Sharpe’s Fury: The Battle of Barrosa, March 1811

‘Good God incarnate, man, can’t you do anything right?’

Sharpe said nothing. Instead he and Harper stripped off their cartridge boxes and jumped overboard to find themselves in four feet of water. They heaved on the pontoon, but it was like trying to push the Rock of Gibraltar. It was immovable and they were stranded fifty or sixty feet from the eastern bank on which the French pursued them, and over a hundred and fifty yards from the British-held bank. Sharpe ordered the other soldiers to get in the river and push, but it did no good. The big pontoons had grounded hard on a shingle bank and evidently intended to stay there.

‘If we can cut one of the buggers free, sir,’ Harper suggested. It was a good suggestion. If one of the pontoons could be loosed from the others then they would have a boat light enough to be forced off the shingle, but the big barges were connected by ropes and by stout timber beams that had carried the plank roadway.

‘It’ll take us half a day to do it,’ Sharpe said, ‘and I don’t think the Crapauds will be happy.’

‘What the devil are you doing, Sharpe?’ Moon demanded from the raft.

‘Going ashore, sir,’ Sharpe decided, ‘all of us.’

‘For God’s sake, why?’

‘Because, sir,’ Sharpe said, forcing himself to stay patient, ‘the French will be here in half an hour and if we’re in the river, sir, they’ll either shoot us down like dogs or else take us prisoner.’

‘So your intentions?’

‘Go up that hill, sir, hide there, and wait for the enemy to leave. And when they’ve gone, sir, we’ll cut one of the pontoons free.’ Though how he would do that with no tools he was not sure, but he would have to try.

Moon plainly wanted to suggest another course of action, but none came to his mind so he submitted to being carried ashore by Sergeant Harper. The rest of the men followed, carrying their weapons and cartridge boxes over their heads. Once ashore they made a makeshift stretcher from a pair of muskets threaded through the sleeves of two red coats, then Harris and Slattery carried the brigadier up the steep hill. Sharpe, before leaving the river bank, collected a few short sticks and a scrappy piece of fishing net, all of which had been washed onto the rocks, then he followed the others up to the first crest and saw, looking to his left, that the French had climbed to the top of the bluff. They were nearly half a mile away, which did not stop one of them letting off his musket. The ball must have fallen into the intervening valley and the report, when it came, was muffled.

‘This is far enough,’ Moon announced. The jolting of the crude stretcher was giving him agony and he looked pale.

‘To the top,’ Sharpe said, nodding to where rocks crowned the bare hill.

‘For God’s sake, man,’ Moon began.

‘French are coming, sir,’ Sharpe interrupted the brigadier. ‘If you want, sir, I can leave you for them, sir? They must have a surgeon in the fort.’

Moon looked tempted for a few seconds, but understood that high-ranking prisoners were rarely exchanged. It was possible that a French brigadier might be captured soon and after prolonged negotiations would be exchanged for Moon, but it would take weeks if not months, and all the while his career would be stalled and other men promoted over him. ‘Up the hill if you must,’ he said grudgingly, ‘but what are your plans after that?’

‘Wait for the French to go, sir, detach a pontoon, cross the river, get you home.’

‘And why the devil are you carrying firewood?’

The brigadier discovered why at the top of the hill. Private Geoghegan, one of the men from the 88th, claimed his mother had been a bonesetter and said he had often helped her as a child. ‘What you do, sir,’ he explained, ‘is pull the bone.’

‘Pull it?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Give it a good swift tug, sir, and he’ll like as not squeal like a piglet, and I straightens it then and we bind it up. Would the gentleman be a Protestant, would he, sir?’

‘I should think so.’

‘Then we don’t need the holy water, sir, and we’ll do without the two prayers as well, but he’ll be straight enough when we’re done.’

The brigadier protested. Why not wait till they were across the river, he wanted to know, and blanched when Sharpe said that could be two days. ‘Soonest done, soonest mended, sir,’ Private Geoghegan said, ‘and if we don’t mend it soon, sir, it’ll set crooked as can be. And I’ll have to cut your trousers off, sir, sorry, sir.’

‘You’ll not damned well cut them!’ Moon protested hotly. ‘They’re Willoughby’s best! There isn’t a finer tailor in London.’

‘Then you’ll have to take them off yourself, sir, you will,’ Geoghegan said. He looked as wild as any of the Connaught men, but had a soft, sympathetic voice and a confidence that somewhat allayed the brigadier’s apprehensions, yet even so it took twenty minutes to persuade Moon that he should allow his leg to be straightened. It was the thought that he would have to spend the rest of his life with a crooked limb that really convinced him. He saw himself limping into salons, unable to dance, awkward in the saddle, and his vanity at last overcame his fear. Sharpe, meanwhile, watched the French. Forty men had worked their way over the bluff and now they were walking towards the stranded pontoons.

‘Buggers are going to salvage them,’ Harper said.

‘Take the riflemen halfway down the hill,’ Sharpe said, ‘and stop them.’

