Sharpe’s Devil: Napoleon and South America, 1820–1821

‘Tell me your business,’ the Emperor invited the senior Spanish officer present. That worthy, an artillery Colonel named Ruiz, explained in hushed tones how their vessel, the Spanish frigate Espiritu Santo, was on passage from Cadiz, carrying passengers to the Spanish garrison at the Chilean port of Valdivia. Ruiz then presented the Espiritu Santo’s Captain, Ardiles, who, with scarcely concealed hostility, offered the Emperor a stiffly reluctant bow. The Emperor’s aides, sensitive to the smallest sign of disrespect, shifted uneasily, but Bonaparte seemed not to notice or, if he did, not to care. Ardiles, asked by the Emperor how long he had been a seaman, answered as curtly as possible. Clearly the lure of seeing the exiled tyrant had overcome Ardiles’s distaste for the company of his passengers, but he was at pains not to show any sense of being honoured by the reception.

Bonaparte, never much interested in sailors, turned his attention back to Colonel Ruiz who formally presented the officers of his regiment of artillery who, in turn, bowed elegantly to the small man in the gilded chair. Bonaparte had a kindly word for each man, then turned his attention back to Ruiz. He wanted to know what impulse had brought Ruiz to St Helena. The Colonel explained that the Espiritu Santo, thanks to the superior skills of the Spanish Navy, had made excellent time on its southward journey and, being within a few days’ sailing of St Helena, the officers on board the Espiritu Santo had thought it only proper to pay their respects to his Majesty the Emperor.

In other words they could not resist making a detour to stare at the defanged beast chained to its rock, but Bonaparte took Ruiz’s flowery compliment at its face value. ‘Then I trust you will also pay your respects to Sir Hudson Lowe,’ he said drily. ‘Sir Hudson is my jailer. He, with five thousand men, seven ships, eight batteries of artillery, and the ocean which you gentlemen have crossed to do me this great honour.’

While the Spanish-speaking Frenchman translated the Emperor’s mixture of scorn for his jailers and insincere flattery for his visitors, Bonaparte’s eyes turned towards Sharpe and Harper who, alone in the room, had not been introduced. For a second Rifleman and Emperor stared into each other’s eyes, then Bonaparte looked back to Colonel Ruiz. ‘So you are reinforcements for the Spanish army in Chile?’

‘Indeed, your Majesty,’ the Colonel replied.

‘So your ship is also carrying your guns? And your gunners?’ Bonaparte asked.

‘Just the regiment’s officers,’ Ruiz replied. ‘Captain Ardiles’s vessel has been especially adapted to carry passengers, but alas she cannot accommodate a whole regiment. Especially of artillery.’

‘So the rest of your men are where?’ the Emperor asked.

‘They’re following on two transport ships,’ Ruiz said airily, ‘with their guns.’

‘Ah!’ The Emperor’s response was apparently a polite acknowledgement of the trivial answer, yet the silence which followed, and the fixity of his smile, were a sudden reproof to these Spaniards who had chosen the comfort of Ardiles’s fast frigate while leaving their men to the stinking hulks that would take at least a month longer than the Espiritu Santo to make the long, savage voyage around South America to where Spanish troops tried to reconquer Chile from the rebel government. ‘Let us hope the rest of your regiment doesn’t decide to pay me their respects.’ Bonaparte broke the slightly uncomfortable air that his unspoken criticism had caused. ‘Or else Sir Hudson will fear they have come to rescue me!’

Ruiz laughed, the other army officers smiled and Ardiles, perhaps hearing in the Emperor’s voice an edge of longing that the other Spaniards had missed, scowled.

‘So tell me,’ Bonaparte still spoke to Ruiz, ‘what are your expectations in Chile?’

Colonel Ruiz bristled with confidence as he expressed his eager conviction that the rebel Chilean forces and government would soon collapse, as would all the other insurgents in the Spanish colonies of South America, and that the rightful government of His Majesty King Ferdinand VII would thus be restored throughout Spain’s American dominions. The coming of his own regiment, the Colonel asserted, could only hasten that royal victory.

