Sharpe’s Escape: The Bussaco Campaign, 1810

The taunting was evidently too much, for a battalion of brown-jacketed Portuguese light troops appeared on the crest and, scattered in a double skirmish chain, advanced down the ridge’s slope towards the spur. They went steadily downhill in two loose lines, one fifty paces behind the other, both spread out, giving a demonstration of how skirmishers went to war. Most troops fought shoulder to shoulder, but skirmishers like Sharpe went ahead of the line and, in the killing ground between the armies, tried to pick off the enemy skirmishers and then kill the officers behind so that when the two armies clashed, dense line against massive column, the enemy was already leaderless. Skirmishers rarely closed ranks. They fought close to the enemy where a bunch of men would make an easy target for enemy gunners, and so the light troops fought in loose formation, in pairs, one man shooting and then reloading as his comrade protected him.

The French watched the Portuguese come. They showed no alarm, nor did they advance any skirmishers of their own. The shells went on arcing down the slope, their detonations echoing dully from the eastern hills. The vast mass of the French were making their bivouacs, ignoring the small drama on the ridge, but a dozen cavalrymen, seeing easy meat in the scattered Portuguese skirmishers, kicked their horses up the hill.

By rights the cavalrymen should have decimated the skirmishers. Men in a loose formation were no match for swift cavalry and the French, half of them dragoons and the other half hussars, had drawn their long swords or curved sabres and were anticipating some practice cuts on helpless men. The Portuguese were armed with muskets and rifles, but once the guns were fired there would be no time to reload before the surviving horsemen reached them, and an empty gun was no defence against a dragoon’s long blade. The cavalry were curving around to assault the flank of the line, a dozen horsemen approaching four Portuguese on foot, but the ridge was too steep for the horses, which began to labour. The advantage of the cavalry was speed, but the ridge stole their speed so that the horses were struggling and a rifle cracked, the smoke jetting above the grass, and a horse stumbled, twisted away and collapsed. Another two rifles fired and the French, realizing that the ridge was their enemy, turned away and galloped recklessly downhill. The unhorsed hussar followed on foot, abandoning his dying horse with its precious equipment to the Portuguese who cheered their small victory.

‘I’m not sure the cazadores had orders to do that,’ a voice said behind Sharpe, who turned to see that Major Hogan had come to the ridge. ‘Hello, Richard,’ Hogan said cheerfully, ‘you look unhappy.’ He held out his hand for Sharpe’s telescope.

‘Cazadores?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Hunters. It’s what the Portuguese call their skirmishers.’ Hogan was staring at the brown-coated skirmishers as he spoke. ‘It’s rather a good name, don’t you think? Hunters? Better than greenjackets.’

‘I’ll stay a greenjacket,’ Sharpe said.

Hogan watched the cazadores for a few moments. Their riflemen had begun firing at the French on the spur, and that enemy prudently backed away. The Portuguese stayed where they were, not going down to the spur where the horsemen could attack them, content to have made their demonstration. Two guns fired, the shells falling into the empty space between the cazadores and the remaining French. ‘The Peer will be very unhappy,’ Hogan said. ‘He detests gunners firing at hopeless targets. It just reveals where his batteries are placed and it does no damn harm to the enemy.’ He turned the telescope to the valley and spent a long time looking at the enemy encampments beyond the stream. ‘We reckon Monsieur Masséna has sixty thousand men,’ he said, ‘and maybe a hundred guns.’

‘And us, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Fifty thousand and sixty,’ Hogan said, giving Sharpe back the telescope, ‘and half of ours are Portuguese.’

There was something in his tone that caught Sharpe’s attention. ‘Is that bad?’ he asked.

‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ Hogan said, then stamped his foot on the turf. ‘But we do have this.’ He meant the ridge.

‘Those lads seem eager enough.’ Sharpe nodded at the cazadores who were now retreating up the hill.

‘Eagerness in new troops is quickly wiped away by gunfire,’ Hogan said.

‘I doubt we’ll find out,’ Sharpe said. ‘The Crapauds won’t attack up here. They’re not mad.’

‘I certainly wouldn’t want to attack up this slope,’ Hogan agreed. ‘My suspicion is that they’ll spend the day staring at us, then go away.’

‘Back to Spain?’

‘Good Lord, no. If they did but know it there’s a fine road that loops round the top of this ridge,’ he pointed north, ‘and they don’t need to fight us here at all. They’ll find that road eventually. Pity, really. This would be a grand place to give them a bloody nose. But they may come. They reckon the Portuguese aren’t up to scratch, so perhaps they’ll think it’s worth an attempt.’

