Sharpe's Rifles

tempted to turn, flee back across the stream, and take his freedom with Bias Vivar, but the British Captain shouted a question down the hillside and the old constraints of discipline made Sharpe answer it. “Sharpe, sir. Rifles.”

“Hogan, Engineers. From the Lisbon garrison.” Hogan scrambled down the last few feet. “Where have you come from?”

“We got separated from Moore’s army, sir.”

“You did well to get away!” Hogan’s admiration seemed genuine, and was spoken in an Irish accent. “Any French behind you?”

“We haven’t seen any in a week, sir. They’re having a hell of a time from the Spanish people.”

“Good! Splendid! Well, come on, man! We’ve got a war to fight!”

Sharpe did not move. “You mean we’re not running away, sir?”

“Running away?” Hogan seemed appalled by the question. “Of course we’re not running away. The idea is to make the French run away. They’re sending Wellesley back here. He’s a pompous bastard, but he knows how to fight. Of course we’re not running away!”

“We’re staying here?”

“Of course we’re staying! What do you think I’m doing? Mapping a country we intend to abandon? Good God, man, we’re going to stay and fight!” Hogan had an ebullient energy that reminded Sharpe of Bias Vivar. “If the bastard politicians in London don’t lose their nerve we’ll run the bloody French clear back to Paris!”

Sharpe turned to stare at Louisa. For a moment he was tempted to shout the good news, then he shrugged it off. She would learn soon enough, and it could change nothing. He laughed.

Hogan led the Riflemen back up the hill. “I suppose your Battalion went back to England?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“If it went to Corunna or Vigo, it did. But I don’t imagine you’ll join them.”

“No, sir?”

“We need all the Rifles we can get. If I know Wellesley he’ll want you to stay on. It won’t be official, of course, but we’ll find some cranny to hide you in. Does that worry you?”

“No, sir.” Sharpe felt a burst of hope that perhaps he would not be doomed to a Quartermaster’s drudgery again, but could stay and fight. “I want to stay, sir.”

“Good man!” Hogan stopped at the hilltop and watched the Spaniards ride away. “Helped you escape, did they?”

“Yes, sir. And they took a city from the French, not for long, but long enough.”

Hogan looked sharply at the Rifleman. “Santiago?”

“Yes, sir.” Sharpe sounded defensive. “I wasn’t sure we should help them, sir, but, well…“ He shrugged, too tired to explain everything.

“Good God, man! We heard about it! That was you?” It was plain that this Captain of Engineers would make no protest at Sharpe’s adventure. On the contrary, Hogan was clearly delighted. “You must tell me the story. I like a good story. Now! I suppose your lads would like a meal?”

“They’d prefer some rum, sir.”

Hogan laughed. “That, too.” He watched as the Riflemen walked past him. The greenjackets were ragged and dirty, but they grinned at the two officers as they passed, and Hogan noted that though these men might lack regulation shoes, and though some had French greatcoats rolled on French packs, and though they were unshaven, unwashed, and unkempt, they all had their weapons, and those weapons were in perfect condition. “Not many escaped,” Hogan said.

“Sir?”

“Of the men who were cut off from Moore’s retreat,” Hogan explained. “Most just gave up, you see.”

“It was cold,” Sharpe said, Very cold. But I was lucky in my Sergeant. The big fellow there. He’s an Irishman.“

“The best are,” Hogan said happily. “But they all look like good lads.”

“They are, sir.” Sharpe raised his voice so every tired man could hear the extravagant praise. “They’re drunken sods, sir, but they’re the best soldiers in the world. The very best.” And he meant it. They were the elite, the damned, the Rifles. They were the soldiers in green.

They were Sharpe’s Rifles.

HISTORICAL NOTE

The retreat to Corunna was one of the most gruelling exploits ever forced onto a British army. The miracle of the retreat was that so many men survived to turn and repel a French attack outside the port. Sir John Moore died in the battle, but his victory gained enough time to let the surviving troops embark on the ships sent to save them.

The French had succeeded in driving Britain’s army, all but for the small Lisbon garrison, from the Peninsula. It was heralded in Paris as a victory, which it was, though no one seemed to notice that the campaign had drawn French troops away from their primary task which was to complete the invasion of Spain and Portugal. That invasion was never completed. Yet, in February 1809, few people could have foreseen that failure, and only a handful believed that Britain, after the defeat of Moore’s campaign, should keep a military presence in the Peninsula.

Yet, in the spring of 1809 Sir Arthur Wellesley, one day to be known as the Duke of Wellington, took command of the Lisbon garrison that was slowly, even grudgingly, expanded into the army that was to win a string of remarkable victories which would end with the invasion of France itself. Those victories form the framework of the Richard Sharpe books, which have already taken Sharpe and Harper into southern France.

This, then, is an early story, told against the background of the brutal French occupation of Galicia. That much of the book is accurate. The French did capture Santiago de Compostela, and did sack its cathedral, and did fight vicious battles against the growing resistance in the Galician hills. The rest, alas, is fiction. The scholars even tell us now that the romantic derivation of Compostela from the Latin campus stellae, ‘field of the star’, is also a fiction. They say the name truly derives from the Latin word for a cemetery. It is often wise to ignore scholars.

Marshal Soult was supposed to conquer all of Portugal before the end of February 1809. Racked by supply problems and tormented by partisans, he could only reach as far as Oporto on the northern bank of the Douro river, in northern Portugal, from which defence line he was to be ejected by Sir Arthur Wellesley in May. Then, having driven the French from Portugal, Wellesley turned east into Spain to gain the first of his Spanish victories, Talavera. Other British victories would follow, some astonishing in their brilliance, but those victories obscured (at least to the British) that far more Frenchmen died at the hands of the Spanish people than in battle against the British. The Spaniards were overwhelmingly partisans who fought the guerrilla, the ‘little war’. Those guerrilleros fought La Guerra de la Independencia as the Spanish call the Peninsular War, and some of their enemies were indeed anfrancesados.

Sharpe and Harper, though, are now bound for Talavera. From Talavera to France is a long way, but that elite of the British army, the greenjacketed Rifleman, marched every step of the way, and when it became necessary, he foot-slogged from Waterloo into Paris itself. Sharpe and Harper have yet to complete either journey, so they will march again.