infantry, in their blue coats, were marching in the trampled wheat either side of the road so as to leave the harder road surface for the artillery. The guns were twelve-pounders. Every few minutes the guns would halt as some obstruction worked its way down the long column. Staff officers galloped fine horses down the road’s wide verges. On the far slope of the valley a troop of Red Lancers cantered through a wheat field, each horse leaving a straight trail of crushed plants.
Sharpe had no watch, but he estimated that he stayed at the edge of the wood for two hours during which time he counted twenty-two guns and forty-eight supply wagons. He also saw two carriages that might have been carrying senior officers, and he flirted with the idea that one of the carriages might have belonged to the Emperor himself. Sharpe had fought the French for over twenty years, yet he had never seen the Emperor and, all unbidden, a sudden and childish image of a man with cloven tail, sharp horns and demonic fangs stalked Sharpe’s fears that were made worse by the Emperor’s real reputation as a soldier of genius whose presence on a battlefield was worth a whole corps of men.
Still the French marched north. Sharpe counted eighteen infantry battalions and four squadrons of cavalry, one of which, composed of Dragoons, rode very close to his hiding place at the wood’s edge, but none of the French troopers glanced left to see where the Englishman and his dog lay in the shadows. The French horsemen were close enough for Sharpe to see their cadenettes, the pigtails which framed each man’s face as a mark of distinction. Their equipment looked good and new, and their horses were well fed. In Spain the French had whipped and ridden their horses to destruction, but these troops were freshly mounted on strong and healthy animals.
Newly mounted cavalry, eighteen battalions of infantry and twenty-two cannon did not constitute an army, but they certainly added up to a threat. Sharpe knew he was seeing much more than a cavalry raid, though he was not certain whether this was the real invasion. It was possible that these men were nothing but a strong feint designed to draw the Allies towards Charleroi while the real French thrust, fuelled by the Emperor’s presence, attacked twenty-five miles to the west at Mons.
Sharpe slithered back from the treeline and climbed wearily into the saddle. His job now was to let the allied headquarters know what he had seen: that the French had crossed the frontier and that the campaign had therefore begun. Sharpe remembered that Lucille, who had loyally left France to stay at his side, had been invited to some fashionable and expensive ball that was supposed to take place in Brussels this night. The expense would all go for nothing now because the Emperor had just rewritten the social calendar. Sharpe, who hated dancing, smiled at the thought, then turned and spurred the horse towards home.
Two miles away, in the streets of Charleroi, the Emperor sat outside the Belle Vue inn. His coach had been parked out of sight while his white saddle horse had been tethered to a post at the roadside so that the passing soldiers would think their Emperor was riding to war instead of being carried in upholstered comfort. The men cheered their monarch as they marched past him. ‘Vive l’Empereur! Vive l’Empereur!’ The drummers, tediously beating the rhythm of the march, broke into joyous flurries when they realized their Emperor was so close. The troops could not reach their idol, for he was protected by bear-skinned guardsmen, but some men broke ranks to kiss the Emperor’s pale horse.
Napoleon showed no reaction to his men’s adulation. He sat motionless, swathed in a greatcoat despite the day’s oppressive heat, and with his face concealed by the peak of his hat that he had turned fore and aft to shadow his eyes. He sat in the low chair with his head bowed, looking for all the world like a genius deep in contemplation, though in fact he was fast asleep.
Beyond the captured bridge a French gunner officer kicked the body of the dead Prussian infantryman into the River Sambre. For a few moments the corpse was trapped on a half-sunken log, then an eddy loosed the dead man and carried him westwards.
And the campaign was six hours old.
Sharpe emerged from the wood and turned the mare north-west. The tired horse faced a journey of at least twenty miles across heavy country so he kept her at a sedate trot. The sun was high and as harsh as on any day Sharpe remembered from the long campaigns in Spain. The dog, seemingly tireless, roamed eagerly ahead.
It was a good five minutes before Sharpe noticed the French Dragoons who followed him. The enemy horsemen were silhouetted on the southern skyline and Sharpe suspected they must have been trailing him ever since he had emerged from the trees. He cursed himself for his carelessness, and dug his heels back to speed the weary mare. He hoped the Frenchmen would be content to drive him away from the high road rather than pursue and capture him, but as he quickened the mare’s pace, so the Frenchmen spurred their own horses.
Sharpe turned westwards away from the Brussels road which he supposed the Dragoons were guarding. For thirty minutes he pressed the horse hard, always hoping that his flight would persuade the Dragoons to abandon their pursuit, but the Frenchmen were stubborn, or else the chase was a welcome break in their day’s tedium. Their horses were fresher, and gradually closed on Sharpe who, to spare the mare’s strength, tried to avoid the worst hills, but he eventually found himself trapped in a long valley and was forced to put the mare at a steep grass slope which led to a bare skyline.
The mare plunged gallantly at the hillside, but even the long rest in the dark cool wood had not restored her full strength. Sharpe spurred her into a clumsy gallop that made his heavy sword flap in its slings and crash its disc hilt painfully onto his left thigh. The Dragoons were bunched like steeplechasers as they reached the foot of the slope. One Frenchman had taken his carbine from his holster and now tried a long shot at Sharpe, but the bullet fluttered harmlessly overhead.
The mare’s breath was roaring as she reached the crest. She wanted to check, but Sharpe pushed her through a gap in a straggling hedgerow and spurred her across an undulating pasture which, years before, had been under the plough and old furrows still formed corrugations that faced Sharpe like waves of pale grass. Sharpe was riding across the grassy waves and the mare took the hard, uneven ground heavily, jarring him with every step. Nosey raced ahead, circled back, barked happily, then ran alongside the labouring horse. Sharpe twisted to look behind and saw the first Dragoons reach the skyline. They had spread out and were racing to capture him. The ridged pasture was falling away in front of Sharpe, sloping down to a long dark oak wood from which a cart track ran north towards a big stone-walled farm that looked like a miniature fort. Sharpe looked behind again and saw the closest Dragoons were now just fifty yards away. Their long swords were drawn and their horses’ teeth bared. Sharpe tried to draw his own sword, but the moment he took his right hand off the reins he almost fell and the mare immediately tried to check. ‘Go on!’ he shouted at the mare and scraped his spurs hard down her flanks. ‘Go on!’
He glanced right and saw another half-dozen Dragoons racing to cut him off from the cart track. He swore viciously, turned the mare a touch westward again, but that merely gave the pursuers a better angle to close on him. The wood was only a hundred paces away, but the sweat-streaked mare was blown and slowing. Even if she reached the trees, the Dragoons would soon ride Sharpe down in the tangle of undergrowth. He swore silently. If he lived he would be doomed to spend the war as a prisoner.
Then a distant trumpet blared a challenge, making Sharpe turn with astonishment to see black-coated horsemen streaming pell-mell from the fortress-like farm buildings. There must have been at least twenty cavalrymen rowelling their horses down the cart track. Sharpe recognized the cavalry as Prussians. Dust spurted and drifted from their hooves and the bright sun flashed cruel and beautiful from their drawn sabres.
The Dragoons closest to the Prussians immediately turned and galloped back up the slope towards their comrades. Sharpe gave the mare a last despairing hack with his heels, then ducked his head as she crashed through a stand of ferns and thus into the wood’s cool margin. She would go no further, but just pulled up under the trees, shivering and sweating and blowing. Sharpe dragged
