Sharpes command, p.21
Sharpe's Command, page 21
‘Mister Sharpe! Mister Sharpe!’ a voice called from his left.
‘What is it?’ Sharpe kept his eye on his sights, waiting.
‘Mister Theobald’s wounded. Gone back to the surgeon.’
Sharpe glanced to his left and recognised Sergeant Gerrard. A good man, one of the best, but plainly perturbed by the loss of his officer. ‘Does that leave you in command, Tom?’
‘It does, Mister Sharpe. Mister Stokes caught a shell fragment, poor bastard got it in the belly. There’s a Portuguese officer, but …’ Gerrard’s voice faltered.
Sharpe sensed Gerrard’s reluctance to put his men under Portuguese command, though almost all the Portuguese officers were British and the rifle-armed Caçadores knew their business every bit as well as the 95th. ‘They’re good lads, Tom,’ he said, ‘they’re as good as we are!’
‘The boys are fine,’ Gerrard said, ‘but their officer? If he’s eighteen I’d be surprised and he’s a stuck-up little bastard. Thinks he knows it all. He wants us to pull further back.’
That complaint Sharpe did understand. He saw too that the men had retreated some way up the slope where they were more exposed to the canister fire. ‘What were Mister Theobald’s orders, Tom?’
‘Stay here and kill the buggers.’
‘Then that’s what you do, but go forward fifty yards.’
‘Forward?’
‘It’ll force the bastards to lower their aim and gunners hate shooting downwards. And it’ll make our fire more accurate. Do it now. And if the stuck-up little bastard tells you otherwise, tell him you’re under my command and he should come talk to me.’
‘Thanks, Dick!’ Gerrard said, then grinned. ‘Sorry, Mister Sharpe.’
‘Don’t be daft, Tom, we’re friends,’ Sharpe said. ‘You saw me through Grace’s death.’ He felt tears prick at his eyes as they always did when he remembered Lady Grace. ‘It was a damn awful time.’
‘She was special,’ Gerrard said, then turned and blew three blasts on a whistle and waved his men forward. Sharpe was already moving. Going forward meant they were lower on the hillside and so could not see as well over the rampart’s top, but he reckoned the canister would probably fire high and so spare the riflemen. Besides, going forward would help the accuracy of the Greenjackets. The French gunners could crouch beside the gun while it was fired, but to reload a man had to stand at the muzzle and swab the barrel, then two more men would load the charge and the canister, then ram the shots, and each of those men would be vulnerable to a good rifleman.
Sharpe dropped to a knee again and looked for the gap in the crenellations where his victim would show. ‘Dan!’
‘Mister Sharpe?’
‘Can you see the gunners?’
‘Not so well, Mister Sharpe.’
‘Go back up. Take Perkins and Trent with you. They load rifles and you shoot them. Go as far as you need and kill the damn artillerymen.’ He trusted Hagman’s accuracy to shoot from a greater distance and doubted that a group of three men would attract the attention of the French artillerymen.
Hagman ran off, collected the two younger riflemen and started back up the slope. His shots would thin the gunners, whose only targets now were the riflemen halfway down the slope. The rest of the assaulting force were either in the ditch or else crouched at the base of the hill on which the fort was built. ‘Get the ladders up,’ Sharpe muttered, looking back to his sights.
And there the man was, another shell in his hands. He held it over his head and the portfire started the fuse burning. A short fuse, Sharpe knew, and pulled the trigger. He cursed, reckoning he had aimed too low in his haste, but ran a few paces to his left to clear the smoke from his rifle and saw an explosion on the rampart. The man throwing the shell had been hit, fallen backwards and the fuse had reached the powder crammed into the shell. There was a churning cloud of smoke above the wall and Sharpe reckoned a half-dozen Frenchmen must have been killed or wounded. He stood to reload his rifle and rammed the leather-wrapped ball down the stubborn barrel. Two guns fired from the rampart and the spray of musket balls went overhead to strike the slope behind where the Greenjackets had been a moment before.
He slotted the ramrod back into its place beneath the barrel, primed the pan, then started walking along the line of riflemen. He was evidently the senior rifleman on the slope and he called to the men as he walked, praising their marksmanship, urging them to load carefully and shoot straight, and assuring them the fort would soon fall. He found Tom Gerrard: ‘Who are your best shots, Tom?’
‘Robertson, Clark and Milner.’
‘Send them back up the slope and tell them to pick off the gunners. There’s a man of mine up there already.’
