Sharpe's Triumph: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803

  Most of the British force now checked a half-mile from the walls while the three assault parties organized themselves. Two of the attacking groups would escalade the wall, one to the left of the gate and the other to the right, and both would be led by Scottish soldiers with sepoys in support. The King’s 78th, the kilted regiment, would attack the wall to the left while their fellow Highlanders of the 74th would assault to the right. The third attack was in the center and would be led by the 74th’s Colonel, William Wallace, who was also commander of one of the two infantry brigades and evidently an old friend of McCandless for, seeing his fellow Scot, Wallace rode back through his regiment’s ranks to greet him with a warm familiarity. Wallace would be leading men of the 74th in an assault against the gate itself and his plan was to run a six-pounder cannon hard up against the big timber gates then fire the gun to blast the entrance open. “None of our gunners have ever done it before,” Wallace told McCandless, “and they’ve insisted on putting a round shot down the gun, but I swear my mother told me you should never load shot to open gates. A double powder charge, she instructed me, and nothing else.”

  “Your mother told you that, Wallace?” McCandless asked.

  “Her father was an artilleryman, you see, and he brought her up properly. But I can’t persuade our gunners to leave out the ball. Stubborn fellows, they are. English to a man, of course. Can’t teach them anything.” Wallace offered McCandless his canteen. “It’s cold tea, McCandless, nothing that will send your soul to perdition.”

  McCandless took a swig of the tea, then introduced Sharpe. “He was the fellow who blew the Tippoo’s mine in Seringapatam,” he told Wallace.

  “I heard about you, Sharpe!” Wallace said. “A damn fine day’s work, Sergeant, well done.” And the Scotsman leaned across to give Sharpe his hand. He was a middle-aged man, balding, with a pleasant face and a quick smile. “I can tempt you to some cold tea, Sharpe?”

  “I’ve got water, sir, thank you,” Sharpe said, patting his canteen which was filled with rum, a gift from Daniel Fletcher, the General’s orderly.

  “You’ll forgive me if I’m about my business,” Wallace said to McCandless, retrieving his canteen. “I’ll see you inside the city, McCandless. Joy of the day to you both.” Wallace spurred back to the head of his column.

  “A very good man,” McCandless said warmly, “a very good man indeed.”

  Sevajee and his dozen men cantered up to join McCandless. They all wore red jackets, for they planned to ride into the city with McCandless and none wanted to be mistaken for the enemy, yet somehow the unbuttoned jackets, which had been borrowed from a sepoy battalion, made them look more piratical than ever. They all carried naked tulwars, curved sabers that they had honed to a razor’s edge at dawn. Sevajee reckoned there would be no time for aiming firelocks once they were inside Ahmednuggur. Ride in, charge whoever still put up a fight and cut down hard.

  The two escalade parties started forward. Each had a pair of ladders, and each party was led by those men who had volunteered to be first up the rungs. The sun was fully above the horizon now and Sharpe could see the wall more plainly. He reckoned it was twenty foot high, give or take a few inches, and the glint of guns in every embrasure and loophole showed that it would be heavily defended. “Ever seen an escalade, Sharpe?” McCandless asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Risky business. Frail things, ladders. Nasty being first up.”

  “Very nasty, sir.”

  “And if it fails it gives the enemy confidence.”

  “So why do it, sir?”

  “Because if it succeeds, Sharpe, it lowers the enemy’s spirits. It will make us seem invincible. Veni, vidi, vici.”

  “I don’t speak any Indian, sir, not proper.”

  “Latin, Sharpe, Latin. I came, I saw, I conquered. How’s your reading these days?”

  “It’s good, sir, very good,” Sharpe answered enthusiastically, though in truth he had not read very much in the last four years other than lists of stores and duty rosters and Major Stokes’s repair orders. But it had been Colonel McCandless and his nephew, Lieutenant Lawford, who had first taught Sharpe to read when they shared a cell in the Tippoo Sultan’s prison. That was four years ago now.

  “I shall give you a Bible, Sharpe,” McCandless said, watching the escalade parties march steadily forward. “It’s the one book worth reading.”

