Sharpes command, p.8
Sharpe's Command, page 8
‘Mister Sharpe?’ Henderson had half heard the words.
‘I was almost feeling sorry for them, Joe. Bastards have probably never fought riflemen.’
Henderson grinned. ‘There’s a lot of them, Mister Sharpe.’
‘A hundred and fifty, more or less. Call it ten each. All in a day’s work, Joe,’ Sharpe walked on down the line, stopping to crouch beside Dan Hagman. The first rank of Frenchmen splashed into the stream. It was no obstacle, scarcely coming to their ankles. Sharpe held his breath as the last rank came from the water. If the French commander had any sense, he would deploy now by sending his Voltigeurs into a loose skirmish line that would climb to the village first. Forty or fifty Voltigeurs would be a handful for his men, because every shot would have to count and as long as they fought against the skirmishers his riflemen could not pour fire into the bigger target of the close-packed column, but the French did not deploy. They just kept coming. Sharpe trained his telescope on the mounted officer, seeing a moustached face. The man was evidently calling to his men, doubtless promising them an easy victory and lavish plunder. He wore a blue sash across his blue coat. He had been riding in the centre of the column, between the two companies, but now spurred his horse to lead the column as it began climbing from the stream. ‘Buggers will have sopping wet boots,’ Hagman said, amused, ‘and they won’t like that.’
Sharpe gazed at the column. ‘They don’t know we’re here,’ he muttered.
‘Probably think we’re sleeping, Mister Sharpe.’
Sharpe kept his glass on the officer, who had drawn a lightly curved sabre that he pointed towards Sharpe. The track rose straight towards the village now, and Sharpe could see the six men in the enemy’s front rank labouring for breath as the slope steepened. The mounted officer waved the curved blade towards the crest ahead and shouted again. The column tried to quicken, but lost cohesion and sergeants were bellowing at the troops to hold their files straight. There was a drummer somewhere in those files and Sharpe could just hear the monotonous beats. Then they halted and Sharpe feared the Voltigeurs were being sent ahead, but the halt was merely to dress the ragged ranks. The officer turned his horse to face his men and just then Hagman fired.
It was a very long shot, even for Hagman. The bullet seared down the hill and Sharpe, still looking through the glass, saw the shock on men’s faces as the sound of the shot echoed through the valley, then the mounted officer pitched forward until his saddle’s pommel checked him, then he slid slowly sideways to fall onto the track.
‘Nice one, Dan,’ Sharpe called, his words drowned as thirteen other rifles fired a ragged fusillade and the whole front file of the column fell. ‘Keep firing!’ Sharpe called and aimed his own rifle a hand’s breath above the column, reckoning the distance would mean his bullet struck into the bloodied and disordered carnage. He fired and automatically dropped the rifle’s butt to the ground and fished a new cartridge from his pouch. He moved to his right to escape the cloud of smoke that obscured his view and, as he poured a new powder charge into the barrel, saw that the French had dragged their dead and wounded to the track’s edges and were reforming their ranks. The mounted officer’s horse was galloping free, back the way the French had come. Another officer was now yelling at the column, pointing uphill, and the march started again. ‘Keep hitting them!’ Sharpe called.
He hardly dared believe his luck. The French force outnumbered his small squad by at least ten to one, but were so confident, or else so hidebound, that they had not deployed a skirmish line and instead seemed intent on marching in column straight towards his riflemen. A gift from heaven. ‘Aim carefully!’ he called. ‘And keep shooting!’ He rammed a leather-wrapped bullet down the rifle’s barrel, stuck the ramrod into the turf beside him, then charged the pan. He brought the rifle to his shoulder and aimed over the open sights at the column’s head. Pulled the trigger and fished a new cartridge from his pouch. A paltry scatter of musket balls flew above him. The few French who were in a position to shoot back were all firing high. ‘Keep hitting them!’
‘Shouldn’t they be in skirmish order, sir?’ Lieutenant Love appeared at Sharpe’s side.
‘They should, yes.’
‘Why aren’t they?’ The Lieutenant had his pistol drawn, but had enough sense to know it would be worse than useless at the distance to where the French were being slaughtered.
‘Because they’re badly trained and worse led,’ Sharpe said. He rammed another bullet down the rifle’s barrel.
