Customer Reviews

Sharpe's Devil: Richard Sharpe and the Emperor, 1820-21 (Richard Sharpe Adventure Series)(Library Edition)

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The plot assumes that ships could land passengers at St. Helena in 1820 to interview Napoleon. Such was not the case. The British fired on any unauthorized ship attempting to approach the island including, in one case, a ship in distress. Other than that, it is an interesting tale.

This is the last novel, chronologically, in the Richard Sharpe series. Sharpe is separated from his wife and living in France with his latest mistress and their two children. His shortage of money indicates his wife in England has everything he stole in Spain. When the Countess of Mouromorto shows up to hire Sharpe to find her missing husband in Chile, his mistress is very receptive to the sight of the money (needed to improve her farm). Sharpe finds himself on his way to Chile with his old friend Patrick Harper, and makes the aforementioned stop at St. Helena to see Napoleon.

Sharpe and Harper become involved, unwillingly, in the civil war raging in Chile between the Spanish royalists and the rebels under O'Higgins (supported by Lord Cochrane). Sharpe's fortunes take some twists and turns, as does the plot. The involvement of Lord Cochrane in Chile is described fairly accurately, including the action at Valdivia. Sharpe, of course, gets his share of the spoils. One can hope that Sharpe will fare better with his latest mistress than he has with earlier women in his life. Having Sharpe acquire bags full of loot always creates the possibility of further action (after all, Lord Cochrane did invite him to go along, and we know from history that Lord Cochrane later served in Brazil and Greece).

It is 1821, six years after the Battle of Waterloo. Richard Sharpe, veteran of the French Wars, has made his home and family in Normandy. However, the sudden arrival of Blas Vivar's wife alerts this instinctive hero to trouble. It is up to Sharpe in locating General Blas Vivar and bring him back from revolutionary Chile. Seeking out a fattened Patrick Harper - formerly his Irish sergeant-major - the two friends make their way by ship to the distant shores of the New World. They stop off at St. Helena to pay their respects to an exiled emperor: once the Scourge of Europe, now a saddened, sickened old man, plagued by what his own greatness could have brought France. Despite his restrictions, and being a former enemy, Napoleon proves a charming, almost sympathetic host. Yet, from almost beginning to end, Sharpe is tricked into aiding a conspiracy that could drench all the Americas in blood and turmoil. I won't spoil it for you by elaborating. But I will mention that the last (chonologically!) Sharpe adventure proves most entertaining: with varied, believable characters, a strange land fully described, peopled by treacherous, corrupt, and deceitful officials who delight in toying with two foreigners on an honourable mission. The interesting aspect of this great plot is that Spain gradually becomes Sharpe's enemy. In particular, I loved the delicate interview with Napoleon; Bautista proved a most cowardly, cunning arch-villain, and the wild, courageous rebel Cochrane added extra spice to a gripping read. Sharpe is set on course for an insane pursuit to find the truth about Vivar - and escape the jaws of certain death!

Six years after the end of the Napoleonic wars, ex-Rifleman Richard Sharpe toils on his French wife's farm in Normandy. Times are a little tough, so when the fabulously wealthy wife of a former Spanish comrade asks him to travel to Chile to find her missing husband, he can't refuse the gold that comes with the request. Naturally, Sharpe rounds up the now-rotund and prosperous tavern-keeper Patrick Harper before setting sail for South America. Their vessel is a Spanish one, ferrying a number of patronizing and foppish Spanish officers who are off to fight the Chilean rebels (who are led by the intriguing half-Spanish, half-Irish gentleman Bernardo O'Higgins). These Spaniards decide to take a minor detour to St. Helena to gawk at the imprisoned Napoleon, and of course Sharpe and Harper can't resist the chance to pay their own respects. The ex-emperor is by now rotting away in his dank mansion, with peeling wallpaper, a poor wine-cellar, and a large British garrison to keep him company. Treated like a curiosity in a zoo, he is disdainful of the Spaniards, but is intrigued by Sharpe and Harper, who are clearly fellow warriors. Cornwell has a lot of fun with this section, as the two old soldiers talk shop, honor each other, and Sharpe, with his customary naivite is unwittingly drawn into intrigue.