‘Indeed,’ the Emperor agreed politely, then moved the conversation to the subject of Europe, and specifically to the troubles of Spain. Bonaparte politely affected to believe the Colonel’s assurance that the liberals would not dare to revolt openly against the King, and his denial that the army, sickened by the waste of blood in South America, was close to mutiny. Indeed, Colonel Ruiz expressed himself full of hope for Spain’s future, relishing a monarchy growing ever more powerful, and fed ever more riches by its colonial possessions. The other artillery officers, keen to please their bombastic Colonel, nodded sycophantic agreement, though Captain Ardiles looked disgusted at Ruiz’s bland optimism and showed his scepticism by pointedly staring out of the window as he fanned himself with a mildewed cocked hat.

Sharpe, like all the other visitors, was sweating foully. The room was steamy and close, and none of its windows was open. The rain had at last begun to fall and a zinc bucket, placed close to the Emperor’s chair, suddenly rang as a drip fell from the leaking ceiling. The Emperor frowned at the noise, then returned his polite attention to Colonel Ruiz who had reverted to his favourite subject of how the rebels in Chile, Peru and Venezuela had overextended themselves and must inevitably collapse.

Sharpe, who had spent too many shipboard hours listening to the Colonel’s boasting, studied the Emperor instead of paying any attention to Ruiz’s long-winded bragging. By now Sharpe had recovered his presence of mind, no longer feeling dizzy just to be in the same small room as Bonaparte, and so he made himself examine the seated figure as though he could commit the man to memory for ever. Bonaparte was far fatter than Sharpe had expected. He was not as fat as Harper, who was fat like a bull or a prize boar is fat, but instead the Emperor was unhealthily bloated like a dead beast that was swollen with noxious vapours. His monstrous pot belly, waistcoated in white, rested on his spread thighs. His face was sallow and his fine hair was lank. Sweat pricked at his forehead. His nose was thin and straight, his chin dimpled, his mouth firm and his eyes extraordinary. Sharpe knew Bonaparte was fifty years old, yet the Emperor’s face looked much younger than fifty. His body, though, was that of an old sick man. It had to be the climate, Sharpe supposed, for surely no white man could keep healthy in such a steamy and oppressive heat. The rain was falling harder now, pattering on the yellow stucco wall and on the window, and dripping annoyingly into the zinc bucket. It would be a wet ride back to the harbour where the longboats waited to row the sixteen men back to Ardiles’s ship.

Sharpe gazed attentively about the room, knowing that when he was back home Lucille would demand to hear a thousand details. He noted how low the ceiling was, and how the plaster of the ceiling was yellowed and sagging, as if, at any moment, the roof might fall in. He heard the scrabble of rats again, and marked other signs of decay like the mildew on the green velvet curtains, the tarnish in the silvering of a looking glass, and the flaking of the gilt on its frame. Under the mirror a pack of worn playing cards lay carelessly strewn on a small round table beside a silver-framed portrait of a child dressed in an elaborate uniform. A torn cloak, lined with a check pattern, hung from a hook on the door. ‘And you, monsieur, you are no Spaniard, what is your business here?’

The Emperor’s question, in French, had been addressed to Sharpe who, taken aback and not concentrating, said nothing. The interpreter, assuming that Sharpe had misunderstood the Emperor’s accent, began to translate, but then Sharpe, suddenly dry-mouthed and horribly nervous, found his tongue. ‘I am a passenger on the Espiritu Santo, your Majesty. Travelling to Chile with my friend from Ireland, Mister Patrick Harper.’

The Emperor smiled. ‘Your very substantial friend?’

‘When he was my Regimental Sergeant Major he was somewhat less substantial, but just as impressive.’ Sharpe could feel his right leg twitching with fear. Why, for God’s sake? Bonaparte was just another man, and a defeated one at that. Moreover, the Emperor was a man, Sharpe tried to convince himself, of no account any more. The prefect of a small French département had more power than Bonaparte now, yet still Sharpe felt dreadfully nervous.

‘You are passengers?’ the Emperor asked in wonderment. ‘Going to Chile?’

‘We are travelling to Chile in the interests of an old friend. We go to search for her husband, who is missing in battle. It is a debt of honour, your Majesty.’

‘And you, monsieur?’ The question, in French, was addressed to Harper. ‘You travel for the same reason?’

Sharpe translated both the question and Harper’s answer. ‘He says that he found life after the war tedious; your Majesty, and thus welcomed this chance to accompany me.’

