“Very nice,” Sergeant Latimer said in tribute to the battalion’s professionalism. “Very nicely done. Just like the parade ground at Shorncliffe.”
“Gun to the right, sir,” Harper called. Sharpe’s men were occupying one of the rocky outcrops that studded the plain and which gave the riflemen protection from the marauding cavalry. Their job was to snipe at the cavalry and especially at the French horse artillery which was trying to take advantage of the British squares. Men in square were safe from cavalry yet horribly vulnerable to shell and roundshot, but gunners were equally vulnerable to the accuracy of the British Baker rifles. A galloper gun had taken position two hundred paces away from Sharpe and the gun’s crew was lining the barrel on the newly formed square. Two men lifted the ammunition chest off the gun’s trail while a third doubleshotted the gun’s blackened barrel by ramming a round of canister on top of a roundshot.
Dan Hagman fired first and the man ramming the shot slewed round, then held on to the protruding rammer’s handle as though it was his grip on life itself. A second bullet cracked off the cannon’s barrel to leave a bright scratch in the jaded brass. Another gunner fell, then one of the gun’s horses was hit and it reared up and kicked at the horse harnessed next to it. “Steady does it,” Sharpe said, “take aim, boys, take aim. Don’t waste the shots.” Three more greenjackets fired and their bullets persuaded the beleaguered gunners to crouch behind the cannon and its limber. The gunners shouted at some green-coated dragoons to go and dig the damned riflemen out from their rocky eyrie. “Someone take care of that dragoon captain,” Sharpe said.
“Square’s going, sir!” Cooper warned Sharpe as Horrell and Cresacre fired at the distant horseman.
Sharpe turned and saw the redcoat square was shaking itself into a column again to resume its retreat. He dared not get too far away from the protection of the redcoats’ muskets. His danger, like that facing every small group of riflemen who covered the retreat, was that his men might be cut off by the cavalry and Sharpe doubted that the long-suffering French horsemen would be willing to take prisoners this day. Any greenjacket caught in the open would most likely be used for sword or lance practice. “Go!” he shouted, and his men scrambled away from the rocks and ran for the cover of the redcoat battalion. The dragoons turned to pursue, then the leading ranks of horsemen were thrown sideways and turned bloody as a blast of canister fired from a British galloper gun smashed into them. Sharpe saw a clump of trees just to the left of the redcoat battalion’s line of march and shouted at Harper to lead the men to the small wood’s cover.
Once safe among the oaks the greenjackets reloaded and looked for new targets. To Sharpe, who had served on a dozen battlefields, the plain offered an extraordinary sight: a mass of cavalry was churning and spilling between the steadily withdrawing battalions, yet for all their noise and excitement the horsemen were achieving nothing. The infantry were steady and silent, performing the intricate drill that they had practiced for hours and hours and which now was saving their lives, and doing it in the knowledge that just one mistake by a battalion commander would be fatal. If a column was just a few seconds too slow to form square then the rampaging cuirassiers would be through the gap on their heavy horses and gutting the imperfect square from the inside. A disciplined battalion would be turned in an instant into a rabble of panicking fugitives to be ridden down by dragoons or slaughtered by lancers, yet no battalion made any mistake and so the French were being frustrated by a superb display of steady soldiering.
The French kept searching for an opportunity. Whenever a battalion was marching in a column of companies and so looked ripe for attack a sudden surge of horses would flow across the field and the trumpets would rally yet more horse to join the thunderous charge, but then the redcoats’ column would break, wheel and march into square with the same precision as if they were drilling on the parade ground of their home barracks. The troops would mark time for an instant as the square was achieved, then the outer rank would kneel, the whole formation would bristle with bayonets and the horsemen would sheer away in impotent rage. A few impetuous Frenchmen would always try to draw blood and gallop too close to the square only to be blasted from their saddles, or maybe a British galloper gun would bloody a whole troop of dragoons or cuirassiers with a blast of canister, but then the cavalry would gallop out of range and the horses would be rested while the square trudged back into column and marched stoically on. The horsemen would watch them go until another flurry of trumpets summoned the whole flux of mounted men to chase yet another opportunity far across the field and once again a battalion would contract into square and once again the horsemen would wheel away with unblooded blades.
