Sharpe’s Sword: The Salamanca Campaign, June and July 1812

On Monday, after early breakfasts, the road from Salamanca was crowded with people coming to stare at the two armies. Some walked, some rode, some came in carriages, and most made themselves comfortable on a hill beside the village of San Christobal and were irked that the armies were not fighting. Perhaps because the spectators had arrived, there seemed a greater sense of urgency in the British lines, and Sharpe watched as his men once more prepared for battle. Flints were reseated in the leather patch that was gripped in the screw-tightened jaws of the rifle cocks, hot water was swilled into barrels that were already cleaned, and Sharpe sensed the fear that all men have before battle.

Some feared the cavalry and in their minds they rehearsed the thunder of a thousand hooves, the dust rolling like a sea fog from the charge and shot through with the bright blades that could slice a man’s life away or, worse, hook out his eyes and leave him in darkness for life. Others feared musket fire, the lottery of an unaimed bullet coming in the relentless volleys that would fire the dry grass with burning wads and roast the wounded where they fell. All feared the artillery, coughing its death in fan-like swathes. It was best not to think about that.

A hundred thousand men, before and behind the ridge, feared on that perfect day of heat, poppies and cornflowers. The smoke from the French cooking fires of the night drifted in a haze to westward while the gunners prepared their instruments of slaughter. Surely today they would fight. Some men in both armies hoped for the battle, seeking in combat the death that would release them from the pains of diseased bodies. The spectators wanted to see a fight. Why else had they come the long six hot miles from Salamanca?

Sharpe expected battle. He had gone to a Regiment of Dragoons and tipped the armourer to put a new edge on the long sword. Now, at midday, he slept. His shako was tipped over his face and he dreamed that he was lying flat, a horseman riding about him, and the sound of the hooves was distinct in his dreams. He could not rise, even though he knew the cavalryman was trying to kill him, and in his dream he struggled and then felt the lance tip at his waist and he jerked himself sideways, twisting desperately, and suddenly he was awake and a man was laughing above him. ‘Richard!’

‘Christ!’ The horse had not been a dream. It stood a yard away, its rider dismounted and laughing at him. Sharpe sat up, shaking the sleep from his eyes. ‘God, you frightened me!’ Major Hogan had woken him by tapping his belt with a booted foot.

Sharpe stood up, drank tepid water from his canteen, and only then grinned at his friend. ‘How are you, sir?’

‘As well as the good Lord permits. Yourself?’

‘Bored with this waiting. Why doesn’t the bastard attack?’ Sharpe looked at his Company, most of whom dozed in the sun as did the men of the South Essex’s other nine companies. A few officers strolled in front of the somnolent lines. The whole British army seemed asleep, except for a few sentries on the skyline.

Major Hogan, his grey moustache stained yellow by the snuff to which he was addicted, looked Sharpe up and down. ‘You’re looking well. I hope you are because I might need you.’

‘Need me?’ Sharpe was putting on his black shako, picking up rifle and sword. ‘What for?’

‘Come for a walk.’ Hogan took Sharpe’s elbow for a second and steered him away from the Light Company up the long slope that led to the ridge-crest. ‘You have news of Colonel Leroux for me?’

‘Leroux?’ For a brief moment Sharpe was lost. The events of Salamanca seemed so long ago, even far away, and his mind at this moment was concerned with the battle that would be fought for the San Christobal Ridge. He was thinking of skirmishers, of Riflemen, not about the tall, pale-eyed French Colonel who was in the city’s fortresses. Hogan frowned.

‘You met him?’

‘Yes.’ Sharpe laughed ruefully. ‘I met the bastard.’ He told Hogan about the capture of the Dragoon officer, of the parole, of the man’s escape, and finally how he had chased him up the hill. Hogan listened intently.

‘You’re certain?’

‘That he’s in the forts? Yes.’

‘Truly?’ Hogan had stopped, was staring hard at Sharpe. ‘You’re really certain?’

‘I saw him climb in. He’s there.’

Hogan said nothing as they finished the climb to the ridge top. They stood there, where the ground dropped steeply away to the great plain where the French were gathered. Sharpe could see an ammunition tumbril coming forward to the closest battery and he had to fight back the thought that his own death might be on that cart.

Hogan sighed. ‘God damn it, but I wish you’d killed him.’

‘So do I.’

Hogan stared, Sharpe suspected without seeing, at the French army. The Major was thoughtful, worried even, and Sharpe waited as he took from his pocket a scrap of paper. Hogan thrust it at Sharpe. ‘I’ve carried that for two months.’

The paper meant nothing to Sharpe. It had groups of numbers written like words in a short paragraph. Hogan smiled wryly. ‘It’s a French code, Richard, a very special code indeed.’ He took the paper back from Sharpe. ‘We have a fellow who can read these codes, a Captain Scovell, and damned clever he is too.’ Sharpe wondered what the story was behind the scrap of paper. A French messenger ambushed by Partisans? Or one of the Spaniards who tried to smuggle messages through hostile territory, the paper hidden in a boot-heel or hollow stick, a man captured and killed so that this piece of paper could reach Hogan? The French, Sharpe knew, would send four or five identical messages because they knew that most would be intercepted and delivered to the British.

