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Sharpe's Company

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What are some of the reasons why you read books?

* Do you like adventure? * Do you like romance? * Do you like action? * Do you like history?

If you answered yes to the above then you will enjoy Sharpe's Company. I started reading these books and I find myself having a hard time putting them down.

Sharpe's Company by Bernard Cornwell is an exciting rip-roaring adventure addition to the Sharpe series. You can see Bernard Cornwell's extensive research come to life page after page. The setting is 1812 and the British forces are re-grouping in Spain to repulse the dreaded French juggernaut led by Napoleon. Sharpe's challenge is to defeat the French forces at Badajoz, retain his rank and marry the girl of his desires. All of Sharpe's soldiers are in attendance and ready for battle.

Sharpe lost his rank due to a clerical error in England and is now a mere lieutenant. He answers to a commanding officer that has never led a battle command. The captain who replaced him is a well meaning light-weight who lets his sergeant give the orders.

Additionally, the evil Sergeant Hakeswell is back in Sharpe's life again and up to his old tricks. I don't think I can imagine of a better villain than Hakeswell. He is ugly, twisted and thoroughly evil. There are no redeeming values to his character. He wants to kill Sharpe and ruin his career. Even Sharpe's friends are in danger from this psychopath.

Where Cornwell shines is the description of the battle. He paints a picture of the siege at Badajoz so realistic that you visualize the battle and all of its horrors. His details are fascinating. For example, the advantages and disadvantages of a rifle and a musket, the uses of cannon to reduce castle walls to rubble and the siege warfare techniques of 1800s.

I wholeheartedly endorse this book.

This 1813-set entry in the Napoleonic War series finds Sharpe once again battling two of his most formidable foes: bureaucracy and the thoroughly evil Sgt. Hakeswill, the man responsible for his flogging in India a decade previously. The first of these battles is a foregone conclusion, as the Horse Guards finally reject Sharpe's battlefield commission to Captain, and he is reassigned away from his company as a Lieutenant. The depression this brings about is further exacerbated by the installation of Sgt. Hakeswill in Sharpe's old company. Early on, Sharpe has a chance to kill his legendarily unkillable enemy, but chooses not to and lets him go, saying that he prefers to do so in the sight of 1,000 men, so that everyone knows the deed is done. It's one of the unlikelier plot justifications of the series, made all the more annoying by the long-term implications of that decision. The story continues with Sharpe trying to figure out how to regain a Captaincy, while dealing with the schemes of Hakeswill. This is all set against the backdrop of the siege at the fortress of Badajoz. Cornwell excels at imparting the technical and murderous side of siege warfare at the time, while remaining entertaining. His descriptions of trench-digging, shelling, and futile charges against overwhelming firepower all eerily foreshadow the horrors of France and Belgium 100 years later. For Sharpe, the storming of the fortress is a test of his courage and pride, a point which Cornwell hammers home almost to the point of parody. To top it all off, Sharpe's lover, the guerilla leader Terressa, is holed up in Badajoz, and Sharpe must race to get to her before raping and looting soldiers do. The post-siege descriptions of wholesale rape are based on historical fact, and are not for the faint of heart (or young), so be warned. Another strong entry in the series.

Overall, an excellent novel. I've read many of Sharpe's adventures, and have enjoyed them all. This particular story deals with the siege of Badajoz. It has everything we've come to expect from a Richard Sharpe novel: action, mind-boggling battle scenes, and the occasional romance. My only complaint sounds kinda dumb, even to myself-- the villian, Obadiah Hakeswill. Every so often an author comes up with a villian that he can't bring himself to kill. Even, as in this case, when it goes against all common sense. The character, Sharpe, simply would not allow an enemy to escape as many times as Hakeswill does. I know this is nit-picking, but having some experience in the military, I can safely say that an infantryman does NOT leave an enemy behind him. Not alive, anyway. Okay, enough whining from me. Again, this is an excellent read. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction, action, or military history.

Since I've already reviewed the television adaptation on Sharpe's Company, I'll only briefly give my praise for the Bernard Cornwell novel.

The film adaptation keeps true to the written word, but the battle scenes on the page are much more detailed and complex. Cornwell finds historical niches for Richard Sharpe to appear, and the siege of Badajoz is lengthy, rough, deadly, and dirty. Several failed siege attempts are also in the book-unlike the film-raising the stakes for Sharpe-who of course has to deal with army politics, enemies within, and the rescue of his wife and daughter.

Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill makes just as much trouble for the written Sharpe as he does onscreen. It's morbidly delightful to read the twisted thoughts of this madman, and Pete Postlehwaite does a fine job of bringing the character to the screen. Of course, on film characters are dropped or combined and dismissed, but in the Sharpe's Company novel, all the supporting officers and soldiers are given plenty of time to develop themselves and their relationship to Sharpe. Hard core friendships and army loyalty between Harper and Sharpe are almost more of a delight to read than see.

Historical fans will love any Sharpe novel. I'm not really reading them in order, more as I find them, but it's easy to jump into the series-especially for Hornblower fans. As realistic as C.S. Forester's books are on naval warfare, Sharpe is their equal on the battlefield. The British-ness may take a few folks some getting used to, but Sharpe's Company is well worth the journey.

If you're reading them in chronological order, rather than the order Cornwell wrote them in, this one has a greater intensity than the earlier Spanish books. Some enjoyable elements have returned. Sharpe is truly up against the career wall once more, his provisional appointment to Captain denied. He has a real love interest, his earlier dalliance with Spanish partisan Teresa Moreno taking a more serious turn. Harper's career is in jeopardy as well with the return of Sharpe's nemesis Obadiah Hakeswill, absent since the end of the third book, "Sharpe's Fortress" and the Indian battle of Gawilghur almost a decade before. All this fateful tension takes place against the backdrop of a monumental battle, the British assault on the heavily fortified city of Badajoz, held by the French and essential to any invasion of Spain. The heavily walled city is surrounded by a dozen strongpoints, water on two sides and modern fortifications elsewhere.

Losing his company to a well-born stranger with no experience, the now merely Lieutenant Sharpe must plot his future as the British wallow in the winter mud outside Badajoz waiting to breach its walls.

Cornwell's best writing in this series has been about 18th century siege warfare - the battering of the walls with artillery, use of the rubble as a ramp up to the broken part of the wall, and the hell the first invaders must go through to sieze the hole, after which they are invariably dead, or heroes. It is this and nothing but this, Sharpe thinks, that will win him back his captaincy.

Cornwell's writing of the storming of Badajoz, and the pillaging of it by British troops, has a special and fearful intensity to it, his best siege and fortress storming since the aforementioned Gawilghur in "Fortress". And Hakeswill - merely evil, malign and relentless in the first three books - is here not only that, but mad as well. At times he sounds like Tolkien's Gollum, talking to ... well, you'll see.

In the order that Cornwell originally wrote them, this is the first time he does a real siege and the first time he writes Hakeswill. Both come horribly alive. This book is short and bowstring-taut. Not a word is wasted.

is great.

I own all the Sharpe novels, and this is one of the best. Sharpe's exploits on the Iberian Peninsula rank alongside those of Horatio Hornblower at sea - except that Bernard Cornwell's writing style is probably more accessible for the modern reader.

The Sharpe stories follow the exploits of a poor officer in the British army as it battles Napoleon's Marshals in Portugal and Spain. Badajoz was a pivotal battle in the campaign, and the seige was a masterpiece of engineering, and a triumph of courage and spirit.

Naturally, Sharpe is in the thick of things, battling not only the French, but his enemies in red jackets: the malicious Hakeswill being chief amongst them.

But Sharpe, and his ever-trustworthy partner, the huge Irishman Harper, fight through one of the grimmest descriptions of a battle you're ever likely to read.

A great episode in the lives of Richard Sharpe, Patrick Harper - and the man who relies so much on them: Arthur Wellesly, the Duke of Wellington.

Cornwall is obviously a military history buff, relishing the dates, companies, weapons, troop movements, locations, battles etc. of the period. If you're into that sort of thing, go hard. Moreover we're drenched in action - this is centred on major battles. And the action carries you along; the page-turning managed to keep me up to knock the book over in a few nights. In his following `historical note' Cornwall owns up to where he's bent things a little for the sake of his story:
"Purists will also be offended that Sharpe attacked Ciudad Rodrigo with the Third Division, and Badajoz with the Fourth, but it is the fate of fictional soldiers to be always where the fight is thickest even when that means a cavalier disregard for the make-up of divisions."
This reminds me of Patrick O'Brian, who I believe said that all the things that happen to his 18th Century RN hero did actually happen - but never to the same man. Books like these can be a far more enjoyable way of learning a bit of history, and both writers are prepared to paint some of the less admirable sides of `their' heroes and `their' army (who both go berserk in Sharpe's Company, butchering surrendering French soldiers once they've breached the wall at Badajoz).