And always, everywhere, ahead and behind and in between the slowly withdrawing battalions, groups of greenjackets sniped and harried and killed. French gunners became reluctant to advance while the more sober horsemen took care to avoid the small nests of riflemen that stung so viciously. The French had no rifles because the emperor despised the weapon as being too slow for battle use, but today the rifles were making the emperor’s soldiers curse.
The emperor’s soldiers were also dying. The calm redcoat battalions were leaving scarcely any bodies behind, but the cavalry was being flayed by rifle and cannon fire. Unhorsed cavalrymen limped southward carrying saddles, bridles and weapons. Some riderless horses stayed with their regiments, forming in the ranks whenever a squadron regrouped and charging along with the other horses when the trumpets threw the squadron into the attack. Far behind the milling cavalry the French infantry divisions hurried to join the battle, but the Light Division was outmarching the advancing French infantry. When a battalion did form column to continue the retreat it would go at the rifle speed of a hundred and eight paces to the minute—faster than any other infantry in the world. The French marching pace was shorter than the British and the speed of their march much slower than that of the specially trained troops of Craufurd’s Light Division and so, despite the need to stop and form square and see off the cavalry, Craufurd’s men were still outpacing the pursuing infantry while far to the north of the Light Division the main British line was being remade so that Wellington’s defense now followed the edge of the plateau to make a right angle with Fuentes de Oñoro at its corner. All that was needed now was for the Light Division to come safely home and the army would be complete again, ensconced behind slopes and daring the French to attack.
Sharpe took his men back another quarter-mile to a patch of rocks where his riflemen could find cover. A pair of British guns was working close to the rocks, blasting roundshot and shell at a newly placed French battery beside the wood Sharpe had just abandoned. The flow of horse began to thicken in this part of the field as the cavalry sought out a vulnerable battalion. Two regiments, one of redcoats and the other Portuguese, were retreating past the battery and the sweating horsemen stalked the two columns. Eventually the press of horse became so thick that the columns marched into squares. “Buggers are everywhere,” Harper said, firing his rifle at a chasseur officer. The two British guns had switched their aim to fire canister at the cavalry in an attempt to drive them away from the two infantry squares. The guns crashed back on their trails to jar the wheels up in the air. The gunners swabbed out the barrel, rammed down a new charge and canister, pricked the powder bag through the touch-hole, then ducked aside after putting the smoking linstock to the powder fuse. The guns cracked deafeningly, smoke punched sixty feet out from the muzzles and the grass lay momentarily flat as the blast whipped overhead. A horse screamed as the musket balls spread out and thumped home.
A surge and eddy in the mass of horse presaged another move, but instead of riding back across the fields to harry a marching column the cavalry suddenly turned on the two guns. Blood dripped from horses’ flanks as riders spurred frantically toward the desperate gunners who now picked up their guns’ trails, turned the weapons and dropped the trail-hooks over the limbers’ pintles. The team horses were run into place, the harnesses attached and
the gunners scrambled up onto the guns or horses, but the French cavalry had timed their charge well and the gunners were still whipping their tired animals into motion as the leading cuirassiers swept down on the battery.
A charge of British light dragoons saved the guns. The blue-coated horsemen slashed in from the north, sabres cutting down at plumed helmets and parrying swords. More British cavalry arrived to flank the guns that were now galloping frantically northward. The heavy cannons bounced over the rough ground, the gunners clung to the limbers’ handles, the whips cracked, and all about the galloping horses and blurring wheels the cavalry hacked at each other in a running fight. A British dragoon reeled out of the fight with a face turned into a mask of blood while a cuirassier fell from his saddle to be mangled by the hooves of the gun teams, then crushed by the iron-rimmed wheels of limber and cannon. Then a rippling crash of musketry announced that the rolling chaos of guns, horses, swordsmen and lancers had come into range of the Portuguese square’s face and the cheated French cavalry swerved away as the two guns galloped on to safety. A cheer for the gunners’ escape went up from the two allied squares, then the guns slewed about in an eruption of grass and dust to open fire again on their erstwhile pursuers.
