Sharpe smiled. He was a Major again, reinstated to his rank, and in temporary command of the South Essex. The command would only be temporary. He had not served long enough as a Major to be given the next rank, and so he must wait, with these men, to see who replaced Lieutenant Colonel Leroy.

Wellington, furious almost beyond words at the looting of the baggage park, had spared praise for Sharpe. The Inquisitor, his bruises explained as a tumble down his stairs, had provided the Generalissimo with a list of those men who had offered support to a peace with France. Already those men were being visited, were listening to quiet arguments that were not quite threats, but which were unmistakeable just the same.

The Inquisitor had offered another explanation of the Marques’ death, an explanation listened to in silence by those Spanish officers brought to hear it. They had looked at Sharpe, at Wellington, and a few, seeing the jest inherent in what they saw, had laughed.

La Marquesa, who had provoked a smile from Wellington’s anger, had taken her fortune from the Inquisitor’s house. She had been promised safe conduct as soon as the roads to the frontier were cleared of the last French garrisons. Wellington, as ever susceptible to a pretty face, had listened to her account of the treaty and rewarded her treachery by restoring her wealth. She would go home, and Sharpe was back where he belonged; with his men.

He had eaten with them this night, made an embarrassing speech to them, and laughed when they had cheered the Marquesa and, because of her dress, shouted at her to jump up and down. Now, standing at the stair’s head with Captain d’Alembord, he felt a surge of affection for these soldiers whose life was so hard and whose pleasures so few and who knew how to take both hardship and pleasure in their stride. He looked at Captain d’Alembord. ‘Why did you need me?’

‘We just thought you’d gone to bed early, sir. Thought you might like to drink another toast.’

Sharpe laughed. He went down the stairs and listened to the cheers and laughter of his men, saw the worried hotel proprietor who winced every time another plate or glass broke, and he walked up to the head table, reached for a bottle of champagne, smiled at Angel who had been given a place of honour, then turned back to the stairs.

‘Where are you going, sir?’ a voice shouted.

He did not reply, instead he waved the champagne, took the stairs two at a time, and the cheers, jeers, and whistles wafted him up to the landing, and the suggestions were thick about him as he turned at the top, raised the bottle, and bowed to them. He motioned for silence that was a long time coming, but finally the faces stared up at him, flushed with drink, and grinning broadly at the Major who had come back from the dead to lead them to victory.

He wondered what he should say. Wellington, in his rage at the men who had plundered the baggage park, had called his army ‘the scum of the earth’. Sharpe laughed aloud, He was proud of them.

‘Talion?’ He paused. They waited. ‘Morning parade at seven o’clock, married men included. Goodnight.’

He turned, laughed, and their insults followed him to the door of his room.

He went inside. The first thing he saw was a pair of shoes lying on their side. Beyond the shoes was a cream dress, fallen on the floor.

She was in bed. She smiled at the champagne, then at him, and Richard Sharpe, leaning on the locked door, thought that this was what had driven him across Spain to this city. This woman, treacherous as sin, who would love and betray him in the same moment. She was as faithful as a morning mist, as hard as a sword-bayonet, and that, he thought, made her a suitable reward for a soldier.

He unbuckled his sword, dropped it on a chair, and sat on the bed. The Marquesa pulled his face to hers, kissed him, and put her hands to the buttons of his jacket. She was the whore of gold, she was the enemy, and she had known that this man, in the cause of her greed, would give to her his sword, his strength, and even his life. He would give her all that he had, all but for the one small thing that she had wanted; the one small thing she could not take; Sharpe’s honour.

HISTORICAL NOTE

‘The material captured,’ wrote Charles Oman in his great History of the Peninsular War, ‘was such as no European army had ever laid hands on… since Alexander’s Macedonians plundered the camp of the Persian king after the battle of Issus.’

‘Many of our men,’ wrote Commissary Schaumann, ‘and particularly those who found diamonds, became rich people that day.’

Edward Costello, a Rifleman, reckoned that he made about a thousand pounds on the evening of the battle, helped by a ‘few whacks of my rifle’.

The plunder of Vitoria was truly spectacular. In military terms it was stunning; ail the French guns save two, a hundred and fifty-one in all, and of the two guns the French did manage to salvage, one was lost during the retreat. But it was not the guns that the soldiers were interested in acquiring.

No one truly knows the value of the plunder. I suspect the figure of five million pounds is a low estimate, and it could well have been seven million. In today’s money that translates to something like £154,000,000 ($234,000,000). Much of it was in such ‘non-negotiable’ items as paintings by Rubens, though even those had their uses as tarpaulins. Eventually the paintings were recovered and some of them, presented to Wellington by the restored King Ferdinand VII, can be seen at Stratfield Saye or at Apsley House in London. One object that was never recovered was the Crown of Spain.

Some of the plunder was extremely negotiable, and not just the gold. Schaumann, a German officer in Wellington’s army, who was one of the men who enjoyed the victory feast in the hotel, particularly noted the number of captured women, many of them dressed in specially tailored cavalry uniforms. Schaumann, who had a particular and discriminating eye for women during the campaign, noted how, in the plunder, the French women instinctively found one enemy soldier to whom, in exchange for protection, they offered their allegiance. Those who, like the Marquesa, wanted to return to France with their belongings, were given safe conduct and an escort. The words, ‘we are a walking brothel’ were spoken to Wellington by a captured French officer.

Wellington himself reckons that the British soldiers took one million pounds worth of gold coin (and they were third into the baggage-park after the fleeing French and the citizens of Vitoria), while he, for the military chest, received only one hundred thousand silver dollars. Among the other trophies were King Joseph’s silver chamberpot (still used, though for drinking purposes, by the cavalry regiment that captured it), and also Marshal Jourdan’s baton which Wellington sent to the Prince Regent. The Prince returned the compliment, ‘you have sent me the staff of a French Marshal, and I send you in return that of England’. Except, that no such English staff existed, one had to be designed, and thus Wellington became a Field Marshal.

An extremely unhappy Field Marshal after his victory. He was furious with the men for plundering the baggage, describing them in a phrase for which he has been attacked ever since; ‘the scum of the earth’. Many of his soldiers doubtless were (but by no means all) and those people who cite the phrase as evidence that Wellington despised the men who fought for him usually forget that he was fond of adding, ‘but it is wonderful what fine fellows we have made of them’. Wellington had cause to be angry (he was hoping to use the French treasure to pay for the campaign), but in defence of the ‘scum’ it is very hard to see how any soldier, paid a shilling a day, could resist the field of gold that waited for them to the east of Vitoria. Yet many did; some regiments kept their order and marched straight through it, so I have no excuses to offer for Sharpe and Harper.