Bernard Cornwell Box Set: Sharpe's Triumph , Sharpe's Tiger , Sharpe's Fortress
Page 97
‘Sir?’
‘Of the men who were cut off from Moore’s retreat,’ Hogan explained. ‘Most just gave up, you see.’
‘It was cold,’ Sharpe said, ‘very cold. But I was lucky in my Sergeant. The big fellow there. He’s an Irishman.’
‘The best are,’ Hogan said happily. ‘But they all look like good lads.’
‘They are, sir.’ Sharpe raised his voice so every tired man could hear the extravagant praise. ‘They’re drunken sods, sir, but they’re the best soldiers in the world. The very best.’ And he meant it. They were the elite, the damned, the Rifles. They were the soldiers in green.
They were Sharpe’s Rifles.
HISTORICAL NOTE
The retreat to Corunna was one of the most gruelling exploits ever forced onto a British army. The miracle of the retreat was that so many men survived to turn and repel a French attack outside the port. Sir John Moore died in the battle, but his victory gained enough time to let the surviving troops embark on the ships sent to save them.
The French had succeeded in driving Britain’s army, all but for the small Lisbon garrison, from the Peninsula. It was heralded in Paris as a victory, which it was, though no one seemed to notice that the campaign had drawn French troops away from their primary task which was to complete the invasion of Spain and Portugal. That invasion was never completed. Yet, in February 1809, few people could have foreseen that failure, and only a handful believed that Britain, after the defeat of Moore’s campaign, should keep a military presence in the Peninsula.
Yet, in the spring of 1809 Sir Arthur Wellesley, one day to be known as the Duke of Wellington, took command of the Lisbon garrison that was slowly, even grudgingly, expanded into the army that was to win a string of remarkable victories which would end with the invasion of France itself. Those victories form the framework of the Richard Sharpe books, which have already taken Sharpe and Harper into southern France.
This, then, is an early story, told against the background of the brutal French occupation of Galicia. That much of the book is accurate. The French did capture Santiago de Compostela, and did sack its cathedral, and did fight vicious battles against the growing resistance in the Galician hills. The rest, alas, is fiction. The scholars even tell us now that the romantic derivation of Compostela from the Latin campus stellae, ‘field of the star’, is also a fiction. They say the name truly derives from the Latin word for a cemetery. It is often wise to ignore scholars.
Marshal Soult was supposed to conquer all of Portugal before the end of February 1809. Racked by supply problems and tormented by partisans, he could only reach as far as Oporto on the northern bank of the Douro river, in northern Portugal, from which defence line he was to be ejected by Sir Arthur Wellesley in May. Then, having driven the French from Portugal, Wellesley turned east into Spain to gain the first of his Spanish victories, Talavera. Other British victories would follow, some astonishing in their brilliance, but those victories obscured (at least to the British) that far more Frenchmen died at the hands of the Spanish people than in battle against the British. The Spaniards were overwhelmingly partisans who fought the guerrilla, the ‘little war’. Those guerrilleros fought La Guerra de la Independencia as the Spanish call the Peninsular War, and some of their enemies were indeed anfrancesados.
Sharpe and Harper, though, are now bound for Talavera. From Talavera to France is a long way, but that elite of the British army, the greenjacketed Rifleman, marched every step of the way, and when it became necessary, he foot-slogged from Waterloo into Paris itself. Sharpe and Harper have yet to complete either journey, so they will march again.
About the Author
Bernard Cornwell was born in London and raised in Essex, and now lives mainly in the USA, with his wife. In addition to the hugely successful Sharpe novels, Bernard Cornwell is the author of the highly praised Starbuck Chronicles, the acclaimed Warlord trilogy, and the recent bestseller Stonehenge.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author
BOOKS BY BERNARD CORNWELL
* * *
The Sharpe Novels (in chronological order)
SHARPE’S TIGER*
Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Seringapatam, 1799
SHARPE’S TRIUMPH*
Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803
SHARPE’S FORTRESS*
Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803
SHARPE’S TRAFALGAR*
Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805
Available as a HarperCollins e-book
SHARPE’S PREY*
Richard Sharpe and the Expedition to Copenhagen, 1807
Available as a HarperCollins e-book
SHARPE’S RIFLES
Richard Sharpe and the French Invasion of Galicia, January 1809
SHARPE’S EAGLE
Richard Sharpe and Talavera Campaign, July 1809
SHARPE’S GOLD
Richard Sharpe and the Destruction of Almeida, August 1810
SHARPE’S BATTLE*
Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro, May 1811
SHARPE’S COMPANY
Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Badajoz, January to April 1812
SHARPE’S SWORD
Richard Sharpe and the Salamanca Campaign, June and July 1812
SHARPE’S ENEMY
Richard Sharpe and the Defense of Portugal, Christmas 1812
SHARPE’S HONOUR
Richard Sharpe and the Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813
SHARPE’S REGIMENT
Richard Sharpe and the Invasion of France, June to November 1813
SHARPE’S SIEGE
Richard Sharpe and the Winter Campaign, 1814
SHARPE’S REVENGE
Richard Sharpe and the Peace of 1814
SHARPE’S WATERLOO
Richard Sharpe and the Waterloo Campaign, 15 June to 18 June 1815
SHARPE’S DEVIL*
Richard Sharpe and the Emperor,
1820–21
* Published by HarperCollinsPublishers
THE NATHANIEL STARBUCK CHRONICLES
Rebel
Copperhead
Battle Flag
The Bloody Ground
OTHER NOVELS
The Archer’s Tale
Stonehenge, 2000 B.C.: A Novel
Bernard Cornwell On:
I. The Origin of Richard Sharpe (Memo to the Sharpe Appreciation Society, http://www.southessex.co.uk)
Richard Sharpe was born on a winter’s night in 1980. It was in London, in a basement flat in Courtnell Street, not far from Westbourne Grove. I had decided to marry an American and, for a myriad of reasons, it was going to be easier if I lived in America, but I could not get a work permit and so, airily, I decided to earn a living as a writer. Love makes us into idiots.
