But where the hell was Wellesley? He could see no one on the high ground that led towards the enemy, and the only men on the road straight ahead were the leading companies of the pickets of the day who continued to march northwards. A slapping sound came from the river and he twisted in his saddle to see that a round shot had whipped through a file of infantry. A body floated downstream in eddies of blood, then the sergeants shouted at the ranks to close up and the infantry kept on coming. But where the hell was Sharpe to go? To his right was the village of Waroor, half hidden behind its trees and for a second Sharpe thought the General must have gone there, but then he saw Lieutenant Colonel Orrock riding up onto the higher ground to the left and Sharpe guessed the Colonel was following Wellesley and so he tugged the mare that way.
The land climbed to a gentle crest across stubble fields dotted by a few trees. Colonel Orrock was the only man in sight and he was forcing his horse up the slope towards the skyline and so Sharpe followed him. He could hear the enemy guns firing, presumably still bombarding the ford that had not been supposed to exist, but as he kicked the mare up through the growing crop the guns suddenly ceased and all he could hear was the thump of hooves, the banging of the saber’s metal scabbard against his boot and the dull sound of the Scottish drums behind.
Orrock had turned north along the skyline and Sharpe, following him, saw that the General and his aides were clustered under a group of trees from where they were gazing westwards through their telescopes. He joined them in the shade, and felt awkward to be in such exalted company without McCandless, but Campbell turned in his saddle and grinned. “Well done, Sergeant. Still with us, eh?”
“Managing, sir,” Sharpe said, rearranging the canteens that had tangled themselves into a lump.
“Oh, dear God,” Colonel Orrock said a moment later. He was gazing through his own telescope, and whatever he saw made him shake his head before peering through the glass again. “Dear me,” he said, and Sharpe stood in his stirrups to see what had so upset the East India Company Colonel.
The enemy was redeploying. Wellesley had crossed the ford to bring his small army onto the enemy’s left flank, but the Mahratta commander had seen his purpose and was now denying him the advantage. The enemy line was marching towards the Peepulgaon ford, then wheeling left to make a new defense line that stretched clean across the land between the two rivers; a line that would now face head on towards Wellesley’s army. Instead of attacking a vulnerable flank, Wellesley would be forced to make a head-on assault. Nor were the Mahrattas making their maneuver in a panicked hurry, but were marching calmly in disciplined ranks. The guns were moving with them, drawn by bullocks or elephants. The enemy was less than a mile away now and their steady unhurried redeployment was obvious to the watching officers.
“They anticipate us, sir!” Orrock informed Wellesley, as though the General might not have understood the purpose of the enemy’s maneuver.
“They do,” Wellesley agreed calmly, “they do indeed.” He collapsed his telescope and patted his horse’s neck. “And they maneuver very well!” he added admiringly, as though he was engaged in nothing more ominous than watching a brigade go through its paces in Hyde Park. “Your men are through the ford?” he asked Orrock.
“They are, sir, they are,” Orrock said. The Colonel had a nervous habit of jutting his head forward every few seconds as if his collar was too tight. “And they can reverse themselves,” he added meaningfully.
Wellesley ignored the defeatist sentiment. “Take them one half-mile up the road,” he ordered Orrock, “then deploy on the high ground this side of the road. I shall see you before we advance.”
Orrock gazed goggle-eyed at the General. “Deploy?”
“On this side of the road, if you please, Colonel. You will form the right of our line, Colonel, and have Wallace’s brigade on your left. Let us do it now, Colonel, if you would so oblige me?”
“Oblige you . . .” Orrock said, his head darting forward like a turtle. “Of course,” he added nervously, then turned his horse and spurred it back towards the road.