‘Oh, shit!’ Gerrard said. ‘Sorry, Mister Sharpe.’
Sharpe saw what had caused the dismay. The first ladder had just been swayed up to clatter against the wall and was at least six feet too short. ‘There are other ladders, Tom,’ Sharpe said, ‘just kill the gunners and keep the rest of the boys shooting.’
He walked the rest of the line. ‘Those poor boys can’t get up the ladders without you!’ He called to the men, ‘so keep killing the bastards!’
A second ladder was heaved into place and again was too short. Sharpe swore and ran back to the right of the line where his men were firing. The ditch, invisible to Sharpe, was betrayed by the churning clouds of smoke where the French shells landed. The defenders had learned a lesson which was to avoid poking their heads above the parapet, but just heave the shells over the wall, confident that each missile must land and explode among the crammed assault parties who were trying to put more ladders in place. It would be carnage in the ditch, Sharpe thought. The explosions of the shells was oddly dull, muted perhaps by the deep ditch and by the bodies of the men dying beneath the inadequate ladders. And Sharpe had recommended shortening those ladders. ‘Pat!’
‘Sir?’
‘I’m going to take a look. Keep the men firing!’
It was safe enough to run to the fort because the French gunners were having difficulty aiming the cannon low enough, which meant the closer he got the safer he was. A handful of brave Frenchmen exposed themselves long enough to fire muskets and most of them were killed by rifle fire while their musket balls went God knows where. None came near Sharpe, not even when he scrambled up the steep hillside to reach the ditch’s edge. There were now five ladders propped against the wall, and all of them were five or six feet too short. Some men had even started climbing them, though God alone knew what they thought they could achieve when they reached the top. A roundshot fell on one of the ladders and plucked two redcoats off the rungs to fall onto the men crowded about the ladder’s base. Smoke lingered above the ditch concealing the worst of the slaughter, though the stench of powder and blood was thick in Sharpe’s nostrils.
‘God save Ireland,’ Harper said, ‘but that’s nasty.’
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I promised Miss Teresa I’d look after you, sir.’
‘So we both get killed?’
‘Not today, sir,’ Harper said with his usual blissful optimism. ‘And those poor bastards will have to retreat,’ he added, nodding into the red hell of the ditch.
The noise was overpowering. The cannon were still firing from the fort’s rampart, though a glance behind assured Sharpe that the canister was still going high. The shells crashed apart in the ditch where men screamed and shouted, and El Sacerdote’s twenty-four-pounder shots were cracking against the fort’s eastern face, where French artillerymen were returning fire with eight-pounders. Five miles to the south the British guns had opened fire on Castle Miravete, though that attack was purely a feint and designed to stop men from the castle’s garrison coming to the aid of their comrades in Fort Napoleon. And now, to add to the racket, two howitzers had begun firing from Fort Ragusa, lobbing their shells high over the river and above Fort Napoleon to explode on the slope where the riflemen looked for their targets.
‘We didn’t come this far to run away,’ Sharpe said. He sensed that the canister fire from the wall’s top was slackening and he guessed that the best marksmen among the rifles were finding their targets. But silencing those guns would not cause the fort to fall, only save the lives of a few riflemen, and maybe save the lives of scores of redcoats if they were forced to abandon the assault and retreat through the deadly hail of canister. He looked at the ladders. They had started a hundred feet in length, far too long, and Sharpe had recommended cutting them in half, but now it seemed to him that they had cut each into three pieces, and each one was too short. Nothing to be done about that now unless there were longer ladders back among the trees. He stared into the ditch where the smoke writhed and where the shells exploded into shrieking fragments of iron. ‘There might be a way, Pat.’
‘God save Ireland, sir. Don’t even think about it.’
‘See the ledge?’
‘Ledge, sir?’
‘I reckon the fort was built before the ditch.’
‘Makes sense, sir.’
‘And then they added the ditch, digging it from both sides.’
‘Ah,’ Harper said, understanding.
The ladders were reaching upwards from the base of the ditch, but Sharpe could see that the ditch had not been dug immediately below the fort’s wall, but had left a ledge of rock there, which meant that the wall stood some four or five feet from the inner edge of the ditch. ‘If we can put a ladder on the ledge, Pat, it could reach.’
‘Aye, it would.’
