Which left the huge curve of the south and west walls, a curve nearly a mile long that had no convenient river or stream to offer protection. Instead there were the cogs on the wheel’s rim, the seven vast bastions that jutted out from the city wall, each bastion the size of a small castle. San Vincente was the most northerly, built beside the river at the angle of the north and west walls, and from the San Vincente the bastions ran south and west till they met the flooded Rivillas. San Jose, Santiago, San Juan, San Roque, Santa Maria, and so to the Trinidad. The saints, the mother of Christ, and the Holy Trinity, each with more than a score of guns, to protect a city.
The bastions were not the only protection to the great curve of walls. First came the glacis, the earth slope that deflected the round shot and bounced it high over the defences, and then the huge ditch. The drop from the glacis to the ditch bottom was nowhere less than twenty feet and, once in the ditch, the real problems began. The bastions would flank any attack, pouring in their plunging fire, and there were ravelins in the great dry moat. The ravelins were like great, triangular, fake walls that split an attack and, in darkness, could deceive men into thinking they had reached the real wall. Any man who climbed a ravelin would be swept off by carefully aimed cannon. From the ditch the walls rose fifty feet and on their wide parapets they mounted guns every five yards.
Badajoz was no mediaeval fortress hastily converted for modern warfare. It had once been the pride of Spain, a brilliantly engineered, massively built death trap, that was now garrisoned by the finest French troops in the Peninsula. Twice the British had failed to take the city and there seemed no reason, a year later, to suppose that a third attempt would meet with success.
The fortress had just one weakness. To the south-east, opposite the Trinidad bastion and across the flood waters, rose the shallow San Miguel hill. From its low, flat top a besieger could fire down on to the south-east corner of the city, and that was the single weakness. The French knew it, and had guarded against it. Two forts had been built to the south and east. One, the Picurina, had been built across the new lake on the lower slopes of the San Miguel hill. The second fort, the huge Pardaleras, was to the south and guarded the approach to any breach that might be carved by the guns on the hill. It was not much of a weakness, but all the British had to work on and so, on St Patrick’s Day, they marched to the rear of the San Miguel hill. They knew, and the French knew, that the effort would be against the south-east corner of the city, against the Santa Maria and Trinidad bastions, and the fact that the selfsame plan had failed twice before did not matter. From the top of the hill, where curious men gathered to look at the city, the breach made in the last siege could be clearly seen between the two bastions. It had been repaired, in lighter coloured stone, and the new masonry seemed to mock the coming British efforts.
Sharpe stood next to Patrick Harper and stared at the walls. ‘Jesus, they’re big!” The Sergeant said nothing. Sharpe pulled the bottle from inside his greatcoat and held it out. ‘Here. A present for St Patrick’s Day.’
Harper’s broad face beamed with pleasure. ‘You’re a grand man, sir, for an Englishman. Would you be ordering me to save you half for St George’s Day?’
Sharpe stamped his feet against the cold. ‘I think I’ll take that half now.’
‘I thought you might. ‘ Harper was glad to see Sharpe, of whom he had seen little in the past month, but there was also an embarrassment in the meeting. The Irishman knew Sharpe needed reassurance that the Light Company missed him, and Harper thought him a fool for needing the words to be said. Of course they missed him. The Light Company were no different to the rest of the army. They were failures, almost to a man, whose failings had led them to courtrooms and jails. They were thieves, drunks, debtors, and murderers, the men Britain wanted out of sight and mind. It was easier to empty a town jail to a recruiting party than go through the tedious business of trial, sentence and punishment.