They came like a terrible flood. Hooves struck sparks from the road as their horses plunged past Sharpe. Their swords struck shards of light in the grey dawn. They lunged into the city’s heart, led by Bias Vivar who shouted an incomprehensible thanks as he galloped past the Riflemen.
And behind the Cazadores, scrambling up from the ravine where Sharpe should have been at first light, the volunteer infantry followed. They too shouted the saint’s name as their warcry. Despite their makeshift uniforms of brown tunics and white sashes, they looked more like an avenging mob armed with muskets, picks, swords, knives, lances, and scythe-blades.
As they ran past, Sharpe thrust the captured French muskets towards the men who had no firearms, but the volunteers were too intent on reaching the city’s centre. For the first time Sharpe saw they might win, not through skilled tactics, but by harnessing a nation’s hate.
“What do we do, sir?” Harper came from the guardhouse with a bundle of captured bayonets.
“Follow them! Forward! Watch your flanks! Keep an eye on the upper windows!”
Not that any advice would be heeded now. The Riflemen were infected by the madness of the morning, and all that mattered was to take the city. The fears of the long cold night were gone, replaced with a surging and extraordinary confidence.
They advanced into chaos. Frenchmen, waking to slaughter, ran into alleys where vengeful Spaniards hunted and killed them. Inhabitants of the cityjoined the chase, abetting Vivar’s men who were spreading into the arcaded mediaeval streets which made a labyrinth about the central buildings. Screams and shots sounded everywhere. Cazadores, split into squads, clattered from street to street. A few Frenchmen still fought from the upper windows of their billets, but one by one they were killed. Sharpe saw his erstwhile guide, the blacksmith, smashing a lancer’s skull with a hammer. The gutters were slick with blood. A priest knelt by a dying volunteer.
“Stay together!” Sharpe was fearful that in the horror of the moment, a dark-uniformed Rifleman might be mistaken for a Frenchman. He came to a small square, chose a turning at random, and led his men along a street where three Frenchmen lay dead in pools of trickling blood. A woman was stripping one man of his uniform on the steps of a church. A fourth Frenchman lay dying as two children, neither over ten years old, stabbed at him with kitchen knives. A legless cripple, eager for plunder, swung on calloused knuckles to a corpse’s side.
Sharpe turned left into another street and shrank aside as Spanish cavalrymen clattered past. A Frenchman fled from a house into the horseman’s path, he screamed, then a sword cut into his face and he went down under the iron-shod hooves. Somewhere in the city a volley of musketry crashed like thunder. A French infantryman came from an alleyway, saw Sharpe, and fell to his knees; literally begging to be taken prisoner. Sharpe pushed him behind, into the keeping of the Riflemen, as more Frenchmen came from the alley. They threw away their muskets, only wanting to be under protection.
There was light and space ahead now, a contrast to the dank shadow of the tiny streets, and Sharpe led his men towards the wide plaza which surrounded the cathedral. There was the incongruous smell of bread in a bakery, then that homely smell was instantly overlaid by the stench of powder smoke. The Riflemen advanced cautiously towards the plaza from which another huge volley jarred the morning. Sharpe could see bodies lying among the weeds which grew between the plaza’s flagstones. There were dead horses and a score of dead men, most of them Spanish. Musket smoke was thicker than the mist. “Bastards are making a stand,” Sharpe shouted to Harper.
He edged forward to the street corner. To his left was the cathedral. Three men in brown tunics lay on the cathedral steps with blood trickling from their bodies. To Sharpe’s right, and directly opposite the cathedral, was a richly decorated building. A tricolour hung above its central door, while every window was wreathed in powder smoke. The French had turned the huge building into a fortress that dominated the plaza.