Sharpe's Company

by Bernard Cornwell

  He was still fifty yards from the Trinidad, but he could see that its breach was no better than the Santa Maria. The foot of the breach was smeared with bodies, its approaches bare of the living, though small groups of men dashed from the shadows of the ravelin and screamed defiance as they clawed at the stones and were blasted away. Bugles sounded to the right, the shouts of officers and Sergeants, and there was the South Essex! He saw them flowing up the glacis in close column and his Company, Rymer’s Company, lined the ditch and fired their ineffectual muskets at the wall’s height while the other men scrambled at the ladders, flung themselves on hay-bags, frantic in their haste. Men bunched at the ditch’s edge, the guns hammered from the wall, their hot breath hard on the glacis, and Sharpe saw the Battalion shudder like a wounded thing, reform, smash itself under new impacts. But they were over, scrambling in the ditch and he saw Windham, his cocked hat gone, scything his sword towards the breach, and new guns fired until the sound of the city was like a weight of solid thunder.

  They died in dozens, but still they went towards the breach, and more men came from the ditch, from other Regiments, and they tried, and pushed, and fought, and scrambled up the stone till it seemed they had to win for there was not enough shot in the world to kill so many men. The gunners rammed and fired, loaded and fired, and the powder kegs banged down the slope, and the shells were thrown, fuses lit, so the dark explosions splintered the men, and they died and it was done. The dead choked the living, the breach had won. A few men, very few, still lived and struggled upwards, shredding their hands on the nailed boards laid down the upper slope, and Sharpe saw Leroy, sword in hand, cigar inevitably between his teeth, look up into the night, so slow, and then he fell, tumbling, fell, screaming into the ditch. A last man reached the sword blades, the very top, he clawed at them, blood on his hands, and then he shook, quivered, filled with a dozen bullets and the highest man, dead on the Trinidad, slid down, blood on stone, till he was caught.

  The survivors were behind the ravelin, digging into the dead, and the French mocked them. ‘Come to Badajoz, English.’

  Sharpe had not been with them. He knelt, fired once at the wall, and watched the death of the Battalion; Collett, Jack Collett, neck severed by a round shot, even Sterritt, poor, worried Sterritt, a hero now, killed in the ditch at Badajoz.

  ‘Sir?’ A voice curiously calm in the torment of sound. ‘Sir?’

  He looked up. Daniel Hagman, strange in red coat, stood over him. He stood up. ‘Daniel?’

  ‘You’d better come, sir.’

  He went towards the Light Company, close to him now and still on the glacis, and he saw in the ditch where men had drowned in the deep water. The black humps of their bodies broke up the ripples in red and dark patterns. The guns were quieter now, saving their anger for the fools who would come from behind the ravelin. The breaches were empty of all but the dead. The huge fires roared, greedy for the lumber that was tossed from the walls, and an army was dying between their flames.

  ‘Sir?’ Lieutenant Price, his eyes stark with the horror, ran to Sharpe. ‘Sir?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your Company, sir.’

  ‘Mine?’

  Price pointed. Rymer was dead, a tiny wound, an insignificant wound, red on his pale forehead. He lay backwards on the slope, arms wide, staring at nothing, and Sharpe shuddered when he remembered how he had wanted this Company, and thus this man’s death, and now it was given to him.

  So easy. It was all done? Out of the horror, the pulverizing fire and iron that smothered the south-east corner of Badajoz, death had given Sharpe back what had once been his. He could stay on the glacis, firing at the night, safe from the carnage, a Captain again, the Company his, and men would account him a hero because he had lived throughBadajoz.

  A musket ball whirred past his head, making him jerkback, and there was Harper, the red jacket discarded, huge in a blood-stained shirt, and the Irish face was stone hard ‘What do we do, sir?’

  Do? There was only one thing to do. A man did not go into a breach to fight for a company, not even a Captaincy. Sharpe looked over the ditch, over the scoured ravelin and there, untouched by blood, was the third breach, the new breach, the unattacked breach. A man went first into a breach for pride, nothing else, just pride. A poor reason, paltry even, but enough, perhaps, to win a city. He looked up at Harper. ‘Sergeant. We’re going to Badajoz.’