Harper left, taking Slattery, Harris, Hagman and Perkins with him. They were the only men from Sharpe’s company stranded on the pontoons, but it was a consolation that they were all good riflemen. There was no better soldier than Sergeant Patrick Harper, the huge Ulsterman who hated the British rule of his homeland, but still fought like a hero. Slattery was from County Wicklow and was quiet, soft-spoken and capable. Harris had been a schoolmaster once and was clever, well read and too fond of gin, which was why he was now a soldier, but he was amusing and loyal. Dan Hagman was the oldest, well over forty, and he had been a poacher in Cheshire before the law caught him and condemned him to the army’s ranks. There was no better marksman in any rifle company. Perkins was the youngest, young enough to be Hagman’s grandson, and he had been a street urchin in London as Sharpe had once been, but he was learning to be a good soldier. He was learning that discipline tied to savagery was unbeatable. They were all good men and Sharpe was glad to have them, and just then the brigadier gave a yelp that he managed to stifle, though he could not contain a long moan. Geoghegan had eased off the brigadier’s boots, which must have hurt like hell, and somehow managed to take down Moon’s trousers, and now he placed two of Sharpe’s sticks alongside the broken calf and wrapped one of the brigadier’s trouser legs about the limb so that it gripped the sticks. He tightened the pressure by winding the trouser leg as though he was wringing water from the material. He tightened it until the brigadier gave a hiss of protest, then Geoghegan grinned at Sharpe. ‘Would you help me, sir? Just take the general’s ankle, will you, sir? And when I tell you, sir, give it a good smart pull.’

‘For God’s sake,’ the brigadier managed to say.

‘As brave a man as ever I saw, sir, so you are,’ Geoghegan said, and he smiled reassuringly at Sharpe. ‘Are you ready, sir?’

‘How hard do I pull?’

‘A good tug, sir, just like pulling a lamb that doesn’t want to be born. Are you ready? Take firm hold, sir, both hands! Now!’

Sharpe pulled, the brigadier gave a high-pitched cry and Geoghegan screwed the material even tighter and Sharpe distinctly heard the bone grate into place. Geoghegan was stroking the brigadier’s leg now. ‘And that’s just good as can be, sir, good as new, sir.’ Moon did not respond and Sharpe realized the brigadier had either fainted or was in such shock that he could not speak.

Geoghegan splinted the leg with the sticks and the net. ‘He can’t walk on it, not for a while, but we’ll make him crutches, we will, and he’ll be dancing like a pony soon enough.’

The rifles sounded and Sharpe turned and ran down the hill to where his greenjackets were kneeling on the turf. They were about a hundred and fifty yards from the river and sixty feet above it, and the French were crouching in the water. They had been trying to haul the big barges off the shingle, but the bullets had ended that effort and now the men were using the pontoon hulls as protection. An officer ran into the shallow water, probably shouting at the men to get to their feet and try again, and Sharpe aimed at the officer, pulled the trigger, and the rifle banged into his shoulder as an errant spark from the flint stung his right eye. When the smoke cleared he saw the panicked officer running back to the bank, holding his scabbarded sword clear of the water in one hand and clutching his hat in the other. Slattery fired a second time and a splinter smacked up from one of the pontoons, then Harper’s next shot threw a man into the river and there was a swirl of blood in which the man thrashed as he drifted away. Harris fired and most of the French waded away from the pontoons to take shelter behind some boulders on the bank.

‘Just keep them there,’ Sharpe said. ‘As soon as they try and shift those barges, kill them.’

He climbed back up the hill. The brigadier was propped against a rock now. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

‘Frogs are trying to salvage the barges, sir. We’re stopping them.’

The boom of the French guns in Fort Josephine echoed down the river valley. ‘Why are they firing?’ the brigadier asked irritably.

‘My guess, sir,’ Sharpe said, ‘is that some of our boys are trying to use a pontoon as a boat to look for us. And the Frogs are shooting at them.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Moon said. He closed his eyes and grimaced. ‘You wouldn’t, I suppose, have any brandy?’

‘No, sir, sorry, sir.’ Sharpe would have bet a penny against the crown jewels that at least one of his men had brandy or rum in their canteen, but he would be damned before he took it away from them for the brigadier. ‘I’ve got water, sir,’ he said, offering his canteen.

‘Damn your water.’

Sharpe reckoned he could trust his riflemen to behave sensibly until they managed to recross the river, but the six fugitives from the 88th were another matter. The 88th were the Connaught Rangers and some men reckoned them the most fearsome regiment in the whole army, but they also had a reputation for wild indiscipline. The six rangers were led by a toothless sergeant and Sharpe, knowing that if the sergeant was on his side then the other men would probably cause no trouble, crossed to him. ‘What’s your name, Sergeant?’ Sharpe asked him.

‘Noolan, sir.’

‘I want you to watch over there,’ Sharpe said, pointing north to the crest of the hill above the bluff. ‘I’m expecting a battalion of bloody Frogs to come over that hill, and when they do, sing out.’

‘I’ll sing right enough, sir,’ Noolan promised, ‘sing like a choir, I will.’

‘If they do come,’ Sharpe said, ‘we’ll have to go south. I know the 88th is good, but I don’t think there’s quite enough of you to fight off a whole French battalion.’

Sergeant Noolan looked at his five men, considered Sharpe’s statement, then nodded gravely. ‘Not quite enough of us, sir, you’re right. And what are you thinking of doing, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?’