Sharpe's Fortress (42 page)
“You sold me to Jama, didn't you?” Sharpe said.
“But that was a mistake, Obadiah, because I beat his jet tis into pulp. I'll do that to
you now. But take your clothes off first.”
“You can't do this to me!” Hakeswill shouted, hoping to attract attention. His face
twitched.
"You can't do this!
“Gainst regulations, it is!”
“Strip, Obadiah,” Sharpe said.
“There are rules! Regulations! Says so in the scriptures!”
The claymore's point jabbed at Hakes wilTs throat, drawing blood from the scar that had
been left when they had tried to hang the young Obadiah. The pain quietened the Sergeant,
and Sharpe smiled.
“I half beat Captain Morris to death, Sergeant, so do you think it worries me that there
are rules which say I mustn't touch you? Now you've got a choice. You can strip naked, or you
can let me strip your corpse naked. I don't care which it is. I don't care if they bloody hang
me for your murder. It'd be worth it. So shut the hell up, and get your bloody clothes
off.”
Hakeswill looked for help, but there was none in sight, and the sword point twisted in his
broken skin and he gabbled that he was undressing himself, and he scrabbled at the rope
belt on his trousers, and tore the buttons out of his shirt.
“Don't kill me!” he shouted.
“I can't be killed! I can't die!” He pulled off the shirt, tugged off his boots and pulled
down his trousers.
“Now the foot cloths,” Sharpe said.
Hakeswill sat and unwrapped the filthy strips and so was left white and naked under the
terrible sun. Sharpe used the sword's tip to pull the clothes into a pile. He would search
them, extract the gems, then leave them.
“On your feet now, Obadiah,” he said, encouraging the naked man with the sword's
reddened tip.
“I can't die, Sharpie!” Hakeswill pleaded, his face racked by twitches.
"I can't! You tried! The tigers wouldn't eat me and the elephant wouldn't kill me. You
know why? Because I can't die! I've got an angel, I do, my own soul's angel and she looks
after me." He shouted the words, and all the while he was being pressed backwards by the
sword tip, and he danced on the rocks because they were so hot and his feet were bare.
“You can't kill me. The angel looks after me. It's Mother, Sharpie, that's who the angel
is, it's Mother all white and shiny. No, Sharpie, no! I can't die!” And the sword stabbed at
his belly and Hakeswill jumped back, and jumped back again when the tip slashed at his scrawny
ribs.
“They tried to hang me but they couldn't!” he declared.
“I dangled and I danced, and the rope wouldn't kill me, and here I am! I cannot die!” And
then he screamed, because the sword had stabbed one last time and Hakeswill had stepped back
to avoid the lunge, only this time there was no rock behind him, only a void, and he
screamed as he fell into the shadows of the snake pit.
He screamed again as he hit the stone floor with a thump.
“I can't die!”
he shouted triumphantly, and stared up at the black shape of his enemy.
“I can't die!” Hakeswill called again, then something sinuous and shadowy flickered to
his left and he had no time to worry about Sharpe.
He screamed, because the snakes were staring at him with hard flat eyes.
“Sharpie!” he shouted.
“Sharpie!”
But Sharpe had gone to collect the pile of rags.
And Hakeswill was alone with the serpents.
Wellesley heard the distant cheers, but could not tell whether it was his own men who
celebrated or the enemy who was making the noise. The smoke cloud that had hung so thick
and constant beyond the fortress faded.
He waited.
The defenders on the south wall still fought. They fired their cannon at the 74th's
skirmish line which, because it was well spread out and sheltered by the rocks on the steep
hillside, survived the sporadic cannonade. The smoke of the guns hung by the walls.
Wellesley looked at his watch. Four o'clock. If the fort had not fallen, then it would soon
be too late. Night would come and he would have to retreat ignominiously to the plain
below. The intermittent crackle of muskets from the north told him that something was
still happening, but whether it was men looting, or the sound of the defenders firing at
defeated attackers, he could not tell.
Then the guns on the south wall fell silent. Their smoke lingered, then drifted away in
the hot wind. Wellesley waited, expecting the cannon to fire again, but they remained
quiet.
“Maybe they've run,” he said. The green and gold flag still hung over the gate-tower, but
Wellesley could see no defenders there.
“If the fortress has fallen, sir,” Wallace pointed out, 'then why aren't they running
out of this gate?"
“Because they know we're here,” Wellesley said, and took out his telescope. By mistake
he had brought the new glass, the one he intended to give to Sharpe which had been engraved
with the date of Assaye, and he put it to his eye and examined the southern wall. The
embrasures were empty. The guns were still there, their blackened muzzles just showing,
but no men.
