Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Barrosa - March 1811

Started on Bernard Cornwell's novels because I ran out of Jack Aubrey, Horatio Hornblower, and Ricard Bolitho books to read. Sharpe is equal to these 3 heroic characters. I like Hornblower and Bolitho better as people, but Richard Sharpe is more complex and much more entertaining!

I have been enjoying the Richard Sharpe books from the beginning. This is the seventh book in the series. Cornwell does a great job with these historically based novels. If you like history, action and suspense, then you will enjoy this series.

Again Cornwell does his homework and paints a detailed picture of the horrors of napoleonic warfare. The writting is excellent, and as always entertaining. A good choice to inspire interest in the period for those who have little knowledge of the era.

I have read everyone of the Sharpe series and love them. This recent is a good book, but for me the least exciting. It appears that our favorite author may be getting tired of this series. Too much historical overview and battle activity without mention of Sharpe. I hope thiis is not the last, but maybe there are no good battles left for Sharpe to fight.

item arrived in timely fashion and was without defect. played well in vehicle cassette player. the seller purchased this item from a library. the quality of this item was excellent not what i am used to from libraries.

I have been reading the Sharpe series in chronological order, so this is my 11th adventure with Richard Sharpe. I’ve followed him from a private soldier in India, to his present rank of captain as he continues to fight under Lord Wellington in the Peninsular Wars against France in the early 19th century. The Sharpe series does settle into a very definite formula. He always appears to be embroidered in an internal conflict with established figures within the British army, as well as having to deal with nasty villains aligned to the French army. And there is nearly always a beautiful woman that he becomes involved with. However, none of this seems to matter. I again found this latest installment, well written, easy to read and highly entertaining, with an excellent historic backdrop. If Bernard Cornwall does take liberties regarding historical facts for the sake of the storyline, he will always inform you in his excellent historical notes at the end of the book. I would personally advise reading this series in chronological order, however, all the books in the series can be read as stand alone novels.

Bernard Cornwell has written another page-turning historical adventure featuring Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, a foot soldier in the Napoleonic Wars between France and Britain, this time during the campaign in northern Portugal in the spring of 1809.

Sharpe is leading a very small company of riflemen cut off in Portugal from the main English army when French Marshall Soult takes the key city of Oporto, a key stepping stone to taking the capital Lisbon. While it is an almost impossible task to fight his way back to British lines, Sharpe is ordered to follow Lieutenant Colonel James Christopher (a Foreign Office agent) and find Kate Savage, a 19 year old English girl who has run away from her mother to a town under attack by the French. On the way Sharpe joins up with a group of 37 Portuguese soldiers who have also been cut off during the attack on Oporto.

At last Sharpe is beginning to make his mark as an officer, despite the distrust of his peers of someone who was born into poverty and his troops towards someone who started out as a humble private. Sharpe achieved his promotion to an officer through bravery in the field and gets the respect of his troops through tough and skilful leadership under almost impossible conditions.

Sharpe, his men and the Portuguese group fight their way out of danger against far superior French forces and track down the renegade Colonel Christopher who has suddenly become an ally of the French. Their only hope is that General Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) will arrive with relief forces in time to drive the French out of Portugal.

This is another great adrenaline-filled page-turning authentic historical re-enactment with Richard Sharpe taking a front-seat role in the battles for the control of Portugal. 4.5 stars.

I have resolved to read all of this brilliant series - so far I have read 9 with only 13 to go. I read this book as part of 3 book Sharpe Kindle bundle available in the Australian region.

Richard Sharpe entered the British Army as a regular soldier. When he saved the life of Sir Arthur Wellesley he was given a commission as a lieutenant. In the British army of the nineteenth century commissions were usually purchased by wealthy families for their sons. Very few soldiers every made the jump from soldier to officer. Those who did were usually looked down upon by the other officers, and treated with disrespect by the soldiers under their command. So Sharpe has had to continuously fight for the respect he deserves.

In this novel, Sharpe and his men are in Oporto, Portugal fighting the French. Sharpe has been ordered to find Kate Savage, the daughter of a rich wine maker. Operating behind enemy lines, must first battle their way out of Oporto as the French forces move in. Then, they need to find their way to the small village where Kate is believed to be. As they travel across country they need to avoid the French.

When they find Kate they discover that she has eloped to marry a British officer. The officer orders Sharpe to defend the village from the French. While protecting Kate, Sharpe learns some distressing facts about Kate's husband.

Eventually Sharpe's squad has to fight their way back to Oporto where they meet up with the British army. In the end, an intelligence officer orders Sharpe to provide a final solution to the problems Kate's husband has been causing.

This novel is an action packed military adventure story. Cornwell's descriptions of the battles are exciting and realistic. For me, this novel was a well written page turner that was hard to put down.

