Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Fury - The Battle of Barrosa, March 1811

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2006

Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2000

Map © Ken Lewis 2006

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

EPub Edition © September 2011 ISBN: 978 0 00 733866 5

This novel is a work of fiction.

The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

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 e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 e-books.

Version: 2017-05-06

Sharpe’s Fury is for Eric Sykes

‘The best thing to happen to military heroes since Hornblower’

Daily Express

Table of Contents

Title Page SHARPE’S FURY Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Barrosa, March 1811 BERNARD CORNWELL

Copyright Copyright Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2006 Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2000 Map © Ken Lewis 2006 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 EPub Edition © September 2011 ISBN: 978 0 00 733866 5 This novel is a work of fiction. The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination. 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 e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 e-books. Version: 2017-05-06

Dedication Sharpe’s Fury is for Eric Sykes

Epigraph ‘The best thing to happen to military heroes since Hornblower’ Daily Express

Map

Part One: The River PART ONE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Part Two: The City

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part Three: The Battle

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Historical Note

Sharpe’s Story

About the Author

The SHARPE Series (in chronological order)

The SHARPE Series (in order of publication)

Also by Bernard Cornwell

About the Publisher

You were never far from the sea in Cadiz. The smell of it was always there, almost as powerful as the stink of sewage. On the city’s southern side, when the wind was high and from the south, the waves would shatter on the sea wall and spray would rattle on shuttered windows. After the battle of Trafalgar storms had battered the city for a week and the winds had carried the sea spray to the cathedral and torn down scaffolding about its unfinished dome. Waves had besieged Cadiz and pieces of broken ship had clattered on the stones, and then the corpses had come. But that had been almost six years ago and now Spain fought on the same side as Britain, though Cadiz was all that was left of Spain. The rest of the country was either ruled by France or had no government at all. Guerrilleros haunted the hills, poverty ruled the streets and Spain was sullen.

February, 1811. Night time. Another storm beat at the city and monstrous waves shattered white against the sea wall. In the dark the watching man could see the explosions of foam and they reminded him of the powder smoke blasted from cannons. There was the same uncertainty about the violence. Just when he thought the waves had done their worst another two or three would explode in sudden bursts and the white water would bloom above the wall like smoke, and the spray would be driven by the wind to spatter against the city’s white walls like grapeshot.

The man was a priest. Father Salvador Montseny was dressed in a cassock, a cloak and a wide black hat that he needed to hold against the wind’s buffeting. He was a tall man, in his thirties, a fierce preacher of saturnine good looks, who now waited in the small shelter of an archway. He was a long way from home. Home was in the north where he had grown up as the unloved son of a widower lawyer who had sent Salvador to a church school. He had become a priest because he did not know what else he should be, but now he wished he had been a soldier. He thought he would have been a good soldier, but fate had made him a sailor instead. He had been a chaplain on board a Spanish ship captured at Trafalgar and in the darkness above him the sound of battle crashed again. The sound was the boom and snap of the great canvas sheets that protected the cathedral’s half-built dome, but the wind made the huge tarpaulins sound like cannons. The canvas, he knew, had once been the sails of Spain’s battle fleet, but after Trafalgar the sails had been stripped from the few ships that had limped home. Father Salvador Montseny had been in England then. Most Spanish prisoners had been put ashore swiftly, but Montseny was chaplain to an admiral and he had accompanied his master to the damp country house in Hampshire where he had watched the rain fall and the snow cover the pastures and where he had learned to hate.

And he had also learned patience. He was being patient now. His hat and cloak were soaked through and he was cold, but he did not stir. He just waited. He had a pistol in his belt, but he reckoned the priming powder would be sodden. It did not matter. He had a knife. He touched the hilt, leaned on the wall, saw another wave break at the street’s end, saw the spray dash past the dim light from an unshuttered window and then heard the footsteps.

A man came running from the Calle Compañía. Father Montseny waited, just a dark shadow in dark shadows, and saw the man go to the door opposite. It was unlocked. The man went through and the priest followed fast, pushing the door open as the man tried to close it. ‘Gracias,’ Father Montseny said.

They were in an arched tunnel that led to a courtyard. A lantern flickered from an alcove and the man, seeing that Montseny was a priest, looked relieved. ‘You live here, Father?’ he asked.