‘Senor?’

‘Horses! Patrick?’

‘Sir?’

‘Grab that fool’s horse.’ He pointed at Trumper-Jones. ‘We’re going hunting!’

‘For what?’ Harper was already moving.

‘Wedding presents and a woman!’ Sharpe followed Harper into the street, looked around, and spotted a Captain of the South Essex. ‘Mr Mahoney!’

‘Sir?’

‘You’ll find orders in that house! Obey them! I’ll be back!’ He gave the mystified Mahoney the letter for Hogan, swung onto Carbine’s saddle, and rode towards the bridge.

To the north of Gamarra Mayor, at a village called Durana, Spanish troops cut the Great Road. The defenders at Durana had been the Spanish regiments loyal to France.

Countrymen fought countrymen, the bitterest clash, and Wellington’s Spaniards, faithful to Spain, won the bridge at five o’clock. The Great Road to France was cut.

The Spanish troops had climbed barricades of the dead. They had fought till their musket barrels were almost red hot, till they had savaged the defenders and won a great victory. They had blocked the Great Road.

The French could still have broken through. They could have screened themselves to the west and thrown their great columns at the tired, — blood-soaked Spaniards, but in the confusion of a smoke filled plain no one knew how few men had broken through in the rear. And all the time, minute by minute, the British Battalions were coming from the west while the great guns, massed wheel to wheel by Wellington, tore huge gaps in the French lines.

The French broke.

King Joseph’s army, that had started the day with a confidence not seen by a French army in Spain for six years, collapsed.

It happened desperately fast, and it happened in pieces. One Brigade would fight, standing fast and firing at their enemies, while another would crumble and run at the first British volley. The French guns fell silent one by one, were limbered up and taken back towards the city. Generals lost touch with their troops, they shouted for information, shouted for men to stand, but the French line was being shredded by the regular, staccato volleys of the British Battalions while overhead the British shells cracked apart in smoke and shrapnel and the French troops edged backwards and then came the rumour that the Great Road was cut and that the enemy came from the north. In truth the French guns still held the British at Gamarra Mayor and the Spaniards further north were too tired and too few to attack south, but the rumour finally broke the French army. It ran.

It was early evening, the time when the trout were rising to feed in the river that flowed beneath the now unguarded bridge at Gamarra Mayor. The French who had guarded the bridge so well had seen their comrades run. They joined the flight.

The men who watched from the western hills or from the Puebla Heights were given a view of magnificence, a view granted to few men, an eagle’s view of victory.

The smoke cleared slowly from the plain to show an army marching forward. Not in parade order, but in a more glorious order. From the mountains to the river, across two miles of burned and bloodied country, the allied Regiments were spread. They marched beneath their Colours and the sun lanced between the smoke to touch the ragged flags red, white, blue, gold, and red again where the blood had soaked them. The land was heavy with the men who marched, Regiment after Regiment, Brigade after Brigade, climbing the low hills that had been the French second line. Their shadows went before them as they marched towards the city of golden spires.

And in the city the women saw the French army break, saw the troops come running, saw the cavalry heading the panicked flight. The tiered seats emptied. Through the city, from house to house, the news spread, and the camp-followers and families and lovers of the French began their own headlong flight from Vitoria. They were spurred on their way by Marshal Jourdan’s last orders in Vitoria, orders brought by harried cavalrymen who shouted at the French to make for Salvatierra.

The Great Road was cut and the only road left for retreat was a narrow, damp track that wound its way towards Salvatierra and from there to Pamplona. From Pamplona, by tortuous paths, the army might struggle back to France through the high Pyrenees.

The chaos began. Civilians, coaches, wagons and horses blocked the narrow streets while, to the west, beneath a sun hazed by the smoke of battle, the victorious Battalions marched in their great line towards the city. The victors darkened the plain and their Colours were high.

While to the south three horsemen crossed Gamarra Mayor’s bridge. They had to pick their way through the corpses, which were already thick with flies, onto the Zadorra’s northern bank.

Sharpe touched his heels to Carbine’s flank. He had his victory, and now, with Harper and Angel beside him, he would ride into the chaos of defeat to search for the Marquesa.

CHAPTER 25

The road to Pamplona was wide enough for a single wagon or gun. The verges and fields either side of the road were too softened by the rain to take either.

Onto that road the whole of the French army, with more than twenty thousand camp-followers, three thousand wagons and over a hundred and fifty guns and limbers, was trying to reach safety.

All day the baggage park had listened to the thunder and watched the smoke over the spires of the cathedral. Now came the orders to retreat, not up the Great Road, but directly east towards Salvatierra and Pamplona.

Whips cracked, oxen protested the iron-shod poles that prodded them into motion, and from a half dozen field tracks and from the crowded city streets the vehicles started towards the single, narrow road. Into the confusion came the guns, thundering from the battlefield and adding their weight to the press of baggage and animals.

The first wagon stuck just a hundred yards beyond the place where the field tracks converged on the road. A carriage, trying to go round it on the soft verge, overturned. A gun swerved, skidded, and the two tons of metal slammed into the carriage, horses screaming, gunners falling beneath the metal, and the road was blocked. Oxen, horses, carriages, wagons, carts, cannon, howitzers, portable forges, ambulances and limbers, all were trapped between the road block and the British.

The wagons swarmed with people. Soldiers fleeing the city, drivers, camp-followers, all ran through the wagon park. Some began to slit the tarpaulins and drag boxes from the loads. Muskets fired as guards tried to protect the Emperor’s property, and then the guards realised that the Emperor had lost this property and whoever took it now might keep it. They joined the looters.

Thousands of French troops were streaming past the blocked wagons, trampling the crops and running eastwards. Generals rode with the cavalry, rehearsing the excuses they would make, while other men swerved into the wagons and searched desperately for wiveS and children.

King Joseph was in his carriage, fleeing towards the road block, and then there was the thunder of hooves, the sight of lifted sabres, and the first British cavalry, sent around the city, descended on the panicked, fleeing mob.

The King escaped only by abandoning his carriage. He scrambled from the right hand door as the British cavalry wrenched open the left. He abandoned his belongings and ran with his erstwhile subjects.

Women and children screamed. They did not know where their men were, only that the army had dissolved into a mob and they must run. Hundreds stayed in the baggage park, tearing the wagonloads down, not caring that the British cavalry were coming. Better to be rich for just a few minutes than eternally poor. From the city came the Spaniards, many with long knives ready for the slaughter.