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The Sharpe Fan Fictions of Paul K.

Bernard Cornwell’s

SHARPE’S Ordeal

 Richard Sharpe and the
Coruña Campaign in Spain 1808

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
SHARPE’S ORDEAL. Copyright © 2025 by Paul Kaster
Sharpe’s Ordeal is for


Chapter 11
JANUARY 6, 1089 LUGO 1809 1 6 This date: 1809 January 6: Lugo. Spain. Baird receives orders to redirect to Coruña instead of Vigo. He is to relay to Fraser, but the cavalry private that he entrusts with the message, gets drunk and fails to deliver to Fraser. When the private is discovered, another messenger is sent. Fraser marched full day before recalled. Late in the day, Paget’s rearguard and stragglers from the other divisions arrive. Moore’s army is together. The Lugo position was very strong: on the right it touched the unfordable river Minho, on the left it rested on rocky and inaccessible hills. All along the front there was a line of low stone walls, the boundaries of fields and vineyards. Below it there was a gentle down-slope of a mile, up which the enemy would have to march in order to attack. The army and the general alike were pleased with the outlook: they hoped that Soult would fight, and knew that they could give a good account of him. Marshal Soult turned out to be far too cautious to run his head against such a formidable line as he met at Lugo. He came up on the sixth, with the dragoons of Lahoussaye and Franceschi and Merle’s infantry. Sharpe finds Baird. Baird is pleased to see Sharpe and the coins. He reminds Sharpe how they handled the gold coins at Copenhagen which is a subtle hint Sharpe to keep some of the coins for himself. Sharpe suggests that he keep enough mules to carry the ammunition for his regiment and the backpacks on those mules. Baird approves and welcomes him to camp with his division Baird also tells him that almost a week ago Craufurd’s brigade with his 2/95th went by different roads to Vigo. The army will not go to Vigo, but to Coruña. Sharpe chooses to go south to Vigo the next day. While Baird and Sharpe talk, they watch the last of Paget’s force, the 1/95th arrive. French dragoons had been leading their horses down an icy road to follow the shivering green jacket rear guard. Lieutenant General Sir John Moore, shaking with the cold, asks Sharpe whether the enemy horsemen had been more bothersome than usual that morning. Sharpe is surprised that Moore asks him then realizes that he wears the green jacket too. He tells Moore that the French cavalry are better than the French infantry. But, they won’t attack British infantry without support. Moore nods and thanks him. That night Sharpe camps near Leith’s brigade. Lieutenant Colonel Michael Symes who commands the 76th wanders through Sharpe’s camp. He asks who Sharpe is. When Sharpe introduces himself, Symes talks about India. Tomorrow he will go south, he thinks. By 6 January Moore’s army was concentrated around Lugo, fifty miles inland from Coruña. During the retreat the army had become very scattered and discipline had begun to break down, and so Moore had decided to rest for a few days. His main aim was to bring his army back together, and give it time to rest, but it is also possible that he had decided make a stand. A final factor in the decision to rest at Lugo was that Moore had only recently decided which port he was heading for. The alternatives were Vigo, on the west coast, or Coruña and Ferrol to the north west. "I met him," Sharpe said laconically, recalling a hurried conversation on a snow-bright hillside in Galicia. French dragoons had been leading their horses down an icy road on the far side of a wide valley toward a shivering greenjacket rear guard, and Lieutenant General Sir John Moore, shaking with the cold, had courteously enquired of Lieutenant Richard Sharpe whether the enemy horsemen had been more bothersome than usual that morning. That distracted conversation, Sharpe now remembered, must have been held only days before he had met Major Blas Vivar of the Cazadores. The British had a strong position at Lugo. Their flanks were protected by the river Minho to the right and by inaccessible hills to the left, while their front line was protected by a line of low stone walls. Moore’s army also turned out to be rather larger than he had believed – partly because 1,800 fresh troops were waiting at Lugo, and partly because a large number of stragglers rejoined their units when they learnt that a battle was likely. In all the British had around 19,000 men at Lugo. Officer claims his mules for the 1/95th. Baird claims for dollars. Sharpe keeps mules loaded with ball and powder. Sharpe fights with Baird. After battle, Baird sends him south to reunite with 2/95th at Vigo. Baird suspects that not all Moore’s army will get away. Craufurd’s force will. 1809 1 7 This date: 1809 January 7: Lugo. Spain. Fraser rejoins the army at Lugo. That morning Mermet’s and Delaborde’s divisions and Lorges’s cavalry appeared. Like the British, the French were tired from the roads and the forced marches. The French force of three infantry divisions had only 13,000 out of the 20,000 that their muster rolls called for. The cavalry had 4,000 of 6,000. They too had lost men to the snow, terrible roads and marauding. Heudelet’s entire division was more than two marches to the rear at Villafranca. Today, Soult chose only to feel out the British position. For the past four days, when confronted by the British at other towns, he had discovered that only Paget’s Reserve