JК
Sharpes Havoc :: Корнуэлл Бернард
Страница: 241 из 242Argenton then returned to Soult, was betrayed and arrested, but was promised his life if he revealed all that he knew and among those revelations was the fact that the British army, far from readying itself to withdraw from Portugal, was preparing to attack northwards. The warning gave Soult a chance to withdraw his advance forces from south of the Douro who otherwise might have been trapped by an ambitious encircling move that Wellesley had initiated. Argenton’s career was not over. He managed to escape his captors, reached the British army and was given a safe passage to England. For some reason he then decided to return to France where he was again captured and this time shot. It is also worth noting, while we are discussing sinister plots, that the aspirations Christopher attributes to Napoleon, aspirations for „a European system, a European code of laws, a European judiciary and one nation alone in Europe, Europeans,” were indeed articulated by Bonaparte.
This is a story that begins and ends on bridges and the twin tales of how Major Dulong of the 31st Leger captured the Ponte Nova and then the Saltador are true. He was a rather Sharpe-like character who enjoyed an extraordinary reputation for bravery, but he was wounded at the Saltador and I have been unable to discover his subsequent fate. He almost single-handedly saved Soult’s army, so he deserved a long life and an easy death, and he certainly does not deserve to be given a failing role in the fictional story of the fictional village of Vila Real de Zedes.
Hagman’s marksmanship at seven hundred paces sounds a little too good to be believable, but is based on an actual event which occurred the previous year during Sir John Moore’s retreat to Corunna. Tom Plunkett (an „irrepressibly vulgar rifleman,” Christopher Hibbert calls him in his book Corunna) fired the „miracle shot” which killed the French General Colbert at around seven hundred yards. The shot, rightly, became famous among riflemen. I read in a recent publication that the extreme range of the Baker rifle was only three hundred yards, a fact that would have surprised the men in green who reckoned that distance to be middling.
Marshal Soult, still merely the Duke of Dalmatia, was forced to retreat once Wellesley had crossed the Douro and the tale of his retreat is described in the novel. The French should have been trapped and forced to surrender, but it is easy to make such criticisms long after the event. If the Portuguese or British had marched a little faster or if the ordenanqa had destroyed either the Ponte Nova or the Saltador then Soult would have been finished, but a small measure of good fortune and Major Dulong’s singular heroism rescued the French. The weather doubtless had much to do with their escape.
This is a story that begins and ends on bridges and the twin tales of how Major Dulong of the 31st Leger captured the Ponte Nova and then the Saltador are true. He was a rather Sharpe-like character who enjoyed an extraordinary reputation for bravery, but he was wounded at the Saltador and I have been unable to discover his subsequent fate. He almost single-handedly saved Soult’s army, so he deserved a long life and an easy death, and he certainly does not deserve to be given a failing role in the fictional story of the fictional village of Vila Real de Zedes.
Hagman’s marksmanship at seven hundred paces sounds a little too good to be believable, but is based on an actual event which occurred the previous year during Sir John Moore’s retreat to Corunna. Tom Plunkett (an „irrepressibly vulgar rifleman,” Christopher Hibbert calls him in his book Corunna) fired the „miracle shot” which killed the French General Colbert at around seven hundred yards. The shot, rightly, became famous among riflemen. I read in a recent publication that the extreme range of the Baker rifle was only three hundred yards, a fact that would have surprised the men in green who reckoned that distance to be middling.
Marshal Soult, still merely the Duke of Dalmatia, was forced to retreat once Wellesley had crossed the Douro and the tale of his retreat is described in the novel. The French should have been trapped and forced to surrender, but it is easy to make such criticisms long after the event. If the Portuguese or British had marched a little faster or if the ordenanqa had destroyed either the Ponte Nova or the Saltador then Soult would have been finished, but a small measure of good fortune and Major Dulong’s singular heroism rescued the French. The weather doubtless had much to do with their escape.