Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe’s Tiger, Sharpe’s Triumph, Sharpe’s Fortress. Bernard Cornwell
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the aqueduct had been efficiently captured by other battalions, but the 33rd had blundered. Wellesley had blundered, and he knew it. General Harris was sympathetic enough when the young Colonel reported his failure; Harris murmured about the uncertainty of night attacks and how everything could be put right in the morning, but Wellesley still felt the failure keenly. He knew only too well that experienced soldiers like Baird despised him, believing that his promotion to second-in-command was due solely to the fact that his elder brother was Governor-General of the British regions in India, and Wellesley’s shame had been made worse because Major General Baird had been waiting with Harris when Wellesley arrived to report his failure and the tall Scotsman seemed to smirk as Wellesley confessed to the night’s disasters. ‘Difficult things, night attacks,’ Harris said yet again while Baird said nothing and Wellesley smarted under the Scotsman’s telling silence.
‘We’ll clear the tope in the morning,’ Harris tried to console Wellesley.
‘My men will do it,’ Wellesley promised quickly.
‘No, no. They won’t be rested,’ Harris said. ‘Better if we use fresh troops.’
‘My fellows will be quite ready.’ Baird spoke for the first time. He smiled at Wellesley. ‘The Scotch Brigade, I mean.’
‘I request permission to command the attack, sir,’ Wellesley said very stiffly, ignoring Baird. ‘Whatever troops you use, sir, I’ll still be duty officer.’
‘I’m sure, I’m sure,’ Harris said vaguely, neither granting nor denying Wellesley’s request. ‘You must get some sleep,’ he said to the young Colonel, ‘so let me wish you a restful night.’ He waited till Wellesley was gone, then shook his head mutely.
‘A whippersnapper,’ Baird said loudly enough for the retreating Colonel to hear him, ‘with his nursery maid’s apron strings still trapped in his sword belt.’
‘He’s very efficient,’ Harris said mildly.
‘My mother was efficient, God rest her soul,’ Baird retorted vigorously, ‘but you wouldn’t want her running a damned battle. I tell you, Harris, if you let him lead the assault on the city you’ll be asking for trouble. Give the job to me, man, give it to me. I’ve got a score to settle with the Tippoo.’
‘So you have,’ Harris agreed, ‘so you have.’
‘And let me take the damned tope in the morning. God, man, I could do it with a corporal’s guard!’
‘Wellesley will still be officer of the day tomorrow morning, Baird,’ Harris said, then pulled off his wig as a sign that he wanted to go to bed. One side of his scalp was curiously flattened where he had been wounded at Bunker Hill. He scratched at the old injury, then yawned. ‘I’ll bid you good night.’
‘You know how to spell Wellesley’s name for the despatch, Harris?’ Baird asked. ‘Three L’s!’
‘Good night,’ Harris said firmly.
At dawn the Scotch Brigade and two Indian battalions paraded east of the encampment, while a battery of four twelve-pounder guns unlimbered to their south. As soon as the sun was up the four guns began throwing shells into the tope. The missiles left filmy smoke traces in the air from their burning fuses, then plunged into the trees where their explosions were muffled by the thick foliage. One shell fell short and a great gout of water spurted up from the aqueduct. Birds wheeled above the smoking tope, squawking their protests at the violence that had once again disturbed their nests.
Major General Baird waited in front of the Scotch Brigade. He itched to take his countrymen forward, but Harris insisted it was Wellesley’s privilege. ‘He’s officer of the day till noon,’ Harris said.
‘He ain’t up,’ Baird said. ‘He’s sleeping it off. If you wait for him to wake up it’ll be past noon anyway. Just let me go, sir.’
‘Give him five minutes,’ Harris insisted. ‘I sent an aide to wake him.’
Baird had intercepted the aide to make certain Wellesley did not wake in time, but just before the five minutes expired the young Colonel came racing across the ground on his white horse. He looked dishevelled, like a man who had made too hasty a toilet. ‘My sincerest apologies, sir,’ he greeted Harris.
‘You’re ready, Wellesley?’
‘Indeed, sir.’
‘Then you know what to do,’ Harris said curtly.
‘Look after my Scots boys!’ Baird called to Wellesley, and received, as he expected, no answer.
The Scots colours were unfurled, the drummer boys sounded the advance, the pipers began their fierce music and the brigade marched into the rising sun. The sepoys followed. Rockets streaked up from the tope, but the missiles were no more accurate in the morning than they had been at night. The four brass field guns fired shell after shell, only stopping when the Scotsmen reached the aqueduct. Harris and Baird watched as the brigade attacked in a four-deep line that climbed the nearer embankment, dropped out of sight into the aqueduct, briefly reappeared on the farther embankment, then finally disappeared into the trees beyond. For a few moments there was the disciplined sound of musket volleys, then silence. The sepoys followed the Scots, spreading left and right to attack the fringes of the battered woodland. Harris waited, then a galloper came from the northern stretch of the aqueduct, which had been captured during the night, to report that the land between the tope and the city was thick with enemy fugitives running back to Seringapatam. That news was proof that the tope was at last taken and that the whole aqueduct was now in allied hands. ‘Time for breakfast,’ Harris said happily. ‘You’ll join me, Baird?’
‘I’ll hear the butcher’s bill first, sir, if you don’t mind,’ Baird answered, but there was no butcher’s bill, for none of the Scots or Indian troops had died. The Tippoo’s men had abandoned the tope once the artillery shells began to fall among the trees and they left behind only the plundered British dead of the previous night. Lieutenant Fitzgerald was among them, and he was buried with honours. Killed by an enemy bayonet, the report said.
And now, with the approach ground west of the city in Harris’s hands, the siege proper could begin.
It did not prove difficult to find Mary. Sharpe merely asked Gudin and, after the night’s events in the tope, the Colonel was eager to give Sharpe whatever he wanted. The loss of the tope the following dawn had in no way diminished the Frenchman’s delight at the night-time victory, nor the optimism inside the city, for no one had seriously expected the tope to resist for more than a few minutes and the previous night’s victory, with its catch of prisoners and its tales of British defeat, had convinced the Tippoo’s forces that they would prove more than a match for the enemy armies.
‘Your woman, Sharpe?’ Gudin teased. ‘You become a corporal and all you want is your woman back?’
‘I just want to see her, sir.’
‘She’s in Appah Rao’s household. I’ll have a word with the General, but first you’re to go to the palace at midday.’
‘Me, sir?’ Sharpe felt an instant pang of alarm, fearing that Hakeswill had betrayed him.
‘To get an award, Sharpe,’ Gudin reassured him. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll be there to steal most of your glory.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe grinned. He liked Gudin, and he could not help contrasting the kind and easy-going Frenchman with his own Colonel who always appeared to treat common soldiers as if they were a nuisance that had to be endured. Of course Wellesley was sheltered from his ranks by his officers and sergeants, while Gudin had such a small battalion that in truth he was more like a captain than a colonel. Gudin did have the assistance of a Swiss adjutant and the occasional help of the two French captains when they were not drinking in the city’s best brothel, but the battalion had no lieutenants or ensigns, and only three sergeants, which meant that the rank and file had an unprecedented access to their Colonel. Gudin liked it that way for he had little