Sharpe 3-Book Collection 4: Sharpe's Escape, Sharpe's Fury, Sharpe's Battle

by Bernard Cornwell

  Henry Wellesley was also a most likeable man, probably the most amiable of the Wellesley brothers. I fear, by giving him an inappropriate love affair, I have traduced his memory. It is, nevertheless, true that he had suffered in love. His wife had left him for Henry Paget, 2nd Earl of Anglesey who, as the Marquess of Anglesey, was to lead Wellington's cavalry at Waterloo. The divorces of Henry Wellesley and Henry Paget (who divorced his first wife to marry Wellesley's wife) caused a great scandal, and I have no evidence whatsoever that Henry Wellesley was the cause of any more scandal. He was, however, an extremely able ambassador, and Britain needed such a man because the political situation in Spain (which meant, in 1811, Cádiz) was explosive. Britain and Spain, for reasons cited in the novel, were awkward allies, and there were influential Spaniards who wished to end the alliance and seek a rapprochement with Napoleon. That they failed is very much because of Henry Wellesley's calm wisdom and, of course, because of Sir Thomas Graham's victory at Barrosa.

  The admiral, like Brigadier Moon and Caterina, is a fictional character. The action described at the start of the book, the attack on the pontoon bridge, is also fictional, though it is based on a very similar (and rather more successful) assault made by General Hill on the bridge over the Tagus at Almarez in May 1812. The attack on the fire rafts did occur, though much earlier than is implied in the novel, and General Graham took no part in that attack, but it proved a useful opportunity for Sharpe and him to meet, so I took liberties.

  There is very little to be seen at Barrosa these days. The Spanish have no cause to remember the battle, and the village has now spread to become a pleasant seaside resort at the expense of the places where so many British, Portuguese, and French soldiers died. Marshal Victor began the battle with around seven thousand men and lost over two thousand killed and wounded, including General Rousseau who died on the day of the battle and General Ruffin who died of his wounds on board the ship taking him to England. Graham began with just over five thousand British and Portuguese, and lost fourteen hundred killed and wounded. The 28th had only two officers left at the battle's end. The First Foot Guards, the Coal Heavers, lost ten officers and 210 guardsmen. No unit suffered as much as John Browne's Flanker Battalion, which suffered at least 50 percent casualties. Major Browne, who did indeed sing "Heart of Oak" as he led them up the hill, miraculously survived. The 87th lost five officers (poor Keogh among them) and 168 men. Every unit suffered heavily, and all fought magnificently.

  I must thank Johnny Watt who, at a time when ill health prevented me from traveling, reconnoitered the old city of Cádiz for me. He did a superb job and it was his enthusiasm for the crypt that led to so much murder and mayhem in the cathedral. Sharpe, I confess, had no business being at Barrosa, and if I had not gone to Johnny's brother's wedding in the nearby town of Jerez de la Frontera, I doubt my interest in the battle would have been piqued. But we were there and I could not resist seeing yet another peninsular battlefield, and so Sharpe was doomed to follow. He is now back in Portugal where, in 1811, he belongs, and Sharpe and Harper will march again.

  BERNARD CORNWELL

  Sharpe’s Battle

  Richard Sharpe

  and the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro,

  1811

  Sharpe’s Battle is for Sean Bean.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part II

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Historical Note

  MAP

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  Sharpe swore. Then, in desperation, he turned the map upside down. “Might as well not have a bloody map,” he said, “for all the bloody use it is.”

  “We could light a fire with it,” Sergeant Harper suggested. “Good kindling’s hard to come by in these hills.”

  “It’s no bloody use for anything else,” Sharpe said. The hand-drawn map showed a scatter of villages, a few spidery lines for roads, streams or rivers, and some vague hatchings denoting hills, whereas all Sharpe could see was mountains. No roads or villages, just gray, bleak, rock-littered mountains with peaks shrouded by mists, and valleys cut by streams turned white and full by the spring rains. Sharpe had led his company into the high ground on the border between Spain and Portugal and there become lost. His company, forty soldiers carrying packs, haversacks, cartridge cases and weapons, seemed not to care. They were just grateful for the rest and so sat or lay beside the grassy track. Some lit pipes, others slept, while Captain Richard Sharpe turned the map right side up and then, in anger, crumpled it into a ball. “We’re bloody lost,” he said and then, in fairness, corrected himself. “I’m bloody lost.”

