And stopped. The slim steel blades of the British officers swept down and the relentless volleys began. Nothing could stand in the way of that musket fire. From right to left along the Battalions the platoon volleys flamed and flickered, a rolling fire that never stopped, the machine-like regularity of trained troops pouring four shots a minute into the dense mass of Frenchmen. The noise rose to the real crescendo of battle, the awesome sound of the ordered volleys and mixed with it the curious ringing as the bullets struck French bayonets. Sharpe looked to his left and saw the South Essex watching. They were too far away for their muskets to be of any use, but he was glad that Simmerson’s raw troops could see a demonstration of how practised firepower won battles.
The drumming went on, the boys banging their instruments frenetically to force the column up the slope and, incredibly, the French tried. The instinct of victory was too strong, too ingrained, and as the front ranks were destroyed by the murderous fire, the men behind struggled over the bodies to be thrown backwards in turn by the relentless bullets. They faced an impossible task. The column was stuck, hunched against the storm, soaking up an incredible punishment but refusing to give in, to accept defeat. Sharpe was amazed, as he had been at Vimeiro, that troops could take such punishment but they did and he watched as the officers tried to organise a new attack. The French, too late, tried to form into line, and he could see the officers waving their swords to lead the rear ranks into the open flanks. Sharpe held his rifle up.
“Come on!”
His men cheered and followed him across the hillside. There was little danger that the French could form line but the appearance of a couple of hundred skirmishers on the flank would deter them. The Germans of the Legion went with Sharpe’s company and they all stopped a hundred paces from the struggling mass of Frenchmen and began their own volleys, more ragged than the ordered fire from the crest, but effective enough to repel the Frenchmen who were bravely trying to form a line. The Germans began fixing bayonets; they knew the column could not stand the fire much longer, and Sharpe yelled at his own men to fix blades. The sound of drums faded. One boy gave a further determined rattle with his sticks, but the distinctive rhythm of the charge faded away and the attack was done. The crest of the hill rippled with light as the 66th fixed bayonets; the volleys died, the British cheered and the French were finished. Broken and smashed by musket fire they did not wait for the bayonet charge. The mass split into small groups of fugitives, the Eagles dropped, the blue ranks broke and ran for the stream.
“Forward!” Sharpe, the German officers, and from the ridge the company officers of the 66th shouted as they led the red-steel-tipped line down the slope. Sharpe looked for the Eagles but they were far ahead, being carried to safety, and he forgot them and led his men diagonally down the hill to cut off the fleeing groups of Frenchmen. It was a time for prisoners, and as the skirmishers cut into the blue mass the Frenchmen threw down their guns and held their hands high. One officer refused to surrender and flickered his blade towards Sharpe, but the huge cavalry sword beat it aside and the man dropped to his knees and held clasped hands towards the Rifleman. Sharpe ignored him. He wanted to get to the stream and stop his men pursuing the French onto the far bank, where reserve Battalions waited to punish the British victors. The mist had almost cleared.
Some Frenchmen stopped at the stream and turned their muskets on the British. A ball plucked at Sharpe’s sleeve, another scorched past his face, but the small group broke and fled as he swept the sword towards them. His boots splashed in the stream; he could hear shots behind him and saw bullets strike the water, but he turned and screamed at his men to stop. He drove them back from the stream, herded them with the prisoners, away from the French reserve troops who waited with loaded muskets on the far bank.
It was done. The first attack beaten and the slope of the Medellin was smothered in bodies that lay in a blue smear from the stream almost to the crest they had failed to reach. There would be another attack, but first each side must count the living and collect the dead. Sharpe looked for Harper and saw, thankfully, that the Sergeant was alive. Lieutenant Knowles was there, grinning broadly, and with his sword still unbloodied.
“What’s the time, Lieutenant?”
Knowles tucked the blade under his arm and opened his watch. “Five minutes after six, sir. Wasn’t that incredible?”
Sharpe laughed. “Just wait. That was nothing.”
