Sharpe's Tiger
India · Seringapatam, 1799
Private Sharpe slips into the Tippoo Sultan's fortress on a clandestine mission and earns his first stripe in the storming of Seringapatam.
Buy on Amazon →Bernard Cornwell
Fiction · Sharpe
Twenty-four novels from a Seringapatam gunner to a Lt-Colonel at Waterloo, and a last, ghostly voyage to Chile.
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The Chosen Man
Cornwell explicitly modelled Sharpe on the idea of a ranker-promoted officer in a class-bound army, a tiny minority in fact, but represented in the period by figures like John Shipp. The 95th Rifles gave Cornwell both a famously egalitarian regiment and a weapon (the Baker rifle) accurate enough for his hero's marksmanship to be credible.
History beside Fiction
Most major set-pieces are historical: Talavera's burning fields, Badajoz's ditch of the dead, Salamanca's forty-minute rout, Waterloo's crisis at La Haye Sainte. Cornwell inserts Sharpe at the margin and allows the real battle to happen around him. The Author's Note at the end of every book tells the reader what he has invented.
A Reading Order
New readers may prefer to start with Sharpe's Rifles (1988) or Sharpe's Eagle (1981), the first-written novels, which introduce Sharpe at his most essential. Chronological order (as below) reads cleaner on a second pass, once Harper's jokes and Hakeswill's curses have become familiar.
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The Chronicle
Twenty-four novels in the order of Sharpe’s life
Sharpe's Triumph
India · Assaye, 1803
Sergeant Sharpe fights the bloody day of Assaye at Arthur Wellesley's side and commits the act that will win him a commission.
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Sharpe's Fortress
India · Gawilghur, 1803
Newly-commissioned Ensign Sharpe climbs the cliff-fortress of Gawilghur against both Mahratta guns and the gentlemen of his own regiment.
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Sharpe's Trafalgar
East Indiaman Calliope, 1805
Homeward-bound Sharpe is caught aboard a merchantman at the greatest sea battle ever fought.
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Sharpe's Prey
Denmark · Copenhagen, 1807
Sharpe hunts a Danish traitor through a burning city during Britain's ugly seizure of the Danish fleet.
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Sharpe's Rifles
Spain · Retreat to Corunna, 1809
Cut off in the Galician mountains, Lieutenant Sharpe must shepherd a sacred relic and an unwilling company of riflemen to safety.
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Sharpe's Havoc
Portugal · Crossing of the Douro, 1809
Sharpe defends an Anglo-Portuguese girl and gets tangled in Wellesley's audacious stroke at Oporto.
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Sharpe's Eagle
Spain · Talavera, 1809
Attached to the cowardly South Essex at Talavera, Sharpe seizes a French Imperial Eagle and makes his first enemies in high places.
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Sharpe's Gold
Spain · Lines of Torres Vedras, 1810
Sharpe hunts a fortune in Spanish gold through the Portuguese interior to pay Wellington's hungry army.
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Sharpe's Escape
Portugal · Bussaco, 1810
Sharpe crosses the murderous Ferragus brothers as the French march into the scorched earth before the Lines.
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Sharpe's Fury
Spain · Barrosa, 1811
Sharpe is thrown into the brief, ferocious fight at Barrosa outside beleaguered Cádiz.
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Sharpe's Battle
Spain · Fuentes de Oñoro, 1811
Sharpe commands an unwanted Irish company at the confused, bloody stand at Fuentes de Oñoro.
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Sharpe's Company
Spain · Ciudad Rodrigo & Badajoz, 1812
Sergeant Hakeswill returns as Sharpe storms the terrible breach of Badajoz.
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Sharpe's Command
Portuguese–Spanish border, 1812
Sharpe leads a covert mission behind French lines before Wellington's march on Salamanca.
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Sharpe's Sword
Spain · Salamanca, 1812
Sharpe hunts the French sword-master Colonel Leroux through the campaign that ends in rout on the Arapiles.
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Sharpe's Enemy
Spain · Adrados, Christmas 1812
A band of deserters under Hakeswill seize a mountain village and an English colonel's wife on the blackest Christmas of the war.
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Sharpe's Honour
Spain · Vitoria, 1813
Sharpe is framed, tried, and killed (officially) on the morning of Vitoria.
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Sharpe's Regiment
England & the Pyrenees, 1813
Back in England, Sharpe investigates the crimping racket that is stealing the 2nd Battalion of the South Essex.
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Sharpe's Siege
France · Atlantic coast, 1814
Sharpe is handed a rotting coastal fort in a forgotten corner of the final campaign.
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Sharpe's Revenge
France & Naples, April 1814
With the war over, Sharpe must clear his name of theft across a France in Bourbon-restorations mood.
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Sharpe's Waterloo
Belgium · Quatre Bras & Waterloo, 1815
Lt-Colonel Sharpe rides into the Hundred Days and the slaughter on the ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean.
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Sharpe's Assassin
France · Occupation of Paris, 1815
In the Allied occupation of Paris, Sharpe hunts a French assassin through a city at war with itself.
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Sharpe's Storm
Southern France, winter 1813
Sharpe and his riflemen face the Allied invasion of southern France and a gathering storm in the Pyrenean foothills.
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Sharpe's Devil
Chile & Valdivia, 1820–1821
Post-war Sharpe sails to Chile with Lord Cochrane for a last, ghostly encounter with Napoleon from St Helena.
Buy on Amazon →“I wrote Sharpe’s Eagle because I wanted to read a book about a soldier fighting with Wellington, and nobody had written one.”
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