IT’S NOT OUR FIGHT, sir,” Harper said.
“I know.”
Sharpe’s admission checked the big Irishman who had not expected such ready agreement. “We should be in Lisbon,” he persisted.
“Aye, we should, and we will be, but there are no boats going to Lisbon, and there won’t be, not till this lot’s over.” Sharpe nodded across the Sancti Petri. It was an hour or so after dawn and a mile down the beach beyond the river were blue uniforms. Not the light blue uniforms of the Spanish, but the darker blue of the French. The enemy had come from the inland heath and their sudden appearance had caused General Zayas’s troops to form in battalions that now waited on the northern side of the river. The strange thing was that the French had not come to attack the makeshift fort built on the far side of the pontoon bridge, but were facing south, away from the fort. A cannon in the fort had tried a shot at the French troops, but the ball had plowed into the sand well short and the one failed shot had persuaded the fort’s commander to save his ammunition.
“I mean, sir,” Harper went on, “just because Mister Galiana wants to fight—”
“I know what you mean.” Sharpe interrupted him harshly.
“Then, sir, just what the hell are we doing here?”
Sharpe did not doubt Harper’s bravery; only a fool could do that. It was not cowardice that was provoking the big Irishman’s protest, but a sense of grievance. The one explanation for the French having their backs to the river was that allied forces were farther south, and that implied that General Lapena’s army, far from marching inland to attack the French siege works from the east, had chosen to advance along the coast instead. So now that army faced what, to Sharpe, looked like four or five battalions of French infantry. And that was Lapena’s fight. If the fifteen thousand men under Dona Manolito’s command could not crush the smaller force on the beach, then there was nothing Sharpe and five riflemen could do to help. For Sharpe to risk those five lives was irresponsible; that was what Harper was saying, and Sharpe agreed with him. “I’ll tell you what we’re doing here,” Sharpe said. “We’re here because I owe Captain Galiana a favor. We all owe him a favor. If it wasn’t for Galiana we’d all be in a Cadiz jail. So in return we see him across the river, and once we’ve done that, we’re finished.”
“Across the river? That’s all, sir?”
“That’s all. We march him over, tell any Spanish bugger who interferes to jump in the river, and we’re finished.”
“So why do we have to see him over?”
“Because he asked. Because he thinks they’ll stop him if he’s not with us. Because that’s the favor he asked us.”
Harper looked suspicious. “So if we see him across, sir, we can go back to the town?”
“You’re missing the tavern?” Sharpe asked. His men had been bivouacking at the beach’s end for two days now: two days of constant grumbling at the Spanish rations that Galiana had arranged and two days of missing the comforts of San Fernando. Sharpe sympathized, but was secretly pleased that they were uncomfortable. Idle soldiers got into mischief and drunken soldiers into trouble. It was better to have them grumbling. “So once we’ve got him safe across,” Sharpe said, “you can go back with the lads. I’ll write you orders. And you can have a bottle of that vino tinto waiting for me.”
Harper, given what he wanted, looked troubled. “Waiting for you?” he asked flatly.
“I won’t be long. It should all be over by nightfall. So go on, tell the lads they can go back as soon as we’ve got Captain Galiana over the bridge.”
Harper did not move. “So what will you be doing, sir?”
“Officially,” Sharpe said, ignoring the question, “we’re all ordered to stay here till Brigadier bloody Moon tells us otherwise, but I don’t think he’ll mind if you go back. He won’t know, will he?”
“But why will you be staying, sir?” Harper insisted.
Sharpe touched the edge of the bandage showing under his shako. The pain in his head had gone and he suspected it was safe to take the bandage off, but his skull still felt tender so he had left it on and religiously soaked it with vinegar each day. “The 8th of the line, Pat,” he said, “that’s why.”
Harper looked down the shoreline to where the French stood silent. “They’re there?”
“I don’t know where the buggers are. What I do know is that they were sent north and they couldn’t get north because we blew up their damned bridge, so the odds are they came back here. And if they are here, Pat, then I want to say hello to Colonel Vandal. With this.” He hefted the rifle.
“So you’re—”
“So I’m just going to wander along the beach,” Sharpe interrupted.
“I’m going to look for him. If I see him I’ll have a shot at him, that’s all. Nothing more, Pat, nothing more. I mean it’s not our fight, is it?”
“No, sir, it isn’t.”
“So that’s all I’m doing, and if I can’t find the bugger, then I’ll come back. Just have that bottle of wine ready for me.” Sharpe clapped Harper on the shoulder, then walked to where Captain Galiana was sitting on a horse. “What’s happening, Captain?”
Galiana had a small telescope and was staring southward. “I don’t understand it,” he said.
“Understand what?”
“There are Spanish troops there. Beyond the French.”
“General Lapena’s men?”
“Why are they here?” Galiana asked. “They should be marching on Chiclana!”
Sharpe gazed over the river and down the long beach. The French stood in three ranks, their officers on horseback, their eagles glinting in the early sun. Then, quite suddenly, those eagles, instead of being outlined against the sky, were wreathed in smoke. Sharpe saw the musket smoke blossom thick and silent until, a few seconds later, the sound crackled past him.
Then, after that first massive volley, the world went silent except for the call of the gulls and the seethe of the waves. “Why are they here?” Galiana asked again, and then the muskets fired a second time, more of them now, and the morning was filled with the sound of battle.
A HUNDRED or so paces upstream of the pontoon bridge a small tidal creek branched south from the Rio Sancti Petri. The creek was called the Almanza and it was a place of reeds, grass, water, and marsh where herons hunted. The creek headed inland, thus dictating that an army coming north along the coast would find itself on a narrowing strip of land and beach that ended at the Rio Sancti Petri. The Almanza Creek was a mile long at low tide and twice that distance at high, and its presence made the narrowing funnel of sand into a trap if another army could get behind the first and drive it north toward the river. The trap would become even more lethal if another force could ford the creek and so block any retreat across the pontoon bridge.
The Almanza Creek was not much of a barrier, except at its mouth it could be waded almost anywhere along its length and, at nine o’clock the morning of March 5, 1811, the tide had only just begun to flood and so the French infantry could cross it easily. They splashed through the marshes, slid down the muddy bank, and waded the creek’s sandy bed before climbing to the dunes and beach beyond. Yet, though the creek was no obstacle to men or to horses, it was impassable to artillery. The cannons weighed too much. A French twelve-pounder, the most common gun in the emperor’s arsenal, weighed a ton and a half, and to get a cannon, its limber, its caisson and crew across the marsh would require engineers. When Marshall Victor ordered General Villatte’s division to ford the Almanza there was no time to summon engineers, let alone for those engineers to build a makeshift road across the creek, so the force Villatte led to block the retreat of Lapena’s army was infantry alone.
Marshal Victor was no fool. He had made his reputation at Marengo and at Friedland, and since coming to Spain he had beaten two Spanish armies at Espinosa and at Medellin. It was true he had taken a bloody nose from Lord Wellington at Talavera, but le beau soleil, the beautiful sun as his men called him, regarded that reverse as a whim of fickle fortune. “A soldier who has never been defeated,” he liked to say, “has learned nothing.”
“And what did you learn from Lord Wellington?” General Ruffin, a giant of a man who led one of Victor’s divisions, had asked.
“Never to lose again, Francois!” Victor had said, then laughed. Claude Victor was a friendly soul, outgoing and genial. His soldiers loved him. He had been a soldier in the ranks himself once. True, he had been an artilleryman, which was hardly the same as an infantryman, but he knew the ranks, he loved them, and he
