Sharpe’s Siege: The Winter Campaign, 1814. Bernard Cornwell
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battering of the fort’s heavy guns.
‘Major?’ Abruptly the image of the twenty foot wall vanished to be replaced by Bampfylde’s quizzically mocking smile. ‘Major?’
‘Sir?’
‘We are talking, Major, of how many men would be needed to defend the captured fortress while we await reinforcements from the south?’
‘How long will the garrison have to hold?’ Sharpe asked.
Wigram chose to answer. ‘A few days at the most. If we do find that Bordeaux’s ripe for rebellion, then we can bring an Army corps north inside ten days.’
Sharpe shrugged. ‘Two hundred? Three? But you’d best use Marines, because I’ll need all of my Battalion if you want me to march inland.’
It was Sharpe’s first trenchant statement and it brought curious glances from the junior naval officers. They had all heard of Richard Sharpe and they watched his weather-darkened, scarred face with interest.
‘Your Battalion?’ Wigram’s voice was as dry as old paper.
‘A brigade would be preferable, sir.’
Elphinstone snorted with laughter, but Wigram’s expression did not change. ‘And what leads you to suppose, Major, that the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers are going to Arcachon?’
Sharpe had assumed it because he had been summoned, and because he was the de facto commander of the Battalion, but Colonel Wigram now disabused him brutally.
‘You are here, Major, because you are supernumerary to regimental requirements.’ Wigram’s voice, like his gaze, was pitiless. ‘Your regimental rank, Major, is that of captain. Captains, however ambitious, do not command Battalions. You should be apprised that a new commanding officer, of due seniority and competence, is being appointed to the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers.’
There was a horrid and embarrassed silence in the cabin. Every man there, except for the young Captain Bampfylde, knew the bitter pangs of promotion denied, and each man knew they were watching Sharpe’s hopes being broken on the wheel of the Army’s regulations. The assembled officers looked away from Sharpe’s evident hurt.
And Sharpe was hurt. He had rescued that Battalion. He had trained it, given it the Prince of Wales’s name, then led it to the winter victories in the Pyrenees. He had hoped, more than hoped, that his command of the Battalion would be made official, but the Army had decided otherwise. A new man would be appointed; indeed, Wigram said, the new commanding officer was daily expected on the next convoy from England.
The news, given so coldly and unsympathetically in the formal setting of the Vengeance’s cabin, cut Sharpe to the bone, but there was no protest he could make. He guessed that was why Wigram had chosen this moment to make the announcement. Sharpe felt numbed.
‘Naturally,’ Bampfylde leaned forward, ‘the glory attached to the capture of Bordeaux will more than compensate for this disappointment, Major.’
‘And you will rejoin your Battalion, as a major, when this duty is done,’ Wigram said, as though that was some consolation.
‘Though the war,’ Bampfylde smiled at Sharpe, ‘may well be over because of your efforts.’
Sharpe stirred himself from the bitter disappointment. ‘Single-handed efforts, sir? Your Marines are poxed, my Battalion can’t come, what am I supposed to do? Train cows to fight?’
Bampfylde’s face showed a flicker of a frown. ‘There will be Marines, Major. The Biscay Squadron will be combed for fit men.’
Sharpe, his belligerence released by Wigram’s news, stared at the young naval captain. ‘It’s a good thing, is it not, that the malady has not spread to your sailors, sir? You seemed to have a full ship’s company as I came aboard?’
Bampfylde stared like a basilisk at Sharpe. Colonel Elphinstone gave a quick, sour laugh, but Wigram slapped the table like a timid schoolmaster calling a rowdy class to order. ‘You will be given troops. Major, in numbers commensurate to your task.’
‘How many?’
‘Enough,’ Wigram said testily.
The question of Sharpe’s troops was dropped. Instead Bampfylde talked of a brig-sloop that had been sent to watch the fortress and to question any local fishermen who put to sea. The presence of the American privateer was discussed and Bampfylde smiled as he spoke of the punishment that would be fetched on Cornelius Killick. ‘We must regard that doomed American as a bonus for our efforts.’ Then the talk went to naval signals, far beyond Sharpe’s competence to understand, and again he wondered about that fortress. Even under-manned a fortress was a formidable thing, and no one in this wide cabin seemed interested in ensuring that he was given a proper force. At the same time, as the voices buzzed about him, he tried to assuage the deep pain of losing the command of his Battalion.
Sharpe knew the regulations disqualified him from commanding the Battalion, but there were other Battalions commanded by majors and the regulations seemed to be ignored for those men. But not for Sharpe. Another man was to be given the superb instrument of infantry that Sharpe had led through the winter’s battles and, once again, Sharpe was adrift and unwanted in the Army’s flotsam. He reflected, bitterly, that if he had been a Northamptonshire Sharpe, or a Wiltshire Sharpe, with an Honourable tag to his name and a park about his father’s house, then this would not have happened. Instead he was a Middlesex Sharpe, conceived in a whore’s transaction and whelped in a slum, and thus a fit whipping-boy for bores like Wigram.
Colonel Elphinstone, sensing that Sharpe was miles away again, kicked the Rifleman’s ankle and Sharpe recovered attentiveness in time to hear Bampfylde inviting the assembled officers to dine with him.
‘I fear I can’t.’ Sharpe did not want to stay in this cabin where his disappointment had shamed him in front of so many officers. It was a petty motive, pride-born, but a soldier without pride was a soldier doomed for defeat.
‘Major Sharpe,’ Bampfylde explained with ill-concealed scorn, ‘has taken a wife, so we must forgo his company.’
‘I haven’t taken a wife,’ Elphinstone said belligerently, ‘but I can’t dine either. Your servant, sir.’
The two men, Sharpe and Elphinstone, travelled back to St Jean de Luz in Bampfylde’s barge. Elphinstone, swathed in a vast black cloak, shook his head sadly. ‘Bloody madness, Sharpe. Utter bloody madness.’
It began to rain. Sharpe wished he was alone with his misery.
‘You’re disappointed, aren’t you?’ Elphinstone remarked.
‘Yes.’
‘Wigram’s a bastard,’ Elphinstone said savagely, ‘and you’re to take no bloody notice of him. You’re not going to Bordeaux. Those are orders.’
Sharpe, stirred from his self-pity by Elphinstone’s ferocious words, looked at the big Engineer. ‘So why are we taking the fort, sir?’
‘Because we need the chasse-marées, why else? Or were you dozing through that explanation?’
Sharpe nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
The rain fell harder as Elphinstone explained that the whole Arcachon expedition had been planned simply to release the three dozen chasse-marées that were protected behind the fortress guns. ‘I need those boats, Sharpe, not to waltz into bloody Bordeaux, but to build a bloody bridge. But for Christ’s sake don’t tell anyone it’s a bridge. I’m telling you, because I won’t have you gallivanting off to Bordeaux, you understand me?’
‘Entirely, sir.’
‘Wigram thinks we want the boats for a landing, because that’s what the Peer wants everyone to think. But it’s going to be a bridge, Sharpe, a damned great bridge to astonish the bloody Frogs. But I can’t build the bloody bridge unless you capture the bloody fort and get me the boats. After that, enjoy yourself. Go and ambush the