Sharpe’s Devil: Napoleon and South America, 1820–1821

‘And you, monsieur?’ The question, in French, was addressed to Harper. ‘You travel for the same reason?’

Sharpe translated both the question and Harper’s answer. ‘He says that he found life after the war tedious; your Majesty, and thus welcomed this chance to accompany me.’

‘Ah! How well I understand tedium. Nothing to do but put on weight, eh?’ The Emperor lightly patted his belly, then looked back to Sharpe. ‘You speak French well, for an Englishman.’

‘I have the honour to live in France, your Majesty.’

‘You do?’ The Emperor sounded hurt and, for the first time since the visitors had come into the room, an expression of genuine feeling crossed Bonaparte’s face. Then he managed to cover his envy by a friendly smile. ‘You are accorded a privilege denied to me. Where in France?’

‘In Normandy, your Majesty.’

‘Why?’

Sharpe hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Une femme.’

The Emperor laughed so naturally that it seemed as though a great tension had snapped in the room. Even Bonaparte’s supercilious aides smiled. ‘A good reason,’ the Emperor said, ‘an excellent reason! Indeed, the only reason, for a man usually has no control over women. Your name, monsieur.’

‘Sharpe, your Majesty.’ Sharpe paused, then decided to try his luck at a more intimate appeal to Bonaparte. ‘I was a friend of General Calvet, of your Majesty’s army. I did General Calvet some small service in Naples before …’ Sharpe could not bring himself to say Waterloo, or even to refer to the Emperor’s doomed escape from Elba which, by route of fifty thousand deaths, had led to this damp, rat-infested room in the middle of oblivion. ‘I did the service,’ Sharpe continued awkwardly, ‘in the summer of ’14.’

Bonaparte rested his chin on his right hand and stared for a long time at the Rifleman. The Spaniards, resenting that Sharpe had taken over their audience with the exiled tyrant, scowled. No one spoke. A rat scampered behind the wainscot, rain splashed in the bucket, and the trade wind gusted sudden and loud in the chimney.

‘You will stay here, monsieur,’ Bonaparte said abruptly to Sharpe, ‘and we will talk.’

The Emperor, conscious of the Spaniards’ disgruntlement, turned back to Ruiz and complimented his officers on their martial appearance, then commiserated with their Chilean enemies for the defeat they would suffer when Ruiz’s guns finally arrived. The Spaniards, all except for the scowling Ardiles, bristled with gratified pride. Bonaparte thanked them all for visiting him, wished them well on their further voyage, then dismissed them. When they were gone, and when only Sharpe, Harper, an aide-de-camp and the liveried servant remained in the room, the Emperor pointed Sharpe towards a chair. ‘Sit. We shall talk.’

Sharpe sat. Beyond the windows the rain smashed malevolently across the uplands and drowned the newly-dug ponds in the garden. The Spanish officers waited in the billiard room, a servant brought wine to the audience room, and Bonaparte talked with a Rifleman.

The Emperor had nothing but scorn for Colonel Ruiz and his hopes of victory in Chile. ‘They’ve already lost that war, just as they’ve lost every other colony in South America, and the sooner they pull their troops out, the better. That man –’ this was accompanied by a dismissive wave of the hand towards the door through which Colonel Ruiz had disappeared ‘– is like a man whose house is on fire, but who is saving his piss to extinguish his pipe tobacco. From what I hear there’ll be a revolution in Spain within the year.’ Bonaparte made another scornful gesture at the billiard room door, then turned his dark eyes on Sharpe. ‘But who cares about Spain. Talk to me of France.’

Sharpe, as best he could, described the nervous weariness of France; how the royalists hated the liberals, who in turn distrusted the republicans, who detested the ultraroyalists, who feared the remaining Bonapartistes, who despised the clergy, who preached against the Orleanists. In short, it was a cocotte, a stew pot.

The Emperor liked Sharpe’s diagnosis. ‘Or perhaps it is a powder keg? Waiting for a spark?’

‘The powder’s damp,’ Sharpe said bluntly.

Napoleon shrugged. ‘The spark is feeble, too. I feel old. I am not old! But I feel old. You like the wine?’

‘Indeed, sir.’ Sharpe had forgotten to call Bonaparte votre Majesté, but His Imperial Majesty did not seem to mind.

‘It is South African,’ the Emperor said in wonderment. ‘I would prefer French wine, but of course the bastards in London won’t allow me any, and if my friends do send wine from France then that hog’s turd down the hill confiscates it. But this African wine is surprisingly drinkable, is it not? It is called Vin de Constance. I suppose they give it a French name to suggest that it has superb quality.’ He turned the stemmed glass in his hand, then offered Sharpe a wry smile. ‘But I sometimes dream of drinking a glass of my Chambertin again. You know I made my armies salute those grapes when they marched past the vineyards?’

‘So I have heard, sir.’

Bonaparte quizzed Sharpe. Where was he born? What had been his regiments? His service? His promotions? The Emperor professed surprise that Sharpe had been promoted from the ranks, and seemed reluctant to credit the Rifleman’s claim that one in every twenty British officers had been similarly promoted. ‘But in my army,’ Bonaparte said passionately, ‘you would have become a General! You know that?’

But your army lost, Sharpe thought, but was too polite to say as much, so instead he just smiled and thanked the Emperor for the implied compliment.

‘Not that you’d have been a Rifleman in my army,’ the Emperor provoked Sharpe. ‘I never had time for rifles. Too delicate a weapon, too fussy, too temperamental. Just like a woman!’

‘But soldiers like women, sir, don’t they?’

The Emperor laughed. The aide-de-camp, disapproving that Sharpe so often forgot to use the royal honorific, scowled, but the Emperor seemed relaxed. He teased Harper about his belly, ordered another bottle of the South African wine, then asked Sharpe just who it was that he sought in South America.

