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

by Bernard Cornwell

  “For what, sir?” Sevajee asked.

  Wellesley heard the Indian’s skeptical tone. “You don’t think we should give battle?”

  Sevajee shrugged, seeking some tactful way of expressing his disagreement with Wellesley’s decision. “The battle isn’t always to the largest army, sir.”

  “Always, no,” Wellesley said, “but usually, yes? You think I am being impetuous?” Sevajee refused to be drawn and simply shrugged again in answer. “We shall see, we shall see,” the General said. “Their army looks fine, I grant you, but once we break the regular compoos, the others will run.”

  “I do hope so, sir.”

  “Depend on it,” Wellesley said, then spurred on.

  Sharpe looked at Sevajee. “Are we mad to fight, sir?”

  “Quite mad,” Sevajee said, “completely mad. But maybe there’s no choice.”

  “No choice?”

  “We blundered, Sergeant. We marched too far and came too close to the enemy, so either we attack him or run away from him, and either way we have to fight. By attacking him we just make the fight shorter.” He twisted in the saddle and pointed towards the now hidden Kaitna. “Do you know what’s beyond that river?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Another river, Sharpe, and they meet just a couple of miles downstream”—he pointed eastwards towards the place where the waters met—“and if we cross that ford we shall find ourselves on a tongue of land and the only way out is forward, through a hundred thousand Mahrattas. Death on one side and water on the other.” Sevajee laughed. “Blundering, Sergeant, blundering!”

  But if Wellesley had blundered he was still in high spirits. Once back at Naulniah he ordered Diomed unsaddled and rubbed down, then began issuing commands. The army’s baggage would stay at Naulniah, dragged into the village’s alleyways which were to be barricaded so that no marauding Mahratta cavalry could plunder the wagons which would be guarded by the smallest battalion of sepoys. McCandless heard that order given, understood its necessity, but groaned aloud when he realized that almost five hundred infantrymen were thus being shorn from the attacking army.

  The cavalry that remained in Naulniah were ordered to saddle their horses and ride to the Kaitna, there to form a screen on the southern bank, while the tired infantry, who had marched all morning, were now rousted from their tents and chivvied into ranks. “No packs!” the sergeants called. “Firelocks and cartridge boxes only. No packs! Off to a Sunday battle, lads! Save your bleeding prayers and hurry up! Come on, Johnny, boots on, lad! There’s a horde of heathens to kill. Look lively, now! Wake yourselves up! On your feet!”

  The pickets of the day, composed of a half company from each of the army’s seven battalions, marched first. They splashed through the small river north of Naulniah and were met on its far bank by one of the General’s aides who guided them onto the farm track that led to Peepulgaon. The pickets were followed by the King’s 74th accompanied by their battalion artillery, while behind them came the second battalion of the 12th Madras Regiment, the first battalion of the 4th Madras, the first of the 8th Madras and the first of the 10th Madras, and lastly the kilted Highlanders of the King’s 78th. Six battalions crossed the river and followed the beaten-earth track between fields of millet beneath the furnace of an Indian sun. No enemy was visible as they marched, though rumor said the whole of the Mahratta army was not far away.

  Two guns fired around one o’clock. The sound was flat and hard, echoing across the heat-shimmering land, but the infantry could see nothing. The sound came from their left, and the battalion officers said there was cavalry somewhere out there, and that doubtless meant that the cavalry’s light galloper guns had engaged the enemy, or else the enemy had brought cannon to face the British cavalry, but the fighting did not seem to be ominous for there was silence after the two shots. McCandless, his nerves strung by the disaster he feared was imminent, galloped Aeolus a few yards westwards as if wanting to find an explanation for the two gunshots, but then he thought better of it and turned his horse back to the road.

  More cannon fire sounded a few moments later, but there was nothing urgent in the distant shots which were monotonous, flat and sporadic. If battle had been brewing to the boil the gunshots would have sounded hard and fast, but these shots were almost lackadaisical, as though the gunners were merely practicing on Aldershot Heath on a lazy summer’s day. “Their guns or ours, sir?” Sharpe asked McCandless.