“I think we shall advance, Wallace,” Wellesley said, snapping the glass shut.
“It could be a trap, sir.”
“We shall advance,” Wellesley said firmly.
The 74th marched with colours flying, drummers beating and pipers playing. A battalion
of sepoys followed, and the two regiments made a brave sight as they climbed the last
stretch of the steep road, but still the great Southern Gate of Gawilghur was closed before
them.
Wellesley spurred ahead, half expecting the defenders to spring a surprise and appear
on the ramparts, but instead it was a redcoat who suddenly showed there and Wellesley's
heart leaped with relief. He could sail home to England with another victory in his
pocket.
The redcoat on the wall slashed at the flag's halyard and Wellesley watched as the green
and gold banner fluttered down. Then the redcoat turned and shouted to someone inside the
fortress.
Wellesley spurred his horse. Just as he and his aides came into the shadow of the
gatehouse, the great gates began to open, hauled back by dirty-looking redcoats with
stained faces and broad grins. An officer stood just beyond the arch and, as the General
rode into sight, the officer brought his sword up in salute.
Wellesley returned the salute. The officer was drenched in blood, and the General
hoped that was not a reflection of the army's casualties.
Then he recognized the man.
“Mister Sharpe?” He sounded puzzled.
“Welcome to Gawilghur, sir,” Sharpe said.
“I thought you'd been captured?”
“I escaped, sir. Managed to join the attack.”
“So I see.” Wellesley glanced ahead. The fort seethed with jubilant redcoats and he knew
it would take till nightfall to restore order.
“You should see a surgeon, Mister Sharpe. I fear you're going to carry a scar on your
face.” He remembered the telescope, but decided he would give it to Sharpe later and so,
with a curt nod, he rode on.
Sharpe stood and watched the 74th march in. They had not wanted him, because he was not a
gentleman. But, by God, he was a soldier, and he had opened the fort for them. He caught
Urquhart's eye, and Urquhart looked at the blood on Sharpe's face and at the crusting scabs on
Sharpe's sword, then looked away.
“Good afternoon, Urquhart,” Sharpe said loudly.
Urquhart spurred his horse.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant Colquhoun,” Sharpe said.
Colquhoun marched doggedly on.
Sharpe smiled. He had proved whatever he had set out to prove, and what was that? That he
was a soldier, but he had always known that. He was a soldier, and he would stay a soldier,
and if that meant wearing a green jacket instead of a red, then so be it. But he was a
soldier, and he had proved it in the heat and blood of Gawilghur. It was the fastness in the
sky, the stronghold that could not fall, and now it was Sharpe's fortress.
I have done the 94th, sometimes known as the Scotch Brigade, and their
Light Company which was led by Captain Campbell, a great disservice, for it was they, and
not Sharpe, who found the route up the side of the ravine and then across the Inner Fort's wall
at Gawil-ghur, and who then assailed the gatehouse from the inside and, by opening the
succession of gates, allowed the rest of the attacking force into the fortress. Fictional
heroes steal other men's thunder, and I trust the Scots will forgive Sharpe. The Captain
Campbell whose initiative broke Gawilghur's defence was not the same Campbell who was one
of Wellesley's aides (and who had been the hero at Ahmednuggur).
The 33rd's Light Company was not at Gawilghur; indeed the only British infantry there
were Scottish regiments, the same Scotsmen who shocked Scindia's army into rout at Assaye
and took the brunt of the Arab attack at Argaum. Wellesley's war against the Mahrattas, which
ended in complete victory at Gawilghur, was thus won by Madrassi sepoys and Scottish
Highlanders, and it was an extraordinary victory.
The battle of Assaye, described in Sharpe's Triumph, was the engagement which destroyed
the cohesion of the Mahratta Confederation. Scindia, the most powerful of the princes,
was so shocked by the defeat that he sued for peace, while the Rajah of Berar's troops,
deserted by their allies, fought on. Undoubtedly their best strategy would have been an
immediate retreat to Gawilghur, but Manu Bappoo must have decided that he could stop the
British and so decided to make his stand at Argaum. The battle happened much as described
in this novel; it began with an apparent Mahratta advantage when the sepoys on the right
of Wellesley's line panicked, but the General calmed them, brought them back, then launched
his line to victory. The Scots, just as they had been at Assaye, were his shock troops, and
they destroyed the Arab regiment that was the best of Bappoo's infantry. There were no
Cobras in Bappoo's army, and though William Dodd existed, and was a renegade fugitive from
the East India Company army, there is no record of his having served Berar. The survivors
of Argaum retreated north to Gawilghur.
