Sharpe’s Battle: The Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro, May 1811

‘Do they speak English?’ Sharpe asked.

‘As well as you or I. About half of them are Irish born, the other half are descended from Irish emigrants, and a good few, I have to say, once wore red coats,’ Hogan said, meaning that they were deserters from the British army.

Sharpe turned and beckoned Harper towards him. ‘Let’s have a look at this palace guard, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Put ’em in open order.’

‘What do I call them?’ Harper asked.

‘Battalion?’ Sharpe guessed.

Harper took a deep breath. ‘’Talion! ’Shun!’ His voice was loud enough to make the closest men wince and the further ones jump in surprise, but only a few men snapped to attention. ‘For inspection! Open order march!’ Harper bellowed, and again very few guardsmen moved. Some just gaped at Harper while the majority looked towards their own sergeants for guidance. One of those gorgeously sashed sergeants came towards Sharpe, evidently to inquire what authority the riflemen possessed, but Harper did not wait for explanations. ‘Move, you bastards!’ he bellowed in his Donegal accent. ‘You’re in a war now, not guarding the royal pisspot. Behave like the good whores we all are and open up, now!’

‘And I can remember when you didn’t want to be a sergeant,’ Sharpe said to Harper under his breath as the startled guards at last obeyed the greenjacket Sergeant’s command. ‘Are you coming, Major?’ Sharpe asked Hogan.

‘I’ll wait here, Richard.’

‘Come on then, Pat,’ Sharpe said, and the two men began inspecting the company’s front rank. An inevitable band of small mocking boys from the town fell into step behind the two greenjackets and pretended to be officers, but a thump on the ear from the Irishman’s fist sent the boldest boy snivelling away and the others dispersed rather than face more punishment.

Sharpe inspected the muskets rather than the men, though he made sure that he looked into each soldier’s eyes in an attempt to gauge what kind of confidence and willingness these men had. The soldiers returned his inspection resentfully, and no wonder, Sharpe thought, for many of these guards were Irishmen who must have been feeling all kinds of confusion at being attached to the British army. They had volunteered for the Real Compañía Irlandesa to protect a Most Catholic King, yet here they were being harried by the army of a Protestant monarch. Worse still, many of them would be avid Irish patriots, fierce for their country as only exiles can be, yet now they were being asked to fight alongside the ranks of that country’s foreign oppressors. Yet, as Sharpe walked down the rank, he sensed more nervousness than anger and he wondered if these men were simply fearful of being asked to become proper soldiers for, if their muskets were any indication, the Real Compañía Irlandesa had long abandoned any pretensions to soldiering. Their muskets were a disgrace. The men carried the serviceable and sturdy Spanish-issue musket with its straight-backed hammer; however these guns were anything but serviceable, for there was rust on the locks and fouling caked inside the barrels. Some of them had no flints, others had no leather flint-seatings, while one gun did not even have the doghead screw to hold the flint in place. ‘Did you ever fire this musket, son?’ Sharpe asked the soldier.

‘No, sir.’

‘Have you ever fired a musket, son?’

The boy looked nervously towards his own sergeant. ‘Answer the officer, lad!’ Harper growled.

‘Once, sir. One day,’ the soldier said. ‘Just the once.’

‘If you wanted to kill someone with this gun, son, you’d have to beat them over the head with it. Mind you’ – Sharpe pushed the musket back into the soldier’s hands – ‘you look big enough for that.’

‘What’s your name, soldier?’ Harper asked him.

‘Rourke, sir.’

‘Don’t call me “sir”. I’m a sergeant. Where are you from?’

‘My da’s from Galway, Sergeant.’

‘And I’m from Tangaveane in County Donegal and I’m ashamed, boy, ashamed, that a fellow Irishman can’t keep a gun in half decent order. Jesus, boy, you couldn’t shoot a Frenchman with that thing, let alone an Englishman.’ Harper unslung his own rifle and held it under Rourke’s nose. ‘Look at that, boy! Clean enough to pick the dirt out of King George’s nose. That’s how a gun should look! ’Ware right, sir.’ Harper added the last three words under his breath.

