Sharpe’s Siege: The Winter Campaign, 1814

Some of his men slept, some clenched muskets, others played cribbage or dice. They were nervous, but they took comfort from their captain’s blithe confidence.

Killick’s confidence was a pretence. He was as nervous as any of his men, and regretting his impulsive offer to defend the fort’s landward approaches. It was not that the American was afraid of a fight, but it was one thing to fight at sea, where he knew the meaning of every catspaw on the water and where he could use his skill at the Thuella’s helm to run confusion about his enemies, and quite another to contemplate a fight on dry land. It was, as his Irish lieutenant would say, a horse of a different colour, and Cornelius Killick was not sure he liked the colour.

He hated the fact that the land was such a clogging, cloying platform for a fight. A ship moved guns much faster than wheels, and there was nowhere to hide at sea. There, in the clean wind, a fight was open and undisguised, while here any bush could hide an enemy. Killick was keenly aware that he had never trained as a soldier, nor even experienced a battle on land, yet he had made the offer to Commandant Lassan, and so, in this chill wind, he was preparing to offer battle if the British Marines came.

Yet if Cornelius Killick had doubts to plague his confidence, he also had compensating encouragements. With him were the six twelve-pounder guns that had been swung out of the Thuella’s hold and mounted on their carriages. Their solidity gave Killick an odd comfort. The guns, so beautifully designed and yet so functional in their appearance, offered an implicit promise of victory. The enemy would come with muskets and be faced with these weapons that Napoleon called his ‘beautiful daughters’. They were Gribeauval twelve-pounders, brute killers of the battlefield, massive.

To serve those guns Killick had sixty men; all of them trained in the use of cannon. The American knew well what fate the British might give to a captured privateer’s crew, so Killick had not ordered his men to give battle, but had instead invited their help. Such was their faith in him, and such their liking for him, that only two dozen men had declined this chance. Thus Killick would be served this day by volunteers, fighters all. How could impressed troops, led by arrogant, dandified officers, Killick asked himself, defeat such men as these?

A wind stirred the pines and drifted the fire’s smoke towards the village. No one was visible on the far ramparts of the fort, nor did any flag show.

‘Maybe the bastards won’t come today.’ Lieutenant Docherty poured himself some of the muddy coffee.

‘Maybe not.’ Killick leaned to the fire and lit a cigar. He felt a sudden pang that he should be forced to this unnatural fight or else lose his ship. He could not face losing the Thuella. ‘But if they do come, Liam, we’ll shock the bastards out of their skins.’ That was Killick’s third advantage; that he had the surprise of ambush on his side.

An hour later the first message arrived from Point Arcachon. Killick had posted four scouts, each one mounted on a lumbering carthorse, and the news came clumping northwards that Marines had landed safely and were already advancing along the tangle of sandy tracks that edged the beach.

‘Did they see you?’ Killick asked the gun-captain who brought the message.

‘No.’ The man was scornful of the Marines’ watchfulness.

Killick stood and clapped his hands. ‘We’re moving, lads! We’re moving!’ The Thuella’s crew had waited with the guns at a point midway between the beach paths and the inland road. Now Killick knew which route the British were taking and so the guns had to be manhandled westwards to bar that route.

Other messages came as the guns were shifted. A hundred and fifty Marines had landed; they had neither artillery nor horses, and all marched north. Other men had followed the Marines ashore, but they had stayed on the beach. The scouts, all four of them, came back to the ambush site.

Henri Lassan had chosen the place, and chosen well. The guns were sited at the edge of a pine wood that topped a shallow ridge that jutted into a spreading, flat expanse of sand that edged the dunes of the beach. Two cottages had stood in the sandy space, but both had burned down in the last few years and their charred remains were all that broke up the area across which the Marines must march.

The gun emplacement also offered Killick’s men protection. The twelve-pounders were shadowed by the pines, so that the grapeshot would blast, obscene and sudden, out of the darkness into the light. And even if the Marines were to counter-attack and brave the maelstrom of fire that would be slashing diagonally towards the sea they must climb a crumbling bank of sand that was six feet high and steep enough to demand the help of hands if it was to be negotiated.

Twenty men went back for the gun limbers, while the rest of Killick’s men prepared the big guns for battle. The barrels had to be shifted on the carriages from their travelling position into the fighting stance, then trunnions must be clamped with iron capsquares as powder and grapeshot were rammed into cold muzzles. The grapeshot was adapted from the stocks taken from the Thuella’s magazine, and each canvas-wrapped bundle of balls would be propelled by four pounds and four ounces of French powder that came in a serge bag shaped to the cannon’s breech. Vent-prickers slid into touch-holes to break the powder bags, then tin tubes filled with finely mealed powder were rammed down to carry the fire to the charge.

