Sharpe’s Triumph: The Battle of Assaye, September 1803

‘Let me introduce Madame Joubert to you,’ Pohlmann said, who had noticed how hungrily Dodd had stared at the woman. ‘This is Major William Dodd.’

‘Madame Joubert?’ Dodd stressed the ‘Madame’, half rising and bowing from his chair as he acknowledged her.

‘Major,’ she said in a low voice, then smiled nervously before looking down at the table that was spread with dishes of almonds.

Pohlmann snapped his fingers for a servant, then smiled at Major Dodd. ‘Simone is married to Captain Joubert, and that is Captain Joubert.’ He pointed into the sunlight where a short captain stood to attention in front of the paraded battalion that stood so stiff and still in the biting sun.

‘Joubert commands the battalion, sir?’ Dodd asked.

‘No one commands the battalion,’ Pohlmann answered. ‘But until three weeks ago it was led by Colonel Mathers. Back then it had five European officers; now it has Captain Joubert and Lieutenant Sillière.’ He pointed to a second European, a tall thin young man, and Dodd, who was observant, saw Simone Joubert blush at the mention of Sillière’s name. Dodd was amused. Joubert looked at least twenty years older than his wife, while Sillière was only a year or two her senior. ‘And we must have Europeans,’ Pohlmann went on, stretching back on the divan that creaked under his weight. ‘The Indians are fine soldiers, but we need Europeans who understand European tactics.’

‘How many European officers have you lost, sir?’ Dodd asked.

‘From this compoo? Eighteen,’ Pohlmann said. ‘Too many.’ The men who had gone were the British officers, and all had possessed contracts with Scindia that excused them from fighting against their own countrymen, and to make matters worse the East India Company had offered a bribe to any British officer who deserted the Mahrattas and, as a result, some of Pohlmann’s best men were gone. It was true that he still had some good officers left, most of them French, with a handful of Dutchmen, Swiss and Germans, but Pohlmann knew he could ill afford the loss of eighteen European officers. At least none of his artillerymen had deserted and Pohlmann put great faith in the battle-winning capacity of his guns. Those cannon were served by Portuguese, or by half-breed Indians from the Portuguese colonies in India, and those professionals had stayed loyal and were awesomely proficient.

Pohlmann drained a glass of rum and poured himself another. He had an extraordinary capacity for alcohol, a capacity Dodd did not share, and the Englishman, knowing his propensity for getting drunk, restrained himself to sips of watered wine. ‘I promised you a reward, Major, if you succeeded in rescuing the cartridges,’ Pohlmann said genially.

‘Knowing I’ve done my duty is reward enough,’ Dodd said. He felt shabby and ill-uniformed among Pohlmann’s gaudy aides and had decided that it was best to play the bluff soldier, a role he thought would appeal to a former sergeant. It was said that Pohlmann kept his old East India Company uniform as a reminder of just how far he had risen.

‘Men do not join Scindia’s army merely for the pleasures of doing their duty,’ Pohlmann said, ‘but for the rewards such service offers. We are here to become rich, are we not?’ He unhooked the elephant-hilted sword from his belt. The scabbard was made of soft red leather and was studded with small emeralds. ‘Here.’ Pohlmann offered the sword to Dodd.

‘I can’t take your sword!’ Dodd protested.

‘I have many, Major, and many finer. I insist.’

Dodd took the sword. He drew the blade from the scabbard and saw that it was finely made, much better than the drab sword he had worn as a lieutenant these last twenty years. Many Indian swords were made of soft steel and broke easily in combat, but Dodd guessed this blade had been forged in France or Britain, then given its beautiful elephant hilt in India. That hilt was of gold, the elephant’s head made the pommel, while the handguard was the beast’s curved trunk. The grip was of black leather bound with gold wire. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said feelingly.

‘It is the first of many rewards,’ Pohlmann said airily, ‘and those rewards will shower on us when we beat the British. Which we shall, though not here.’ He paused to drink rum. ‘The British will attack any day now,’ he went on, ‘and they doubtless hope I’ll stay and fight them here, but I don’t have a mind to oblige them. Better to make the bastards march after us, eh? The rains may come while they pursue us and the rivers will hold them up. Disease will weaken them. And once they are weak and tired, we shall be strong. All Scindia’s compoos will join together and the Rajah of Berar has promised his army, and once we are all gathered we shall crush the British. But that means I have to give up Ahmednuggur.’