  “Ours, I suspect,” the Scotsman said. “Cavalry galloper guns keeping the enemy horse on their toes.” He tugged on Aeolus’s rein, moving the gelding out of the path of sixty sepoy pioneers who were doubling down the road’s left verge with pick-axes and shovels on their shoulders. The pioneers’ task was to reach the Kaitna and make certain that its banks were not too steep for the ox-drawn artillery. Wellesley cantered after the pioneers, riding to the head of the column and trailing a succession of aides. McCandless joined the General’s party and Sharpe kicked his horse alongside Daniel Fletcher who was mounted on a big roan mare and leading an unsaddled Diomed by a long rein. “He’ll want him when the bay’s tired,” Fletcher told Sharpe, nodding ahead at Wellesley who was now riding a tall bay stallion. “And the mare’s in case both horses get shot,” he added, slapping the rump of the horse he rode.

  “So what do you do?” Sharpe asked the dragoon.

  “Just stay close until he wants to change horses and keep him from getting thirsty,” Fletcher said. He carried no less than five water canteens on his belt, bulked over a heavy saber in a metal scabbard, the first time Sharpe had ever seen the orderly carrying a weapon. “Vicious thing, that,” Fletcher said when he saw Sharpe glance at the weapon, “a good wide blade, perfect for slicing.”

  “Ever used it?” Sharpe asked.

  “Against Dhoondiah,” Fletcher answered. Dhoondiah had been a bandit chieftain whose depredations in Mysore had finally persuaded Wellesley to pursue him with cavalry. The resultant battle had been a short clash of horsemen that had been won in moments by the British. “And I killed a goat with it for the General’s supper a week ago,” Fletcher continued, drawing the heavy curved blade, “and I think the poor bugger died of fright when it saw the blade coming. Took its head clean off, it did. Look at this, Sergeant.” He handed the blade to Sharpe. “See what it says there? Just above the hilt?”

  Sharpe tipped the saber to the sun. “’Warranted Never to Fail,’” he read aloud. He grinned, for the boast seemed oddly out of place on a thing designed to kill or maim.

  “Made in Sheffield,” Fletcher said, taking the blade back, “and guaranteed never to fail! Good slicer this is, real good. You can cut a man in half with one of these if you get the stroke right.”

  Sharpe grinned. “I’ll stick with a musket.”

  “Not on horseback, you won’t, Sergeant,” Fletcher said. “A firelock’s no good on horseback. You want a blade.”

  “Never learned to use one,” Sharpe said.

  “It ain’t difficult,” Fletcher said with the scorn of a man who had mastered a difficult trade. “Keep your arm straight and use the point when you’re fighting cavalry, because if you bend the elbow the bastards will chop through your wrist as sure as eggs, and slash away like a haymaker at infantry because there ain’t bugger all they can do back to you, not once they’re on the run. Not that you could use any kind of sword off the back of that horse.” He nodded at Sharpe’s small native beast. “It’s more like an overgrown dog, that is. Does it fetch?”

  The road reached the high point between the two rivers and Fletcher, mounted high on the General’s mare, caught his first glimpse of the enemy army on the distant northern bank of the Kaitna. He whistled softly. “Millions of the buggers!”

  “We’re going to turn their flank,” Sharpe said, repeating what he had heard the General say. So far as Sharpe understood, the idea was to cross the river at the ford which no one except Wellesley believed existed, then make an attack on the left flank of the waiting infantry. The idea made sense
to Sharpe, for the enemy line was facing south and, by coming at them from the east, the British could well plunge the compoos into confusion.

  “Millions of the buggers!” Fletcher said again in wonderment, but then the road dropped and took the enemy out of their view. The dragoon orderly sheathed his saber. “But he’s confident,” he said, nodding ahead at Wellesley who was dressed in his old uniform coat of the 33rd. The General wore a slim straight sword, but had no other weapon, not even a pistol.

  “He was always confident,” Sharpe said. “Cool as you like.”

  “He’s a good fellow,” Fletcher said loyally. “Proper officer. He ain’t friendly, of course, but he’s always fair.” He touched his spurs to the mare’s flanks because Wellesley and his aides had hurried ahead into the village of Peepulgaon where the villagers gaped at the foreigners in their red coats and black cocked hats. Wellesley scattered chickens from his path as he cantered down the dusty village street to where the road dropped down a precipitous bluff into the half-dry bed of the Kaitna. The pioneers arrived a moment later and began attacking the bluff to smooth its steep slope. On the river’s far bank Sharpe could see the road twist up into the trees that half obscured the village of Waroor. The General was right, he reckoned, and there had to be a ford, for why else would the road show on both banks? But whether the ford was shallow enough for the army to cross no one yet knew.