‘Are the Portuguese up to scratch?’ Sharpe asked. The gunfire had ended, leaving scorched grass and small patches of smoke on the spur. The French, denied their game of dare, were drifting back towards their lines.

‘We’ll find out about the Portuguese if the French decide to have at us,’ Hogan said grimly, then smiled. ‘Can you come for supper tonight?’

‘Tonight?’ Sharpe was surprised by the question.

‘I spoke with Colonel Lawford,’ Hogan said, ‘and he’s happy to spare you, so long as the French aren’t being a nuisance. Six o’clock, Richard, at the monastery. You know where that is?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Go north,’ Hogan pointed up the ridge, ‘until you see a great stone wall. Find a gap in it, go downhill through the trees until you discover a path and follow that till you see rooftops. There’ll be three of us sitting down.’

‘Three?’ Sharpe asked suspiciously.

‘You,’ Hogan said, ‘me and Major Ferreira.’

‘Ferreira!’ Sharpe exclaimed. ‘Why’s that slimy piece of traitorous shit having supper with us?’

Hogan sighed. ‘Has it occurred to you, Richard, that the two tons of flour might have been a bribe? Something to exchange for information?’

‘Was it?’

‘Ferreira says so. Do I believe him? I’m not sure. But whatever, Richard, I think he regrets what happened and wants to make his peace with us. It was his idea to have supper, and I must say I think it decent of him.’ Hogan saw Sharpe’s reluctance. ‘Truly, Richard. We don’t want resentments to fester between allies, do we?’

‘We don’t, sir?’

‘Six o’clock, Richard,’ Hogan said firmly, ‘and try to convey the impression that you’re enjoying yourself.’ The Irishman smiled, then walked back to the ridge’s crest where officers were pacing off the ground to determine where each battalion would be positioned. Sharpe wished he had found a good excuse to miss the supper. It was not Hogan’s company he wanted to avoid, but the Portuguese Major, and he felt increasingly bitter as he sat in the unseasonal warmth, watching the wind stir the heather beneath which an army, sixty thousand strong, had come to contest the ridge of Bussaco.

Sharpe spent the afternoon bringing the company books up to date, helped by Clayton, the company clerk, who had the annoying habit of saying the words aloud as he wrote them. ‘Isaiah Tongue, deceased,’ he said to himself, then blew on the ink. ‘Does he have a widow, sir?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘He’s owed four shillings and sixpence halfpenny is why I ask.’

‘Put it in the company fund.’

‘If we ever gets any wages,’ Clayton said gloomily. The company fund was where stray money went, not that there ever was much stray money, but wages owed to the dead were put there and, once in a while, it was spent on brandy, or to pay the company wives for the laundry. Some of those wives had come to the ridge’s crest where, joined by scores of civilians, they were gazing down at the French. The civilians had all been ordered to go south, to find the safety of the countryside around Lisbon that was protected by the Lines of Torres Vedras, but plainly many had disobeyed for there were scores of Portuguese folk gawping at the invaders. Some of the spectators had brought bread, cheese and wine and now sat in groups eating and talking and pointing at the French, and a dozen monks, all with bare feet, were among them.

‘Why don’t they wear shoes?’ Clayton asked.

‘God knows.’

Clayton frowned disapprovingly at a monk who had joined one of the small groups eating on the ridge. ‘Déjeuner à la fourchette,’ he said, sniffing with disapproval.

‘Day-jay what?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Dinner with a fork,’ Clayton explained. He had been a footman in a great house before he joined the South Essex, and had a great knowledge of the gentry’s strange ways. ‘It’s what people of quality do, sir, when they don’t want to spend a lot of money. Give ’em food and a fork and let ’em wander round the grounds sniffing the bloody flowers. All titter and giggle in the garden.’ He frowned at the monks. ‘Shoeless bloody papist monks,’ he said. The gowned men were not monks at all, but friars of the Discalced Carmelite order, two of whom were gravely inspecting a nine-pounder cannon. ‘And you should see inside their bloody monastery, sir,’ Clayton went on. ‘The altar in one of the chapels is smothered with wooden tits.’

Sharpe gaped at Clayton. ‘It’s smothered with what?’

‘Wooden tits, sir, all painted to look real. Got nipples and everything! I took the ration returns down there, sir, and one of the guards showed me. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Mind you, them monks ain’t allowed the real things, are they, so perhaps they make do as best they can. Punishment book now, sir?’

‘See if you can scuff up some tea instead,’ Sharpe suggested.