Eventually, the ship arrives in Chile, where Sharpe is told the man he is seeking, Captain-General Vivar, is actually dead. Of course, Sharpe is suspicious when a body can't be produced, and soon he and Harper have run afoul of the thoroughly evil Spanish Governor-General Bautista. Events entertainingly run their course, and soon the dynamic duo find themselves on the side of the rebels seeking to eject the Spaniards from Chile. They come under the wings of Admiral Cochrane, a Scottish Lord turned rebel seaman, and all around adventurer. Cochrane is a wildly daring and bold leader, a real life figure of such improbability that many readers will want to rush out and read one of the biographies about his exploits (The Audacious Admiral Cochrane by and The Sea Wolf by being two). Once in Cochrane's company, the action ratchets up until the climactic battle at Valdivia, where the ragtag rebel navy crushed the entrenched and more numerous Spanish defenders in an audacious action, heralding an end to Spanish rule. The rout also allows Sharpe to unravel the mystery of what befell Captain-General Vivar, and of course, exact retribution on the nasty Bautista.

This is indubitably a change of pace and setting from the regular Sharpe books, but a welcome one. As always, the military action is well described, there are evil villains, interesting supporting characters, and a heavy dose of vivid personages from history on hand. It's hard to imagine anyone making the nominally drab topic of Chilean independence come alive more vividly than Cornwell does here. There's a lot packed into this one, and Cornwell even manages to raise the specter of one of history's more interesting "what ifs" via an audacious plot. All in all, great fun.

PS. Anyone interested in St. Helena is advised to read Harry Ritchie's excellent travel book, The Last Pink Bits, which has a good section on how the island fares in modern times.

The final novel in the Richard Sharpe series, (thus far,) has retired Lt. Col. Richard Sharpe undertaking a mission to find an old friend in revolutionary Chile. With Patrick Harper at his side Sharpe first visits the isle of St. Helena with it's one tourist attraction: the Emperor Napoleon. After a brief audience with Bonoparte Sharpe heads to Chile where he faces the local Spanish Captain-General Bautista. Eventually Sharpe and Harper throw their lot in with the rebels and their rogue of an Admiral, Lord Cochrane. This novel is yet more proof of Cornwell's ability to tell an exciting story while at the same time evoke with absolute vision the early nineteenth century into the reader's mind. I hope this isn't the last book in the Richard Sharpe novels but if it is it is a fitting ending to a series that rank among the great adventure stories of modern fiction.

"Sharpe's Devil" is - so far - the final book in Bernard Cornwell's epic Richard Sharpe series in chronological terms. Cornwell has famously written many of these books out of historical sequence, but for the most part the novels formed a long, slow build to a magnificent climax with "Waterloo," when Sharpe finally faces Napoleon on the battlefield. "Waterloo" worked on many levels, but primarily as the perfect final act of Sharpe's long military career.

But Cornwell is a prolific writer, so say the least, and he must have felt that Sharpe and Patrick Harper deserved an entertaining epilogue of sorts, so here we have "Sharpe's Devil." The novel kicks off in 1820, and Sharpe has settled down in Normandy, content to live a farmer's life with Lucille and their two children. But a woman from Sharpe's past comes with a small errand - can Sharpe go to Chile to track down Don Blas Vivar, her husband? Don Blas had fought with Sharpe in Spain and they were friends of sorts. Lucille reminds Sharpe that they need money for the farm, and with this somewhat unconvincing prologue, Sharpe sets off for the New World with Harper - now obese after years of sampling his own wares at his pub in Ireland.

On the way to Chile, Sharpe and Harper meet Napoleon, who charms them and gives Sharpe a token to present to an "admirer" in Chile. This of course is false, and puts Sharpe at the mercy of the corrupt Spanish authorities in Chile because the token is actually a coded message from Napoleon to a local rebel.

The point of Cornwell's story is to have Sharpe fight alongside one of the era's true mavericks, Lord Cochrane. Cochrane is a famous sailor who has hired out his services to the Chilean rebels fighting against their Spanish overlords - he is the titular devil. Cochrane may have served as Patrick O'Brian's inspiration for Lucky Jack Aubrey, as the two characters are both audacious and lucky in battle as well as being completely useless in politics. But who could resist having Cochrane, the ultimate sailor, meet Sharpe, the ultimate soldier?