  Wellesley stood his horse at the top of the bluff and drummed the fingers of his right hand on his thigh. It was the only sign of nerves. He was staring across the river, thinking. No enemy was in sight, but nor should they have been for the Mahratta line was now two miles to the west, which meant that Scindia’s army was now between him and Stevenson. Wellesley grimaced, realizing that he had already abandoned his first principle for fighting this battle, which had been to secure his left flank so Stevenson could join. Doubtless, the moment the guns began their proper, concentrated work, the sound of their cannonade would bring Stevenson hurrying across country, but now the older man would simply have to join the fight as best he could. But Wellesley had no regrets at posing such difficulties for Stevenson, for the chance to turn the enemy’s flank was heaven-sent. So long, that is, as the ford was practicable.

  The pioneer Captain led a dozen of his sepoys down towards the river. “I’ll just see to that far bank, sir,” the Captain called up to the General, startling Wellesley out of his reverie.

  “Come back!” Wellesley shouted angrily. “Back!”

  The Captain had almost reached the water, but now turned and stared at Wellesley in puzzlement. “Have to grade that bluff, sir,” he shouted, pointing to where the road climbed steeply to the screen of trees on the Kaitna’s northern bank. “Too steep for guns, sir.”

  “Come back!” Wellesley called again, then waited as the dozen men trudged back to the southern bank. “The enemy can see the river, Captain,” the General explained, “and I have no wish that they should see us yet. I do not want them knowing our intentions, so you will wait until the first infantry make the crossing, then do your work.”

  But the enemy had already seen the pioneers. The dozen men had only been visible in the river’s open bed for a few seconds, but someone in the Mahratta gun line was wide awake and there was a sudden and violent plume of water in the river and, almost simultaneously, the sky-battering sound of a heavy gun.

  “Good shooting,” McCandless said quietly when the fifteen-foot-high fountain had subsided to leave nothing but a whirling eddy in the river’s brown water. The range must have been almost two miles, yet the Mahrattas had turned a gun, trained and fired it in seconds, and their aim had been almost perfect. A second gun fired and its heavy ball plowed a furrow in the dry, crazed mud beside the river and bounced up to scatter bucket-loads of dry earth from the bluff’s face. “Eighteen-pounders,” McCandless guessed aloud, thinking of the two heavy siege guns that he had seen in front of Dodd’s men.

  “Damn,” Wellesley said quietly. “But no real harm done, I suppose.” The first of the infantry were now marching down Peepulgaon’s steep street. Lieutenant Colonel Orrock led the pickets of the day, while behind them Sharpe could see the grenadier company of the 74th. The Scottish drums were beating a march rhythm and the sound of the flurries made Sharpe’s blood race. The sound presaged battle. It seemed like a dream, but there would be a battle this Sunday afternoon and a bloody one, too.

  “Afternoon, Orrock,” Wellesley spurred his horse to meet the infantry vanguard. “Straight across, I think.”

  “Has the ford been sounded?” Colonel Orrock, a lugubrious and worried-looking man, asked nervously.

  “Our task, I think,” Wellesley said cheerfully. “Gentlemen?” This last invitation was to his aides and orderly. “Shall we open proceedings?”

  “Come on, Sharpe,” McCandless said.

  “You can cross after us, Captain!” Wellesley called to the eager pioneer Captain, then he put his big bay stallion down the slope of the bluff and trotted towards the river. Daniel Fletcher followed close behind with Diomed’s leading rein in his hand, while the aides and McCandless and Sevajee and Sharpe all followed. Forty horsemen would be the first men across the Kaitna and the General would be the first of all, and Sharpe watched as Wellesley’s stallion trotted into the river. He wanted to see how deep the water was, and he was determined to watch the General all the way through, but suddenly the bang of an eighteen-pounder gun bullied the sky and Sharpe glanced upstream to see a puff of gunsmoke smear the horizon, then he heard a horse screaming and he looked back to see that Daniel Fletcher’s mount was rearing at the water’s edge. Fletcher was still in the saddle, but the orderly had no head left, only a pulsing spurt of blood from his ragged neck. Diomed’s rein was still in the dead man’s hand, but somehow the body would not fall from the mare’s saddle and she was screaming in fear as her rider’s blood splashed across her face.