“Barclay?” the General addressed one of his aides. “My compliments to Colonel Maxwell and he will bring all Company and King’s cavalry to take post to Orrock’s right. Native horse will stay south of the river.” There was still enemy cavalry south of the Kaitna and the horsemen from Britain’s Indian allies would stay on that bank to keep those enemies at bay. “Then stay at the ford,” Wellesley went on addressing Barclay, “and tell the rest of the infantry to form on Orrock’s pickets. Two lines, Barclay, two lines, and the 78th will form the left flank here.” The General, who had been gazing at the enemy’s calm redeployment, now turned to Barclay who was scribbling in pencil on a scrap of paper. “First line, from the left. The 78th, Dallas’s 10th, Corben’s 8th, Orrock’s pickets. Second line, from the left. Hill’s 4th, Macleod’s 12th, then the 74th. They are to form their lines and wait for my orders. You understand? They are to wait.” Barclay nodded, then tugged on his reins and spurred his horse back towards the ford as the General turned again to watch the enemy’s redeployment. “Very fine work,” he said approvingly. “I doubt we could have maneuvered any more smartly than that. You think they were readying to cross the river and attack us?”
Major Blackiston, his engineer aide, nodded. “It would explain why they were ready to move, sir.”
“We shall just have to discover whether they fight as well as they maneuver,” Wellesley said, collapsing his telescope, then he sent Blackiston north to explore the ground up to the River Juah. “Come on, Campbell,” Wellesley said when Blackiston was gone and, to Sharpe’s surprise, instead of riding back to where the army was crossing the ford, the General spurred his horse still further west towards the enemy. Campbell followed and Sharpe decided he had better go as well.
The three men rode into a steep-sided valley that was thick with trees and brush, then up its far side to another stretch of open farmland. They cantered through a field of unharvested millet, then across pasture land, always inclining north towards another low hill crest. “I’ll oblige you for a canteen, Sergeant,” Wellesley called as they neared the crest and Sharpe thumped his heels on the mare’s flanks to catch up with the General, then fumbled a canteen free and held it out, but that meant taking his left hand off the reins while his right was still holding Diomed’s tether and the mare, freed of the rein, swerved away from the General. Wellesley caught up with Sharpe and took the canteen. “You might tie Diomed’s rein to your belt, Sergeant,” he said. “It will provide you with another hand.”
A man needed three hands to do Sharpe’s job, but once they reached the low crest the General halted again and so gave Sharpe time to fasten the Arab’s rein to Fletcher’s belt. The General was staring at the enemy who was now only a quarter-mile away, well inside cannon shot, but either the enemy guns were not ready to fire or else they were under orders not to waste powder on a mere three horsemen. Sharpe took the opportunity to explore what was in Fletcher’s pouch. There was a piece of moldy bread that had been soaked when the trooper’s body fell into the river, a piece of salted meat that Sharpe suspected was dried goat, and a sharpening stone. That made him half draw the saber to feel its edge. It was keen.
“A nasty little settlement!” Wellesley said cheerfully.
“Aye, it is, sir!” Campbell agreed enthusiastically.
“That must be Assaye,” Wellesley remarked. “You think we’re about to make it famous?”
“I trust so, sir,” Campbell said.
“Not infamous, I hope,” Wellesley said, and gave his short, high-pitched laugh.
Sharpe saw they were both staring towards a village that lay to the north of the enemy’s new line. Like every village in this part of India it was provided with a rampart made of the outermost houses’ mud walls. Such walls could be five or six feet in thickness, and though they might crumble to the touch of an artillery bombardment, they still made a formidable obstacle to infantry. Enemy soldiers stood on ever
y roof top, while outside the wall, in an array as thick as a hedgehog’s quills, was an assortment of cannon. “A very nasty little place,” the General said. “We must avoid it. I see your fellows are there, Sharpe!”
“My fellows, sir?” Sharpe asked in puzzlement.
“White coats, Sergeant.”
So Dodd’s regiment had taken their place just to the south of Assaye. They were still on the left of Pohlmann’s line, but now that line stretched southwards from the bristling defenses about the village to the bank of the River Kaitna. The infantry were already in place and the last of the guns were now being hauled into their positions in front of the enemy line, and Sharpe remembered Syud Sevajee’s grim words about the rivers meeting, and he knew that the only way out of this narrowing neck of land was either back through the fords or else straight ahead through the enemy’s army. “I see we shall have to earn our pay today,” the General said to no one in particular. “How far ahead of the infantry is their gun line, Campbell?”
