Sharpe’s Triumph: The Battle of Assaye, September 1803. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ he contemplated what Dowlut Rao Scindia would say if he meekly surrendered Ahmednuggur. Scindia would be angry, and an angry Scindia was liable to put whoever had angered him beneath the elephant’s foot. The Killadar’s task was to delay the British in front of Ahmednuggur while Scindia gathered his allies and so prepared the vast army that would crush the invader. Sanjit Pandee sighed. ‘There can be no cowle,’ he called down to Wellesley’s three messengers, and the horsemen did not try to change his mind. They just tugged on their reins, spurred their horses and rode away. ‘They want battle,’ the Killadar said sadly, ‘they want loot.’

      ‘That’s why they come here,’ an aide replied. ‘Their own land is barren.’

      ‘I hear it is green,’ Sanjit Pandee said.

      ‘No, sahib, barren and dry. Why else would they be here?’

      News spread along the walls that cowle had been refused. No one had expected otherwise, but the Killadar’s reluctant defiance cheered the defenders whose ranks thickened as townsfolk climbed to the firestep to see the approaching enemy.

      Dodd scowled when he saw that women and children were thronging the ramparts to view the enemy. ‘Clear them away!’ he ordered his interpreter. ‘I want only the duty companies up here.’ He watched as his orders were obeyed. ‘Nothing’s going to happen for three days now,’ he assured his officers. ‘They’ll send skirmishers to harass us, but skirmishers can’t hurt us if we don’t show our heads above the wall. So tell the men to keep their heads down. And no one’s to fire at the skirmishers, you understand? No point in wasting good balls on skirmishers. We’ll open fire after three days.’

      ‘In three days, sahib?’ a young Indian officer asked.

      ‘It will take the bastards one day to establish batteries and two to make a breach,’ Dodd forecast confidently. ‘And on the fourth day the buggers will come, so there’s nothing to get excited about now.’ The Major decided to set an example of insouciance in the face of the enemy. ‘I’m going for breakfast,’ he told his officers. ‘I’ll be back when the bastards start digging their breaching batteries.’

      The tall Major ran down the steps and disappeared into the city’s alleys. The interpreter looked back at the approaching column, then put his eye to the telescope. He was looking for guns, but at first he could see only a mass of men in red coats with the odd horseman among their ranks, and then he saw something odd. Something he did not comprehend.

      Some of the men in the front ranks were carrying ladders. He frowned, then saw something more familiar beyond the red ranks and tilted the glass so that he could see the enemy’s cannon. There were only five guns, one being hauled by men and the four larger by elephants, and behind the artillery were more redcoats. Those redcoats wore patterned skirts and had high black hats, and the interpreter was glad that he was behind the wall, for somehow the men in skirts looked fearsome.

      He looked back at the ladders and did not really understand what he saw. There were only four ladders, so plainly they did not mean to lean them against the wall. Maybe, he thought, the British planned to make an observation tower so that they could see over the defences, and that explanation made sense and so he did not comprehend that there was to be no siege at all, but an escalade. The enemy was not planning to knock a hole in the wall, but to swarm straight over it. There would be no waiting, no digging, no saps, no batteries and no breach. There would just be a charge, a scream, a torrent of fire, and then death in the morning sun.

      ‘The thing is, Sharpe,’ McCandless said, ‘not to get yourself killed.’

      ‘Wasn’t planning on it, sir.’

      ‘No heroics, Sharpe. It’s not your job. We just follow the heroes into the city, look for Mister Dodd, then go back home.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘So stay close to me, and I’m staying close to Colonel Wallace’s party, so if you lose me, look for him. That’s Wallace there, see him?’ McCandless indicated a tall, bare-headed officer riding at the front of the 74th.

      ‘I see him, sir,’ Sharpe said. He was mounted on McCandless’s spare horse and the extra height allowed him to see over the heads of the King’s 74th who marched in front of him. Beyond the Highlanders the city wall looked dark red in the early sun, and on its summit he could see the occasional glint of a musket showing between the dome-shaped merlons that topped the wall. Big round bastions stood every hundred yards and those bastions had black embrasures which Sharpe assumed hid the defenders’ cannon. The brightly coloured statues of a temple’s tower showed above the rampart while a slew of flags drooped over the gate. No one fired yet. The British were within cannon range, but the defenders were keeping their guns quiet.

      Most of the British force now checked a half-mile from the walls while the three assault parties organized themselves. Two of the attacking groups would escalade the wall, one to the left of the gate and the other to the right, and both would be led by Scottish soldiers with sepoys in support. The King’s 78th, the kilted regiment, would attack the wall to the left while their fellow Highlanders of the 74th would assault to the right. The third attack was in the centre and would be led by the 74th’s Colonel, William Wallace, who was also commander of one of the two infantry brigades and evidently an old friend of McCandless for, seeing his fellow Scot, Wallace rode back through his regiment’s ranks to greet him with a warm familiarity. Wallace would be leading men of the 74th in an assault against the gate itself and his plan was to run a six-pounder cannon hard up against the big timber gates then fire the gun to blast the entrance open. ‘None of our gunners have ever done it before,’ Wallace told McCandless, ‘and they’ve insisted on putting a round shot down the gun, but I swear my mother told me you should never load shot to open gates. A double powder charge, she instructed me, and nothing else.’

      ‘Your mother told you that, Wallace?’ McCandless asked.

      ‘Her father was an artilleryman, you see, and he brought her up properly. But I can’t persuade our gunners to leave out the ball. Stubborn fellows, they are. English to a man, of course. Can’t teach them anything.’ Wallace offered McCandless his canteen. ‘It’s cold tea, McCandless, nothing that will send your soul to perdition.’

      McCandless took a swig of the tea, then introduced Sharpe. ‘He was the fellow who blew the Tippoo’s mine in Seringapatam,’ he told Wallace.

      ‘I heard about you, Sharpe!’ Wallace said. ‘A damn fine day’s work, Sergeant, well done.’ And the Scotsman leaned across to give Sharpe his hand. He was a middle-aged man, balding, with a pleasant face and a quick smile. ‘I can tempt you to some cold tea, Sharpe?’

      ‘I’ve got water, sir, thank you,’ Sharpe said, patting his canteen which was filled with rum, a gift from Daniel Fletcher, the General’s orderly.

      ‘You’ll forgive me if I’m about my business,’ Wallace said to McCandless, retrieving his canteen. ‘I’ll see you inside the city, McCandless. Joy of the day to you both.’ Wallace spurred back to the head of his column.

      ‘A very good man,’ McCandless said warmly, ‘a very good man indeed.’

      Sevajee and his dozen men cantered up to join McCandless. They all wore red jackets, for they planned to ride into the city with McCandless and none wanted to be mistaken for the enemy, yet somehow the unbuttoned jackets, which had been borrowed from a sepoy battalion, made them look more piratical than ever. They all carried naked tulwars, curved sabres that they had honed to a razor’s edge at dawn. Sevajee reckoned there would be no time for aiming firelocks once they were inside Ahmednuggur. Ride in, charge whoever still put up a fight СКАЧАТЬ