‘Not an important city,’ Dodd commented. He noticed that Simone Joubert was sipping wine. She kept her eyes lowered, only occasionally glancing up at her husband or at Lieutenant Sillière. She took no notice of Dodd, but she would, he promised himself, she would. Her nose was too small, he decided, but even so she was a thing of pale and fragile wonder in this hot, dark-skinned land. Her blonde hair, which was hung with ringlets in a fashion that had prevailed ten years before in Europe, was held in place by small mother-of-pearl clips.

‘Ahmednuggur is not important,’ Pohlmann agreed, ‘but Scindia hates losing any of his cities and he stuffed Ahmednuggur full of supplies and insisted I post one regiment inside the city.’ He nodded towards the white-coated troops. ‘That regiment, Major. It’s probably my best regiment, but I am forced to quarter it in Ahmednuggur.’

Dodd understood Pohlmann’s predicament. ‘You can’t take them out of the city without upsetting Scindia,’ he said, ‘but you don’t want to lose the regiment when the city falls.’

‘I can’t lose it!’ Pohlmann said indignantly. ‘A good regiment like that? Mathers trained it well, very well. Now he’s gone to join our enemies, but I can’t lose his regiment as well, so whoever takes over from Mathers must know how to extricate his men from trouble.’

Dodd felt a surge of excitement. He liked to think that it was not just for the money that he had deserted the Company, nor because of his legal troubles, but for the long overdue chance of leading his own regiment. He could do it well, he knew that, and he knew what Pohlmann was leading up to.

Pohlmann smiled. ‘Suppose I give you Mathers’s regiment, Major? Can you pull it out of the fire for me?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Dodd said simply. Simone Joubert, for the first time since she had been introduced to Dodd, looked up at him, but without any friendliness.

‘All of it?’ Pohlmann asked. ‘With its cannon?’

‘All of it,’ Dodd said firmly, ‘and with every damned gun.’

‘Then from now it is Dodd’s regiment,’ Pohlmann said, ‘and if you lead it well, Major, I shall make you a colonel and give you a second regiment to command.’

Dodd celebrated by draining his cup of wine. He was so overcome with emotion that he hardly dared speak, though the look on his face said it all. His own regiment at last! He had waited so long for this moment and now, by God, he would show the Company how well their despised officers could fight.

Pohlmann snapped his fingers so that a servant girl brought him more rum. ‘How many men will Wellesley bring?’ he asked Dodd.

‘No more than fifteen thousand infantry,’ the new commander of Dodd’s regiment answered confidently. ‘Probably fewer, and they’ll be split into two armies. Boy Wellesley will command one, Colonel Stevenson the other.’

‘Stevenson’s old, yes?’

‘Ancient and cautious,’ Dodd said dismissively.

‘Cavalry?’

‘Five or six thousand? Mostly Indians.’

‘Guns?’

‘Twenty-six at most. Nothing bigger than a twelve-pounder.’

‘And Scindia can field eighty guns,’ Pohlmann said, ‘some of them twenty-eight-pounders. And once the Rajah of Berar’s forces join us, we’ll have forty thousand infantry and at least fifty more guns.’ The Hanoverian smiled. ‘But battles aren’t just numbers. They’re also won by generals. Tell me about this Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley.’

‘Boy Wellesley?’ Dodd responded scathingly. The British General was younger than Dodd, but that was not the cause of the derisory nickname. Rather it was envy, for Wellesley had connections and wealth, while Dodd had neither. ‘He’s young,’ Dodd said, ‘only thirty-four.’

‘Youth is no barrier to good soldiering,’ Pohlmann said chidingly, though he well understood Dodd’s resentment. For years Dodd had watched younger men rise up through the ranks of the King’s army while he had been stuck in the Company’s hidebound ranks. A man could not buy promotion in the Company, nor were promotions given by merit, but only by seniority, and so forty-year-old men like Dodd were still lieutenants while, in the King’s army, mere boys were captains or majors. ‘Is Wellesley good?’ Pohlmann asked.

‘He’s never fought a battle,’ Dodd said bitterly, ‘not unless you count Malavelly.’

‘One volley?’ Pohlmann asked, half recalling stories of the skirmish.

‘One volley and a bayonet charge,’ Dodd said, ‘not a proper battle.’

‘He defeated Dhoondiah.’

‘A cavalry charge against a bandit,’ Dodd said scornfully. ‘My point, sir, is that Boy Wellesley has never faced artillery and infantry on a real battlefield. He was jumped up to major general solely because his brother is Governor General. If his name had been Dodd instead of Wellesley he’d be lucky to command a company, let alone an army.’

‘He’s an aristocrat?’ Pohlmann enquired.

‘Of course. What else?’ Dodd asked. ‘His father was an earl.’