Sharpe turned to see two horsemen galloping across the waste ground towards him. The horses’ hooves spurted dust. The leading horse was a fine black stallion being ridden by an officer who was wearing the gorgeous uniform of the Real Compañía Irlandesa and whose coat, saddlecloth, hat and trappings fairly dripped with gold tassels, fringes and loops. The second horseman was equally splendidly uniformed and mounted, while behind them a small group of other riders curbed their horses when Hogan intercepted them. The Irish Major, still on foot, hurried after the two leading horsemen, but was too late to stop them from reaching Sharpe. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ the first man asked as he reined in above Sharpe. He had a thin, tanned face with a moustache trained and greased into fine points. Sharpe guessed the man was still in his twenties, but despite his youth he possessed a sour and ravaged face that had all the effortless superiority of a creature born to high office.

‘I’m making an inspection,’ Sharpe answered coldly.

The second man reined in on Sharpe’s other side. He was older than his companion and was wearing the bright-yellow coat and breeches of a Spanish dragoon, though the uniform was so crusted with looped chains and gold frogging that Sharpe assumed the man had to be at least a general. His thin, moustached face had the same imperious air as his companion’s. ‘Haven’t you learned to ask a commanding officer’s permission before inspecting his men?’ he asked with a distinct Spanish accent, then snapped an order in Spanish to his younger companion.

‘Sergeant Major Noonan,’ the younger man shouted, evidently relaying the older man’s command, ‘close order, now!’

The Real Compañía Irlandesa’s Sergeant Major obediently marched the men back into close order just as Hogan reached Sharpe’s side. ‘There you are, my Lords’ – Hogan was addressing both horsemen – ‘and how was your Lordships’ luncheon?’

‘It was shit, Hogan. I wouldn’t feed it to a hound,’ the younger man, whom Sharpe assumed was Lord Kiely, said in a brittle voice that dripped with aloofness but was also touched by the faint slur of alcohol. His Lordship, Sharpe decided, had drunk well at lunch, well enough to loosen whatever inhibitions he might have possessed. ‘You know this creature, Hogan?’ His Lordship now waved towards Sharpe.

‘Indeed I do, my Lord. Allow me to name Captain Richard Sharpe of the South Essex, the man Wellington himself chose to be your tactical adviser. And Richard? I have the honour to present the Earl of Kiely, Colonel of the Real Compañía Irlandesa.’

Kiely looked grimly at the tattered rifleman. ‘So you’re supposed to be our drillmaster?’ He sounded dubious.

‘I give lessons in killing too, my Lord,’ Sharpe said.

The older Spaniard in the yellow uniform scoffed at Sharpe’s claim. ‘These men don’t need lessons in killing,’ he said in his accented English. ‘They’re soldiers of Spain and they know how to kill. They need lessons in dying.’

Hogan interrupted. ‘Allow me to name His Excellency Don Luis Valverde,’ he said to Sharpe. ‘The General is Spain’s most valued representative to our army.’ Hogan gave Sharpe a wink that neither horseman could see.

‘Lessons in dying, my Lord?’ Sharpe asked the General, puzzled by the man’s statement and wondering whether it sprang from an incomplete mastery of English.

For answer the yellow-uniformed General touched his horse’s flanks with the tips of his spurs to make the animal walk obediently along the line of the Real Compañía Irlandesa’s front rank and, superbly oblivious of whether Sharpe was following him or not, lectured the rifleman from his saddle. ‘These men are going to war, Captain Sharpe,’ General Valverde said in a voice loud enough for a good portion of the guard to hear him. ‘They are going to fight for Spain, for King Ferdinand and Saint James, and fighting means standing tall and straight in front of your enemy. Fighting means staring your enemy in the eye while he shoots at you, and the side that wins, Captain Sharpe, is the side that stands tallest, straightest and longest. So you don’t teach men how to kill or how to fight, but rather how to stand still while all hell comes at them. That’s what you teach them, Captain Sharpe. Teach them drill. Teach them obedience. Teach them to stand longer than the French. Teach them’ – the General at last twisted in his saddle to look down on the rifleman – ‘to die.’