Hogan stared at the numbers. ‘It’s one thing to decode these messages, Richard, it’s another to understand them. This one’s the Emperor’s own code! How about that?’ He smiled in understandable triumph at Scovell’s victory. ‘It was sent from the man himself to Marshal Marmont and I’ll tell you what it says.’ He read from the numbers as if they were words. ‘“I send you Colonel Leroux, my own man, who works for me. You are to afford him whatever he requests.” That’s all, Richard! I can read it, but I can’t understand it. I know that a Colonel Leroux is here to do a special job, a job for the Emperor himself, but what’s the job? Then I hear more things. Some Spaniards have been tortured, skinned alive, and the bastard signed them with his name. Why?’ Hogan folded the paper. ‘There was something else. Leroux got Colquhoun Grant.’

That shocked Sharpe. ‘Killed him?’

‘No, captured him. We’re not exactly trumpeting that failure about.’

Sharpe could understand Hogan’s misery. Colquhoun Grant was the best of the British Exploring Officers, a colleague of Lord Spears who rode brazenly on the flanks of the French forces. Grant was a severe loss to Hogan, and a triumph for the French.

Sharpe said nothing. To his right he could see, half a mile away, the General and his staff bunched on the skyline. An aide-de-camp had just left the small group and was spurring back down the ridge towards the British forces. Sharpe wondered if something was about to happen.

The French were making a move, yet not a particularly forceful one. Directly ahead of Sharpe and Hogan, at the foot of the ridge scarp, was a small knoll that disturbed the smoothness of the plain where the French were gathered. Two enemy Battalions had come slowly forward and now lined the knoll’s crest. They were no threat to the ridge and, having taken the tiny summit, they seemed content to stay there. Two field guns had come with them.

Hogan ignored them. ‘I have to stop Leroux, Richard. That’s my job. He’s taking my best people and he’s killing them if they’re Spanish and capturing them if they’re British, and he’s too bloody clever by half.’ Sharpe was surprised by the gloom in his friend’s voice. Hogan was not usually downcast by setbacks, but Sharpe could tell that Colonel Philippe Leroux had the Irish Major desperately worried. Hogan looked up at Sharpe again. ‘You searched him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me again what you found. Tell me everything.’

Sharpe shrugged. He took off his shako to let the small breeze cool his forehead. He spoke of that day in the wood, of the prisoner’s seeming arrogance. He mentioned the sword, he spoke of his suspicion that Leroux pretended not to understand English. Hogan smiled at that. ‘You were right. He speaks English like a bloody native. Go on.’

‘There isn’t any more. I’ve told you everything!’ Sharpe looked behind the ridge to see where the aide-de-camp had ridden, and an urgency suddenly came over him. ‘Look! We’re moving! Christ!’ He crammed his shako back on.

The South Essex, together with another Battalion, had been stirred into activity. They had stood up, dressed their ranks, and now they were climbing the hill in companies. They were going to attack! Sharpe looked north, at the small knoll, and he knew that Wellington was meeting the French move with a move of his own. The French would be pushed off the small hill, and the South Essex was to be one of the two Battalions that did the pushing. ‘I must go!’

‘Richard!’ Hogan held his elbow. ‘For God’s sake. Nothing else? No papers? No books? Nothing hidden in his helmet, I mean, God, he must have had something!’

Sharpe was impatient. He wanted to be with his men. The Light Company would be first into the attack and Sharpe would lead them. Already he was forgetting Leroux and thinking only of the enemy skirmishers he would face in a few minutes. He snapped his fingers. ‘No, yes. Yes. There was one thing. Jesus! A piece of paper, he said it was horse dealers or something. It was just a list!’

‘You have it?’

‘It’s in my pack. Down there.’ He pointed to the place the South Essex had left. The Battalion was halfway up the slope now, the Light Company already stretching ahead. ‘I must go, sir!’

‘Can I look for the paper?’

‘Yes!’ Sharpe was running now, released by Hogan, and his scabbard and rifle thumped as he hurried towards his men. The leather casings were being stripped from the colours so that the flags, unfurled, spread in the small breeze, their tassels bright yellow against the Union Flag. He felt the surge of emotion because the Colours were a soldier’s pride. They were going to fight!

‘Are they going to fight?’ La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba had come to San Christobal hoping for a battle. Lord Spears was with her, his horse close to the elegant barouche, while La Marquesa herself was chaperoned by a dowdy, middle-aged woman who was wilting of the heat in a thick serge dress. La Marquesa wore white and had her filmy parasol raised against the sun.

Lord Spears tugged at his sling to make it comfortable. ‘No, my dear. It’s just a redeployment.’

‘I do believe you’re wrong, Jack.’

‘Ten guineas says I’m not.’

‘You owe me twice that already.’ La Marquesa had taken out a small, silver telescope that she trained on the two British Battalions. They were marching towards the crest. ‘Still, I’ll take you, Jack. Ten guineas.’ She put the telescope in her lap and picked up a folding ivory fan with which she cooled her face. ‘Everyone ought to see a battle, Jack. It’s part of a woman’s education.’

‘Quite right, my dear. Front row for the slaughter. Lord Spears’ Academy for Young Ladies, battles arranged, mutilations our speciality.’

The fan cracked shut. ‘What a bore you are, Jack, and just a tiny bit amusing. Oh look! Some of them are running! Do I cheer?’

Lord Spears was realising that he had just lost another ten guineas that he did not have, but he showed no regret. ‘Why not? Hip, hip …’

‘Hooray!’ said La Marquesa.