‘So…’ Pohlmann put a handful of almonds in his mouth and paused to chew them. ‘So,’ he went on, ‘he’s the younger son of a nobleman, sent into the army because he wasn’t good for anything else, and his family purchased him up the ranks?’

‘Exactly, sir, exactly.’

‘But I hear he is efficient?’

‘Efficient?’ Dodd thought about it. ‘He’s efficient, sir, because his brother gives him the cash. He can afford a big bullock train. He carries his supplies with him, so his men are well fed. But he still ain’t ever seen a cannon’s muzzle, not facing him, not alongside a score of others and backed by steady infantry.’

‘He did well as Governor of Mysore,’ Pohlmann observed mildly.

‘So he’s an efficient governor? Does that make him a general?’

‘A disciplinarian, I hear,’ Pohlmann said.

‘He sets a lovely parade ground,’ Dodd agreed sarcastically.

‘But he isn’t a fool?’

‘No,’ Dodd admitted, ‘not a fool, but not a general either. He’s been promoted too fast and too young, sir. He’s beaten bandits, but he took a beating himself outside Seringapatam.’

‘Ah, yes. The night attack.’ Pohlmann had heard of that skirmish, how Arthur Wellesley had attacked a wood outside Seringapatam and there been roundly thrashed by the Tippoo’s troops. ‘Even so,’ he said, ‘it never serves to underestimate an enemy.’

‘Overestimate him as much as you like, sir,’ Dodd said stoutly, ‘but the fact remains that Boy Wellesley has never fought a proper battle, not with more than a thousand men under his command, and he’s never faced a real army, not a trained field army with gunners and disciplined infantry, and my guess is that he won’t stand. He’ll run back to his brother and demand more men. He’s a careful man.’

Pohlmann smiled. ‘So let us lure this careful man deep into our territory where he can’t retreat, eh? Then beat him.’ He smiled, then hauled a watch from his fob and snapped open the lid. ‘I have to be going soon,’ he said, ‘but some business first.’ He took an envelope from his gaudy coat’s pocket and handed the sealed paper to Dodd. ‘That is your authority to command Mathers’s regiment, Major,’ he said, ‘but remember, I want you to bring it safely out of Ahmednuggur. You can help the defence for a time, but don’t be trapped there. Young Wellesley can’t invest the whole city, he doesn’t have enough men, so you should be able to escape easily enough. Bloody his nose, Dodd, but keep your regiment safe. Do you understand?’

Dodd understood well enough. Pohlmann was setting Dodd a difficult and ignoble task, that of retreating from a fight with his command intact. There was little glory in such a manoeuvre, but it would still be a difficult piece of soldiering and Dodd knew he was being tested a second time. The first test had been Chasalgaon, the second would be Ahmednuggur. ‘I can manage it,’ he said dourly.

‘Good!’ Pohlmann said. ‘I shall make things easier for you by taking your regiment’s families northwards. You might march soldiers safely from the city’s fall, but I doubt you can manage a horde of women and children too. And what about you, Madame?’ He turned and laid a meaty hand on Simone Joubert’s knee. ‘Will you come with me?’ He talked to her as though she were a child. ‘Or stay with Major Dodd?’

Simone seemed startled by the question. She blushed and looked up at Lieutenant Sillière. ‘I shall stay here, Colonel,’ she answered in English.

‘Make sure you bring her safe home, Major,’ Pohlmann said to Dodd.

‘I shall, sir.’

Pohlmann stood. His purple-coated bodyguards, who had been standing in front of the tent, hurried to take their places on the elephant’s flanks while the mahout, who had been resting in the animal’s capacious shade, now mounted the somnolent beast by gripping its tail and clambering up its backside like a sailor swarming up a rope. He edged past the gilded howdah, took his seat on the elephant’s neck and turned the beast towards Pohlmann’s tent. ‘Are you sure’ – Pohlmann turned back to Simone Joubert – ‘that you would not prefer to travel with me? The howdah is so comfortable, as long as you do not suffer from seasickness.’

‘I shall stay with my husband,’ Simone said. She had stood and proved to be much taller than Dodd had supposed. Tall and somewhat gawky, he thought, but she still possessed an odd attraction.

‘A good woman should stay with her husband,’ Pohlmann said, ‘or someone’s husband, anyway.’ He turned to Dodd. ‘I shall see you in a few days, Major, with your new regiment. Don’t let me down.’

‘I won’t, sir, I won’t,’ Dodd promised as, holding his new sword, he watched his new commander climb the silver steps to the howdah. He had a regiment to save and a reputation to make, and by God, Dodd thought, he would do both things well.

