he know what he’s doing?’
‘He’s English,’ Vicente said drily. The Portuguese army had been reorganized and trained in the last eighteen months and huge numbers of British officers had volunteered into its ranks for the reward of a promotion.
‘I’d still send in more men,’ Sharpe said.
Vicente had no chance to answer because there was the sudden thump of hooves on the springy turf and a stentorian voice shouting at him. ‘Don’t hang about, Vicente! There are Frogs to kill! Get on with it, Captain, get on with it! Who the devil are you?’ This last question was directed at Sharpe and came from a horseman who had trouble curbing his gelding as he tried to rein in beside the two officers. The rider’s voice betrayed he was English, though he was wearing Portuguese brown to which he had added a black cocked hat that sported a pair of golden tassels. One tassel shadowed his face that looked to be red and glistening.
‘Sharpe, sir,’ Sharpe answered the man’s bad-tempered question.
‘95th?’
‘South Essex, sir.’
‘That bloody mob of yokels,’ the officer said. ‘Lost a colour a couple of years back, didn’t you?’
‘We took one back at Talavera,’ Sharpe said harshly.
‘Did you now?’ The horseman did not seem particularly interested. He took out a small telescope and stared at the rocky knoll, ignoring some musket balls which, fired at extreme range, fluttered impotently by.
‘Allow me to name Colonel Rogers-Jones,’ Vicente said, ‘my Colonel.’
‘And the man, Vicente,’ Rogers-Jones said, ‘who ordered you to turf those buggers out of the rocks. I didn’t tell you to stand here and chatter, did I?’
‘I was seeking Captain Sharpe’s advice, sir,’ Vicente said.
‘Reckon he’s got any to offer?’ The Colonel sounded amused.
‘He took a French Eagle,’ Vicente pointed out.
‘Not by standing around talking, he didn’t,’ Rogers-Jones said. He collapsed his telescope. ‘I’ll tell the gunners to open fire,’ he went on, ‘and you advance, Vicente. You’ll help him, Sharpe.’ He added the order carelessly. ‘Winkle them out, Vicente, then stay there to make sure the bastards don’t come back.’ He turned his horse and spurred away.
‘Jesus bloody wept,’ Sharpe said. ‘Does he know how many of them there are?’
‘I still have my orders,’ Vicente said bleakly.
Sharpe took the rifle off his shoulder and loaded it. ‘You want advice?’
‘Of course.’
‘Send our rifles up the middle,’ Sharpe said, ‘in skirmish order. They’re to keep firing, hard and fast, no patches, just keeping the bastards’ heads down. The rest of our lads will come up behind in line. Bayonets fixed. Straightforward battalion attack, Jorge, with three companies, and hope your bastard Colonel is satisfied.’
‘Our lads?’ Vicente picked those two words out of Sharpe’s advice.
‘Not going to let you die alone, Jorge,’ Sharpe said.
‘You’d probably get lost trying to find the pearly gates.’ He glanced northwards and saw the cannon smoke thickening as the French attack closed on the village beneath the ridge’s summit, then the first of the guns close to the knoll fired and a shell banged smoke and casing scraps just beyond the rocky knoll. ‘So let’s do it,’ Sharpe said.
It was not wise, he thought, but it was war. He cocked the rifle and shouted at his men to close up. Time to fight.
The village of Sula, which was perched on the eastward slope of the ridge very close to where the northernmost road crossed the summit, was a small and unremarkable place. The houses were cramped, the dungheaps large, and for a long time the village had not even possessed a church, which had meant that a priest must be fetched from Moura, at the ridge’s foot, or else a friar summoned from the monastery, to give extreme unction to the dying, but the sacraments had usually arrived too late and so the dead of Sula had gone to their long darkness unshriven, which was why the local people liked to claim that the tiny hamlet was haunted by spectres.
On Thursday, 27th September 1810, the village was haunted by skirmishers. The whole first battalion of the 95th Rifles were in and around the hamlet, and with them were the 3rd Cazadores, many of whom were also armed with the Baker rifle, which meant that more than a thousand skirmishers in green and brown opened fire on the two advancing French columns, which had deployed almost as many skirmishers themselves, but the French had muskets and were opposed by rifles, and so the voltigeurs were the first to die in the small walled paddocks and terraced vineyards beneath the village. The sound of the fight was like dry brush burning, an unending crackle of muskets and rifles, which was augmented by the bass notes of the artillery on the crest that fired shell and shrapnel over the Portuguese and British skirmishers to tear great holes in the two columns struggling up the slope behind the voltigeurs. To the French officers in the column, scanning the ridge above, it seemed they were opposed only by skirmishers and artillery. The artillery had been placed on a ledge beyond the village and just below the skyline, and near the guns was a scatter of horsemen who watched from beside the white-painted stump of the windmill’s tower. The artillery was hurting the columns, smashing round shot through tight ranks and exploding shells above the files, but two batteries could never stop these great columns. The horsemen by the mill were no danger. There were only four or five riders visible when the cannon smoke thinned, and all wore cocked hats, which meant they were not cavalrymen, so it seemed that the British and Portuguese skirmishers, supported by cannon, were supposed to defeat the attack. Which meant the French must win, for there were no redcoats in sight, no damned lines to envelop a column with volley fire. The drummers beat the pas de charge and the men gave their war cry, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ One of the two columns divided into two smaller units to negotiate an outcrop of rock, then rejoined on the road as two shells exploded right over their front ranks. A dozen men were thrown down, the dusty road was suddenly red and sergeants dragged the dead and wounded aside so that the ranks behind would not be obstructed. Ahead of the column the sound of the skirmishing grew in intensity as the voltigeurs closed the range and opened on the riflemen with their muskets. There were so many skirmishers now that the noise of their battle was a continuous crackling. Smoke drifted off the hillside. ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ the French shouted and the first riflemen began picking at the columns’ front ranks. A bullet smacked an Eagle, ripping off the tip of a wing, and an officer went down in the front rank, gasping with pain as the files tramped round him. The voltigeurs, outranged by the rifles, were being driven back onto the columns and so Marshal Ney, who commanded this attack, ordered that more companies were to deploy as skirmishers to drive the riflemen and cazadores back up the slope.
The drummers kept up their monotonous rhythm. A round of shrapnel, designed to burst in the air and slam its load of bullets down and forward, exploded above the right-hand column and the drums momentarily ceased as a dozen boys went down and the men behind were spattered with their blood. ‘Close up!’ a sergeant shouted and a shell banged behind him and a hat went spiralling up in the air and fell on the road with a heavy thump because half the man’s head was still inside. A drummer boy, both legs broken and his belly slit by shell fragments, sat and kept up his drumming as the files went past him. The men patted his head for luck, leaving him to die among the vines.
Ahead of the columns the new French skirmishers deployed and their officers shouted them up the hill to close the range and so swamp the hated greenjackets with musket fire. The Baker rifle was a killer, but a slow one. To fire it accurately a man was supposed to wrap each ball in a greased leather patch, then ram it down on the charge, and ramming a patched bullet was hard work and