Killick stooped at the breech of one gun. He squinted through the tangent sights, set for point blank range, then gave the brass handle of the elevating screw a quarter turn. Satisfied, he went to each of the other guns and stared down the sights to imagine the tangling death he would cause to flicker above the clearing’s sand. The guns’ mute promise of terrible power gave Killick a welcome surge of confidence.

‘The Commandant thanks you, Cornelius.’ Lieutenant Liam Docherty had warned Commandant Lassan that the British had landed. ‘He wishes you joy of the meeting.’

Killick gave his swooping, bellowing laugh as if in anticipation of victory. ‘They’ll not be here for six hours yet, Liam,’ he paused to light a cigar, ‘but we’ll kill the sons of devils when they do come, eh?’

‘We will indeed.’ For Liam Docherty the coming battle would be one tiny shard of the vengeance he took on the British for their savagery in suppressing the rebellion of the United Irishmen. Docherty’s father had been hanged as a rebel in Ireland, casually strung up beside a peat-dark stream with as little ceremony as might attend the death of a rabid dog, and the boy’s mother, rearing him in America, would not let him forget. Nor did Liam Docherty wish to forget. He imagined the redcoats coming into the clearing and he relished the savage surprise that would be unleashed from the six gun barrels.

Some villagers, made curious by the strange happenings to the south, had come into the trees to watch the Americans prepare. Cornelius Killick welcomed them. In the night he had been besieged by fears, by imaginings of disaster, but now, when the shape of the enemy’s approach was plain and the skilful placing of his ambush apparent, he felt sure of success and was glad that this victory would be witnessed by spectators. ‘I wonder what they’d say in Marblehead if they could see us now,’ he said happily to Docherty.

Liam Docherty thought that few people in Marblehead would be astonished by this new adventure of Killick’s. Cornelius Killick had always had the reputation of being a reckless rogue. ‘Maybe they’ll name a street after you.’

‘A street? Why not rename the bloody town?’

Only one thing remained to be done, and that was done with a due solemnity. Cornelius Killick unfurled the great ensign that he had fetched from the Thuella. Its stars and stripes had been sewn together by a committee of Marblehead ladies, then blessed by a Presbyterian Minister who had prayed that the flag would see much slaughter of the Republic’s enemies. This day, Killick promised himself, it would. The flag, drooping in the windless space beneath the trees, would be carried forward at the first gunshot and it would stand proud as the gunners worked and as the enemy fell.

Cornelius Killick and the men of the Thuella were ready.

The beach was strangely deserted when the Marines were gone. The wind was cold as Sharpe’s men tumbled uncertainly through the surf to drag their packs, greatcoats and weapons to the dunes.

‘One more boat, sir,’ Frederickson said unnecessarily.

Sharpe grunted. The clouds had hidden the sun again and he could see little inland through his telescope. On one far hill a track seemed to wind uncertainly upwards, but there was no visible village or church that might correspond to the scanty map that Frederickson spread on the sand. ‘The captain said we were three miles south of Point Arcachon, here.’

Sharpe knew the map by heart and did not bother to glance down. ‘There are no roads eastwards. Our quickest route is up to Arcachon then use the Bordeaux road.’

‘Follow the web-foots on the beach?’

‘Christ, no.’ Sharpe did not care if he never saw Bampfylde again. ‘We’ll take the inland road.’ He turned. The Comte de Maquerre was standing disconsolate by the tideline watching as his two horses, each given a long lead rope, were unceremoniously dumped overboard. The horses would have to swim now, tethered to the Amelie’s boat, and the Count feared for their loss.

Frederickson still stared at the map. ‘How are you going to stop Bampfylde invading France?’

‘By refusing to believe that prinked-up bastard.’ Sharpe nodded towards the Frenchman. ‘I should have heaved him overboard last night.’

‘I could have an accident with a rifle?’ Frederickson offered helpfully.

It was a cheerful thought for a cold morning, but Sharpe shook his head before turning to watch a working party of Riflemen wrestling supplies through the surf. ‘We can jettison the bloody ladders,’ Sharpe said sourly. He wondered how Bampfylde proposed crossing the ditches and walls of the Teste de Buch without scaling-ladders, then dismissed the problem as irrelevant now. Sharpe’s job now was to go inland, ambush a military convoy on the great road that led southwards, and try to discover the mood of Bordeaux from the captives he would take. ‘We’ll split the supplies between the men. What we can’t carry, we leave.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Frederickson folded the map and pushed it into his pouch. ‘You’ll leave the order of march to me?’

But Sharpe did not reply. He was staring at a group of seated Riflemen who sheltered from the icy wind in a fold of the sand-dunes. ‘You!’ he bellowed, ‘come here!’