The column had stopped. No one there seemed to know what to do. Sharpe used the pause to fish out his telescope and saw that the second officer who had tried to rally the two companies was down. The front of the French was being shredded by rifle bullets and no sooner was it destroyed then the men immediately behind became new targets for the relentless rifle fire. The men in the column’s centre were panicking, aiming uphill and shooting wildly. A ramrod windmilled through the air, shot from a musket and a sure sign of badly trained troops. Then, at last, Sharpe saw a thin officer gesturing the men of the second company at the rear of the column to spread out. He could see the man shouting and took his eye from the telescope to watch the company scatter across the valley’s side to make a loose skirmish line. ‘Not before time,’ Sharpe muttered. ‘Keep those Voltigeurs busy!’ he called.
The skirmish line began climbing and Sharpe felt a pulse of apprehension. There were well over fifty men in the skirmish line, each four or five paces from his neighbour, and his fourteen riflemen had to stop them. It would take at least seven or eight minutes for the Voltigeurs to climb the valley side, which gave him time to loose more than two hundred shots, but single men were much harder to kill than troops conveniently packed into ranks, and most of his riflemen were shooting at the remnants of the first company who were still formed in column on the road. ‘Ignore the column!’ he bellowed. ‘Kill the skirmishers! And aim carefully!’
The skirmishers were beginning to fight properly, one man kneeling and shooting uphill while his partner reloaded. And the closer they came the more accurate would be their musketry. Sharpe watched the Voltigeurs, saw one fall, but too many rifle bullets were missing. He turned, reckoning that his next position would have to be the houses at the edge of the village where a small crowd of people was gazing anxiously towards him. El Héroe might have fled, but some villagers had stayed behind, and Sharpe had no doubt of their fate if he was forced to retreat beyond the small houses. Damn it, he thought, but he should not have picked this battle. The Voltigeurs were halfway up the slope now, their numbers scarcely diminished by the rifle fire, while the first company, having dragged its dead and wounded to the edges of the track, had resumed its march. He primed his rifle and sought a target down the slope, seeing the thin officer shouting orders as he gestured for the Voltigeurs to spread out further.
Sharpe knelt, brought the rifle’s butt to his shoulder and lined the sights on the officer’s pale face, reckoning the bullet would drop to hit his breastbone or belly. He held his breath. Pulled the trigger. The powder in the pan flared, specks stung his right cheek, then the rifle hammered into his shoulder and smoke obscured his view. He ran six paces to his left, looked again and the man was still shouting and gesturing, then suddenly twisted down as his shako was shot from his head revealing long fair hair. So another rifleman had fired at the officer. ‘I want that fair-haired bugger down!’ Sharpe shouted. ‘And keep at them, lads!’
He reloaded. A musket ball clipped the long grass beside him. So they were no longer firing high and the remnant of the column was climbing faster, driven by the hidden drummer. The Voltigeurs were even closer, firing, crouching, reloading, running forward again. ‘Pat!’ Sharpe bellowed to the right of his line. ‘We’ll be pulling back soon!’
‘Aye, sir!’ Harper called back, then aimed his rifle down the hill and pulled the trigger.
Too many of Sharpe’s men were still aiming at the company that had stayed in column and was still approaching, and their bullets tore into the dense formation which gave the Voltigeurs some respite. Sharpe saw those Voltigeurs fixing bayonets, which meant they were readying for a final charge that must end in his men’s slaughter or surrender. He cursed, knowing he had led his men to an ignominious defeat. He took a deep breath, ready to admit the failure and to call his men back, but just then, to his left, from across the shoulder of the hill, a bugle sounded.
The call came again from his left, then to his astonishment he saw a line of horsemen coming fast along the valley’s side. More horses spilled over the skyline and were spurred faster. Some of the riders carried lances, most had sabres, and all wore bright red scarves that flapped behind as they galloped. ‘Keep firing!’ Sharpe bellowed.
