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

‘According to my correspondent, my Lord, by ship. Our ships.’ Hogan put a pinch of snuff on his left hand, then sniffed the powder up each nostril. He paused for a second, his eyes suddenly streaming, then sneezed. His horse’s ears flicked back at the noise. ‘The commander of the Real Compañía Irlandesa claims he marched his men to Spain’s east coast, my Lord,’ Hogan went on, ‘then took ship to Menorca where our Royal Navy collected them.’

Wellington snorted his derision. ‘And the French just let that happen? King Joseph just watched half the royal guard march away?’ Joseph was Bonaparte’s brother and had been elevated to the throne of Spain, though it was taking three hundred thousand French bayonets to keep him there.

‘A fifth of the royal guard, my Lord,’ Hogan gently corrected the General. ‘And yes, that’s exactly what Lord Kiely says. Kiely, of course, being their comandante.’

‘Kiely?’

‘Irish peer, my Lord.’

‘Damn it, Hogan, I know the Irish peerage. Kiely. Earl of Kiely. An exile, right? And his mother, I remember, gave money to Tone back in the nineties.’ Wolfe Tone had been an Irish patriot who had tried to raise money and men in Europe and America to lead a rebellion against the British in his native Ireland. The rebellion had flared into open war in 1798 when Tone had invaded Donegal with a small French army that had been roundly defeated and Tone himself had committed suicide in his Dublin prison rather than hang from a British rope. ‘I don’t suppose Kiely’s any better than his mother,’ Wellington said grimly, ‘and she’s a witch who should have been smothered at birth. Is his Lordship to be trusted, Hogan?’

‘So far as I hear, my Lord, he’s a drunk and a wastrel,’ Hogan said. ‘He was given command of the Real Compañía Irlandesa because he’s the only Irish aristocrat in Madrid and because his mother had influence over the King. She’s dead now, God rest her soul.’ He watched a soldier try to fork up the spilt French officer’s intestines with his bayonet. The guts kept slipping off the blade and finally a sergeant yelled at the man to either pick the offal up with his bare hands or else leave it for the crows.

‘What has this Irish guard been doing since Ferdinand left Madrid?’ Wellington asked.

‘Living on sufferance, my Lord. Guarding the Escorial, polishing their boots, staying out of trouble, breeding, whoring, drinking and saluting the French.’

‘But not fighting the French.’

‘Indeed not.’ Hogan paused. ‘It’s all too convenient, my Lord,’ he went on. ‘The Real Compañía Irlandesa is permitted to leave Madrid, permitted to take ship, and permitted to come to us, and meanwhile a letter is smuggled out of France saying the company is a gift to you from His imprisoned Majesty. I smell Frog paws all over it, my Lord.’

‘So we tell these damn guards to go away?’

‘I doubt we can. In London the Prince Regent will doubtless be flattered by the gesture and the Foreign Office, you may depend, will consider any slight offered to the Real Compañía Irlandesa to be an insult to our Spanish allies, which means, my Lord, that we are stuck with the bastards.’

‘Are they good for anything?’

‘I’m sure they’ll be decorative,’ Hogan allowed dubiously.

‘And decoration costs money,’ Wellington said. ‘I suppose the King of Spain did not think to send his guard’s pay chest?’

‘No, my Lord.’

‘Which means I’m paying them?’ Wellington inquired dangerously, and, when Hogan’s only answer was a seraphic smile, the General swore. ‘God damn their eyes! I’m supposed to pay the bastards? While they stab me in the back? Is that what they’re here for, Hogan?’

‘I wouldn’t know, my Lord. But I suspect as much.’

A gust of laughter sounded from a fatigue party that had just discovered some intimate drawings concealed in a dead Frenchman’s coat tails. Wellington winced at the noise and edged his horse further away from the raucous group. Some crows fought over a pile of offal that had once been a French skirmisher. The General stared at the unpleasant sight, then grimaced. ‘So what do you know about this Irish guard, Hogan?’

‘They’re mostly Spanish these days, my Lord, though even the Spanish-born guards have to be descended from Irish exiles. Most of the guardsmen are recruited from the three Irish regiments in Spanish service, but a handful, I imagine, will be deserters from our own army. I’d suspect that most of them are patriotic to Spain and are probably willing to fight against the French, but undoubtedly a handful of them will be afrancesados, though in that regard I’d suspect the officers before the men.’ An afrancesado was a Spaniard who supported the French and almost all such traitors came from the educated classes. Hogan slapped a horsefly that had settled on his horse’s neck. ‘It’s all right, Jeremiah, just a hungry fly,’ he explained to his startled horse, then turned back to Wellington. ‘I don’t know why they’ve been sent here, my Lord, but I am sure of two things. First, it will be a diplomatic impossibility to get rid of them, and second we have to assume that it’s the French who want them here. King Ferdinand, I’ve no doubt, was gulled into writing the letter. I hear he’s not very clever, my Lord.’

‘But you are, Hogan. It’s why I put up with you. So what do we do? Put them to latrine digging?’

Hogan shook his head. ‘If you employ the King of Spain’s household guard on menial tasks, my Lord, it will be construed as an insult to our Spanish allies as well as to His Catholic Majesty.’

‘Damn His Catholic Majesty,’ Wellington growled, then stared balefully towards the trench-like grave where the French dead were now being unceremoniously laid in a long, white, naked row. ‘And the junta?’ he asked. ‘What of the junta?’