CHAPTER 2

Sharpe sat in the open shed where the armoury stored its gun carriages. It had started to rain, though it was not the sheeting downpour of the monsoon, just a miserable steady grey drizzle that turned the mud in the yard into a slippery coating of red slime. Major Stokes, beginning the afternoon in a clean red coat, white silk stock and polished boots, paced obsessively about a newly made carriage. ‘It really wasn’t your fault, Sharpe,’ he said.

‘Feels like it, sir.’

‘It would, it would!’ Stokes said. ‘Reflects well on you, Sharpe, ’pon my soul, it does. But it weren’t your fault, not in any manner.’

‘Lost all six men, sir. And young Davi.’

‘Poor Hedgehog,’ Stokes said, squatting to peer along the trail of the carriage. ‘You reckon that timber’s straight, Sharpe? Bit hog-backed, maybe?’

‘Looks straight to me, sir.’

‘Ain’t tight-grained, this oak, ain’t tight-grained,’ the Major said, and he began to unbuckle his sword belt. Every morning and afternoon his servant sent him to the armoury in carefully laundered and pressed clothes, and within an hour Major Stokes would be stripped down to breeches and shirtsleeves and have his hands full of spokeshaves or saws or awls or adzes. ‘Like to see a straight trail,’ he said. ‘There’s a number four spokeshave on the wall, Sharpe, be a good fellow.’

‘You want me to sharpen it, sir?’

‘I did it last night, Sharpe. I put a lovely edge on her.’ Stokes unpeeled his red jacket and rolled up his sleeves. ‘Timber don’t season here properly, that’s the trouble.’ He stooped to the new carriage and began running the spokeshave along the trail, leaving curls of new white wood to fall away. ‘I’m mending a clock,’ he told Sharpe while he worked, ‘a lovely-made piece, all but for some crude local gearing. Have a look at it. It’s in my office.’

‘I will, sir.’

‘And I’ve found some new timber for axletrees, Sharpe. It’s really quite exciting!’

‘They’ll still break, sir,’ Sharpe said gloomily, then scooped up one of the many cats that lived in the armoury. He put the tabby on his lap and stroked her into a contented purr.

‘Don’t be so doom-laden, Sharpe! We’ll solve the axletree problem yet. It’s only a question of timber, nothing but timber. There, that looks better.’ The Major stepped back from his work and gave it a critical look. There were plenty of Indian craftsmen employed in the armoury, but Major Stokes liked to do things himself, and besides, most of the Indians were busy preparing for the feast of Dusshera which involved manufacturing three giant-sized figures that would be paraded to the Hindu temple and there burned. Those Indians were busy in another open-sided shed where they had glue bubbling on a fire, and some of the men were pasting lengths of pale cloth onto a wicker basket that would form one of the giants’ heads. Stokes was fascinated by their activity and Sharpe knew it would not be long before the Major joined them. ‘Did I tell you a sergeant was here looking for you this morning?’ Stokes asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘Came just before dinner,’ Stokes said, ‘a strange sort of fellow.’ The Major stooped to the trail and attacked another section of wood. ‘He twitched, he did.’

‘Obadiah Hakeswill,’ Sharpe said.

‘I think that was his name. Didn’t seem very important,’ Stokes said. ‘Said he was just visiting town and looking up old companions. D’you know what I was thinking?’

‘Tell me, sir,’ Sharpe said, wondering why in holy hell Obadiah Hakeswill had been looking for him. For nothing good, that was certain.

‘Those teak beams in the Tippoo’s old throne room,’ Stokes said, ‘they’ll be seasoned well enough. We could break out a half-dozen of the things and make a batch of axletrees from them!’

‘The gilded beams, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Soon have the gilding off them, Sharpe. Plane them down in two shakes!’

‘The Rajah may not like it, sir,’ Sharpe said.

Stokes’s face fell. ‘There is that, there is that. A fellow don’t usually like his ceilings being pulled down to make gun carriages. Still, the Rajah’s usually most obliging if you can get past his damned courtiers. The clock is his. Strikes eight when it should ring nine, or perhaps it’s the other way round. You reckon that quoin’s true?’

Sharpe glanced at the wedge which lowered and raised the cannon barrel. ‘Looks good, sir.’

‘I might just plane her down a shade. I wonder if our templates are out of true? We might check that. Isn’t this rain splendid? The flowers were wilting, wilting! But I’ll have a fine show this year with a spot of rain. You must come and see them.’

‘You still want me to stay here, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Stay here?’ Stokes, who was placing the quoin in a vice, turned to look at Sharpe. ‘Of course I want you to stay here, Sergeant. Best man I’ve got!’

