Sharpe's Havoc Part 36

"Well, well, well! We have Rifles among our congregation! We are blessed indeed. I didn't know any of the 95th were attached to the 1st Brigade." The speaker was a burly, rubicund man with a balding head and an affable face. If it were not for his uniform he would have looked like a friendly farmer and Sharpe could imagine him in an English market town, leaning on a hurdle, prodding plump sheep and waiting for a livestock auction to begin. "You are most welcome," he told Sharpe.

"That's Daddy Hill," Harris told Pendleton.

"Now, now, young man," General Hill boomed, "you shouldn't use an officer's nickname within his earshot. Liable to get you punished!"

"Sorry, sir." Harris had not meant to speak so loudly.

"But you're a rifleman so you're forgiven. And a very scruffy rifleman too, I must say! What is the army coming to when we don't dress for battle, eh?" He beamed at Harris, then fished in his pocket and brought out a handful of almonds. "Something to occupy your tongue, young man."

"Thank you, sir."

There were now two generals on the seminary roof. General Hill, commander of the 1st Brigade, whose forces were crossing the river and whose kindly nature had earned him the nickname of "Daddy," had joined Sir Edward Paget just in time to see three French battalions come from the city's eastern suburbs and form into two columns that would a.s.sault the seminary hill. The three battalions were in the valley, being pushed and harried into their ranks by sergeants and corporals. One column would come straight up at the seminary's facade while the other was forming near the Amarante road to a.s.sault the northern flank. But the French were also aware that British reinforcements were constantly arriving at the seminary and so they had sent a battery of guns to the river bank with orders to sink the three barges. The columns waited for the gunners to open fire, probably hoping that once the barges were sunk the gunners would turn their weapons onto the seminary.

And Sharpe, who had been wondering why Sir Arthur Wellesley had not put guns at the convent across the river, saw that he had worried about nothing, for no sooner did the French batteries appear than a dozen British guns, which had been parked out of sight at the back of the convent terrace, were wheeled forward. "That's the medicine for Frenchmen!" General Hill exclaimed when the great row of guns appeared.

The first to fire was a five-and-a-half-inch howitzer, the British equivalent of the cannon that had bombarded Sharpe on the watchtower hill. It was loaded with a spherical case shot, a weapon that only Britain deployed, which had been invented by Lieutenant Colonel Shrapnel and the manner of its working was kept a closely guarded secret. The sh.e.l.l, which was packed with musket b.a.l.l.s about a central charge of powder, was designed to shower those b.a.l.l.s and the sc.r.a.ps of its casing down onto enemy troops, yet to work properly it had to explode well short of its target so that the shot's forward momentum carried the lethal missiles on to the enemy, and that precision demanded that the gunners cut their fuses with exquisite skill. The howitzer's gunner had that skill. The howitzer boomed and rocked back on its trail, the sh.e.l.l arced over the river, leaving the telltale wisp of fuse smoke in its wake, then exploded twenty yards short and twenty feet above the leading French gun just as it was being unlimbered. The explosion tore the air red and white, the bullets and shattered casing screamed down and every horse in the French team was eviscerated, and every man in the French gun crew, all fourteen of them, was either killed or wounded, while the gun itself was thrown off its carriage.

"Oh dear," Hill said, forgetting the bloodthirsty welcome with which he had greeted the sight of the British batteries. "Those poor fellows," he said, "dear me."

The cheers of the British soldiers in the seminary were drowned by the huge bellow of the other British guns opening fire. From their eyrie on the southern bank they dominated the French position and their spherical case, common sh.e.l.ls and round shot swept the French guns with dreadful effect. The French gunners abandoned their pieces, left their horses squealing and dying, and fled, and then the British guns racked their elevating screws or loosened the howitzer quoins and started to pour shot and sh.e.l.l into the ma.s.sed ranks of the nearest French column. They raked it from the flank, pouring round shot through close-packed files, exploding case shot over their heads and killing with a terrible ease.

The French officers took one panicked look at their broken artillery and ordered the infantry up the slope. Drummers at the heart of the two columns began their incessant rhythm and the front rank stepped off as another round shot whipped through the files to plough a red furrow in the blue uniforms. Men screamed and died, yet still the drums beat and the men chanted their war cry, "Vive I'Empereur!"

Sharpe had seen columns before and was puzzled by them. The British army fought against other infantry arrayed in two ranks and every man could use his musket, and if cavalry threatened they marched and wheeled into a square of four ranks, and still every man could use his musket, but the soldiers at the heart of the two French columns could never fire without hitting the men in front.

