McCandless’s spare horse and the extra height allowed him to see over the heads of the King’s 74th who marched in front of him. Beyond the Highlanders the city wall looked dark red in the early sun, and on its summit he could see the occasional glint of a musket showing between the dome-shaped merlons that topped the wall. Big round bastions stood every hundred yards and those bastions had black embrasures which Sharpe assumed hid the defenders’ cannon. The brightly colored statues of a temple’s tower showed above the rampart while a slew of flags drooped over the gate. No one fired yet. The British were within cannon range, but the defenders were keeping their guns quiet.