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Storming the walls of the inner fortress at Gawilghur and opening the gates to the besieging forces (in reality, this was achieved by Captain Campbell leading the light company of the 94th Scotch Brigade; in the novel, Campbell and his troops are the first to join Sharpe once they realise what he's planning);
Serves as lieutenant colonel in the 5th Belgian Light Dragoons (Dutch Army) led by the Prince of Orange during the 100 days. He later acts as colonel of his old regiment during the Battle of Waterloo. At the climax of the battle, he is given official command after Wellington says, "That is your Battalion now! So take it forward!" At the end of the war Wellington confirms his command, allowing Sharpe to retire from the army on a lieutenant-colonel's pension.
Book Summary
Just when it seems that the Revenant will get away, the combined French and Spanish fleets sortie, with Admiral Horatio Nelson's fleet in pursuit. The Revenant joins the enemy fleet, while the Pucelle comes under Nelson's command. When Nelson summons Chase to a meeting, Chase brings Sharpe along and introduces him to his friend the admiral. An interesting perspective on the Indian experience: ‘I’ve been five months in India,’ Chase said, ‘but always at sea. Now I’m living ashore for a week, and it stinks. My God, how the place stinks!’ As a child, Cornwell loved the novels of C.S. Forester, chronicling the adventures of fictional British naval officer Horatio Hornblower during the Napoleonic Wars, and was surprised to find there were no such novels following Lord Wellington's campaign on land. Motivated by the need to support himself in the U.S. through writing, Cornwell decided to write such a series. He named his chief protagonist Richard Sharpe, a rifleman involved in most major battles of the Peninsular War.
This was a genius idea by Cornwell to write about one of the biggest battles of the era and to have Sharpe get in the middle of it in an organic way. The giant set piece at the end of this one did not disappoint, and Cornwell brought his trademark visceral battle writing full of every sensory detail you could imagine, savage fighting, death everywhere, and acts of grand bravery. Cornwell was born in London in 1944. His father was a Canadian airman, and his mother, who was English, a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. He was adopted and brought up in Essex by the Wiggins family, who were members of the Peculiar People, a strict Protestant sect who banned frivolity of all kinds and even medicine. After he left them, he changed his name to his birth mother's maiden name, Cornwell. Reverted to the rank of lieutenant after his gazetting as Captaincy was refused by Horse Guards and in the absence of a vacant captain's position in the South Essex. But Calliope is captured by a formidable French warship, Revenant. This French warship has been terrorizing British nautical traffic in the Indian Ocean. She races toward the safety of its own fleet, carrying a stolen treaty that, if delivered, could provoke India into a new war against the British. But help comes from an unexpected quarter. Sharpe's friend, Joel Chase, a captain in the Royal Navy, is on the trail of the Revenant. Sharpe comes aboard his 74-gun man-of-war, Pucelle along with Lady Grace and her husband. During the earliest (chronological) books Sharpe is a private and later sergeant, and so his uniform and weapons largely are in line with Army regulations. His first sword and officer's sash are taken from the dead in the wake of the Battle of Assaye, although no specifics are given on the weapon.Richard Share was a feral London boy before he joined the British army. In the time just before this book, he was sent to India to battle both indigenous peoples and other countries with imperial ambitions. He saves the life of an officer (who later will become Lord Wellington, hero of Waterloo) and is promoted from the ranks to ensign. Saving the Duke of Wellington from two assassination attempts in Paris (Cornwell explains that the first attempt happened, though the shooter simply missed, while the second is fictional and based on a likely deliberate fire that broke out in a house Wellington had been in days earlier). Finding the boats that allowed Wellesley's forces to ambush Marshal Nicolas Soult's forces at the Second Battle of Porto (Cornwell notes that in reality a Portuguese barber approached the British forces of his own volition rather than being sent across by Sharpe); Sharpe is often portrayed as the driving force in a number of pivotal historical events. Cornwell admits to taking license with history, placing Sharpe in the place of another man whose identity is lost to history or sometimes "stealing another man's thunder." Such accomplishments include:
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