Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold (91 page)
Read Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold Online
Authors: Bernard Cornwell
Tags: #Action & Adventure, #Fiction / Historical / General, #Fiction, #Historical, #War & Military, #Fiction / Action & Adventure
Almeida’s garrison surrendered after the explosion of August 27th, 1810. The event was much as described in
Sharpe’s Gold
. The magazine in the cathedral blew up and destroyed, beside the cathedral itself, the castle, five hundred houses, and part of the fortifications. It was estimated that more than five hundred of the garrison died. Brigadier Cox wanted to continue the defence but bowed to the inevitable and surrendered the next day.
It must have been one of the biggest explosions of the prenuclear world. (Certainly not the biggest. A year before, in 1809, Sir John Moore deliberately exploded four thousand barrels of powder to keep them from falling into French hands at Corunna.) A year later the French added to the destruction. They, in turn, were besieged in Almeida and abandoned its defence after blowing up part of the walls; their garrison of fourteen hundred men successfully escaped through the much larger British besieging force. Despite its misfortunes the town’s defences are still impressive. The main road no longer passes through Almeida; instead it runs a few miles to the south, but the town is just half an hour’s drive from the border post at Vilar Formoso. The awesome defences are repaired and intact, surrounding what is now a shrunken village, and on the top of the hill it is easy to see where the explosion occurred. Nothing was rebuilt. A graveyard marks the site of the cathedral; the castle moat is a square, stone-faced ditch; granite blocks still litter the area where they fell, and wild flowers grow where once there were houses and streets.
No one, conveniently for a writer of fiction, knows the precise cause of the catastrophe, but the accepted version, pieced together from the stories of survivors, is that a leaking keg of gunpowder was rolled from the cathedral and an exploding French shell ignited the accidental powder train, which fired back to musket ammunition stored by the main door. This, in turn, flashed down to the main magazine, and so the greatest obstacle between Masséna and his invasion of Portugal was gone. One Portuguese soldier, very close to the cathedral, saved his life by diving into a bread oven, and now his presence of mind has been borrowed by Richard Sharpe. The most unlikely stories often turn out to be the truth.
The Lines of Torres Vedras existed and truly were one of the great military achievements of all time. They can still be seen, decrepit for the most part, grassed over, but with a little imagination Masséna’s shock can be realized. He had pursued the British army from the border to within a day’s march of Lisbon, had survived Wellington’s crushing victory at Busaco on the way, but surely, so close to Portugal’s capital, he must have thought his job done. Then he saw the lines. They were the furthest point of retreat for the British in the Peninsula; they were never to be used again, and four years later Wellington’s superb army marched over the Pyrenees into France itself.
Sharpe’s Gold
is, sadly, unfair to the Spanish. Some Partisans were as self-seeking as El Católico, but the large majority were brave men who tied up more French troops than did Wellington’s army. The Richard Sharpe books are the chronicles of British soldiers and, with that perspective, the men who fought the ‘little war’ have suffered an unfair distortion. But at least, by the autumn of 1810, the British army is safe behind its gigantic Lines and the stage is set for the next four years: the advance into Spain, the victories, and the ultimate conquest of France itself.
Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper will march again.
Bernard Cornwell is the author of the acclaimed Richard Sharpe series (available from PerfectBound), the Grail Quest series (featuring
The Archer’s Tale
and
Vagabond
), and many other novels. Mr. Cornwell lives with his wife on Cape Cod. Please visit
www.bernardcornwell.net
.
The Sharpe Novels (in chronological order)
S
HARPE’S
T
IGER
Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Seringapatam, 1799
S
HARPE’S
T
RIUMPH
Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803
S
HARPE’S
F
ORTRESS
Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803
S
HARPE’S
T
RAFALGAR
Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805
S
HARPE’S
P
REY
Richard Sharpe and the Expedition to Copenhagen, 1807
S
HARPE’S
R
IFLES
Richard Sharpe and the French Invasion of Galicia, January 1809
S
HARPE’S
H
AVOC
Richard Sharpe and the Campaign in Northern Portugal, Spring 1809
S
HARPE’S
E
AGLE
Richard Sharpe and Talavera Campaign, July 1809
S
HARPE’S
G
OLD
Richard Sharpe and the Destruction of Almeida, August 1810
S
HARPE’S
B
ATTLE
Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro, May 1811
S
HARPE’S
C
OMPANY
Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Badajoz, January to April 1812
S
HARPE’S
S
WORD
Richard Sharpe and the Salamanca Campaign, June and July 1812
S
HARPE’S
E
NEMY
Richard Sharpe and the Defense of Portugal, Christmas 1812
S
HARPE’S
H
ONOUR
Richard Sharpe and the Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813
S
HARPE’S
R
EGIMENT
Richard Sharpe and the Invasion of France, June to November 1813
S
HARPE’S
S
IEGE
Richard Sharpe and the Winter Campaign, 1814
S
HARPE’S
R
EVENGE
Richard Sharpe and the Peace of 1814
S
HARPE’S
W
ATERLOO
Richard Sharpe and the Waterloo Campaign, June 15 to June 18, 1815
S
HARPE’S
D
EVIL
Richard Sharpe and the Emperor, 1820–21
T
HE
N
ATHANIEL
S
TARBUCK
C
HRONICLES
Rebel
Copperhead
Battle Flag
The Bloody Ground
T
HE
G
RAIL
Q
UEST
S
ERIES
The Archer’s Tale
Vagabond
T
HE
W
ARLORD
C
HRONICLES
The Winter King
The Enemy of God
Excalibur
O
THER
N
OVELS
Gallows Thief
Stonehenge, 2000 B.C.: A Novel
Redcoat
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 daft, 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.
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 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
http://www.southessex.co.uk
