Bernard Cornwell – 1812 10 Sharpe’s Enemy

He looked to his front again. The Riflemen on the Convent roof were biting into the back of the French. They were panicking now, the enemy, crowding eastwards towards the village and Sharpe wanted that. He inclined the line to the left, forcing the French east, and the Riflemen from the gateway sprinted further left as the Fusiliers blocked the line of fire from the gate.

The nervousness was gone now, the hours of doubt as the night crawled by, the moments of waiting to unleash this small force against the enemy, and Sharpe felt the roadway beneath his boots and saw the French fifty yards ahead, and already he was picking his way through their dead. A musket ball went close to his head, a fluttering noise that left a tiny slap of wind, and he saw a Frenchman who had died with a look of utter astonishment on his young face. Behind Sharpe the Sergeants called. ‘Close up! Close up!’ They were taking casualties.

Sharpe stopped, listened to the boots behind him, heard the Rifles from the gatehouse, and the two rank line came up to him. ‘Fusiliers! Present!’

The twin line of muskets, steel tipped, went to the shoulders. To the French it seemed as if the red line had made a quarter turn to the right.

‘Fire!’

Flames gouted into smoke, a killing volley at short range, and the cloud spread in front of the Fusiliers obscuring their view.

‘Left wheel!’ This would be ragged, but this did not matter. His ears rang with the bellow of the muskets.

‘Charge!’

Bayonets from the smoke, swords in the hands of officers, and Sharpe bellowed with them as he ran out of the smoke cloud and saw the French running as he had known they would run. Timing was all. This had been rehearsed in his head again and again, thought through in the lonely hours, dreamed of as the rain fell on the weed strewn cobbles of the yard. ‘Halt! Dress!’

A wounded Frenchman cried and crawled towards the Fusiliers. Their dead were thick at the crossroads where they had taken the single volley of musket fire at a range so close that hardly a weapon could miss. The Battalion was going back towards the village, leaderless and frightened, and Sharpe was standing close to the fallen Colonel. The man’s horse was running free in the valley.

Sharpe re-lined the Fusiliers, still listening for the bugle call that would warn of the French cavalry, and he bellowed at the men to load. This was clumsy because the long bayonets skinned their cold knuckles as they rammed the shots home, but he needed one more volley from them. Gilliland! Where the hell was Gilliland?

The French officer at the watchtower saw them first, Lancers! The English had no Lancers! Yet there they were, coming across the skyline to the south, riding like the very devil down the small valley that split Castle and watchtower. They looked ragged and unprofessional, but that might have been because the horses had to negotiate the thorns, and then the French Battalion saw them and the officers and the Sergeants who still lived screamed at their men. ‘Form square!’ They knew what the Lancers would do to scattered infantry, knew how the long blades would tear into them and slaughter them, and the French leaders pulled at men, struck them, and formed the rallying square as the greatcoated horsemen burst out into the valley’s pasture.

‘Forward!’ Sharpe shouted again, his sword unblooded, and the two ranks stepped and stumbled over the dead bodies of the French, past the wounded who cried for help, and the joy was on Sharpe for now he was within a few seconds of this first success.

‘Left! Left! Left!’ The Fusilier Captain who led the Lancers shouted at them, circled towards the Castle, waved with his sword at the place of safety. Never in any of his wildest hopes had Sharpe wanted the untrained Rocket Troop to drive the charge home. They would have died like cattle in a slaughter-house, but they had done their job. They had forced the Battalion into square, into a solid target for another volley from the muskets, and as the horsemen swerved fast, water spraying from their horses’ hooves, and rode for the courtyard, Sharpe halted the line again. ‘Present!’

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *