Bernard Cornwell - 1811 05 Sharpe's Battle Read online

  Latimer!" Sharpe shouted. "Count them up! Thompson's out of it. Go, go!" If the French already held the ramparts, Sharpe reflected, then he and his riflemen were already trapped and doomed to die like rats in a hole, but he dared not abandon hope. "Go!" he shouted at his men. "Out! Out!" He had been sleeping with his boots on, so all he needed to do was snatch up his belt, pouches and sword. He slung the belt over his shoulder and began reloading the rifle. His eyes were smarting from the smoke. A French musket coughed more smoke at the top of the stairs and the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the back wall.

  "Just you and Harps, sir!" Latimer called from the back stair.

  "Go, Pat!" Sharpe said.

  Boots clattered on the stairs. Sharpe abandoned his attempt to load the rifle, reversed the weapon instead and hammered its butt at the shadow that appeared in the smoke. The man went down silently and hard, felled instantly by the brass-weighted blow. Harper, his rifle reloaded, fired blindly up the stairs, then grabbed Sharpe's elbow. "For the love of God, sir. Come on!"

  Grey attackers were pouring down the stairs into the smoky darkness. A pistol fired, a man shouted in urgent French and another tripped over Thompson's corpse. The damp cave-like space stank of urine, rotted eggs and sweat. Harper pulled Sharpe through the cloying smoke to the foot of the back stairs where

  Latimer crouched. "Go on, sir!" Latimer had a loaded rifle that would serve as the parting shot.

  Sharpe pounded up the stairs towards the cool and blessedly clean night air.

  Latimer fired into the chaos, then followed Harper up the crooked stair.

  Cresacre and Hagman were waiting at the stairhead with pointed rifles. "Don't shoot!" Sharpe called as he neared the stairhead, then pushed past the two riflemen and ran to the inner edge of the firestep to try and understand the night's full horror.

  Harper ran to the door that led into the gate tower, only to find it was barred from the inside. He hammered on the wood with the butt of his volley gun. "Open up!" he shouted. "Open up!"

  Hagman fired down the winding stair and a scream echoed up the steps.

  "Behind us, sir!" Perkins called. He was sheltering a terrified Miranda in one of the machicolations, "and there's more on the road, sir!"

  Sharpe swore. The gatehouse, that he had thought would be the night's salvation, was already captured. He could see that the gate was wide open and being guarded by grey-uniformed soldiers. Sharpe guessed two companies of

  Loup's voltigeurs, distinguished by the red epaulettes they wore, had led the attack and both were now inside the fort. One company had gone straight to the magazine where Sharpe and his men were bivouacking while most of the second company had spread into a skirmish line that was now advancing fast among the barracks blocks. Another squad of the grey-clad infantry was running up a ramp which led to the wall's wide firestep.

  Harper kept trying to break the door down, but no one inside the gatehouse responded. Sharpe shouldered his half-loaded rifle and drew his sword. "Leave it, Pat!" he shouted. "Rifles! Line on me!" The real danger now was the section of men coming up to the wall. If those men got a lodging in the gun platforms then Sharpe's riflemen would be trapped while the rest of Loup's men swarmed into the San Isidro. That main enemy force was now hurrying up the approach road and, from the one quick southward glance that he could spare,

  Sharpe could see that Loup had sent his whole brigade into this attack which had been spearheaded by two companies of light infantry. God damn it, Sharpe thought, but he had got everything wrong. The French had not attacked from the north, but from the south, and in so doing they had already captured the fort's strongest point, the place Sharpe had planned to turn into an impregnable stronghold. He guessed that the two elite companies had crept up the approach road and rushed the causeway before any sentry called the alarm.

  And doubtless, too, the gates had been unbarred from inside by the same person who had betrayed where Sharpe, Loup's sworn enemy, was to be found and where

  Loup, seeking his revenge, had sent one of the two attacking companies.