‘Just round the corner,’ Sharpe said, pointing. He meant the corner where the fort’s east wall met the southern wall. It was the southern wall that was under assault, while the eastern wall was only threatened by the captured twenty-four-pounders at the old bridge. That fire was constant and accurate, but those big guns were doing little damage except to frighten the defenders, and Sharpe reckoned most of the French on the ramparts would have crowded to the southern wall to join in the sport of tossing roundshot and shell down into their enemy. ‘Run back to our lads,’ Sharpe told Harper, ‘I want a dozen of them over there,’ he pointed eastwards. ‘They’re to kill any bastard that shows his face on the rampart. I’ll get a ladder. Be quick!’
Harper muttered something about Sharpe and insanity, but ran down the slope towards the riflemen, while Sharpe jumped into the ditch. He landed in an area clear of bodies, either wounded or dead, but as he moved westwards along the face of the southern wall, he was forced to step on and over dead and dying men. Many had crushed limbs, others had been flayed with shell fragments and lay bleeding and moaning. He thought of the carnage he had inflicted on the French at the old bridge and thought this was payback for the enemy. He was looking for an officer or Sergeant and finally saw a slender young man with a drawn sword. ‘You!’ he bellowed, pointing. ‘Who are you?’
The youngster saw Sharpe’s ragged uniform and the rifle slung on his shoulder and looked indignant for a heartbeat, then his mind registered the officer’s red sash and the heavy sword at Sharpe’s side. ‘Sir?’ he responded nervously.
‘Who are you? I’m Major Sharpe, 95th.’
The young man stiffened as if standing to attention. ‘Lieutenant Fitzgerald, sir, 92nd.’
‘Just who I was looking for,’ Sharpe said, stepping to one side as a missile thumped into the ditch a yard to his right. One glance showed it was a roundshot, or else it was a shell that had landed plumb on its fuse, extinguishing the fire. ‘Assemble a work party,’ Sharpe ordered, ‘and get me a ladder to that corner.’ He pointed behind him.
‘Ladders are too short, sir,’ Fitzgerald said anxiously. He had a Scottish accent.
‘Just get me a ladder, Lieutenant, and once you’ve done that, start taking the wounded out of the ditch. Lay them on the slope where they can’t be hit by more shells. We’ll sort them out when the fort’s taken.’
‘A ladder, sir?’ Fitzgerald asked, bemused.
‘And be quick about it! You know how to get something done in this army?’
‘Done, sir?’
‘Find a good Sergeant, give him the order. Quick now!’
Fitzgerald, sensibly, found a Sergeant, a big brute of a man named Maclean who dragged down the closest ladder and detailed four men to carry it to where Sharpe waited. ‘It’ll no reach the top, sir,’ Maclean warned Sharpe.
‘It will, Sergeant. Get it up.’
The ladder was heaved up until it lay against the fortress’s eastern wall, just two feet from the corner. It was five or six feet too short, but Sharpe clambered up onto the ledge between the ditch and the stonework. ‘Now heave it up here, Sergeant,’ he said, tapping the ledge with his foot.
Two big Scotsmen seized the base of the ladder and shoved it upwards and Sharpe helped by pulling on the rungs until the ladder was standing inches from the ledge’s brink and reaching to within inches of the wall’s top. ‘That’s perilously steep, sir,’ Maclean said, ‘it’ll tip!’
‘Two of you are going to hold it steady,’ Sharpe said, then handed his rifle to the big Scotsman. ‘Hold on to that for me. I’ll collect it from you once we’re inside the fort.’ He drew his sword. ‘Send men after me, Sergeant.’
‘I’ll be on your heels, sir.’
Sharpe edged round the ladder and put his left foot on a rung. God help me, he thought, but this was madness. He had found a way to reach the wall’s top, but that was no reason to lead the way. His job was to smother the wall’s top with rifle bullets which would allow the assaulting battalions to climb the ladder, but somehow he had known from the start that he would be doomed to the task. He climbed.
The ladder had been made hastily and the rungs merely hacked out with an axe. They felt fragile. Some moved beneath his weight. The rungs were crudely nailed to the rails which were equally unfinished, and Sharpe soon found he could not hold the sword and use two hands on the rails, so he paused and pushed his right hand through the guard on his sword’s hilt. He had never bothered to replace the sword-knot, a short length of cord or strap that went round the wrist so that if the sword was knocked from his grip he would not lose the weapon. Now the blade hung uncomfortably from his wrist and let him climb faster, though how he would recover the sword for the fight at the head of the ladder he did not know. Just climb, he told himself, because this was the only way to win this fight.