Comparing the two military historical writers any further, however, can only put Cornwall in the shade. While Cornwall could contend that he's giving an accurate soldier's eye view - grim, ruthless - I found his characters one dimensional, something you couldn't say of O'Brian's Marturin or Aubrey. Indeed, Sharpe's right hand man Harper is barely even a cardboard invention: little John has simply changed his uniform, accent and century. O'Brian's characters often surprised me: it felt like the author had some insight into the journals and accounts he'd read from another age. Once I'd had their opening description Cornwall's characters never did - I felt more like I was reading someone who'd seen a lot of mid-day black and white movies (witness, for example, his massively stereotyped image of the coarse working class army wives). His heroine and his villain could have stepped out of pantomime.

For a purportedly historical novel this book is awash with melodramatic fictional conventions - and that bugs me more than if it were, say, thrown into an SF context based on the same historical events. I'd feel far less compelled to judge his W.E. Johns attitude to the largely faceless enemy or the glory of battle. Of course every book is contrived, but this feels so contrived (as opposed to crafted) - Sharpe will suffer several losses (no fault of his own) early in the book so that his eventual inevitable victory will taste all the sweeter. OK, OK, likewise Jack Aubrey, but there's so much else happening along the way. The devotion of Sharpe's men to their dashing leader feels so much more Hollywood than history, as, of course, his charmed ability to stand in a spray of bullets that can only ever touch the minor characters standing around him.

Maybe you could put aside the pretentions of authenticity (of character, not dates, events and places) and just enjoy the well researched settings and brutal victories. However even with some pretty generous suspension of disbelief parameters Cornwall's fairly central plot around the villainous Hawkeswill is internally stupid. A deranged (yet cunning) serial rapist-murderer, Sharpe's nemesis, who in previous books has given Sharpe overwhelming personal motivations to kill. Early in the book he gives us one more - he corners Sharpe's lover and attempts to rape and kill her. Sharpe and little John step in mid-attack and overpower him. Hawkeswill sternly vows his intention to rape and kill her at the earliest opportunity. Sharpe's assassin girlfriend offers to kill him. Harper begs for the task. Sharpe - who's bread and butter is killing - says he wants to kill him. Yet ... like those who oppose Batman and James Bond, for some reason these seasoned executioners inexplicably can't bring themselves to simply fire a round or insert a knife. Sharpe's reasoning, "I want to do it publicly," out of some sort of supposedly noble desire to thereby purge the evil Hawkeswill has visited on so many - is nothing short of ridiculous. The result is that Hawkeswill is simply turned free - by the hero - to torture, rape and kill more innocents and provide suspense. In order to set up the climax of Sharpe having to win the race past the walls of Badajoz to rescue his defacto wife and child from the lurking killer/rapist, Cornwall expects his readers to have his supposedly super-resourceful hero blithely let him walk around untouched - without even bothering to attempt to kill him. It's far worse than the insufferably procrastinating Hamlet, as Sharpe is supposed to be an unusually able plotter and killer. This absurd contradiction bugged me (did you pick that?), and got more and more stupid as the book went on - to the supreme stupidity of Hawkeswill getting away yet again (from three armed experienced killers in the one room) to lurk about in the next novel! Hawkeswill, in contrast, actually had the intelligence to know who his enemies were, to carefully observe them and take rational and devious measures to bring them down (such as the not uncommon fragging. That being said, it is also stupid that Hawkeswill's never been fragged).

OK, sure, if Cornwall was wanting to write cartoon farce ("Next time, Gadget, next time"; "Ah, Von-Stalhein - we meet again"), this is acceptable, nay, expected. But hard-bitten, carefully researched historical fiction? Only as hard bitten as Georgette Heyer. He doesn't have to write something as bleak as All Quiet on the Western Front, but he should at least be informed by it. Alternatively he could write `historical fiction' like Alexandre Dumas, where the characters are deliberately far larger than life and we can relish the greater emphasis on the `fiction' without the troubling demands of trying to be essentially `historical' within precisely documented specific events.

Sharpe! Sharpe! Sharpe!

