Sharpe's Havoc (32 page)

Soult heaped his plate with liver and bacon, then took his seat. “They’re swatting
sentries,” he said, “so what are we doing?”

“Counter-battery fire, sir,” the aide answered. “You don’t have any kidneys, sir? Can I
bring you some?”

“Oh do, Cailloux. I like kidneys. Any news from the Castelo?” The Castelo de Sao was on
the Douro’s north bank where the river met the sea and was heavily garrisoned to fight off a
British seaborne assault.

“They report two frigates just out of range, sir, but no other craft in sight.“

“He dithers, doesn’t he?” Soult said with satisfaction. “This Wellesley, he’s a ditherer.
Help yourself to the coffee, Colonel,” he told Christopher, “and if you would be so kind, a
cup for me as well. Thank you.” Soult took a bread roll and some butter. “I talked with
Vuillard last night,” the Marshal said, “and he’s making excuses. Hundreds of
excuses!”

“Another day, sir,” Christopher said, “and we would have captured the hill. Kate, her eyes
red, looked down at her empty plate. Nous, her husband had said, “we.”

“Another day?” Soult responded scornfully. “He should have taken it in a short minute
the very first day he arrived!” Soult had recalled Vuillard and his men from Vila Real de
Zedes the instant he heard that the British and Portuguese were advancing from Coimbra, but
he had been annoyed that so many men had failed to dislodge so small a force. Not that it
mattered; what mattered now was that Wellesley had to be taught a lesson.

Soult did not think that should prove too difficult. He knew Wellesley had a small army and
was weak in artillery. He knew that because Captain Argenton had been arrested five days
before and was now spilling all he knew and all he had observed on his second visit to the
British. Argenton had even met with Wellesley himself and the Frenchman had seen the
preparations being made for the allied advance, and the warning given to Soult by
Argenton had enabled the French regiments south of the river to skip backward out of the
way of a force sent to hook about their rear. So now Wellesley was stuck on the wrong side of
the Douro without any boats to make a crossing except for any craft brought by the British
navy and that, it seemed, was no danger at all. Two frigates dithering offshore! That was
hardly going to make the Duke of Dalmatia quake in his boots.

Argenton, who had been promised his life in exchange for information, had been captured
thanks to Christopher’s revelation, and that put Soult in the Englishman’s debt.
Christopher had also revealed the names of the other men in the plot, Donadieu of the 47th,
the brothers Lafitte of the 18th Dragoons, as well as three or four other experienced
officers, and Soult had decided to take no action against them. The arrest of Argenton
would be a warning to them, and they were all popular officers and it did not seem sensible
to stir up resentment in the army by a succession of firing squads. He would let the
officers know that he knew who they were, then hint that their lives depended on their
future conduct. Better to have such men in his pocket than in their graves.

Kate was crying. She made no noise, the tears just rolled down her cheeks and she brushed
them away in an attempt to hide her feelings, but Soult had noticed. “What is the matter?” he
asked gently.

“She fears, sir,” Christopher said.

“She fears?” Soult asked.

Christopher gestured toward the window which still rattled from the pummelling of the
cannons. “Women and battle, sir, don’t mix.”

“Only between the sheets,” Soult said genially. “Tell her,” he went on, “that she has
nothing to fear. The British cannot cross the river, and if they try they will be repulsed.
In a few weeks we shall be reinforced.” He paused so that the translation could be made and
hoped he was right in saying that reinforcements would come soon or else he did not know how
he was to continue his invasion of Portugal. “Then we shall march south to taste the joys
of Lisbon. Tell her we shall have peace by August. Ah! The cook!”

A plump Frenchman with extravagant mustaches had come into the room. He wore a
blood-streaked apron with a wicked-looking carving knife thrust into its belt. “You sent for
me” he sounded grudging-”sir.”

“Ah!” Soult pushed back his chair and rubbed his hands. “We must plan supper, Sergeant Deron,
supper! I intend to sit sixteen, so what do you suggest?”

“I have eels.”

“Eels!” Soult responded happily. “Stuffed with buttered whiting and mushrooms?
Excellent.”

“I shall fillet them,” Sergeant Deron said doggedly, “fry them with parsley and serve the
fillets with a red wine sauce. Then for an entree I have lamb. Very good lamb.”

“Good! I do like lamb,” Soult said. “You can make a caper sauce?”