The junta in Cadiz was the regency council that ruled unoccupied Spain in their King’s absence. Of its patriotism there could be no doubt, but the same could not be said of its efficiency. The junta was notorious for its internal squabbles and touchy pride, and few matters had touched that pride more directly than the discreet request that Arthur Wellesley, Viscount Wellington, be made Generalisimo of all Spain’s armies. Wellington was already the General Marshal of Portugal’s army and commander of the British forces in Portugal, and no man of sense denied he was the best general on the allied side, not least because he was the only one who consistently won battles, and no one denied that it made sense for all the armies opposing the French in Spain and Portugal to be under a unified command, but nevertheless, despite the acknowledged sense of the proposal, the junta was reluctant to grant Wellington any such powers. Spain’s armies, they protested, must be led by a Spaniard, and if no Spaniard had yet proved capable of winning a campaign against the French, then that was no matter; better a defeated Spaniard than a victorious foreigner.

‘The junta, my Lord,’ Hogan answered carefully, ‘will think this is the thin end of a very broad wedge. They’ll think this is a British plot to take over the Spanish armies piecemeal, and they’ll watch like hawks, my Lord, to see how you treat the Real Compañía Irlandesa.’

‘The hawk,’ Wellington said with a sour twist, ‘being Don Luis.’

‘Precisely, my Lord,’ Hogan said. General Don Luis Valverde was the junta’s official observer with the British and Portuguese armies and the man whose recommendation was needed if the Spanish were ever to appoint Wellington as their Generalisimo. It was an approval that was highly unlikely, for General Valverde was a man in whom all the junta’s great pride and none of its small sense was concentrated.

‘God damn it,’ Wellington said, thinking of Valverde. ‘Well, Hogan? You’re paid to advise me, so earn your damned pay.’

Hogan paused to collect his thoughts. ‘I fear we have to welcome Lord Kiely and his men,’ he said after a few seconds, ‘even while we distrust them, and so it seems to me, my Lord, that we must do our best to make them uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that they either go back to Madrid or else march down to Cadiz.’

‘We drive them out?’ Wellington said. ‘How?’

‘Partly, my Lord, by bivouacking them so close to the French that those guardsmen who wish to desert will find it easy. At the same time, my Lord, we say that we have put them in a place of danger as a compliment to their fighting reputation, despite which, my Lord, I think we must assume that the Real Compañía Irlandesa, while undoubtedly skilled at guarding palace gates, will prove less skilled at the more mundane task of fighting the French. We should therefore insist that they submit to a period of strict training under the supervision of someone who can be trusted to make their life a living misery.’

Wellington gave a grim smile. ‘Make these ceremonial soldiers stoop, eh? Make them chew on humble pie till it chokes them?’

‘Exactly, my Lord. I have no doubt that they expect to be treated with respect and even privilege, so we must disappoint them. We’ll have to give them a liaison officer, someone senior enough to smooth Lord Kiely’s feathers and allay General Valverde’s suspicions, but why not give them a drillmaster too? A tyrant, but someone shrewd enough to smoke out their secrets.’

Wellington smiled, then turned his horse back towards his aides. He knew exactly who Hogan had in mind. ‘I doubt our Lord Kiely will much like Mister Sharpe,’ the General said.

‘I cannot think they’ll take to each other, my Lord, no.’

‘Where is Sharpe?’

‘He should be on his way to Vilar Formoso today, my Lord. He’s an unhappy recruit to the Town Major’s staff.’

‘So he’ll be glad to be cumbered with Kiely instead then, won’t he? And who do we appoint as liaison officer?’

‘Any emollient fool will do for that post, my Lord.’

‘Very well, Hogan, I’ll find the fool and you arrange the rest.’ The General touched his heels to his horse’s flank. His aides, seeing the General ready to move, gathered their reins, then Wellington paused. ‘What does a man want with a common milking stool, Hogan?’

‘It keeps his arse dry during wet nights of sentry duty, my Lord.’

‘Clever thought, Hogan. Can’t think why I didn’t come up with the idea myself. Well done.’ Wellington wheeled his horse and spurred west away from the battle’s litter.

Hogan watched the General go, then grimaced. The French, he was sure, had wished trouble on him and now, with God’s good help, he would wish some evil back on them. He would welcome the Real Compañía Irlandesa with honeyed words and extravagant promises, then give the bastards Richard Sharpe.

The girl clung to Rifleman Perkins. She was hurt inside, she was bleeding and limping, but she had insisted on coming out of the hovel to watch the two Frenchmen die. Indeed she taunted the two men, spitting and screaming at them, then laughed as one of the two captives dropped to his knees and lifted his bound hands towards Sharpe. ‘He says he wasn’t raping the girl, sir,’ Harris translated.

‘So why were the bastard’s trousers round his ankles?’ Sharpe asked, then looked at his eight-man firing squad. Usually it was hard to find men willing to serve on firing squads, but there had been no difficulty this time. ‘Present!’ Sharpe called.

‘Non, Monsieur, je vous prie! Monsieur!’ the kneeling Frenchman called. Tears ran down his face.

Eight riflemen lined their sights on the two Frenchmen. The other captive spat his derision and kept his head high. He was a handsome man, though his face was bruised from Harris’s ministrations. The first man, realizing that his begging was to go unanswered, dropped his head and sobbed uncontrollably. ‘Maman,’ he called pathetically, ‘Maman!’ Brigadier General Loup, back in his fur-edged saddle, watched the executions from fifty yards away.

Sharpe knew he had no legal right to shoot prisoners. He knew he might even be endangering his career by this act, but then he thought of the small, blood-blackened bodies of the raped and murdered children. ‘Fire!’ he called.

The eight rifles snapped. Smoke gusted to form an acrid, filthy-smelling cloud that obscured the skeins of blood splashing high on the hovel’s stone wall as the two bodies were thrown hard back, then recoiled forward to flop onto the ground. One of the men twitched for a few seconds, then went still.