Bernard Cornwell: Sharpe’s Company

At seven it was dark. The big church clock in the tower that had been chipped and scarred by cannon balls, whirred as it geared itself to strike the hour. The sound was clearly audible over the snow. The orders must come soon. The siege guns stopped firing, a sudden silence that seemed unnatural after the days of hammering at the defences. Sharpe could hear men coughing, stamping their feet, and the little noises were terrible reminders of how small and frail men were against the defences of a fortress.

‘Go!’ The Brigade Majors had the orders. ‘Go!’

Lawford touched Sharpe’s shoulder. ‘Good luck!’

The Rifleman noticed the Colonel was still uncloaked, but it was too late now. There was a stirring in the trenches, a rustle as the hay-bags were pushed out of the trench, and then Harper was beside him and, beyond the Sergeant, Lieutenant Price, wide-eyed and pale. Sharpe grinned at them. ‘Come on.’

They climbed up on the fire-step, over the parapet, and went in silence towards the breach.

1812 had begun.

The snow was brittle, crunching beneath Sharpe’s boots, while behind him he could hear the sounds of men slipping in the whiteness, their breath rasping in the cold air, their equipment clinking as they started up the hill towards the glacis.

The crest of the defences were limned by a faint, red haze where the lights in the town, fires and bracketed torches, glowed in the night mist. It seemed unreal, but to Sharpe battles often seemed unreal, especially now as he climbed the snow-slope towards the silent, waiting town and with each step he expected the sudden eruption of cannon and the shriek of grape. Yet the defenders were quiet, as if they were oblivious of the mass of men who churned the snow towards Ciudad Rodrigo. In two hours at the most, Sharpe knew, it would all be over. Talavera had taken a day and a night, Fuentes de Oñoro all of three days, but no man could endure the hell of a breach for more than a couple of hours.

Lawford was beside him, the cloak still held over one arm and the gold lace reflecting the dim, red light ahead. The Colonel grinned at Sharpe; he looked, the Rifleman thought, very young.

‘Perhaps we’re surprising them, Richard.’

The answer was instant. From ahead, from the left and right, the French gunners put matches to the priming tubes, the cannons banged back on their trails, and the canisters were spat over the glacis. The crest of the defences seemed to erupt in great, boiling clouds of smoke that were lit by internal lances of flame that reached from the wall, over the ditch, to spear their tongues of light on to the snow-slope. Following the thunder, so close that the sounds were indistinguishable, came the explosions of the canisters. Each was a metal can packed with musket balls which were blown apart by a powder charge. The balls hammered down. The snow was spotted with crimson.

There were shouts far to the left and Sharpe knew that the Light Division, attacking the smaller breach, were pouring over the glacis into the ditch. He slipped on the snow, recovered, and shouted at his men. ‘Come on!’

The smoke rolled slowly from the glacis, carried south on the night wind, and was then put back by the gunners’ next volley. The canisters cracked apart again, the mass of men hurried as the shouts of officers and Sergeants drove them up the slope to the dubious safety of the ditch. Far back, behind the first parallel, a band played and Sharpe caught a snatch of the tune and then he was at the top of the slope, the ditch black beneath him.

There was a temptation to stay a few feet down the slope and hurl the bags hopefully into the darkness, but Sharpe had long taught himself that the few steps of which a man is afraid are the important steps. He stood on the crest, Lawford beside him, and shouted at his men to hurry. The hay-bags thumped softly down in the blackness.

‘This way! This way!’ He led them right, away from the breach, their job finished, and the Forlorn Hope were jumping down into the ditch and Sharpe felt a pang of envy.

‘Down! down!’ He pushed them flat on the crest of the glacis and the cannons crashed overhead so close that the Light Company could feel the lick of their hot breath. The battalions were coming behind to follow the Forlorn Hope. ‘Watch the wall!’ The best help that the Light Company could be now to the attack was to snipe over the ditch as soon as any target could be seen.

All was blackness. Sounds came from the ditch; boots scuffing, the scrape of a bayonet, a muffled curse, and then the scrabbling of feet on rubble that told him the Hope had reached the breach and were climbing the broken stone slope. Musket flashes dazzled from the breach summit, the first opposition to the Forlorn Hope, but the fire did not appear to be heavy and Sharpe could hear the men still climbing.

‘So far …’ Lawford left the sentence unfinished.

There were shouts from behind and Sharpe turned to see the attackers reaching the crest and jumping recklessly into the ditch. There were shouts as men missed the hay-bags, or landed on their comrades, but the leading battalions were in place, and they were going forward in the darkness, and Sharpe heard the growl that he remembered from Gawilghur. It was an eerie sound made by hundreds of men in a small place, steeling themselves to go into the narrow breach, and it was a sound that would last till the battle was decided.

‘It’s going well!’ Lawford’s face was nervous. It was going too well. The Hope had to be nearing the end of their long climb, the 45th and 88th were on their heels, and still the only French reaction was the few musket shots and the canister that still exploded far behind over the hurrying reserves. Something more had to be waiting in the breach.

A flame flickered on the walls, spread like fire catching on dry thatch, then heaved itself up into the air and down into the ditch. Another flame followed, then another, and the breach was lit like daylight as the carcasses, oil-soaked, hardpacked straw that was bound in tarred canvas, were lit and tossed into the ditch so that the defenders could see their targets. There was a cheer from the French, a triumphant, defiant cheer, and the musket balls plucked at the Forlorn Hope, revealed close to the summit of the jumbled stone slope, and the cheer was answered by the 45th and 88th as the battalions ran forward, a dark mass in the tangled maze of the ditch, and the assault began to look easy.

‘Rifles!’ Sharpe shouted. He had eleven Riflemen left, apart from Harper and himself, of the thirty men he had led away from the horrors of the Corunna retreat three years before. They were the core of his Company, the green-jacketed specialists, whose modern Baker rifles could kill at three hundred paces and more, while the smooth-bore musket, the Brown Bess, was virtually useless at more than fifty yards. He heard the distinctive crack of the weapons, less muffled than the muskets, and saw a Frenchman fall back as he tried to throw another burning carcass down the breach slope. Sharpe wished he had more rifles. He had trained some of his redcoats to use the weapon, but he would have liked more.

He ducked down beside Lawford. The French had switched to grapeshot that left the cannon barrels like duck shot from a fowling piece. He heard the whistle of balls over his head, saw a flame stab down into the ditch towards the crowded battalions, but in the fire-light he could see the redjacketed British were nearing the mid-point of their climb. The Forlorn Hope, still almost intact, were just paces from the top, their bayonets held out, while behind them the lower half of the breach was darkened by the mass of the assaulting column.