  “I’d like that, sir,” Sharpe said straight-faced, then saw that the picquets of the day were running ahead to make a skirmish line that would pepper the wall with musket fire. Still no one fired from the city wall, though by now both the picquets and the two ladder parties were well inside musket range. “If you don’t mind me asking, sir,” Sharpe said to McCandless, “what’s to stop that bugger—sorry, sir—what’s to stop Mister Dodd from escaping out the other side of the city, sir?”

  “They are, Sharpe,” McCandless said, indicating the cavalry that now galloped off on both sides of the city. The British 19th Dragoons rode in a tight squadron, but the other horsemen were Mahratta allies or else silladars from Hyderabad or Mysore, and they rode in a loose swarm. “Their job is to harass anyone leaving the city,” McCandless went on. “Not the civilians, of course, but any troops.”

  “But Dodd’s got a whole regiment, sir.”

  McCandless dismissed the problem. “I doubt that two whole regiments will serve him. In a minute or two there’ll be sheer panic inside Ahmednuggur, and how’s Dodd to get away? He’ll have to fight his way through a crowd of terrified civilians. No, we’ll find him inside the place if he’s still there.”

  “He is,” Sevajee put in. He was staring at the wall through a small telescope. “I can see the uniforms of his men on the firestep. White jackets.” He pointed westwards, beyond the stretch of wall that would be attacked by the 78th.

  The picquets suddenly opened fire. They were scattered along the southern edge of the city, and their musketry was sporadic and, to Sharpe, futile. Men firing at a city? The musket balls smacked into the red stone of the wall which echoed back the crackle of the gunfire, but the defenders ignored the threat. Not a musket replied, not a cannon fired. The wall was silent. Shreds of smoke drifted from the skirmish line which went on chipping the big red stones with lead.

  Colonel Wallace’s assault party was late in starting, while the kilted men of the 78th, who were assaulting the wall to the left of the gate, were now far in advance of the other attackers. They were running across open ground, their two ladders in plain sight of the enemy, but still the defenders ignored them. A regiment of sepoys was wheeling left, going to add their musket fire to the picquet line. A bagpiper was playing, but he must have been running for his instrument kept giving small ignominious hiccups. In truth it all seemed ignominious to Sharpe. The battle, if it could even be called a battle, had begun so casually, and the enemy was not even appearing to regard it as a threat. The skirmishers’ fire was scattered, the assault parties looked under strength and there seemed to be no urgency and no ceremony. There ought to be ceremony, Sharpe considered. A band should be playing, flags should be flying, and the enemy should be visible and threatening, but instead it was ramshackle and almost unreal.

  “This way, Sharpe,” McCandless said, and swerved away to where Colonel Wallace was chivvying his men into formation. A dozen blue-coated gunners were clustered about a six-pounder cannon, evidently the gun that would be rammed against the city gate, while just beyond them was a battery of four twelve-pounder cannon drawn by elephants and, as Sharpe and McCandless urged their horses towards Wallace, the four mahouts halted their elephants and the gunners hurried to unharness the four guns. Sharpe guessed the battery would spray the wall with canister, though the silence of the defenders seemed to suggest that they had nothing to fear from these impudent attackers. Sir Arthur Wellesley, mounted on Diomed who seemed no worse for his bloodletting, rode up behind the guns and called some instruction to the battery commander who raised a hand in acknowledgment. The General was accompan
ied by three scarlet-coated aides and two Indians who, from the richness of their robes, had to be commanders of the allied horsemen who had ridden to stop the flight of fugitives from the city’s northern gate.

  The attackers from the 78th were just a hundred paces from the wall now. They had no packs, only their weapons. And still the enemy treated them with lordly disdain. Not a gun fired, not a musket flamed, not a single rocket slashed out from the wall.

  “Looks like it will be easy, McCandless!” Wallace called.

  “I pray as much!” McCandless said.

  “The enemy has been praying, too,” Sevajee said, but McCandless ignored the remark.

