Sharpe 3-Book Collection 4. Bernard Cornwell
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nervous of a battle? It seemed unlikely, for the Colonel had been in enough actions to know what must be coming, but Sharpe attempted to reassure him anyway. ‘It never does to understimate the Crapauds, sir,’ he said carefully, ‘and they’ll keep coming whatever we chuck at them, but no, it shouldn’t be difficult. That hill will slow them and we’ll kill them.’
‘That’s rather what I thought, Sharpe,’ Lawford said, offering a dazzling smile. ‘The hill will slow them and then we’ll kill them. So, all in all, the fox is running, the scent’s high, we’re mounted on a damned fine horse and the going’s firm.’
‘We should win, sir,’ Sharpe said, ‘if that’s what you mean. And if the Portuguese fight well.’
‘Ah yes, the Portuguese. Hadn’t thought of them, but they seem fine fellows. Do have that last egg.’
‘I’m full, sir.’
‘You’re sure? Very kind. I never say no to a well-boiled egg. My father, God rest him, always believed he would be met at the gates of heaven by an angel carrying two decently boiled eggs on a silver salver. I do hope it turned out that way for him.’ Sharpe decided there was nothing to say to that so stayed silent as the Colonel sliced off the egg’s top, sprinkled it with salt and dug in his spoon. ‘The thing is, Sharpe,’ Lawford went on, but hesitantly now, ‘if the going is firm and we don’t need to be over-anxious, then I’d like to spread some experience through the battalion. Know what I mean?’
‘The French do that, sir,’ Sharpe said.
‘Do they?’ Lawford seemed surprised.
‘Every time they fight us, sir, they shovel experience all over us.’
‘Ah, I see your drift!’ Lawford ate some egg, then dabbed his lips with a napkin. ‘I mean real experience, Sharpe, the kind that will serve the regiment well.
Fellows don’t learn their duties by watching, do they? But by doing. Don’t you agree?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘So I’ve decided, Sharpe,’ Lawford was not looking at Sharpe any more, but concentrating on his egg, ‘that Cornelius ought to command the light company today. He’s not taking it over, don’t think that for a moment, but I do want him to stretch his wings. Want to see how he does, eh? And if it ain’t going to be a tricky business, then today will blood him gently.’ He spooned more egg into his mouth and dared to give Sharpe a quizzical look. Sharpe said nothing. He was furious, humiliated and helpless. He wanted to protest, but to what end? Lawford had plainly made up his mind and to fight the decision would only make the Colonel dig in his heels. ‘And you, Sharpe,’ Lawford smiled now he felt the worst was over, ‘I think you probably need a rest. That tumble you took did some damage, eh? You look battered. So let Cornelius show us his stuff, eh? And you can use his horse and serve as my eyes. Advise me.’
‘My advice, sir,’ Sharpe could not help saying, ‘is to let your best man command the light company.’
‘And if I do that,’ Lawford said, ‘I’ll never know what potential Cornelius has. No, Sharpe, let him have his canter, eh? You’ve already proved yourself.’ Lawford stared at Sharpe, wanting his approval of the suggestion, but again Sharpe said nothing. He felt as though the bottom had dropped from his world.
And just then a gun fired from the valley.
The shell screamed through the fog, burst into sunlight above the ridge where, showing as a black ball against a clear sky, it arched over the troops to fall close beside the newly made road which linked the British and Portuguese troops along the ridge. It exploded after its first bounce, doing no harm, but a scrap of shell casing, almost spent, rapped against Lawford’s tent, making the taut grey canvas shudder. ‘Time to go, Sharpe,’ Lawford said, throwing down his egg-stained napkin.
Because the French were coming.
Thirty-three French battalions formed into four columns were launched across the stream and up the far slope that was thickly obscured by fog. This was only the first attack. The second attack was still assembling, their twenty-two battalions forming into two more great columns which would advance either side of the better road that led towards the northern end of the ridge while a third, smaller column would follow behind them to exploit their success. Together the two attacks made a hammer and an anvil. The first assault, the heaviest, would follow the lesser road up to the lowest part of the ridge, capture its wide summit, then turn north to drive in the defenders desperately fending off the second blow. Marshal Masséna, waiting close to the troops who would deliver that second thunderous strike, imagined the English and Portuguese troops reduced to panic; he saw them fleeing from the ridge, throwing down packs and weapons, discarding anything that would slow them, and then he would release his cavalry to sweep across the ridge’s northern end and slaughter the fugitives. He drummed his fingers against his saddle’s pommel in time to the fog-muffled rhythm of the drums that sounded to the south. Those drums were driving the first attack up the slope. ‘What’s the time?’ he asked an aide.
‘A quarter to six, sir.’
‘The fog’s lifting, don’t you think?’ Masséna stared into the vapour with his one eye. The Emperor had taken the other in a shooting accident while they were hunting, and, ever since, Masséna had worn a patch.
‘Perhaps a little, sir,’ the aide said doubtfully.
Tonight, Masséna thought, he would sleep in the monastery said to be on the ridge’s far slope. He would send a troop of dragoons to escort Henriette from Tondela from where he had been so abruptly summoned the previous night, and he smiled as he recalled her white arms reaching playfully for him as he dressed. He had slept an hour or two with the army, and risen early to find a cold, foggy dawn, but the fog, he reckoned, was France’s friend. It would let the troops get most of the way up the slope before the British and Portuguese could see them, and once the Eagles were close to the summit the business should not take long. Victory by midday, he thought, and he imagined the bells ringing out in Paris to announce the triumph of the Eagles. He wondered what new honours would come to him. He was already the Prince of Essling, but by tonight, he thought, he might have earned a dozen other royal titles. The Emperor could be generous in such things, and the Emperor expected great things of Masséna. The rest of Europe was at peace, cowed into submission by the armies of France, and so Napoleon had sent reinforcements into Spain, had formed this new Army of Portugal that had been entrusted to Masséna, and the Emperor expected Lisbon to be captured before the leaves fell. Victory, Masséna thought, victory by midday, and then the enemy’s remnants would be pursued all the way to Lisbon.
‘You’re sure there’s a monastery across the ridge?’ he enquired of one of his Portuguese aides, a man who fought for the French because he believed they represented reason, liberty, modernity and rationality.
‘There is, sir.’
‘We shall sleep there tonight,’ Masséna announced, and turned his one eye to another aide. ‘Have two squadrons ready to escort Mademoiselle Leberton from Tondela.’ That essential comfort assured, the Marshal spurred his horse forward through the fog. He stopped close to the stream and listened. A single cannon sounded to the south, the signal that the first attack was under way, and when the cannon’s reverberating echo had died away Masséna could hear the drums fading in the distance as the four southern columns climbed the slope. It was the sound of victory. The sound of the Eagles going into battle.
It had taken over two hours to form the four columns. The men had been roused in the dark, and the reveille had been sounded an hour later to fool the British into thinking that the French had slept longer, but the columns had been forming long before the bugles sounded. Sergeants with flaming torches served as guides, and the men formed on them, company by company, but it had all taken much longer than expected. The fog confused the newly woken men. Officers gave orders, sergeants bellowed, shoved, and used their musket stocks to force men into the ranks, and some fools mistook their orders and joined the wrong column, and they had to be pulled out, cursed, and sent to their proper place, but eventually the thirty-three battalions were assembled in their four assault