CHAPTER 23
To the spectators on the great ridge the battle had appeared as something like a surging spring tide seething into a place that was usually above the high water mark. The tide had surged from the west, running swiftly over the plain, and then it had struck the obstacles of the Arapiles. The righting had churned. For a moment it had looked as if the French centre would flow irresistibly towards the city, through the small valley, but it had been held, the two Divisions in column broken, and the fighting had surged back, past the Arapiles, and now the fighting drained off to the south and east; away from the city.
The fighting was not done, yet already the scavengers were on the field. The wives and children of the British were stripping enemy corpses. When it was darker they would start on men of their own side, slitting the throats of the wounded who resisted them, but for the moment they plundered the French while the Bandsmen cared for the British wounded. The South Essex followed the Sixth Division for a small way, but then orders came for them to rest and the men dropped where they were.
The drummer boy, with the worried intensity of a child given a great responsibility, had clung to Sharpe’s horse and the Rifleman was grateful for the saddle. The wound throbbed, he was tired, and he forced himself to respond to the greetings of Leroy and Forrest, of the other officers, and they teased him for having a horse. He was tired, but still restless.
Musketry came from the south. The fighting still went on.
Sharpe sat on his horse, her horse, and he watched, without really seeing, as a small child tugged at the ring on a ringer of a naked corpse. The child’s mother was stripping another Frenchman nearby, slicing open the seams, and she snapped at the child to hurry because there were so many corpses and so many looters. The child, dressed only in a cut-down skirt of her mother’s, picked up a discarded French bayonet and began hacking at the ring finger. Prisoners were being herded, disarmed, and led to the rear.
The French had been beaten. Not just beaten, they had been utterly defeated. Half their army had been broken and the survivors were running for the road that led eastwards through the southern woods. Only a rearguard stopped the vengeful British and German cavalry from hacking into the fugitives, but the cavalry pursuit could wait. The French were stumbling, discipline lost, back through the cork woods and oak trees to the town of Alba de Tormes. The battle had been fought in a huge bend of the river and Alba was the only town with a bridge that could take the French east to safety. Many men would use the fords, but most, with all the baggage, the guns, the pay chest, and the wounded, would make for the mediaeval bridge at Alba de Tormes. And there stop. The Spanish had a garrison in the town, a garrison that commanded the bridge, and the French were trapped in the great river bend. The cavalry could ride in the morning and round up the fugitives. It was a great victory.
Sharpe stared at the smoke that lay above the battlefield in long pink ribbons. He should be feeling the elation of this day. They had waited all summer for a battle, wanted it, and no one had dared hope it would be this decisive. This year they had taken Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and now they had defeated the so-called Army of Portugal. Yet Sharpe was haunted by failure. He had protected La Marquesa, who was his enemy, and he had failed to capture Leroux. He had been beaten by the Frenchman. Leroux had put Sharpe in the death room, he had broken Sharpe’s sword, and Sharpe wanted revenge. There was a man alive who could boast of beating Sharpe, and that hurt; it throbbed like the wound, and Sharpe wanted the pain to go. He was restless. He wanted one more chance to face the Kligenthal, to possess it, and he touched the hilt of his new sword as if it were a talisman. It had yet to be blooded.
The South Essex were piling their arms, going to the village to steal doors and furniture that could be broken into fires, and Sharpe did not want to rest. There was unfinished business, and it frustrated him because he did not see how to finish it, and he wondered if the Palacio Casares was even now being searched for Leroux. He could go back to Salamanca now, but he could not face La Marquesa.
Major Forrest walked over to Sharpe’s horse and looked up. “You look like a statue, Sharpe.” He held up a captured bottle of brandy. “Join us?”
Sharpe looked to the southern edge of the battlefield where smoke was still rising from the fight. “Do you mind if I see the end of it, sir?”
“Help yourself.” Forrest grinned at him. “Take care, I don’t want to lose you again.”
„I’ll take care, sir.“ He let the horse find its own way between the grass fires and the wounded. The sun was almost gone, already a pale moon was high in the evening sky, and he could see where the French rearguard sparkled the dusk with their muskets. A dog whimpered beside the dead body of its master, barked as Sharpe’s horse came too close, and then ran back to its vigil.
Sharpe was depressed. He had always known that he could not possess La Marquesa, yet he missed her, and he was saddened because they had both deceived, there was so much left unsaid. It too was unfinished business. He rode slowly towards the gunfire.
The last French Division had arrayed itself on a small, steep ridge that blocked the tracks into the wood. The ridge allowed six and sometimes seven ranks of men to fire at the British, each rank firing over the heads of the ranks in front, and the twilight was stabbed by the French flames.
The Sixth Division, that had already defeated Clausel’s brave hopes, advanced against the obstacle. They had already won a great victory and now they thought that this rearguard, this impudent line, would melt before their musket fire in the dusk. The musket duel began. Line against line, and the cartridges were bitten open, the powder tipped, and the flints snapped forward, and the French line held. It fought gloriously, hopelessly, in the knowledge that if they collapsed and ran for the road that led eastwards through the woods, the cavalry would come after them. Darkness was their hope, their salvation, and the last French Division stood on their small steep ridge and they galled the Sixth Division, flayed it, and the Battalions shrunk man by man.
British artillery jangled its way over the plain, turned, and unlimbered on the Sixth Division’s flanks. The horses were led away, the guns’ trails unhooked from the limbers, and the red-bagged ammunition was piled beside the weapons. Canister. The gun-layers eyed the French line dispassionately; at this range they could not miss.
Nearly every ball from the splitting tin containers would count on the French ridge. The guns jumped backwards, smoke belching, and Sharpe saw the French fall sideways like wheat hit by buckshot. Still they fought. Fires had started in the grass, adding to the smoke, and their flames were lurid on the underside of the battle smoke that hung in skeins over the spitting muskets. The French held their place, the dead fell on the slope, the wounded struggled to keep firing. They must have been terrified, Sharpe thought as he watched them, because they knew that the battle was lost, that instead of marching to the gates of Portugal they would have a long harried retreat into Spain’s centre, yet still they fought and their discipline under the onslaught of musket and canister was awesome. They were buying time with their lives, time for their shattered companions to make their way eastwards towards the bridge at Alba de Tormes. And there, the British knew, a Spanish garrison waited to complete the destruction.
The fight could not last, whatever the bravery of the French, and the end was signalled as the Fifth Division, which had attacked the French left beside the cavalry earlier in the day, were marched onto the French rearguard’s flank. Two British Divisions fought a single French Division. More guns came in a slew of dust and chains and their canister split apart in the heart of the guns’ great flames. More fires caught in the grass, their flames throwing wavering black shadows as the twilight turned to night, and the end had to come. There was a pause in the musket fire of the Sixth, an order was repeated from Company to Company, and there was the great noise of the scraping bayonets coming from scabbards. The line flickered with reflections from the seventeen inch blades.
“Forward!” The last light was draining in the west over Portugal, there was a cheer from the British, the line surged forward towards the battered French, but the battle had one surprise left.
Sharpe heard the hooves behind him, and took no notice, and then the urgency of the sound, the speed of the single horse, made him turn. A lone cavalry officer, resplendent in blue and silver, his sabre drawn, was galloping at the French line. He was shouting like a maniac. “Wait! Wait!”
The Company nearest Sharpe heard the sound, checked, and a Sergeant forced a gap in the files. Officers shouted at the cavalryman, but he took no notice, just urged on his horse that was labouring with the effort, raked by spurs, and the turf flew in clods behind the hooves. “Wait! Wait!” The officer went for the gap and the French;