Harper ran down the slope towards them and held out a bundle in his hands. “Breakfast, sir?”
“Not garlic sausage?”
Harper grinned. “Just for you.”
Sharpe broke off a length and bit into the pungent, tasty meat. He stretched his arms, felt the tenseness ease in his muscles, and began to feel better. The first round was over and he looked up the littered slope to the single colour of the Battalion. Beneath it was Gibbons, mounted beside his uncle, and Sharpe hoped the Lieutenant had watched the skirmishers and was feeling the fear. Harper saw where he was looking and he saw the expression on his Captain’s face. The Sergeant turned to the men of the company, guarding their prisoners and boasting of their exploits. “All right, this isn’t a harvest bloody festival! Reload your guns. They’ll be back.”
Chapter 22
The battle had flared briefly then died into silence and, as the sun climbed higher and the smoke drifted into nothingness, the Portina valley filled with men, British and French, who came to rescue the wounded and bury the dead. Men who an hour before had struggled desperately to kill each other now chatted and exchanged tobacco for food, and wine for brandy. Sharpe took a dozen men down to the stream to find four men of the Light Company who were missing. They had not died in the skirmish; all had been killed as they climbed back up the slope with their prisoners. The French guns had opened fire but this time with their barrels depressed, and the shells blew apart in the loose ranks of the British trudging up the hill. The men began to run, the French prisoners turned and sprinted for their own lines, but there was no cover from the shelling. Sharpe had watched one iron ball strike a rabbit hole and bounce into the air with smoke spiralling crazily from its fuse. The shell, small enough to pick up with one hand, landed by Gataker. The Rifleman had bent down to pinch out the fuse but he was too late; it exploded, spitting him with its fractured casing and belching smoke and flame as it hurled his corpse backwards. Sharpe had knelt beside him but Gataker was dead; the first of Sharpe’s Riflemen to die since the fighting in the northern mountains of the last winter.
When the guns stopped they were ordered back to bury the dead quickly, and the men scraped shallow holes in the soft earth beside the stream. The French came as well. For a few minutes the troops avoided each other but soon someone made a joke, held out a hand, and within minutes the enemies shook hands, tried on each other’s shakoes, shared the meagre scraps of food and treated each other like long-lost friends rather than sworn enemies. The valley was littered with the remains of battle: unexploded shells, weapons, looted packs, the usual garbage of defeat.
“Sharpe! Captain!” Sharpe turned to see Hogan picking his way through the dead and the wounded. “I’ve been looking for you!” The Engineer slid from his horse and looked around. “Are you all right?”
“I’m all right.” Sharpe accepted Hogan’s offered water-bottle. “How’s Josefina?”
Hogan smiled. “She slept.”
Sharpe looked at the dark rings under the Irishman’s eyes. “But you didn’t?”
Hogan shook his head and then indicated the bodies. “One sleepless night isn’t much to complain about.”
“And Josefina?”
“I think she’s all right. Really, Richard.” Hogan shook his head. “She’s subdued, unhappy. But what would you expect after last night?”
Last night, thought Sharpe. Good God, it was only last night. He turned away and looked at the bloodied water of the Portina stream and at the Frenchmen on the far bank who were excavating a wide shallow hole into which their stripped dead we
re being thrown. He turned back to Hogan. “What’s happening in town?”
“In the town? Oh, you’re worried about her safety?” Sharpe nodded. Hogan took out his snuff box. “Everything’s quiet. They rounded up most of the Spanish and they’re back in their lines. There’s a guard in the town to stop any more looting.”
“So she’s safe?”