  Then, suddenly and appallingly, the silence ended.

  The enemy was not ignoring the attack. Instead, from serried loopholes in the wall and from the bastions’ high embrasures and from the merlons along the parapet, a storm of gunfire erupted. One moment the wall had been clear in the morning sun, now it was fogged by a thick screen of powder smoke. A whole city was rimmed white, and the ground about the attacking troops was pitted and churned by the strike of bullets. “Ten minutes of seven,” McCandless shouted over the noise, as though the time was important. Rockets, like those Sharpe had seen at Seringapatam, seared out from the walls to stitch their smoke trails in crazy tangles above the assaulting parties’ heads, yet, despite the volume of fire, the defenders’ opening volley appeared to do little harm. One redcoat was staggering, but the assault parties still went forward, and then a pain-filled squeal made Sharpe look to his right to see that an elephant had been struck by a cannonball. The beast’s mahout was dragging on its tether, but the elephant broke free and, maddened by its wound, charged straight towards Wallace’s men. The Highlanders scattered. The gunners had begun to drag their loaded six-pounder forward, but they were right in the injured beast’s path and now sensibly abandoned the gun to flee from the crazed animal’s charge. The wrinkled skin of the elephant’s left flank was sheeted in red. Wallace shouted incoherently, then spurred his horse out of the way. The elephant, trunk raised and eyes white, thumped past McCandless and Sharpe. “Poor girl,” McCandless said.

  “It’s a she?” Sharpe asked.

  “All draught animals are female, Sharpe. More docile.”

  “She ain’t docile, sir,” Sharpe said, watching the elephant burst free of the army’s rear and trample through a field of stubble pursued by her mahout and an excited crowd of small skinny children who had followed the attacking troops from the encampment and now whooped shrilly as they enjoyed the chase. Sharpe watched them, then involuntarily ducked as a musket ball whipped just over his shako and another ricocheted off the six-pounder’s barrel with a surprisingly musical note.

  “Not too close now, Sharpe,” McCandless warned, and Sharpe obediently reined in his mare.

  Colonel Wallace was calling his men back into formation. “Damned animals!” he snarled at McCandless.

  “Your mother had no advice on elephants, Wallace?”

  “None I’d repeat to a godly man, McCandless,” Wallace said, then spurred his horse towards the six-pounder’s disordered gunners. “Pick up the traces, you rogues. Hurry!”

  The 78th had reached the wall to the left of the gate. They rammed the foot of their two ladders into the soil, then swung the tops up and over onto the wall’s parapet. “Good boys,” McCandless shouted warmly, though he was far too distant for the attackers to hear his encouragement. “Good boys!” The first kilted Highlanders were already scrambling up the rungs, but then a man was hit by a bullet from the flanking bastion and he stopped, clung to the ladder, then slowly toppled sideways. A crowd of Highlanders jostled at the bottom of the ladders to be the next up the rungs. Poor bastards, Sharpe thought, so eager to climb to death, and he saw that the leading men on both ladders were officers. They had swords. The men climbed with their bayonet-tipped muskets slung over their shoulders, but the officers climbed sword in hand. One of them was struck and the man behind unceremoniously shoved him off the ladder and hurried up to the parapet and there, inexplicably, he stopped.

  His comrades shouted at him to get a bloody move on and scramble over the wall, but the man did nothing except to unsling his musket, and then he was hurled backwards in a misting spray of blood. Another man took his place, and the same happened to him. The officer at the top of the second ladder was crouching on the top rung, occasionally peering over the coping of the wall between two of the dome-shaped merlons, but he was making no attempt to cross the parapet. “They should have more than two ladders, sir,” Sharpe grumbled.