These columns both had around forty men in a rank and twenty in each file. The French used such a formation, a great battering block of men, because it was simpler to persuade conscripts to advance in such an array and because, against badly trained troops, the very sight of such a great ma.s.s of men was daunting. But against redcoats? It was suicide.

"Vive I'Empereur!" the French shouted in rhythm with the drums, though their shout was half-hearted because both formations were climbing steep slopes and the men were breathless.

"G.o.d save our good King George," General Hill sang in a surprisingly fine tenor voice, "long live our n.o.ble George, don't shoot too high." He sang the last four words and the men on the roof grinned. Hagman hauled back the flint of his rifle and sighted on a French officer who was laboring up the slope with a sword in his hand. Sharpe's riflemen were on the northern wing of the seminary, facing the column that was not being flayed by the British guns on the convent terrace. A new battery had just deployed low on the river's southern bank and it was adding its fire to the two batteries on the convent hill, but none of the British guns could see the northern column, which would have to be thrown back by rifle and musket fire alone. Vicente's Portuguese were manning the loopholes on the northern garden wall and by now there were so many men in the seminary that every loophole had three or four men so that each could fire, then step back to reload while another took his place. Sharpe saw that some of the redcoats had green facings and cuffs. The Berks.h.i.+res, he thought, which meant the whole of the Buffs were in the building and new battalions were now arriving.

"Aim at the officers!" Sharpe called to his riflemen. "Muskets, don't fire! This order is for rifles only." He made the distinction because a musket, fired at this range, was a wasted shot, but his riflemen would be lethal. He waited a second, took a breath. "Fire!"

Hagman's officer jerked back, both arms in the air, sword cartwheeling back over the column. Another officer was down on his knees clutching his belly, and a third was holding his shoulder. The front of the column stepped over the corpse and the blue-coated line seemed to shudder as more bullets slammed into them, and then the long leading French ranks, panicked by the whistle of rifled bullets about their ears, fired up at the seminary. The volley was ear-splitting, the smoke smothered the slope like sea fog and the musket b.a.l.l.s rattled on the seminary walls and shattered its gla.s.s windows. The volley at least served to hide the French for a few yards, but then they reappeared through the smoke and more rifles fired and another officer went down. The column divided to pa.s.s the solitary tree, then the long ranks reunited when they were past it.

The men in the garden began firing, then the redcoats crammed into the seminary windows and arrayed with Sharpe's men on the roof pulled their triggers. Muskets crashed, smoke thickened, the b.a.l.l.s plucked at men in the column's front ranks and put them down and the men advancing behind lost their cohesion as they tried not to step on their dead or wounded colleagues.

"Fire low!" a sergeant of the Buffs called to his men. "Don't waste His Majesty's lead!"

Colonel Waters was carrying spare canteens about the roof for men who were parched by biting the cartridges. The saltpeter in the gunpowder dried the mouth fast and men gulped the water between shots.

The column attacking the seminary's western face was already shredded. Those Frenchmen were being a.s.sailed by rifle and musket fire, but the cannonade from the southern bank of the river was far worse. Gunners had rarely been offered such an easy target, the chance to rake the flank of an enemy's infantry column, and they worked like demons. Spherical case cracked in the air, shooting fiery strands of smoke in crazy trajectories, round shots bounced and hammered through the ranks and sh.e.l.ls exploded in the column's heart. Three drummers were hit by case shot, then a round shot whipped the head off another drummer boy, and when the instruments went silent the infantrymen lost heart and began to edge backward. Musket volleys spat from the seminary's three upper floors and the big building now looked as though it was on fire because powder smoke was writhing thick from every window. The loopholes fet-ted flame, the b.a.l.l.s struck wavering ranks, and then the French in the western column began to retreat faster and the backward movement turned to panic and they broke.

Some of the French, instead of retreating to the cover of the houses on the valley's far side, houses that were even now being struck by round shot so that their rafters and masonry were being splintered and the first fires were burning in the wreckage, ran to join the northern attack which was s.h.i.+elded by the seminary from the cannon fire. That northern column kept coming. It was taking dreadful punishment, but it was soaking up the bullets and musket b.a.l.l.s, and the sergeants and officers continually pushed men into the front ranks to replace the dead and the wounded. And so the column came ponderously uphill, but no one in the French ranks had really thought what they would do when they reached the hilltop where there was no door facing them. They would have to skirt the building and try to break through the big gates leading to the garden and when the men in the front ranks saw no place to go they simply stopped advancing and began shooting instead. A ball plucked at Sharpe's sleeve. A newly arrived lieutenant of the Northamptons.h.i.+re regiment fell back with a sigh, a bullet in his forehead. He lay on his back, dead before he fell, looking strangely peaceful. The redcoats had placed their cartridges and propped their ramrods on the red-tiled parapet to make loading quicker, but there were now so many on the roof that they jostled each other as they fired down into the dim ma.s.s of Frenchmen who were wreathed in their own smoke. One Frenchman ran bravely forward to fire through a loophole, but he was. .h.i.t before he could reach the wall. Sharpe had fired one shot, then he just watched his men. Pendleton and Perkins, the youngest, were grinning as they fired. Cooper and Tongue were reloading for Hagman, knowing he was a better shot, and the old poacher was calmly picking off one man after the other.