He drank the tea on the crest. The French were plainly not planning to attack this day for their troops were scattered about the bivouacs near the villages. Their numbers had grown so that the low ground was now dark with men, while nearer the ridge shirtsleeved gunners were piling shot beside the newly placed batteries. The position of those batteries suggested where the French would attack, if indeed they did, and Sharpe saw that the South Essex would be just to the left of any assault aimed up the rough southern track that had been barricaded near its top with felled trees, presumably to deter the French from dragging their artillery up towards the crest. More French guns were crowded close to the road at the northern end of the ridge, which suggested there would be two assaults, and Sharpe supposed they would be like every other French attack he had ever endured: great columns of men advancing to the beat of massed drums, hoping to batter their way through the Anglo-Portuguese line like giant rams. The vast columns were supposed to overawe inexperienced troops and Sharpe looked to his left where the officers of a Portuguese battalion were watching the enemy. Would they stand? The Portuguese army had been reorganized in the last few months, but they were enduring the third invasion of their country in three years, and so far no one could pretend that the Portuguese army had covered itself in glory.

There was a parade and inspection of kit in the late afternoon, and when it was done Sharpe walked north along the ridge until he saw the high stone wall enclosing a great wood. The Portuguese and British soldiers, wanting passage through the wall, had knocked gaps in it and Sharpe negotiated one such breach and went into the trees, eventually finding a path which led downhill. There were odd-looking brick sheds beside the path, equally spaced, each about the size of a gardener’s potting shed, and Sharpe stopped at the first to peer through the door which was made of iron bars. Inside were clay statues, life-size, showing a group of women clustered about a half-naked man and then Sharpe saw the crown of thorns and realized the central figure must be Jesus and that the brick sheds had to be part of the monastery. All of the small buildings had the eerie statues, and at several of the shrines shawled women were kneeling in prayer. A very pretty girl was beside another, listening shyly to an impassioned Portuguese officer who paused, embarrassed, as Sharpe walked by. The officer began his harangue again as soon as Sharpe had gone down a flight of stone steps that led to the monastery. An ancient and gnarled olive tree grew by the entrance and a dozen saddled horses were tethered to its branches, while two redcoats stood guard by the doorway. They ignored Sharpe as he ducked through the low archway into a dark passageway lined with doors that were covered with thick layers of cork. One of the doors was open and Sharpe looked inside to see a shirtsleeved surgeon in a monk’s small cell. The surgeon was sharpening a scalpel. ‘I’m open for trade,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Not today, sir. Do you know where I’ll find Major Hogan?’

‘End of the passage, door on the right.’

The supper was awkward. They ate in one of the small cells that was lined with cork to keep out the cold of the coming winter, and their meal was a stew of goat and beans, with coarse bread, cheese and a plentiful supply of wine. Hogan did his best to keep the conversation moving, but Sharpe had little to say to Major Ferreira who never referred to the events on the hilltop where Sharpe had burned the telegraph tower. Instead he talked of his time in Brazil where he had commanded a fort in one of the Portuguese settlements. ‘The women are beautiful!’ Ferreira exclaimed. ‘The most beautiful women in all the world!’

‘Including the slaves?’ Sharpe asked, causing Hogan, who knew Sharpe was trying to turn the subject to the Major’s brother, to roll his eyes.

‘The slaves are the prettiest!’ Ferreira said. ‘And so obliging.’

‘Not much choice,’ Sharpe observed sourly. ‘Your brother didn’t give them any, did he?’

Hogan tried to intervene, but Major Ferreira stilled his protest. ‘My brother, Mister Sharpe?’

‘He was a slaver, yes?’

‘My brother has been many things,’ Ferreira said. ‘As a child he was beaten because the monks who taught us wanted him to be pious. He is not pious. My father beat him because he would not read his books, but the beating did not make him a reader. He was happiest with the servants’ children, he ran wild with them until my mother could take his wildness no longer and so he was sent to the nuns of Santo Espírito. They tried to beat the spirit from him, but he ran away. He was thirteen then, and he came back sixteen years later. He came back rich and quite determined, Mister Sharpe, that no one would ever beat him again.’

‘I did,’ Sharpe said.

‘Richard!’ Hogan remonstrated.

Ferreira ignored Hogan, staring at Sharpe across the candles. ‘He has not forgotten,’ he said quietly.

‘But it’s all cleared up,’ Hogan said. ‘An accident! Apologies have been made. Try some of this cheese, Major.’ He pushed a chipped plate of cheese across the table. ‘Major Ferreira and I, Richard, have been questioning deserters all afternoon.’

