Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Company

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1982

Previously published in paperback by Fontana 1983

Reprinted eleven times

Copyright © Rifleman Productions Ltd 1982

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Cover image © Private Collection/Bridgeman Images

Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © July 2009 ISBN: 9780007334551

Version: 2019-12-13

Sharpe’s Company is for the Harper family, Charlie and Marie, Patrick, Donna and Terry, with affection and gratitude

‘Brilliant! Sharpe is a great creation’

Daily Mirror

‘Now thou art come unto a feast of death’

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

HENRY VI, PART I, ACT 4, SCENE 5 .

Contents

Cover

Title Page SHARPE’S COMPANY Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Badajoz, January to April 1812 BERNARD CORNWELL

Copyright Copyright An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Collins 1982 Previously published in paperback by Fontana 1983 Reprinted eleven times Copyright © Rifleman Productions Ltd 1982 Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019 Cover image © Private Collection/Bridgeman Images Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © July 2009 ISBN: 9780007334551 Version: 2019-12-13

Dedication Sharpe’s Company is for the Harper family, Charlie and Marie, Patrick, Donna and Terry, with affection and gratitude

Epigraph ‘Brilliant! Sharpe is a great creation’ Daily Mirror ‘Now thou art come unto a feast of death’ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE HENRY VI, PART I, ACT 4, SCENE 5 .

Map

Part One: January 1812 PART ONE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part Two: February–March 1812

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Part Three: St Patrick’s Day, March 17th to Easter Sunday, March 29th 1812

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Part Four: Saturday, April 4th to Monday, April 6th 1812

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Epilogue

Historical Note

Sharpe’s Story

Keep Reading …

About the Author

The SHARPE Series (in chronological order)

The SHARPE Series (in order of publication)

Also by Bernard Cornwell

About the Publisher

A pale horse seen a mile away at sunrise means the night is over. Sentries can relax, battalions stand down, because the moment for a surprise dawn attack has passed.

But not on this day. A grey horse would hardly have been visible at a hundred paces, let alone a mile, and the dawn was shredded with dirty cannon smoke that melded with the snow-clouds. Only one living thing moved in the grey space between the British and French lines; a small, dark bird that hopped busily in the snow. Captain Richard Sharpe, huddled in his greatcoat, watched the bird and willed it to fly away. Move, you bastard! Fly! He hated the superstition in himself. He had spotted the tiny bird and, quite suddenly and unbidden, the thought had come to him that unless the bird took wing within thirty seconds, then the day would end in disaster.

He counted. Nineteen, twenty, and still the damned bird hopped in the snow. He could not tell what kind of bird it was. Sergeant Harper would know, of course, the huge Irish sergeant knew all the birds, but knowing what kind of bird it was would not help. Move! Twenty-four, twenty-five, and in desperation he bundled a crude snowball and skittered it down the slope so that the small bird, startled, sprang up into the skeins of smoke with a couple of seconds to spare. A man must sometimes make his own luck.

God! But it was cold! It was all right for the French. They were behind the vast defences of Ciudad Rodrigo, sheltered in the town’s houses and warmed by wide hearths, but the British and Portuguese troops were in the open. They slept by vast fires that died in the night and yesterday, at dawn, four Portuguese sentries had been discovered frozen, their greatcoats iced to the ground, dead by the river. Someone had tipped them in, breaking the Agueda’s thin ice, because no one wanted to dig graves. The army had taken its fill of digging; for twelve days they had done nothing else; batteries, parallels, saps and trenches, and they never wanted to dig again. They wanted to fight. They wanted to carry their long bayonets up the glacis of Ciudad Rodrigo, to go into the breach, to kill the French, and take those fires and houses for themselves. They wanted to be warm.