Bernard Cornwell
Collected Edition:
Sharpe’s Honour,
Sharpe’s Regiment and
Sharpe’s Siege
Copyright Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Sharpe’s Honour Sharpe’s Regiment Sharpe’s Siege About the Author Other Books by Bernard Cornwell About the Publisher
These novels are entirely works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Individual Editions:
Sharpe’s Honour: 9780007338696
Sharpe’s Regiment: 9780007338719
Sharpe’s Siege: 9780007346813
This Collected Ebook Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007454716
Version: 2018-09-18
Cover
Title Page Bernard Cornwell Collected Edition: Sharpe’s Honour, Sharpe’s Regiment and Sharpe’s Siege
Copyright
Sharpe’s Honour BERNARD CORNWELL Sharpe’s Honour Richard Sharpe and the Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813
Sharpe’s Regiment
Sharpe’s Siege
About the Author
Other Books by Bernard Cornwell
About the Publisher
BERNARD CORNWELL
Sharpe’s Honour
Richard Sharpe and
the Vitoria Campaign,
February to June 1813
Sharpe’s Honour is for Jasper Partington and Shona Crawford Poole, who marched from the very start
We’ll search every room for to find rich treasure, And when we have got it we’ll spend it at leisure. We’ll card it, we’ll dice it, we’ll spend without measure, And when it’s all gone, bid adieu to all pleasure.
From: The Grenadier’s March (Anon), Quoted in THE RAMBLING SOLDIER, edited by Roy Palmer, Penguin Books, 1977.
Epigraph We’ll search every room for to find rich treasure, And when we have got it we’ll spend it at leisure. We’ll card it, we’ll dice it, we’ll spend without measure, And when it’s all gone, bid adieu to all pleasure. From: The Grenadier’s March (Anon), Quoted in THE RAMBLING SOLDIER, edited by Roy Palmer, Penguin Books, 1977.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Historical Note
Author Note
PROLOGUE Table of Contents Epigraph We’ll search every room for to find rich treasure, And when we have got it we’ll spend it at leisure. We’ll card it, we’ll dice it, we’ll spend without measure, And when it’s all gone, bid adieu to all pleasure. From: The Grenadier’s March (Anon), Quoted in THE RAMBLING SOLDIER, edited by Roy Palmer, Penguin Books, 1977. Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Epilogue Historical Note Author Note
There was a secret that would win the war for France. Not a secret weapon, nor some surprise strategy that would send the enemies of France reeling in defeat, but a sleight of politics that would drive the British from Spain without a musket being fired. It was a secret that must be kept, and must be paid for.
To which end, on a pitiless winter’s day in 1813, two men climbed into the northern hills of Spain. Whenever the road forked they took the lesser path. They climbed by frost-hardened tracks, going ever higher into a place of rocks, eagles, wind, and cruelty, until at last, at a place where the far sea could be seen glittering beneath a February sun, they came to a hidden valley that smelt of blood.
There were sentries at the valley’s head; men wrapped in rags and pelts, men with muzzle-blackened muskets. They stopped the travellers, challenged them, then incongruously knelt to one of the horsemen, who, with a gloved hand, made a blessing over their heads. The two men rode on.
The smaller of the two travellers, the keeper of this secret of secrets, had a thin, sallow face that was pockmarked by the old scars of smallpox. He wore spectacles that chafed the skin behind his ears. He stopped his horse above a rock amphitheatre that had been made when this valley was mined for iron. He looked with his cold eyes at the scene below him. ‘I thought you didn’t fight the bulls in winter.’
It was a crude bullfight, nothing like the splendour of the entertainment provided in the barricaded plazas of the big cities to the south. Perhaps a hundred men cheered from the sides of the rock pit, while, beneath them, two men tormented a black, angry bull that was slick with the blood drawn from its weakened neck muscles. The animal was weak anyway, ill fed through the winter, and its charges were pitiful, easily evaded, and its end swift. It was not killed with the traditional sword, nor with the small knife plunged between its vertebrae, but by a poleaxe.
A huge man, clothed in leather beneath a cloak of wolf’s fur, performed the act. He swung the great axe, its blade glittering in the weak sun, and the animal tried to swerve from the blow, failed, and it bellowed one last useless challenge at the sky as the axe took its life and cut down, through bone and pipes and sinews and muscles, and the men about the rock pit cheered.
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