Sharpe - 12 - Sharpe's Battle by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Military Fiction, Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780006473244
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1996-10-05T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

“He's mad, Hogan,” Wellington said. "Stark mad. Gibbering. Should be locked up in Bedlam where we could pay sixpence to go and mock him. Ever been to

Bedlam?"

“Once, my Lord, just the once.” Hogan's horse was tired and fretful, for the

Irishman had ridden long and hard to find the General and he was somewhat confused by the abrupt greeting. Hogan was also in the disobliging mood of a man woken too early, yet he somehow managed to respond to Wellington's jocular greeting in a similar vein. “My sister wanted to see the lunatics, my Lord, but as I recall we only paid tuppence each.”

“They should lock Erskine up,” Wellington said grimly, “and charge the populace tuppence apiece to view him. Still, even Erskine should manage this job, eh? All he has to do is stop the place up, not actually capture it.”

Wellington was inspecting the grim defences surrounding the French-​held town of Almeida. Every now and then a gun would fire from the fortress town and the flat, hard sound of the shot would echo across the rolling country a few seconds after the shot itself had bounced in a flurry of early morning dew and bounded harmlessly off towards fields or woods. Wellington, attended by a dozen aides and gallopers and starkly lit by the long slanting rays of the just risen sun, made a ripe target for the French gunners, but his Lordship ignored their efforts. Instead, almost in mockery of the enemy's marksmanship, he would stop wherever the terrain offered a view and stare at the town which had possessed a peculiar flat-​topped appearance ever since the cathedral and castle on Almeida's hill top had exploded in a massive eruption of stored powder. That explosion had forced the British and Portuguese defenders to surrender the fortress town to the French, who in turn were now ringed by

British troops under the command of Sir William Erskine. Erskine's men were under orders to contain the garrison, not capture it, and indeed none of

Erskine's guns was large enough to make any impression on the massive star- shaped fortifications. “How many of the scoundrels are in there, Hogan?”

Wellington asked, ignoring the fact that Hogan would not have ridden hard across country so early in the day without bringing some important news.

“We think fifteen hundred men, my Lord.”

“Ammunition?”

“Plenty.”

“And how much food do they have?”

"My sources say two weeks on half rations which probably means they can last a month. The French do seem able to subsist on nothing, my Lord. Might I suggest we move before a gunner lays an accurate sight? And might I claim your

Lordship's further attention?"

Wellington did not move. “I am claiming the gunners' whole attention,” the

General said with heavy humour, “as a means of encouraging them to improve their aim. That way, Hogan, they might relieve me of Erskine.” General Erskine was usually drunk, perpetually half blind and reputed to be mad. "Or so the

Horse Guards confessed to me,“ Wellington said, expecting Hogan to follow his erratic train of thought.

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