I encourage you to read these books in order of the chronology of the events, rather than the order in which they are written. If you've been doing that, you've probably wondered whatever happened to Sergeant Obadiah ("I can't be killed") Hakeswill who we last read about in India. In Sharpe's Company, this spawn of the underworld returns to cause lots of mischief.

Viscount Wellington is still leading the allied forces in the Peninsula, having secured Portugal. In Sharpe's Company, two fortresses bar the way into Napoleon's Spain, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. Naturally, Sharpe plays a key role in both battles. In this book, you get two sieges for the price of one.

The love story is much stronger here than usual in the series as the female partisan leader from Sharpe's Gold, Teresa, makes an important return appearance. In the process, Sharpe learns he has become a father . . . and his daughter is being cared for in Badajoz.

Sharpe's career also takes a turn for the worse. The temporary captaincy comes to an end, and he's reduced in rank to lieutenant reporting to a new captain who isn't as decisive as he might be. Hakeswill is soon undermining everyone to put himself to an advantage, and Sharpe's morale plummets while his hatred of Hakeswill grows.

Sharpe also comes to resent that he cannot become a permanent captain and toys with the idea of leading a Forlorn Hope into the breach to gain such a promotion.

The story's ending may turn your stomach more than a little as Mr. Cornwell treats us to a pretty graphic description of the sack of Badajoz by the British and Portuguese. It may be more historical realism than you really want to know about. Before that, the blood and guts get to be pretty strong as suicidal charge after suicidal charge is led into Badajoz's breaches.

It's an exciting book that you won't soon forget. I happen to like fiendish villains, and Hakeswill is a fine example to my taste. I love to wonder what horrible trick he will pull next.

This was the third novel written in the Richard Sharpe Napoleonic Wars series, though by internal chronology it's about halfway through Sharpe's recorded career. It's early 1812 and the comparatively small British-Portuguese army under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley, now Lord Wellington, is about to undertake the invasion of Spain. But first, they have to take the fortified Ciudad Rodrigo, guarding the principal highway in the north. Sharpe has a part in that, naturally -- and then he's reunited with Teresa, the Partisan leader from _Sharpe's Gold,_ and finds out he's a father. Now the army will move south to attempt (for the third time) to take the much larger and much more formidable city of Badajoz. Things appear to be looking up. But Sharpe is never lucky for very long, and when his badly wounded colonel (his old friend from India, Lawford) is shipped back home, the replacement is a fox-hunting countryman with no patience for Sharpe's somewhat eccentric ways. More than that, Sharpe's temporary promotion has been rejected back in London and he finds himself replaced in command of the Light Company by a young officer with the funds to have purchased the position. Sharpe is back to being a lieutenant, at least until a vacancy opens up. To retrieve his command, and in a way that no one can deprive him of it again, he's determined to be the first man through the breach when they assault Badajoz. But, worst of all, Sgt. Obediah Hakeswill has joined the battalion. Hakeswill is a thief, blackmailer, inveterate liar, and the man who not only recruited Sharpe nearly twenty years before but also got him unjustly flogged when he was just a private. He's also increasingly insane, believing (with some justification) that he cannot be killed -- and he harbors a passionate hatred for Sharpe. The reader can sort of see where all this melodrama is going, but it's the journey that Cornwell makes fascinating. Badajoz was one of Wellington's greatest challenges in the Peninsular Campaign and taking it cost him thousands of casualties. Cornwell takes his time telling of the siege, the assault, and the sack that followed, and does it all with his usual attention to the gritty, bloody details.

In the early months of 1812, Wellington led his army to French-occupied Spain. Captain Richard Sharpe participates in the storming of the fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. The siege of Badajoz is bloody for the British army. They failed twice before and now Wellington wants the fortress at any cost. As Wellington moves on Badajoz, a new Colonel and a new Captain arrive from England and the command of Sharpe's Light Company has been given to this new Captain who bought the promotion. Sergeant Hakeswill, who is ruthless, cruel, indestructible and Sharpe's oldest and toughest enemy also joins the company. Hakeswill could do anything to terrorise everyone in the company, including Sharpe and Harper. Sharpe desperately fights for his company, and for Teresa, the woman he loves and with her is Antonia, their daughter, both blocked in the besieged city of Badajoz.

Again, Mr Cornwell did an excellent job in Sharpe's company. I would highly recommend this book to any Cornwell fan and any history buff.