The Voltigeurs on the right of the French line started running back towards the column, but were too slow. The lances struck, the sabres slashed and the horses kept coming. Sharpe heard a desperate scream as a Voltigeur was lanced in the back, he saw his men’s bullets slamming into the column which was now facing outwards with fixed bayonets to make a rally square. The horsemen, Sharpe saw, wore ragged faded uniforms, some yellow, some black. They were partisans who now divided into two streams to gallop either side of the first company and carry their blades to the remaining Voltigeurs, most of whom were now running desperately downhill towards the stream. Which is where they died under the merciless Spanish sabres and lances. ‘So El Héroe came back?’ Harper had joined Sharpe. ‘Didn’t think he had it in him.’
‘Nor did I,’ Sharpe said, ‘but thank God he did, we were about to be beat. Did we lose anyone?’
‘Milner got his shako shot off, and the bullet grazed his skull. He’ll live, he’s got a head made of firebrick.’
The bugle sounded again, evidently rallying the horsemen, most of whom were in the valley’s bed where they had finished off the last of the French skirmishers, but a score or more surrounded the column that had formed a ragged rally square and now stood on the road with fixed bayonets. ‘I’d best take them prisoner,’ Sharpe said, ‘unless we want to watch them being butchered. Harris!’
‘Mister Sharpe?’
‘You speak some Frog, so come here.’
‘Bien sûr, monsieur!’ Harris ran to Sharpe, grinning. ‘That was enjoyable, Mister Sharpe!’
‘It was bloody murder,’ Sharpe said, ‘but I don’t want more slaughter, so you’ll tell the bastards to surrender. Come. If El Héroe gives you any trouble, tell him to bugger off.’
He slung his rifle and drew his sword. He did not expect to use it, but the sword denoted he was an officer and the sheer size of the blade put fear into most men. He strode down the track. ‘Tell their officer to meet me,’ he instructed Harris, who shouted the order at the sullen Frenchmen who were shrinking into an ever-tighter huddle. Sharpe estimated there were about forty or fifty men in the rally square and by now they were surrounded by at least that many partisans who were jeering them. ‘Quiet!’ Sharpe bellowed. ‘Silencio!’
Harris strode towards the frightened men ‘Qui vous commande?’ he demanded, and a thin pale young man with floppy fair hair pushed his way through the front rank. Sharpe recognised him as the man who had deployed the Voltigeurs. Instead of an infantry officer’s sword he carried his bullet-riddled shako, and he looked pathetically young, but he had possessed the sense to do what his dead commanding officer should have done, only to be defeated by cavalry, the fatal enemy of all skirmishers.
‘Je commande maintenant,’ he said nervously, his eyes on Sharpe’s sword.
‘Et tu es?’ Harris snapped.
‘Sous-Lieutenant Blanchet.’ He hesitated, looking terrified. ‘Pierre Blanchet. I belong to the,’ he hesitated, as if his English was not sufficient, ‘trenteneuvième de la ligne,’ he added as if revealing his Christian name would move Sharpe to pity.
‘Thirty-ninth regiment of the line,’ Harris translated.
‘Tell him he belongs to me now,’ Sharpe told Harris.
‘But he doesn’t,’ a voice said behind and above Sharpe, ‘he belongs to me.’
He turned, his heart leaping as he looked up. ‘Hello, Teresa,’ he said.
‘Hello, Richard.’
La Aguja had come.
Teresa had met El Héroe earlier that morning. ‘He was at San Miguel’s cave, hiding,’ she said dismissively, ‘and ordered me to stay with him.’
‘Ordered you?’
‘He said we would be killed if we came here. He is a coward. un cobarde.’ She spat the word, making Sharpe smile. She had brought sixty-three men and had apologised there were not more. ‘My people are scattered,’ she had explained, ‘and I brought what I could.’
‘It’s more than enough,’ he had assured her.
She wanted to kill all fifty-eight of the French prisoners. ‘You know what they do to us?’ she asked, before answering her own question. ‘They kill, mutilate and rape us. They are not men, they are animals.’ She had found her own brother tortured and nailed to a cellar wall, and ever since she had fought the French with a fanatical ruthlessness. ‘Death is too good for them.’
‘They must live,’ Sharpe said, ‘there are rules.’
‘I spit on your rules. They are my prisoners!’
It was hard to argue with that. Sharpe knew he had miscalculated, that his fifteen rifles could never have defeated both French companies. It had been sheer pride and overconfidence that had persuaded him that he could win, and in the end he had only been saved by Teresa and her partisans. ‘Right now,’ he told Teresa, ‘the French only know about my men and your followers, they don’t know General Hill is coming with cannon and thousands of men. And so far every time they’ve left their forts they’ve been defeated. So we let them go back to the forts where they’ll spread fear of us. The garrisons will be pissing themselves in terror by the time General Hill arrives.’