  A second gun fired, but high, and the shot crashed low overhead to tear into the trees on the southern bank. A third ball smashed into the water, drenching McCandless. Fletcher’s mare bolted upstream, but was checked by a fallen tree and so she stood, quivering, and still the trooper’s decapitated body was in the saddle and Diomed’s rein in his dead hand. The gray horse’s left flank was reddened with Fletcher’s blood. The trooper had slumped now, his headless trunk leaning eerily to drip blood into the river.

  To Sharpe it seemed as if time had stopped. He was aware of someone shouting, aware of the blood dripping from the dragoon’s collar, aware of his small horse shivering, but the sudden violence had immobilized him. Another gun fired, this one of smaller caliber, and the ball struck the water a hundred yards upstream, ricocheted once, then vanished in a plume of white spray.

  “Sharpe!” a voice snapped. Horsemen were wheeling in the river’s shallows and reaching for the dead man’s bridle. “Sharpe!” It was Wellesley who shouted. The General was in the middle of the river where the water did not even reach his stirrups, so there was a ford after all and the river could be crossed, but the enemy was hardly going to be taken by surprise now. “Take over as orderly, Sharpe!” Wellesley shouted. “Hurry, man!” There was no one else to replace Fletcher, not unless one of Wellesley’s aides took over his duties, and Sharpe was the nearest man.

  “Go on, Sharpe!” McCandless said. “Hurry, man!”

  Captain Campbell had secured Fletcher’s mare. “Ride her, Sharpe!” the Captain called. “That little horse won’t keep up with us. Just let her go. Let her go.”

  Sharpe dismounted and ran to the mare. Campbell was trying to dislodge Fletcher’s blood-soaked body, but the trooper’s feet were caught in the stirrups. Sharpe heaved Fletcher’s left boot free, then gave the booted leg a tug and the corpse slid towards him. He jumped back as the bloody remnants of the neck, all sinew and flesh and tattered scraps, slapped at his face. The corpse fell into the edge of the river and Sharpe stepped over it to mount the General’s mare. “Get the General’s canteens,” Campbell ordered him, and an insta
nt later another eighteen-pounder shot hammered low overhead like a clap of thunder. “The canteens, man, hurry!” Campbell urged Sharpe, but Sharpe was having trouble untying the water bottles from Fletcher’s belt, so instead he heaved the body over so that a gush of blood spurted from the neck to be instantly diluted in the shallow water. He tugged at the trooper’s belt buckle, unfastened it, then hauled the belt free with its pouches, canteens and the heavy saber. He wrapped the belt over his own, hastily buckled it, then clambered up into the mare’s saddle and fiddled his right foot into the stirrup. Campbell was holding out Diomed’s rein.

  Sharpe took the rein. “Sorry, sir.” He apologized for making the aide wait.

  “Stay close to the General,” Campbell ordered him, then leaned over and patted Sharpe’s arm. “Stay close, be alert, enjoy the day, Sergeant,” he said with a grin. “It looks as if it’s going to be a lively afternoon!”

  “Thank you, sir,” Sharpe said. The first infantry were in the ford now and Sharpe turned the mare, kicked back his heels and tugged Diomed through the water. Campbell was spurring ahead to catch up with Wellesley and Sharpe clumsily kicked the mare into a canter and was almost thrown as she stumbled on the riverbed, but he somehow clung to her mane as she recovered. A round shot thrashed the water white to his left, drenching him with spray. The musket had fallen off his shoulder and was dangling awkwardly from his elbow and he could not manage both it and Diomed’s rein, so he let the firelock drop into the river, then wrenched the sword and the heavy canteens into a more comfortable position. Bugger this, he thought. Lost a hat, a horse and a gun in less than an hour!

  The pioneers were hacking at the bluff on the northern bank to make the slope less steep, but the first galloper guns, those that accompanied the pickets of the day, were already in the Kaitna. Galloper guns were drawn by horses and the gunners shouted at the pioneers to clear out of their way. The pioneers scattered as the horses came up from the river with water streaming from the leading gun’s spinning wheels; a whip cracked over the leader’s head and the team galloped up the bluff with the gun and limber bouncing erratically behind. A gunner was thrown off the limber, but he picked himself up and ran after the cannon. Sharpe kicked his horse up the bluff once the second gun was safely past and suddenly he was in low ground, protected from the enemy’s cannonade by the rising land to his left.