Sharpes Sword   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

The infantry were behind, snakes of blue-jacketed men who seemed to fill the plain, spreading east and west, and among them were the guns. The French artillery, Napoleon’s own trade, who made their batteries in full view of the ridge and lifted the burning barrels from the travelling position to the fighting position. Major Forrest, watching with his officers, grinned. “There’s enough of them.”

There usually are, sir,“ Sharpe said.

Hussars, Dragoons, Lancers, Cuiraisseurs, Chasseurs, Guardsmen, Grenadiers, Voltigeurs, Tirailleurs, Infantry, Artillery, Bandsmen, Engineers, Ambulance men, Drivers, Staff, all of them pulled by the beat of the drum to this place where they became an army. Fifty thousand men brought to this patch of land half the size of a country parish, a patch of land that might become well-manured with their blood. The Spanish farmers said the crops grew twice as well the year after a battle.

The French could not see the British. They saw a few officers on the hilltop, saw the flash of light from an occasional telescope aimed at them, but Marmont had to guess where Wellington’s troops were hidden behind the ridge. He would have to guess where to make his attack, knowing all the while that his fine troops might climb the ridge’s scarp only to be suddenly faced with the red-jacketed infantry that could fire their Brown Bess muskets faster than any army in the world. Marmont would have to guess where to attack, and Generals do not like guessing.

He did not guess that first day, nor the next, and it seemed as if the two armies had come together only to be paralysed. Each night men from British Light Companies would go down the hill towards the French to act as picquets against a night attack, but Marmont did not risk his army in the darkness. Sharpe went one night. The noise of the French army was like the noise of a city, its lights were a sprawl of fires scattered as lavishly as the poppies and cornflowers. It was cold at night, the upland not holding the day’s heat, and Sharpe shivered, Leroux and La Marquesa forgotten, waiting for the battle to erupt on the long ridge.

On Monday, after early breakfasts, the road from Salamanca was crowded with people coming to stare at the two armies. Some walked, some rode, some came in carriages, and most made themselves comfortable on a hill beside the village of San Christobal and were irked that the armies were not fighting. Perhaps because the spectators had arrived, there seemed a greater sense of urgency in the British lines, and Sharpe watched as his men once more prepared for battle.