The 11th Richard Sharpe adventure story. The British army is defending a small part of Portugal. All but the coastal city of Cadiz has fallen, so it appears that the French are going to win their war. Captain Richard Sharpe has a mission to destroy an enemy-held bridge. He succeeds, but is double-crossed by the dishonorable French Colonel Vandal. Sharpe is then sent on a secret mission to steal letters which would incriminate Lord Henry Wellesley and possibly destroy Spanish faith in their British allies. Meanwhile, the French intend to take advantage of the Spanish General's reluctance to fight and trap the British between them and the sea. The British, badly outnumbered 3-to-1 and without help from the Spanish, must find a way to defeat the enemy. A superb story.

This is Cornwell's 21st novel in his Richard Sharpe series. This prolific author has published nearly 40 historical novels. All of them are excellent. They are excellent reads. They are excellent literary works. They are excellently researched.
I love history. I love reading good historical fictions, based on real events. I love reading anything written by Cornwell. I especially love reading his series featuring Richard Sharpe, during the Napoleonic Wars.
Why? The writing is excellent. The story flows. The reader is eager to turn the pages. Three hundred plus pages pass by in mere hours with few breaks. The reader just wants to keep reading. One is drawn back into the past. One can feel the intrigue & smell the smoke of battle. BUT, besides that, Sharpe is a man other men aspire to be or become. List a whole plethora of positive values & they total Richard Sharpe.
Loyal, humble, brave beyond measure, a great friend, up from the ranks, not pompous, not wordy, always willing to fight no matter the odds he faces, honest, loaded with common sense, & someone you want to have your back in any fight. Yet, he has his faults. He kills when he has to; sometimes with a bit too much relish. He steals when he has to; but, it always seems as if he's stealing for a good cause. He usually spits in the face of authority & they usually deserve it; yet, he can bend his knee to authority, when necessary.
Sharpe is surrounded by a core group of supporting characters; from the always feisty Irishman, Sgt. Harper, to the rest of his green jacketed riflemen & even including periodic appearances by the Duke of Wellington who seems to regard Sharpe as a friend while the rest of the officers look down their noses at Sharpe because he's risen from the ranks & not born to privilege. I love character-driven novels. This recurring cast of characters in these Sharpe novels always add to my enjoyment. Cornwell is able to seamlessly add new characters into this group of regulars.
This book again finds Sharpe in precarious situations, facing treachery & intrigue & then taking part in a battle where the British forces are vastly undermanned; yet manage to win - with Sharpe & his men always having a major part in the victory.

I've been reading Richard Sharpe novels since just after high school, when I first picked one up and enjoyed it thoroughly. I'm not an expert on the British intervention in the Peninsula, but Cornwell apparently is one of those guys who's made himself an expert by reading everything he can, without any sort of formal training. As a result, the books he writes are very interesting and detailed, and if they're a bit pro-British it's not surprising and the stories are well-told enough that it makes up for any shortcomings the author might have.

In this episode, Sharpe's half-company of British riflemen are holed up in Oporto, the second city of Portugal, when the French attack. The Portugese can't hold the city, Sharpe is sent on an errand by his superior officer (a semi-spy named Captain Hogan) and then diverted by another, even more superior officer. He gets trapped with his men on the wrong side of a river, can't retreat, and has to hole up in a village nearby until circumstances change, and this leads to all sorts of adventures. When the situation eventually changes, Sharpe and his men must pursue the enemy, with revenge on their minds.

This is a very well-written entry in the Sharpe series. The author has a sort of formula, with Sharpe and his men being trapped behind enemy lines, and having to make their way on their own. He's done it before, and it works well as a formula, if you're willing to overlook the probability of this happening repeatedly. This is a very well-done book, quite fun.

The 7th Richard Sharpe adventure story. While in Portugal, Sharpe is given a mission to find 19 year-old Kate Savage, who has apparently run off with Colonel Christopher. He is a British officer who is secretly trying to negotiate peace by having one of Napoleon's generals declared King of Portugal. Sharpe senses that Christopher might be acting on his own or is a traitor. Then Sharpe and his rifleman are cut off from the main British army and must defend themselves against large odds near a small Portuguese village. He is assisted by Lieutenant Vincente, a lawyer and poet-turned-soldier, and his ever-loyal, ever Irish, Sergeant Harper. A very enjoyable book.

That's All She Read [...]

This is only the seventh book in the Richard Sharpe Adventure Series if you line them all up in chronological order by battles. I suspect Sharpe's Havoc was written after the three India, one shipboard and one Denmark novels were written, themselves a jump back fromn 1814 to 1798 and soon after to fill in Sharpe's early years. Sharpe's Havoc provides a place for Cornwell to tie up a loose end or two and acknowledge events, like the battles in India, the surprising presence of Sharpe at Trafalgar, the sad love story of of Copenhagen and even sadder love story of lady Grace. Personally I founed it satisfying to have all those dramatic events taken into account in Sharpe's life.

