Sharpe’s Escape: The Bussaco Campaign, 1810

‘I’m sure you didn’t waste it,’ Hogan said. He was an Irishman, a Royal Engineer whose shrewdness had taken him away from engineering duties to serve Wellington as the man who collected every scrap of information about the enemy. Hogan had to sift rumours brought by pedlars, traders and deserters, he had to appraise every message sent by the partisans who harried the French on both sides of the frontier between Spain and Portugal, and he had to decipher the despatches, captured by the partisans from French messengers, some of them still stained with blood. He was also an old friend of Sharpe, and one who now frowned at the rifleman. ‘A gentleman came to headquarters last night,’ he said, ‘to lodge an official complaint about you. He wanted to see the Peer, but Wellington’s much too busy fighting the war, so the man was fobbed off on me. Luckily for you.’

‘A gentleman?’

‘I stretch the word to its uttermost limits,’ Hogan said. ‘Ferragus.’

‘That bastard.’

‘Illegitimacy is probably the one thing he cannot be accused of,’ Hogan said.

‘So what did he say?’

‘That you hit him,’ Hogan said.

‘He can tell the truth, then,’ Sharpe admitted.

‘Good God, Richard!’ Hogan examined Sharpe. ‘You don’t seem hurt. You really hit him?’

‘Flattened the bastard,’ Sharpe said. ‘Did he tell you why?’

‘Not precisely, but I can guess. Was he planning to sell food to the enemy?’

‘Close on two tons of flour,’ Sharpe said, ‘and he had a bloody Portuguese officer with him.’

‘His brother,’ Hogan said, ‘Major Ferreira.’

‘His brother!’

‘Not much alike, are they? But yes, they’re brothers. Pedro Ferreira stayed home, went to school, joined the army, married decently, lives respectably, and his brother ran away in search of sinks of iniquity. Ferragus is a nickname, taken from some legendary Portuguese giant who was reputed to have skin that couldn’t be pierced by a sword. Useful, that. But his brother is more useful. Major Ferreira does for the Portuguese what I do for the Peer, though I fancy he isn’t quite as efficient as I am. But he has friends in the French headquarters.’

‘Friends?’ Sharpe sounded sceptical.

‘More than a few Portuguese joined the French,’ Hogan said. ‘They’re mostly idealists who think they’re fighting for liberty, justice, brotherhood and all that airy nonsense. Major Ferreira somehow stays in touch with them, which is damned useful. But as for Ferragus!’ Hogan paused, staring uphill to where a hawk hovered above the pale grass. ‘Our giant is a bad lot, Richard, about as bad as they come. You know where he learned English?’

‘How would I?’

‘He joined a ship as a seaman when he ran away from home,’ Hogan said, ignoring Sharpe’s surly response, ‘and then had the misfortune to be pressed into the Royal Navy. He learned lower-deck English, made a reputation as the fiercest bare-knuckle fighter in the Atlantic fleet, then deserted in the West Indies. He apparently joined a slave ship and rose up through the ranks. Now he calls himself a merchant, but I doubt he trades in anything legal.’

‘Slaves?’

‘Not any longer,’ Hogan said, ‘but that’s how he made his money. Shipping the poor devils from the Guinea coast to Brazil. Now he lives in Coimbra where he’s rich and makes his money in mysterious ways. He’s quite an impressive man, don’t you think, and not without his advantages?’

‘Advantages?’

‘Major Ferreira claims his brother has contacts throughout Portugal and western Spain, which sounds very likely.’

‘So you let him get away with treason?’

‘Something like that,’ Hogan agreed equably. ‘Two tons of flour isn’t much, not in the greater scheme of things, and Major Ferreira persuades me his brother is on our side. Whatever, I apologized to our giant, said you were a crude man of no refinement, assured him that you would be severely reprimanded, which you may now consider done, and promised that he would never see you again.’ Hogan beamed at Sharpe. ‘So the matter is closed.’

‘So I do my duty,’ Sharpe said, ‘and land in the shit.’

‘You have at last seized the essence of soldiering,’ Hogan said happily, ‘and Marshal Masséna is landing in the same place.’

‘He is?’ Sharpe asked. ‘I thought we were retreating and he was advancing?’

