"Sir!"
"Shoot the next bastard who takes a step back."
"Yes, sir."
They stared at him as if he was a ghost. They froze, bullets half rammed down barrels, and he bellowed at them to load, to hurry, and it was the first time he had shouted in a month and the strain tugged at the huge, tender bruise low on his stomach and Harper saw the twinge on his Captain’s face. The front rank was kneeling now, more frightened of Sharpe’s anger than the French, and the Riflemen were tap loading their guns, not bothering with the greased leather patch that gripped the grooves of the barrel. Sharpe knew it was a waste of a good weapon. "Rifles!" He pointed to the open end of the line, nearest the French. "Move! Load properly!"
The sound of the French was close, overwhelming, and he wanted to cringe from it, to turn and watch it, but he dared not. His men were loading again, their training overcoming their fear, and he watched as the ramrods came up and out of the barrels and were propped against mens’ bodies. The muskets were levelled towards the French. He glanced to his left and saw that number Five Company had already fired and he had to trust that no man in the Company disliked him enough to aim deliberately at him. "Fire!"
The balls hammered past him. "Load!" He watched them, daring them to move. The Riflemen were now in a small group at the open end of the line and he looked at them. "Kill their officers. Fire in your own time." He looked back at the men. "We stay here. Aim at the corner of the column." He suddenly grinned at them. "Nice to be back." He turned round, his back to the Company, and now all he could do was stand, to be still, to deny this tiny patch of grassland to the French. He stood with his legs apart, the sword resting on the ground, and the great column was shouting and drumming its way towards them.
The small volleys of the South Essex battered the column’s nearest corner, threw men down so that the ranks behind edged right to avoid the bodies, and still the Company volleys came from the South Essex and the Frenchmen, who had been raked with shrapnel and canister, lanced with roundshot, angled their march so they would go past the single Battalion. The breakwater was holding. The French fired at them as they marched, but it was hard to load a musket and keep walking, harder still to aim in the rhythm of the march, and the column did not win by firepower. It was designed to win by sheer weight, by fear, by glory. The drums hypnotised the valley and drove the Frenchmen on and they passed just fifty yards in front of Sharpe. He watched the packed ranks, saw their mouths open rhythmically when the drums paused and the great shout went up, Vive 1’Empereur!" Another volley pitted the corner, more men fell, and then an officer tried to drag a group of men out of the column to fire at the Light Company and Daniel Hagman put a bullet through the Frenchman’s throat. Sharpe watched the enemy infantry strip the dead officer as they marched past, successive ranks bending down to go through the officer’s pockets and pouches, and still the drums bore them on and the shout filled the valley, and Sharpe wondered where the Sixth Division were and what was happening on the rest of the field.
He watched the enemy soldiers, so close, and except that they liked moustaches, they looked little different to his own men. Sometimes a Frenchman would catch Sharpe’s eye and there was a curious moment of recognition as though the enemy face was that of an old half-remembered comrade. He saw the mouths open again. "Vive 1’Empereur!" One man caught Sharpe’s eye as he chanted the words, shrugged and Sharpe could not help grinning back. It was ridiculous.
"Fire!" Lieutenant Price’s voice shouted. The Company pulled their triggers and the column jerked spasmodically away from the balls. Sharpe was glad to see the man who had shrugged at him was still alive. He turned round. "Stop firing!"
There was no point in firing now. They might kill a few men on the column’s flanks, but their job had been to push the ponderous column a few yards to its right, and they had done it. They could save their loaded muskets for the column’s retreat, if it did retreat, and Sharpe nodded to Price. "The Company can retire, Lieutenant, as far as the hill."
The rear of the column was marching past now and Sharpe saw the wounded limping behind, trying to catch up with their comrades, and some of them fell to add to the droppings of the great attack. He looked south, into the smoke, and he could see no cavalry yet, no guns, but they could come. He turned and walked towards his Company and the men grinned at him, called out to him, and he was ashamed because he had feared that one might aim for him. He nodded to them. "How are you?"
