Sharpe’s Sword: The Salamanca Campaign, June and July 1812

Sharpe blew his whistle that sent his men scattering into the loose skirmish chain. The other nine companies would fight in their ranks, held by discipline, but his men fought in pairs, picking their ground and being the first to meet the enemy. He was on the crest now, the grass long beneath his boots, and his skirmish line was going down towards the enemy. Once again he forgot Leroux, forgot Hogan’s concern, for now he was doing the job for which the army paid him. He was a skirmisher, a fighter of battles between the armies, and the love of combat was rising in him, that curious emotion that diluted fear and drove him to impose his will on the enemy. He was excited, eager, and he led his men at a swift pace down the hillside to where the enemy skirmishers, the Voltigeurs, were coming out to meet him. This was his world now, this small saddle of land between the escarpment and the knoll, a tiny piece of grassland that was warm in the sun and pretty with flowers. There he would meet his enemy and there he would win. ‘Spread out! Keep moving!’ Sharpe was going to war.

CHAPTER FIVE

Wellington did not want to attack. He saw little sense in sending his army down into the plain, but he was frustrated by the French reluctance to attack him. He had sent two Battalions against the two enemy Battalions on the knoll in the hope that he could provoke Marmont into a response. Wellington wanted to entice the French up onto the ridge, to force their infantry to climb the steep slope and face the guns and muskets that would suddenly appear to blast the tired enemy in chaos and horror back the way they had come.

Such thoughts were far from Richard Sharpe. His job was altogether more simple, merely to take on an enemy Light Company and defeat them. The British, unlike the French, attacked in line. The French had a taste for attacking in columns, great blocks of men driven like battering rams at the enemy line, columns propelled by the serried drummers in their midst, marching beneath the proud eagle standards that had conquered Europe, but that was not the way of Wellington’s army. The two red-coated Battalions made one line, two ranks deep, and it marched forward, its ranks wavering because of the uneven ground, marching towards the French defensive line, three ranks deep, broken only where the field guns waited to fire.

Sharpe’s Company was ahead of the British line.

His job was simple enough. His men had to weaken the enemy line before the British attack crashed home. They would do it by sniping at the officers, at the gunners, worrying the morale of the Frenchmen, and to stop them doing it, the French had sent out their own skirmishers. Sharpe could see them clearly, blue-jacketed men with white crossbelts and red shoulders, men who ran forward in pairs and waited for the Light Company. Sweat trickled down Sharpe’s spine.

His Light Company was outnumbered by enemy skirmishers, but he had an advantage denied the French. Most of Sharpe’s men, like the enemy, carried muskets that, though quick to load and fire, were inaccurate except at point blank range. Yet Sharpe also had his green-jacketed Riflemen, the killers at long range, whose slow-loading Baker Rifles would dominate this fight. The grass-stalks were thick, pulling at his boots, brushing against the metal scabbard heavy at his side. He looked to his right and saw Patrick Harper walking as easily as if he was strolling in the hills of his beloved Donegal. The Sergeant, far from looking at the French, was staring over their heads at a hawk. Harper was fascinated by birds.

The French gunners, judging their range, put fire to the priming tubes and the two field guns hammered back on their trails, pulsed smoke in a filthy cloud and crashed their shot at the opposing hillside. The gunners had deliberately aimed short for a cannon-ball could do more damage if it bounced waist high amongst the enemy. They called that bounce a ‘graze’ and Sharpe watched it, spewing grass, dirt and stones on its passage. The ball grazed among his men and slammed up the hill to graze again before it struck a file of the South Essex behind.

‘Close up! Close up!’ Sharpe could hear the Sergeants shouting.

The noise would start now. Shots, shouts, screams. Sharpe ignored it. He heard the guns, but he watched only his enemy. A Voltigeur officer, a sabre at his side, was spreading his men out and pointing towards Sharpe. Sharpe grinned. ‘Dan?’

‘Sir?’ Hagman sounded cheerful.

‘You see that bastard?’

‘I’ll get him, sir!’ The French officer was as good as dead already. It was always the same. Look for the leaders, officers or men, and kill them first. After that the enemy would waver.

Richard Sharpe was good at this. He had been doing it for nineteen years, his whole adult life, more, indeed, than half his life, and he wondered if he would ever be good for anything else. Could he make things with his hands? Could he earn a living by growing things, or was he just this? A killer on a battlefield, legitimised by war for which, he knew, he had a talent. He was judging the distance between the skirmishers, picking his moment, but part of his mind worried about the coming of peace. Could he soldier in peacetime? Was he to lead his men against hunger-rioters in England or against Harper’s countrymen in their ravaged island? Yet there was no sign of this war ending. It had lasted his lifetime, Britain against France, and he wondered if it would last the lifetime of his little daughter, Antonia, of whom he saw so little. Twenty seconds to go.

The guns were at their rhythm now, the roundshot slamming at the attackers and in a few seconds they would change to canister to spray the hillside with death. Harper’s job was to stop that.

Ten seconds Sharpe guessed, and he saw a Frenchman kneel and bring his musket into his shoulder. The musket was aimed at Sharpe, but the range was too great to cause worry. For a second Sharpe thought of poor Ensign McDonald who had so wanted to distinguish himself in the skirmish line. Damn Leroux.

