Sharpe's Havoc

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.

Sharpe shrugged off the ordenanqa who wanted to welcome him and threw himself down on the bluff’s lip. Rain thrashed the rocks, poured down the cliff’s face and drummed on his shako. A crash of thunder sounded overhead to be echoed by another from the southwest, and Sharpe recognized the second peal as the sound of guns. It was cannon fire, and the noise meant that Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army must have caught up with the French and that his artillery had opened fire, but that fight was miles away, back beyond the Ponte Nova, and here, at the final obstacle, the French were escaping.

Hogan, panting from the exertion of climbing the bluff, dronned beside Sharpe. They were so close to the bridge they could see the mustaches on the faces of the French infantry, see the striped brown-and-black pattern of a woman’s long skirt. She walked beside her man, carrying his musket and his child, and had a dog tied to her belt by a length of string. Behind them an officer led a limping horse. „Is that cannon I’m hearing?” Hogan asked.

„Yes, sir.“

„Must be the three-pounders,” Hogan guessed. „We could do with a couple of those toys here.”

But they had none. Only Sharpe, Vicente and their men. And an army that was escaping.

Back at the Ponte Nova the gunners had manhandled their two toy cannon to the crest of a knoll that overlooked the French rearguard. It was not raining here. An occasional flurry whipped down from the mountains, but the muskets could still fire and the Brigade of Guards loaded their weapons, fixed bayonets and then formed to advance in column of companies.

And the guns, the despised three-pounders, opened on the French and the small balls, scarcely bigger than an orange each, whipped through the tight ranks and bounced on rock to kill more Frenchmen, and the band of Coldstream Guards struck up „Rule Britannia” and the great colors were unfurled to the damp air, and the three- pound balls struck again, each shot leaving a long spray of blood in the air as though a giant unseen knife were slashing through the French ranks. The two light companies of the Guards and a company of the green-jacketed 60th, the Royal American Rifles, were advancing among a jumble of rocks and low stone walls on the French left flank and the muskets and Baker rifles began taking their toll of French officers and sergeants. French skirmishers, men from the renowned 4th Leger, a regiment chosen by Soult to guard his rear because the 4th was famous for its steadiness, ran forward to drive the British skirmishers back, but the rifles were too much for them. They had never faced such long-range accurate fire before and the voltigeurs backed away.

„Take them forward, Campbell, take them forward!” Sir Arthur Wellesley called to the brigade’s commander and so the first battalion of the Coldstreamers and the first battalion of the 3rd Foot Guards marched toward the bridge. Their bearskins made them seem huge, the band’s drummers thumped for all they were worth, the rifles snapped and the two three-pounders crashed back onto their trails to cut two more bloody furrows through the long lines of Frenchmen.

„They’re going to break,” Colonel Waters said. He had served as Sir Arthur’s guide all day and was watching the French rearguard through his glass. He could see them wavering, see the sergeants dashing back and forth behind the ranks to push men into file. „They’re going to break, sir.”

„Pray they do,” Sir Arthur said, „pray they do.” And he wondered what was happening far ahead, whether the French escape route had been blocked. He already had a victory, but how complete would it be?

The two battalions of Guards, both twice the size of an ordinary battalion, marched steadily and their bayonets were two thousand specks of light in the cloud-dimmed valley and their colors were red, white, blue and gold above them. And in front of them the French shivered and the cannons fired again and the blood mist flickered in two long lines to show where the round shots ploughed the files.

And Sir Arthur Wellesley did not even watch the Guards. He was staring up into the hills where a great black rainfall blotted the view. „God grant,” he said fervently, „that the road is cut.”

„Amen,” Colonel Waters said, „amen.”

The road was not blocked because a leaping strip of stone spanned the Misarella and a seemingly endless line of French made their way across the hump-backed arch. Sharpe watched them. They walked like beaten men, tired and sullen, and he could see from their faces how they resented the handful of engineer officers who chivvied them across the bridge. In April these men had been the conquerors of northern Portugal and they had thought they were about to march south and capture Lisbon. They had plundered all the country north of the Douro: they had ransacked houses and churches, raped women, killed men and strutted like the cocks of the dunghill, but now they had been whipped, broken and chased, and the distant sound of the two cannon told them that their ordeal was not yet over. And above them, on the rock-strewn hill crests, they could see dozens of bitter men who just waited for a straggler and then the knives would be sharpened, the fires lit, and every Frenchman in the army had heard the stories of the horribly mutilated corpses found in the highlands.

Sharpe just watched them. Every now and then the bridge arch would be cleared so that a recalcitrant horse could be coaxed over the narrow span. Riders were peremptorily ordered to climb down from their saddles