Sharpe’s Waterloo: The Waterloo Campaign, 15–18 June, 1815. Bernard Cornwell
core of the Duke’s army was his infantry. He had thirty battalions of redcoats, but only half of those had fought in his Spanish campaigns and the quality of the other half was unknown. He had some excellent infantry battalions of the King’s German Legion, and some enthusiastic troops from Hanover, but together the German and British infantry totalled less than forty thousand men. To make up the numbers he had the Dutch-Belgian army, over thirty thousand infantrymen in all, which he did not trust at all. Most of the Dutch-Belgians had fought for the Emperor and still wore the Emperor’s uniforms. The Duke was assured by the King of the Netherlands that the Belgians would fight, but, Wellington wondered, for whom?
The Duke had cavalry too, but the Duke had no faith in horsemen, whether Dutch or English. His German cavalry was first class, but sadly few in numbers, while the Duke’s English cavalrymen were mere fools on horseback; expensive and touchy, prone to insanity, and utter strangers to discipline. The Dutch-Belgian horsemen, for all the Duke cared, could have packed their bags and ridden home right now.
He had ninety thousand men, of whom half might fight well, and he knew he would likely face a hundred thousand of Napoleon’s veterans. The Emperor’s veterans, fretting against the injustices of Bourbon France, had welcomed Napoleon’s return and flocked to the Eagles. The French army, which the Duke still thought was massing south of the border, was probably the finest instrument that Napoleon had ever commanded. Every man in it had fought before, it was freshly equipped, and it sought vengeance against the countries that had humbled France in 1814. The Duke had cause for worry, yet as he strolled down the rue Royale he was forced to put a brave face on the desperate odds lest his enemies took courage from his despair. The Duke could also cling to one strong hope, namely that his scratch army would not fight Napoleon alone, but alongside Prince Blücher’s Prussians. So long as the British and Prussian armies joined forces, they must win; separately, the Duke feared, they must be destroyed.
Yet twenty-five miles to the south the French were already pushing the Prussian forces eastwards, away from the British. No one in Brussels knew that the French had invaded; instead they prepared for a duchess’s ball while a fat Prussian major paid for his roast chicken, finished his wine, then ambled slowly northwards.
At one o’clock in the afternoon, eight hours after the first shots had been fired south of Charleroi, Sharpe met more cavalrymen; this time a patrol in red-faced dark blue coats who thundered eagerly across a pasture to surround Sharpe and his two horses. They were men from Hanover, exiles who formed the King’s German Legion that had fought so hard and well in Spain. Now the German soldiers stared suspiciously at Sharpe’s strange uniform until one of the troopers saw the Imperial ‘N’ on the horse’s saddle-cloth and the sabres rasped out of their metal scabbards as the horsemen shouted at Sharpe to surrender.
‘Bugger off,’ Sharpe snarled.
‘You’re English?’ the KGL Captain asked in that language. He was mounted on a fine black gelding, glossy coated and fresh. His saddle-cloth bore the British royal cipher, a reminder that England’s King was also Hanover’s monarch.
‘I’m Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe, of the Prince of Orange’s staff.’
‘You must forgive us, sir.’ The Captain, who introduced himself as Hans Blasendorf, sheathed his sabre. He told Sharpe his patrol was one of the many that daily scouted south to the French border and beyond; this particular troop had been ordered to explore the villages south and east of Mons down as far as the Sambre, but not to encroach on Prussian territory.
‘The French are already in Charleroi,’ Sharpe told the German.
Blasendorf gaped at Sharpe in shocked silence for a moment. ‘For certain?’
‘For certain!’ Tiredness made Sharpe indignant. ‘I’ve just been there! I took this horse off a French Dragoon north of the town.’
The German understood the desperate urgency of Sharpe’s news. He tore a page from his notebook, offered it with a pencil to Sharpe, then volunteered his own patrol to take the despatch to General Dornberg’s headquarters in Mons. Dornberg was the General in charge of these cavalry patrols which watched the French frontier, and finding one of his officers had been a stroke of luck for Sharpe; by pure accident he had come across the very men whose job was to alert the allies of any French advance.
Sharpe borrowed a shako from one of the troopers and used its flat round top as a writing desk. He did not write well because he had learned his letters late in life and, though Lucille had made him into a much better reader, he was still clumsy with a pen or pencil. Nevertheless, as clearly as he could, he wrote down what he had observed – that a large French force of infantry, cavalry and artillery was marching north out of Charleroi on the Brussels road. A prisoner had been taken who reported a possibility that the Emperor was with those forces, but the prisoner had not been certain of that fact. Sharpe knew it was important for Dornberg to know where the Emperor was, for where Napoleon rode, that was the main French attack.
He signed the despatch with his name and rank, then handed it to Blasendorf who promised it would be delivered as swiftly as his horses could cross country.
‘And ask General Dornberg to tell the Prince’s Chief of Staff that I’m watching the Charleroi road,’ Sharpe added.
Blasendorf nodded an acknowledgement as he turned his horse away, then, realizing what Sharpe had said, he looked anxiously back. ‘You’re going back to the road, sir?’
‘I’m going back.’
Sharpe, his message in safe hands, was free to return and watch the French. In truth he did not want to go, for he was tired and saddle-sore, but this day the allies needed accurate news of the enemy so that their response could be certain, fast and lethal. Besides, the appearance of the French had spurred Sharpe’s old excitement. He had thought that living in Normandy would make him ambivalent towards his old enemy, but he had spent too many years fighting the Crapauds suddenly to relinquish the need to see them beaten.
So out of habit as much as out of duty, he turned his captured horse and rode again towards the enemy. While to the north Brussels slept.
Major General Sir William Dornberg received the pencil-written despatch in the town hall at Mons which he had made into his headquarters, and where he had transformed the ancient council chamber into his map room. The panelled room, hung with dusty coats of arms, suited his self-esteem, for Dornberg was a very proud man who was convinced that Europe did not properly appreciate his military genius. He had once fought for the French, but they had not promoted him beyond the rank of colonel, so he had deserted to the British who had rewarded his defection with a knighthood and a generalship, but even so, he still felt slighted. He had been given command of a cavalry brigade, a mere twelve hundred sabres, while men he thought less talented than himself commanded whole divisions. Indeed, the Prince of Orange, a callow boy, commanded a corps!
‘Who was this man?’ he asked Captain Blasendorf.
‘An Englishman, sir. A lieutenant-colonel.’
‘On a French horse, you say?’
‘He says he captured the horse, sir.’
Dornberg frowned at the message, so ill-written in clumsy pencilled capitals that it could have been scrawled by a child. ‘What unit was this Englishman, Sharpe? Is that his name? Sharpe?’
‘If he’s the Sharpe I think he is, sir, then he’s quite a celebrated soldier. I remember in Spain –’
‘Spain! Spain! All I hear about is Spain!’ Dornberg slapped the table with the palm of his hand, then glared with protruding eyes at the unfortunate Blasendorf. ‘To listen to some officers in this army one would think that no other war had ever been fought but in Spain! I asked you, Captain, what unit this Sharpe belonged to.’
‘Hard to say, sir.’ The KGL Captain frowned as he tried to remember Sharpe’s uniform. ‘Green jacket, nondescript hat, and Chasseur overalls. He said he was on the Prince of Orange’s staff. In fact he asked that you tell the Prince’s headquarters that he’s gone back towards Charleroi.’
Dornberg ignored the