Sharpe's Havoc (The Sharpe Series): The Northern Portugal Campaign, Spring 1809 (The Sharpe Series, Book 7)

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Christopher still looked outraged, then Sergeant Harper chimed in. “It’s not a cherry, sir. It’s a Judas tree. The same kind that Iscariot used to hang himself on, sir, after he betrayed our Lord.” To avoid arrest, Sharpe takes the " King's shilling", joining the 33rd Foot, as a result of the blandishments of recruiting sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill. The regiment is first sent to Flanders in 1794, where Sharpe fights in his first battle, at Boxtel. The next year, he and his regiment are posted to India, under the command of the British East India Company. Short like a good sermon, sir,” Hagman said, “now keep still, sir, just keep still.” There was a sudden stab of pain as Hagman speared a louse with the scissor’s blade. He spat on the drop of blood that showed on Sharpe’s scalp, then wiped it away. “So the Crapauds will get the city, sir?” a b Cornwell, Bernard (1994). Sharpe's Eagle. London: HarperCollins Publishers. pp.327–8. ISBN 978-0-00-780509-9.

Sharpe's story is "intimately linked" [1] with the real-life story of Sir Arthur Wellesley, who appears in this book and would be appointed Viscount Wellington of Talavera as a result of the events related. And of course, Christopher is far from Sharpe's only problem. His men are still cut off from the rest of their regiment and sort of juking their way through the war at Arthur Wellesley's whim. The Iberian peninsula is crawling with French soldiers. The ordinary people are unreliable; many passionately committed to maintaining their independence from Napoleon's empire but ill-trained and ill-equipped and looking to people like Sharpe to make up for their deficiencies. Generals and other superiors have high expectations for him, too, but are a bit out of touch with what he's dealing with, sometimes by nature, sometimes due to circumstances, and sometimes because of Christopher's machinations. And then there's the novel's Girl, this time the pretty young heiress to a British wine dynasty who has grown up in Portugal and refuses to leave it despite the danger. Thank goodness Sharpe is too busy to do the predictable by her, this time around, at least. And the hero, Christian, calls at the House Beautiful, sir,” Tongue ignored Sharpe’s sarcasm, “where he talks with four virgins.” Suffers from the Prime Flaw of Historical Fiction -- namely that the characters seem to be involved in every important bit of history ever. Granted, that's probably why most fans like the genre but it does hurt suspension of disbelief when Sharpe is not only present at the Greatest Rifle Shot Ever Made but also fights against The Greatest French Skirmisher Ever, happens to always be at the Decisive Point of the Battle, and so on. Sir Banastre Tarleton (mentioned only) – Simmerson's cousin, now a high-ranking member of the Horse Guards

Diaries & Calendars

Once a private, now he leads his men into action in the bloodiest battle of the war. The danger is as great from his enemies on his own side as from those across the battlefield. But through treachery and gunsmoke, through swordfight and bloody warfare, Sharpe saves his own life and the honor of the regiment. How many books are there in the Sharpe series? I don't actually know the time period well enough to know if this historical fiction is accurate, but it has the feel of something well researched and the inclusion of well known battles and figures is pretty cool. I'd happily scarf down another of these if I'm in the mood for something light and action-filled. Christopher emulates Marshal Andre Massena, in having Kate dress in a man's Hussar uniform that shows off her figure.