Three brigades of British troops had marched over a hundred miles to destroy the pontoon bridge and all that lay between them and success was one small fortress, and if the fortress could not be taken then the three brigades must march back defeated and the armies of Marmont and Soult could combine to make an overwhelming assault on the smaller British army. Climb this ladder, Sharpe told himself, and the French are properly buggered. His hands were being sliced by splinters from the rails, and a chip of stone, struck from the wall by one of El Sacerdote’s shots stung his right cheek. He climbed. A rung broke, or rather swung down from one nail when the other gave way, and he jarred down onto the rung beneath and only stayed on the ladder by gripping the rails tightly. A bullet struck the stones a foot to his left and he knew it was one of his riflemen shooting low. Or rather he hoped the man was shooting low and not aiming at his back. Sharpe had known of a half-dozen unpopular officers declared to be casualties of enemy action when in truth their own men had pulled the triggers. Don’t think about it, he told himself, just bloody climb. He climbed.
‘Watch above you, sir!’ a voice shouted from below and Sharpe thrust his face into the ladder and froze. Something hard and heavy clouted his pack, bounced away, then a shout, almost a scream, sounded close above him and he reckoned a rifle bullet had hit whoever had tried to hurl him from the ladder with a roundshot or stone. He could hear the rifles firing rapidly behind him, hear the bullets striking stone and one even drove a foot-long splinter from the ladder’s right-hand rail. ‘Keep firing, lads,’ he muttered and tilted his head back to look beneath his shako’s visor and saw he was close to the top. Just bloody climb! He climbed.
The ladder swayed slightly, not left or right, but inwards and the knuckles of his left hand were pressed painfully against the stonework. He began using his hands on the rungs instead of the rails, but the ladder was now so close to the wall that he could not make proper grips. He glanced downwards, immediately regretting it, and glimpsed a redcoat behind him and three or four men beyond him, their weight forcing the ladder to bow inwards. ‘Almost there, sir!’ a Scottish voice shouted from below.
Easy for you to say, Sharpe thought. His feet could not step properly on the rungs which, thanks to the ladder’s bowing, were now so close to the wall that only his toes in their hobnail boots could get a grip.
It suddenly struck him that he had not heard the French cannons fire for a long time and he reckoned his riflemen, chiefly Dan Hagman, had dropped the gunners. He edged up another rung, daring a quick glance upwards to see that he had only two or three feet to go. The ladder stopped about a foot beneath the wall’s top and the last few rungs would be the most difficult to negotiate. ‘First man up is doomed,’ he remembered a cheerful Scotsman saying to him as they watched the redcoats climb the ladders at Ahmednuggur. The French knew the ladder was here, knew men were climbing it and could wait beyond the parapet with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets. And all Sharpe had was the sword which hung awkwardly from his wrist. He tried turning his hand to grasp the hilt, but could not turn it far enough. He needed Harper’s volley gun, he thought. He needed more sense. He would die here, but at least his death might give the next man on the ladder a chance to scramble over the wall while the enemy was reloading.
Then an explosion not far to his right pummelled his body with a gust of air while shards of jagged iron flew above and below him. One struck his pack while another hit his right hip to give him a sudden sharp pain. He heard shouts from above him and realised that El Sacerdote’s gunners were trying to help him by loading the twelve-pounders with shell. And those Spanish gunners were good. A skilled man had cut the shell’s fuse to the exact length so the missile neither exploded short of its target nor far beyond it, but had almost blasted Sharpe off the ladder. He twisted his hand again, almost losing the sword, but snatched his arm up just in time. Speed, he thought. That was his best friend now. He had been climbing the last few rungs painfully slowly because the ladder was more or less vertical against the stonework and both footholds and handholds were awkward and precarious. He glanced down and saw redcoats climbing behind him. ‘Not far now, lads,’ he grunted, then looked up again. He was headed for one of the embrasures in the wall’s top, a space about two feet wide between its merlons. Rifle bullets were hitting those merlons, provoking puffs of stone dust. Sharpe thought of the redcoats who had scaled the walls of the castle at Badajoz, walls three times the height of this one. How the hell had they done it? Not just climbed, but conquered. And what the hell were the French doing above him? He had expected more eight-pounder roundshots to be dropped on him, possibly even a shell with its fuse cut dangerously short, but other than muffled shouts he could sense nothing. Was a man waiting with an axe, ready to chop down as soon as Sharpe’s head appeared? Christ, he thought, but he was frightened. Terrified. But the one thing he knew about fear was to fight through it. Courage was not a lack of fear, it was conquering the fear, and to do that he needed a decent foothold on the rungs, a spring upwards, and a usable weapon.
