Sharpe’s Escape by Bernard Cornwell

Some writers fall into a certain formula in their books. Despite this – or maybe in some ways because of this – in the hands of a good author the books can remain enjoyable and even compelling. Such is the case with Bernard Cornwell’s novels about Richard Sharpe, a soldier under the Duke of Wellington in the Napoleonic Wars. There is an underlying formula to many of the books, but they are great fun nevertheless.

The Sharpe series originally started with Sharpe’s Rifles and ended with Sharpe’s Waterloo. They followed Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper – who Sharpe first meets, then makes his second in command in Sharpe’s Rifles – through the history of the Peninsular War – the war against Napoleon in Portugal and Spain, and the key reason (more important than the 1812 Russian campaign) to Napoleon’s downfall. After Waterloo, Cornwell took Sharpe and Harper to South America (interestingly, Patrick O’Brian also took Aubrey and Maturin to South America after Waterloo, so I’m sure there is some fan fiction about this out there somewhere). He then went back and wrote prequels, set in India and Denmark, among other places. (These were good, but less satisfying than the main series, since althoughI refer to the series as the Sharpe series, it really is the Sharpe/Harper series; the relationship between the two men is important to the dynamic of the series.) Now, Cornwell is filling in gaps between the books in the original series.

Sharpe’s Escape takes place in Portugal in 1810. The French are sending a huge army into Portugal to drive the British out and complete their conquest of the Iberian peninsula. Wellington, in secret, has been building up a huge series of fortifications – the Lines of Torres Vedras – around Lisbon. His plan is to destroy all supplies that the French can use and move his army behind the lines. The French can then starve during the Portuguese winter while he and his men wait them out behind the lines. Thus, after defeating the French once at Busaco, he retreats behind the Lines. The French rampage across the country, but the combination of attacks by the partisans and starvation and disease do major damage to the army, which is eventually forced to retreat back to Spain (from which Wellington, two years later, will eject them).

Sharpe, meanwhile, is engaged in what we normally expect: he is instrumental in several key battles. But he also has to put up with stupidity in his own army and treachery from some who are supposed to be on his side – in this case, a pair of Portuguese brothers who are trying to play both sides. Despite the fact that we’ve seen this sort of thing before in other Sharpe books, it’s still fun here. This isn’t the best of the Sharpe books and it doesn’t add much to an already solid series, but it’s still a good read, especially if you are a Sharpe fan.