What I don’t understand,” Sharpe began, then paused because the front door of the house had been thrown open and Mrs Savage, widow and mother of the missing daughter, came into the sunlight. She was a good looking woman in her forties; dark haired, tall and slender with a pale face and high arched eyebrows. She hurried down the steps as a cannon ball rumbled high overhead and then there was a smattering of musket fire alarmingly close, so close that Sharpe climbed the porch steps to stare at the crest of the hill where the Braga road disappeared between a large tavern and a handsome church. A Portuguese six pounder gun had just deployed by the church and was now firing at the invisible enemy. The bishop’s forces had dug new redoubts on the crest and patched the old mediaeval wall with hastily erected palisades and earthworks, but the sight of the small gun firing from its makeshift position in the centre of the road suggested that those defences were crumbling fast. The novel depicts the real-life Battle of Talavera that occurred during the early stages of the Peninsular War. The primary historical difference, as admitted in Cornwell's historical postscript, is that no Eagle was captured during the battle. The rest is fairly accurate, and it provides an excellent historical insight into the life of soldiers at the time as "much of the detail in the book is taken from contemporary letters and diaries." [2]Yet another superbly engaging Sharpe book! Cornwell was on a tremendous roll with these in the early 2000s, and it was easy to see how much he had improved as a writer from Sharpe's Rifles which he wrote 15 years before this one. Sharpe here was his usual witty, hard-edged self, but at a really interesting point in his development where he's really coming into his own as an officer and leader of his band of Rifles as they try to survive amidst the French invasion of Portugal. Which is to say that from my perspective, SH looks to be one of the best, if not the best, of the Sharpe novels, and certainly my favorite since Sharpe's Fortress, the best of the three India books. Sharpe is 100% Sharpe, smart, capable, cunning, sometimes cruel, stubborn and devastatingly creative, qualities he desperately needs as he struggles not only against the French, against the deprivations and duties of wartime abroad, but also against the machinations of yet another turncoat superior officer. His main foe this time around, Colonel Christopher, can't hold a candle to Major Dodd in the scary-danger department being more of a political schemer and a misguided idealist, but that makes him all the more actually dangerous to Sharpe**, who can handle any jerk on the battlefield or in skirmishes of all sorts, but who is still pretty rough and clueless when it comes to society and the way it works -- or is supposed to work. I do that too, Richard, I do indeed.” Hogan said, then straightened up, waved farewell and spurred his horse after Mrs Savage’s carriage that had swung out of the front gate and joined the stream of fugitives going towards the Douro. His intelligence work for Wellesley brings him the long-lasting enmity of the fictional French spymaster Pierre Ducos, who conspires several times to destroy Sharpe's career, reputation or life. Sharpe and his detachment, orphaned from the 95th Rifles, are trapped when the French seize Oporto, but are unexpectedly saved by a small detachment of Portuguese soldiers led by Lieutenant Jorge Vicente, a law student in civilian life. Despite his hatred of lawyers, Sharpe gradually comes to respect Vincente.

There is yet another Pretty Girl that Sharpe inexplicably falls for (along with an inexplicable kiss). A mention of Yet Another Pretty Girl That Sharpe Planned To Marry from a previous volume. (The constant recurrence of these girls is almost enough to move the book from Adventure to Farce.) Lieutenant Richard Sharpe is in the second battalion of the 95th Rifles and Captain Hogan of the Royal Engineers has been delaying paperwork and snitching funds to keep Sharpe and his Rifles protecting him as they map the countryside. Sharpe's Havoc: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Oporto is the seventh historical novel in the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, first published in 2003. The precious darling will be with you very soon,” Hogan said reassuringly, “Mister Sharpe will see to that,” he added, then used his foot to close the coach door on Mrs Savage who was the widow of one of the many British wine merchants who lived and worked in the city of Oporto. She was rich, Sharpe presumed, certainly rich enough to own a fine carriage and the lavish House Beautiful, but she was also foolish for she should have left the city two or three days before, but she had stayed because she had evidently believed the bishop’s assurance that he could repel Marshal Soult’s army. Colonel Christopher, who had once lodged in the strangely named House Beautiful, had appealed to the British forces south of the river to send men to escort Mrs Savage safely away and Captain Hogan had been the closest officer and Sharpe, with his Riflemen, had been protecting Hogan while the engineer mapped northern Portugal, and so Sharpe had come north across the Douro with twenty-four of his men to escort Mrs Savage and any other threatened British inhabitants of Oporto to safety. Which should have been a simple enough task, except that at dawn the widow Savage had discovered that her daughter had fled from the house. The battles were well depicted. The bad guys a little cardboard, but properly unlikable, and the supporting cast drawn well enough to make our hero heroic. Better, the straits our poor hero finds himself in are pretty rotten.Sharpe is born to a whore in the rookeries of London. Orphaned at an early age, he grows up in poverty. He is eventually taken in by prostitute (and later bar owner) Maggie Joyce and becomes a thief. He has to flee the city after killing a man to protect Maggie. Despite that, SH is a fantastic read, amusing, emotional, bloody and thrilling. If I haven't convinced you to give Sharpe a try by now, seven books into the series, I despair of you. I really do. It's everything most of my people read books for and then some. But why had Captain Hogan left Sharpe and his Riflemen behind? Sharpe wondered about that as Hagman tidied up his work. And had there been any significance in Hogan’s final injunction to keep a close eye on the Colonel? Sharpe had only met the Colonel once. Hogan had been mapping the upper reaches of the River Cavado and the Colonel and his servant had ridden out of the hills and shared a bivouac with the Riflemen. Sharpe had not liked Christopher who had been supercilious and even scornful of Hogan’s work. “You map the country, Hogan,” the Colonel had said, “but I map their minds. A very complicated thing, the human mind, not simple like hills and rivers and bridges.” Beyond that statement he had not explained his presence, but just ridden on next morning. He had revealed that he was based in Oporto which, presumably, was how he had met Mrs Savage and her daughter, and Sharpe wondered why Colonel Christopher had not persuaded the widow to leave Oporto much sooner. “You’re done, sir,” Hagman said, wrapping his scissors in a piece of calfskin, “and you’ll be feeling the cold wind now, sir, like a newly shorn sheep.” 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.