division that faced him. He was not sure that Moore’s whole army was in front of him. When he sent forward a battery against apparent center of the British line, the battery was immediately silenced by the fire of fifteen British guns. Certain that all Moore’s army was ahead, he chose to feint against the British right, near the Minho river while sending Merle’s division against the British left. The Brigade of Guards stopped the feint attack with little gain. Leith’s brigade, drove Merle’s 2nd Léger and 36th of the Line back with a downhill bayonet-charge cost the French, 300 men. Sharpe had planned to leave in the morning. When the French attacked Leith, Sharpe waited. He went to the 76th to watch the French attack. Lieutenant Colonel Symes saw him and asked if he would assist the light company. Sharpe agreed. The men of the light company were surprised that an officer was using a rifle, but appreciated the longer reach of the Baker than of their Brown Besses. After the Guards counterattack, it was clear that the French would attack no more. Sharpe went to Symes to say farewell then took his mules to the road to Orense. The fighting at Lugo on 7 January 1809 was the closest that the British and French came to fighting a full scale battle during Sir John Moore’s retreat to Coruña over the winter of 1808-1809. Lt Colonel Michael Symes of the 76th Marshal Soult reached Lugo on 6 January, but his army had also been stretched out during the long march through the mountains, so only half of it was with him on that day. Even after the other half arrived on 7 January, the French were probably outnumbered by the British. At full strength Soult’s army would have contained 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, but by the time it reached Lugo he is reported to have had 13,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, a total of 17,000 men. At first Soult did not know whether he was facing Moore’s entire army, or just Paget’s rearguard. On 7 January he made a series of probing attacks, starting with an artillery bombardment of the British centre. This was soon silenced by fire from fifteen British guns, several times more than Paget had deployed in the rearguard actions at Cacabellos and Constantino. He then launched a feint against the British right, which was seen off by the Brigade of Guards. The most serious fighting came on the left, where the 2nd Léger and 36th Line regiments of Merle’s division launched an attack which was beaten back by Leith’s brigade. 1809 1 8 This date: 1809 January 8: Lugo. Spain. Soult waits for the rest of his corps to join him. Moore waits at Lugo. His generals advocate to attack the French. However, an attack would gain him nothing other than casualties. Marshal Ney’s corps was nearby and potentially could cut Moore off from Coruña. In the dark, near midnight, Moore started his army towards Coruña. Paget and the rearguard are the last to leave. Sharpe goes south. As he goes, the weather became worse and worse. He went many miles across the snow before finding shelter. Moore makes a stand until January 8.This ended the fighting at Lugo. On 8 January Soult decided to wait for reinforcements to arrive. On the British side Moore had prepared his men for a battle, but as the day wore on it became increasingly clear that the French were not going to attack. Moore dismissed any suggestion that he should launch an attack. He had every reason to believe that Soult’s army was at least as large as his, and the French were in just as strong a defensive position as the British. A costly victory would have been as disastrous as a defeat, for there was a second French army under Marshal Ney close behind. Accordingly, at midnight on 8-9 January the British slipped out of their lines, and resumed the retreat to Coruña. Moore had hoped that the rest at Lugo was restore the discipline of his men, but he was sadly mistaken, and the army once again began to dissolve into a disorganized mob, that would only come back together as an army at Coruña. Fortunately for Moore, this did not apply to Paget’s rearguard, which retained its discipline all the way to the coast. The battle that so many of Moore’s men wanted finally came at Coruña, on 16 January 1809. Sharpe goes south to reunite with 2/95th. Terrible storm Army shelters short distance west of Lugo. Compostella road, a bad bypath, and went many miles across the snow At midnight on January 8-9 the army silently slipped out of its lines, leaving its bivouac fires burning, so as to delude the enemy with the idea that it still lay before him. Elaborate precautions had been taken to guide each division to the point from which it could fall with the greatest ease into the Coruña road. But it is not easy to evacuate by night a long position intersected with walls, enclosures, and suburban bypaths. Moreover the fates were unpropitious: drenching rain had set in, and it was impossible to see five yards in the stormy darkness. Whole regiments and brigades got astray, and of all the four divisions only Paget’s Reserve kept its bearings accurately and reached the chaussée exactly at the destined point. For miles on each side of the road stray battalions were wandering in futile circles when the day dawned. Instead of marching fifteen miles under cover of the night, many corps had got no further than four or five from their starting-point. Isolated men were scattered all over the face of the country-side, some because they had lost their regiments, others because they had deliberately