Hogan looked at Sharpe’s red-rimmed eyes, at the deep shadows on the face, and nodded. “She’s safe, Richard.” Hogan said no more. Sharpe’s face scared him; a grim face, he thought, like the face of a desperate adventurer who would risk everything on the single fall of a pair of dice. The two men began walking beside the stream, between the bodies, and Hogan thought of the Prince of Wales Dragoon, a Captain with a broken arm, who had called at the house early in the morning. Josefina had been surprised to see him, but pleased, and told Hogan that she had met the cavalry officer in the town the day before. The Dragoon had taken over Hogan’s vigil but this, the Engineer thought, was no time to tell Sharpe about Captain Claud Hardy. Hogan had liked the man, had taken immediately to Hardy’s laughing description of how he had fallen from his horse, and the Irishman could see how relieved Josefina was to have someone sitting beside her who told her jokes, talked blithely of balls and banquets, hunting and horses, but who shrewdly understood whatever horrors still lurked in her memories of the night before. Hardy was good for Josefina, Hogan knew, but this was not the time to tell that to Sharpe.
“Richard?”
“Yes?”
“Have you done anything about… ?” Hogan broke off.
“Gibbons and Berry?”
“Yes.” Hogan stepped aside and led his horse away from a Frenchman dragging a naked corpse over the grass. Sharpe waited until the man had gone.
“Why?”
Hogan shrugged. “I was thinking.” He spoke hesitantly. “I was hoping that after a night to think about it you would be careful. It could destroy your career. A duel, a fight. Be careful.” Hogan was virtually pleading. Sharpe stopped and turned to him.
“I promise you one thing. I will do nothing to Lieutenant Berry.”
Hogan thought for a moment. Sharpe’s face was unreadable but finally the Irishman nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s a good thing. But you’re still determined about Gibbons?”
Sharpe smiled. “Lieutenant Gibbons will soon join Lieutenant Berry.” He turned away and began walking up the slope. Hogan ran after him.
“You mean?”
“Yes. Berry’s dead. Tell Josefina that, will you?”
Hogan felt an immense sadness, not for Berry, who had probably deserved whatever Sharpe had done to him, but for Sharpe, who saw all of life as one immense battle and had equipped himself to fight it with an unparalleled ferocity. “Be careful, Richard.”
“I will. I promise.”
“When will we see you?” Hogan dreaded that Sharpe would walk into Josefina’s room and find Hardy there.
“I don’t know.” Sharpe indicated the waiting French army. “There’s a hell of a fight still to come and I suspect we’ll all have to stay on the field till one side goes home. Maybe tonight. Probably tomorrow. I don’t know.”
Bugles split the valley, calling the troops back to their positions, and Hogan gathered his reins in his hand. The two men watched as British and French soldiers shook hands and slapped each other’s backs before the killing restarted. Hogan heaved himself into the saddle. “I’ll tell her about Berry, Richard. Be careful, we don’t want to lose you.” He put spurs to his horse and cantered beside the stream, back towards Talavera.
Sharpe walked up the slope of the Medellin with his men as they counted the spoils they had collected from the dead. He himself had found nothing but as he walked up the hill he knew that there would be richer pickings on the field before the sun fell; there was an Eagle to be plucked.
The morning crept on. The two armies faced each other, the cavalry chafing that there were no broken infantry to slaughter, the artillery piling their ammunition to break the infantry, while the infantry sat on the grass and made up their ammunition and cleaned the locks of their muskets. No-one seemed to be in a hurry. The first attack had been repulsed, and now the French were doubly determined to break the small British army in front of them. Through his telescope Sharpe watched the blue Battalions moving sluggishly into place, Regiment after Regiment, Brigade after Brigade, until between the Pajar and the Cascajal he could see more than thirty Eagles gathering for the attack. Forrest joined him and smiled nervously as he took the proffered telescope.
“Are they getting ready, Sharpe?”
Forrest scanned the French line. It was obvious what was about to happen. On the Cascajal the gunners were levering the pieces round so that they could fire at the troops to the right of the South Essex, at the Legion and at the Guards. Opposite those Regiments was gathering a vast horde of enemy Battalions. The French had failed to take the Medellin, by night or day, so now they were planning a hammer blow of such weight that no troops in the world could withstand the fury and intensity of their attack. Behind the French infantry Sharpe could see impatient cavalry waiting to pour through the gap and slaughter the defeated British. The day was gathering its strength, pausing before the carnage, readying itself for the emphatic demonstration of French superiority that would destroy Britain’s army, swat it contemptuously aside, and to that end, at one o’clock, the French guns opened fire again.
