Sharpe's Eagle

by Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe glanced at Hogan, who raised his eyebrows impishly. All week the Irishman had been determinedly cheerful about Josefina, and Sharpe, with three Generals watching him, had no option but to smile and give a modest shrug.

  “Fortune favours the brave, eh, Sharpe?” Hill grinned.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He leaned back and let the conversation flow on. He missed her. It was only just over two weeks since the night he had followed her from the inn courtyard into the darkness by the stream, and since then he had spent only five nights with her. And now there would be no more. He had known as soon as he had reached Talavera, on the morning after the battle, and she had kissed him and smiled at him while in the background Agostino packed the leather saddlebags and folded up the dresses he had not had time to see her wear. She had walked with him through the town, clinging onto his elbow, looking up into his face as though she were a child. “It would never have lasted, Richard.”

  “I know.” He believed otherwise.

  “Do you?”

  She wanted him to say goodbye gracefully, and it was the least he could do. He told her about Gibbons; about the final look before the bayonet took its revenge. She held his arm tight. “I’m sorry, Richard.”

  “For Gibbons?”

  “No. That you had to do it. It was my fault, I was a fool.”

  “No.” It was strange, he thought, how when lovers say goodbye they take all the blame. “It wasn’t your fault. I promised to protect you. I didn’t.”

  They walked into a small, sunlit square and stared at a convent which formed one side of the plaza. Fifteen hundred British wounded were in the building, and the army surgeons were working on the first floor. Screams came clearly from the windows and, with them, a grisly flow of severed limbs that piled up beside a tree: an ever growing heap of arms and legs that was guarded by two bored privates whose job was to chase away the hungry dogs from the mangled flesh. Sharpe shivered at the sight and prayed the soldiers’ prayer; that he would be delivered from the surgeons with their serrated blades and blood-stiff aprons.

  Josefina had plucked his elbow and they turned away from the convent. “I have a present for you.”

  He looked down at her. “I have nothing for you.”

  She seemed embarrassed. “You owe Mr Hogan twenty guineas?”

  “You’re not giving me money!” He let his anger show.

  Josefina shook her head. “I’ve already paid him. Don’t be angry!” He had tried to pull away but she clung on. “There’s nothing you can do about it, Richard. I paid him. You kept pretending you had enough money, but I knew you were borrowing.” She gave him a tiny paper packet and did not look at him because she knew he was upset.

  Inside the paper was a ring, made of silver, and on the boss was engraved an eagle. Not a French eagle, holding a thunderbolt, but an eagle all the same. She looked up at him, pleased at his expression. “I bought it in Oropesa. For you.”

  Sharpe had not known what to say. He had stammered his thanks and now, sitting with the Generals, he let his fingers feel the silver ring. They had walked back to the house and, waiting outside, there had been a cavalry officer with two spare horses. “Is that him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s rich?”

  She had smiled. “Very. He’s a good man, Richard. You’d like him.”

  Sharpe had laughed. “I doubt it.” He wanted to tell her how much he would not like Claud Hardy, with his stupid sounding name and his rich uniform and his thorough­bred horses. The Dragoon had watched them as she looked up at Sharpe.

  “I can’t stay with the army, Richard.”So you’re going back to Lisbon?“

  She nodded. “We’re not going to Madrid, are we?” He shook his head. “Well, it has to be Lisbon.” She smiled at him. “He has a house in Belem, a big one. I’m sorry.”Don’t be.“

  “I can’t follow an army, Richard.” She was pleading for understanding.

  “I know. But armies follow you, yes?” It was a clumsy attempt at gallantry, and it had pleased her, but now it was time to part and he wanted her to stay. He did not know what to say. “Josefina? I’m sorry.”

  She touched his arm arid there was the gleam of tears in her eyes. She blinked them away and forced herself to sound happy. “One day, Richard, you will fall in love with the right girl? You promise?”

  He had not watched her walk to the Dragoon but instead turned away to rejoin the company in the stench of the dead on the battlefield.

  “Captains shouldn’t marry.” Crauford thumped the table and Sharpe jumped. “Isn’t that true?”

