Sharpe - 18 - Sharpe's Siege by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Military Fiction, Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780006175247
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-08-21T17:49:24+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Lieutenant of Marines Fytch, to whom Sharpe had hardly spoken since they had marched inland, brought the civilians to Major Sharpe. The Lieutenant herded them at pistol-​point until told by Sharpe to put his damned toy away. Fytch, his martial ardour offended by the Rifleman, gestured at the four stout and worried looking men. “They're from the town, sir. Buggers want to surrender.”

The four men, all dressed in good woollen clothes, smiled nervously at the mounted officer. They each wore the white cockade which was the symbol of the exiled King Louis XVIII and thus an emblem of anti-​Napoleonic sentiment. The sight of the cockade, and the evident willingness of the four men to embrace a British victory, were uncomfortable reminders to Sharpe of Bampfylde's hopes. Perhaps Bordeaux, like this small town, was ripe for rebellion? He should, Sharpe knew, have interrogated a captured French officer by now, but his determination to obey Elphinstone's privately given orders, had made him ignore the duty.

“Kindly ask them,” Sharpe said to Fytch who evidently had some French, “if they still wish to surrender when they understand that we will be leaving here this afternoon and may not be back for some months?”

The Mayor's monarchical enthusiasm evaporated swiftly. He smiled, bowed, fingered the cockade nervously, and backed away. But he still wished to assure the English milord that anything the town could offer his men would be available. They had only to ask for Monsieur Calabord.

“Get rid of him,” Sharpe said. “Politely! And get those damned civilians off the bridge!” Townspeople, hearing the crackle of musketry, had come to view the battle. The one-​legged toll-​keeper was vainly trying to make them pay for the privilege of their grandstand view.

Frederickson's rifles snapped from the north as he harried the broken infantry away from the scene of their defeat. Two waggoners and four cavalrymen, hands held high, were being prodded from the beech trees towards the disconsolate prisoners. Marines were piling captured muskets in a pile.

The luckiest Marines were rifling the waggons. Much of the plunder was useless to a looter. There were vats of yellow and black paint that the French mixed to colour their gun-​carriages, and which now the Marines spilled on to the road to mingle with the blood and ox-​dung. Two of the waggons held nothing but engineer's supplies. There were coils of three inch white-​cable, sap forks, cross-​cut saws, bench-​hammers, chalk-​lines, scrapers, felling-​axes, augers, and barrels of Hambro` line. There were spare cartouches for the infantry, each bag filled with a wooden block drilled to hold cartridges. Other waggons held drag-​chains, crooked-​sponges, relievers, bricoles, wad-​hooks, sabot-​bracers, and hand-​spikes. There were garlands for the stacking of round-​shot and even band instruments including a Jingling Johnny that a proud Marine paraded about the stripped waggons and shook so that the tiny bells mounted on the wooden frame made a strangely festive sound in the bleak, cold day. Another man banged the clash-​pans until Sharpe curtly ordered him to drop the bloody cymbals.

On one waggon there were crates of tinned food.

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