‘Better they don’t go back at all,’ Teresa said harshly, ‘and the garrisons will fear even more because their men just disappeared.’
‘I can’t hold them prisoner,’ Sharpe said, ‘I don’t have the food for them, and they need surgeons.’
‘Why hold them prisoner?’ Teresa enquired. ‘Why not just cut their throats?’
‘Because if I let you kill them,’ Sharpe said, ‘then they’ll believe I ordered it and every rifleman ever captured in this war will be executed by the French. There really are rules.’
‘There should be no rules in war,’ Teresa said, ‘war is the absence of law.’
‘Let them go,’ Sharpe said, ‘and in a few days we’ll capture them all again.’
‘Just let them go!’ She sounded astonished.
‘I want them to spread fear.’
Sharpe had already given the French prisoners two handcarts from the village with which they had collected their wounded men from the carnage in the valley. Now all the Frenchmen were in the stables of the large house that El Héroe had occupied, guarded there by Teresa’s red-scarved men. The only surviving officer was the young Sous-Lieutenant Marchet, who looked terrified when Teresa ordered him and his surviving men to parade in the stableyard. There was a big stone mounting block in the yard and the prisoners watched in misery as two of Teresa’s men destroyed their muskets. A farrier’s hammer was used to knock the locks clean off the muskets, then the heavy stocks were cut away with an axe, leaving only the barrels. Harper took the ramrods and bent them one by one, then tossed them contemptuously onto a pile before the useless barrels were given back to the Frenchmen. Lieutenant Marchet watched silently and only protested when Teresa unbuckled his sword belt. ‘Be silent,’ she snarled at him, then tossed his scabbarded sword to one of her followers. ‘Now,’ she said in English, ‘tell them to undress.’
Harris grinned. ‘Enlevez vous vos vêtements!’ he called.
The prisoners hesitated, but Teresa’s men levelled cocked muskets and slowly, unwillingly, they undressed. They were embarrassed because a woman watched them and, while she gloated over them, Sharpe watched her. He marvelled, as he always did, at her slim, dark beauty. A hawk’s face, he thought, stern and strong, and he wondered whether their daughter would inherit the same good face. His thoughts were interrupted by a protest from Sous-Lieutenant Blanchet who, still in his uniform, marched indignantly towards Sharpe and delivered a harsh sentence in rapid French.
‘Tell him to slow down, Harris.’
‘He’s whingeing about being told to strip naked, sir.’
Blanchet evidently understood Harris’s translation because he launched into another rant, none of which Sharpe understood. Lieutenant Love, attracted by the French Lieutenant’s anger, came to stand by Sharpe. ‘He’s angry, sir,’ Love said unnecessarily, ‘and says it is unseemly of officers to treat their prisoners with such discourtesy. And I must say, sir, he has a point.’
Sharpe offered a brutal summation of what Lieutenant Love could do with his point, then pointed at the irate Frenchman. ‘Tell the bugger that when La Aguja was captured by the French they stripped her naked. She’s merely doing what they do.’
Blanchet seemed taken aback, looking at Teresa. ‘La Aguja?’ he asked, plainly impressed, then added more urgent words.
‘He says he’s your prisoner, sir,’ Love interpreted, ‘and he doesn’t expect an English gentleman to allow this behaviour.’
‘Tell him I’m no gentleman, and add that La Aguja outranks me. And tell him she wanted them all dead and I persuaded her to leave them alive. So what does he want to be? Dead or naked?’
Sharpe was impressed by Blanchet, who had shown courage in objecting to Teresa’s orders. He ordered Harris to take the young officer into the house. ‘He can keep his damned clothes on,’ he said, ‘and I’ll join you. Give the poor bugger some wine, El Cobarde must have left some here.’
‘El Cobarde, sir?’
‘El Héroe’s new name,’ Sharpe said.
‘The coward, that makes sense,’ Harris said happily and used his rifle butt to steer the Frenchman into the house.
‘Should I join you, sir?’ Lieutenant Love asked.