‘His name is Blas Vivar, sir. He is a Spanish officer, and a good one, but he has disappeared. I fought alongside him once, many years ago, and we became friends. His wife asked me to search for him.’ Sharpe paused, then shrugged. ‘She is paying me to search for him. She has received no help from her own government, and no news from the Spanish army.’

‘It was always a bad army. Too many officers, but good troops, if you could make them fight.’ The Emperor stood and walked stiffly to the window from where he stared glumly at the pelting rain. Sharpe stood as well, out of politeness, but Bonaparte waved him down. ‘So you know Calvet?’ The Emperor turned at last from the rain.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do you know his Christian name?’

Sharpe supposed the question was a test to determine if he was telling the truth. He nodded. ‘Jean.’

‘Jean!’ The Emperor laughed. ‘He tells people his name is Jean, but in truth he was christened Jean-Baptiste! Ha! The belligerent Calvet is named for the original head-wetter!’ Bonaparte gave a brief chuckle at the thought as he returned to his chair. ‘He’s living in Louisiana now.’

‘Louisiana?’ Sharpe could not imagine Calvet in America.

‘Many of my soldiers live there.’ Bonaparte sounded wistful. ‘They cannot stomach that fat man who calls himself the King of France, so they live in the New World instead.’ The Emperor shivered suddenly, though the room was far from cold, then turned his eyes back to Sharpe. ‘Think of all the soldiers scattered throughout the world! Like embers kicked from a camp fire. The lawyers and their panders who now rule Europe would like those embers to die down, but such fire is not so easily doused. The embers are men like our friend Calvet, and perhaps like you and your stout Irishman here. They are adventurers and combatants! They do not want peace; they crave excitement, and what the filthy lawyers fear, monsieur, is that one day a man might sweep those embers into a pile, for then their heat would feed on each other and they would burn so fiercely that they would scorch the whole world!’ Bonaparte’s voice had become suddenly fierce, but now it dropped again into weariness. ‘I do so hate lawyers. I do not think there was a single achievement of mine that a lawyer did not try to desiccate. Lawyers are not men. I know men, and I tell you I never met a lawyer who had real courage, a soldier’s courage, a man’s courage.’ The Emperor closed his eyes momentarily and, when he opened them, his expression was kindly again and his voice relaxed. ‘So you’re going to Chile?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Chile.’ He spoke the name tentatively, as though seeking a memory on the edge of consciousness. ‘I well recall the service you did me in Naples,’ the Emperor went on after a pause. ‘Calvet told me of it. Will you do me another service now?’

‘Of course, sir.’ Sharpe would later be amazed that he had so readily agreed without even knowing what the favour was, but by that moment he was under the spell of a Corsican magician who had once bewitched whole continents; a magician, moreover, who loved soldiers better than he loved anything else in all the world, and the Emperor had known what Sharpe was the instant the British Rifleman had walked into the room. Sharpe was a soldier, one of the Emperor’s beloved mongrels, a man able to march through shit and sleet and cold and hunger only to fight like a devil at the end of the day, then fight again the next day and the next, and the Emperor could twist such soldiers about his little finger with the ease of a master.

‘A man wrote to me. A settler in Chile. He is one of your countrymen, and was an officer in your army, but in the years since the wars he has come to hold some small admiration for myself.’ The Emperor smiled as though apologizing for such immodesty. ‘He asked that I would send him a keepsake, and I am minded to agree to his request. Would you deliver the gift for me?’

‘Of course, sir.’ Sharpe felt a small relief that the favour was of such a trifling nature, though another part of him was so much under the thrall of the Emperor’s genius that he might have agreed to hack a bloody path down St Helena’s hillside to the sea and freedom. Harper, sitting beside Sharpe, had the same look of adoration on his face.

‘I understand that this man, I can’t recall his name, is presently living in the rebel part of the country,’ the Emperor elaborated on the favour he was asking, ‘but he tells me that packages given to the American consul in Valdivia always reach him. I gather they were friends. No one else in Valdivia, just the American consul. You do not mind helping me?’

‘Of course not, sir.’

The Emperor smiled his thanks. ‘The gift will take some time to choose, and to prepare, but if you can wait two hours, monsieur?’ Sharpe said he could wait and there was a flurry of orders as an aide was despatched to find the right gift. Then Napoleon turned to Sharpe again. ‘No doubt, monsieur, you were at Waterloo?’

‘Yes, sir. I was.’

‘So tell me,’ the Emperor began, and thus they talked, while the Spaniards waited and the rain fell and the sun sank and the redcoat guards tightened their night-time ring about the walls of Longwood, while inside those walls, as old soldiers do, old soldiers talked.

It was almost full dark as Sharpe and Harper, soaked to the skin, reached the quayside in Jamestown where the Espiritu Santo’s longboats waited to take the passengers back to Ardiles’s ship.

At the quayside a British officer waited in the rain. ‘Mister Sharpe?’ He stepped up to Sharpe as soon as the Rifleman dismounted from his mule.

‘Lieutenant Colonel Sharpe.’ Sharpe had been irritated by the man’s tone.

‘Of course, sir. And a moment of your time, if you would be so very kind?’ The man, a tall and thin Major, smiled and guided Sharpe a few paces away from the curious Spanish officers. ‘Is it true, sir, that General Bonaparte favoured you with a gift?’

‘He favoured each of us with a gift.’ Each of the Spaniards, except for Ardiles who had received nothing, had been given a silver teaspoon engraved with Napoleon’s cipher, while Harper had received a silver thimble inscribed with Napoleon’s symbol of a honey bee.