Sharpe’s Triumph: The Battle of Assaye, September 1803. Bernard Cornwell

again, ‘dear God.’ More men began to climb the ladders while the wounded crawled and limped back from the walls, pursued by the musket fire of the defenders. A Scottish officer, claymore in hand, ran up one of the ladders with the facility of a sailor swarming up rigging. He cut the claymore at a lunging bayonet, somehow survived a musket blast, put a hand on the coping, but then a spear took him in the throat and he seemed to shake like a gaffed fish before tumbling backwards and carrying two men down to the ground with him. The sound of the defenders’ musketry was punctuated by the deeper crash of the small cannon that were mounted in the hidden galleries of the bastions. One of those cannon now struck a ladder in the flank and Sharpe watched appalled as the whole flimsy thing buckled and broke, carrying seven men down to the ground in its wreckage. The 78th had been repulsed and the 74th had lost one of their two ladders. ‘This is not good,’ McCandless said grimly, ‘not good at all.’

      ‘Fighting Mahrattas,’ Sevajee said smugly, ‘is not like fighting men from Mysore.’

      Colonel Wallace’s party was still a good hundred yards from the gate, slowed by the weight of their six-pounder cannon. It seemed to Sharpe that Wallace needed more men to handle the cumbersome gun and the enemy’s musket fire was taking its toll of the few men he did have shoving at the wheels or dragging at the traces. Wellesley was not far behind Wallace, and just behind the General, mounted on one of his spare horses and with a second on a leading rein, was Daniel Fletcher. The musket fire spurted scraps of dried mud all around Wellesley and his aides, but the General seemed to have a charmed life.

      The 78th returned to the attack on the left, only this time they ran their two ladders directly at the bastion which flanked the wall where their first attempt had failed. The threatened bastion reacted with an angry explosion of musket fire. One of the ladders fell, its carriers hard hit by the volley, but the other swung on up and as soon as its top struck the bastion’s summit a kilted officer climbed the rungs. ‘No!’ McCandless cried, as the officer was hit and fell. Other men took his place, but the defenders tipped a basket of stones over the parapet and the tumbling rocks scoured the ladder clear. A volley of musketry made the defenders duck and when the smoke cleared Sharpe saw that the kilted officer was again ascending the ladder, this time without his tall hat. He carried his claymore in his right hand and the big sword hampered him. An Arab fleetingly appeared at the top of the ladder with a lump of timber that he hurled down at the attacker, and the officer was thrown back a second time. ‘No!’ McCandless lamented again, but then the same officer appeared a third time. He was determined to have the honour of being first into the city, and this time he had tied his red waist-sash to his wrist and let his claymore hang by its hilt from a loop of the silk, thus leaving both hands free and allowing him to climb much faster. He kept climbing, and his men crowded behind him in their big bearskin hats, and the loopholes in the bastion’s galleries spat flame and smoke as they scrambled past the bastion’s storeys, but magically the officer survived the fusillade and Sharpe had his heart in his mouth as the man drew nearer and nearer to the top. He expected to see a defender appear at any moment, but the attackers who were not queuing at the foot of the ladder were now hammering the bastion’s summit with musket fire and under its cover the bare-headed officer scrambled up the last few rungs, paused to take hold of his claymore’s hilt, then leaped over the top of the wall. Someone cheered, and Sharpe caught a distinct view of the officer’s claymore rising and falling above the red wall’s coping. More Highlanders were clambering up the ladder and though some were blasted off by musket fire from the bastion’s loopholes, others were at last reaching the high parapet and following their officer onto the defences. The second ladder was swung into place and the trickle of attackers became a stream. ‘Thank God,’ McCandless said fervently, ‘thank God indeed.’