‘French?’

‘Lord, no. Portuguese.’ Hogan explained that, following the fall of Almeida, scores of that fortress’s Portuguese garrison had volunteered into the Portuguese Legion, a French unit. ‘It seems they did it,’ Hogan explained, ‘because it gave them a chance to get near our lines and desert. Over thirty came in this evening. And they’re all saying that the French will attack in the morning.’

‘You believe them?’

‘I believe they are telling the truth as they know it,’ Hogan said, ‘and their orders were to make ready for an attack. What they don’t know, of course, is whether Masséna will change his mind.’

‘Monsieur Masséna,’ Ferreira remarked acidly, ‘is too busy with his mistress to think sensibly about battle.’

‘His mistress?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Mademoiselle Henriette Leberton,’ Hogan said, amused, ‘who is eighteen years old, Richard, while Monsieur Masséna is what? Fifty-one? No, fifty-two. Nothing distracts an old man so effectively as young flesh which makes Mademoiselle Leberton one of our more valued allies. His Majesty’s government should pay her an allowance. A guinea a night, perhaps?’

When the supper was eaten Ferreira insisted on showing Hogan and Sharpe the shrine where, as Clayton had said, wooden breasts lay on an altar. A score of small candles flickered around the weird objects and dozens of other candles had burned down to wax puddles. ‘Women bring the breasts,’ Ferreira explained, ‘to be cured of diseases. Women’s diseases.’ He yawned, then pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘I must get back to the ridge top,’ he said. ‘An early night, I think. Perhaps the enemy will come at dawn.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Hogan said.

Ferreira made the sign of the cross, bowed to the altar and left. Sharpe listened as the sound of the Major’s spurred boots faded down the passage. ‘What the hell was that all about?’ he asked Hogan.

‘What was what about, Richard?’

‘That supper!’

‘He was being friendly. Showing you there are no hard feelings.’

‘But there are! He said his brother hadn’t forgotten.’

‘Not forgotten, but persuaded to let the matter rest. And so should you.’

‘I wouldn’t trust that bugger as far as I can spit,’ Sharpe said, then had to step back because the door had been pushed wide open and a noisily cheerful group of British officers stepped into the small room. One man alone was not in uniform, wearing instead a blue top coat and a white silk stock. It was Lord Wellington, who glanced at Sharpe, but appeared not to notice him.

Instead the General nodded to Hogan. ‘Come to worship, Major?’ he asked.

‘I was showing Mister Sharpe the sights, my lord.’

‘I doubt Mister Sharpe needs to see replications,’ Wellington said. ‘He probably sees more of the real article than most of us, eh?’ He spoke genially enough, but with an edge of scorn, then looked directly at Sharpe. ‘I hear you did your duty three days ago, Mister Sharpe,’ he said.

Sharpe was confused, first by the sudden change of tone and then by the statement, which seemed strange after Hogan’s earlier reproof. ‘I hope so, my lord,’ he answered carefully.

‘Can’t leave food for the French,’ the General said, turning back to the modelled breasts, ‘and I would have thought I had made that stratagem entirely clear.’ The last few words were said harshly and left the other officers silent. Then Wellington smiled and gestured at the votive breasts. ‘Can’t quite imagine these things in Saint Paul’s,’ he went on, ‘can you, Hogan?’

‘They might improve the place, my lord.’

‘Indeed they might. I shall advert the matter to the Dean.’ He gave his horse neigh of a laugh, then abruptly looked at Hogan again. ‘Any news from Trant?’

‘None, my lord.’

‘Let us hope that is good news.’ The General nodded at Hogan, ignored Sharpe again and led his guests back to wherever they were having supper.

‘Trant?’ Sharpe asked.

‘There’s a road round the top of the ridge,’ Hogan said, ‘and we have a cavalry vedette there and, I trust, some Portuguese militia under Colonel Trant. They are under orders to alert us if they see any sign of the enemy, but no word has come, so we must hope Masséna is ignorant of the route. If he thinks his only road to Lisbon is up this hill, then up this hill he must come. I must say, unlikely as it seems, that he probably will attack.’

‘And maybe at dawn,’ Sharpe said, ‘so I must get some sleep.’ He grinned at Hogan. ‘So I was right about bloody Ferragus and you were wrong?’

Hogan returned the grin. ‘It is very ungentlemanly to gloat, Richard.’

‘How did Wellington know?’

‘I suppose Major Ferreira complained to him. He said he didn’t, but …’ Hogan shrugged.

