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

by Bernard Cornwell

  “You were saying, Your Majesty, that Wellington has a choice?” Ducos prompted the marshal who had drifted into a momentary daydream.

  “He has a choice,” Masséna confirmed. “He can abandon his right wing, which means he also abandons any chance of retreat, in which case we shall break his center in Fuentes de Oñoro and hunt his army down in the hills for the next week. Or he can abandon Fuentes de Oñoro and try to rescue his right wing, in which case we shall fight him to the death on the plain. I’d rather he offered me a fight on the plain, but he won’t. This Englishman only feels safe when he has a hill to defend, so he’ll stay in Fuentes de Oñoro and let his right wing go to a hell of our making.”

  Ducos was impressed. It had been a long time since he had heard a French officer sound so optimistic in Spain, and a long time too since the eagles had marched into battle with such confidence and alacrity. Masséna deserved applause and Ducos happily offered the marshal the compliments he desired, but he also added a caution. “This Englishman, Your Majesty,” he pointed out, “is also skilled at defending hills. He defended Fuentes de Oñoro on Friday, did he not?”

  Masséna sneered at the caution. Ducos had elaborated such devious schemes to undermine British morale, but they only sprang from his lack of faith in soldiers, just as Ducos’s presence in Spain sprang from the emperor’s lack of faith in his marshals. Ducos had to learn that when a marshal of France put his mind to victory, then victory was certain. “On Friday, Ducos,” Masséna explained, “I tickled Fuentes de Oñoro with a pair of brigades, but today we shall send three whole divisions into that little village. Three big divisions, Ducos, full of hungry men. What chance do you think that little village has?”

  Ducos considered the question in his usual pedantic way. He could see Fuentes de Oñoro clearly enough; the village was a meager sprawl of peasants’ hovels being pounded to dust by the French artillery. Beyond the dust and smoke Ducos could see the graveyard and battered church where the road angled uphill to the plateau. The hill was steep, to be sure, but not very high, and on Friday the attackers had cleared the village of its defenders and gained a lodgement among the lower stones of the graveyard and one more attack would surely have driven the eagles clear across the ridge’s crest and into the soft belly of the enemy beyond. And now, out of sight of that enemy, three whole divisions of French infantry were waiting to attack, and in the van of that attack Masséna planned to put the elite of his attacking regiments, the massed companies of grenadiers with their plumed bearskins and fearful reputation. The cream of France would march against a raddled army of half-broken men.

  “Well, Ducos?” Masséna challenged the major for his verdict.

  “I must congratulate Your Majesty,” Ducos said.

  “Which means, I suppose, that you approve of my humble plan?” Masséna asked sarcastically.

  “All France will approve, Your Majesty, when it brings victory.”

  “Bugger the victory,” Masséna said, “so long as it brings me Wellington’s whores. I’m tired of my present bunch. Half of them are poxed, the other half are pregnant and the fat one bawls her eyes out every time you strip the bitch for duty.”

  “Wellington has no whores,” Ducos said icily. “He controls his passions.”

  The one-eyed Masséna burst into laughter. “Controls his passions! God on his cross, Ducos, but you’d make smiling a crime. Controls his passions, does he? Then he’s a fool, and a defeated fool at that.” The marshal wheeled his horse away from the major and snapped his fingers at a nearby aide. “Let the eagles go, Jean, let them go!”

  The drums called for the muster and three divisions stirred themselves for action. Men drained coffee dregs, stowed knives and tin plates in haversacks, checked their cartridge pouches and plucked their muskets from the pyramid stacks. It was two hours after a Sunday dawn and time to close the battle’s jaws as all along the marshal’s line, from south in the plain to north where the village smoked under its numbing cannonade, the French smelled victory.

  “’Pon my soul, Sharpe, but it’s unfair. Unfair! You and me both to stand trial?” Colonel Runciman had been unable to resist the lure of witnessing the day’s high drama and so he had come to the plateau, though he had taken care not to step too close to the ridge’s crest which was occasionally churned by a high French roundshot. A pyre of smoke marked where the village endured its bombardment while further south, way down on the plain, a second smudge of musket smoke betrayed where the French flank attack was driving across the low ground.