“A hundred yards, sir?” the young Scotsman guessed after gazing through his spyglass for a while.
“A hundred and fifty, I think,” Wellesley said.
Sharpe was watching the village. A lane led from its eastern wall and a file of cavalry was riding out from the houses towards some trees.
“They think to allow us to take the guns,” Wellesley guessed, “reckoning we’ll be so pounded by round shot and peppered by canister that their infantry can then administer the coup de grâce. They wish to treat us to a double dose! Guns and firelocks.”
The trees where the cavalry had disappeared dropped into a steep gully that twisted towards the higher ground from where Wellesley was observing the enemy. Sharpe, watching the tree-filled gully, saw birds fly out of the branches as the cavalry advanced beneath the thick leaves. “Horsemen, sir,” Sharpe warned.
“Where, man, where?” Wellesley asked.
Sharpe pointed towards the gully. “It’s full of the bastards, sir. They came out of the village a couple of moments ago. You can’t see them, sir, but I think there might be a hundred men hidden there.”
Wellesley did not dispute Sharpe. “They want to put us in the bag,” he said in seeming amusement. “Keep an eye out for them, Sharpe. I have no wish to watch the battle from the comfort of Scindia’s tent.” He looked back to the enemy’s line where the last of the heavy guns were being lugged into place. Those last two guns were the big eighteen-pounder siege guns that had done the damage as the British army crossed the ford, and now the huge pieces were being emplaced in front of Dodd’s regiment. Elephants pulled the guns into position, then were led away towards the baggage park beyond the village. “How many guns do you reckon, Campbell?” the General asked.
“Eighty-two, sir, not counting the ones by Assaye.”
“Around twenty there, I think. We shall be earning our pay! And their line’s longer than I thought. We shall have to extend.” He was not so much speaking to Campbell as to himself, but now he glanced at the young Scots officer. “Did you count their infantry?”
“Fifteen thousand in the line, sir?” Campbell hazarded.
“And at least as many again in the village,” Wellesley said, snapping his telescope shut, “not to mention a horde of horsemen behind them, but they’ll only count if we meet disaster. It’s the fifteen thousand in front who concern us. Beat them and we beat all.” He made a penciled note in a small black book, then stared again at the enemy line beneath its bright flags. “They did maneuver well! A creditable performance. But do they fight, eh? That’s the nub of it. Do they fight?”
“Sir!” Sharpe called urgently, for, not two hundred paces away, the first enemy horsemen had emerged from the gully with their tulwars and lances bright in the afternoon sun, and now were spurring towards Wellesley.
“Back the way we came,” the General said, “and fairly briskly, I think.”
This was the second time in one day that Sharpe had been pursued by Mahratta cavalry, but the first time he had been mounted on a small native horse and now he was on one of the General’s own chargers and the difference was night and day. The Mahrattas were at a full gallop, but Wellesley and his two companions never went above a canter and still their big horses easily outstripped the frantic pursuit. Sharpe, clinging for dear life to the mare’s pommel, glanced behind after two minutes and saw the enemy horsemen pulling up. So that, he thought, was why officers were willing to pay a small fortune for British and Irish horses.
The three men dropped into the valley, climbed its farther side and Sharpe saw that the British infantry had now advanced from the road to form its line of attack along the low ridge that lay parallel to the road, and the redcoat array looked pitifully small compared to the great enemy host less than a mile to the west. Instead of a line of heavy guns, there was only a scatter of light six-pounder cannon and a single battery of fourteen bigger guns, and to face Pohlmann’s three compoos of fifteen thousand men there were scarcely five thousand red-coated infantry, but Wellesley seemed unworried by the odds. Sharpe did not see how the battle was to be won, indeed he wondered why it was being fought at all, but whenever the doubt made his fears surge he only had to look at Wellesley and take comfort from the General’s serene confidence.
