Yet twenty-five miles to the south the French were already pushing the Prussian forces eastwards, away from the British. No one in Brussels knew that the French had invaded; instead they prepared for a duchess’s ball while a fat Prussian major paid for his roast chicken, finished his wine, then ambled slowly northwards.
At one o’clock in the afternoon, eight hours after the first shots had been fired south of Charleroi, Sharpe met more cavalrymen; this time a patrol in red-faced dark blue coats who thundered eagerly across a pasture to surround Sharpe and his two horses. They were men from Hanover, exiles who formed the King’s German Legion that had fought so hard and well in Spain. Now the German soldiers stared suspiciously at Sharpe’s strange uniform untill one of the troopers saw the Imperial `N’ on the horse’s saddle-cloth and the sabres rasped out of their metal scabbards as the horsemen shouted at Sharpe to surrender.
“Bugger off,” Sharpe snarled.
“You’re English?” the KGL Captain asked in that language. He was mounted on a fine black gelding, glossy coated and fresh. His saddle-cloth bore the British royal cipher, a reminder that England’s King was also Hanover’s monarch.
“I’m Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe, of the Prince of Orange’s staff.”
“You must forgive us, sir.” The Captain, who introduced himself as Hans Blasendorf, sheathed his sabre. He told Sharpe his patrol was one of the many that daily scouted south to the French border and beyond; this particular troop had been ordered to explore the villages south and east of Mons down as far as the Sambre, but not to encroach on Prussian territory.
“The French are already in Charleroi,” Sharpe told the German.
Blasendorf gaped at Sharpe in shocked silence for a moment. “For certain?”
“For certain!” Tiredness made Sharpe indignant. “I’ve just been there! I took this horse off a French Dragoon north of the town.”
The German understood the desperate urgency of Sharpe’s news. He tore a page from his notebook, offered it with a pencil to Sharpe, then volunteered his own patrol to take the despatch to General Dornberg’s headquarters in Mons. Dornberg was the General in charge of these cavalry patrols which watched the French frontier, and finding one of his officers had been a stroke of luck for Sharpe; by pure accident he had come across the very men whose job was to alert the allies of any French advance.
Sharpe borrowed a shako from one of the troopers and used its flat round top as a writing desk. He did not write well because he had learned his letters late in life and, though Lucille had made him into a much better reader, he was still clumsy with a pen or pencil. Nevertheless, as clearly as he could, he wrote down what he had observed – that a large French force of infantry, cavalry and artillery was marching north out of Charleroi on the Brussels road. A prisoner had been taken who reported a possibility that the Emperor was with those forces, but the prisoner had not been certain of that fact. Sharpe knew it was important for Dornberg to know where the Emperor was, for where Napoleon rode, that was the main French attack.
He signed the despatch with his name and rank, then handed it to Blasendorf who promised it would be delivered as swiftly as his horses could cross country.
“And ask General Dornberg to tell the Prince’s Chief of Staff that I’m watching the Charleroi road,” Sharpe added.
Blasendorf nodded an acknowledgement as he turned his horse away, then, realizing what Sharpe had said, he looked anxiously back. “You’re going back to the road, sir?”
“I’m going back.”
Sharpe, his message in safe hands, was free to return and watch the French. In truth he did not want to go, for he was tired and saddle-sore, but this day the allies needed accurate news of the enemy so that their response could be certain, fast and lethal. Besides, the appearance of the French had spurred Sharpe’s old excitement. He had thought that living in Normandy would make him ambivalent towards his old enemy, but he had spent too many years fighting the Crapauds suddenly to relinquish the need to see them beaten.