  “Waste of time complaining about unfairness, General,” Sharpe said. “Only the wealthy can afford to preach about fairness. The rest of us take what we can and try hard not to miss what we can’t take.”

  “Even so, Sharpe, it’s unfair!” Runciman said reprovingly. The colonel looked pale and unhappy. “It’s the disgrace, you see. A man goes home to England and expects to be decently treated, but instead I’ll be vilified.” He ducked as a French roundshot rumbled far overhead. “I had hopes, Sharpe! I had hopes!”

  “The Golden Fleece, General? Order of the Bath?”

  “Not just those, Sharpe, but of marriage. There are, you understand, ladies of fortune in Hampshire. I’ve no ambition to be a bachelor all my life, Sharpe. My dear mother, God rest her, always claimed I’d make a good husband so long as the lady was possessed of a middling fortune. Not a great fortune, one must not be unrealistic, but a sufficiency to keep our good selves in modest comfort. A pair of coaches, decent stables, cooks that know their business, smallish game park, a dairy, you know the sort of place.”

  “Makes me homesick, General,” Sharpe said.

  The sarcasm sailed airily over Runciman’s head. “But now, Sharpe, can you imagine any woman of decent family allying herself with a vilified name?” He thought about it for a moment, then gave a slow despairing shake of the head. “Good God! I might have to marry a Methodist!”

  “It hasn’t happened yet, General,” Sharpe said, “and a lot could change today.”

  Runciman looked alarmed. “You mean I could be killed?”

  “Or you could make a name for bravery, sir,” Sharpe said. “Nosey always forgives a man for good conduct.”

  “Oh, good Lord, no! Dear me, no. ’Pon my soul, Sharpe, no. I ain’t the type. Never was. I went into soldiering because my dear father couldn’t find a place for me anywhere else! He purchased me into the army, you understand, because he said it was as good a billet as I could ever expect from society, but I’m not the fighting sort. Never was, Sharpe.” Runciman listened to the terrible noise of the cannonade pounding Fuentes de Oñoro, a noise made worse by the splintering sound of voltigeur muskets firing over the stream. “I’m not proud of it, Sharpe, but I don’t think I could endure that kind of thing. Don’t think I could at all.”

  “Can’t blame you, sir,” Sharpe said, then turned as Sergeant Harper shouted for his attention. “You’ll forgive me, General?”

  “Off you go, Sharpe, off you go.”

  “Trade, sir,” Harper said, jerking his head toward Major Tarrant who was gesticulating at a wagon driver.

  Tarrant turned as Sharpe came near. “The Light Division is ordered south, Sharpe, but its ammunition reserve is stuck to the north. We’re to replace it. Would you mind if your rifles accompanied it?”

  Sharpe did mind. He instinctively wanted to stay where the battle would be fiercest and that was in Fuentes de Oñoro, but he could not say as much to Tarrant. “No, sir.”

  “In case they get bogged down, d’you see, and have to spend the rest of the day fighting off Frenchmen, so the general wants them to have a plenitude of ammunition. Rifle and musket cartridges, mixed. Artillery are looking after themselves. One wagon should do it, but it needs an escort, Sharpe. French cavalry are lively down there.”

  “Can we help?” Captain Donaju had overheard Tarrant’s hurried explanation of Sharpe’s errand.

  “Might need you later, Captain,” Tarrant said. “I have a feeling today’s likel
y to be lively all round. Never seen the Frogs so uppity. Have you, Sharpe?”

  “They’ve got their tails up today, Major,” Sharpe agreed. He looked up at the wagon driver. “Are you ready?”

  The driver nodded. His wagon was an English four-wheeled farm vehicle with high splayed sides to which were harnessed three Cleveland Bays in single file. “Had four beasts once,” the driver remarked as Sharpe climbed up beside him, “but a Frenchie shell got Bess, so now I’m down to three.” The driver had woven red and blue woolen braiding into the horses’ manes and had decorated his wagon’s flanks with discarded cap-plates and thrown horseshoes that he had nailed to the planking. “You know where we’re going?” he asked Sharpe as Harper ordered the riflemen to climb onto the boxes of ammunition stacked on the wagon’s bed.

  “After them.” Sharpe pointed to his right where the plateau offered a gentler slope down to the southern lowlands and where the Light Division was marching south beneath its banners. It was Sharpe’s old division, made up of riflemen and light infantry, and it regarded itself as the army’s elite division. Now it was marching to save the Seventh Division from annihilation.

  A mile away, across the Dos Casas stream and close to the ruined barn that served as his headquarters, Marshal André Masséna saw the fresh British troops leaving the plateau’s protection to march south toward the beleaguered redcoats and Portuguese. “The fool,” he said to himself, then louder in a gleeful voice, “the fool!”

  “Your Majesty?” an aide inquired.

  “The first rule of war, Jean,” the marshal said, “is never to reinforce failure. And what is our whore-free Englishman doing? He’s sending more troops to be massacred by our cavalry!” The marshal put the telescope back to his eye. He could see guns and cavalry going south with the new troops. “Or maybe he’s withdrawing?” he mused aloud. “Maybe he’s making sure he can get back to Portugal. Where’s Loup’s brigade?”

  “Just north of here, Your Majesty,” the aide answered.

  “With his whore, no doubt?” Masséna asked sourly. Juanita de Elia’s flamboyant presence with the Loup Brigade had drawn the attention and jealousy of every Frenchman in the army.

  “Indeed, Your Majesty.”

  Masséna snapped the telescope shut. He disliked Loup. He recognized his ambitions and knew that Loup would trample over any man to gain those ambitions. Loup wanted to be a marshal like Masséna, he had even lost an eye like Masséna, and now he wanted those grand titles with which the emperor rewarded the brave and the lucky. But Masséna would not help Loup secure those ambitions. A man remained a marshal by suppressing his rivals, not encouraging them, so this day Brigadier Loup would be given a menial task. “Warn Brigadier Loup,” Masséna told the aide, “that he’s to untangle himself from his Spanish whore and be ready to escort the wagons through Fuentes de Oñoro when our soldiers have opened the road. Tell him Wellington’s shifting his position to the south and the road to Almeida should be open by midday, and that his brigade’s job will be to escort the supplies into Almeida while the rest of us finish off the enemy.” Masséna smiled. Today was a day for Frenchmen to win glory, a day to capture a haul of enemy colors and to soak a riverbank with the blood of Englishmen, but Loup, Masséna had decided, would share no part of it. Loup would be a common baggage guard while Masséna and the eagles made all Europe shudder with fear.

  The Seventh Division retreated toward a slight ridge of ground above the Dos Casas stream. They were retreating north, but facing south as they tried to block the advance of the massive French force that had been sent around the army’s flank. In the distance they could see the two enemy infantry divisions re-forming their ranks in front of Poco Velha, but the immediate danger came from the enormous number of French cavalry that waited just outside the effective range of the Seventh Division’s muskets. The equation facing the nine allied battalions was simple enough. They could form squares and know that even the bravest cavalry would be slaughtered if they tried to charge the mass of compacted muskets and bayonets, but infantry in square was cruelly vulnerable to artillery and musket fire; the moment the Seventh Division contracted into squares the French would batter the allied ranks with gunfire until the Portuguese and redcoats were shredded bloody and the cavalry could ride unchallenged over the crazed survivors.

  British and German cavalry came to the rescue first. The allied horse was outnumbered and could never hope to defeat the swirling mass of plumed and breastplated Frenchmen, but the hussars and dragoons made charge after charge that kept the enemy cavalry from harrying the infantry. “Keep them in hand!” a British cavalry major kept shouting at his squadron. “Keep them in hand!” He feared that his men would lose their sense and make a mad charge to glory instead of retiring after each short attack to re-form and charge again, and so he kept encouraging them to show caution and keep their discipline. The squadrons took turns to hold off the French cavalry, one fighting as the others retreated after the infantry. The horses were bleeding, sweating and trembling, but time after time they trotted into their ranks and waited for the spurs to throw them back into the fight. The men tightened their grips on sword and sabre and watched the enemy who shouted insults in an attempt to entice the British and Germans to a mad galloping assault that would open their tightly ordered ranks and turn the controlled charges into a frantic meleé of swords, lances and sabres. In such a meleé the French numbers were bound to win, but the allied officers kept their men in hand. “Damn your eagerness! Hold her in, hold her in!” a captain called to a trooper whose horse broke into a trot too early.