sought shelter from the rain behind any convenient wall or rock. 1809 1 9 This date: 1809 January 9: Valmeda. Spain. Moore’s army had marched in the dark and a driving rain that fell on the snow already on the ground. Units became disoriented and stopped rather than march in the wrong direction. At dawn, they resumed the march. When they reached Valmeda, they could go no further. Many commanders had their men lie down where they stopped. General Baird chose to disperse his men to shelters in the Valmeda and surrounding hamlets. When it came time to march again, many of these men did not join as they were so dispersed to be contacted. The other two divisions suffered similarly, but not as much as Baird’s. Paget kept his division together better than any of the others. Sharpe continued through the miserable weather. They were able to advance only a few miles on the poor roads. Continuing their retreat for some hours after daybreak, the troops reached the village of Valmeda, where their absolute exhaustion made a halt necessary. The more prudent commanders made their men lie down in their ranks, in spite of the downpour, and eat as they lay. But Baird, from mistaken kindness, allowed his division to disperse and to seek shelter in the cottages and barns of neighbouring hamlets: they could not be got together again when the time to start had arrived, and Bentinck and Manningham’s brigades left an enormous proportion of their men behind. The same thing happened on a smaller scale with Hope’s and Fraser’s divisions: only Paget’s regiments brought up the rear in good order. But behind them trailed several thousand stragglers, forming a sort of irregular rearguard. There was more dispersion, disorder, and marauding in this march than in any other during the whole retreat. The plundering during this stage seems to have been particularly discreditable: the inhabitants of the villages along the high-road had for the most part gone up into the hills, in spite of the dreadful weather. The British seem to have imputed their absence to them as a crime, and to have regarded every empty house as a fair field for plunder. As a matter of fact it was not with the desire of withholding aid from their friends that the Galicians had disappeared, but from fear of the French. 1809 1 10 This date: 1809 January 10: Betanzos. Spain. Moore’s army marched west from Valmeda to Betanzos. After Moore had sent General Craufurd to Vigo, at Monforte de Lemos Craufurd had Lieutenant Colonel Wade send a force to Chantada to protect the road that Moore intended to take from Lugo to Orense. Craufurd and Alten proceeded to Orense. Sharpe continued south and reached the village of Chantada. He meets Major Dunnet who has four companies of the 2/95th with him. He tells Dunnet that Moore will go to Coruña not to Vigo. Dunnet decides that it is time to rejoin Wade. Sharpe’s story is now told in Sharpe’s Rifles. This concludes the story of Sharpe’s first battles in the Peninsula that was first mentioned forty years ago in Sharpe’s Eagle. “EAGLE p4: Some wondered if the stories were true, stories of Seringapatam and Assaye, of VIMEIRO and LUGO.” This date: 1809 January 12: Vigo, Spain. Craufurd and Alten reach Vigo. They wait for stragglers to come in, but start to embark their regiments to the transport ships. Two weeks after leaving Moore, they leave Spain. This date: 1809 January 16: Coruña, Spain. Moore holds a defensive line of from his left, Hope’s, Baird’s, Paget’s and Fraser’s divisions to protect the harbor. The Royal Navy arrived on January 14. Moore began to destroy anything that the French could use and started to evacuate. Marshal Soult’s corps was slow to reach Coruña. The British had blown every bridge behind them as they retreated. And the roads had broken down under their march and the weather. Soult had sent has cavalry around to the south towards Santiago de Campostela to try to find a weakness on the British right. By the 16th, Soult was ready to attack. He sent Delaborde’s division to attack the left, while Merle and Mermet demonstrated against the center. Delaborde was slow to get into position because of the difficult terrain. Moore concluded that the French were not going to attack, so he ordered Paget to board ships. They barely had moved when the French attacked. The French artillery bombarded the British first. Mermet’s attack followed the artillery. Baird issued a counterattack, but was wounded when an artillery round took off his left arm. Moore arrived to direct the counterattack. The British captured the village of Elviña, but the French counterattacked to take it back. While directing his forces, Moore was struck in the left shoulder by a roundshot. He was removed from the field and General Hope took command. On the British right, Fraser was busy easily repelling Lahoussaye’s dragoons who had dismounted. The terrain was not suited to mounted cavalry attacks. On the British left, at 4:30, Delaborde finally began to attack. General Hill’s brigade counterattacked. By dark, the fight was over. Hope issued orders to evacuate. Through the 18th, the British were aboard with Beresford’s brigade being the last to go. Approximately 26,000 British solders were taken off from Vigo and Coruña . The Spanish general Alcedo held the lines until the British were gone, then surrendered to the French. While Soult fought Moore, Sharpe was in the mountains south trying to make his way to Portugal. You can read that story in Sharpe’s Rifles.

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