Richard Sharpe and the Destruction of Almeida - August 1810 (#9)

‘Sharpe’s Gold’ is yet another fast paced, action paced tale of Richard Sharpe, now a Captain in Wellington’s army. For those that have been reading the Sharpe books in chronological order, it has all the qualities of the previous books. I’m sure I can safely say that Sharpe fans will not be disappointed. I have read criticisms regarding this book that it does not stick as closely to historical fact than most of the other Sharpe books. However, the book was still great fun, and loosely centred on an event in the Peninsular Wars. With that in mind, I’m sure we can forgive Bernard Cornwall, who in my view is one of the very best historical fiction writers, straying a little ways from the facts from time to time.

Ninth in the Richard Sharpe military fiction series. This one finds Richard a Captain during the Peninsular War in August 1810.

My Take
Just a bit of theft required to acquire the gold Wellesley needs to continue the war. London believes all is lost and is dithering about sending any money while still expecting Wellesley to pay the Spanish, the Portuguese, and take care of his own men.
I can't blame Wellesley for taking the gold especially since the Spanish were such tightwads and never honored their promises to feed the British Army leaving them to starve. That was just the icing on the cake for me after their lousy performance in battle, heck, before battle as well.

Cornwell works his visceral magic again making me smell the stink of the manure and blood, feel the horror of the massacred children, choke on the dust from the explosion, and moan about the blisters. It's an odd way of expressing it, but Cornwell brings the battlefield to life. I want to be out there with a Baker rifle...but with a bottle of Perrier, please! Can you imagine how excited Sharpe and his men would be if they could get their hands on the automatic weapons of today?

It's our first introduction to the bladder telegraph. Too bad they didn't have more backups who could read/send the messages on them!

My only complaint about this story is that it was too short.

The Story
Sharpe and his 31 men are bored with patrolling the border between Spain and Portugal and have finally received orders to march. It's lucky that Wellesley needs Sharpe for a special mission behind enemy lines after Sharpe, ahem, offends a provost intent on stringing up one of Sharpe's men after his encounter with a wild chicken.

So off march Sharpe and his Rifles to Almeida to pick up Major Kearsey, the only man who knows where to find the gold intended for the Spanish government in Cadiz and knows the man who holds it, Cesar Moreno. The gold that Wellesley intends to appropriate. There's just one problem. While Moreno holds the gold, his guerilla band has been joined by a larger one led by El Católico who is betrothed to Cesar's daughter. A dangerous man who does not want the British Army to touch the gold. For some reason, he suspects the British intend to steal it. Part of Kearsey's precautions included leaving one of his men with Moreno, a Captain Claud Hardy. Josefina's Hardy (seeSharpe's Eagle (Richard Sharpe's Adventure Series #8)).

Naturally, nothing can be that easy. The French have captured the Morenos and put the village to the sword and no one can find Hardy. Then the Major is captured and it's Sharpe to the rescue. A very handy rescue as they save Teresa from an ugly fate and later provides Sharpe with some interesting exchanges including Teresa stripping off to distract the French.

But there is no gold. Even El Católico insists that the French got the gold. An insistence that Sharpe finds very suspect. And Sharpe knows how badly Wellesley needs that gold. Sharpe is so skeptical that he practically steals it from under El Católico's nose taking Teresa along as a very willing hostage. Then the chase is on for El Católico will not give up that promise of power nor the woman. A back and forth of gain and loss until there are the ultimate losses.

The Characters
Captain Richard Sharpe is now in charge of the Light Company of the South Essex regiment. His men include Lieutenant Robert Knowles; Sergeant Patrick Harper; Private Batten who moans about everything--cracks me up that Batten whines about the provost walking off with his chicken when Sharpe has just saved his bacon for having stolen it!; Daniel Hagman, a former poacher with the best eye; Parry Jenkins, a Welshman and the best fisherman amongst them; the educated Isaiah Tongue; Corporal James Kelly who recently married a woman two stones heavier than him and hasn't stopped smiling since; Sergeant Read, a Methodist concerned for the souls of the men; Private Roach who sells his wife's services a penny a time; and, Sergeant McGovern.