  “My grand-da got lost once,” Harper said helpfully. “He’d bought a bullock from a fellow in Cloghanelly Parish and decided to take a shortcut home across the Derryveagh Mountains. Then the fog rolled in and Grand-da couldn’t tell his left from his right. Lost like a wee lamb he was, and then the bullock deserted the ranks and bolted into the fog and jumped clear over a cliff into the Barra Valley. Grand-da said you could hear the poor wee beast bellowing all the way down, then there was a thump just like you’d dropped a bagpipe off a church tower, only louder, he said, because he reckoned they must have heard that thump all the way to Ballybofey. We used to laugh about it later, but not at the time. God, no, it was a tragedy at the time. We couldn’t afford to lose a good bullock.”

  “Jesus bloody wept!” Sharpe interrupted. “I can afford to lose a bloody sergeant who’s got nothing better to do than blather on about a bloody bullock!”

  “It was a valuable beast!” Harper protested. “Besides, we’re lost. We’ve got nothing better to do than pass the time, sir.”

  Lieutenant Price had been at the rear of the column, but now joined his commanding officer at the front. “Are we lost, sir?”

  “No, Harry, I came here for the hell of it. Wherever the hell this is.” Sharpe stared glumly about the damp, bleak valley. He was proud of his sense of direction and his skills at crossing strange country, but now he was comprehensively, utterly lost and the clouds were thick enough to disguise the sun so that he could not even tell which direction was north. “We need a compass,” he said.

  “Or a map?” Lieutenant Price suggested happily.

  “We’ve got a bloody map. Here.” Sharpe thrust the balled-up map into the Lieutenant’s hands. “Major Hogan drew it for me and I can’t make head nor tail out of it.”

  “I was never any good with maps,” Price confessed. “I once got lost marching some recruits from Chelmsford to the barracks, and that’s a straight road. I had a map that time, too. I think I must have a talent for getting lost.”

  “My grand-da was like that,” Harper said proudly. “He could get lost between one side of a gate and the other. I was telling the captain here about the time he took a bullock up Slieve Snaght. It was dirty weather, see, and he was taking the shortcut—”

  “Shut up,” Sharpe said nastily.

  “We went wrong at that ruined village,” Price said, frowning over the creased map. “I think we should have stayed on the other side of the stream, sir.” Price showed Sharpe the map. “If that is the village. Hard to tell really. But I’m sure we shouldn’t have crossed the stream, sir.”

  Sharpe half suspected the lieutenant was right, but he did not want to admit it. They had crossed the stream two hours before, so God only knew where they were now. Sharpe did not even know if they were in Portugal or Spain, though both the scenery and the weather looked more like Scotland. Sharpe was supposedly on his way to Vilar Formoso where his company, the Light Company of the South Essex Regiment, would be attached to the Town Major as a guard unit, a prospect that depressed Sharpe. Town
garrison duty was little better than being a provost and provosts were the lowest form of army life, but the South Essex was short of men and so the regiment had been taken out of the battle line and set to administrative duties. Most of the regiment was escorting bullock carts loaded with supplies that had been barged up the Tagus from Lisbon, or else were guarding French prisoners on their way to the ships that would carry them to Britain, but the Light Company was lost, and all because Sharpe had heard a distant cannonade resembling far-away thunder and he had marched toward the sound, only to discover that his ears had played tricks. The noise of the skirmish, if indeed it was a skirmish and not genuine thunder, had faded away and now Sharpe was lost. “Are you sure that’s the ruined village?” he asked Price, pointing to the crosshatched spot on the map that Price had indicated.

  “I wouldn’t like to swear to it, sir, not being able to read maps. It could be any of those scratchings, sir, or maybe none.”

  “Then why the hell are you showing it to me?”

  “In a hope for inspiration, sir,” Price said in a wounded voice. “I was trying to help, sir. Trying to raise our hopes.” He looked down at the map again. “Maybe it isn’t a very good map?” he suggested.

  “It would make good kindling,” Harper repeated.