Sharpe’s men had slipped away from the rocks to join another battalion of redcoats. They marched among the companies for a few minutes, then broke off to take position in a tangle of thorns and boulders. A small group of chasseurs in green coats, black silver-looped shakoes and with carbines slung on hooks on their white crossbelts trotted close by. The French had not noticed the small group of riflemen crouched among the thorns. They were continually taking off their shakoes and wiping sweat from their faces with their frayed red cuffs. Their horses were white with sweat. One had a leg matted with blood, but it was somehow keeping up with its companions. The officer stopped his troop and one of the men unclipped his carbine, cocked the weapon and aimed at a British gun that was unlimbering to the east. Hagman put a rifle bullet into the man’s head before he could pull the trigger and suddenly the chasseurs were cursing and trying to spur their horses out of rifle range. Sharpe fired, his rifle’s report lost in the crackle of sound as his men sent a volley after the enemy troop. A half-dozen of the chasseurs galloped out of range, but they left as many bodies behind. “Permission to rake the bastards over, sir?” Cooper asked.
“Go on, but equal shares,” Sharpe said, meaning that whatever plunder was found had to be shared among the whole squad.
Cooper and Harris ran out to filch the bodies while Harper and Finn carried bundles of empty water bottles to a nearby stream. They filled the bottles while Cooper and Harris slit the seams of the dead men’s green coats, cut open the pockets of their white waistcoats, searched inside the shako linings and tugged off the short, white-tasseled boots. The two riflemen came back with a French shako half filled with a motley collection of French, Portuguese and Spanish coins. “Poor as church mice,” Harris complained while he split the coins into piles. “You having a share, sir?”
“’Course he is,” Harper said, distributing the precious water. Every man was parched. Their mouths had been dried and soured by the acrid, salty gunpowder in the cartridges and now they swilled the water round their mouths and spat it out black before drinking the rest.
A distant crackling sound made Sharpe turn. The village of Fuentes de Oñoro was a mile away now and the sound seemed to be coming from its narrow, death-choked streets where a plume of smoke climbed into the sky. More gunsmoke showed at the plateau’s edge, evidence that the French were still attacking the village. Sharpe turned back to look at the tired, hot cavalrymen who spread across the plain. He was looking for gray uniforms and seeing none.
“Time to go, sir?” Hagman called, hinting that the riflemen would be cut off if Sharpe did not withdraw soon.
“Back we go,” Sharpe said. “Run to that column.” He pointed to some Portuguese infantry.
They ran, easily reaching the Portuguese before a halfhearted pursuit of vengeful chasseurs could get close to the riflemen, but the chasseurs’ small charge attracted a flow of other cavalrymen, enough to make the Portuguese column shake itself into square. Sharpe and his men stayed in the square and watched as the cavalry streamed around the battalion. Brigadier General Craufurd had also taken shelter in the square and now observed the surrounding French from under the battalion’s colors. He looked a proud man, and no wonder. His division, which he had disciplined into becoming the best in all the army, was performing magnificently. They were outnumbered, they were surrounded, yet no one had panicked, not one battalion had been caught deployed in column, and not one square had been rattled by the horsemen’s proximity. The Light had saved the Seventh Division and now it was saving itself with a dazzling display of professional soldiering. Pure drill was defeating French verve, and Masséna’s attack, which had swept around the British right flank with overwhelming force, had been rendered utterly impotent. “You like it, Sharpe?” Craufurd called from his horse.
“Wonderful, sir, just wonderful.” Sharpe’s compliment was heartfelt.
“They’re scoundrels,” Craufurd said of his men, “but the devils can fight, can’t they?” His pride was understandable, and it had even persuaded the irascible Craufurd to unbend and indulge in conversation. It was even a friendly conversation. “I’ll put a word in for you, Sharpe,” Craufurd said, “because a man shouldn’t be disciplined for killing the enemy, but I don’t suppose my help will do you any good.”
