If he lost today’s battle he would be king of nothing.
Which was why, as the sun rose higher and the guns waited, Joseph Bonaparte was troubled by the evident success that Wellington’s troops were having on the Puebla Heights. He expressed his concern to his military commander, Marshal Jourdan, who merely smiled. ‘Let the British have the Heights, sir.’
‘Let them?’ King Joseph, a kindly, anxious man, looked worriedly at his military commander.
Jourdan’s horse was restless. The Marshal calmed.it. ‘They want the Heights, sir, so they can march safely through the defile beneath. And that’s where I want them.’ If the British came from the defile where the river left the plain then they would be marching towards his great guns. He smiled at Joseph. ‘If they come from the west, sir, they’re beaten.’
Jourdan hoped to God he was right. He had planned on a British attack from the west and when the cannons had smeared the killing ground with British dead he would release the cavalry to become the first of France’s Marshals to defeat Wellington. He did not care about the Heights. No man there could influence the battle on the plain. The British could take every damned hill in Spain so long as they marched into his guns afterwards. He could almost taste the victory.
There was only one place that worried Marshal Jourdan, and that was the flat land north of the river. If Wellington did not attack from the west, but instead tried to outflank the plain by marching about the French right, then Jourdan would have to turn his battle-line and resite his guns.
He looked anxiously northwards, to the land across the river where the wind stirred the crops in long, pale, rippling waves. Two marsh harriers flew above the trout-rich Zadorra, gliding out of sight behind the hill that hid the river’s bend. He had not fortified that hill. He wondered if Napoleon would have put men there. No. No. He must not have doubts! He must behave as if he knew exactly what would happen, as if he was controlling the enemy as well as his own army.
He made himself smile. He made himself look confident. He complimented the King on his tailor and tried not to think of British troops coming from the north. Let them come from the west! Pray God, from the west!
‘Sir!’
‘Sir!’
A chorus of voices sounded. Fingers pointed west towards the defile that was still deep shadow.
‘Sir!’
‘I see it!’ Jourdan spurred forwards.
From the defile, marching towards the small village that lay before the Arinez Hill, marching onto the great killing ground dominated by the French guns, were British infantry.
Their Colours were flying. They marched like parade soldiers towards their deaths.
‘We’ve got him! We’ve got him, by God!’ Jourdan slapped his thigh.
So Wellington was not being clever. He was coming straight on and that was what Jourdan wanted. Straight on to death and glory to the Emperor! He spurred his horse forward, waving his plumed hat at the artillerymen. ‘Gunners! Wait!’
The linstocks were lit. In each of the great guns, more than a hundred of them, the priming tubes had pierced the powder bags and waited for the fire.
King Joseph rode alongside his Marshal. Joseph was terrified of his younger brother’s displeasure, and the terror showed on his face. If he lost this battle he would be a king no more, and to win it he had to see Wellington beaten. Joseph had witnessed the British army fight at Talavera and he had seen how their infantry had snatched victory from certain defeat.
But Marshal Jourdan had seen more. He had fought as a private in the French army that went to help the American Revolutionaries. He had seen the British defeated, and he knew he would see it again. He beamed at the King, the Emperor’s brother. ‘You have a victory, sir. You have a victory!’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Look!’ He waved his hand at the empty north, then to the troops that spread out before his guns. ‘You have a victory!’
It was the last moment that men could look at the field and see what happened, the last moment before the smoke of the guns hid the struggle. Jourdan drew his sabre, the steel bright as the sun, and swept it down.
The guns began.
The defile where the Great Road entered Vitoria’s plain was crowded. Troops waited to be ordered forward. Wounded, from the Heights of Puebla, had been brought to the road. Surgeons, their aprons already gleaming red, tried to work their saws and blades as men crowded the narrow verges waiting to go towards the gunfire that had suddenly started.
Men joked fabout the sound of the French guns. They joked because they feared them.
Young drummer boys, their voices unbroken, watched the veterans and tried to take comfort from their calmness. Young officers, sitting on expensive horses, wondered whether glory was worth this nervousness. Staff officers, their horses’ flanks already white with sweat, galloped along the columns looking for Generals and Colonels. The Colours, untouched in the defile by any wind, hung heavy on staffs. The first Battalions were already on the plain. The first wounded were already dragging themselves back towards the surgeons.
Men broke from the ranks to go down to the river and fill their canteens with water. Some had prudently saved their ration of wine or rum. It was better, they said, to go into battle with alcohol inside.
An Irish regiment, their red coats faded and patched to show their long service in Spain, knelt to a chaplain of a Spanish regiment who blessed them, made the sign of the cross above them, while their women prayed anxiously behind. Their Colonel, a Scottish Presbyterian, sat in his saddle and read the twenty-third psalm.
Some Highland troops were climbing the Puebla Heights, going to take over from the Spaniards. The sound of the pipes, wild as madness, came to the defile mixed with the roar of the French guns.
Men asked each other what was happening, and no one knew. They waited, feeling the warmth coming into the day, and they listened to the battle sound and prayed that they would live to hear the sound of victory. They prayed to be spared the surgeons.
At the rear of the column, where the women and children waited for the day’s lottery of widowhood to be drawn, and where the local villagers stared wide-eyed at the strange, huge tribe that was packed into their valley, two horsemen reined in. One of the two men, a tall, dark-haired, scarred man shouted at a group of soldiers’ women who sat at the river’s edge. ‘Which Division is this?’
A woman who was suckling a baby looked up at the Rifleman who had shouted the question. ‘Second.’
‘Where’s the Fifth?’
‘Christ knows.’
Which answer, Sharpe reflected, he deserved. He spurred Carbine forward. ‘Lieutenant! Lieutenant!’
A Lieutenant of infantry turned. He saw a tall, suntanned man on a horse. The man wore a tattered uniform of the 95th Rifles. At his hip was a sword, which seemed to suggest that the unshaven man was an officer. ‘Sir?’ The Lieutenant sounded tentative.
‘Where’s Wellington?’
‘I think he’s over the river.’
‘Fifth Division?’
‘On the left, sir. I think.’
‘Are you the right?’
‘I think so, sir.’ The Lieutenant sounded dubious.
Sharpe turned his horse. The defile was jammed with men and he could hear the sound of guns that told him this road led only to the battlefield.
He did not care about Wellington. Now was not the time to find the General and speak of the treaty that La Marquesa had betrayed to him in Burgos. He had written down everything that she had told him, and he would make sure that the letter reached Hogan: But now Sharpe had caught up with the army on a day of battle, he was a soldier, and vindicating his name could wait until the fighting was done. He looked at Angel, mounted on^an ugly horse that they had stolen in Pancorvo. ‘Come on!’
He led the boy back to the village where a bridge crossed to the western bank. He would find the South Essex, he would come back from the dead, and he would fight.
