General Lapeña and his aides were on a small wooded rise where a dozen civilians were arguing. The Spanish general nodded a distant greeting to Sir Thomas. “They are not sure of the way,” Lapeña said, indicating the civilians.
“Who are they?”
“Our guides, of course.”
“And they don’t know the way?”
“They do,” Lapeña said, “but they know different ways.” Lapeña smiled and shrugged as if to suggest such things were inevitable.
“Where’s the sea?” Sir Thomas demanded. The guides looked solemnly at Sir Thomas and then all pointed westward and agreed that the sea lay that way. “Which would make sense,” Sir Thomas said caustically, nodding toward the east where the sky was suffused with new light, “because the sun has a habit of rising in the east and the sea lies to the west, which means our route to Barrosa lies that way.” He pointed north.
Lapeña looked offended. “At night, Sir Thomas, there is no sun to guide us.”
“That’s what happens when you march at night!” Sir Thomas snarled. “You get lost.”
The march began again, now following tracks across an undulating heath dotted with pinewoods. The sea came into sight soon after the sun rose. The track led north above a long sandy beach where the surf broke and seethed before sliding back to meet the next crashing wave. Far out to sea a ship bore southward, only her topsails visible above the horizon. Sir Thomas, riding on the inland flank of his leading brigade, climbed a sandy hill and saw three watchtowers punctuating the coast ahead, relics of the days when Moorish pirates sailed from the Straits of Gibraltar to murder, rob, and enslave. “The nearest, Sir Thomas, is the tower at Puerco,” his liaison officer told him. “Beyond that is the tower of Barrosa, and the furthest is at Bermeja.”
“Where’s Conil?”
“Oh, we skirted Conil in the night,” the liaison officer said. “It is behind us now.”
Sir Thomas glanced at his tired troops who marched with heads down, silent. He looked north again and saw, beyond the tower at Bermeja, the long isthmus leading to Cádiz that was a white blur on the horizon. “We’ve wasted our time, haven’t we?” he said.
“Oh no, Sir Thomas. I am sure General Lapeña means to attack.”
“He’s marching for home,” Sir Thomas said wearily, “and you know it.” He leaned forward on his saddle pommel and suddenly felt every one of his sixty-three years. He knew Lapeña was hurrying for home now. Doña Manolito had no intention of turning east to attack the French; he just wanted to be in Cádiz where, doubtless, he would boast of having marched across Andalusia in defiance of Marshal Victor.
“Sir Thomas!” Lord William Russell spurred his horse toward the general. “There, sir.”
Lord William was pointing north and east. He gave Sir Thomas a telescope and the general extended the tubes and, using Lord William’s shoulder as a slightly unsteady rest, saw the enemy. Not dragoons this time, but infantry. A mass of infantry half hidden by trees.
“Those are the forces masking Chiclana,” the liaison officer declared confidently.
“Or the forces marching to intercept us?” Sir Thomas suggested.
“We know they have troops at Chiclana,” the liaison officer said.
Sir Thomas could not see whether the distant troops were marching or not. He collapsed the glass. “You will go to General Lapeña,” he told the liaison officer, “and give him my compliments, and tell him there is French infantry on our right flank.” The liaison officer turned his horse, but Sir Thomas checked him. The Scotsman was looking ahead and could see a hill just inland of Barrosa, a hill with a ruin on its summit and a place that would offer a position of strength. It was the obvious place to post men if the French were planning an attack. Make Victor’s forces fight uphill, make them die on the slope, and, when they were beaten, march on Chiclana. “Tell the general,” he told the liaison officer, “that we are ready to turn and attack on his orders. Go!”
The liaison officer spurred away. Sir Thomas looked again at the hill above Barrosa and reckoned that the brief and so far disastrous campaign could yet be saved. But then, from far ahead, came the crackle of gunfire. The sound rose and fell in the wind, sometimes almost drowned by the crash of the endless waves, but it was unmistakable, the thorn-burning snap and splintering noise of musket volleys. Sir Thomas stood in his stirrups and stared. He was waiting for the thick smoke of the powder to reveal where the fighting took place, and at last he saw it. It was smearing the beach beyond the third watchtower, but still short of the pontoon bridge that led back to the city. Which meant that the French had already cut them off and were now barring the road to Cádiz and, worse, much worse, were almost certainly advancing from the inland flank. Marshal Victor had the allied force exactly where he wanted it: between his army and the sea. He had them at his mercy.