They pounded his back, shouted at him, and they all seemed to have inane grins on their faces as though they had won a great victory. He pushed through them, noticing how foul was their breath after his month away from troops, but it was good to be back. Lieutenant Price saluted. "Welcome back, sir."
"It’s nice to be back. How is it?"
Price glanced at the closest men, then grinned at Sharpe. "Still the best Company in the Battalion, sir."
"Without me?"
"They had me, sir." They both laughed to cover a mutual pleasure. Price glanced at Sharpe’s stomach. "And you, sir?"
"The doctors say another month."
"Harps said it was a miracle."
Sharpe smiled. "He performed it, then." He turned to watch the column go on. It was like some mindless machine that was grinding its way northwards, aiming at the city, and he knew that soon the valley would fill with French guns and cavalry unless the column could be stopped. One of his men shouted over the swell of drums and French cheers.
"Harps says you was living in a palace with Duchess!"
"Harps is a bloody liar!" Sharpe pushed through the knot of men and grinned at the big Sergeant. "How are you?"
"I’m doing all right. Yourself, sir?"
"It’s fine." Sharpe looked north to where the valley was littered with bodies. ." Casualties?"
Harper shook his head. He sounded disgusted. "Two wounded. We went back too bloody fast." He nodded at Sharpe’s shoulder. "You got the rifle back?"
"Yes. But I need ammunition."
"I’ll fix that for you, sir." Harper turned as a new sound filled the valley. It was like a hundred children dragging sticks along park railings, the sound of the volleys that the Sixth Division were slamming into the column’s head. The Sixth swore that this day they would restore the reputation that had been sullied by the time they took to capture the three fortresses. They had approached the great column in small columns and then, in the enemy’s face, they swung into line and waited for the French to come into musket range.
The two-deep line curled round the head of the column. The men fought like automatons, biting the cartridges, loading, ramming, firing on command so that the volleys’ flames ran down the face of the line, again and again, and the bullets twitched at the fog of powder smoke and hammered the French. The British volleys made the column’s head into a pile of dead and wounded men. Frenchmen who had thought themselves safe in the fourth or fifth rank suddenly had to cock their muskets and fire desperately into the smoke bank. The column checked. The drums still sounded, but they no longer paused for the great shout. The drummer boys worked their sticks as if they could force the men over the barricade of the dead and onto the Sixth Division, but the men at the column’s front were flinching from the murderous fire. The men behind pressed forward, the column crushed and bulged, and the drummer boys faltered. Some officers, brave beyond duty, tried to take men forward, but it was hopeless. The bravest died, the others shrank back from the British fire, and the column heaved and jerked like some I giant snared animal.
There was a pause in the British volleys. It was filled with a new sound, a scraping and clicking as the hundreds of long bayonets were taken from belt-scabbards and fixed on the muskets. Then a cheer, a British cheer, and the long line came forward with their blades level and the great column, that had so nearly turned the battle, turned instead into a panicked crowd. They ran.
The French had tried to send galloper guns through the small valley to blast the Sixth Division away, but the guns had been broken
by the British artillery. The French gunners who still lived put their wounded horses out of their agony with their short carbines. The valley floor was thick with the remains of battle. Bodies, guns, canteens, pouches, haver-sacks, spent cannon balls, dead horses, the wounded. Everywhere the wounded. The French column was a running mass of fugitives, fleeing the steady line of the Sixth Division that came forward into the small valley which was covered by a tenuous awning of smoke. The sun touched the smoke layer with red. The Fourth Division reformed itself, drew bayonets, and went on with the Sixth. The British went forward, the French back, and Clausel’s centre was gone. It had extracted a price for its defeat, a high price, but it was over. The Eagles/Went back, they left the Greater Arapile, the French were^running from the field. The French left had been destroyed, utterly destroyed, in just forty minutes. The centre had tried and failed, and now all that could be done was for the French right to form a barrier on the edge of the plain to stop the British pursuit.
