Sharpe's Trafalgar: The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805: Book 4 (The Sharpe Series)

Product Information

Gazetted by General Wellesley as a captain after saving the Regimental Colour of the South Essex Battalion at Valdelacasa.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2011-12-08 17:34:22 Boxid IA174801 Boxid_2 CH122501 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York, NY Donor In his fourth Sharpe novel, Sharpe's Trafalgar, Bernard Cornwell has his hero leave India to return home to England. On the way on board the Calliope, our stalwart soldier unexpectedly finds himself caught up in a historic sea battle. Accustomed to fighting on land as part of an army, Ensign Richard Sharpe is initially disconcerted when he joins the crew of the fictional British ship Pucelle in the October 21, 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, revered Admiral Horatio Nelson's final engagement. But Sharpe is a fast learner and soon finds his sea legs as he joins the marine crew under Lieutenant Llewelyn. The Revenant is spotted, and a long chase commences. One night, Lady Grace hesitantly informs Sharpe that she is pregnant with his child, unsure of his reaction. He is delighted.

Reader Reviews

Following Napoleon's defeat, Sharpe ends up in Paris with the occupying allied armies. There he uncovers and defeats a secret Bonapartist group ( Sharpe's Assassin). Afterwards, he retires from the army. What is to follow is the momentous clash between the armadas of Britain against the French and Spanish on an October day, and what in the end will happen off Cape of Trafalgar is a victorious British fleet with Richard Sharpe right in the midst of it all. Sharpe takes part in a number of notable actions, either with the South Essex or on detached duty for Wellesley's spymaster, Captain Michael Hogan of the Royal Engineers. These include capturing a French Imperial Eagle at the Battle of Talavera in 1809 (fulfilling a promise to a dying captain he respects), and the storming of the breach at Badajoz. He also takes an active role in the first siege of Almeida, the battles of Bussaco, Barossa, Ciudad Rodrigo, Fuentes de Onoro, Salamanca, Vitoria, and Toulouse. Over this period, he rises in rank from lieutenant to captain to major, eventually taking unofficial command of the entire regiment. Sharpe's Irish friend Harper rises from rifleman to regimental sergeant major.

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. 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. Firing the shot that wounded the Prince of Orange during the Battle of Waterloo, forcing him to retire from the field (in reality, this shot was most likely fired by a French skirmisher); Retrieving and restoring the Imperial Family's treasure (in his note, Cornwell notes that several chests of personal belongings and riches did get lost in the chaos of the French defeat of 1814, but how this happened and their final fate are unknown) From what I know about Sharpe's future with a rifle company in the Napoleonic wars (these novels have such cultural currency that it's almost as impossible not to know Sharpe's going to end up a lieutenant in Spain as it is not to know what Rosebud is), these are good lessons for him to be getting, very important for his transformation from a gutter rat whose first (chronological) scene in fiction is of him getting flogged to a man who inspires loyalty.

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). 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!’