‘I lost six men, sir.’

‘And it wasn’t your fault, not your fault at all. I’ll get you another six.’

Sharpe wished it was that easy, but he could not chase the guilt of Chasalgaon out of his mind. When the massacre was finished he had wandered about the fort in a half-daze. Most of the women and children still lived, but they had been frightened and had shrunk away from him. Captain Roberts, the second in command of the fort, had returned from patrol that afternoon and he had vomited when he saw the horror inside the cactus-thorn wall.

Sharpe had made his report to Roberts who had sent it by messenger to Hurryhur, the army’s headquarters, then dismissed Sharpe. ‘There’ll be an enquiry, I suppose,’ Roberts had told Sharpe, ‘so doubtless your evidence will be needed, but you might as well wait in Seringapatam.’ And so Sharpe, with no other orders, had walked home. He had returned the bag of rupees to Major Stokes, and now, obscurely, he wanted some punishment from the Major, but Stokes was far more concerned about the angle of the quoin. ‘I’ve seen screws shatter because the angle was too steep, and it ain’t no good having broken screws in battle. I’ve seen Frog guns with metalled quoins, but they only rust. Can’t trust a Frog to keep them greased, you see. You’re brooding, Sharpe.’

‘Can’t help it, sir.’

‘Doesn’t do to brood. Leave brooding to poets and priests, eh? Those sorts of fellows are paid to brood. You have to get on with life. What could you have done?’

‘Killed one of the bastards, sir.’

‘And they’d have killed you, and you wouldn’t have liked that and nor would I. Look at that angle! Look at that! I do like a fine angle, I declare I do. We must check it against the templates. How’s your head?’

‘Mending, sir.’ Sharpe touched the bandage that wrapped his forehead. ‘No pain now, sir.’

‘Providence, Sharpe, that’s what it is, providence. The good Lord in His ineffable mercy wanted you to live.’ Stokes released the vice and restored the quoin to the carriage. ‘A touch of paint on that trail and it’ll be ready. You think the Rajah might give me one roof beam?’

‘No harm in asking him, sir.’

‘I will, I will. Ah, a visitor.’ Stokes straightened as a horseman, swathed against the rain in an oilcloth cape and with an oilcloth cover on his cocked hat, rode into the armoury courtyard leading a second horse by the reins. The visitor kicked his feet from the stirrups, swung down from the saddle, then tied both horses’ reins to one of the shed’s pillars. Major Stokes, his clothes just in their beginning stage of becoming dirty and dishevelled, smiled at the tall newcomer whose cocked hat and sword betrayed he was an officer. ‘Come to inspect us, have you?’ the Major demanded cheerfully. ‘You’ll discover chaos! Nothing in the right place, records all muddled, woodworm in the timber stacks, damp in the magazines and the paint completely addled.’

‘Better that paint is addled than wits,’ the newcomer said, then took off his cocked hat to reveal a head of white hair.

Sharpe, who had been sitting on one of the finished gun carriages, shot to his feet, tipping the surprised cat into the Major’s wood shavings. ‘Colonel McCandless, sir!’

‘Sergeant Sharpe!’ McCandless responded. The Colonel shook water from his cocked hat and turned to Stokes. ‘And you, sir?’

‘Major Stokes, sir, at your service, sir. John Stokes, commander of the armoury and, as you see, carpenter to His Majesty.’

‘You will forgive me, Major Stokes, if I talk to Sergeant Sharpe?’ McCandless shed his oilskin cape to reveal his East India Company uniform. ‘Sergeant Sharpe and I are old friends.’

‘My pleasure, Colonel,’ Stokes said. ‘I have business in the foundry. They’re pouring too fast. I tell them all the time! Fast pouring just bubbles the metal, and bubbled metal leads to disaster, but they won’t listen. Ain’t like making temple bells, I tell them, but I might as well save my breath.’ He glanced wistfully towards the happy men making the giant’s head for the Dusshera festival. ‘And I have other things to do,’ he added.

‘I’d rather you didn’t leave, Major,’ McCandless said very formally. ‘I suspect what I have to say concerns you. It is good to see you, Sharpe.’

‘You too, sir,’ Sharpe said, and it was true. He had been locked in the Tippoo’s dungeons with Colonel Hector McCandless and if it was possible for a sergeant and a colonel to be friends, then a friendship existed between the two men. McCandless, tall, vigorous and in his sixties, was the East India Company’s head of intelligence for all southern and western India, and in the last four years he and Sharpe had talked a few times whenever the Colonel passed through Seringapatam, but those had been social conversations and the Colonel’s grim face suggested that this meeting was anything but social.