‘You can’t trust that Portuguese bugger,’ Sharpe said. ‘Get one of your nasties to slit his throat.’

‘You’re the only nasty I know,’ Hogan said, ‘and it’s past your bedtime. So good night, Richard.’

It was not late yet, probably no more than nine o’clock, but the sky was black dark and the temperature had fallen sharply. A wind had come from the west to bring cold air from the distant sea and a mist was forming among the trees as Sharpe climbed back to the path where the strange statues were housed in their brick huts. The path was deserted now. The bulk of the army was up on the ridge and any troops bivouacking behind the line were encamped around the monastery where their fires offered some small light that filtered through the wood to throw Sharpe’s monstrous shadow flickering across tree trunks, but that small light faded as Sharpe climbed higher. There were no fires on the ridge top because Wellington had ordered that none were to be lit so that their glow could not betray to the French where the allied army was concentrated, though Sharpe suspected the enemy must have guessed. The lack of campfires made the upper hill bleakly dark. The mist thickened. Far off, beyond the wall that encircled the monastery and its forest, Sharpe could hear singing coming from the British and Portuguese encampments, but the loudest noise was his own footsteps on the pine needles that carpeted the path. The first of the shrines came into sight, lit from inside by votive candles that cast a small hazy glow through the chill mist. A black-gowned monk knelt in prayer by the last shrine and, as Sharpe passed, he thought of offering the man a greeting, then decided against interrupting the monk’s devotions, but just then the cowled man lashed out, catching Sharpe behind his left knee, and two more men came from behind the shrine, one with a cudgel that smacked into Sharpe’s belly. He went down hard, his metal scabbard clanging against the ground. He twisted away, trying to draw the sword, but the two men who had come from behind the shrine seized his arms and dragged him into the building where there was a small space in front of the statues. They kicked some candles aside to make more room. One drew Sharpe’s sword and tossed it onto the path outside, while the cowled monk pushed back his hood.

It was Ferragus, vast and tall, filling the shrine with his menace. ‘You cost me a lot of money,’ he said in his strongly accented English. Sharpe was still on the ground. He tried to stand up, but one of Ferragus’s two companions kicked him in the shoulder and forced him back. ‘A lot of money,’ Ferragus said heavily. ‘You wish to pay me now?’ Sharpe said nothing. He needed a weapon. He had a folding knife in one pocket, but he knew he would never have time to pull it out, let alone extract the blade. ‘How much money do you have?’ Ferragus asked. Sharpe still said nothing. ‘Or would you rather fight me?’ Ferragus went on. ‘Bare knuckles, Captain, toe to toe.’

Sharpe made a curt suggestion of what Ferragus could do and the big man smiled and spoke to his men in Portuguese. They attacked with their boots, kicking Sharpe, who drew up his knees to shield his belly. He guessed they were ordered to disable him and thus leave him to Ferragus’s mercies, but the shrine was small, the space left by the statues cramped and the two men got in each other’s way. Their kicks still hurt. Sharpe tried to lunge up at them, but a boot caught him on the side of the face and he fell back heavily, rocking the kneeling image of Mary Magdalene, and that gave him his weapon. He hammered the statue with his right elbow, smacking its knee so hard that the clay shattered and Sharpe snatched up one shard that was nearly a foot long and ended in a wicked point. He stabbed the makeshift dagger at the nearest man, aiming at his groin, but the man twisted aside so that the clay sliced into his inner thigh. The man grunted. Sharpe was up from the floor now, using his head as a battering ram that he thumped into the wounded man’s belly. A fist caught him on the side of the nose, a boot slammed into his ribs, but he lunged the clay dagger at Ferragus, slicing it along the big man’s jawbone, then a mighty blow on the side of his head threw him back and he fell against Christ’s clay lap. Ferragus ordered his men to get out of the shrine, to give him room, and he punched Sharpe again, delivering a ringing blow on the temple, and Sharpe let go of his makeshift knife, put his arm round the Son of God’s neck and jerked it hard so that the whole head came clean off. Ferragus threw a straight left jab and Sharpe dodged it, then came off the ground to ram the broken head with its crown of thorns up into Ferragus’s face. The hollow clay skull cracked apart as it hit, its jagged edges gouging deep cuts in the big man’s cheeks, and Sharpe twisted to his left as Ferragus recoiled. Sharpe scrambled through the door, trying to reach his sword, but the two men were outside and they fell on him. Sharpe heaved, managed to half turn over, and then got a kick in the belly that drove all the wind out of him.