Wellesley rode first to the left of his line where the kilted Highlanders of the 78th waited in line. “You’ll advance in a moment or two, Harness,” he told their Colonel. “Straight ahead! I fancy you’ll find bayonets will be useful. Tell your skirmishers that there are cavalry about, though I doubt you’ll meet them at this end of the line.”
Harness appeared not to hear the General. He sat on a big horse as black as his towering bearskin hat and carried a huge claymore that looked as if it had been killing the enemies of Scotland for a century or more. “It’s the Sabbath, Wellesley,” he finally spoke, though without looking at the General. “’Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work, but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work.’” The Colonel glowered at Wellesley. “Are you sure, man, that you want to fight today?”
“Quite sure, Colonel,” Wellesley answered very equably.
Harness grimaced. “Won’t be the first commandment I’ve broken, so to hell and away with it.” He gave his huge claymore a flourish. “You’ll not need to worry about my rogues, Wellesley, they can kill as well as any man, even if it is a Sunday.”
“I never doubted it.”
“Straight ahead, eh? And I’ll lay the lash on any dog who falters. You hear that, you bastards! I’ll flog you red!”
“I wish you joy of the afternoon, Colonel,” Wellesley said to Harness, then he rode north to speak with his other five battalion commanders. He gave them much the same instructions as he had given Colonel Harness, though because the Madrassi sepoys deployed no skirmishers, he simply warned them that they had one chance of victory and that was to march straight into the enemy fire and, by enduring it, carry their bayonets into the Mahratta ranks. He told the commanding officers of the two sepoy battalions in the second line that they would now need to join the front line. “You’ll incline right,” he told them, “forming between Corben’s 8th and Colonel Orrock’s pickets.” He had hoped to attack in two lines, so that the men behind could reinforce those in front, but the enemy array was too wide and so he would need to throw every infantryman forward in one line. There would be no reserves. The General rode to meet Colonel Wallace who today would command a brigade of his own 74th Highlanders and two sepoy battalions which, with Orrock’s pickets, would form the right side of the attacking force. He warned Wallace of the line’s extension. “I’ll have Orrock incline right to give your sepoys room,” he promised Wallace, “and I’m putting your own regiment on Orrock’s right flank.” Wallace, because he was commanding the brigade, would not lead his own Highlanders who would be under the command of his deputy, Major Swinton. Colonel McCandless had joined his friend Wallace, and Wellesley greeted him. “
I see your man holds their left, McCandless.”
“So I’ve seen, sir.”
“But I don’t wish to tangle with him early on. He’s hard by the village and they’ve made it a stronghold, so we’ll take the right of their line, then swing north and pin the rest against the Juah. You’ll get your chance, McCandless, get your chance.”
“I’m depending on it, sir,” McCandless answered. The Colonel nodded a mute greeting to Sharpe, who then had to follow Wellesley to the ranks of the 74th. “You’ll oblige me, Swinton,” Wellesley said, “by doubling your fellows to the right and taking station beyond Colonel Orrock’s pickets. You’re to form the new right flank. I’ve told Colonel Orrock to move somewhat to his right, so you’ll have a good way to go to make your new position. You understand?”
“Perfectly, sir,” Swinton said. “Orrock will incline right and we double around behind him to form the new flank and sepoys replace us here.”
“Good man!” Wellesley said, then rode on to Colonel Orrock. Sharpe guessed that the General had ordered the 74th to move outside Orrock because he did not trust the nervous Colonel to hold the right flank. Orrock’s contingent of half companies was a small but potent force, but it lacked the cohesion of the men’s parent battalions. “You’re to lead them rightwards,” Wellesley told the red-faced Colonel, “but not too far. You comprehend? Not too far right! Because you’ll find a defended village on your front right flank and it’s a brute. I don’t want any of our men near it until we’ve sent the enemy infantry packing.”
Sharpe's Triumph: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803 Page 28