Unfortunately, while the novel has several promising elements - there is no such thing as a bad Bernard Cornwell novel - it does not hit the heights of the rest of the series. Perhaps most annoyingly, the Spanish foes Cochrane and Sharpe face have a disturbing tendency to run away. At several key moments, Sharpe and Cochrane would be dead if the local soldiers could mount a decent volley and bayonet charge, but instead they run away. Indeed, some forts are abandoned seemingly before they are even fired upon.

Ultimately, the enemies Sharpe, Harper and Cochrane face in "Devil" just aren't up to snuff. While the novel raises the intriguing notion of Napoleon heading to Chile to start another campaign, this obviously did not occur. Fans of Cornwell will probably read "Devil" anyway, but the book in no way constitutes an essential part of the Sharpe legend. Feel free to stop with "Waterloo" and check out Cornwell's other series if you haven't read them already.

Awhile back, I read my way through the complete series of novels featuring rifleman Richard Sharpe and his adventures in the wars with France, from his apprenticeship as a private and sergeant in India, through the Peninsular Campaigns, to his final battle at Waterloo as a lieutenant-colonel. But somehow I missed this "afterthought" novel. After twenty years in uniform, what does a professional soldier do when the war is over? In Sharpe's case, he settles down with no regret (or very little) as a farmer with his lady friend's broken-down chateau in Normandy. Five years pass. And then a woman appears out of his past, who had married a Spanish officer and nobleman, Don Blas Vivar, beside whom Sharpe had fought and whom he admired greatly. Vivar was sent off to be Captain-General of the Spanish colony in Chile, where an independence movement has just about won the country's independence -- and now he has disappeared. Will Sharpe go and find him? Or at least find out for sure what happened to him? Summoning his best friend and erstwhile sergeant-major, Patrick Harper, from his Dublin pub, he journeys to the western coast of South America -- taking time out on the way to pay a visit to the exiled Napoleon at St. Helena in the south Atlantic. (So many years spent fighting this man and he's as nervous as a schoolboy.) When the two old soldiers finally arrive at the Spanish capital, the fortress of Valdivia, they're told by the new captain-general that Vivar is dead and buried in a garrison church farther south -- so off they go to disinter the body, intending to take it back to the widow in Spain. And then things get complicated. Hovering over the revolution in Chile, frightening the Spanish, who believe he's some sort of devil, is the figure of Thomas Lord Cochrane, a real-life, larger-than-life hero of the Royal Navy. In fact, many of Cornwell's readers will have met him before -- as the model for Jack Aubrey, and Horatio Hornblower, and Nicholas Ramage. Cochrane was turfed out of his position in the navy (and Parliament, and the Order of the Bath) and has become an admiral-for-hire on the side of anti-colonial revolution, and he's doing a terrific job of it. Sharpe and Cochrane naturally come together and the results are fascinating for the reader who knows his history. Though Cornwell doesn't have much good to say about the Spanish, militarily or politically. Sharpe is a semi-civilian spectator for much of the early action -- he just wants to fulfill his promise and go home -- but as Cochrane closes in on Valdivia, Sharpe becomes involved as a battle leader again. It's all a lot of fun, almost like old home week, and I recommend this one to all the Sharpe fans out there.

This book is the 21st in the entire series regarding the military and personal life of Richard Sharp. The book ends the series and many hours of reading pleasure authored by Barnard Cornwell and the adventures, trials and tribulations of Richard Sharp. It was a bittersweet ending to a series of books that I read "straight through"....21 different novels in a row. All enjoyable and historically informative. This last one was as good as any other...easily read, enough action and intrigue to keep your interest and just enough history to broaden your mind and perspective. I have now gotten the Saxon Series to read but taking a quick detour into Stonehenge...which is also very good.

Cornwell is one of my favorite authors.

"When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time." -- Luke 4:13

It takes a special imagination to find a way to write another Richard Sharpe novel after Napoleon was soundly defeated at Waterloo, but Bernard Cornwell's fertile mind has conjured up a tale to bring back that intrepid hero for one last hurrah (at least for now). Sharpe is a farmer now until he's pulled out of retirement to look for one of his old compatriots from the Napoleonic wars in Spain, Don Blas Vivar, who has been leading Spain's efforts in Chile to fight off rebels.

Sharpe and Harper join a group of Spanish officers headed for Spain. On the way, they take a detour to visit Napoleon in exile on the island of St. Helena. If you've wondered what would happen if Napoleon and Sharpe ever met, this book will satisfy your curiosity.