  Chapter 24

  Captain Robert Knowles crossed the bridge by the ruined mill and wondered at the calmness of the night. Beneath him the Rivillas stream whispered from the dam, ahead the huge castle blotted out the sky and, in the darkness, it seemed impossible that men could dare hope escalade the giant bastion. Wind rustled the new foliage in the trees that grew precariously on the steep hill that led up to the castle. Behind Knowles came his Company, carrying two ladders, and they paused with him at the foot of the slope, their excitement suppressed, and peered up at the looming walls. ‘Bloody high!’ A voice came from the rear rank.

  ‘Quiet!’

  The Engineer officer who was guiding the Battalion was nervous and Knowles became annoyed at the man’s fidgeting. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘We’re too far over. We must go right.’

  They could not go right. There were too many troops crowding at the hill’s base, and it would cause chaos if the battalions tried to re-align themselves in the darkness. Knowles shook his head irritably. ‘We can’t. What’s the problem?’

  ‘That.’ The Engineer pointed to his left. A huge shadow sprang from the dark rock, high over them, a shadow with a crenellated outline. The bastion of San Pedro. Knowles’s Colonel appeared beside him. ‘What’s the problem?’

  Knowles pointed to the bastion, but the Colonel dismissed it. ‘We must do what we can. Are you all right, Robert?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The Colonel turned to the Light Company and raised his voice a little above a whisper. ‘Enjoy yourselves, lads!’

  There was a growling from the ranks. They had been told that this attack was merely a diversion, not intended to succeed, but then General Picton had damned Wellington’s eyes and said that the Third Division did not make fake attacks. The Third Division would go all the way, or not at all, and the men were determined to prove Picton right. Knowles, for the first time, felt the seeds of doubt. They must climb a hundred feet of almost sheer rock, and then put ladders against a wall that looked forty feet high, and all the time under the guns of the defenders. He thrust the doubts away, trying, as he always did, to emulate Sharpe, but it was difficult, faced with the enormity of the castle, to feel confident. His worries were interrupted by hurrying footsteps and one of Picton’s aides was calling for the Colonel.

  ‘Here!’

  ‘Go, sir! And the General wishes you God speed.’

  ‘I’d rather he wished me a case of his claret.’ The Colonel slapped Knowles’s shoulder. ‘Off you go.’

  Knowles could not draw his sabre. He needed both hands to cling to the rock hill, to pull himself up while his feet found desperate footholds. His Captaincy was heavy on his shoulders. He hurried, wanting to stay ahead of his men because he knew Sharpe would lead, and he imagined, as he climbed, the first heavy musket balls plummeting down to crush in the top of his skull. His men seemed to be so noisy! The ladders scraped on rock, on tree-trunks; the musket stocks banged on stone, the feet clattered pebbles loose, but still the castle was silent, the great shadow unrelieved by the gun flames. Knowles found himself thinking of Teresa, inside the city, and hoping, against all the evidence of the massive walls, that he could reach her first. He wanted to do something for Sharpe.

  ‘Faster!’ The shout was from one of his Sergeants, and Knowles, his thoughts elsewhere, snapped his head back and stared up. High above him, falling, falling, was the first carcass. The fire roared in the sky; it tumbled end over end, shedding sparks, and he watched, fascinated, as it plunged into a thorn tree that grew close by. The tree flared into flame and the first mu
skets banged from the castle wall. They seemed far away.

  ‘Come on!’

  More fireballs and carcasses fell from the ramparts; some lodged in the narrow space by the wall’s foot, others fell in streaming shreds of fire down the rock slope and took men with them, screaming as the flames captured them, but Knowles climbed on and his men pressed behind. ‘Faster! Faster!’

  A cannon crashed out its load from the San Pedro bastion and canister whipped through the trees and crackled on stone. There was a cry behind him, a shout of despair, and he knew a man had gone, but there was no time to worry about casualties, just to scramble upwards, the going easier as they neared the top, and Knowles felt the excitement of battle that would carry him past fear and into action.

  ‘Keep going!’ The Colonel, surprisingly agile for his years, overtook him and reached the space at the wall’s base first. He leaned down and helped Knowles up. ‘Get the ladders!’

