Sharpe’s Siege: The Winter Campaign, 1814. Bernard Cornwell
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The fortress guarded the entrance to a natural harbour, the Bassin d’Arcachon, which was just twenty-five miles from the city of Bordeaux.
Elphinstone, at the mention of Bordeaux, gave a scornful grunt that was ignored by the rest of the cabin.
The fortress of Teste de Buch, Wigram continued, was to be captured by a combined naval and Army force. The expedition’s naval commander would be Captain Bampfylde, while the senior Army officer would be Major Sharpe. Sharpe, understanding that the chill, pedantic Wigram would not be travelling north, felt a pang of relief.
Wigram gave Sharpe a cold, pale glance. ‘Once the fortress is secured, Major, you will march inland to ambush the high road of France. A successful ambush will alarm Marshal Soult, and might even detach French troops to guard against further such attacks.’ Wigram paused. It seemed to Sharpe, listening to the slap of water at the Vengeance’s stern, that there was an unnatural strain in the cabin, as though Wigram approached a subject that had been discussed and argued before Sharpe arrived.
‘It is to be hoped,’ Wigram turned a page of his notebook, ‘that any prisoners you take in the ambush will provide confirmation of reports reaching us from the city of Bordeaux.’
‘Balderdash,’ Elphinstone said loudly.
‘Your dissent is already noted,’ Wigram said dismissively.
‘Reports!’ Elphinstone sneered the word. ‘Children’s tales, rumours, balderdash!’
Sharpe, uncomfortably trapped between the two men, kept his voice very mild. ‘Reports, sir?’
Captain Bampfylde, evidently Wigram’s ally in the disagreement, chose to reply. ‘We hear, Sharpe, that the city of Bordeaux is ready to rebel against the Emperor. If it’s true, and we profoundly hope that it is, then we believe the city might rise in spontaneous revolt when they hear that His Majesty’s forces are merely a day’s march away.’
‘And if they do rise,’ Colonel Wigram took up the thread, ‘then we shall ship troops north to Arcachon and invade the city, thus cutting France in two.’
‘You note, Sharpe,’ Elphinstone was relishing this chance to stir more trouble, ‘that you, a mere major, are chosen to make the reconnaissance. Thus, if anything goes wrong, you will carry the blame.’
‘Major Sharpe will make his own decisions,’ Wigram said blandly, ‘after interrogating his prisoners.’
‘Meaning you won’t go to Bordeaux,’ Elphinstone said confidingly to Sharpe.
‘But you have been chosen, Major,’ Wigram’s pale eyes looked at Sharpe, ‘not because of your lowly rank, as Colonel Elphinstone believes, but because you are known as a gallant officer unafraid of bold decisions.’
‘In short,’ Elphinstone continued the war across the table, ‘because you will make an ideal scapegoat.’
The naval officers seemed embarrassed by the contretemps, all but for Bampfylde who had evidently relished the clash of colonels. Now the naval captain smiled. ‘You merely have to understand, Major, that your first task is to escalade the fortress. Perhaps, before we explore the subsequent operations, Colonel Wigram might care to tell us about the Teste de Buch’s defences?’
Wigram turned pages in his notebook. ‘Our latest intelligence demonstrates that the garrison can scarcely man four guns. The rest of its men have been marched north to bolster the Emperor’s Army. I doubt whether Major Sharpe will be much troubled by such a flimsy force.’
‘But four fortress guns,’ Elphinstone said harshly, ‘could slice a Battalion to mincemeat. I’ve seen it!’ Implying, evidently truthfully, that Wigram had not.
‘If we imagine disaster,’ Bampfylde said smoothly, ‘then we shall allow timidity to convince us into inaction.’ The comment implied cowardice to Elphinstone, but Bampfylde seemed oblivious of the offence he had given. Instead he unrolled a chart on to the table. ‘Weight the end of that, Sharpe! Now! There seems to me just one sensible way to proceed.’
He outlined his plan which was, indeed, the only sensible way to proceed. The naval flotilla, under Bampfylde’s command, would sail northwards and land troops on the coast south of the Point d’Arcachon. That land force, commanded by Sharpe, would proceed towards the fortress, a journey of some six hours, and make an escalade while the defenders were distracted by the incursion of a frigate into the mouth of the Arcachon channel. ‘The frigate’s bound to take some punishment,’ Bampfylde said equably, ‘but I’m sure Major Sharpe will overcome the gunners swiftly.’
The chart showed the great Basin of Arcachon with its narrow entrance channel, and marked the fortress of Teste de Buch on the eastern bank of that channel. A profile of the fort, as a landmark for mariners, was sketched on the chart, but the profile told Sharpe little about the stronghold’s defences. He looked at Elphinstone. ‘What do we know about the fort, sir?’
Elphinstone had been piqued by Bampfylde’s discourteous treatment and thus chose to use the technical language of his trade, doubtless hoping thereby to annoy the bumptious naval captain. ‘It’s an old fortification, Sharpe, a square-trace. You’ll face a glacis rising to ten feet, with an eight counterscarp into the outer ditch. A width of twenty and a scarp often. That’s revetted with granite, by the way, like the rest of the damned place. Climb the scarp and you’re on a counterguard. They’ll be peppering you by now and you’ve got a forty foot dash to the next counterscarp.’ The colonel was speaking with a grim relish, as if seeing the figures running and dropping through the enemy’s plunging fire. ‘That’s twelve feet, it’s flooded, and the enceinte height is twenty.’
‘The width of that last ditch?’ Sharpe was making notes.
‘Sixteen, near enough.’ Elphinstone shrugged. ‘We don’t think it’s flooded more than a foot or two.’ Even if the naval officers did not understand Elphinstone’s language, they could understand the import of what he was saying. The Teste de Buch might be an old fort, but it was a bastard; a killer.
‘Weapons, sir?’ Sharpe asked.
Elphinstone had no need to consult his notes. ‘They’ve got six thirty-six pounders in a semi-circular bastion that butts into the channel. The other guns are twenty-fours, wall mounted.’
Captain Horace Bampfylde had listened to the technical language and understood that a small point was being scored against him. Now he smiled. ‘We should be grateful it’s not a tenaille trace.’
Elphinstone frowned, realizing that Bampfylde had understood all that had been said. ‘Indeed.’
‘No lunettes?’ Bampfylde’s expression was seraphic. ‘Caponiers?’
Elphinstone’s frown deepened. ‘Citadels at the corners, but hardly more than guerites.’
Bampfylde looked to Sharpe. ‘Surprise and speed, Major! They can’t defend the complete enceinte, and the frigate will distract them!’ So much, it seemed, for the problems of capturing a fortress. The talk moved on to the proposed naval operations inside the Bassin d’Arcachon, where more chasse-marées awaited capture, but Sharpe, uninterested in that part of the discussion, let his thoughts drift.
He did not see Bampfylde’s plush, shining cabin, instead he imagined a rising grass slope, scythed smooth, called a glacis. Beyond the glacis was an eight foot drop into a granite faced, sheer-sided ditch twenty feet wide.
At the far side of the ditch his men would be faced with a ten foot climb that would lead to a gentle, inward-facing slope; the counterguard. The counterguard was like a broad target displayed to the marksman on the inner wall, the enceinte. Men would cross the counterguard, screaming and twisting as the balls thumped home, only to face a twelve foot drop into a flooded ditch that was sixteen feet wide.
By now the enemy would be dropping shells or even stones. A boulder, dropped from the twenty foot high inner wall, would crush a man’s skull like an eggshell, yet still the wall would have to be climbed with ladders if the men were to penetrate into