Sharpes Escape   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

That was unlikely for there were Portuguese cazadores on the battalion's left flank now, and empty marshland on their right, while the French, harassed by the cannon fire, were retreating across the valley. Best of all the light company was back.

"It went well," Lawford said. He had mounted the horse Harper had brought to the battalion. "Very well."

"A nervous moment or two," Major Forrest said.

"Nervous?" Lawford said in a surprised tone. "Of course not! Everything went exactly as I thought. Quite exactly as I thought. Pity about Lightning, though." He looked with disgust at his brother-in-law who, plainly drunk, was sitting behind the color party, then he took off his hat as Sharpe walked down the line. "Mister Sharpe! That was very pretty what you did to those voltigeurs, very pretty. Thank you, my dear fellow."

Sharpe changed jackets with Bullen, then looked up at Lawford who was beaming with happiness. "Permission to rescue our wounded from the farm, sir," Sharpe said, "before I return to duty."

Lawford looked puzzled. "Rescuing the wounded is part of your duty, isn't it?"

"I mean being quartermaster, sir."

Lawford leaned from his captured saddle. "Mister Sharpe," he said softly.

"Sir?"

"Stop being bloody tedious."

"Yes, sir."

"And I'm supposed to send you to Pero Negro after this," the Colonel went on and, seeing Sharpe did not understand, added, "to headquarters. It seems the General wants a word with you."

"Send Mister Vicente, sir," Sharpe said, "and the prisoner. Between them they can tell the General everything he needs to know."

"And you can tell me," Lawford said, watching the French go back into the far hills.

"Nothing to tell, sir," Sharpe said.

"Nothing to tell! Good God, you've been absent for two weeks and you've nothing to tell?"

"Just got lost, sir, looking for the turpentine. Very sorry, sir."

"You just got lost," Lawford said flatly, then he looked at Sarah and Joana who were in muddy breeches and had muskets. Lawford looked as if he was about to say something about the women, then shook his head and turned back to Sharpe. "Nothing to tell, eh?"

"We got away, sir," Sharpe said, "that's all that matters. We got away." And they had. It had been Sharpe's escape.



HISTORICAL NOTE

The French invasion of Portugal in the late summer of 1810 was defeated by hunger, and it marked the last time that the French tried to capture the country. Wellington, by now commander of both the Portuguese and the British armies, adopted a scorched earth policy that brought huge hardship to the Portuguese people. Attempts were made to deny the invaders every scrap of food, while the inhabitants of central Portugal were required to leave their homes, either to take to the hills, go north to Oporto or south to Lisbon, which was to be defended by the extraordinary Lines of Torres Vedras.

The strategy worked, but at a very high price. One estimate reckons that forty to fifty thousand Portuguese lost their lives in the winter of 1811–1812, most from hunger, some from the French, but an appalling figure, amounting to about 2 per cent of the then Portuguese population. It was, by any reckoning, a hard-hearted strategy, throwing the burden of the war onto the civilian population. Was it necessary? Wellington conclusively defeated Massena on the heights of Bussaco, and had he guarded the road around the north of the great ridge, he could probably have repulsed the French there and then, forcing them back to Ciudad Rodrigo across the Spanish border, but that, of course, would have left Massena's army relatively undamaged. Hunger and disease were much greater enemies than redcoats and riflemen, and by forcing Massena to spend the winter in the wasteland north of the lines, Wellington destroyed his enemy's army. At the beginning of the campaign, in September 1810, Massena commanded 65,000 men. When he got back to Spain he had fewer than 40,000, and had lost half his horses and virtually all his wheeled transport. Of the 25,000 men he lost, only about 4,000 were killed, wounded or taken prisoner at Bussaco (British losses were about 1,000); the rest were lost because the Lines of Torres Vedras condemned Massena to a winter of hunger, disease and desertion.

So why fight at Bussaco if the Lines of Torres Vedras could do the job better? Wellington fought there for the sake of morale. The Portuguese army did not have a sterling record against the French, but it was now reorganized and under Wellington's command and, by giving it a victory on the ridge, he gave that army a confidence it never lost. Bussaco was the place where the Portuguese learned they could beat the French and, rightly, it holds a celebrated place in Portuguese history.

The ridge is heavily forested now, so that it is difficult to imagine how any battle could have been fought up its eastern face, but photographs taken in 1910 show the ridge as almost entirely bare, and contemporary accounts suggest that was how it was a hundred years earlier. Those photographs can be seen in the splendid book, Bussaco 1810 , by Rene Chartrand, published by Osprey. In most books about the battle the monastery on the reverse slope is referred to as a convent, a word which properly can be applied to communities of either monks or nuns, but common usage restricts it to nuns, and I have seen the building at Bussaco called the Convento dos Carmelitas Descalgos and the Mosteiro dos Carmelitas, so I refer to it as a monastery to avoid giving the impression that nuns were present. It was occupied by the Barefoot Carmelites until 1834 when the Portuguese monasteries were dissolved. It still exists, as do the clay stations of the cross in their brick housings, and all can be visited. A massive hotel, built in the early twentieth century as a royal palace, now stands next to the monastery.

Massena was indeed twenty-two miles behind Bussaco on the eve of the battle. He had visited Bussaco briefly, then returned to his eighteen-year-old mistress, Henriette Leberton, and Ney's aide, D'Esmenard, was forced to hold a conversation through their closed bedroom door. Massena managed to tear himself from Henriette's arms and rode back to Bussaco where he decided against any kind of reconnaissance and simply launched his troops into their attack. It was a foolhardy decision, for the ridge at Bussaco is a formidable position. Some of his generals advised against an attack, but Massena was confident his troops could break the British and Portuguese line. It was an error born of over-confidence and, though the French columns did reach the crest as described in the novel, they were pinched off and defeated.

The French sack of Coimbra was every bit as nasty as its depiction in Sharpe's Escape.