“They said you captured them.”

“We probably did.” He took out a leather case of long thin cigars and offered one to Sharpe. Sharpe shook his head, then waited as Lecroix laboriously struck a light with his tinderbox. “You did well this morning,” the Frenchman said once the cigar was alight.

“Your garrison was asleep,” Sharpe said.

Lecroix shrugged. “Garrison troops. No good. Old and sick and tired men.” He spat out a shred of tobacco. “But I think you have done all the damage you will do today. You will not break the bridge.”

“We won’t?”

“Cannon,” Lecroix said laconically, gesturing at Fort Josephine, “and my colonel is determined to preserve the bridge, and what my colonel wants, he gets.”

“Colonel Vandal?”

“Vandal,” Lecroix corrected Sharpe’s pronunciation, “Colonel Vandal of the 8th of the Line. You have heard of him?”

“Never.”

“You should educate yourself, Captain,” Lecroix said with a smile.

“Read the accounts of Austerlitz and be astonished by Colonel Vandal’s bravery.”

“Austerlitz?” Sharpe asked. “What was that?”

Lecroix just shrugged. The women’s luggage was dropped at the bridge’s end and Sharpe sent the men back, then followed them until he reached Lieutenant Sturridge who was kicking at the planks on the foredeck of the fourth pontoon from the bank. The timber was rotten and he had managed to make a hole there. The stench of stagnant water came from the hole. “If we widen it,” Sturridge said, “then we should be able to blow this one to hell and beyond.”

“Sir!” Harper called. Sharpe turned eastward and saw French infantry coming from Fort Josephine.