  Sharpe did not reply. He suspected Crauford was right, and he determined, again, to thrust away the memory of Josefina. She was on her way to Lisbon, to the big house, to live with a man who was to join the Lisbon garrison and live a life of dancing and diplomacy. Damn all of it. He drank his wine, reached for the bottle, and forced himself to listen to the conversation which was now as gloomy as his thoughts. They were talking of the fifteen hundred wounded men in the convent who would have to be abandoned to the care of the Spanish. Hill was peering worriedly at Wellesley. “Will Cuesta look after them?”

  “I wish I could say ”yes“.” Wellesley sipped his wine. “The Spanish have failed us in every promise. It was not easy to leave our wounded to their care but we have no choice, gentlemen, no choice.”

  Hill shook his head. “The retreat will not be received well in England.”

  “Damn England!” Wellesley spoke with asperity, his eyes suddenly alive with anger. “I know what England will say; that once again we have been driven from Spain, and so we have, gentlemen, so we have!” He leaned back in his chair and Sharpe could see the tiredness on his face. The other officers were still, listening intently, and like Sharpe they could see in Wellesley’s face the difficulty of the decision he had taken. “But this time—„ the General ran his finger round the wine glass so that it rang—„this time we have been driven out, not by the French, but by our allies.” He let the sarcasm come through on the word. “A starving army, gentlemen, is worse than no army. If our allies cannot feed us then we must go where we can feed ourselves and we will come back, I promise you that, but we will come back on our terms and not on the Spanish terms.” There were murmurs of agreement round the table. Wellesley sipped his wine. “The Spanish have failed us everywhere. They promised us food and delivered none. They prom­ised to shield us from Soult’s northern army, and now I find that they did not. Soult, gentlemen, is behind us and unless we move now we will find ourselves a surrounded and starving army simply because we believed General Cuesta and his promises. Now he has promised to look after our wounded.” Wellesley shook his head. “I know what will happen. He will insist on advancing to meet the French, he will be thrashed, and the town will be aban­doned to the enemy.” He shrugged. “I am convinced, gentlemen, that they will treat our wounded better than our allies.”

  There was silence round the table. The candles flickered and shimmered their reflections on the polished wood. From somewhere, far away, there came the sound of music but it faded with the breeze beyond the heavy curtains. And what happens to Josefina now? Sharpe filled his glass with wine and passed the bottle to Hill. If Wellesley was right, and he was, then in a matter of days the French would be masters of Talavera and the British army would be well on its way back to Portugal and probably to Lisbon.

  Sharpe knew that he wanted her still and wondered what would happen if the swirling currents of war brought them together again.

  A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts and he watched as a Staff Captain entered and gave Wellesley a sealed paper. The officers talked, inventing topics of conversation so that Wellesley could open the paper and talk to the Captain in some privacy. Hill was telling Sharpe about the Drury Lane Theatre. Did he know it had been burned down in February? Sharpe nodded and smiled, made the right noises, but he looked round the table, at the three Generals, at the aristocrats, and he thought of the foundling home and prisons he had kno
wn as a child. He remembered the foetid barracks where two men shared a cot, the vicious beatings, the unprincipled struggle just to stay alive. And now this? The candles danced in the draught, the red wine was rich and deep, and he wondered where the road they must take in tomorrow’s cold dawn would lead. If Bonaparte was to be defeated, then tomor­row’s march could last for years before it ended at the gates of Paris.

  The Captain left and Wellesley tapped the table. The conversation tailed away and they looked at their hook­nosed General, who lifted the paper into the air. “The Austrians have made peace with Bonaparte.” He waited for the exclamations to die down. “Effectively, gentlemen, we are on our own. We can expect more French troops, maybe even Napoleon himself, and even more enemies at home.” Sharpe thought of Simmerson, already on the way home, planning to conspire in Parliament and in the smoking rooms of London against Wellesley and the British army in the Peninsula. “But, gentlemen, we have beaten three Marshals this year so let the rest come on!”

  The officers pounded the table and raised their glasses. In the town a clock struck eight o’clock and, abruptly, Sir Arthur Wellesley got to his feet and held up his wineglass. “I see the cigars are here and the evening is getting on. We leave early so, gentlemen, I give you the King.”

  Sharpe scraped his chair back, took the glass, and joined in the murmuring. “The King, God bless him.”