  The dragoons were the allied heavy cavalry. They were big men mounted on big horses and carried long heavy straight-bladed swords. They did not charge at the gallop, but rather waited until an enemy regiment threatened to charge and then they made their countercharge at walking pace. Sergeants shouted at the men to hold the line, to keep close and curb their horses, and only at the very last moment, when the enemy was within pistol shot, did a trumpeter sound the charge and the horses would be spurred to a gallop and the men would scream their war cries as they hacked at the enemy horsemen. The big swords could do horrid work. They battered the lighter sabres of the French chasseurs aside and forced the riders to duck low over their horses’ necks as they tried to avoid the butchers’ blades. Steel clashed on steel, wounded horses screamed and reared, then the trumpet would call for the withdrawal and the allied horse would disengage and wheel away. A few French were bound to pursue, but the British and Germans were working close to their own infantry and any Frenchman tempted to pursue too close to the Portuguese and British battalions became easy meat for a company of muskets. It was hard, disciplined, inglorious work, and each countercharge paid a price in men and horses, but the threat of the enemy cavalry was checked by it and the nine infantry battalions marched steadily north because of it.

  The retreating Seventh Division’s flanks were covered by the fire of the horse artillery. The gunners fired canister that could turn a horse and man into a mangled horror of flesh, cloth, leather, steel and blood. The guns would fire four or five rounds while the infantry retreated, then the horse teams were hurried forward, the gun’s trail lifted into the limber’s pintle, and the gunners would scramble onto the horses’ backs and whip the animals into a frantic dash before the vengeful French cavalrymen could catch them. As soon as the team reached the protection of the infantry’s muskets it would slew around to make the gun’s skidding wheels throw up a fountain of mud or dust, and the gunners would slide off the horses’ backs even before they had stopped running. The gun was unhitched, the horses and limber led away and in seconds the next round of canister would shriek down the field to drive another French squadron bloodily away.

  The French artillery concentrated their fire on the infantry. Their roundshot and shells whipped through the ranks, spraying blood ten feet high as the missiles plunged home. “Close up! Close up!” the sergeants shouted and prayed that the excitable enemy cavalry would mask their own guns
and thus stop the bombardment, but the cavalry was learning to let the gunners and the French infantry do some of the work before the horsemen garnered all the glory. The French cavalry pulled aside to let the muskets and cannons fight the battle and to rest their horses while the Portuguese and British infantry died.

  And die they did. The roundshot whipped through the columns and musket fire raked the files to slow the already agonizingly slow retreat. The nine shrinking battalions left trails of crushed and bloodied grass as they crawled northward and the crawl was threatening to come to a full halt when all that would be left of the division would be nine bands of survivors clustered round their precious colors. The French cavalry saw their enemy dying and were content to wait for the perfect moment to pounce and deliver the coup de grâce. One group of chasseurs and cuirassiers rode toward a slight rise in the ground where a long wood was planted. The cavalry’s commander reckoned the wood would hide his men as they worked their way to the rear of the dying battalions and so give him a chance to launch a surprise attack that might capture a half-dozen flags in one glorious charge. He led the two troops up the slope, his men trailing behind, when suddenly the tree line exploded with gunsmoke. There were not supposed to be enemy troops among the trees, but the volley ripped the advancing cavalry into chaos. The cuirassier commander went backward off his horse’s rump with his breastplate holed three times. One of his boots was trapped in a stirrup and he screamed as his terrified and wounded horse dragged him bouncing across the grass to leave great splashes of blood. Then his foot came free and he twitched on the grass as he died. Eight other horsemen fell, some had merely been unhorsed and those men ran to find an unwounded mount while their comrades turned and spurred to safety.