The sun was sinking into a cushion of gold and scarlet, it touched the killing ground with crimson and it promised to give enough light for a little time more. Time enough for more blood to be spilt on an earth that already reeked with the stench of it.
Chapter 23
To the spectators on the great ridge the battle had appeared as something like a surging spring tide seething into a place that was usually above the high water mark. The tide had surged from the west, running swiftly over the plain, and then it had struck the obstacles of the Arapiles. The righting had churned. For a moment it had looked as if the French centre would flow irresistibly towards the city, through the small valley, but it had been held, the two Divisions in column broken, and the fighting had surged back, past the Arapiles, and now the fighting drained off to the south and east; away from the city.
The fighting was not done, yet already the scavengers were on the field. The wives and children of the British were stripping enemy corpses. When it was darker they would start on men of their own side, slitting the throats of the wounded who resisted them, but for the moment they plundered the French while the Bandsmen cared for the British wounded. The South Essex followed the Sixth Division for a small way, but then orders came for them to rest and the men dropped where they were.
The drummer boy, with the worried intensity of a child given a great responsibility, had clung to Sharpe’s horse and the Rifleman was grateful for the saddle. The wound throbbed, he was tired, and he forced himself to respond to the greetings of Leroy and Forrest, of the other officers, and they teased him for having a horse. He was tired, but still restless.
Musketry came from the south. The fighting still went on.
Sharpe sat on his horse, her horse, and he watched, without really seeing, as a small child tugged at the ring on a ringer of a naked corpse. The child’s mother was stripping another Frenchman nearby, slicing open the seams, and she snapped at the child to hurry because there were so many corpses and so many looters. The child, dressed only in a cut-down skirt of her mother’s, picked up a discarded French bayonet and began hacking at the ring finger. Prisoners were being herded, disarmed, and led to the rear.
The French had been beaten. Not just beaten, they had been utterly defeated. Half their army had been broken and the survivors were running for the road that led eastwards through the southern woods. Only a rearguard stopped the vengeful British and German cavalry from hacking into the fugitives, but the cavalry pursuit could wait. The French were stumbling, discipline lost, back through the cork woods and oak trees to the town of Alba de Tormes. The battle had been fought in a huge bend of the river and Alba was the only town with a bridge that could take the French east to safety. Many men would use the fords, but most, with all the baggage, the guns, the pay chest, and the wounded, would make for the mediaeval bridge at Alba de Tormes. And there stop. The Spanish had a garrison in the town, a garrison that commanded the bridge, and the French were trapped in the great river bend. The cavalry could ride in the morning and round up the fugitives. It was a great victory.
Sharpe stared at the smoke that lay above the battlefield in long pink ribbons. He should be feeling the elation of this day. They had waited all summer for a battle, wanted it, and no one had dared hope it would be this decisive. This year they had taken Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and now they had defeated the so-called Army of Portugal. Yet Sharpe was haunted by failure. He had protected La Marquesa, who was his enemy, and he had failed to capture Leroux. He had been beaten by the Frenchman. Leroux had put Sharpe in the death room, he had broken Sharpe’s sword, and Sharpe wanted revenge. There was a man alive who could boast of beating Sharpe, and that hurt; it throbbed like the wound, and Sharpe wanted the pain to go. He was restless. He wanted one more chance to face the Kligenthal, to possess it, and he touched the hilt of his new sword as if it were a talisman. It had yet to be blooded.
The South Essex were piling their arms, going to the village to steal doors and furniture that could be broken into fires, and Sharpe did not want to rest. There was unfinished business, and it frustrated him because he did not see how to finish it, and he wondered if the Palacio Casares was even now being searched for Leroux. He could go back to Salamanca now, but he could not face La Marquesa.
Major Forrest walked over to Sharpe’s horse and looked up. "You look like a statue, Sharpe." He held up a captured bottle of brandy. "Join us?"
Sharpe looked to the southern edge of the battlefield where smoke was still rising from the fight. "Do you mind if I see the end of it, sir?"