Hogan laughed. ‘There are three roads he could have chosen, Richard, two very good ones and one quite rotten one, and in his wisdom he chose this one, the bad one.’ It was indeed a bad road, merely two rutted wheel tracks either side of a strip of grass and weeds, and littered with rocks large enough to break a wagon or gun wheel. ‘And this bad road,’ Hogan went on, ‘leads straight to a place called Bussaco.’

‘Am I supposed to have heard of it?’

‘A very bad place,’ Hogan went on, ‘for anyone attacking it. And the Peer is gathering troops there in hope of giving Monsieur Masséna a bloody nose. Something to look forward to, Richard, something to anticipate.’ He raised a hand, kicked back his heels and rode ahead, nodding to Major Forrest who came the other way.

‘Two ovens in the next village, Sharpe,’ Forrest said, ‘and the Colonel would like your lads to deal with them.’

The ovens were great brick caves in which the villagers had baked their bread. The light company used pickaxes to reduce them to rubble so the French could not use them. They left the precious ovens destroyed and then marched on.

To a place called Bussaco.

CHAPTER TWO

Robert Knowles and Richard Sharpe stood on the Bussaco ridge and stared at l’Armée de Portugal that, battalion by battalion, battery by battery and squadron by squadron, streamed from the eastern hills to fill the valley.

The British and Portuguese armies had occupied a great ridge that ran north and south and so blocked the road on which the French were advancing towards Lisbon. The ridge, Knowles guessed, was almost a thousand feet above the surrounding countryside, and its eastward flank, which faced the French, was precipitously steep. Two roads zigzagged their way up that slope, snaking between heather, gorse and rocks, the better road reaching the ridge’s crest towards its northern end just above a small village perched on a ledge of the ridge. Down in the valley, beyond a glinting stream, lay a scatter of other small villages and the French were making their way along farm tracks to occupy those lower settlements.

The British and Portuguese had a bird’s-eye view of the enemy who came from a wooded defile in the lower hills, then marched past a windmill before turning south to take up their positions. They, in turn, could look up the high, bare slope and see a handful of British and Portuguese officers watching them. The army itself, with most of its guns, was hidden from the French. The ridge was ten miles long, a natural rampart, and General Wellington had ordered that his men were to stay well back from its wide crest so that the arriving French would have no idea which part of the high ground was most heavily defended. ‘Quite a privilege,’ Knowles said reverently.

‘A privilege?’ Sharpe asked sourly.

‘To see such a thing,’ Knowles explained, gesturing at the enemy, and it was, in truth, a fine sight to see so many thousands of men at one time. The infantry marched in loose formations, their blue uniforms pale against the green of the valley, while the horsemen, released from the discipline of the march, galloped beside the stream to leave plumes of dust. And still they came from the defile, the might of France. A band was playing close to the windmill and, though the music was too far away to be heard, Sharpe fancied he could hear the thump of the bass drum like a distant heartbeat. ‘A whole army!’ Knowles enthused. ‘I should have brought my sketching pad. It would make a fine picture.’

‘What would make a fine picture,’ Sharpe said, ‘is to see the buggers march up this hill and get slaughtered.’

‘You think they won’t?’

‘I think they’d be mad to try,’ Sharpe said, then frowned at Knowles. ‘Do you like being Adjutant?’ he asked abruptly.

Knowles hesitated, sensing that the conversation was approaching dangerous ground, but he had been Sharpe’s Lieutenant before becoming Adjutant and he liked his old company commander. ‘Not excessively,’ he admitted.

‘It’s always been a captain’s job,’ Sharpe said, ‘so why is he giving it to you?’

‘The Colonel feels the experience will be advantageous to me,’ Knowles said stiffly.

‘Advantageous,’ Sharpe said bitterly. ‘It ain’t your advantage he wants, Robert. He wants that piece of gristle to take over my company. That’s what he wants. He wants bloody Slingsby to be Captain of the light company.’ Sharpe had no evidence for that, the Colonel had never said as much, but it was the only explanation that made sense to him. ‘So he had to get you out of the way,’ Sharpe finished, knowing he had said too much, but the rancour was biting at him and Knowles was a friend who would be discreet about Sharpe’s outburst.

Knowles frowned, then flapped at an insistent fly. ‘I truly believe,’ he said after thinking for a moment, ‘that the Colonel believes he’s doing you a favour.’

‘Me! A favour? By giving me Slingsby!’

‘Slingsby has experience, Richard,’ Knowles said, ‘much more than I do.’