  Now, though, was not the time to analyse Loup's tactics, but to clear the ramparts of the Frenchmen who threatened to isolate Sharpe's riflemen. "Fix swords," he ordered, and waited while his men slotted the long, sword-handled bayonets onto their rifles' muzzles. "Be calm, lads," he said. He knew his men were frightened and excited after being woken to nightmare by a clever enemy, but this was no time for panic. It was a time for very cool heads and murderous fighting. "Let's get the bastards! Come on!" Sharpe called and he led his men in a ragged line down the moonlit battlements. The first Frenchmen to reach the firestep dropped to their knees and took aim, but they were outnumbered, in the dark and nervous and so they fired early and their bullets flew wide or high. Then, fearing to be overwhelmed by the dark mass of riflemen, the voltigeurs turned and ran down the ramp to join the skirmish line that was advancing between the barracks blocks towards Oliveira's caçadores.

  The Portuguese, Sharpe decided, must fend for themselves. His duty lay with the Real Companïa Irlandesa whose twin barracks had already been surrounded by the French skirmishers. The voltigeurs were firing at the barracks from the shelter of the other buildings, but they dared not attack, for the Irish guardsmen had opened a brisk return fire. Sharpe assumed the Real Companïa

  Irlandesa's officers were already either dead or prisoners, though it was possible that a few might have escaped out of the gatehouse's rampart doors as the French streamed into the lower rooms. "Listen, lads!" Sharpe raised his voice so that all his riflemen could hear. "We can't stay here. The buggers will be up from the magazine soon so we're going over to join the Irish boys.

  We'll barricade ourselves inside and keep firing." He would have liked to split his greenjackets into two groups, one for each of the besieged barracks, but he doubted any man could reach the further barracks alive. The nearer of the two was less infested by voltigeurs, but it was also the barracks where the wives and children were quartered and thus the more in need of extra firepower. "Are you ready?" Sharpe called. "Let's go!"

  They ran down the ramp just as Oliveira's skirmishers attacked from the right.

  The appearance of the caçadores distracted the voltigeurs and gave Sharpe's riflemen the chance to cross to the barracks without fighting through a whole voltigeur company, but it was a narrow chance, for even as Harper began shouting in Gaelic to order the Real Companïa Irlandesa to open their door a huge cheer from the gatehouse on Sharpe's left announced the arrival of Loup's main force. Sharpe was among the barracks now where the voltigeurs were retreating from the attack of the Portuguese skirmishers. The Frenchmen's retreat drove them at right angles across Sharpe's path. Loup's men realized their danger too late. A sergeant screamed a warning, then was clubbed to the ground by Harper's volley gun. The Frenchman tried to stand, then the butt of the heavy gun slammed sickeningly into his skull. Another Frenchman tried to turn and run in the opposite direction, then realized in his panic that he was running towards the Portuguese and so turned back again only to find Rifleman

  Harris's sword bayonet at his throat. "Non, monsieur!" the Frenchman cried as he dropped his musket and raised his hands.

  "Don't speak bloody Crapaud, do I?" Harris lied and pulled his trigger. Sharpe swerved past the falling body, parried a clumsy bayonet thrust and hammered his attacker down with his heavy sword. The man tried to stab his bayonet up at Sharpe who gave him two furious slashes with the big sword and left him screaming and bleeding and curled into a ball. He back-cut another French skirmisher, then ran on to the moon-cast shadow of the next empty barracks block where a huddle of riflemen were protecting Miranda. Harper still shouted in Gaelic, one of the precautions Sharpe had agreed with Donaju in case the

  French used an English speaker to confuse the defenders. The Sergeant's shouting had at last gained the attention of the guardsmen in the nearest barracks and the end door opened a crack. A rifle flared and crashed close beside Sharpe, a bullet hissed through the d
ark overhead while behind him a man screamed. Hagman was already at the barracks door where he crouched and counted the riflemen inside. "Come on, Perks!" he called, and Perkins and

  Miranda scuttled over the open space, followed by a rush of riflemen. "They're all safe, sir, all safe," the Cheshireman called to Sharpe, "just you and

  Harps."