‘Ah! How well I understand tedium. Nothing to do but put on weight, eh?’ The Emperor lightly patted his belly, then looked back to Sharpe. ‘You speak French well, for an Englishman.’

‘I have the honour to live in France, your Majesty.’

‘You do?’ The Emperor sounded hurt and, for the first time since the visitors had come into the room, an expression of genuine feeling crossed Bonaparte’s face. Then he managed to cover his envy by a friendly smile. ‘You are accorded a privilege denied to me. Where in France?’

‘In Normandy, your Majesty.’

‘Why?’

Sharpe hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Une femme.’

The Emperor laughed so naturally that it seemed as though a great tension had snapped in the room. Even Bonaparte’s supercilious aides smiled. ‘A good reason,’ the Emperor said, ‘an excellent reason! Indeed, the only reason, for a man usually has no control over women. Your name, monsieur.’

‘Sharpe, your Majesty.’ Sharpe paused, then decided to try his luck at a more intimate appeal to Bonaparte. ‘I was a friend of General Calvet, of your Majesty’s army. I did General Calvet some small service in Naples before …’ Sharpe could not bring himself to say Waterloo, or even to refer to the Emperor’s doomed escape from Elba which, by route of fifty thousand deaths, had led to this damp, rat-infested room in the middle of oblivion. ‘I did the service,’ Sharpe continued awkwardly, ‘in the summer of ’14.’

Bonaparte rested his chin on his right hand and stared for a long time at the Rifleman. The Spaniards, resenting that Sharpe had taken over their audience with the exiled tyrant, scowled. No one spoke. A rat scampered behind the wainscot, rain splashed in the bucket, and the trade wind gusted sudden and loud in the chimney.

‘You will stay here, monsieur,’ Bonaparte said abruptly to Sharpe, ‘and we will talk.’

The Emperor, conscious of the Spaniards’ disgruntlement, turned back to Ruiz and complimented his officers on their martial appearance, then commiserated with their Chilean enemies for the defeat they would suffer when Ruiz’s guns finally arrived. The Spaniards, all except for the scowling Ardiles, bristled with gratified pride. Bonaparte thanked them all for visiting him, wished them well on their further voyage, then dismissed them. When they were gone, and when only Sharpe, Harper, an aide-de-camp and the liveried servant remained in the room, the Emperor pointed Sharpe towards a chair. ‘Sit. We shall talk.’

Sharpe sat. Beyond the windows the rain smashed malevolently across the uplands and drowned the newly-dug ponds in the garden. The Spanish officers waited in the billiard room, a servant brought wine to the audience room, and Bonaparte talked with a Rifleman.

The Emperor had nothing but scorn for Colonel Ruiz and his hopes of victory in Chile. ‘They’ve already lost that war, just as they’ve lost every other colony in South America, and the sooner they pull their troops out, the better. That man –’ this was accompanied by a dismissive wave of the hand towards the door through which Colonel Ruiz had disappeared ‘– is like a man whose house is on fire, but who is saving his piss to extinguish his pipe tobacco. From what I hear there’ll be a revolution in Spain within the year.’ Bonaparte made another scornful gesture at the billiard room door, then turned his dark eyes on Sharpe. ‘But who cares about Spain. Talk to me of France.’

Sharpe, as best he could, described the nervous weariness of France; how the royalists hated the liberals, who in turn distrusted the republicans, who detested the ultraroyalists, who feared the remaining Bonapartistes, who despised the clergy, who preached against the Orleanists. In short, it was a cocotte, a stew pot.

The Emperor liked Sharpe’s diagnosis. ‘Or perhaps it is a powder keg? Waiting for a spark?’

‘The powder’s damp,’ Sharpe said bluntly.

Napoleon shrugged. ‘The spark is feeble, too. I feel old. I am not old! But I feel old. You like the wine?’

‘Indeed, sir.’ Sharpe had forgotten to call Bonaparte votre Majesté, but His Imperial Majesty did not seem to mind.

‘It is South African,’ the Emperor said in wonderment. ‘I would prefer French wine, but of course the bastards in London won’t allow me any, and if my friends do send wine from France then that hog’s turd down the hill confiscates it. But this African wine is surprisingly drinkable, is it not? It is called Vin de Constance. I suppose they give it a French name to suggest that it has superb quality.’ He turned the stemmed glass in his hand, then offered Sharpe a wry smile. ‘But I sometimes dream of drinking a glass of my Chambertin again. You know I made my armies salute those grapes when they marched past the vineyards?’