  “One thing’s certain,” Sharpe said as he took the map back from Price, “we haven’t crossed the watershed, which means these streams must be flowing west.” He paused. “Or they’re probably flowing west. Unless the world’s bloody upside down, which it probably bloody is, but on the chance that it bloody isn’t we’ll follow the bloody streams. Here”—he tossed the map to Harper—“kindling.”

  “That’s what my grand-da did,” Harper said, tucking the crumpled map inside his faded and torn green jacket. “He followed the water—”

  “Shut up,” Sharpe said, but not angrily this time. Rather he spoke quietly, and at the same time gestured with his left hand to make his companions crouch. “Bloody Crapaud,” he said softly, “or something. Never seen a uniform like it.”

  “Bloody hell,” Price said, and dropped down to the path.

  Because a horseman had appeared just two hundred yards away. The man had not seen the British infantrymen, nor did he appear to be on the lookout for enemies. Instead his horse just ambled out of a side valley until the reins checked it, then the rider swung himself wearily out of the saddle and looped the reins over an arm while he unbuttoned his baggy trousers and urinated beside the path. Smoke from his pipe drifted in the damp air.

  Harper’s rifle clicked as he pulled the cock fully back. Sharpe’s men, even those who had been asleep, were all alert now and lying motionless in the grass, keeping so low that even if the horseman had turned he would probably not have noticed the infantry. Sharpe’s company was a veteran unit of skirmishers, hardened by two years of fighting in Portugal and Spain and as well trained as any soldiers in Europe. “Recognize the uniform?” Sharpe asked Price softly.

  “Never seen it before, sir.”

  “Pat?” Sharpe asked Harper.

  “Looks like a bloody Russian,” Harper said. Harper had never seen a Russian soldier, but had a perverse idea that such creatures wore gray and this mysterious horseman was all in gray. He had a short gray dragoon jacket, gray trousers and a gray horsehair plume on his steel gray helmet. Or maybe, Sharpe thought, it was merely a cloth cover designed to stop the helmet’s metal from reflecting the light.

  “Spaniard?” Sharpe wondered aloud.

  “The dons are always gaudy, sir,” Harper said. “The dons never did like dying in drab clothes.”

  “Maybe he’s a partisan,” Sharpe suggested.

  “He’s got Crapaud weapons,” Price said, “and trousers.” The pissing horseman was indeed armed just like a French dragoon. He wore a straight sword, had a short-barreled carbine sheathed in his saddle holster and had a brace of pistols stuck in his belt. He also wore the distinctively baggy saroual trousers that the French dragoons liked, but Sharpe had never seen a French dragoon wearing gray ones, and certainly never a gray jacket. Enemy dragoons always wore green coats. Not dark hunting green like the coats of Britain’s riflemen, but a lighter and brighter green.

  “Maybe the buggers are running out of green dye?” Harper suggested, then fell silent as the horseman buttoned his floppy trousers and hauled himself up onto his saddle. The man looked carefully about the valley, saw nothing to alarm him and so spurred his horse back into the hidden side valley. “He was scouting,” Harper said softly. “He was sent to see if anyone was here.”

  “He made a bloody bad job of it,” Sharpe commented.

  “Even so,” Price said fervently, “it’s a good thing we’re going in the other direction.”

  “We’re not, Harry,” Sharpe said. “We’re going to see who those bastards are and what they’re doing.” He pointed uphill. “You first, Harry. Take your fellows and go halfway up, then wait.”

  Lieutenant Price led the redcoats of Sharpe’s company up the steep slope. Half of the company wore the red jackets of Britain’s line infantry while the other half, like Sharpe himself, had the green jackets of the elite rifle regiments. It had been an accident of war that had stranded Sharpe and his riflemen in a redcoat battalion, but sheer bureaucratic inertia had held them there and now it was sometimes hard to tell the riflemen from the redcoats, so shabby and faded were their respective uniforms. From a distance they all looked like brown uniforms because of the cheap Portuguese cloth that the men were forced to use for repairs.

  “You think we’ve crossed the lines?” Harper asked Sharpe.