  "Go, Pat," Sharpe said, and just as the Irishman began to run a voltigeur came round the corner of the building, saw the big rifle Sergeant running away and dropped to one knee as he levelled his musket. He saw Sharpe a second later, but it was already too late. Sharpe came out of the dark shadow with the sword already swinging. The blade caught the voltigeur just above the eyes and such was the anger and strength in the blow that the top of the man's skull came away like a decapitated boiled egg.

  "God save England," Hagman said, watching the blow from the barracks door.

  "Come in, Harps! Come on, sir! Hurry!" The panic started among the voltigeurs by the counterattacking Portuguese had helped the riflemen escape Loup's first assault, but that panic was subsiding as Loup's main force arrived through the captured gatehouse. That force would soon have Sharpe's men trapped in the barracks.

  "Mattresses! Packs!" Sharpe shouted. "Pile 'em behind the doors! Pat! Look to the windows! Move, woman!" he snarled at a screaming wife who was trying to leave the barracks altogether. He unceremoniously pushed her back. Bullets cracked on the stone walls and splintered the door. There were two small windows on either side of the long room and Harper was stuffing them with blankets. Rifleman Cresacre pushed his rifle through one of the half-blocked windows and fired towards the gatehouse.

  Sharpe and Donaju had discussed earlier what might happen if the French attacked and they had gloomily agreed that the Real Companïa Irlandesa might be trapped inside their barracks and so Donaju had ordered his men to make loopholes in the walls. The work had been done half-heartedly, but at least the loopholes existed and gave the defenders a chance to fire back. Even so, in the rushlit gloom of the tunnel-like barracks, this was a nightmarish place to be trapped. The women and children were crying, the guardsmen were nervous and the barricades behind the two end doors flimsy.

  "You all know what to do," Sharpe called to the guardsmen. "The French can't get in here, and they can't blow the walls down and they can't shoot through stone. You keep up a good fire and you'll drive the bastards away." He was not sure that anything he had said was true, but he had to do his best to restore the men's spirits.

  There were ten loopholes in the barracks, five on each long side, and each loophole was manned by at least eight men. Few of the men were as efficient as

  Sharpe would have liked at loading a musket, but with so many men using each loophole their fire would still be virtually continuous. He hoped the men in the second barracks were making similar preparations for he expected the

  French to assault both barracks at any moment. "Someone opened that damned gate for them," Sharpe told Harper. Harper had no time to answer, for instead a great howling noise announced the advance of Loup's main body of troops.

  Sharpe peered through a chink in one of the blocked windows and saw the flood of grey uniforms surge past the barracks. Behind them, pale in the moonlight,

  Loup's horsemen rode under their wolf-tail banner. "It's my own fault," Sharpe said ruefully.

  "Yours, why?" Harper was ramming the last barrel of his volley gun.

  "What does a good soldier do, Pat? He goes for surprise. It was so obvious that Loup had to attack from the north that I forgot about the south. Damn it." He pushed his rifle through the gap and looked for the one-eyed Loup.

  Kill Loup, he thought, and this attack would stall, but he could not see the

  Brigadier among the mass of grey uniforms into which he fired his rifle indiscriminately. The enemy's fire crackled harmlessly against the stone walls, while inside the barracks muskets crashed loud at loopholes and children wailed. "Keep those damn kids quiet!" Sharpe snapped. The dark, chill barracks room became foul with the acrid smell of powder smoke that scared the children almost as much as the deafening gunfire. "Quiet!" Sharpe roared, and there was a sudden gasping silence except for one baby that screamed incessantly. "Keep the damn thing quiet!" Sharpe shouted at the mother. "Hit it if you have to!" The mother plunged a breast into the baby's mouth instead, effectively stifling it. Some of the women and older children were usefully loading spare muskets and stacking them beside the windows. "Can't stand bloody children crying," Sharpe grumbled as he reloaded his rifle, "never have and never will."

  "You were a baby once, sir," Daniel Hagman said reprovingly. The poacher turned rifleman was liable to such sententious moments.

  "I was sick once, damn it, but that doesn't mean I have to like disease, does it? Has anyone seen that bastard Loup?"

  No one had, and by now the mass of the Loup Brigade had swept past the two barracks in pursuit of the Portuguese who had called back their skirmish line and formed two ranks so that they could trade volleys with their attackers.

