He wanted the French guns there. He had invited the French to put their guns there.

He watched the three gun teams inch their way down the steep road. Infantrymen helped brake the wheels. Lower and lower they came. It was possible, he knew, that the guns might be brought to the flat land across from the bridge, but to stop that he had posted his handful of Riflemen from the South Essex Light Company on the river bank. The French would have seen them there, would fear the spinning accuracy of the bullets, and would, he hoped, choose to place the guns out of the rifles’ range.

They so chose. Sharpe watched with relief as the teams swung onto the platform, as the weapons were unlimbered, and as the ready ammunition was brought forward.

Sharpe turned. ‘Unstop your muzzles!’ The two red-coated ranks pulled the corks from their musket barrels and unwrapped the damp rags from the locks. ‘Present!’

The muskets went into the mens’ shoulders. The French would see the movement. The French feared the speed of British musket fire, the well drilled rhythm of death that had scoured so many battlefields of Spain.

Sharpe turned away from his men. ‘Lieutenant?’

‘Sir?’ Michael Trumper-Jones answered in a squeak. He tried again in a deeper voice. ‘Sir?’

‘Tie your handkerchief to your sabre.’

‘But, sir…’

‘You will obey orders, Lieutenant.’ It was not said so loudly as to reach any ears other than Trumper-Jones‘, but the words were harshly chilling.

‘Yes, sir.’

The six attack companies of the French were two hundred and fifty yards away. They were in column, their bayonets fixed, ready to come forward when the guns had done their work.

Sharpe took the telescope from his haversack, extended the tubes, and looked at the guns. He could see the canisters, the tin cans that spread their balls in a fan of death, being carried to the muzzles of the three guns.