“A caper sauce!” Deron looked disgusted. “The vinegar will drown the lamb,” he said
indignantly, “and it is good lamb, tender and fat.”

“A very delicate caper sauce, perhaps?” Soult suggested.

The guns rose to a sudden fury, shaking the windows and rattling the crystal peardrops of
the two chandeliers above the long table, but both the Marshal and the cook ignored the
sound. “What I will do,” Deron said in a voice which suggested that there could be no
discussion, “is bake the lamb with some goose fat.”

“Good, good,” Soult said.

“And garnish it with onions, ham and a few cepes.”

A harassed-looking officer, sweating and red-faced from the day’s heat, came into the
room. “Sir!”

“A moment,” Soult said, frowning, then looked back to Deron. “Onions, ham and some cepes?”
he repeated. “And perhaps we might add some lardons, Sergeant? Lardons go so well with
lamb.”

“I shall garnish it with a little chopped ham,” Deron said stoically, “some small onions
and a few cepes.”

Soult surrendered. “I know it will taste superb, quite superb. And Deron, thank you for
this breakfast. Thank you.”

“It would have been better eaten when it was cooked,” Deron said, then sniffed and went from
the room.

Soult beamed at the cook’s retreating back, then scowled at the newcomer who had
interrupted him. “You’re Captain Brossard, are you not? You wish some breakfast?” The
Marshal indicated with a butter knife that Brossard should take the seat at the end of the
table. “How’s General Foy?”

Brossard was an aide to Foy and he had no time for breakfast nor indeed to offer a report
on General Foy’s health. He had brought news and, for a second, he was too full of it to speak
properly, but then he controlled himself and pointed eastward. “The British, sir, they’re
in the seminary.”

Soult stared at him for a heartbeat, not quite believing what he heard. “They are what?” he
asked.

“British, sir, in the seminary.”

“But Quesnel assured me there were no boats!” Soult protested. Quesnel was the city’s
French governor.

“None on their bank, sir.” All the boats in the city had been pulled from the water and piled
on the quays where they were available for the French to use, but would be of no use to anyone
coming from the south. “But they’re nevertheless crossing,” Brossard said. “They’re already
on the hill.”

Soult felt his heart miss a beat. The seminary was on a hill that dominated the road to
Amarante, and that road was his lifeline back to the depots in Spain and also the
connection between the garrison in Oporto and General Loison’s men on the Tamega. If the
British cut that road then they could pick off the French army piece by piece and Soult’s
reputation would be destroyed along with his men. The Marshal stood, knocking over his chair
in his anger. “Tell General Foy to push them back into the river!” he roared. “Now! Go! Push
them into the river!”

The men hurried from the room, leaving Kate and Christopher alone, and Kate saw the look of
utter panic on her husband’s face and felt a fierce joy because of it. The windows rattled,
the chandeliers shivered and the British were coming.

“Well, well, well! We have Rifles among our congregation! We are blessed indeed. I didn’t
know any of the 95th were attached to the 1st Brigade.” The speaker was a burly, rubicund man
with a balding head and an affable face. If it were not for his uniform he would have looked
like a friendly farmer and Sharpe could imagine him in an English market town, leaning on a
hurdle, prodding plump sheep and waiting for a livestock auction to begin. “You are most
welcome,” he told Sharpe.

“That’s Daddy Hill,” Harris told Pendleton.

“Now, now, young man,” General Hill boomed, “you shouldn’t use an officer’s nickname
within his earshot. Liable to get you punished!”

“Sorry, sir.” Harris had not meant to speak so loudly.

“But you’re a rifleman so you’re forgiven. And a very scruffy rifleman too, I must say!
What is the army coming to when we don’t dress for battle, eh?” He beamed at Harris, then
fished in his pocket and brought out a handful of almonds. “Something to occupy your
tongue, young man.”

“Thank you, sir.”

There were now two generals on the seminary roof. General Hill, commander of the 1st
Brigade, whose forces were crossing the river and whose kindly nature had earned him the
nickname of “Daddy,” had joined Sir Edward Paget just in time to see three French battalions
come from the city’s eastern suburbs and form into two columns that would assault the
seminary hill. The three battalions were in the valley, being pushed and harried into
their ranks by sergeants and corporals. One column would come straight up at the seminary’s
facade while the other was forming near the Amarante road to assault the northern flank.
But the French were also aware that British reinforcements were constantly arriving at
the seminary and so they had sent a battery of guns to the river bank with orders to sink the
three barges. The columns waited for the gunners to open fire, probably hoping that once the
barges were sunk the gunners would turn their weapons onto the seminary.