  The musket balls smacked down, but the shot was an awkward one for the defenders; they had to lean right over the battlements and shoot straight down, almost at random, into the flaring light at the bottom of the wall. The cannons were far more dangerous, shooting from the San Pedro and from a smaller bastion to Knowles’s right, a bastion jutting from the castle wall. Canister scraped the wall, promising death to men on ladders, but that was a fear that had to be ignored.

  ‘Here!’ The first ladder loomed over the rock slope and Knowles ran to it, pulled it towards the wall, and more men were manhandling it, swinging it upwards, until it thumped against the battlements. The Colonel waved them on. ‘Good lads! The first one over gets the best whore in Badajoz!’

  They cheered and the Colonel dropped, felled by a bullet from above, but they hardly noticed. ‘Me first! Me first!’ Knowles pushed through, boyish in his excitement. He knew that Sharpe would lead, and so must he, and he scrambled up the rungs, wondering what a fool he was, but his legs pumped automatically and it occurred to him, with sudden horror, that he had not even drawn his sabre. He looked up, saw the arms of defenders pushing at the ladder and he began to fall sideways. He shouted a warning, let go, and thumped down into a press of men. Miraculously not a single bayonet touched him. He picked himself up.

  ‘Are you hurt, sir?’ A Sergeant looked worriedly at him.

  ‘No! Get it up!’ The ladder was not broken. Another canister splintered on the wall, the men swung the ladder again and this time Knowles was not near enough to be first and he watched as his men began climbing. The first was shot from above, thrown clear by the second man, more pushed behind, and then the whole ladder with its human cargo disintegrated in splinters and flesh as a barrel-full of grapeshot, fired from the San Pedro bastion, found a full target. Stones were being hurled from the castle parapets that crashed into knots of men and bounced down the rock face. Suddenly Knowles’s Company seemed to be halved in strength, he felt the frustrations of defeat and looked frantically for the second ladder. It had gone, back down the slope, and then there were voices shouting at him. ‘Back! Back!’ He recognized his Major’s voice, saw the face, and he jumped into the shadows and left behind the broken ladders and bodies of the first attack beneath the triumphant shouts of the enemy.

  ‘Any news from the casde?’

  ‘No, my Lord.’ The Generals fidgeted. In front of them the south-east corner of Badajoz flickered with bright fire. The two soaring bastions, scarred by the unconquered breaches, framed the flames, fed them, and the smoke boiled scarlet into the night. To the right, and seemingly far away, more fire glowed above the silhouetted castle and Wellington, cloaked and gloved, tugged nervously at his reins. ‘Picton won’t do it, y’know. He won’t. ‘

  An aide-de-camp leaned closer. ‘My Lord?’ ‘Nothing. Nothing.’ He was irritable, helpless. He knew what was happening in the great pit of fire ahead. His men were marching into it and could not get out the other side. He was appalled. The walls were three times bigger than Ciudad Rodrigo, the fight unimaginably worse, but he had to have the city. Kemmis, from the Fourth Division, pushed in by his side.

  ‘My Lord?’

  ‘General?’

  ‘Do we reinforce, sir?’ Kemmis was hatless, his face smeared with dirt as if he had been firing a musket himself. ‘Do we send in more men?”

  Wellington hated sieges. He could be patient when he had to be, when he was enticing the enemy into a trap, but a siege was not like that. Inevitably this moment had to come, when the troops had to be ordered into the one, small, deadly point, and there was no escaping it unless the enemy was simply starved into submission and there had been no time for that. He had to have this city.

  Sharpe! For a second the General was tempted to damn Sharpe, who had assured him the breaches were practical. But Wellington suppressed the thought. The Rifleman had said what Wellington had wanted him to say and even if he had not, then Wellington would still have sent in the troops. Sharpe! If Wellington had one thousand Sharpes then the city might be his. He listened gloomily to the sounds of battle. The French cheers were loud and he knew they were beating him. He could withdraw now and leave the dead and wounded to be recovered under a flag of truce, or he could send in more men and hope to turn the battle. He had to have the city! Otherwise there could be no march on Spain this summer, no advance to the Pyrenees, and Napoleon would be given another year of power. ‘Send them in!”

