Sharpe’s Battle: The Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro, May 1811
Richard Sharpe is fighting for his Irish battalion and his own honour through the blood-stained streets of the town.Quartered in a crumbling Portuguese fort, Richard Sharpe and his men are attacked by an elite French unit, led by an old enemy of Sharpe’s, and suffer heavy losses.The army’s high command blame Sharpe for the disaster and his military career seems to be ruined. His only hope is to redeem himself on the battlefield. So with his honour at stake, against an overwhelming number of French troops, Sharpe leads his men to battle in the narrow streets of Fuentes de Oñoro.Soldier, hero, rogue – Sharpe is the man you always want on your side. Born in poverty, he joined the army to escape jail and climbed the ranks by sheer brutal courage. He knows no other family than the regiment of the 95th Rifles whose green jacket he proudly wears.
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SHARPEâS
BATTLE
Richard Sharpe and the Battle
of Fuentes de Oñoro, May 1811
BERNARD CORNWELL
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1995
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 1995
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
This novel is a work of fiction.
The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the authorâs imagination.
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Source ISBN: 9780006473244
Ebook Edition © March 2012 ISBN: 9780007339525 Version: 2017-05-08
Sharpeâs Battle is for Sean Bean
âAs always the actionâs the thing â and once Sharpe is surrounded by enemies, both on his own side and the opposition, events move at their usual satisfyingly breathless paceâ
Independent on Sunday
CHAPTER ONE
Sharpe swore. Then, in desperation, he turned the map upside down. âMight as well not have a bloody map,â he said, âfor all the bloody use it is.â
âWe could light a fire with it,â Sergeant Harper suggested. âGood kindlingâs hard to come by in these hills.â
âItâs no bloody use for anything else,â Sharpe said. The hand-drawn map showed a scatter of villages, a few spidery lines for roads, streams or rivers, and some vague hatchings denoting hills, whereas all Sharpe could see was mountains. No roads or villages, just grey, bleak, rock-littered mountains with peaks shrouded by mists, and valleys cut by streams turned white and full by the spring rains. Sharpe had led his company into the high ground on the border between Spain and Portugal and there become lost. His company, forty soldiers carrying packs, haversacks, cartridge cases and weapons, seemed not to care. They were just grateful for the rest and so sat or lay beside the grassy track. Some lit pipes, others slept, while Captain Richard Sharpe turned the map right side up and then, in anger, crumpled it into a ball. âWeâre bloody lost,â he said and then, in fairness, corrected himself. âIâm bloody lost.â
âMy grand-da got lost once,â Harper said helpfully. âHeâd bought a bullock from a fellow in Cloghanelly Parish and decided to take a short cut home across the Derryveagh Mountains. Then the fog rolled in and grand-da couldnât tell his left from his right. Lost like a wee lamb he was, and then the bullock deserted the ranks and bolted into the fog and jumped clear over a cliff into the Barra Valley. Grand-da said you could hear the poor wee beast bellowing all the way down, then there was a thump just like youâd dropped a bagpipe off a church tower, only louder, he said, because he reckoned they must have heard that thump all the way to Ballybofey. We used to laugh about it later, but not at the time. God, no, it was a tragedy at the time. We couldnât afford to lose a good bullock.â
âJesus bloody wept!â Sharpe interrupted. âI can afford to lose a bloody sergeant whoâs got nothing better to do than blather on about a bloody bullock!â
âIt was a valuable beast!â Harper protested. âBesides, weâre lost. Weâve got nothing better to do than pass the time, sir.â
Lieutenant Price had been at the rear of the column, but now joined his commanding officer at the front. âAre we lost, sir?â
âNo, Harry, I came here for the hell of it. Wherever the hell this is.â Sharpe stared glumly about the damp, bleak valley. He was proud of his sense of direction and his skills at crossing strange country, but now he was comprehensively, utterly lost and the clouds were thick enough to disguise the sun so that he could not even tell which direction was north. âWe need a compass,â he said.
