Бернард Корнуэлл: Sharpe's Skirmish

He's got the shakes, Harper thought. He's seeing enemies where there are none. But the Irishman kept his eyes peeled anyway.

General Herault was just thirty years old. He was a cavalryman, an hussar, and he wore the cadenettes of the hussars; the twin pigtails that hung beside his face. His jacket was a dolman, a Hungarian fashion because the first hussars had all been from Hungary, and Herault's dolman was brown with pale blue cuffs and thick white loops of lace sewn across its breast.

His breeches were pale blue and had more lace twisting and looping down the thighs towards the tasselled tops of his black leather boots. The general had once been the captain of an elite company, and he still wore their mark; the thick fur colback hat with its tall red plume. The colback was hot in summer, but it stopped a sabre better than any metal helmet.

From his left shoulder hung a fur-trimmed pelisse that was even more thickly decorated with white lace than his coat, while a blue and white sash crossed his chest and a white leather belt held the silver chains from which his sabre scabbard hung. A sabretache, decorated with the eagle of France, hung by the scabbard.

A very handsome man, Jean Herault, and made even more handsome by his gorgeous uniform. There were girls across Europe who sighed at the memory of Herault, the slim cavalryman who had ridden into town, broken their hearts and ridden out, but Herault was much more than a handsome young hero on a horse. He was also clever. And he was lucky. And he was brave.

Herault had led a charge at Albuhera that had destroyed a British battalion, and even though that battle had been lost, Herault had emerged covered in glory. It was a glory that had been enhanced in the battles against Ballesteros's Spaniards, and Soult had promoted the young cavalry officer to command all the Army of the South's horsemen, and Herault had led them brilliantly. He had done the dull work well, and that was an even more impressive achievement than doing the brave work gloriously. Any fool could be a hero if he had daring enough, but it took a clever man to do war's day-to-day chores well, and Herault's cavalry patrolled and scouted and manned an outpost line that was forever under assault by partisans, and Herault had made sure they did it aggressively and efficiently. He had even persuaded his men not to treat every Spanish peasant as an enemy, for doing so only made them into enemies, and for the first time in Spain Soult was beginning to receive information from civilians, information that was freely given instead of extracted by torture. Herault had achieved that.

Now Herault had to capture the bridge at San Miguel de Tormes, and even before he left Toledo he had given the problem a deal of thought. He had even managed to impress Pierre Ducos, and that was quite an achievement, for Ducos believed most soldiers were pig-headed fools. "The danger,»

Herault explained to the Major who was not really a Major, "is going through the mountains."

"Because of the guerilleros?" Ducos asked, "so travel at night."

"But however fast we travel, Major, they will still outrun us and so give warning to this fortlet at San Miguel, " Herault tapped the map, "and the fort's garrison will send to Salamanca for reinforcements, and we shall arrive and find a small army waiting for us." He frowned, staring at the map and tapping his teeth with a pencil. «Avila,» he said after a while, prodding the town with the pencil. It lay well to the east of San Miguel, high in the hills.

"Avila?" Ducos asked.

"If I march towards Avila it will draw the guerilleros like flies to a corpse. And I shall send a vanguard, say three hundred infantry? We give the bastards a victory, Major, by sacrificing those three hundred men on the Avila road, and when the guerilleros are busy destroying them, the rest of us will go straight across the hills." He slashed the pencil over the map. "My two thousand cavalrymen will go first, and we shall ride like demons, Major. Any horse that falls will be left, its rider abandoned. We will ride straight for San Miguel, and you will follow with the infantry.

It will take the footsoldiers two days, less if General Michaud forces them hard, and we shall hold the bridge at San Miguel until you come."

Michaud would force the infantry hard. Ducos would see to that, using all the Emperor's surrogate authority to make Michaud crack the whip. "But what about the British reinforcements from Salamanca?" Ducos asked.

"Suppose they arrive before Michaud?"

"They won't know where to go, Major, " Herault said, "because I won't just wait for Michaud to catch up. I shall send cavalry all across the plain, right to the gates of Ciudad Rodrigo. We shall burn supplies, ambush convoys, kill every small garrison. We shall set southern Castile afire, Major, and the British will march in circles trying to find us." He let the map roll up.

"And what does the infantry do?"

"It stays at San Miguel, of course. To protect our retreat."

Ducos approved. Madrid would be saved, Marmont's retreat could end, and the British would be forced back to the Portuguese border, only to discover that their enemy had vanished into the hills. It was an audacious plan, brilliant even, and proof to Ducos that a few brave men could change the course of a war. Herault, he thought, must be recommended to the Emperor, and he wrote the general's name in his small black notebook and added a star which was Ducos's code for a man who might well deserve swift promotion.

"We leave at dawn, " Herault said, then smiled, "and tonight my men will spread rumours that we intend to sack Avila. By tomorrow night, Major, every partisan within fifty miles will be waiting on the Avila road."

And Herault would be miles away, spurring towards a fortress that thought itself safe.

It was uncanny how news spread in the Spanish countryside. Sharpe could see no one in the fields, olive groves and vineyards across the river, other than a few old men who tended the oxen turning the wheels that pumped the river water into the irrigation ditches, but by midday a rumour had reached Teresa's partisans that a French column had marched from Toledo to sack Avila. The rumour enraged Teresa. "It is a special place!»

she claimed.

"Avila?" Sharpe asked, "special?"

"St Teresa lived there."

"Must be special then." Sharpe said sarcastically.

"What would you know? Protestant pig."

"I'm not any sort of pig. Not protestant, not nothing."

"Heathen pig, then, " Teresa said angrily. She stared eastwards. "I should ride there, " she added.

"I won't stop you, " Sharpe said, "but I won't be happy."

"Who cares about your happiness?"

"Your men are my best sentries." Sharpe said. "If anything does come up that road, " he pointed southwards, "they'll see it first." Teresa's partisans were keeping watch in the foothills, ready to ride back and warn San Miguel of any threat coming out of the Sierra de Gredos. "How far is Avila, anyway?"

Teresa shrugged. "Fifty miles."

"And why would the frogs go there?"

"For plunder, of course! There are rich convents, monasteries, the cathedral, the basilica of Santa Vicente."

"Why would they go after plunder?" Sharpe asked.

Teresa frowned at him, wondering why he asked such a seemingly stupid question. "Because they are crapauds, of course! " she said. "Because they are scum. Because they are slime-toads that crawled from the devil's backside when God was not watching."

"But everywhere else, " Sharpe said, "the church treasures are hidden!»

Sharpe had marched through countless Spanish towns and villages, and everywhere the church plate had been taken away and buried or concealed behind walls or hidden in caves. He had seen precious altar screens, too large to be moved, daubed with limewash in hope that the French would not realise there was treasure behind the white covering. What he had never seen was a church flaunting its treasures when the French were within a week's march. "Why would Avila keep its treasures?"