  “Wasn’t time, laddie, wasn’t time,” McCandless said. “What’s holding them?” he asked as he stared with an agonized expression at the stalled men. The Arab defenders in the nearest bastion were being given a fine target and their musketry was having a terrible effect on the crowded ladders. The noise of the defenders’ fire was continuous; a staccato crackle of musketry, the hiss of rockets and the thunderous crash of cannon. Men were blasted off the ladders, and their place was immediately taken by others, but still the men at the top of the rungs did not try to cross the wall, and still the defenders fired and the dead and injured heaped up at the foot of the ladders and the living pushed them aside to reach the rungs and so offer themselves as targets to the unending gunfire. One man at last heaved himself onto the wall and straddled the coping where he unslung his musket and fired a shot down into the city, but almost immediately he was hit by a blast of musket fire. He swayed for a second, his musket clattered down the wall’s red face, then he followed it to the ground. The new man at the top of the ladder heaved himself up, then, just like the rest, he checked and ducked back.

  “What’s holding them?” McCandless cried in frustration. “In God’s name! Go!”

  “There’s no bloody firestep,” Sharpe said grimly.

  McCandless glanced at him. “What?”

  “Sorry, sir. Forgot not to curse, sir.”

  But McCandless was not worried about Sharpe’s language. “What did you say, man?” he insisted.

  “There’s no firestep there, sir.” Sharpe pointed at the wall where the Scotsmen were dying. “There’s no musket smoke on the parapet, sir.”

  McCandless looked back. “By God, you’re right.”

  The wall had merlons and embrasures, but not a single patch of musket smoke showed in those defenses, which meant that the castellation was false and there was no firestep on the wall’s far side where defenders could stand. From the outside the stretch of wall looked like any other part of the city’s defenses, but Sharpe guessed that once the Highlanders reached the wall’s summit they were faced with a sheer drop on the far side, and doubtless there was a crowd of enemies waiting at the foot of that inner wall to massacre any man who survived the fall. The 78th were attacking into thin air and being bloodied mercilessly by the jubilant defenders.

  The two ladders emptied as the officers at last realized their predicament and shouted at their men to come down. The defenders cheered the repulse and kept firing as the two ladders were carried back from the ramparts.

  “Dear God,” McCandless said, “dear God.”

  “I warned you,” Sevajee said, unable to conceal his pride in the fighting qualities of the Mahratta defenders.

  “You’re on our side!” McCandless snarled, and the Indian just shrugged.

  “It ain’t over yet, sir,” Sharpe tried to cheer up the Scotsman.

  “Escalades work by speed, Sharpe,” McCandless said, “and we’ve lost surprise now.”

  “It will have to be done properly,” Sevajee remarked smugly, “with guns and a breach.”

  But the escalade was not defeated yet. The assault party of the 74th had now reached the wall to the right of the gate and their two ladders were swung up against the high red stones, but this stretch of wall did possess a firestep and it was crowded with eager defenders who rained a savage fire down onto the attackers. The British twelve-pounders had opened fire, and their canister was savaging the defenders,
but the dead and wounded were dragged away to be replaced by reinforcements who quickly learned that if they let the attackers come up the two ladders then the cannon would cease fire, and so they let the Scots climb the rungs and then hurled down baulks of wood that could scrape a ladder clear in seconds. Then a cannon in one of the flanking bastions hammered a barrel load of stones and scrap iron into the men crowding about the foot of the ladders. “Oh, dear God,” McCandless prayed again, “dear God.” More men began to climb the ladders while the wounded crawled and limped back from the walls, pursued by the musket fire of the defenders. A Scottish officer, claymore in hand, ran up one of the ladders with the facility of a sailor swarming up rigging. He cut the claymore at a lunging bayonet, somehow survived a musket blast, put a hand on the coping, but then a spear took him in the throat and he seemed to shake like a gaffed fish before tumbling backwards and carrying two men down to the ground with him. The sound of the defenders’ musketry was punctuated by the deeper crash of the small cannon that were mounted in the hidden galleries of the bastions. One of those cannon now struck a ladder in the flank and Sharpe watched appalled as the whole flimsy thing buckled and broke, carrying seven men down to the ground in its wreckage. The 78th had been repulsed and the 74th had lost one of their two ladders. “This is not good,” McCandless said grimly, “not good at all.”

  “Fighting Mahrattas,” Sevajee said smugly, “is not like fighting men from Mysore.”