© 1987 Bernard Cornwell
352 pages
Napoleon
may not realize it, but his wars are lost. The English have achieved total
naval supremacy, and are free to raid
the coasts of the imperial hexagon at their leisure. Richard Sharpe, whose sturdy
Riflemen are in part responsible for l’Empereur’s imminent job loss, has been
dispatched on one such raid. His orders are to capture a small but potentially
bothersome fort, and possibly wander over to Bordeaux, where it is said the
people are clamoring for the restoration of the Bourbons. Alas for Sharpe, he is a pawn twice over; he has been invited
to join the raid only so the bumbling generals in charge of it will have hope
of victory, or at the very least a good scapegoat – and the generals themselves
are operating on suspect intelligence fed to them by French counterintelligence
mastermind, Pierre Ducos. When Ducos
learns that the redcoats are up for a little raiding and Sharpe is with him, he
takes a personal interest in not only rendering their plans moot, but
condemning Sharpe to die. In short
order, the good rifleman is trapped in France with no hope of escape but an
American pirate who was to have hung for crimes against the Crown. Sharpe’s Siege distinguishes itself from many
other Sharpe novels in that the military action is wholly fabricated; the raid
he participates in never took place.
Although the military scenes are full of excitement and explosions and
the like, they take second place to
Ducos’ scheming; there’s no doubt that Sharpe will capture the fort and then
defend it against a host of embarrassed Frenchmen, but getting out of the
greater trap is an altogether different feat. What I appreciated most about it
was the mixing-in of naval action. Alas for me, there are only two more Sharpe
books waiting – Sharpe’s Revenge, which is next, and then Sharpe’s
Waterloo.
I think I still have 5-6 Sharpe novels to read. I really must get around to scheduling them to be read sooner rather than later!
ReplyDeleteYou've read Waterloo, I know; were the unread Sharpe books released after you'd started reading the series? I know a lot of them date to the 1980s, with some newer releases set earlier in his life.
ReplyDeleteI think I made the mistake of reading some of them out of sequence to start with. They're certainly stand-alone novels in that you don't need to have read any of them before reading any other - if you see what I mean - but I'm making more of an effort to read them (or the remaining ones) in the right sequence.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Cornwell did bring out Sharpe's adventures in India only after the rest of the series became the hit that it did - I also think he penned a few in the gaps between stories. The books I have put them in chronological order of the timeline rather than publishing date order which helps.