  Feed the monster, he thought, that was grinding his army, his fine army, but the monster must be fed until it gave up. He could make up the shattered battalions, the reinforcements would come, but without Badajoz there was no victory. Damn the Engineers. There were miners in Britain, hundreds in Cornwall alone, but none with the army, no Corps of Sappers who could have tunneled under the bastions, packed the cavern with powder, and blown the French to kingdom come. He found himself wondering whether he should have slaughtered the garrison at Ciudad Rodrigo, whether he could have lined them up in tens and shot them, then left the bodies to rot in the town ditch so that any Frenchmen who chose to contest another breach could only expect the terrible vengeance of the English. He could not have ordered it, any more than he would order it here if they won this night. If.

  He turned irritably towards his aides. His face was long and harsh-shadowed in the torchlight cast from Lord March’s hand. ‘Any news of the Fifth?’

  The answering voice was low, anxious not to add to the bad news. ‘They should be attacking now, my Lord, General Leith sends his apologies. ‘

  ‘God damn his apologies. Why can’t he be on time?’ His horse shied, struck by a spent musket bullet, and the General soothed it. He could expect nothing of the escalades. Leith was late and the garrison at San Vincente would be warned, while Picton was hoping for the moon if he thought he could lay his long ladders against the castle wall. Victory, he knew, would have to be carved here, at the south-east corner, where flame and smoke churned over the ghastly ditch. Distantly, like a reminder of another world echoing in the depths of hell, the Cathedral bell tolled eleven, and Wellington looked up into the blackness and then back at the flames. ‘One more hour, gentlemen, one more hour.’ And then what, he wondered? Failure? Hell was no place for miracles.

  On the walls the French gunners slackened their fire. They had drowned the ditch in death and now they listened to the screams and moans that came from below. The attacks seemed to have stopped, so the gunners stretched, soaked their faces with water splashed from the buckets used to wet the sponges, and watched as fresh ammunition was brought up the ramp. They did not expect much more effort from the British. A few men had climbed the breaches, one was even impaled on the sabre blades, but it was a hopeless effort. Poor bastards! There was no joy any longer in shouting insults. A sergeant, leather-skinned and hard, leaned on a gun wheel and flinched. ‘Christ! I wish they’d stop screaming.’

  A few men had lit surreptitious cigars that they hid from their officers by leaning deep into the gun embrasures. One man wriggled forward, past the acrid muzzle, until he could peer down into th
e ditch. The Sergeant called wearily to him. ‘Come back! Those Rifle bastards will get you.’

  The man stayed. He peered down, far down, at the writhing horror in the ditch. He pulled himself back. ‘If they get in they’ll bloody slaughter us!’

  The Sergeant laughed. ‘They won’t get in, lad, not a chance. In two hours you’ll be tucked in bed with that horrid thing you call a woman.’

  ‘You’re jealous, Sergeant.’

  ‘Me? I’d rather go to bed with this.’ The Sergeant slapped the barrel of his gun. The wreathed ‘N’, Napoleon’s symbol, was searing hot. ‘Now get back here, lad, put that bloody cigar out, and look smart. I might need you, God help me. ‘

  A call from the observation point. ‘Make ready!’

  The Sergeant sighed and stood up. Another tiny group of idiot British were running towards the Santa Maria breach and his gun covered the approach. He watched them down the length of his glistening gun, saw them slip on blood, stumble on stone, and then they were in his target zone. He stood to one side, touched the match to the powder-filled reed, and the green-jacketed men were beaten into fragments. It was so easy. The Sergeant bellowed orders for the reloading, listened to the hiss as the sponge seared down the bore, and was glad that he was at Badajoz this night. The French had begun to fear this Lord Wellington, to turn him into a bogey man to frighten their sleep, and it was pleasing to show that the English Lord could be beaten. The Sergeant grinned as the bulbous lumps of canvas-wrapped grapeshot were rammed into the cannon. This night Wellington would taste defeat, utter defeat, and the whole Empire would rejoice. This night belonged to France, only to France, and Britain's hopes were being buried where they belonged; in a ditch for the dead.