‘So I have heard, sir.’

Bonaparte quizzed Sharpe. Where was he born? What had been his regiments? His service? His promotions? The Emperor professed surprise that Sharpe had been promoted from the ranks, and seemed reluctant to credit the Rifleman’s claim that one in every twenty British officers had been similarly promoted. ‘But in my army,’ Bonaparte said passionately, ‘you would have become a General! You know that?’

But your army lost, Sharpe thought, but was too polite to say as much, so instead he just smiled and thanked the Emperor for the implied compliment.

‘Not that you’d have been a Rifleman in my army,’ the Emperor provoked Sharpe. ‘I never had time for rifles. Too delicate a weapon, too fussy, too temperamental. Just like a woman!’

‘But soldiers like women, sir, don’t they?’

The Emperor laughed. The aide-de-camp, disapproving that Sharpe so often forgot to use the royal honorific, scowled, but the Emperor seemed relaxed. He teased Harper about his belly, ordered another bottle of the South African wine, then asked Sharpe just who it was that he sought in South America.

‘His name is Blas Vivar, sir. He is a Spanish officer, and a good one, but he has disappeared. I fought alongside him once, many years ago, and we became friends. His wife asked me to search for him.’ Sharpe paused, then shrugged. ‘She is paying me to search for him. She has received no help from her own government, and no news from the Spanish army.’

‘It was always a bad army. Too many officers, but good troops, if you could make them fight.’ The Emperor stood and walked stiffly to the window from where he stared glumly at the pelting rain. Sharpe stood as well, out of politeness, but Bonaparte waved him down. ‘So you know Calvet?’ The Emperor turned at last from the rain.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do you know his Christian name?’

Sharpe supposed the question was a test to determine if he was telling the truth. He nodded. ‘Jean.’

‘Jean!’ The Emperor laughed. ‘He tells people his name is Jean, but in truth he was christened Jean-Baptiste! Ha! The belligerent Calvet is named for the original head-wetter!’ Bonaparte gave a brief chuckle at the thought as he returned to his chair. ‘He’s living in Louisiana now.’

‘Louisiana?’ Sharpe could not imagine Calvet in America.

‘Many of my soldiers live there.’ Bonaparte sounded wistful. ‘They cannot stomach that fat man who calls himself the King of France, so they live in the New World instead.’ The Emperor shivered suddenly, though the room was far from cold, then turned his eyes back to Sharpe. ‘Think of all the soldiers scattered throughout the world! Like embers kicked from a camp fire. The lawyers and their panders who now rule Europe would like those embers to die down, but such fire is not so easily doused. The embers are men like our friend Calvet, and perhaps like you and your stout Irishman here. They are adventurers and combatants! They do not want peace; they crave excitement, and what the filthy lawyers fear, monsieur, is that one day a man might sweep those embers into a pile, for then their heat would feed on each other and they would burn so fiercely that they would scorch the whole world!’ Bonaparte’s voice had become suddenly fierce, but now it dropped again into weariness. ‘I do so hate lawyers. I do not think there was a single achievement of mine that a lawyer did not try to desiccate. Lawyers are not men. I know men, and I tell you I never met a lawyer who had real courage, a soldier’s courage, a man’s courage.’ The Emperor closed his eyes momentarily and, when he opened them, his expression was kindly again and his voice relaxed. ‘So you’re going to Chile?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Chile.’ He spoke the name tentatively, as though seeking a memory on the edge of consciousness. ‘I well recall the service you did me in Naples,’ the Emperor went on after a pause. ‘Calvet told me of it. Will you do me another service now?’

‘Of course, sir.’ Sharpe would later be amazed that he had so readily agreed without even knowing what the favour was, but by that moment he was under the spell of a Corsican magician who had once bewitched whole continents; a magician, moreover, who loved soldiers better than he loved anything else in all the world, and the Emperor had known what Sharpe was the instant the British Rifleman had walked into the room. Sharpe was a soldier, one of the Emperor’s beloved mongrels, a man able to march through shit and sleet and cold and hunger only to fight like a devil at the end of the day, then fight again the next day and the next, and the Emperor could twist such soldiers about his little finger with the ease of a master.