  “Like as not,” Sharpe said sourly, still angry at himself. “Not that anyone knows where the damn lines are,” he said defensively, and in part he was right. The French were retreating out of Portugal. Throughout the winter of 1810 the enemy had stayed in front of the Lines of Torres Vedras just a half-day’s march from Lisbon, and there they had frozen and half starved to death rather than retreat to their supply depots in Spain. Marshal Masséna had known that retreat would yield all Portugal to the British while to attack the Lines of Torres Vedras would be pure suicide, and so he had just stayed, neither advancing nor retreating, just starving slowly through the winter and staring at the lines’ enormous earthworks, which had been hacked and scraped from a range of hills across the narrow peninsula just north of Lisbon. The valleys between the hills had been blocked by massive dams or with tangled barricades of thorn, while the hilltops and long slopes had been trenched, embrasured and armed with battery after battery of cannon. The lines, a winter’s hunger and the relentless attacks of partisans had finally defeated the French attempt to capture Lisbon and in March they had begun to retreat. Now it was April and the retreat was slowing in the hills of the Spanish frontier, for it was here that Marshal Masséna had decided to make his stand. He would fight and defeat the British in the river-cut hills, and always, at Masséna’s back, stood the twin fastnesses of Badajoz and Ciudad Rodrigo. Those two Spanish citadels made the frontier into a mighty barrier, though for now Sharpe’s concern was not the grim border campaign that loomed ahead but rather the mysterious gray horseman.

  Lieutenant Price had reached a patch of dead ground halfway up the hill where his redcoats concealed themselves as Sharpe waved his riflemen forward. The slope was steep, but the greenjackets climbed fast for, like all experienced infantrymen, they had a healthy fear of enemy cavalry and they knew that steep hillsides were an effective barrier to horsemen and thus the higher the riflemen climbed, the safer and happier they became.

  Sharpe passed the resting redcoats and went on up toward the crest of a spur that divided the two valleys. When he was close to the ridge he waved his greenjackets down into the short grass, then crawled up to the skyline to peer down into the smaller valley where the gray horseman had disappeared.

  And, two hundred feet beneath him, saw Frenchmen.

  The men were all wearing the strange gray uniform, but Sharpe now knew they were French because one of th
e cavalrymen carried a guidon. This was a small, swallowtailed banner carried on a lance as a rally mark in the chaos of battle, and this particular shabby, frayed flag showed the red, white and blue of the enemy. The standard-bearer was sitting on his horse in the center of a small abandoned settlement while his dismounted companions searched the half-dozen stone and thatch houses that looked as if they had been built to shelter families during the summer months when the lowland farmers would bring their flocks to graze the high pastures.

  There were only a half-dozen horsemen in the settlement, but with them was a handful of French infantrymen, also wearing the drab and plain gray coats, rather than their usual blue. Sharpe counted eighteen infantrymen.

  Harper wriggled uphill to join Sharpe. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he said when he saw the infantry. “Gray uniforms?”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Sharpe said, “maybe the buggers have run out of dye.”

  “I wish they’d run out of musket balls,” Harper said. “So what do we do?”

  “Bugger off,” Sharpe said. “No point in having a fight for the hell of it.”

  “Amen to that, sir.” Harper began to slither down from the skyline. “Are we going now?”

  “Give me a minute,” Sharpe said and felt behind his back for his telescope, which was stored in a pouch of his French oxhide pack. Then, with the telescope’s hood extended to shade the outer lens and so stop even this day’s damp light from being reflected downhill, he trained the glass on the tiny cottages. Sharpe was anything but a wealthy man, yet the telescope was a very fine and expensive glass made by Matthew Berge of London, with a brass eyepiece, shutters and a small engraved plate set into its walnut tube. “In Gratitude,” the plate read, “AW. September 23rd, 1803.” AW was Arthur Wellesley, now the Viscount Wellington, a lieutenant general and commander of the British and Portuguese armies which had pursued Marshal Masséna to Spain’s frontier, but on September 23rd, 1803, Major General the Honourable Arthur Wellesley had been astride a horse that was piked in the chest and so pitched its rider down into the enemy’s front rank. Sharpe could still remember the shrill Indian cries of triumph as the red-jacketed general had fallen among them, though he could remember precious little else about the seconds that followed. Yet it was those few seconds that had plucked him from the ranks and made him, a man born in the gutter, into an officer in Britain’s army.