Sharpe’s Eagle: The Talavera Campaign, July 1809

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 author’s imagination.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1981

Previously published in paperback by Fontana 1981

Reprinted twelve times

Copyright © Rifleman Productions Ltd 1981

Map © John Gilkes 2011

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 ISBN: 9780007276240

Ebook Edition © JULY 2009 ISBN: 9780007338641 Version: 2017-05-06

‘Bernard Cornwell set out to create a character who was credible enough to go through many adventures and both Sharpe himself and his Irish sergeant, Patrick Harper, are excellent creations. To my taste, Sharpe is much more interesting than Flashman’

Financial Times

For Judy

‘Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier’

SAMUEL JOHNSON

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

Foreword

Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Epilogue

Historical Note

Sharpe’s Story

Keep Reading

About the Author

The SHARPE Series (in chronological order)

The SHARPE Series (in order of publication)

Also by Bernard Cornwell

About the Publisher

This was the first book I wrote, and it is the only book of mine that I have never dared go back and re-read. I still do not dare, for I am sure I would be horrified by the crudity of its writing, but I am constantly told by readers that it is one of their favourites.

It tells the story of the battle of Talavera, which occurred towards the beginning of the Peninsular War. It was not where I wanted to start the Sharpe series. I really wanted to begin with the tale of Badajoz (which turns up in Sharpe’s Company), because Badajoz is such an extraordinary and dramatic event, but I decided it would be a good idea to write a book or two before Badajoz, rather like a bowler warming up before he takes on the opening batsman. I had never written a novel before, never tried to write a novel before, and so Sharpe’s Eagle is where I was going to make all a beginner’s mistakes, and where, if I was successful in my ambition to write a series of tales about the adventures of a British rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars, I was going to learn some of the tricks of the trade. One of the first things I learned was that Sharpe’s enemies, by and large, had to be British. I had thought, before I began writing, that the French would provide him with enemies enough, but the circumstances of war meant that Sharpe spent much more time with the British than with the enemy French, and if he was to be unendingly challenged, irritated, obstructed and angered then the provocations had to come from people with whom he was constantly associated. In time Sharpe is to meet many foul enemies, but few, I think, are as nauseating as Sir Henry Simmerson who, I seem to remember, becomes a tax inspector in his later career.

I said Sharpe’s enemies were British. In fact most of them, like me, are English, while his friends are often Irish. This arose from the happy fact that I had been living in Belfast in the years immediately prior to writing Sharpe and had acquired a fondness for Ireland which has never abated. It also reflected a truth that Wellington’s army was heavily recruited from the Irish, and indeed the Duke (as he was to become) had been born there. That was not a fact of which he was proud. ‘Being born in a stable,’ he once remarked, ‘does not make a man a horse.’ The Duke was a difficult, cold and snobbish man who was also one of the greatest soldiers ever to take the field. Like Sharpe I admire him, but would not particularly wish to dine with him. His story, though, is intimately linked with Sharpe’s, which is to Sharpe’s good fortune. But Sharpe, if he is to make his reputation, must do it with action, rather than by his distant connection with the Duke, and there was no act more admired on a battlefield than the capture of an enemy’s standard. In Napoleon’s army those standards took the form of small statuettes of eagles – thus the book’s title. I decided that if I was not to launch Sharpe against the great walls of Badajoz in his first adventure, then he should face another task just as impossible, and so I set him to capture an eagle. Poor Sharpe.