‘I’d rather teach them to shoot,’ Sharpe said.

The General scoffed at the remark. ‘Of course they can shoot,’ he said. ‘They’re soldiers!’

‘They can shoot with those muskets?’ Sharpe asked derisively.

Valverde stared down at Sharpe with a look of pity on his face. ‘For the last two years, Captain Sharpe, these men have stayed at their post of duty on the sufferance of the French.’ Valverde spoke in the tone he might have used to a small and unintelligent child. ‘Do you really think they would have been allowed to stay there if they had posed a threat to Bonaparte? The more their weapons decayed, the more the French trusted them, but now they are here and you can provide them with new weapons.’

‘To do what with?’ Sharpe asked. ‘To stand and die like bullocks?’

‘So how would you like them to fight?’ Lord Kiely had followed the two men and asked the question from behind Sharpe.

‘Like my men, my Lord,’ Sharpe said, ‘smartly. And you begin fighting smartly by killing the enemy officers.’ Sharpe raised his voice so that the whole of the Real Compañía Irlandesa could hear him. ‘You don’t go into battle to stand and die like bullocks in a slaughteryard, you go to win, and you begin to win when you drop the enemy officers dead.’ Sharpe had walked away from Kiely and Valverde now and was using the voice he had developed as a sergeant, a voice pitched to cut across windy parade grounds and through the deadly clamour of battlefields. ‘You start by looking for the enemy officers. They’re easy to recognize because they’re the overpaid, overdressed bastards with swords and you aim for them first. Kill them any way you can. Shoot them, club them, bayonet them, strangle them if you must, but kill the bastards and after that you kill the sergeants and then you can begin murdering the rest of the poor leaderless bastards. Isn’t that right, Sergeant Harper?’

‘That’s the way of it, sure enough,’ Harper called back.

‘And how many officers have you killed in battle, Sergeant?’ Sharpe asked, without looking at the rifle Sergeant.

‘More than I can number, sir.’

‘And were they all Frog officers, Sergeant Harper?’ Sharpe asked, and Harper, surprised by the question, did not answer, so Sharpe provided the answer himself. ‘Of course they were not. We’ve killed officers in blue coats, officers in white coats and even officers in red coats, because I don’t care what army an officer fights for, or what colour coat he wears or what king he serves, a bad officer is better off dead and a good soldier had better learn how to kill him. Ain’t that right, Sergeant Harper?’

‘Right as rain, sir.’

‘My name is Captain Sharpe.’ Sharpe stood in the centre front of the Real Compañía Irlandesa. The faces watching him showed a mixture of astonishment and surprise, but he had their attention now and neither Kiely nor Valverde had dared to interfere. ‘My name is Captain Sharpe,’ he said again, ‘and I began where you are. In the ranks, and I’m going to end up where he is, in the saddle.’ He pointed at Lord Kiely. ‘But in the meantime my job is to teach you to be soldiers. I dare say there are some good killers among you and some fine fighters too, but soon you’re going to be good soldiers as well. But for tonight we’ve all got a fair step to go before dark and once we’re there you’ll get food, shelter and we’ll find out when you were last paid. Sergeant Harper! We’ll finish the inspection later. Get them moving!’

‘Sir!’ Harper shouted. ‘’Talion will turn to the right. Right turn! By the left! March!’

Sharpe did not even look at Lord Kiely, let alone seek his Lordship’s permission to march the Real Compañía Irlandesa away. Instead he just watched as Harper led the guard off the waste ground towards the main road. He heard footsteps behind, but still he did not turn. ‘By God, Sharpe, but you push your luck.’ It was Major Hogan who spoke.

‘It’s all I’ve got to push, sir,’ Sharpe said bitterly. ‘I wasn’t born to rank, sir, I don’t have a purse to buy it and I don’t have the privileges to attract it, so I need to push what bit of luck I’ve got.’

‘By giving lectures on assassinating officers?’ Hogan’s voice was frigid with disapproval. ‘The Peer won’t like that, Richard. It smacks of republicanism.’