"Help yourself." Forrest grinned at him. "Take care, I don’t want to lose you again."
"I’ll take care, sir." He let the horse find its own way between the grass fires and the wounded. The sun was almost gone, already a pale moon was high in the evening sky, and he could see where the French rearguard sparkled the dusk with their muskets. A dog whimpered beside the dead body of its master, barked as Sharpe’s horse came too close, and then ran back to its vigil.
Sharpe was depressed. He had always known that he could not possess La Marquesa, yet he missed her, and he was saddened because they had both deceived, there was so much left unsaid. It too was unfinished business. He rode slowly towards the gunfire.
The last French Division had arrayed itself on a small, steep ridge that blocked the tracks into the wood. The ridge allowed six and sometimes seven ranks of men to fire at the
British, each rank firing over the heads of the ranks in front, and the twilight was stabbed by the French flames.
The Sixth Division, that had already defeated Clausel’s brave hopes, advanced against the obstacle. They had already won a great victory and now they thought that this rearguard, this impudent line, would melt before their musket fire in the dusk. The musket duel began. Line against line, and the cartridges were bitten open, the powder tipped, and the flints snapped forward, and the French line held. It fought gloriously, hopelessly, in the knowledge that if they collapsed and ran for the road that led eastwards through the woods, the cavalry would come after them. Darkness was their hope, their salvation, and the last French Division stood on their small steep ridge and they galled the Sixth Division, flayed it, and the Battalions shrunk man by man.
British artillery jangled its way over the plain, turned, and unlimbered on the Sixth Division’s flanks. The horses were led away, the guns’ trails unhooked from the limbers, and the red-bagged ammunition was piled beside the weapons. Canister. The gun-layers eyed the French line dispassionately; at this range they could not miss.
Nearly every ball from the splitting tin containers would count on the French ridge. The guns jumped backwards, smoke belching, and Sharpe saw the French fall sideways like wheat hit by buckshot. Still they fought. Fires had started in the grass, adding to the smoke, and their flames were lurid on the underside of the battle smoke that hung in skeins over the spitting muskets. The French held their place, the dead fell on the slope, the wounded struggled to keep firing. They must have been terrified, Sharpe thought a
s he watched them, because they knew that the battle was lost, that instead of marching to the gates of Portugal they would have a long harried retreat into Spain’s centre, yet still they fought and their discipline under the onslaught of musket and canister was awesome. They were buying time with their lives, time for their shattered companions to make their way eastwards towards the bridge at Alba de Tormes. And there, the British knew, a Spanish garrison waited to complete the destruction.
The fight could not last, whatever the bravery of the French, and the end was signalled as the Fifth Division, which had attacked the French left beside the cavalry earlier in the day, were marched onto the French rearguard’s flank. Two British Divisions fought a single French Division. More guns came in a slew of dust and chains and their canister split apart in the heart of the guns’ great flames. More fires caught in the grass, their flames throwing wavering black shadows as the twilight turned to night, and the end had to come. There was a pause in the musket fire of the Sixth, an order was repeated from Company to Company, and there was the great noise of the scraping bayonets coming from scabbards. The line flickered with reflections from the seventeen inch blades.
"Forward!" The last light was draining in the west over Portugal, there was a cheer from the British, the line surged forward towards the battered French, but the battle had one surprise left.
Sharpe heard the hooves behind him, and took no notice, and then the urgency of the sound, the speed of the single horse, made him turn. A lone cavalry officer, resplendent in blue and silver, his sabre drawn, was galloping at the French line. He was shouting like a maniac. "Wait! Wait!"
The Company nearest Sharpe heard the sound, checked, and a Sergeant forced a gap in the files. Officers shouted at the cavalryman, but he took no notice, just urged on his horse that was labouring with the effort, raked by spurs, and the turf flew in clods behind the hooves. "Wait! Wait!" The officer went for the gap and the French; on the ridge, were just shadows as they turned and ran for the safety of the dark woods.