The Riflemen’s faces, bland with the innocence that always greeted an officer’s anger, turned to stare at Sharpe, but one man stood, shook sand from his green jacket, and started towards the two officers. ‘Did you know?’ Sharpe turned furiously on Frederickson.

‘No,’ Frederickson lied.

Sharpe looked towards the man he had summoned. ‘You stupid bloody fool!’

‘Sir.’

‘Jesus Christ! I make you a bloody RSM and what do you do? You throw it away!’

Patrick Harper’s cheek was even more swollen from the toothache and, as though it explained all, he touched the swelling. ‘It was this, sir.’

The reply took the wind from Sharpe’s anger. He stared at the huge Irishman who gave him a lopsided grin in return. ‘Your tooth?’ Sharpe asked menacingly.

‘I went to the surgeon to have the tooth pulled, so I did, sir, and he gives me some rum against the pain, so he does, sir, and I think I must have taken a drop too much, sir, and the next thing I know is I’m on a ship, sir, and the bastard still hasn’t touched the tooth, nor has he, sir, and the only explanation I can possibly think of, sir, is that in my legally inebriated condition some kind soul presumed I was one of Captain Frederickson’s men and put me on to the Amelie.’ Harper paused in his fluent, practised lie. ‘It was the very last thing I wanted, sir. Honest!’

‘You lying bastard,’ Sharpe said.

‘Maybe, sir, but it’s the truth so help me God.’ Patrick Harper, delighted with both his exploit and explanation, grinned at his officer. The grin spoke the real truth; that the two of them always fought together and Harper was determined that it should stay that way. The grin also implied that Major Richard Sharpe would somehow avert the righteous wrath of the Army from Harper’s innocent head.

‘So your tooth still isn’t pulled?’ Sharpe asked.

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Then I’ll damn well pull it now,’ Sharpe said.

Harper took a step backwards. He was four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, with muscles to match his size, while on his shoulders were slung a rifle and his fearful seven-barrelled gun, but over his broad, swollen face there suddenly appeared a look of sheer terror. ‘You’ll not pull the tooth, sir.’

‘I damn well will.’ Sharpe turned to Frederickson. ‘Find me some pincers, Captain.’

Frederickson’s hand instinctively went to the pouch at his belt, then checked. ‘I’ll ask the men, sir.’

Harper blanched. ‘Mr Sharpe! Sir! Please!’

‘Quiet!’ Sharpe stared at the huge Ulsterman. In truth he was relieved that Harper was here, but the Army was the Army and the relief could not be betrayed. ‘You’re a damned fool, RSM. What about your son?’

‘He’s a bit too young to fight yet, sir.’ Harper grinned, and Sharpe had to look away so that he did not return the grin.

‘No pincers, sir!’ Frederickson sounded disappointed, though Sharpe suspected Sweet William had made no kind of real search for the implement. ‘You’ll want us under way, sir?’

‘Inland. Sergeant Harper!’

‘Sir?’

‘Attach yourself to Captain Frederickson’s Company and assume whatever rank he sees fit to give you.’

‘Sir!’

Like beasts of burden the Riflemen shouldered packs, canteens, weapons, greatcoats and supplies. They went eastwards into the trees, then northwards on the country road that straggled between the few marsh hamlets of this barren coast.

It was not much of a road, merely a rutted cart track that wound between brush and pine and edged past great swamps where long-legged wading birds flapped slowly into the winter air as the Riflemen passed. The Green Jackets marched fast, as they were trained to march, and always, a quarter mile ahead, the picquets signalled back towards Sharpe that the road was clear.

It seemed strange to be this deep in France. This was the land of Bonaparte, the enemy land, and between Sharpe and Bordeaux, indeed between Sharpe and Paris, there were no friendly troops. A single squadron of enemy cavalry could cut this march into butcher’s offal, yet the Green Jackets marched undisturbed and unseen.

‘If we go at this pace,’ Frederickson said, ‘we’ll overtake the Marines.’

‘It had occurred to me,’ Sharpe said mildly.

The eye-patched man stared at Sharpe. ‘You’re not thinking of taking the …’

‘No,’ Sharpe interrupted. ‘If Bampfylde wants to take the fort, he can. But if the map’s right we have to go close to Arcachon, so we might take a look at the fort before we turn eastwards.’

Patrick Harper carried the picquets’ packs and coats as punishment, but the extra weight made no difference to his marching pace. His tooth bothered him; the pain of that was foul and throbbing, but he had no other cares in the world. He had followed Sharpe because it was unthinkable to stay behind when Sharpe went off on his own. Harper had seen that happen before and the Major had nearly killed himself in Burgos Castle as a result. Besides, Jane Sharpe, giving him the oil of cloves, had suggested he stowed away, Isabella had insisted he stay with the Major, and Captain Frederickson had turned his blind eye to Harper’s presence. Harper felt he was in his proper place; with Sharpe and with a column of Riflemen marching to battle.