A cannonball screamed overhead and Sharpe twisted round to see that the French had placed a battery on the hill to the west, at the city's edge. There was a small chapel there with a bell tower and Sharpe saw the bell tower vanish in smoke, then crumble into ruin as the British batteries at the convent hammered the newly arrived French guns. A Berks.h.i.+re man turned to watch and a bullet whipped through his mouth, mangling his teeth and tongue and he swore incoherently, spitting a stream of blood.

"Don't watch the city!" Sharpe bellowed. "Keep shooting! Keep shooting!"

Hundreds of Frenchmen were firing muskets uphill and the vast majority of the shots were simply wasted against stone walls, but some found targets. Dodd had a flesh wound in his left arm, but he kept firing. A redcoat was. .h.i.t in the throat and choked to death. The solitary tree on the northern slope was twitching as it was struck by bullets and shreds of leaf were flying away with the French musket smoke. A sergeant of the Buffs fell back with a bullet in his ribs, and then Sir Edward Paget sent men from the western side of the roof, who had already seen their column defeated, to add their fire to the northern side. The muskets flared and coughed and spat down, the smoke thickened, and Sir Edward grinned at Daddy Hill. "Brave b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" Sir Edward had to shout over the noise of muskets and rifles.

"They won't stand, Ned," Hill called back. "They won't stand."

Hill was right. The first Frenchmen were already backing down the hill because of the futility of shooting at stone walls. Sir Edward, exultant at this easy victory, went to the parapet to look at the retreating enemy and he stood there, gold braid catching the smoke-dimmed sun, watching the enemy column disintegrate and run away, but a few stubborn Frenchmen still fired and suddenly Sir Edward gasped, clapped a hand to his elbow and Sharpe saw that the sleeve of the General's elegant red coat was torn and that a jagged piece of white bone was showing through the ripped wool and b.l.o.o.d.y mangled flesh.

"Jesus!" Paget swore. He was in terrible pain. The ball had shattered his elbow and seared up through his biceps. He was half bent over with the agony and very pale.

"Take him down to the doctors," Hill ordered. "You'll be all right, Ned."

Paget forced himself to stand straight. An aide had taken off a neckcloth and was trying to bind his General's wound, but Paget shook him off. "The command is yours," he said to Hill through clenched teeth.

"So it is," Hill acknowledged.

"Keep firing!" Sharpe shouted at his men. It did not matter that the rifle barrels were almost too hot to touch, what mattered was to drive the remaining French back down the hill or, better still, to kill them. Another rush of feet announced that more reinforcements had arrived at the seminary for the French had yet to find any way of stopping the traffic across the river. The British artillery, kings of this battlefield, were hammering any French gunner who dared show his face. Every few moments a brave French crew would run to the abandoned guns on the quay in hope of putting a round shot into one of the barges, but every time they were struck by spherical case and even by canister, for the new British battery, down at the water's edge, was close enough to use the deadly ammunition across the river. The musket b.a.l.l.s flared from the cannons' mouths like duck shot, killing six or seven men at a time, and after a while the French gunners abandoned their efforts and just hid in the houses at the back of the quay.

And then, quite suddenly, there were no Frenchmen firing on the northern slope. The gra.s.s was horrid with dead men and wounded men and with fallen muskets and with little flickering fires where the musket wadding had set light to the gra.s.s, but the survivors had fled to the Amarante road in the valley. The single tree looked as though it had been attacked by locusts. A drum trundled down the hill, making a rattling noise. Sharpe saw a French flag through the smoke, but could not see whether the staff was topped by an eagle. "Stop firing!" Hill called.

"Clean your barrels!" Sharpe shouted. "Check your flints!" For the French would be back. Of that he was certain. They would be back.

Chapter 9.