Once in Spain, Sharpe finds himself in over his head and is soon sent packing as a pressed seaman on the very ship that just brought him from Europe. But at this point, the adventure takes a positive turn as Sharpe develops a new and unexpected ally among the rebels. The second half of the book recounts the kind of daring fights that made this series so appealing . . . combining land and sea forces in this case.

You'll probably guess the story's outcome before the end, but that won't spoil the fun very much. With the final historical note, you'll also be left with some very interesting "what if's" to ponder.

This isn't one of the best books in the series, but it's a must read for all Sharpe fans due to the meeting of the two retired soldiers in the middle of the Atlantic.

Good-bye for now, Richard. It's been fun reading about you.

A few years after Waterloo, Sharpe is called away from his quiet farm existence to answer the plea of a widow: to find her husband, Sharpe's old friend Blas Vivar from the Spanish wars, who has gone missing while commanding the beleaguered Spanish forces in Chile, Spain's last and shrinking bastion in South America. She suspects foul play, as her upstanding husband went after the corruption endemic in the colonial administration.

Accompanied by Harper, Sharpe sets off on the long voyage around the Horn. One stop on the way is St. Helena, where he meets the exiled Napoleon and is mesmerized, despite himself, by the former emperor. Napoleon wants Sharpe to carry a souvenir to someone in South America. Does he have one more ace up his sleeve?

In Chile he and Harper get an uneasy reception. Blas Vivar's replacement, Miguel Bautista, is widely feared and busy feathering his own nest in anticipation of Chile's fall and his return to Spain. Bautista in turn fears Charles Cochrane - the legendary captain fleeing British disgrace to command the tiny navy of the fledgling Chilean republic. Bautista needs to dispel rumors that he engineered Blas Vivar's disappearance, but meanwhile can't have Sharpe and Harper poking around.

The last chronologically in the Sharpe series, this book makes a fine capstone, our probable last look at Sharpe. We finally get to meet Napoleon. Letting Sharpe feel the man's sway is a courageous and honest thing for Cornwell to write. It would have been too easy to turn Napoleon into a 2-D villain.

And the encounter with Cochrane is fascinating. Jack Aubrey fans can consider this book one last Aubrey novel as well, since, as they know, Cochrane was the inspiration for O'Brian's Aubrey, and also for Forrester's Horatio Hornblower.

Cochrane isn't identical to Aubrey; he is so willing to make the bold stroke that some think he's mad, something no one ever accuses Aubrey of. But Cochrane is nearly as mesmerizing as Napoleon. He's a brash and happy warrior, a magnetic leader whose men plunge into battle chanting his name. Give him something impossible to do, and he couldn't be happier, and when he succeeds, he just burnishes his legend and cements his men's affections to him even more. When Sharpe and Harper fall into his company, they find themselves going into battle one last time, with someone more on Sharpe's wavelength than any commander he's ever had. The battle of Valdivia has a certain mad quality to it as Cochrane attacks against overwhelming odds. (Of course, he has Sharpe on his side. So what's the problem?)

A great episode that dramatizes some of the great history of Napoleon's last days and the fall of the Spanish empire.

Although I enjoy history and historical novels, I've never particularly cared for military history. But as anyone who has enjoyed the "Sharpe" television (& video) series will attest, there's so much more to these stories than mere military history. This is the first Bernard Cornwell novel I've read, and it certainly won't be the last. Without a doubt, fans of the show will not be disappointed with this novel; in fact, it is a must-read as it is the very last Sharpe novel, and it has not been dramatized (so far).

As for the story (without giving anything away--this is all in the prologue), it is 1820 and Sharpe & Harper are reunited for an expedition to Chile in search of an old friend. En route, they visit St. Helena and have the honour of meeting the imprisoned Napoleon, who entreats Sharpe to convey a gift to an admirer in Chile.

This novel is an absolute page-turner, and Cornwell is truly a master storyteller. Suffice it to say that no knowledge of military tactics or manoeuvres is necessary in order to fully enjoy this gem of a novel. Any action or suspense is seasoned with liberal doses of humour, and there is a most delightful array of entertaining characters. Lastly, the story is made all the more memorable by the historical afterword.

This novel is sure to please. Highly recommended to anyone who loves a thrilling, action-packed read, and particularly to aficionados of historical fiction.