The very religious Major Kearsey of the Prince of Wales Dragoons is the exploring officer who knows where to find the gold while Captain Claud Hardy is the officer Kearsey left behind to watch it. Cesar Moreno is the leader of a small band of guerillas and has the coins near his manor in Casatejada. Both of his children, Ramon and Teresa, are involved. Teresa is engaged to El Católico, a.k.a.,
Colonel Joaquim Jovellanos in the Spanish Army, a vicious, brutal man with his own ideas about the gold and the power it can buy him. A man who prays over his victims as he kills them; the best swordsman in Spain.

Lieutenant Colonel the Honorable William Lawford is still in command of a much-improved South Essex; Major Forrest; General Sir Arthur Wellesley; Major Michael Hogan is now the head of Wellesley's intelligence; and, Brigadier Cox is the English Commander of the garrison at Almeida. Lieutenant Ayres is the hapless provost.

Captain Lossow of the King's German Legion respects Sharpe and his men for their capture of the eagle and he, Sergeant Helmut, and his men joyfully help Sharpe to protect the gold. Lieutenant Tom Garrard is with the Portuguese garrison at Almeida; he and Sharpe are friends from the 33rd. Fortunately, he survives the explosion.

The Cover
The top third of the cover is banded in black with a thin piping of yellow followed by a band of orange. The bottom of the cover is about three-quarters of an inch of orange topped by a piping of yellow and in between it appears as if Wellesley is exhorting the troops.

The title is all about the money that Sharpe is sent to retrieve, Sharpe's Gold.

The 9th Richard Sharpe adventure story. Sharpe is secretly commissioned by General Wellington himself to find and retrieve 16,000 gold pieces so the British can resist the French advance through Portugal. To do so, he must win a fight against the superior swordsman, El Catolico, a guerrilla leader seeking the gold for his own cause, and win the loyalty of El Catolico's mistress, the beautiful and brave Teresa. Sharpe must also defy his own superior, Major Kearsey and the British officer, Cox, commander of the fortress town of Almeida, Portugal, which is soon to be overrun by the French. A wonderfully engaging story.

Following on the heels of Sharpe's Eagle, Sharpe's Gold (the 9th novel in chronological order of events) plays on the darker side of "doing one's duty" of winning at any cost. During the early part of the Peninsula Wars, the Spanish army ceased to exist and a payroll for the nonexistent army is left in limbo. After a scout learns that the partisans have the gold, Sir Arthur Wellesley decides that the money must be liberated to help save the British army from defeat in Portugal.

After an awkward interchange where Captain Richard Sharpe (promoted from Lieutenant in Sharpe's Eagle) interferes with a provost who wants to hang one of his men as a looter, Wellesley tells Sharpe that he "must" get the gold. An earlier foray with cavalry failed, but there is a British officer watching the gold along with the partisans (guerillas). All Sharpe has to do is lead his few infantrymen behind enemy lines, persuade the partisans (led by the dangerous and suspicious El Catalico) to give him the Spanish gold, and then carry it back through enemy lines again.

Naturally, the challenge is even more difficult than expected. The scout who accompanies him is immediately captured by the French and Sharpe decides to rescue him. After that, the Spanish partisans claim the French have the gold and that the British officer has been captured. In the ensuing battle, Sharpe saves and becomes entranced by a most remarkable young woman, one who fights better than most men and is also very beautiful.

In the story, Bernard Cornwell brilliantly uses a real historical incident to present Sharpe with one of those "someone will die no matter what I do" choices that often occur in war. If you read this book with a friend, you can have some fun debating what Sharpe might have done differently.

The story is way too dark to be totally satisfying to Sharpe fans. Otherwise, it's brilliantly done. But it pales compared to the remarkable Sharpe's Eagle that preceded it.

Enjoy!