  He was sitting down again, looking forward to the brandy and one of the General’s cigars, when he noticed that Wellesley was still standing. He straightened up, cursing his lack of social manners and hoping that the others would not see his blushing. Wellesley waited for him. “I remember one other battle, gentlemen, which almost matched our recent victory in carnage. After Assaye I had to thank a young Sergeant; today we salute the same man, a Captain.” He raised his glass to Sharpe, who was convulsed with embarrassment. He watched the officers smile at him, raise their glasses to him, and he looked down at the silver eagle. He wished Josefina could see him at this moment, that she could hear Wellesley’s toast. He only half heard it himself.

  “Gentlemen. I give you Sharpe’s Eagle.”

  Historical Note

  Sir Arthur Wellesley (who was soon to become, thanks to the events of July 27th and 28th, 1809, Viscount Welling­ton of Talavera) lost 5365 dead and wounded in the battle. About 15 percent of those casualties were killed outright on the field. French casualties numbered 7268 and there were also about 600 to add to the ‘butcher’s bill’. The French also lost seventeen guns but, alas, no Eagle. The first Eagle to be captured by the British in the Peninsular War was won by Ensign Keogh and Sergeant Masterman of the 87th, an Irish Regiment, at the Batde of Barossa on March 5th, 1811. Keogh died of his wounds, but Master­man survived and was rewarded with a commission, thus joining the small number of British officers, perhaps one in twenty, who had risen from the ranks. I hope that the ghosts of Keogh and Masterman, as well as the modern successors of the 87th, the Royal Irish Rangers, will forgive me for preempting their achievement.

  Masterman was made into an Ensign, the lowest officer rank of Britain’s army in 1809. Above him, in a Battalion, there would be Lieutenants, ten Captains, two Majors, and a Lieutenant Colonel in command. That was on paper. A Battalion was supposed to consist of a thousand fighting men, but disease and casualties, added to the shortage of recruits, meant that Battalions often went into battle with only half their numbers of men and officers.

  In Sharpe’s Eagle the South Essex, a fictional Regiment, is sometimes described as a ‘Regiment’ and sometimes as a ‘Battalion’. A Regiment was an administrative unit and usually consisted of at least two Battalions, the basic fighting unit. There were a few Regiments, like the imaginary South Essex, that were single-Battalion Regi-ments, and that is why, in the novel, the two words are used interchangeably.

  Perhaps the strangest feature of Britain’s Napoleonic army, at least to modern readers, is the purchase system. A rich man, as long as he had served a minimum period in his rank, could buy promotion. Merit had nothing to do with his advancement, only the availability of cash. The system was grossly unfair and led to great resentment, but it also enabled some soldiers, like Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, to rise to high rank early enough in his career to become Britain’s most successful General. The French, of course, promoted purely by merit, yet they were never to defeat Wellington.

  There is no such place as Valdelacasa on the River Tagus, nor was there ever a South Essex Regiment, but beyond those inventions the campaign of Talavera hap­pened much as described in the novel. In the account of the battle only the adventures of the South Essex and the capture of the Eagle are fictitious; there was a Dutch Battalion fighting with the French, and I took the liberty of moving them from their position opposite the Spanish fortifications and offered them as a sacrifice to Sharpe and Harper instead. The account of Cuesta’s army, sadly, is true; they did run away on the eve of the battle, frightened by their own volley, and within days General Cuesta was to lead them to total defeat. Talavera was abandoned to the French, who, as Wellesley predicts in the novel, treated the British wounded with kindness and consideration. The ineffectiveness of the Spanish army was more than com­pensated for by the bravery of the Guérilleros, the Spanish civilian ‘freedom fighters’, who caused Napoleon to liken Spain to a ‘running sore’ on his armies.

  Much of the detail in the book is taken from contempo­rary letters and diaries. Scenes like the growing pile of arms and legs outside the convent in Talavera defy imagination and come straight from eyewitness accounts. In addition to those I drew heavily on the scholarship of Michael Glover’s The Peninsular War, Lady Elizabeth Long­ford’s Wellington: The Years of the Sword, and the American historian Jac Weller’s Wellington in the Peninsula. To those three authors, and to the kind people of Talavera who showed me the battlefield, I acknowledge a special debt.

  Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper are, sadly, inven­tions. I hope that today’s Royal Green Jackets, who once marched as the 95th Rifles (and as the Royal American Rifles), will not be ashamed of them or their picaresque adventures that will, eventually, lead them to Waterloo and Napoleon himself.