“It won’t, sir?”
“Valverde’s an awkward bugger,” Craufurd said. “He don’t like the British, and he won’t want Wellington given a Spanish Generalisimo’s hat. Valverde reckons he’d make a better Generalisimo himself, but the only time the bugger fought the French he pissed his yellow pants yellower and lost three good battalions doing it. But it ain’t about soldiering, Sharpe, it’s about politics, all about damned politics, and the one thing every soldier should know is not to get tangled up in politics. Slimy bastards, politicians, should all be killed. Every last damned one of them. I’d tie the whole bloody pack of lying bastards to cannon muzzles and blow them away, blow them away! Fertilize a field with the bastards, dung the world with the breed. Them and lawyers.” The thought of the twin professions had put Craufurd into a bad mood. He scowled at Sharpe, then twitched his reins to take his horse back toward the battalion’s colors. “I’ll speak for you, Sharpe.”
“Thank you, sir,” Sharpe said.
“Won’t help you,” Craufurd said curtly, “but I’ll try.” He watched the nearest French cavalry move away. “I think the buggers are looking for other meat,” he called to the Portuguese battalion’s colonel. “Let’s march on. Should be back in the lines for luncheon. Day to you, Sharpe.”
The Seventh Division had long reached the safety of the plateau and now the leading battalions of the Light Division climbed the slope under the protection of British artillery. The British and German cavalry, that had charged again and again to hold off the hordes of French horsemen, now walked their weary and wounded horses up the hill where riflemen with dried mouths and bruised shoulders and fouled rifle barrels trudged toward safety. The French horsemen could only watch their enemy march away and wonder why in over three miles of pursuit across country made by God for cavalrymen they had not managed to break one single battalion. They had succeeded in catching and killing a handful of redcoat skirmishers in the open land at the bottom of the ridge, but the overall price of the morning’s fight had been dozens of dead troopers and scores of butchered horses.
The last of the Light Division columns climbed the hill beneath its colors where bands played to greet the battalion’s return. The British army that had been so dangerously divided was now whole again, but it was still cut off from home and it still faced the larger of the two French attacks.
For in Fuentes de Oñoro, whose streets were already choked with blood, a whole new French attack was following the drums.
Marshal Masséna fel
t annoyance as he watched the two parts of the enemy’s army recombine. Good God, he had sent two divisions of infantry and all his cavalry and still they had let the enemy slip away! But at least all the British and Portuguese forces were now cut off from their retreat across the Coa so that now, when they were defeated, the whole of Wellington’s army must try to find safety in the wild hills and deep gorges of the high borderland. It would be a massacre. The cavalry which had frittered away the morning so uselessly would hunt the survivors through the hills, and all that was needed to begin that wild and slaughterous chase was for Masséna’s infantry to break through the last defenses above Fuentes de Oñoro.
The French now held the village and the graveyard. Their leading soldiers were just feet beneath the ridge’s summit that was crowned with redcoats and Portuguese blasting volleys that fountained soil among the graves and rattled sharply against the village walls. The surviving Highlanders had retreated to the ridge with the Warwickshire men who had lived through the mauling fight in the streets and now they had been joined by Portuguese caçadores, redcoats from the English shires, skirmishers from the valleys of Wales and by Hanoverians loyal to King George III; all mingled as they stood shoulder to shoulder to hold the heights and drown Fuentes de Oñoro in smoke and lead. And in the village the streets were crowded with French infantry who were waiting for the order to make the last victorious assault up and out of the smoking houses, across the broken graveyard wall, over the humped graves and broken stones of the cemetery and then across the ridge’s crest and into the enemy’s vulnerable rear. To the left of their charge would be the white-walled, bullet-scarred church on its ledge of rock, while to the right would be the tumbled gray boulders of the stony summit where the British riflemen lurked, and in between those two landmarks the road climbed the grassy, blood-slicked chute up which the blue-coated infantry needed to attack to bring France a victory.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 4: Sharpe's Escape, Sharpe's Fury, Sharpe's Battle Page 104