In Sharpe's Havoc our boys find themselves in Portugal with Captain Hogan, assigned to look for a missing British wine merchant's daughter and, with Hogan's arch insinuation, "to keep an eye on Christopher". Christopher is a Foreign Office operative assigned to feel out the Portuguese attitude towards the French invasion of their country. He has decided he has a higher calling, to manipulate relations within and without the the French leading officers to create peace between the three nations. Our Christopher has more than a little larceny in him, as he plans to marry the wine merchant's daughter, Kate, and get hold of her late father's company, and then some. I felt that Hogan suspected something, but if so, he certainly did not get that across to Sharpe who trusts the guy for an awfully long time. I kept shouting at the book, "Send someone to warn Hogan, for God's sake!" My exhortations did not help.

Sharpe almost obeys Hogan's other suggestion, not to fall in love with Kate. There is one kiss, then the book ends with someone else with her in his arms, implying I suppose that he gets the girl, not Sharpe. The novel starts with the French capture of Oporto, follows Sharpe and his rifles to a standstill in a small Portuguese town where he sits more or less idle while Christopher is off doing his dirty tricks. When Our Hero finally figures out he's been duped, it is almost too late. Her, Harper, Hagman, Tongue, Perkins and Harris, and the rest, as they say on Gilligan's Island, withstand the siege of a hill fort before Christopher and the French give up and head for Oporto with an unhappy Kate and not before murdering literally everyone in the small town. In a dramatic battle at a seminary the British now under the general command of good old Nosey, Sir Arthur Wellesley, retake the seaport and send the French scrambling for the Spanish border. It is of course Sharpe's official mission to stop the French from escaping and his private mission to kill Christopher, retrieve his stolen telescope, and presumably Kate.

The novel begins on a bridge and ends on a bridge. You can tell this is is a bridge in itself, written later than the earliest novels. For one thing, all the catch up and fill in. But also because it is even better written than those first Sharpe adventures. Cornwell wrote dozens of other novels in between, and it really shows. This is as smooth and mature a Sharpe novel as there is. Other than instances where I wanted to give Sharpe a blow upside the head for obtuseness, this is as satisfying a Sharpe novel as there are. It has all the anticipated treasures, battle, courtship, Sharpe's struggle to be a proper officer, the growing comradeship of the key rifles, and Sharpe's self-actualized comments and actions. Christopher says to him, "We are England. We don't assassinate." Sharpe replies, "I do."

My husband, Jim, as wild a fan of Cornwell as I am, after all my long and patient evangelism, read Sharpe's Havoc to me. It is available in hardback, paperback, and even a leather bound edition, on Kindle, and on audio VD and download. For blind and otherwise print impaired readers, you can find it at BookShare.org and from the National Library Service via your local library in cassette form as RC 58259 and download as DB 58259. This is not one of the novels made into a film.

The style and tone of this book carry lighter than earlier written novels that portray a more anxious Richard Sharpe, the hero of this book. This Sharpe seems more confident than the one met earlier, more kind and generous, less of a hardass. Why I am not sure but I suspect it has something to do not with the character development chronology but the time and order in which they actually were penned. This Sharpe seems more mature by a longshot than the immediately preceeding one. Somehow Dick's gone over to a more ossifer-like demeanor, overall.

Nevertheless, its a fun tale of soldierly mayhem. Enthusiasts of rifle shooting may find it especially pleasing since there is an accounting of the special virtues of rifles over muskets and the effects that had on various tactical situations in historical battles.

Fans of Cromwell will enjoy and it's recommended. It would be best however to pick up the series with Sharpe at his earliest. The situation with two or three different publishers is very confusing and I have wasted a lot of time trying to piece together a chronologically correct succession of these books. I often wish that I could have one similarly bound and printed series available in supply at my big box store. Thankfully we have the store to piece disjointed sequels together.

This one is better than the previous couple of books in the series; maybe it's because Lieut. Sharpe is paying more attention to the war against the French and less attention to women and spies. By internal chronology, "Sharpe's Havoc" comes immediately after "Sharpe's Rifles" -- which actually was the first book Cornwell wrote in this series, but whatever. It's the spring of 1809 and Richard Sharpe, previously a private and then a sergeant, and most recently a regimental quartermaster (because the gentlemanly officers of his unit don't have much use for someone with his lack of family background), finds himself in command of a short company of rifles in northern Portugal. The British army has retreated south but a bridge across the Douro River gives way and Sharpe and his men are stranded on the French-controlled side of the river. A certain Colonel Christopher (he's really an opportunistic Foreign Office observer with personal ambitions) begins giving him orders and Sharpe follows them, but reluctantly -- at least until the bastard steals his prized telescope, and then all bets are off. The colonel turns out to be a cad in several other ways as well. Cornwell, as usual, sticks pretty close to historical events for the background of Sharpe's adventures, and it's kind of amazing just how much real-life improves on fiction in this case. Sharpe's riflemen find ways and places to lie low, aided by a very young, completely inexperienced Portuguese lieutenant, but who has the right attitude and good instincts. They have several opportunities to teach the French about the accuracy and range of the rifled barrel, and they benefit from the wrongly assured superiority of the French commanders. Sharpe's path crosses that of Sir Arthur Wellesley yet again, but at least the lieutenant doesn't find it necessary to murder anyone in cold blood this time. out.