But at least I knew what I wanted to write. It was going to be a land-based version of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books. I wasted hours trying to find my hero’s name. I wanted a name as dramatic as Horatio Hornblower, but I couldn’t think of one (Trumpetwhistler? Cornetpuffer?), so eventually I decided to give him a temporary name and, once I had found his real name, I would simply go back and change it. So I named him after Richard Sharp, the great rugby player, and of course the name stuck. I added an “e” – that was all.
The book was finished in New Jersey. Now, eighteen years, innumerable battles and well over a million words later, he’s still going strong, and there are yet more books to write. I thought I had finished with Sharpe after Waterloo, but so many people wrote wanting more stories that he had to put on his green jacket and march again. Being a hero, of course, he has more lives than a basketful of cats, but maybe Sharpe’s greatest stroke of good fortune was meeting Sean Bean.
He has also been outrageously lucky in his other friends who, collectively, are the Sharpe Appreciation Society. He would not think there was that much to appreciate (“Bloody d
aft, really”), but on his behalf, I can thank you for being his friends and assure you that, so long as I have anything to do with him, he will not let you down.
And, finally, time for confession: Years and years ago I was a journalist in Belfast and I remember a night just before Christmas when a group of us were sitting in a city-centre pub getting drunk and maudlin, and discussing, as journalists are wont to do, how much easier life would be if only we were novelists. No more hard work, just storytelling, and somehow we invented the name of an author and a bet was laid. The bet was a bottle of Jameson Whiskey from everyone about the table to be given to whichever one of us first wrote the book with the author’s name. Years later I collected the winnings (long drunk) which is why, in second-hand shops, you might find the following: A Crowning Mercy; The Fallen Angels; Coat of Arms – all by Bernard Cornwell, writing as Susannah Kells.
II. Sharpe’s Adventures
I thought, when I began writing Sharpe, that there could not possibly be more than ten novels in him, but there are now eighteen and more are on the way.
So who and what is he?
Richard Sharpe is a soldier, one of the thousands of Britons who fought against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France between 1793 and 1815. He shadows the career of Sir Arthur Wellesley, who becomes the first Duke of Wellington, and in so doing he takes part in some of the most extraordinary exploits of the era – from the storming of Seringapatam in 1799 to the bloodbath at Waterloo in 1815.
By 1814, when Napoleon is first defeated and sent into exile, the Duke of Wellington leads what is arguably the finest army that Britain ever raised. About one in twenty of its officers had come up from the ranks, and Richard Sharpe is one of them. Is he real? No, there was no Rifle officer called Sharpe, though there was a cavalryman whose rise from trooper to Lieutenant Colonel took the same amount of time that it takes Sharpe to be promoted from private to Lieutenant Colonel. Sharpe is also a Rifleman, a new breed of soldier in the British army who fought, not with a smoothbore musket, but with the much more accurate rifle. Above everything, though, Sharpe has adventures. That is the point of the poor man’s existence.
— Bernard Cornwell
(Material culled from http://www.bernardcornwellbooks.com and from The Sharpe Appreciation Society website, http://www.southessex.co.uk.)
The Sharpe Appreciation Society
The Sharpe Appreciation Society was formed in 1996 amid growing demands from fans wanting more information about the books, television series, the people involved in making the series, the Napoleonic period, weaponry – in fact anything remotely connected with Sharpe.
After finding there was no central point of contact for fans, Chris Clarke, now secretary, made contact with Richard Rutherford-Moore (historical and technical advisor to the television series) and wrote to the author Bernard Cornwell as well as to Malcolm Craddock, one of the producers.
With Richard Moore’s help, Chris started the fan club in July 1996, expecting fifty to 100 fans to join her. We now have over 1,500 fans across the world and they are still joining! In May 1998, we held our first convention, where we were joined by Bernard Cornwell, Malcolm Craddock, Muir Sutherland and some of the actors involved in bringing the world of Sharpe to life.
We are the official fan club, approved by the author, producers, Carlton Television and Central Television. For more information, please write to Chris who will be pleased to send you an application form.
The Sharpe Appreciation Society
P.O. Box 14
Lowdham
Nottingham
NG14 7HU
England
Sharpe Query Line:
Tel: 0(044) 115 966 5405
Secretary: Christine Clarke
sharpe@southessex.co.uk
http://www.southessex.co.uk
About the Publisher
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http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Contents
Sharpe's Trafalgar
Dedication
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
Historical Note
Sharpe's Prey
Dedication
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
HISTORICAL NOTE
Sharpe's Rifles
Dedication
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
HISTORICAL NOTE
About the Author
BOOKS BY BERNARD CORNWELL
Bernard Cornwell On:
The Sharpe Appreciation Society
About the Publisher