This was not the time to fight a battle against a cornered band of desperate Frenchmen, but rather to determine that the rest of city was taken. The Riflemen used back alleys to circumvent the plaza. The prisoners stayed with them, terrified of the vengeance which the townspeople were exacting on other captured Frenchmen. The city had spawned a vengeful mob, and Sharpe’s soldiers had to use their rifle butts to keep the prisoners safe.
Sharpe led his men south. They passed a dying horse which Harper shot. Two women immediately attacked the corpse with knives, sawing off great joints of warm meat. A hunchback with a bleeding scalp grinned as he cut off a dead Dragoon’s pigtails, and it occurred to Sharpe that the dead man was the first Dragoon he had seen in Santiago de Compostela. He wondered whether Louisa’s deception had truly worked, and the bulk of the green-coated French cavalry had ridden south.
“In there!” Sharpe saw a courtyard to his left and he pushed his prisoners through the archway. He left half a dozen greenjackets to guard them, then went back to the medieval maze that was a confusion of fighting. Some alleys were peaceful, while in others there were brief, furious fire-fights as desperate Frenchmen were cornered. One cuirassier, trapped in an alley, laid about with his sword and put six volunteers to flight before a crash of musket bullets smashed his defiance. Most of the French barricaded themselves in their billets. Spanish muskets blasted doors open, men died as they charged up narrow stairs, but the French were outnumbered. Two houses caught fire, and men screamed horribly as they were burned alive.
Most of the surviving enemy, except those who held the great building in the plaza, were to the south of the city where, in a slew of houses, their officers enjoined them to a sturdy defence. Sharpe’s men took over two housetops and their rifle fire drove the French from windows and courtyards. Vivar led a dismounted charge of Cazadores and Sharpe watched the red and blue-coated cavalry flood into the enemy-held buildings.
Vivar’s careful plan, which would have sent men to each of the city’s exits, had crumbled in the heat of victory so that men who should have been driving the enemy eastwards were killing and plundering wherever they could. Yet it was this very savagery which drove the attackers through the city, and made the French flee, either to the countryside, or to the French headquarters in the plaza.
The rising sun revealed that the tricolour was gone from the cathedral’s high dome. In its place, bright as a jewel, a Spanish standard caught the small breeze. It bore the coat of arms of Spanish royalty; a banner for the morning, but not the banner of Santiago that would be unfurled in the cathedral. Sharpe thought how beautiful the city’s skyline was in this dawn. It was an intricate tangle of spires, domes, pinnacles, cupolas and towers, all misted by smoke and sunlight. Above the whole scene was the great cathedral itself. A group of blue-coated Frenchmen appeared on the balustraded balcony of one of the bell towers. They fired downwards, then a volley from below drove them back. One of the Spanish bullets clanged against a bell. The other church bells of the city rang their peals of victory, even though the stammer of musket fire still testified to the last vestiges of French resistance.
A Rifleman beside Sharpe tracked two Frenchmen scrambling across a roof fifty yards away. The Baker rifle slammed back into his shoulder and one of the enemy slid bloodily down the tiles and fell into the street. The other, in desperation, hurled himself across the roof ridge to disappear. Vivar’s men had hunted forward with sabre and carbine, and Sharpe could see French soldiers running into the southern fields. He told his men to hold their fire, then led them down to the street where the beauty of the city’s skyline was replaced by the curdling stench of blood. One of the Riflemen laughed because a child was carrying a human head. A dog lapped at blood in a gutter and snarled when the Riflemen came too close.