And Sharpe, who had been wondering why Sir Arthur Wellesley had not put guns at the
convent across the river, saw that he had worried about nothing, for no sooner did the
French batteries appear than a dozen British guns, which had been parked out of sight at the
back of the convent terrace, were wheeled forward. “That’s the medicine for Frenchmen!”
General Hill exclaimed when the great row of guns appeared.

The first to fire was a five-and-a-half-inch howitzer, the British equivalent of the cannon
that had bombarded Sharpe on the watchtower hill. It was loaded with a spherical case shot,
a weapon that only Britain deployed, which had been invented by Lieutenant Colonel Shrapnel
and the manner of its working was kept a closely guarded secret. The shell, which was packed
with musket balls about a central charge of powder, was designed to shower those balls and
the scraps of its casing down onto enemy troops, yet to work properly it had to explode
well short of its target so that the shot’s forward momentum carried the lethal missiles on
to the enemy, and that precision demanded that the gunners cut their fuses with exquisite
skill. The howitzer’s gunner had that skill. The howitzer boomed and rocked back on its trail,
the shell arced over the river, leaving the telltale wisp of fuse smoke in its wake, then
exploded twenty yards short and twenty feet above the leading French gun just as it was
being unlimbered. The explosion tore the air red and white, the bullets and shattered
casing screamed down and every horse in the French team was eviscerated, and every man in
the French gun crew, all fourteen of them, was either killed or wounded, while the gun itself
was thrown off its carriage.

“Oh dear,” Hill said, forgetting the bloodthirsty welcome with which he had greeted the
sight of the British batteries. “Those poor fellows,” he said, “dear me.”

The cheers of the British soldiers in the seminary were drowned by the huge bellow of the
other British guns opening fire. From their eyrie on the southern bank they dominated the
French position and their spherical case, common shells and round shot swept the French guns
with dreadful effect. The French gunners abandoned their pieces, left their horses
squealing and dying, and fled, and then the British guns racked their elevating screws or
loosened the howitzer quoins and started to pour shot and shell into the massed ranks of the
nearest French column. They raked it from the flank, pouring round shot through close-packed
files, exploding case shot over their heads and killing with a terrible ease.

The French officers took one panicked look at their broken artillery and ordered the
infantry up the slope. Drummers at the heart of the two columns began their incessant rhythm
and the front rank stepped off as another round shot whipped through the files to plough a red
furrow in the blue uniforms. Men screamed and died, yet still the drums beat and the men
chanted their war cry, “Vive I’Empereur!”

Sharpe had seen columns before and was puzzled by them. The British army fought against
other infantry arrayed in two ranks and every man could use his musket, and if cavalry
threatened they marched and wheeled into a square of four ranks, and still every man could use
his musket, but the soldiers at the heart of the two French columns could never fire without
hitting the men in front.

These columns both had around forty men in a rank and twenty in each file. The French used
such a formation, a great battering block of men, because it was simpler to persuade
conscripts to advance in such an array and because, against badly trained troops, the very
sight of such a great mass of men was daunting. But against redcoats? It was suicide.

“Vive I’Empereur!” the French shouted in rhythm with the drums, though their shout was
half-hearted because both formations were climbing steep slopes and the men were
breathless.

“God save our good King George,” General Hill sang in a surprisingly fine tenor voice,
“long live our noble George, don’t shoot too high.” He sang the last four words and the men on
the roof grinned. Hagman hauled back the flint of his rifle and sighted on a French officer
who was laboring up the slope with a sword in his hand. Sharpe’s riflemen were on the
northern wing of the seminary, facing the column that was not being flayed by the British
guns on the convent terrace. A new battery had just deployed low on the river’s southern
bank and it was adding its fire to the two batteries on the convent hill, but none of the
British guns could see the northern column, which would have to be thrown back by rifle and
musket fire alone. Vicente’s Portuguese were manning the loopholes on the northern garden
wall and by now there were so many men in the seminary that every loophole had three or four
men so that each could fire, then step back to reload while another took his place. Sharpe saw
that some of the redcoats had green facings and cuffs. The Berkshires, he thought, which meant
the whole of the Buffs were in the building and new battalions were now arriving.