Their green jackets and dark trousers melded with the cloud-darkened pines. The 60th had been raised for just such terrain, the American wilderness, and Sharpe, turning sometimes to watch the men, could see how well chosen the uniform was. At a hundred paces an unmoving man could be invisible. For a moment Sharpe felt the sudden pride of a Rifleman. The Rifles, he believed as an article of his soldier’s faith, were simply, indisputably, the finest troops in all the world.

They fought like demons and were made more deadly because they were trained, unlike other infantry, to fight independently. These men, in danger, would not look to an officer or sergeant for instruction, but would know, thanks to their training, just what to do. They were mostly squat and ugly men, toothless and pinched-faced, villainous and foul-mouthed, but on a battlefield they were kings, and victory was their common coin.

They could fight and they could march. God, but they could march! In ’09, trying to reach the carnage of Talavera, the Light Division had marched forty-two hilly miles in twenty-six hours and had arrived in good order, weapons primed, and ready to fight. These men marched thus now. They did it unthinkingly, not knowing that the pace they unconsciously assumed was the fastest marching pace of all the world’s armies. They were Riflemen, the finest of the best, and they were going north to war.

While to their west, on the less happy trails that edged the tumbled dunes, the Marines faltered.

It was not their fault. For months now, on a diet of worm-infested biscuit, rotting meat, foul water and rum, they had been immured in the forecastles of the great ships that weathered the Biscay storms. They were not hardened to marching, and the sand they crossed gave treacherous footing and chafed their boots on softened skin. Their muskets, all of the heavy Sea Service pattern, seemed to grow heavier by the mile. Their chest straps, whitened and taut, constricted labouring lungs. It was a cold day, but sweat stung their eyes while the muscles at the backs of their legs burned like fire. Some of the men were burdened by ropes and grapnel hooks that they would use to scale the fort’s wall instead of the long ladders that Bampfylde had deemed unnecessary for the Marines.

‘We shall call a halt.’ Captain Bampfylde did not do it for the men’s benefit, but his own. If they laboured, he suffered. His handmade boots had rubbed his right heel raw and raised blisters on his toes. The leather band of his bicorne hat was like a ring of steel and his white breeches were cutting into his crotch like a sawhorse.

The captain was regretting his intrepidity. He had been eager to lead these men into battle, and that could not be done from the deck of the Vengeance any more than it could be done from the quarterdeck of the Scylla. That frigate, under Captain Grant, would nose into the Arcachon channel to draw the fire of what few defenders might infest the fort’s bastions. Once those defenders were occupied with the frigate, and while their gaze was fastened seawards, the Marines would assault the empty landward ramparts. It was that assault which would capture the imagination of the British public when it was printed in the Naval Gazette, not the old story of a ship bombarding a battery.

Captain of Marines Palmer saluted Bampfylde. ‘We’re behind time, sir.’

‘God damn it, Palmer, if I require your contribution then I shall ask for it!’

‘Sir!’ Palmer was unmoved by Bampfylde’s anger. Neil Palmer was ten years older than Bampfylde and too experienced to be worried by the petulance of yet another ambitious young captain who resented the fame gained by Nelson’s band of brothers. ‘I’ll put picquets out, sir?’

‘Do it!’ Bampfylde subsided against the trunk of a tree. He wanted to haul off his precious boots and dabble his sore feet in the shallows of the sea, but he dared not betray such weakness in front of his men.

‘Water, sir?’ Lieutenant Ford offered a canteen.

‘After you, Ford.’ Bampfylde knew such behaviour was proper, and he was a man eager to be seen to behave heroically in all things.

He consoled himself that his discomfort was a small price to pay for the renown that he would win this day. The Marines might come late to the fortress, but the fortress would fall just the same, and the blisters on his feet would be forgotten in the blaze of glory. He opened his watch, saw they had already rested ten minutes, but decided a few more minutes could not hurt. He stretched out tired legs, tipped his hat forward, and polished the news of victory that he would write this night.

While a hundred yards away, standing on a sudden rise of sandy soil that made a bare ridge through the thin pines, Captain Palmer stared at the countryside through a heavy, ancient telescope. Far to the north, beyond the fading ridges of sand and conifers, a rainstorm misted the land like a vast curtain. The rain lifted for a brief instant and Palmer thought he saw the malevolent, dark shape of the fort hull-down on the horizon, but, as the rain closed again on his view, he could not be certain of what he had seen.

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