Sharpe’s Company: The Siege of Badajoz, January to April 1812

The orders came late in the afternoon, surprising no one, but stirring the battalions into quiet activity. Bayonets were sharpened and oiled, muskets checked and re-checked, and still the siege guns hammered at the French defences, trying to unseat the hidden, waiting cannon. Grey smoke blossomed out of the batteries and drifted up to join the low, bellying clouds that were the colour of wet gunpowder.

Sharpe’s Light Company, as Hogan had requested, were to join the Engineers on the approach to the largest breach. They would be carrying huge hay-bags that would be thrown down the steep face of the ditch to make a vast cushion on to which the Forlorn Hope and the attacking battalions could safely jump. Sharpe watched as his men filed into the forward trench, each holding one of the grotesquely stuffed bags. Sergeant Harper dropped his bag, sat on it, pummelled it into comfort, and then lay back. ‘Better than a feather bed, sir.’

Nearly one man in three of Wellington’s army came, like the Sergeant, from Ireland. Patrick Harper was a huge man, six feet four inches of muscle and contentment, who no longer thought it odd that he fought for an army not his own. He had been recruited by hunger from his native Donegal and kept in his head a memory of his homeland, a love of its religion and language, and a fierce pride in its ancient warrior heroes. He did not fight for England, less still for the South Essex Regiment, but instead he fought for himself and for Sharpe. Sharpe was his officer, a fellow Rifleman and a friend if it was possible for a Captain and a Sergeant to be friends. Harper was proud to be a soldier, even in his enemy’s army, because a man could take pride in doing a job well. One day, perhaps, he would fight for Ireland, but he could not imagine how that could happen because the land was crushed and persecuted, the flames of resistance trampled out, and, in truth, he did not give the prospect much thought or hope. For the moment he was in Spain and his job was to inspire, discipline, humour, and cajole the Light Company of the South Essex. He did it brilliantly.

Sharpe nodded at the hay-bag. ‘It’s probably full of fleas.’

‘Aye, sir, it probably is.’ Harper grinned. ‘But there’s no room on my body for another flea.’ The whole army was verminous; lice-ridden, flea-bitten, but so inured to the discomfort that they hardly noticed it. Tomorrow, thought Sharpe, in the comfort of Ciudad Rodrigo, they could all strip off, smoke out the lice and fleas, and crush the uniform seams with a hot iron to break the eggs. But that was tomorrow.

‘Where’s the Lieutenant?’

‘Being sick, sir.’

‘Drunk?’

Harper’s face flickered in a frown. ‘That’s not for me to say, sir.’ Which meant, Sharpe knew, that Lieutenant Harold Price was drunk.

‘Will he be all right?’

‘He always is, sir.’

Lieutenant Price was new to the Company. He was a Hampshire man, the son of a ship-builder, and gambling debts and unwanted pregnancies among the local girls had persuaded his sober, church-loving father that the best place for young Price was in the army. The ship-builder had purchased his son an Ensign’s commission and, four years later, had been happy to pay the five hundred and fifty pounds that had secured Master Price’s promotion to Lieutenant. The father had been happy because the vacant Lieutenancy was in the South Essex, a Regiment that was safely abroad, and he was glad to see as great a distance as possible between himself and his youngest son.

Robert Knowles, Sharpe’s previous Lieutenant, had gone. He had bought himself a Captaincy in a Fusilier Battalion, making the vacancy Price had purchased, and Sharpe, at first, had not liked the change. He had asked Price why, as the son of a ship-builder, he had not joined the navy.

‘Seasick, sir. Could never stand up straight.’

‘You can’t do that on land.’

Price had taken a few moments to understand, then his round, friendly, misleadingly innocent face had grinned. ‘Very good, sir. Droll. But still, sir, on land, if you follow me, there’s always something solid underneath. I mean if you fall over, then at least you know it’s the drink and not the bloody ship.’

The dislike had not lasted. It was impossible to dislike Lieutenant Price. His life was a single-minded pursuit of the debauchery denied him by his stern, God-fearing family, and he retained enough sense to make sure that when he was supposed to be sober he was, at the very least, upright. The men of Sharpe’s Company liked him, were protective towards him because they believed he was not long for this world. They reasoned that if a French bullet did not kill him, then the drink would, or the mercury salts he took for the pox, or a jealous husband, or, as Harper said admiringly, sheer bloody exhaustion. The big Sergeant looked up from his hay-bag, nodded down the trench. ‘Here he is now, sir.’

