Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe’s Revenge, Sharpe’s Waterloo, Sharpe’s Devil. Bernard Cornwell
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had left. Sharpe and Frederickson had still not been given any indication why they had been summoned or why this pompous tribunal had been convened.
Sharpe gazed malevolently at Wigram who, apparently oblivious of the baleful look, droned on. Wigram was a man Sharpe had met before, and had disliked mightily. He was a staff colonel, a petty-minded and meticulous bore; a clerk in a colonel’s uniform. Wigram, Sharpe also remembered only too well, had been an avid supporter of Captain Bampfylde in the days before the Teste de Buch expedition had sailed. Surely this tribunal could have nothing to do with the man Sharpe had fought above a dawn-grey ocean? Yet that seemed only too possible, for one of the official observers on Sharpe’s left was a Naval officer.
Wigram tonelessly introduced the other two members of the tribunal; both Lieutenant-Colonels from the Adjutant-General’s department. One of the two was a uniformed lawyer, the other a provost officer. Both men had sallow and unfriendly faces. The Naval officer was introduced to Sharpe and Frederickson as Captain Harcourt. The second man at Harcourt’s table was, strangely, a civilian French lawyer.
‘The purpose of this tribunal,’ Wigram at last reached the meat of his document, ‘is to enquire into certain happenings at the Teste de Buch fort, in the Bay of Arcachon, during the month of January this year.’
Sharpe felt an initial pulse of relief. His conscience was entirely clear about the fight at the Teste de Buch fort, yet the relief did not last, for the formality of this tribunal was very chilling. Papers and pens had been provided on the Riflemen’s table and Sharpe wrote a question for Frederickson, ‘Why a French lawyer?’
‘God alone knows,’ Frederickson scribbled in reply.
‘I shall begin,’ Wigram selected a new sheaf of paper, ‘by recapitulating the events which took place at the Teste de Buch fortress.’
It had been decided, Wigram informed the tribunal, to capture the fort in an attempt to deceive the enemy into thinking that a sea-borne invasion might follow. The expedition was under the overall command of Captain Horace Bampfylde, RN. The land troops were commanded by Major Richard Sharpe. Wigram looked up at that point and found himself staring into Sharpe’s unfriendly eyes. The staff officer, who wore small round-lensed spectacles, quickly looked back to his paper.
The fort had been successfully captured, Wigram went on, though there was disagreement between Captain Bampfylde and Major Sharpe as to the exact manner in which that success had been achieved.
‘Wrong,’ Sharpe said, and his interruption so astonished the room that no one objected to it. ‘Any disagreement between Captain Bampfylde and myself,’ Sharpe said harshly, ‘was ended by a duel. He lost.’
‘I was about to point out,’ Wigram said icily, ‘that all the indications reveal that the predominant credit for the fort’s capture must be given to you, Major Sharpe. Or is it that you wish this tribunal to investigate a clearly illegal occurrence of duelling?’
The Naval Captain smiled, then hastily looked more solemn as Wigram continued. Among those captured at the fort, Wigram said, had been an American Privateer, Captain Cornelius Killick. Killick had been promised good treatment by Captain William Frederickson and, when it appeared that promise was being broken by Bampfylde, Major Sharpe had released the American and his crew.
‘Is that accurate, Major?’ It was the provost Lieutenant-Colonel who asked the question.
‘Yes,’ Sharpe answered.
‘Yes, sir,’ Wigram corrected Sharpe.
‘Yes, it is accurate,’ Sharpe said belligerently.
There was a pause, and Wigram evidently decided not to press the issue.
Major Sharpe, Wigram continued, had subsequently marched inland with all the army troops, plus a contingent of Royal Marines under the command of Captain Neil Palmer.
‘May one enquire,’ it was the army lawyer who now interrupted Wigram, ‘why Captain Palmer is not here to present his evidence?’
‘Captain Palmer has been sent on a voyage to Van Dieman’s Land,’ Wigram replied.
‘He would have been,’ Frederickson said loudly enough for the whole room to hear.
The lawyer ignored Frederickson. ‘We nevertheless have an affidavit from Captain Palmer?’
‘There was no opportunity to secure one.’ Wigram was clearly discomfited by the questions.
‘There wouldn’t have been,’ Frederickson said sardonically.
Sharpe laughed aloud. He wondered how Bampfylde had so conveniently managed to have Palmer sent all the way to Australia, then he wondered how Bampfylde had managed to have this tribunal instituted. God damn the man! He had lost a duel, but had somehow continued the fight. How? The man had lied, had been a coward, yet here, in this captured prefecture, it was Sharpe and Frederickson who were being questioned.
During Sharpe’s absence from the fort, Wigram pressed on with his account, the weather conditions were such that Captain Bampfylde deemed it sensible to take his ships off shore. That decision was made easier by intelligence which claimed that Major Sharpe and all his men had been defeated and captured. That intelligence later proved to be false.
Major Sharpe subsequently returned to the Teste de Buch fort, defended it against French attack, and finally escaped thanks to the intervention of the American, Killick. Wigram paused. ‘Is that an accurate account, Major Sharpe?’
Sharpe thought for a few seconds, then shrugged. ‘It’s accurate.’ In fact it had been surprisingly accurate. The nature of their quasi-arrest that afternoon had convinced Sharpe that this tribunal had been established solely to exonerate Bampfylde, yet so far he had to admit that the proceedings had been scrupulously fair and the facts not at all helpful to Bampfylde’s reputation. Was it possible that this tribunal was establishing the facts to present at Bampfylde’s court-martial?
Subsequently, Wigram recounted, Captain Bampfylde had accused Major Sharpe of accepting a bribe from the American, Killick. Sharpe, hearing that accusation for the first time, sat up, but Wigram anticipated his outrage by asking whether any evidence had been produced to substantiate the allegation.
‘None at all,’ Captain Harcourt said firmly.
Sharpe was sitting bolt upright now. Was this tribunal indeed to be Bampfylde’s doom? Frederickson must have felt the same hope, for he swiftly drew a sketch of a Naval officer dangling in a noose from a scaffold. He pushed the sketch to Sharpe, who smiled.
Frederickson’s sketched prognostication of Bampfylde’s fate seemed accurate, for Harcourt was now invited to offer the tribunal a summary of the Navy’s own investigation. That investigation, held at Portsmouth at the beginning of April, had found Captain Bampfylde derelict in his duty. Specifically he was blamed for his precipitate abandonment of the captured fort, and for not returning when the storm abated to seek news of the shore party.
‘So court-martial him,’ Sharpe offered harshly.
Harcourt glanced at the Riflemen, then shrugged. ‘It was decided that, for the good of the service, there will be no court-martial. You may be assured, though, that Captain Bampfylde has left the Navy, and that he still has difficulty with his bowels.’
The small jesting reference to the duel passed unnoticed. If there was to be no court-martial, Sharpe wondered, then why in hell were they here? The Navy had decided to hush up an embarrassing incident, yet this army tribunal was re-opening the sack of snakes and apparently doing it with the Navy’s connivance.
It would be assumed, Wigram continued, from the evidence already offered to the tribunal, that Captain Bampfylde’s accusations against Major Sharpe were groundless. The army had indeed already decided as much. Major Sharpe had been faced by a French brigade commanded by the notorious General Calvet, which brigade Major Sharpe had roundly defeated. Nothing but praise could attach itself to such an action. Captain Harcourt, who seemed rather sympathetic to the two Riflemen, applauded by slapping the table top. The French lawyer, who could hardly