Sharpe's Gold by Bernard Cornwell is an exciting adventure yarn about greed, guts and duty. This time the British army is defeated and General Wellington fears that his forces are being pushed out of the peninsula. In order for Wellington to continue the war he needs money and lots of it. There is gold in some remote Spanish village and once Wellington hears of it, he MUST have it. And who do you think the General would give this important assignment to...none other than Captain Sharpe (naturally). Spain may be lost to the French but there is one thing the British forces have that France does not and that is SHARPE. If there is one thing Sharpe hates is losing. So you know he will do what ever it takes to win. Cornwell's blending of fact and fiction are amazing. You get the sense of being there, you visualize the battles and the scenes at the fortress of Almeida are spellbinding. Of course Sharpe gets the gold, receives the praise (reluctantly) from Wellington and he even gets the pretty girl in the end. My only problem with the story is the ending. What Sharpe must do to get the gold is too ruthless to be imagined. If this is your first Sharpe book don't let it be your last, Sharpe's Rifles or Sharpe's Company are better. However, all of Cornwell's Sharpe books are good reads, you will not be disappointed.

Bernard Cornwell creation, Richard Sharpe, is one of the more swashbuckling characters you're ever going to find. Raised from the sewers of London through the ranks of the British Army to the command of the lethal 95th Rifles, Sharpe is a soldier's soldier. Handsome, smart but uneducated, with a rakish smile and handsome scars, Sharpe leads men to victory and often manages to lead women into bed. And he has even won the grudging admiration of Cornwell's hero, Sir Arthur Wellesley, nemesis to Napoleon.

So far I have followed Sharpe across India and through the Peninsular War. In each novel Sharpe acquits himself with honor, if not tact. Generally, Sharpe gets to kill the bad guys and work with the good guys, and it's as easy to root for Sharpe as it is to root for James Bond or Indiana Jones.

For most of "Sharpe's Gold," this dynamic holds true. General Wellesley knows that the war is lost to Napoleon unless he can "retrieve" 16,000 pieces of Spanish gold from their rightful owners. Spain and England are ostensibly allies in 1810 in the war against Napoleon, but both sides have reason to begrudge the other. And so Wellesley cannot get the gold just by asking for it. He must send Sharpe to take it. "Must" is the key word, and it rings through Sharpe's ears throughout the story. And for Sharpe, he must plumb the depths of the sacrifices required for that "must."

Cornwell gives Sharpe his typically-dastardly villain, a Spanish demon with the sword named El Catolico. El Catolico has visions of using the gold to set up his own kingdom in the mountains of Spain, leading his Partisans against the French with the lovely Teresa at his side. Teresa, a true beauty in the Cornwell tradition, leaves El Catolico's side for Sharpe, and between the gold and the woman it's hard to tell which makes El Catolico more angry with Sharpe. It's a given that these two will fight to the death.

But the story really comes into its own when Sharpe must confront the sacrifice of several of his fellow soldiers to save the gold. Can Sharpe kill fellow Brits to save the army? True to Sharpe, he doesn't wrestle with this dilemma a la Hamlet, he dives in with both fists. Leave it to Cornwell to tell the story, but suffice it to say "Sharpe's Gold" is where this series grows up quite a bit. Well worth the read.