  The fight was lit by a half-moon and the guttering flicker of what remained of the camp-fires. The Frenchmen had ceased their wolf-like howling as the fight became grim, but it was still a one-sided affair. The newly woken Portuguese were outnumbered and facing men armed with a quick-loading musket, while they were equipped with the slow-loading Baker rifle. Even if they tap-loaded the rifle, abandoning the rammer and the leather patch that gripped the barrel's rifling, they still could not compete with the speed of the well-trained

  French force. Besides, Oliveira's caçadores were trained to fight in open country, to harass and to hide, to run and to shoot, and not to trade heavy volleys in the killing confrontation of the main battle line.

  Yet even so the caçadores did not break easily. The French infantry found it hard to pinpoint the Portuguese infantry in the half-dark, and when they did establish where the line was formed it took time for the scattered French companies to come together and make their own line of three ranks. But once the two French battalions were in line they overlapped the small Portuguese battalion and so the flanks of the French pressed inwards. The Portuguese fought back hard. Rifle flames stabbed the night. The sergeants shouted at the files to close to the centre as men were hurled back by the heavy French musket balls. One man fell into the smouldering embers of a fire and screamed terribly as his cartridge pouch exploded to tear a haversack-sized hole in his back. His blood hissed and bubbled in the red-hot ashes as he died. Colonel

  Oliveira paced behind his men, weighing the fight's progress and judging it lost. That damned English rifleman had been right. He should have taken refuge in the barracks blocks, but now the French were between him and that salvation and Oliveira sensed the coming calamity and knew there was little he could do to prevent it. He had even fewer options when he heard the ominous and unmistakable sound of hooves. The French even had cavalry inside the fort.

  The Colonel sent his colour party back to the northern ramparts. "Find somewhere to hide," he ordered them. There were old magazines in the bastions, and fallen walls that had made dark caves amidst the ruins, and it was possible that the regiment's colours might be preserved from capture if they were hidden in the tangle of damp cellars and tumbled stone. Oliveira waited as his hard-pressed men fired two more volleys then gave the order to retreat.

  "Steady now!" he called. "Steady! Back to the walls!" He was forced to abandon his wounded, though some bleeding and broken men still tried to crawl or limp back with the retreating line. The French uniforms pressed closer, then came the moment Oliveira feared most as a trumpet blared in the dark to the accompaniment of swords scraping out of scabbards. "Go!" Oliveira shouted to his men. "Go!"

  His men broke ranks and ran to the walls just as the cavalry charged, and thus the caçadores became the dream target of all horsemen: a broken unit of scattered men. The grey dragoons slashed into the retreating ranks with their heavy swords. Loup himself led the charge and deliberately led it wide so th
at he could turn and herd the fugitives back towards his advancing infantry.

  Some of Oliveira's left-hand companies reached the ramparts safely. Loup saw the dark uniforms streaming up an ammunition ramp and was content to let them go. If they crossed the wall and fled out into the valleys then the remainder of his dragoons would hunt them down like vermin, while if they stayed on the ramparts his men inside the San Isidro Fort would do the same. Loup's immediate concern was the men who were trying to surrender. Dozens of

  Portuguese soldiers, their rifles unloaded, stood with hands raised. Loup rode at one such man, smiled, then cut down with a backswing that half severed the man's head. "No prisoners!" Loup called to his men. "No prisoners!" His withdrawal from the fort could not be slowed by prisoners and, besides, the slaughter of a whole battalion would serve to warn Wellington's army that in reaching the Spanish frontier they had encountered a new and harder enemy than the troops they had chased away from Lisbon. "Kill them all!" Loup shouted. A caçador aimed at Loup, fired, and the bullet slapped inches past the

  Brigadier's short grey beard. Loup laughed, spurred his grey horse and threaded his way through the panicking infantry to hunt down the wretch who had dared try to kill him. The man ran desperately, but Loup cantered up behind and slashed his sword in an underhand swing that laid the man's spine open to the night. The man fell, writhing and screaming. "Leave him!" Loup called to a French infantryman tempted to give the wretch his coup de grâce.