Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell [Cornwell, Bernard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction / Historical / General, Fiction, Historical, War & Military, Action & Adventure, Fiction / Action & Adventure
Goodreads: 19101562
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2014-04-27T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

THE CLOUDS AT LAST fled Copenhagen, leaving a rinsed blue sky. A late summer sun glossed the copper roofs and shimmered the harbor where scores of merchant ships, fearing the British fleet that had anchored ten miles to the north, had taken refuge.

The Amalienborg Palace lay west of the harbor. It was really four small palaces grouped about a courtyard and was gracious rather than grand, intimate instead of intimidating, and it was there, on an upper floor overlooking the harbor, that the Crown Prince made his farewells to the city’s notables. His Majesty was returning to Holstein. He had been in that southern province all summer, but had returned to Copenhagen when he heard that the British fleet had sailed for the Baltic. He had come back to encourage the citizens. Denmark, he said, did not want to fight. It had not started the quarrel and bore no ill will toward Britain, but if the British persisted in their outrageous demand to take the Danish fleet then Denmark would resist. And that, the Crown Prince knew, meant that Copenhagen must suffer, for it was in the capital’s secure inner harbor that the fleet was sheltered.

Yet the British, the Crown Prince insisted, could not succeed. It was late in the year to begin a siege. It would take weeks to make a breach in the great walls and even then there could be no certainty that an assault would succeed. Besides, long before any breach was practicable, the Prince would bring the Danish army back from Holstein and trounce the besieging forces. “So the British will not attack the city,” the Prince said forcefully, “but merely threaten it. It is a bluff, gentlemen, a bluff. There is no time for a siege.”

“Plenty of time for a bombardment,” General Peymann, who had been appointed the commander of Copenhagen’s garrison, noted gloomily.

“No!” The Prince turned on the General. “No, no, no!” The Prince knew well enough that the city feared a bombardment by mortars and howitzers that could loft their shells over the wall to leave the city a smoking ruin. “The British are not barbarians,” the Prince insisted, “and they will not risk an action that will earn the condemnation of all civilized people. There will be no bombing. The British will threaten it, just as they threaten a siege, but it is all bluff.” Instead, he forecast, the British would blockade the capital and hope that hunger would persuade the garrison to yield. “So we shall fill the city with food,” he told General Peymann, “and you must endure their blockade until the late autumn. Then I shall lead the army back from Holstein.” Holstein was where the bulk of Denmark’s army was guarding the southern frontier, which was threatened by a French army.

Peymann, an old man, straightened ponderously. He was white-haired, corpulent and had never led troops into battle, but he had a reassuring presence. There was something about the 72-year-old Ernst Peymann that suggested he could not

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