Бернард Корнуэлл - Sharpe's Havoc

The problem was reaching the bluff. It was not far away, perhaps a half-mile, but between Sharpe and that enticing high ground was the Misarella. „We have to cross that river,” Sharpe said.

„How long will that take?” Hogan asked.

„As long as it takes,” Sharpe said. „We don’t have a choice.”

The musketry grew in intensity, crackling like burning thorn, then fading before bursting back into life. The dragoons were crowding the southern bank to swamp the defenders with fire, but Sharpe could do nothing to help.

So, for the moment, he walked away.

In the valley of the Cavado, just twelve miles from the advance guard that fought the ordenanqa across the ravine of the Misarella, the first British troops caught up with Soult’s rearguard which protected the men and women still crossing the Ponte Nova. The British troops were light dragoons and they could do little more than exchange carbine fire with the French troops who were drawn across the road to fill the valley between the river and the southern cliffs. But not far behind the dragoons the Brigade of Guards was marching, and behind them was a pair of three-pounder cannons, guns that fired shot so light that they were derided as toys, but on this day, when no one else could deploy artillery, the two toys were worth their weight in gold.

The French rearguard waited while, a dozen miles away, the vanguard readied to attack the Saltador. Two battalions of infantry would assault the bridge, but it was plain that they would become mincemeat if the thick barrier of thorn were not removed from the bridge’s far end. The abattis was four feet high and just as thick and made from two dozen thorn bushes that had been tied together and weighted down with logs, and it made a formidable obstacle and so a Forlorn Hope was proposed. A Forlorn Hope was a company of men who were expected to die, but in doing so they would clear a path for their comrades, and usually such suicidal bands were deployed against the heavily defended breaches of enemy fortresses, but today’s band must cross the narrow remnant of a bridge and die under the flail of musket fire, and as they died they were to clear away the thorn abattis. Major Dulong of the 31st Leger, the new Legion d’Honneur medal still bright on his chest, volunteered to lead the Forlorn Hope. This time he could not use darkness, and the enemy was far more numerous, but his hard face showed no apprehension as he pulled on a pair of gloves and then twisted the loops of his saber cords about his wrist so that he would not lose the weapon in the chaos he anticipated as the thorns were wrenched aside. General Loison, who commanded the French vanguard, ordered every available man to the river bank to swamp the ordenanga with musket, carbine and even pistol fire and when the noise had swelled to a deafening intensity Dulong raised his saber then swung it forward as a signal to advance.

The skirmishing company of his own regiment ran across the bridge. Three men could just go abreast on the narrow ribbon of stone and Dulong was in the very first rank. The ordenanqa roared their defiance and a volley blasted from the closest earthwork. Dulong was hit in the chest, he heard the bullet strike his new medal and then distinctly heard the snap as a rib broke and he knew the bullet must be in his lung, but he felt no pain. He tried to shout, but his breath was very short, yet he began hauling at the thorns with his gloved hands. More men came, cramming themselves on the bridge’s thin roadway. One slipped and fell screaming into the white tumult of the Misarella. Bullets smacked into the Forlorn Hope, the air was nothing but smoke and splintering noise and hissing bullets, but then Dulong managed to pitch a whole section of the abattis into the river and there was a gap wide enough to let a man through and big enough to save a trapped army, and he staggered through it, saber raised, spitting bubbles of blood as his breath labored. A huge shout came from behind him as the first of the support battalions ran toward the bridge with fixed bayonets. Dulong’s surviving men cleared away the last of the thorn abattis, a dozen dead voltigeurs were unceremoniously kicked over the roadway’s edge into the ravine, and suddenly the Saltador was dark with French troops. They screamed a war cry as they came and the ordenanqa, most of whom were still reloading after trying to stop Dulong’s Forlorn Hope, now fled. Hundreds of men ran westward, climbing into the hills to escape the bayonets. Dulong paused by the nearest abandoned earthwork and there he bent over, his saber dangling by the cords tied to his wrist and a long dribble of mingled blood and saliva trickling from his mouth. He closed his eyes and tried to pray.

„A stretcher!” a sergeant shouted. „Make a stretcher. Find a doctor!” Two French battalions chased the ordenanqa away from the bridge. A few Portuguese still lingered on a high rocky bluff to the left of the road, but they were too far away for their musket fire to be anything except a nuisance and so the French let them stay there and watch an army escape.

For Major Dulong had prized open the last jaws of the trap and the road north was open.

Sharpe, up in the rough ground south of the Misarella, heard the furious musketry and knew the French must be assaulting the bridge and he prayed the ordenanqa would hold them, but he knew they would fail. They were amateur soldiers, the French were professional and, though men would die, the French would still cross the Misarella and once the first troops were over then the rest of their army would surely follow.

So he had little time in which to cross the river which tumbled white in its deep rocky ravine and Sharpe had to go more than a mile upstream before he found a place where they might just negotiate the steep slopes and rain-swollen water. The mule would have to be abandoned for the ravine was so precipitous that not even Javali could manhandle the beast down the cliff and through the fast water. Sharpe ordered his men to strip the slings off their rifles and muskets, then buckle or tie them together to make a long rope. Javali, eschewing such an aid, scrambled down to the Misarella, waded through and began climbing the other side, but Sharpe feared losing one of his men to a broken leg up in these hills and so he went more slowly. The men eased themselves down, using the rope as a support, then passed down their weapons. The river was scarcely a dozen paces across, but it was deep and its cold water tugged hard at Sharpe’s legs as he led the crossing. The rocks underfoot were slick and uneven. Tongue fell over and was swept a few yards downstream before he managed to haul himself onto the bank. „Sorry, sir,” he managed to say through chattering teeth as water drained from his cartridge box. It took over forty minutes for them all to cross the ravine and climb its other side where, from a peak of rock, Sharpe could just see the cloud-shadowed hills of Spain.

They turned east toward the bridge just as it began to rain again. All morning the dark showers had slanted about them, but now one opened directly above them, and then a crash of thunder bellowed across the sky. Ahead, far off to the south, there was a patch of sunshine lightening the pale hills, but above Sharpe the sky grew darker and the rain heavier and he knew the rifles would have difficulty firing in such a teeming downpour. He said nothing. They were all cold and dispirited, the French were escaping and Christopher might already be over the Misarella and on his way into Spain.

To their left the grass-grown road twisted up into the last Portuguese hills and they could see dragoons and infantry slogging up the road’s tortuous bends, but those men were a half-mile away and the rocky bluff was just ahead. Javali was already on its summit and he warned the remnants of the ordenanga who waited among the ferns and boulders that the uniformed men who approached were friends. The Portuguese, whose muskets were useless in the heavy rain, had been reduced to throwing rocks that bounded down the bluff’s eastern face and were nothing but a minor nuisance to the stream of French who crossed the thin lifeline across the Misarella.