Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2. Bernard Cornwell
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stupid girl resisted me,’ Christopher explained, ‘she put up a fight, so I taught her who is master. Every woman needs to be taught that.’
‘Even a wife?’
‘Especially a wife,’ Christopher said, ‘though the process might be slower. You don’t break a good mare quickly, but take your time. But this one’ – he jerked his head towards Maria – ‘this one needed a damned fast whipping. I don’t mind if she resents me, but one doesn’t want a wife to be soured by resentment.’
Maria was not the only one with a bruised face. Major Dulong had a black mark across the bridge of his nose and a scowl just as dark. He had reached the watchtower before the British and Portuguese troops, but with a smaller group of men and then he had been surprised by the ferocity with which the enemy had attacked him. ‘Let me go back, mon Général,’ he pleaded with Vuillard.
‘Of course, Dulong, of course.’ Vuillard did not blame the voltigeur officer for the night’s only failure. It seemed that the British and Portuguese troops, whom everyone had expected to find in the Quinta’s stables, had decided to go south and thus had been halfway to the watchtower when the attack began. But Major Dulong was not accustomed to failure and the repulse on the hilltop had hurt his pride. ‘Of course you can go back,’ the Brigadier reassured him, ‘but not straightaway. I think we shall let les belle filles have their wicked way with them first, yes?’
‘Les belle filles?’ Christopher asked, wondering why on earth Vuillard would send girls up to the watchtower.
‘The Emperor’s name for his cannon,’ Vuillard explained. ‘Les belle filles. There’s a battery at Valengo and they must have a brace of howitzers. I’m sure the gunners will be pleased to lend us their toys, aren’t you? A day of target practice and those idiots on the hill will be as broken as your redhead.’ The Brigadier watched as the girls brought out the food. ‘I shall look at their target after we’ve eaten. Perhaps you will do me the honour of lending me your telescope?’
‘Of course,’ Christopher pushed the glass across the table. ‘But take care of it, my dear Vuillard. It’s rather precious to me.’
Vuillard examined the brass plate and knew just enough English to decipher its meaning. ‘Who is this AW?’
‘Sir Arthur Wellesley, of course.’
‘And why would he be grateful to you?’
‘You couldn’t possibly expect a gentleman to answer a question like that, my dear Vuillard. It would be boasting. Suffice it to say that I did not merely black his boots.’ Christopher smiled modestly, then helped himself to eggs and bread.
Two hundred dragoons rode the short journey back to Valengo. They escorted an officer who carried a request for a pair of howitzers, and the officer and the dragoons returned that same morning.
With one howitzer only. But that, Vuillard was certain, would be enough. The riflemen were doomed.
‘What you really wanted,’ Lieutenant Pelletieu said, ‘was a mortar.’
‘A mortar?’ Brigadier General Vuillard was astonished at the Lieutenant’s self-confidence. ‘You are telling me what I want?’
‘What you want,’ Pelletieu said confidently, ‘is a mortar. It’s a question of elevation, sir.’
‘It is a question, Lieutenant’ – Vuillard put a deal of stress on Pelletieu’s lowly rank – ‘of pouring death, shit, horror and damnation on those impudent bastards on that goddamned hilltop.’ He pointed to the watchtower. He was standing at the edge of the wood where he had invited Lieutenant Pelletieu to unlimber his howitzer and start slaughtering. ‘Don’t talk to me of elevation! Talk to me of killing.’
‘Killing is our business, sir,’ the Lieutenant said, quite unmoved by the Brigadier’s anger, ‘but I do have to get closer to the impudent bastards.’ He was a very young man, so young that Vuillard wondered whether Pelletieu had even begun to shave. He was also thin as a whip, so thin that his white breeches, white waistcoat and dark-blue cutaway coat hung on him like discarded garments draped on a scarecrow. A long skinny neck jutted from the stiff blue collar, and his long nose supported a pair of thick-lensed spectacles that gave him the unfortunate appearance of a half-starved fish, but he was a remarkably self-possessed fish who now turned to his Sergeant. ‘Two pounds at twelve degrees, don’t you think? But only if we can get to within three hundred and fifty toise?’
‘Toise?’ The Brigadier knew gunners used the old unit of measurement, but it meant nothing to him. ‘Why the hell don’t you speak French, man?’
‘Three hundred and fifty toise? Call that …’ Pelletieu paused and frowned as he did the mathematics.
‘Six hundred and eighty metres,’ his Sergeant, as thin, pale and young as Pelletieu, broke in.
‘Six hundred and eighty-two,’ Pelletieu said cheerfully.
‘Three fifty toise?’ the Sergeant mused aloud. ‘Two-pound charge? Twelve degrees? I think that will serve, sir.’
‘Only just though,’ Pelletieu said, then turned back to the Brigadier. ‘The target’s high, sir,’ he explained.
‘I know it’s high,’ Vuillard said in a dangerous tone, ‘it is what we call a hill.’
‘And everyone believes howitzers can work miracles on elevated targets,’ Pelletieu went on, disregarding Vuillard’s sarcasm, ‘but they’re not really designed to be angled at much more than twelve degrees from the horizontal. Now a mortar, of course, can achieve a much higher angle, but I suspect the nearest mortar is at Oporto.’
‘I just want the bastards dead!’ Vuillard growled, then turned back as a memory occurred to him. ‘And why not a three-pound charge? The gunners were using three-pound charges at Austerlitz.’ He was tempted to add ‘before you were born’, but restrained himself.
‘Three pounds!’ Pelletieu audibly sucked in his breath while his Sergeant rolled his eyes at the Brigadier’s display of ignorance. ‘She’s a Nantes barrel, sir,’ Pelletieu added in gnomic explanation as he patted the howitzer. ‘She was made in the dark ages, sir, before the revolution, and she was horribly cast. Her partner blew up three weeks ago, sir, and killed two of the crew. There was an air bubble in the metal, just horrible casting. She’s not safe beyond two pounds, sir, just not safe.’
Howitzers were usually deployed in pairs, but the explosion three weeks before had left Pelletieu’s the sole howitzer in his battery. It was a strange-looking weapon that resembled a toy gun incongruously perched on a full-scale carriage. The barrel, just twenty-eight inches long, was mounted between wheels that were the height of a man, but the small weapon was capable of doing what other field guns could not achieve: it could fire in a high arc. Field guns were rarely elevated more than a degree or two and their round shot flew in a flat trajectory, but the howitzer tossed its shells up high so that they plunged down onto the enemy. The guns were designed to fire over defensive walls, or above the heads of friendly infantry, and because a lobbed missile came to a swift stop when it landed, the howitzers did not fire solid round shot. An ordinary field gun, firing solid shot, could depend on the missile to bounce and keep on bouncing, and even after the fourth or fifth graze, as the gunners called each bounce, the round shot could still maim or kill, but a round shot tossed into the air was likely to bury itself in the turf and do no subsequent damage. So the howitzers fired shells that were fused to explode when the missile landed.
‘Forty-nine times two, sir, seeing as how we have the caisson for the other howitzer as well,’ Pelletieu said when Vuillard asked him how many shells his gun possessed. ‘Ninety-eight shells, sir, and twenty-two canister. Twice the usual rations!’
‘Forget the canister,’ Vuillard ordered. Canister,