Price grinned weakly at them, winced as twenty-four pounds of roundshot hammered overhead towards the city, then stared agape at Harper. ‘What are you sitting on, Sergeant?’

‘Hay-bag, sir.’

Price shook his head in admiration. ‘Christ! They should issue them every day. Can I borrow it?’

‘My pleasure, sir.’ Harper stood up and courteously waved the Lieutenant to the bag.

Price collapsed, groaned in satisfaction. ‘Wake me when glory calls.’

‘Yes, sir. Which one’s Glory?’

‘Irish wit, oh God, Irish wit.’ Price closed his eyes.

The sky was darkening, the grey clouds turning sinister, bringing on the inexorable moment. Sharpe pulled his huge sword a few inches from the scabbard, tested the honed edge, and pushed it back. The sword was one of his symbols, with the rifle, which proclaimed he was a fighter. As a Light Company officer, he should have kept to the tradition that decreed he carried a Light Cavalry sabre. He hated the curved, light blade. Instead he used a Heavy Cavalry sword, straight-bladed and ill-balanced, that he had picked up from a battlefield. It was a brute of a weapon, thirty-five inches of cumbersome steel, but Sharpe was tall and strong enough to wield it easily. Harper saw Sharpe’s thumb test the edge. ‘Expecting to use it, sir?’

‘No. We don’t go beyond the glacis.’

Harper grunted. ‘There’s always hope.’ He was loading his seven-barrelled gun, a weapon of extreme unorthodoxy. Each of the barrels was a half inch wide and all seven were fired by a single charge that punched out a spray of death. Only six hundred had been made by the gunsmith, Henry Nock, and delivered to the Royal Navy, but the massive recoil had smashed men’s shoulders and the invention had been quietly discarded. The gunsmith would have been pleased to see the huge Irishman, one of the few men strong enough to handle the weapon, meticulously loading each twenty-inch barrel. Harper liked the weapon, it gave him a distinction similar to Sharpe’s sword, and the gun had been a present from his Captain; purchased from a chandler in Lisbon.

Sharpe pulled the greatcoat tight and peered over the parapet towards the city. There was little to see. The snow, glinting with a myriad of metallic sparks, led to the slope of the glacis which was a continuation of the hill on which Ciudad Rodrigo was built. He could see where the breach was hidden behind the glacis because of the dark scars in the snow where the siege artillery had fired short. The glacis was not designed to stop infantry. It was an earthen slope, easily climbed, that was banked in front of the defences to bounce the roundshot screaming over the defenders, and it had forced Wellington to capture the French forts on nearby hills so that the British artillery could be placed high up and fire down, over the glacis, into the walls.

Beyond the glacis was a ditch, hidden from Sharpe, that would be stone-faced and wide and, beyond the ditch, the modern walls that masked, in their turn, the old mediaeval wall. The guns had pierced both walls, old and new, and turned them into a stretch of rubble, but the defenders would have prepared horrid traps to guard the gap.

It was nine years since Sharpe had been part of a besieging force, yet he could remember clearly the fierceness of the fight as the British had climbed the hill to Gawilghur and plunged into the maze of walls and ditches that the Indians had defended with ferocious bravery. Ciudad Rodrigo should, he knew, be more difficult; not because the men who defended this town were better soldiers, but because, like Badajoz, it was defended with the science of modern engineering. There was something horridly precise about the defences, with their false walls and ravelins, their mathematically sited bastions and hidden cannons, and only passion, anger, or screaming desperation would force the science to yield to the bayonets. The desperation would not subside quickly. Sharpe knew that once the attackers broke through the breach, their blood raised to a desperate pitch, the men would be ungovernable in the town’s streets. It had always been so. If a fortress did not surrender, if its defenders forced the attackers to shed their blood in an assault, then old custom, soldiers’ custom, dictated that all inside the fortress belonged to the attackers’ vengeance. Ciudad Rodrigo’s only hope lay in a short, easy fight.

Bells rang the Angelus in the town. The Catholics in the Company, all Irish, made sketchy crosses and scrambled to their feet as Lieutenant-Colonel the Honourable William Lawford, the South Essex’s Commanding Officer, came into sight. He waved the men down, grinned at the sight of the snoring Price, nodded amicably to Harper, and came and stood beside Sharpe. ‘All well?’

‘Yes, sir.’

