Sharpe 3-Book Collection 4: Sharpe’s Escape, Sharpe’s Fury, Sharpe’s Battle
Three classic Richard Sharpe adventuresRichard Sharpe and the Bussaco Campaign, 1811It is 1810 and the French are making yet another attempt to invade Portugal. Facing them is a wasted land, stripped of food by Wellington’s orders, and Captain Richard Sharpe.Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Barrosa, March 1811In the winter of 1811, the war seems lost. Spain has fallen to the French, except for Cadiz, now the Spanish capital and itself under siege. Inside the city walls an intricate diplomatic dance is taking place and Richard Sharpe faces more than one enemy.Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro , May 1811Richard Sharpe and his men, quartered in a crumbling Portuguese fort, are attacked by an elite French unit, led by an old enemy of Sharpe’s, and suffer heavy losses.
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Bernard Cornwell
Collected Edition:
Sharpe’s Escape,
Sharpe’s Fury and
Sharpe’s Battle
These novels are entirely works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2009
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBNs:
Sharpe’s Escape: 9780007338658
Sharpe’s Fury: 9780007338665
Sharpe’s Battle: 9780007339525
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007454693
Version: 2018-05-22
Contents
BERNARD CORNWELL
Sharpe’s Escape
Richard Sharpe
and the Bussaco Campaign,
1811
Sharpe’s Escape is for CeCe
Mister Sharpe was in a bad mood. A filthy mood. He was looking for trouble in Sergeant Harper’s opinion, and Harper was rarely wrong about Captain Sharpe, and Sergeant Harper knew well enough not to engage his Captain in conversation when Sharpe was in such a black temper, but on the other hand Harper liked to live dangerously. ‘I see your uniform’s been mended, sir,’ he said cheerily.
Sharpe ignored the comment. He just marched on, climbing the bare Portuguese slope under the searing sun. It was September 1810, almost autumn, yet the heat of late summer hammered the landscape like a furnace. At the top of the hill, another mile or so ahead of Sharpe, stood a barn-like stone building next to a gaunt telegraph station. The station was a black timber scaffolding supporting a high mast from which signaling arms hung motionless in the afternoon’s heat.
‘It’s a rare nice piece of stitching on that jacket,’ Harper went on, sounding as though he did not have a care in the world, ‘and I can tell you didn’t do it yourself. It looks like a woman’s work, so it does?’ He inflected the last three words as a question.
Sharpe still said nothing. His long, straight-bladed cavalry sword banged against his left thigh as he climbed. He had a rifle slung on his shoulder. An officer was not supposed to carry a longarm like his men, but Sharpe had once been a private and he was used to carrying a proper gun to war.
‘Was it someone you met in Lisbon, now?’ Harper persisted.
Sharpe simmered, but pretended he had not heard. His uniform jacket, decently mended as Harper had noticed, was rifle green. He had been a rifleman. No, he still thought of himself as a rifleman, one of the elite men who carried the Baker rifle and wore the dark green instead of the red, but the tides of war had stranded him and a few of his men in a redcoat regiment and now he commanded the light company of the South Essex who were following him up the hill. Most wore the red jackets of the British infantry and carried smoothbore muskets, but a handful, like Sergeant Harper, still kept their old green jackets and fought with the rifle.
‘So who was she?’ Harper finally asked.
‘Sergeant Harper,’ Sharpe was finally goaded into speaking, ‘if you want bloody trouble then keep bloody talking.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Harper said, grinning. He was an Ulster-man, a Catholic and a sergeant, and as such he was not supposed to be friends with an Englishman, a heathen and an officer, but he was. He liked Sharpe and knew Sharpe liked him, though he was wise enough not to say another word. Instead he whistled the opening bars of the song ‘I Would that the Wars Were all Done’.
Sharpe inevitably thought of the words that accompanied the tune; ‘In the meadow one morning, all pearly with dew, a fair pretty maiden plucked violets so blue’, and Harper’s delicate insolence forced him to laugh aloud. He then swore at the Sergeant, who was grinning with triumph. ‘It was Josefina,’ Sharpe admitted.