Five seconds, and Sharpe could see his opposing Captain looking nervously left and right. The smoke from the cannons was thickening, the noise hammering at Sharpe’s eardrums. ‘Now!’

He had lost count of the number of times he had done this.

‘Go! Go! Go!’

This was rehearsed. The Light Company broke into a run, the last thing the enemy expected, and they went left and right, confusing their enemy’s aim, and they closed the range to put pressure on the enemy’s nerve. The Riflemen stopped first, wicked guns at their shoulders, and Sharpe heard the first crack which spun the enemy officer backwards, hands up, blood spraying suddenly, and then Sharpe was on his knee, his own rifle at his shoulder, and he saw the puff of smoke where the man had been who was aiming for him and he knew the musket ball had gone wide. Sharpe aimed up the hill. He looked for the enemy Colonel, saw him on his horse, aimed slowly, squeezed, and grinned as he glimpsed the Frenchman fall back from the saddle. That would be Sharpe’s last shot in this battle. Now he would fight his men as a weapon.

More rifles cracked, firing into the smudge of smoke about the nearest gun. If the gunners could be killed, that was good, but at the least the bullets whistling about their weapon would slow their fire and spare the South Essex some of the ghastly canister.

‘Sergeant Huckfield! Watch left!’

‘Sir!’

The men fought in pairs. One man fired while the other loaded, and both sought targets for each other. Sharpe could see four enemy down, two of them crawling backwards, and he saw that unwounded men were hurrying to help the wounded. That was good. When the uninjured went to help their comrades it meant they were looking for an excuse to leave the battle.

Sharpe’s muskets were firing fast now and his men were going forward, paces at a time, and the enemy were going backwards. The field gun opposite the South Essex had slowed down and Sharpe smiled because he had nothing to do. His men were fighting as he expected them to fight, using their intelligence, pushing the enemy back, and Sharpe looked behind to see where the main Battalion was.

The South Essex were fifty yards behind, coming steadily forward, and on their muskets were bayonets, bright in the sun, and behind them, on the ridge slope, were the bodies broken by the cannon.

‘Rifles! Go for the main line! Kill the officers!’

Make widows on this field! Kill the officers, crumble the enemy morale, and Sharpe saw Hagman aim, fire, and the other Riflemen followed. Lieutenant Price was directing the musket fire, keeping the enemy skirmishers pinned back and releasing the Rifles to fire above their heads. Sharpe felt a surge of pride in his men. They were good, so good, and they were showing the spectators just how a Light Company should fight. He laughed aloud.

They were at the foot of the slope now, the enemy Light troops driven back towards their own line, and in a few seconds the South Essex would catch up with their Light Company. They had a hundred yards to go into the attack.

Sharpe pulled his whistle from its holster, waited a few seconds, then blasted out the signal to form company. He heard the Sergeants repeat the signal, watched his men come running towards him for now their skirmishing task was done. Now they would form up on the left of the attacking line and go in like the other Companies. The men sprinted towards him, tugging out bayonets, and he clapped them on the shoulders, said they had done well. Then the Company was formed, marching, and they were climbing the knoll over the blood of their enemies.

The field gun had stopped firing. The smoke was drifting clear.

Sharpe walked in front of his men. The great sword scraped on the scabbard throat as it came clear.

The French line levelled their muskets.

Boots swished through the grass. It was hot. The powder smoke stung men’s nostrils.

‘For what we’re about to receive,’ a voice said.

‘Quiet in the ranks! Close up!’

‘Keep your dressing, Mellors! What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get in line, you useless bastard!’

Boots in the grass, the French line seeming to take a quarter turn to the right as the muskets go back into the shoulders. The muzzles, even at eighty yards, look huge.

‘Get your bayonet up, Smith! You’re not ploughing the bloody field!’

Sharpe listened to the Sergeants.

‘Steady, lads, steady!’

The French officers had their swords raised. The cannon smoke had cleared now and Sharpe could see that the field gun had gone. It had been taken back, away from the infantry.

‘Take it like men, lads!’

Seventy yards and the French swords swept down and Sharpe knew they had fired too soon. The smoke rippled from the hundreds of muskets, the sound was like the falling of giant stakes, and the air was thick with the thrumming of the balls.

The attacking line was jerked by the balls. Some men fell backwards, some stumbled, most kept stolidly on. Sharpe knew the enemy would be frantically reloading, fumbling with cartridges and ramrods, and he instinctively quickened his pace so that the South Essex might close the gap before the enemy had recharged their weapons. The other officers hurried too, and the attacking line began to lose its cohesion. The Sergeants yelled. ‘It’s not a sodding steeplechase! Watch your dressing!’

Fifty yards, forty, and Major Leroy, whose voice was twice as loud as Forrest’s, bellowed at the South Essex to halt.

Sharpe could see some enemy muskets being rammed. The Frenchmen were looking nervously at their enemy so close.

Leroy filled his lungs.

‘Level your muskets!’

The Light Company alone was not loaded. The other companies levelled their muskets and beneath each muzzle the seventeen inch bayonet pointed towards the French.