They were the same age, thirty-five, but Lawford had been born to the Officers’ Mess. When he had been a Lieutenant, lost and frightened in his first battle, Sergeant Richard Sharpe had been with him, guiding him as Sergeants often guide young officers. Then, when both men had been in the torture chambers of the Sultan Tippoo, Lawford had taught Sharpe to read and write. The skills had made it possible for Sharpe, once he had performed an act of suicidal bravery, to be made into an officer. Lawford stared over the parapet at the glacis. ‘I’ll come with you tonight.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe knew that Lawford had no need to be there, but also knew he could not dissuade him from coming. He glanced at his Colonel. As usual, Lawford was immaculately uniformed; gold lace glinting above the clean, yellow facings of the scarlet jacket. ‘Wear a greatcoat, sir.’

Lawford smiled. ‘You want me to disguise myself?’

‘No, sir, but you must be bloody cold, and we all like a shot at a fancy Colonel.’

‘I’ll wear this.’ Lawford held up a cavalry cloak, fur trimmed and lavish. The fastening was a gold chain at the neck and Sharpe knew the cloak would billow open and leave the uniform exposed.

‘It won’t hide the uniform, sir.’

‘No, Sergeant.’ Lawford smiled. He had spoken softly and the remark was an acknowledgement that their relationship was still the same, despite the promotions. Lawford was a good officer who had turned the South Essex from a frightened Regiment into a hardened, confident unit. But soldiering was not Lawford’s life; instead it was a means to his ends, political ends, and he wanted success in Spain to pave the way to power at home. In war he still relied on Sharpe, the natural soldier, and Sharpe was grateful for the trust and the freedom.

Beyond the river, towards Portugal, the fires of the British camp glowed bright in the dusk. In the trenches the battalions waiting for the assault shivered, gratefully drank the rum that was issued, and went through the tiny rituals that always preceded battle. Uniforms were pulled straight, belts made comfortable, weapons obsessively checked, and men felt in pockets or pouches for the talismans that kept them alive. A lucky rabbit’s foot, a bullet that had nearly killed them, a memento of home, or just a plain pebble that had caught their eye as they lay under heavy fire on a battlefield. The clocks moved up from the half hour towards the hour.

Generals fidgeted as they tried to persuade themselves their plans were as near perfect as possible, Brigade Majors fussed over last minute orders, while the men themselves wore that wary, stretched look that soldiers have before an event that demands their deaths to make it memorable. Packs were piled, to be guarded by men who would wait in the trenches, and bayonets were slotted and twisted on to musket barrels. The job, General Picton said, would be done with cold iron; and there would be no time to reload a musket in the breach, just to push on, bayonet out, reaching for the enemy. They waited for night. Made small jokes, fought with the imagination.

At seven it was dark. The big church clock in the tower that had been chipped and scarred by cannon balls, whirred as it geared itself to strike the hour. The sound was clearly audible over the snow. The orders must come soon. The siege guns stopped firing, a sudden silence that seemed unnatural after the days of hammering at the defences. Sharpe could hear men coughing, stamping their feet, and the little noises were terrible reminders of how small and frail men were against the defences of a fortress.

‘Go!’ The Brigade Majors had the orders. ‘Go!’

Lawford touched Sharpe’s shoulder. ‘Good luck!’

The Rifleman noticed the Colonel was still uncloaked, but it was too late now. There was a stirring in the trenches, a rustle as the hay-bags were pushed out of the trench, and then Harper was beside him and, beyond the Sergeant, Lieutenant Price, wide-eyed and pale. Sharpe grinned at them. ‘Come on.’

They climbed up on the fire-step, over the parapet, and went in silence towards the breach.

1812 had begun.

CHAPTER THREE

The snow was brittle, crunching beneath Sharpe’s boots, while behind him he could hear the sounds of men slipping in the whiteness, their breath rasping in the cold air, their equipment clinking as they started up the hill towards the glacis.

The crest of the defences were limned by a faint, red haze where the lights in the town, fires and bracketed torches, glowed in the night mist. It seemed unreal, but to Sharpe battles often seemed unreal, especially now as he climbed the snow-slope towards the silent, waiting town and with each step he expected the sudden eruption of cannon and the shriek of grape. Yet the defenders were quiet, as if they were oblivious of the mass of men who churned the snow towards Ciudad Rodrigo. In two hours at the most, Sharpe knew, it would all be over. Talavera had taken a day and a night, Fuentes de Oñoro all of three days, but no man could endure the hell of a breach for more than a couple of hours.