‘A man wrote to me. A settler in Chile. He is one of your countrymen, and was an officer in your army, but in the years since the wars he has come to hold some small admiration for myself.’ The Emperor smiled as though apologizing for such immodesty. ‘He asked that I would send him a keepsake, and I am minded to agree to his request. Would you deliver the gift for me?’

‘Of course, sir.’ Sharpe felt a small relief that the favour was of such a trifling nature, though another part of him was so much under the thrall of the Emperor’s genius that he might have agreed to hack a bloody path down St Helena’s hillside to the sea and freedom. Harper, sitting beside Sharpe, had the same look of adoration on his face.

‘I understand that this man, I can’t recall his name, is presently living in the rebel part of the country,’ the Emperor elaborated on the favour he was asking, ‘but he tells me that packages given to the American consul in Valdivia always reach him. I gather they were friends. No one else in Valdivia, just the American consul. You do not mind helping me?’

‘Of course not, sir.’

The Emperor smiled his thanks. ‘The gift will take some time to choose, and to prepare, but if you can wait two hours, monsieur?’ Sharpe said he could wait and there was a flurry of orders as an aide was despatched to find the right gift. Then Napoleon turned to Sharpe again. ‘No doubt, monsieur, you were at Waterloo?’

‘Yes, sir. I was.’

‘So tell me,’ the Emperor began, and thus they talked, while the Spaniards waited and the rain fell and the sun sank and the redcoat guards tightened their night-time ring about the walls of Longwood, while inside those walls, as old soldiers do, old soldiers talked.

It was almost full dark as Sharpe and Harper, soaked to the skin, reached the quayside in Jamestown where the Espiritu Santo’s longboats waited to take the passengers back to Ardiles’s ship.

At the quayside a British officer waited in the rain. ‘Mister Sharpe?’ He stepped up to Sharpe as soon as the Rifleman dismounted from his mule.

‘Lieutenant Colonel Sharpe.’ Sharpe had been irritated by the man’s tone.

‘Of course, sir. And a moment of your time, if you would be so very kind?’ The man, a tall and thin Major, smiled and guided Sharpe a few paces away from the curious Spanish officers. ‘Is it true, sir, that General Bonaparte favoured you with a gift?’

‘He favoured each of us with a gift.’ Each of the Spaniards, except for Ardiles who had received nothing, had been given a silver teaspoon engraved with Napoleon’s cipher, while Harper had received a silver thimble inscribed with Napoleon’s symbol of a honey bee.

Sharpe, having struck an evident note of affection in the Emperor, had been privileged with a silver locket which contained a curl of the Emperor’s hair.

‘But you, sir, forgive me, have a particular gift?’ the Major insisted.

‘Do I?’ Sharpe challenged the Major, and wondered which of the Emperor’s servants was the spy.

‘Sir Hudson Lowe, sir, would appreciate it mightily if you were to allow him to see the gift.’ Behind the Major stood an impassive file of redcoats.

Sharpe took the locket from out of his pocket and pressed the button that snapped open the silver lid. He showed the Major the lock of hair. ‘Tell Sir Hudson Lowe, with my compliments, that his dog, his wife or his barber can provide him with an infinite supply of such gifts.’

The Major glanced at the Spanish officers who, in turn, glowered back. Their displeasure was caused simply by the fact that the Major’s presence delayed their departure, and every second’s delay kept them from the comforts of the Espiritu Santo’s saloon, but the tall Major translated their enmity as something which might lead to an international incident. ‘You’re carrying no other gifts from the General?’ he asked Sharpe.

‘No others,’ Sharpe lied. In his pocket he had a framed portrait of Bonaparte, which the Emperor had inscribed to his admirer, whose name was Lieutenant Colonel Charles, but that portrait, Sharpe decided, was none of Sir Hudson Lowe’s business.

The Major bowed to Sharpe. ‘If you insist, sir.’

‘I do insist, Major.’

The Major clearly did not believe Sharpe, but could do nothing about his disbelief. He stepped stiffly backwards. ‘Then good day to you, sir.’

The Espiritu Santo weighed anchor in the next day’s dawn and, under a watery sun, headed southwards. By midday the island of St Helena with its ring of warships was left far behind, as was the Emperor, chained to his rock.

And Sharpe, carrying Bonaparte’s gift, sailed to a distant war.