CHAPTER 10
I T’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 Lapeña’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 Lapeña’s fight. If the fifteen thousand men under Doña 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 Cádiz 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 the
m 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 Lapeña’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 Lapeña’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, François!” 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 expected them to fight hard just as he led them hard. He was, all French soldiers said, a brave and a good man. Le beau soleil. And he was no fool. He knew that Villatte’s infantry, unsupported by close artillery, could not stand against the approaching Spaniards, but they could delay Lapeña. They could hold Lapeña’s forces on the narrowing beach while Victor’s other two divisions, those of Leval and Ruffin, worked around their rear, and then the trap would be sprung. The allied army would be driven into the narrowing funnel that ended at the Rio Sancti Petri and, though Villatte’s men would doubtless have to give way in front of the increasing pressure, the other two divisions would come from behind like avenging angels. Only a few Spaniards and Britons could hope to cross the pontoon bridge; the rest would be herded and slaughtered until, inevitably, the survivors surrendered. And it would be simple! The allied army, apparently oblivious of the fate that waited for it, was still in line of march, stretching for three miles along the straggling coast road. The marshal had watched their progress from Tarifa with growing astonishment; he had watched them haver and change course and stop and start and change direction again, and he came to understand that he was opposing enemy generals who did not know their business. It would all be so easy.
Now Villatte was across the creek and in place. He was the anvil. And the two sledgehammers, Leval and Ruffin, were ready to attack. Marshal Victor, from the summit of a hill on the inland heath, gave a last survey of his chosen battlefield and liked what he saw. On his right, closest to Cádiz, was the Almanza Creek, which he could cross with infantry but not with artillery, so he would let Villatte fight his battle there with musketry alone. In the center, south of the creek, was a stretch of heathland ending in a thick pinewood that hid his view of the sea. The enemy column, his scouts reported, was mostly strung along the track that ran inside that wood, so Marshal Victor would send General Leval’s division to attack the pinewood and break through to the beach beyond. Such an attack would be threatened on its left flank by a hill that also hid the sea. It was not much of a hill—Victor guessed it rose no more than two hundred feet above the surrounding heath—but it was steep enough and it was crowned by a ruined chapel and a stand of wind-bent trees. The hill, astonishingly, was empty of troops, though Victor did not believe his enemies would be so foolish as to leave it unguarded. Occupied or not, the hill must be taken and the pinewood captured. Then Victor’s two divisions could turn north up the shore and drive the remnants of the allied army to destruction in the narrowing space between the sea and the creek. “It will be a rabbit hunt!” Victor promised his aides. “A rabbit hunt! So hurr
y! Hurry! I want my bunnies in the pot by lunchtime!”
SIR THOMAS had his eyes fixed on the hill crowned by a ruin. He galloped along the rough track that curled around the seaward side of the hill and discovered a Spanish brigade marching there. The brigade contained five battalions of troops and a battery of artillery, all of whom were under Sir Thomas’s command because they followed the baggage and Lapeña had agreed that every unit behind the baggage would fall under Sir Thomas’s authority. He ordered the Spaniards, both infantry and artillery, to the top of the hill. “You will hold there,” he instructed their commander. The brigade was the nearest troops to the hill, an accident of where they happened to be when Sir Thomas decided to garrison the height, but the Scotsman was nervous of entrusting the army’s rear to an unknown Spanish brigade. He turned his horse, its hooves kicking up sand, and found the battalion of flank companies from the Gibraltar garrison. “Major Browne!”
“At your service, Sir Thomas!” Browne swept off his hat. He was a burly man, red-faced, and eternally cheerful.
“Your fellows are stout, Browne?”
“Every man jack a hero, Sir Thomas.”
Sir Thomas twisted in his saddle. He was on the coast road where it passed through a miserable village called Barroso. There was a watchtower there, built long ago to guard against enemies from the sea, and he had sent an aide to climb the tower, but it gave a poor view inland. Pinewoods edged the coast here and they hid everything to the east, but common sense told Sir Thomas that the French must attack the hill, which was the highest point on the coast. “The devils are out there somewhere,” Sir Thomas said, pointing east, “and our lord and master tells me they’re not coming here, but I don’t believe it, Major. And I don’t want the devils on that hill. You see those Spaniards?” He nodded toward the five battalions toiling up the slope. “Reinforce them, Browne, and hold the hill.”