17th - What was Sharpe getting up to?
THE THIRD DAY
Saturday, 17 June 1815
Sharpe and Harper spend the night at Quatre Bras, not returning to the princely headquarter.
"The Duke of Wellington, who had slept in an inn three miles from Quatre Bras, returned to the crossroads at first light. The Highlanders of the 92nd made him a fire and served him t ea."
that would have been at about 3 in the morning... and he's lucky he didn't have to drink Harper's tea...
Baron Rebecque searches out Sharpe to discuss the other day's disaccord. They walk through the trampled fields, carefully staying clear of the 69th’s mass grave.
"‘You were right,’ he said at last.
Sharpe shrugged, but said nothing.
‘And the Prince knows you were right, and he feels badly.’
‘So tell the little bastard to apologize. Not to me, but to the widows of the 69th.’
Rebecque smiled at Sharpe’s vehemence. ‘One is generally disappointed if one expects royalty to make apologies. He’s young, very headstrong, but he’s a good man underneath. He has the impatience of youth; the conviction that bold action will bring immediate success. Yesterday he was wrong, but who can say that tomorrow he won’t be right? Anyway, he needs the advice of people he respects, and he respects you.’ Rebecque, suffering from the day’s first attack of hay fever, blew his nose into a huge red handkerchief. ‘And he’s very upset that you’re angry with him.’"
Their conversation goes on, and this time it's Rebecque who gives out smart advice to our reluctant staff officer and ourtier.
"‘It means that when he gives you an idiotic order, you say, “Yes, sir. At once, sir,” and you ride away and you waste as much time as you can, and when you get back and he demands to know why the order hasn’t been obeyed, you say you’ll attend to it at once and you ride away again and waste even more time. It’s called tact.’
‘Bugger tact,’ Sharpe said angrily, though he suspected Rebecque was right."
Rebecque, displaying an impressive skill at tactical manoeuvres, gets Sharpe to agree to report for duty again, and will further smoothe the waters by apopogising to the prince: "I shall say that you deeply regret having caused his Highness any perturbation and wish only to be at his side as an adviser and friend.’"
The Prussian force under Blücher had got beaten at Ligny, leaving the flanks of the British at Quatre Bras exposed, so now the army is in retreat.
"Sharpe remembered Wellington leaning over the map in the Duke of Richmond’s dressing-room. ‘Are we going to Waterloo?’ he asked Rebecque."
Rebeque confirms that they are marching twelve miles to the north, to a place just south of Waterloo, Mont-St-Jean, to stand there tomorrow. Further he suggests that Sharpe serves as the Prince’s personal picquet on the retreat and keeps Lt. Doggett as a messenger again.
Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe, Harper and Doggett join the British rearguard, waiting out the retreat at the edge of the wood by the half-covered grave of the 69th.
Only when they see Wellington, who had been reading the papers and taking a nap in the rye, pull himself into his saddle to join the last troops leaving the crossroads, they start moving north as well. Almost too late, thousands of French lancers appear in the farmland. They are greeted by the last remnant of the British: their artillery. Every waiting British gun was fired. The weather does not approve, a thunderstorm breaks lose, bringing torrential rain that turns the road into a river of mud. It's true Wellington weather.
Cavalry and artillery have a hard time retreating in the morass, and a barrage by a rocket troop scatters both sides cavalry in panic. At least Sharpe and Harper knew what was coming when they spotted the rocket artillery...
Also among the bolting cavlry is Lord John Rossendale, whom Sharpe's wife, taking Sharpe's money as well, had absconded with. When he first spots Sharpe in the downpour, he turns and flees, but Sharpe is onto him and catches up with him in the woods.
He draws a rainproof percussion pistol on Sharpe, but can not bring himself to shoot. Sharpe calmly closes on him, takes the pistol away and breaks it, then Lord John's precious sword and tells him that he's not worth fighting.
Sharpe continues: "'You listen. I don’t care about Jane. She’s your whore now. But I’ve got a farm in Normandy and it needs new apple trees and the barn needs a new roof, and the bloody Emperor took all our horses and cattle for his Goddamned army, and the taxes in France are bloody evil, and you’ve got my money. So where is it?’"
Rossendale has to admitt that Jane has squandered most of the money, not least on his debts, and writes a promissory note for Sharpe. Sharpe considers himself to be rid of Jane now.