Gawilghur is still a mightily impressive fortress, sprawling over its vast headland high
above the Deccan Plain. It is deserted now, and was never again to be used as a stronghold
after the storming on 15 December 1803. The fort was returned to the Mahrattas after they
made peace with the British, and they never repaired the breaches which are still there, and,
though much overgrown, capable of being climbed. No such breaches remain in Europe, and it
was instructive to discover just how steep they are, and how difficult to negotiate,
even unencumbered by a musket or sword. The great iron gun which killed five of the
attackers with a single shot still lies on its emplacement in the Inner Fort, though its
carriage has long decayed and the barrel is disfigured with graffiti.
Most of the buildings in the Inner Fort have vanished, or else are so overgrown as to be
invisible. There is, alas, no snake pit there. The major gatehouses are still intact,
without their gates, and a visitor can only marvel at the suicidal bravery of the men who
climbed from the ravine to enter the twisting deathtrap of the Inner Fort's northern
gate.
Defeat would surely have been their reward, had not Campbell and his Light Company found
a way up the side of the ravine and, with the help of a ladder, scaled the wall and so attacked
the gates from the inside. By then Beny Singh, the Killadar, had already poisoned his wives,
lovers and daughters. He died, like Manu Bappoo, with his sword in his hand.
Manu Bappoo almost certainly died in the breaches and not, as the novel says, in the
ravine, though that was where most of his men died, trapped between the attackers who had
captured the Outer Fort and the ySth who were climbing the road from the plain. They should
have found refuge within the Inner Fort, and bolstered its de fences but for reasons that
have never been explained, the Inner Fort's gates were fast shut against the survivors of the
Outer Fort's garrison.
Elizabeth Longford, in Wellington, The Years of the Sword, quotes the late Jac Weller as
saying of Gawilghur, 'three reasonably effective troops of Boy Scouts armed with rocks
could have kept out several times their number of professional soldiers'. It is
difficult to disagree.
Manu Bappoo and Beny Singh made no effort to protect the Outer Fort's walls with a
glacis, which was their primary mistake, but their real stronghold was the Inner Fort, and
it fell far too swiftly. The supposition is that the defenders were thoroughly
demoralized, and the few British casualties (about 150), most of them killed or wounded in
the assault on the gatehouse, testify to the swiftness of the victory. A hundred and
fifty sounds like a small 'butcher's bill', and so it is, but that should not hide the horror
of the fight for the Inner Fort's gatehouse where Kenny died.
That fight occurred in a very small space and, for a brief while, must have been as ghastly
as, say, the struggle for Badajoz's breaches nine years later. Campbell's escalade up the
precipice saved an enormous number of lives and cut a nasty fight blessedly short. Indeed,
the victory was so quick, and so cheaply gained, that a recent biography of the Duke of
Wellington (in 1803 he was still Sir Arthur Wellesley) accords the siege less than three
lines, yet to the redcoat who was sweating up the hill to the plateau and who was expected to
carry his firelock and bayonet across the rocky isthmus to the breaches in the double walls
it was a significant place and his victory remarkable.
The real significance of Gawilghur lay in the future. Sir Arthur Wellesley had now
witnessed the assault of the breach at Seringapatam, had escaladed the walls of
Ahmednuggur and swept over the great de fences of Gawilghur. In Portugal and Spain,
confronted by even greater de fences manned by determined French soldiers, it is claimed
that he underestimated the difficulties of siege work, having been lulled into
complacency by the ease of his Indian victories. There may be truth in that, and at
Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Burgos and San Sebastian he took dreadful casualties. My own
suspicion is that he did not so much underestimate the ability of de fences to withstand
him, as overestimate the capacity of British troops to get through those de fences and,
astonishingly, they usually lived up to his expectations. And it was Scotsmen who gave
him those high expectations: the Scots who used four ladders to capture a city at
Ahmednuggur and one ladder to bring down the great fortress of Gawilghur. Their bravery
helped disguise the fact that sieges were terrible work, so terrible that the troops,
regardless of their commander's wishes, regarded a captured stronghold as their own
property, to destroy and violate as they wished. This was their revenge for the horrors
that the defenders had inflicted on them, and there was undoubtedly a vast slaughter
inside Gawilghur once the victory was gained. Many of the defenders must have escaped down
the steep cliffs, but perhaps half of the seven or eight thousand died in an orgy of
revenge.