In this installment in Cornwell's Napoleonic War series, Sharpe and his riflemen are sent by Lord Wellington on a secret mission to recover a huge cache of Spanish gold deep in French held territory. At this point in the war (August 1810), the British have been driven from Spain, and French armies are marching on Portugal. Meanwhile, the army has run out of money and without the gold, the British will have to abandon Lisbon, and the war. Sharpe's mission introduces him (and the reader) to the uneasy diplomacy between England and Spain, as for the first time, Shape encounters Spanish partisans fighting the French. The partisans currently have the gold, and are loathe to relinquish it to the English troops, whom they don't trust. In each book in the series there is a main villain, here it is the partisan leader, a cruel warlord called "El Catholico." And, in each book in the series there is a beautiful woman, here Teressa, who will play an important and long running role in the series. True to form, she falls into his bed a little too readily, but that's par for the course in the series.
SPOILER WARNING << Read no Further: Plot Twists to Be Revealed! >>
As usual, even once Sharpe successfully extricates the gold and his company from the partisans, and then French forces, he still must battle his greatest foe: army bureaucracy. Holed up in the fortress of Almeida, he is ordered by the garrison commander to relinquish the gold to Spanish representatives. Unwilling to let that happen, he comes up with a rather drastic way to avoid the command--blow up the garrison, thus dissolving the commander's authority! Cornwell bases this on the real explosion of the magazine that destroyed Almeida, but it seems a rather extreme solution, even for the ruthless Sharpe. Pursing his "break a few eggs to make an omlette" plan, Sharpe's explosion ends up killing around 500 British soldiers--rank and file soldiers just like him. He grapples with his remorse momentarily, but it's a monumentally guilt-inducing event that seems not to have caused Sharpe many sleepless nights later in the series (at least the ones I've read so far). Considering Cornwell's has Sharpe's repeatedly recall his whipping in India, and other traumatic events from his past, it seems a slight misstep that the climax of this book doesn't affect him in later ones (although perhaps in working my way through the rest of the series, I'll find myself wrong).
In any event, it's a fairly solid entry in the series.

I own all the Sharpe books - including Trafalgar.
Sharpe's Gold is right up there with the best of the series. It's a rollicking Boy's Own yarn, a swasher of buckles, a putter-downer of foes, a sweeper-away of tempestuous heroines. It's fun, and makes no pretence to be otherwise.
Bernard Cornwell rarely writes badly (I disliked his Starbuck / Civil War stories, but that's me) and he doesn't let his fans down with this book.
Wellington's army is backed into a corner, and broke. The Spaniards have a lot of gold, and Sharpe's just the man to steal - er, appropriate it. That he has to blow up a city to do it is just another day in this larger-than-life, ultimately pragmatic soldier's life.
And yes - there's a great love story, too.
If, in reality, Wellington had had a Sharpe or two under his command, Napoleon would have gone back to Corsica to study pre-revolutionary tatting. Fortunately, he didn't... which means there are plenty of more opportunities for Sharpe to battle his way across Spain and into France.

This is another entry on the Sharpe series. It is fun, entertaining and very readable. Cornwell's research is as excellent as usual. He takes some licenses for the shake of the story and continuity, but this is OK. Some people are outraged by the portrait of some of the real historical characters, but historical characters are rarely depicted accurately in historical fiction, so I think this can be forgiven. Besides, usually a more serious account of these characters is given at the end of the book on the Historical Note.

Many people insist in compare this series with Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. I don't think this is fair for any of the series, they are different entities. What they have in common is that once you start you may get hooked and devour one book after another...

And in the literary world today that is a rare and marvelous thing

This book is pretty typical fast paced Sharpe action until the end where the last few chapters kill the whole series. Cornwell had done such a great job building the Sharpe character to this point, and then manages to slaughter him in the last few pages of this book.

I originally started the Sharpe series several years ago, but disliked the ending of this book so much that I put the series down for several years before discovering it again. Up until this point Sharpe's character is certainly no gentleman, but he has shown considerable honor, gone out of his way to rescue damsels in distress, gotten his men through some really tough spots with minimal causalities, and even spared the life of valiant enemies on occasion. He is a killer, but so far he has only killed people that need killing.

In this book the same guy who always manages to come up with a way out of the most hopeless situations is faced with a relatively simple problem. He needs to leave a British held garrison that is under siege by the French. Good news is that the gate he needs to leave by has not been surrounded by French troops. He has 250 loyal men with him. The only thing stopping him is an indecisive General, and a lightly guarded gate. Sharpe's solution is to murder 500 innocent people by blowing up the garrison (remember these are people on his side), and letting the rest of the garrison be captured by the French.

Up until this point Cromwell had done a good job of integrating historical fact with his fictional characters. In most cases the historical facts were much more intriguing than the fictional stuff, as it would have been in this story if Cromwell had not fallen asleep at the quill.

