Sharpe's Sword

It took the Third Division more than two hours to march past a single point on the road. The men were tired, dispirited at a further retreat, and ashamed that they were deserting the city. Some of them, in their tiredness, dragged their feet. The dust began to move. The road had dried and the dust rose, was stirred, and the air over the Ciudad Rodrigo road was misted with fine, white powder. The army’s baggage, sent ahead in case the British did have to retreat, added to the mist that smeared the western horizon.

Marmont had the message, had seen the dust, and now his tight boots were forgotten. He would have his victory!

There was no such elation on the British ridge. The waiting had made Wellington’s officers irritable. Sharpe had slept for a while, for he had had little rest the previous night, and now he stared at the great plain and it was empty beneath the hawks that slid against the steel-blue sky. There was no sign that Marmont had extended his left, that he had fallen into the trap, and Sharpe knew it must be past midday. He had been woken by the ca

The French attack was not heavy. About five thousand men had come from behind the Greater Arapile and advanced on the village. Sharpe could hear the sharper sound of the Baker Rifles from the plain and he knew that the French skirmishers would be cursing the British Riflemen, that Voltigeurs would be dying in the wheat, and it all seemed so far away, like a child’s battle with toy soldiers seen from an upstairs window. The blue uniforms came forward, stopped, and the white smoke rills showed where the musket volleys were fired, puffs showed where shrapnel burst over the enemy, and the sound would come seconds after the smoke appeared.

The attack stopped just outside the village. This was not a true battle, not yet. If the French had been serious, if they had really wanted to capture the miserable cottages, they could have marched in their great columns, the Eagles bright above, and the massed drums would have driven them on and the artillery would have blasted a path ahead of them, and the noise would have swelled to a great crescendo in the afternoon heat while the French wave swept over the village, up the small valley, and then there would be a battle. Sharpe dozed off again.

Hogan woke him with an offer of lunch; two legs of cold chicken and diluted wine. Sharpe ate in the shadow of the farmhouse wall and he listened to the small sounds of the skirmishers bickering by the village. Still the great plain was empty to the west, the French were not taking the bait, and Hogan had gloomily admitted that in a couple of hours the Peer would probably order a full scale retreat. Another day gone.

Wellington was pacing up and down in front of the farm. He had been down to the village once, seen that the defenders were in no trouble, and now he fretted as he ate cold chicken and waited for Marmont to show his hand. He had noticed Sharpe, welcomed him back ‘to the living’, but the Peer was in no mood for small talk. He paced, he watched, and he worried.

“Sir! Sir!” A horseman was spurring up the ridge, coming from the west, and his horse was lathered with sweat. He jumped from the saddle, saluted, and offered a scrap of paper to the General. He was an aide-de-camp to General Leith and he did not wait for Wellington to read the paper. “Sir! They’re extending their left!”

“The devil they are! Give me a glass! Quickly!”

There was dead ground on the rolling plain, hollows in the wheat that hid themselves from the ridge, and the French were in the hollows. General Leith, off to the west, had seen the movement first, but now the French could be seen, climbing a track from the dead ground, and Sharpe, his own telescope extended, saw that the enemy was marching. The sheep were on the wolf-ground. Wellington rammed his glass shut, threw the chicken leg he had been eating over his shoulder, and his face was jubilant. “By God! That will do.!”

His horse was ready, he mounted, and he spurred off to the west, outru

Hogan was replete with happiness. “We’ve got him! At last, Richard we’ve got him!”

CHAPTER 21

Battles rarely start quickly. They grow like grass fires. A piece of musket wadding, red hot, is spat onto grass, it smoulders, is fa

The afternoon smouldered. Three o’clock passed, then four, and to the men on the ridge, to the Battalions behind the ridge, the sound of battle was like a distant storm that had no effect on them. The French left wing, a quarter of the army, was marching westwards and it heard the guns behind and thought it was merely the bickering of the rearguard.

The British gu