"‘I’m not a prinked up bastard,’ Sharpe said. ‘I’m the real thing, my lord. I’m a whore’s bastard out of a gutter, so I’m allowed to sell my wife. She’s yours. I’ve got your money,’ Sharpe pushed the promissory note into his pocket, ‘so all you need is this.’ He fumbled in a saddlebag then drew out the scruffy piece of rope that was Nosey’s usual leash. He tossed the dirty scrap of sisal across Lord John’s saddle. ‘Put the noose round her neck and tell her that you bought her."
He allows Rossendale to ride off, nevertheless Sharpe is somewhat shaken by the transaction.
"Sharpe waited a few moments. He swore silently to himself, for there had been no joy in humiliating the weak. But at least he considered he had made a good bargain. A new roof for the château in return for a faithless wife. He patted the pocket where the note was folded, then turned his horse. He was still somewhat shaken for, until he had actually taken the pistol from Lord John, Sharpe had not realized that it was a rainproof percussion weapon. Otherwise he would never have ridden so slowly to its black muzzle."
Of course Harper and Doggett have caught up as well.
"Harper waited for Sharpe on the high road. He had seen a shaken Lord John Rossendale burst from the trees, now, with a bemused Doggett beside him, the Irishman watched Sharpe urge his horse up to the paved surface. ‘So what happened?’ Harper asked.
‘He pissed himself, then bought the bitch.’
Harper laughed. Doggett did not like to ask for any explanation."
The retreating army struggles on to Mont-St-Jean, the battalions bivouacing in the soaking fields.
"The Duke of Wellington chose to make his stand on the ridge where the solitary elm tree grew.
And there, in the rain, his army waited."
"It was fully dark by the time Sharpe and Harper reached Waterloo and discovered the Prince’s billet. A sentry opened the stable gate and the two Riflemen ducked under the low stone arch which led to the yard." Harper starts settling down in the stables and takes care of the horses, and Sharpe is all about bedding down as well, but he's chased off by Harper.
"‘Go and see your wee Prince. He’s probably missing you.’" It's back unto the breach for Sharpe.
The other staff officers and don't quite know how to deal with him and brave little Doggett comes to the rescue.
"‘Where’s Rebecque?’ Sharpe asked the room at large.
‘With His Highness,’ Doggett said. ‘Red wine?’
‘What I would really like,’ Sharpe collapsed into the chair, ‘is a cup of tea.’
Doggett grinned. ‘I shall arrange it, sir.’"
Sharpe girds his loins and proceeds to be tactful.
"‘I hate common things.’ The Prince dropped his ring and turned his glaucous eyes on Sharpe. ‘I thought I ordered you to dress in Dutch uniform?’
Tact, Sharpe told himself, tact. ‘It’s drying out, sir.’
[...]
‘I’ve been educated as a soldier, isn’t that so, Rebecque?’
‘Indeed, Your Highness.’
‘Educated, Sharpe! Think of that! My whole lifetime has been devoted to the study of warfare, and shall I tell you what is the one lesson I have learned above all others?’
‘I should like to know, sir.’ Sharpe admired his own tactful restraint, especially as the Prince was just twenty-three years old and Sharpe had been a fighting soldier for twenty-two.
[...]
‘Indeed, sir.’ Sharpe had fallen back into his old Sergeant’s ways, merely saying what an officer wanted to hear. It was always easy to keep bumptious officers happy with a succession of yes, no and indeed."
Finally having escaped the princely attention, Sgt. Sharpe is free to bed down with Harper and the horses.
"The clock in the hallway struck eleven. Sharpe, knowing that he must be at the ridge before dawn, left orders that he was to be called at half-past two, then carried Rebecque’s gift of bread and cold lamb out to the stables where Harper had sequestered a patch of comparatively dry straw for a bed.
[...]
Sharpe pulled the damp cloak over his wet uniform and listened to the rain smash down on the yard’s cobbles."
and after a wet night...
all "quotes" from Sharpe's Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell, pics from Sharpe's Waterloo of the tv series, map by battlefield-site.co.uk
And greatest thanks to Bernard Cornwell, he did the hard research and fictionalising, I'm just summing up what Sharpe's doing (according to the book).