This story exposes our hero to be nothing but a stupid, ruthless, cold blooded, heartless killer, willing to do any vile act to please his idol Wellington. The whole Sharpe character is assassinated in the last pages of this book. How are readers that have developed a relationship with the Sharpe character to this point to accept this total change in personality? A much better ending would have let Sharpe come up with some clever scheme to leave the garrison, and let the explosion occur as it actually did. Maybe Cromwell was drunk at the end of this one?

My advice is to skip the last few chapters of this book. Sharpe comes away form this one looking much to disgusting to be a hero, much less for someone a reader can relate to.

Cornwall and a good number of reviewers apparently have no problem rooting for a mass murderer. One who willingly, willfully murders hundreds of innocent comrades. Under the guise of "the war must go on" (isn't it up to governments to decide at what cost war must be prosecuted--not vainglorious generals or their amoral underlings?). Apparently not. If a general doesn't want a campaign to end, murder however many (of your own!!!) it takes to get what you want. Why? The boss said so.

This revolting morality is a deal breaker for me. I've enjoyed the first 8 books of this series in part because of their moral ambiguity. There's nothing ambiguous about Sharpe's methods in this installment. And while Sharpe is fictional, Wellington isn't. Is Cornwall proposing this is how Arthur Wellesley prosecuted the Peninsula Campaign. Lousy history. Repugnant morality. . Badly done Bernard. Badly done. Why an author would purposely diminish his main character and a series in this fashion is beyond my understanding.

Sharpe's Gold is an installment of the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell which takes place during the Peninsular War and one year after the Battle of Talavera . Captain Richard Sharpe is with General Wellington's army in Portugal where the British are in dyer need of money, food and supplies. Sharpe's mission is to steal gold to continue to fund the campaign. Sharpe finds himself stuck in the fortress at Almeida, Portugal and he must use all of his cunning to escape and help save the British army.

It is so difficult to find a CHRONOLOGICAL listing of the Sharpe's series. the store, show a chrono right here! All listings are ALPHABETICAL, which is USELESS! A library program called NOVELIST actually has a chronological listing. You really need it to read the series in proper sequence.

Lieutenant Sharpe and Sergeant Harper of the 95th Rifles are detailed to recover Royal Spanish gold from Spanish Guerilleros. The British Army numbering less than 30,000 men are poorly supplied and are at their last lines of retreat in Portugal. Viscount Wellington in overall command of combined Portuguese and British forces personally emphasises to Sharpe the dire need to fund the fight against the esitimated 350,000 French armies, recovering the gold is vital.
Sharpe outwits Spanish guerilla leader Jovellanos, retreating to Almeida where a massive unexpected gunpowder explosion destroys the Cathedral (which was used as a magazine) and fortifications. Sharpe escapes to Portugal and Welington, the gold funds the defensive lines ogf Torres Vedras. Marechal Massena is halted 30 minutes from Lisbon.

I've really enjoyed reading the Richard Sharpe series of historical novels by Bernard Cornwell. They are easy reads and teach you something about the history of the Napoleonic wars. The author includes historical notes at the end of each book which delineate historical fact from his fiction. You find out, for example, if any of the battlements are still standing. After reading "Sharpe's Company" about the siege of Badajoz, Spain, I went there on Google Earth and took a virtual tour of the fortress. Way Cool!

You can always count on the Richard Sharpe books. They are exciting page turners, if a bit formulaic. Sharpe always has trouble with authority, an exotic love interest, and plenty of fighting. I recommend that you start at the beginning of the series.

Page turning suspense but lighter in the story department than most Sharpe entries. If I hadn't read so many footnotes in the Flashman series, (one mentioned Wellington's "Lines") I wouldn't have been as impressed with the ending as I was.

Cornwell delivers another Sharpe adventure set in the Napoleonic era. Sharpe does his usual Bond-like disobeying of higher authorities and superhuman feats in the wonderfully detailed battle scenes, whether individual or large scale.