Chapter 23
Sir Henry Simmerson had hardly moved all morning. He. had watched the repulse of the first attack but, apart from the Light Company, the South Essex had not been needed; now, Sir Henry knew, things would be very different. The eastern side of the Portina was filled with French troops, Battalion after Battalion, preparing to come forward in the inevitable columns, and Sir Henry had silently inspected them with his telescope. Fifteen thousand men were about to launch themselves against the centre of the British position and, beyond them, another fifteen thousand were already beginning to approach the Pajar and the network of obstacles that sheltered the Spanish. To Sir Henry’s right the four Battalions of the King’s German Legion, the Coldstream and the Third Guards waited for the attack but Sir Henry knew that the battle was lost. No troops, not even the vaunted Legion and the Guards, could stand up to the overwhelming numbers that waited for the signal to begin their massive approach.
Sir Henry grunted and shifted in his saddle. He had been right all along. It had been madness to let Wellesley have an army, it was madness to fight in this God-forsaken, heathen country when the British should more properly be fighting behind the walls of Flemish towns. He looked again at the French. Any fool could see what was about to happen: that the huge columns would punch through the thin British line like an angry bull going through a matchwood fence. Talavera would be cut off, the Spanish hunted like rats through the streets, but the troops on the Medellin, like his own Battalion, were in a worse position. At least the troops near Talavera stood a chance of reaching the bridge and beginning the long retreat to ignominy, but for the South Essex and for the other Battalions the only fate was to be cut off and the inevitable surrender.
“We will not surrender.”
Lieutenant Gibbons edged his horse closer to his uncle. It had not occurred to him that they might surrender, but he had long known that the easiest way to stay in Sir Henry’s favour was to offer agreement. “Quite right, sir.”
Simmerson pushed his telescope shut. “It will be a disaster, Christian, a disaster. The army is about to be destroyed.”
His nephew agreed and Simmerson reflected, for the thousandth time, what a waste of talent it was that Gibbons was only a Lieutenant. He had never heard anything but military sense from his nephew, the boy understood all his problems, agreed with his solutions, and if Sir Henry had found it temporarily impossible to give his nephew a deserved Captaincy, then at least he could keep him away from that damned Sharpe and use him as a trusted adviser and confidant. A new Battalion appeared in the French
line, almost opposite the South Essex, and Simmerson opened the telescope and looked at them.
“That’s strange.”
“Sir?” Simmerson handed the telescope to his nephew. The fresh Battalion marching from behind the Cascajal was dressed in white jackets with red turnbacks and collars. Simmerson had never seen troops like them.
“Major Forrest!”
“Sir?”
Simmerson pointed to the new troops who were forming a column. “Do you know who they are?”
“No, sir.”
“Find out.”
The Colonel watched Forrest spur his horse down the line. “Going to see Sharpe. Thinks he knows it all.” But not for long, thought Simmerson; this battle would see the end of military adventurers like Sharpe and Wellesley and return the army to prudent men, officers of sense, men like Sir Henry Simmerson. He turned and watched the shells exploding among the KGL and the Guards. The Battalions were lying flat, and most of the French shots exploded harmlessly or bounced over their heads. Every now and then, though, there was a puff of smoke in the centre of the ranks, and Simmerson could see the Sergeants pulling the mangled dead from the line and closing up the gaps. The skirmish line was forward, lying in the long grass by the stream, a futile gesture in the face of the imminent French attack. Forrest came back. “Major?”
“Captain Sharpe tells me they’re from the German Division, sir. Thinks they’re probably the Dutch Battalions.”
Simmerson laughed. “Germans fighting Germans, eh? Let ‘em kill each other!” Forrest did not laugh.
“Captain Sharpe asks that the Light Company go forward, sir. He thinks the Dutchmen will attack this part of the line.”
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