More men came to the seminary. A score of Portuguese civilians arrived with hunting guns and bags of ammunition, escorted by a plump priest who was cheered by the redcoats when he arrived in the garden with a bell-mouthed blunderbuss like those carried by stage-coach drivers to repel highwaymen. The Buffs had relit the fires in the kitchens and now fetched great metal cauldrons of tea or hot water to the roof. The tea cleaned out the soldiers' throats and the hot water swilled out their muskets and rifles. Ten boxes of spare ammunition were also carried up and Harper filled his shako with the cartridges, which were not as fine as those supplied for the rifles, but would do in a pinch. "And this is what you call a pinch, sir, eh?" he asked, distributing the cartridges along the parapet where the rifles and ramrods leaned. The French were thickening in the low ground to the north. If they had any sense, Sharpe thought, the enemy would bring mortars to that low ground, but so far none had appeared. Perhaps all the mortars were to the west of the city, guarding against the Royal Navy, and too far away to be fetched quickly.

Extra loopholes were battered through the garden's northern wall. Two of the Northamptons.h.i.+res had manhandled a great pair of rain b.u.t.ts to the wall and propped the door of the garden shed across the barrels' tops to make a fire step from which they could shoot over the wall's coping.

Harris brought Sharpe a mug of tea, then looked left and right before producing a leg of cold chicken from his cartridge box. "Thought you might like this as well, sir."

"Where did you get it?"

"Found it, sir," Harris said vaguely, "and I got one for you too, Sarge." Harris gave a leg to Harper, then produced a breast for himself, brushed some loose powder from it and bit into it hungrily.

Sharpe discovered he was famished and the chicken tasted delicious. "Where did it come from?" he insisted.

"I think they were General Paget's dinner, sir," Harris confessed, "but he's probably lost his appet.i.te."

"I should think he has," Sharpe said, "and a pity to let good chicken waste, eh?" He turned as a drumbeat sounded and saw the French were forming their ranks again, but this time only on the northern side of the seminary. "To your places!" he called, chucking the chicken bone far out into the garden. A few of the French were now carrying ladders, presumably plundered from the houses that were being battered by the British guns. "When they come," he called, "aim for the men with the ladders." Even without the rifle fire he doubted the French could get close enough to place the ladders against the garden wall, but it did no harm to make certain. Most of his riflemen had used the lull in the fight to load their newly cleaned barrels with leather-wrapped b.a.l.l.s and prime powder which meant their first shots ought to be lethally accurate. After that, as the French pressed closer and the noise rose and the smoke thickened, they would use cartridges, leave the leather patches in their b.u.t.t traps and so sacrifice accuracy for speed. Sharpe now loaded his own rifle, using a patch, but no sooner had he returned the ramrod to its slots than General Hill was beside him.

"I've never fired a rifle," Hill said.

"Very like a musket, sir," Sharpe said, embarra.s.sed at being singled out by a general.

"May I?" Hill reached for the weapon and Sharpe yielded it. "It's rather beautiful," Hill said wistfully, caressing the Baker's flank, "not nearly as c.u.mbersome as a musket."

"It's a lovely thing," Sharpe said fervently.

Hill aimed the gun down the hill, seemed about to c.o.c.k and fire, then suddenly handed it back to Sharpe. "I'd dearly like to try it," he said, "but if I missed my aim then the whole army would know about it, eh? And I'd never live that down." He spoke loudly and Sharpe understood he had been an unwitting partic.i.p.ant in a little piece of theater. Hill had not really been interested in the rifle, but rather in taking the men's minds away from the threat beneath them. In the process he had subtly flattered them by suggesting they could do something he could not, and he had left them grinning. Sharpe thought about what he had just seen. He admired it, but he also admired Sir Arthur Wellesley who would never have resorted to such a display. Sir Arthur would ignore the men and the men, in turn, would fight like demons to gain his grudging approval.

Sharpe had never wasted much time worrying why some men were born to be officers and others not. He had jumped the gap, but that did not make the system any less unfair. Yet to complain of the world's unfairness was the same as grumbling that the sun was hot or that the wind sometimes changed its direction. Unfairness existed, it always had and it always would, and the miracle, to Sharpe's eyes, was that some men like Hill and Wellesley, though they had become wealthy and privileged through unfair advantages, were nevertheless superb at what they did. Not all generals were good, many were downright bad, but Sharpe had usually been lucky and found himself commanded by men who knew their business. Sharpe did not care that Sir Arthur Wellesley was the son of an aristocrat and had purchased his way up the ladder of promotion and was as cold as a lawyer's sense of charity. The long-nosed b.u.g.g.e.r knew how to win and that was what mattered.