Customer Reviews

Sharpe's Escape (Richard Sharpe's Adventure Series #10)

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In book 20 of the Sharpe series, Cornwell is still doing what he does best...keeping Sharpe alive, keen, and fresh...and writing the best breathtaking battlescenes ever!

The Battle of Bussaco is so gritty you can smell the gunpowder, feel your mouth go dry with the salt as the Riflemen reload, and feel the smoke smothering and embracing your lungs.
Cornwell's descriptions are vivid and detailed and as authentic as it gets in historical fiction.

Naturally, Sharpe has his own private nemisis - in vol. 20 he's Ferragus, all-around 'bad-boy' selling contraband to the French and annoying Richard with fists, deeds and words.

The lovely Patrick Harper is here also (charming & one of my favorite of Cornwell's characters) and more than a sidekick. Harper grows with each novel as does Hogan (another favorite) who's more than just an engineer.

Brilliant adventure tale!

Richard Sharpe and Sgt. Harper are once again embroiled in Wellington's battle agsainst the French in Portugal. As usual, Sharpe has a chip on his shoulder about senior officers, and feels that his commander is favoring an incompetent officer over him because of the commander's marital relationship with the man. There is the usual fighting, a beautiful woman, a nasty villain, and other assorted problens to overcome before Sharpe and Harper are able to return to their army, having been left behind in a city captured by the French. It's exciting as always, and even though you know that Sharpe is going to come through, your heart beats faster at the tense scenes of trouble and danger. I certainly hope that the author has many more Sharpe adventures to tell, for it would be a shame to have this excellent series end.

Those of you who are coming to SHARPE'S ESCAPE after reading the previous nineteen volumes may be excused for sighing every now and then. Richard Sharpe, that dauntless desperado of Lord Wellington's Peninsular Campaign, is back, fighting against the forces of Napoleon in Portugal. And, of course, Sergeant Patrick Harper is here, wielding his massive nine-barreled gun and yet another incompetent English commander to contend with, and a perfidious ally. And, of course, Sharpe makes a powerful enemy early on, this time a heavily muscled Portuguese enforcer selling contraband to the French. By the time the innocent English governess shows up behind enemy lines, even the most devoted fan of Bernard Cornwell's masterful series may be rolling his eyes a bit. This is --- quite literally ---- territory that fans of the series have marched over before, more than once.

Cornwell has a gift and a curse. His gift is his intimate knowledge of Wellington's campaign against Napoleon and his ability to transmit that knowledge through the exploits of Richard Sharpe on the battlefield. (Sharpe's parallel achievements in the bedroom, of course, cannot be attributed to the Iron Duke, though Cornwell records those faithfully as well.) His curse is that he can't stop writing. Cornwell is almost maddeningly prolific --- but unlike other prolific writers, he is also incredibly consistent. SHARPE'S ESCAPE is the equal of the other nineteen; there's no appreciable difference in quality. Only the situations remain familiar. So if you're reading SHARPE'S ESCAPE and think you might have read it before, you may be very nearly right.

But if you haven't --- well, then, perhaps it's time that you had.

SHARPE'S ESCAPE is about a campaign as stern and unyielding as its hero. The British forces, in the early stage of the battle for the Iberian Peninsula, are marching towards the safety of the Lines of Torres Vedras, a great defensive bastion protecting the city of Lisbon from invasion. Wellington expects the French to besiege the lines of fortifications, and the best way to win such a siege is to deny as much rations to the enemy as possible. Lieutenant Richard Sharpe and his men are on a scorched-earth mission as the book starts, seeking to destroy as much food as possible while herding the local civilians behind friendly lines.

Sharpe's mission is complicated by a Portuguese major who is ostensibly gathering information from the enemy and, not incidentally, selling food to them --- food that coincidentally happens to be owned by his brother. Sharpe disrupts this flow of food and makes two powerful enemies. Additionally, Sharpe faces opposition in his South Essex Regiment, as his colonel seeks to promote a socially connected relative over his head. Add to that the implacable hostility from the French forces contesting for the control of Portugal, and Sharpe is arrayed against numerous --- and familiar --- enemies.

That Richard Sharpe gets the better of his enemies is not to be doubted. What makes the Sharpe novels so infectiously fun is how he does it; how he manages to outfight and outwit those who would stand in his way. Richard Sharpe is a thief and a rogue in search of gold, girls and glory, but he's uncommonly honest about it --- and immensely likeable as a result. Here, he's paired with a lawyerly Portuguese officer and a prim English schoolmarm, and it's not too long in their acquaintance before both come to Sharpe's way of thinking about plunder, bad language and survival.

SHARPE'S ESCAPE is about survival --- survival, in this instance, from a deadly trap and through two harrowing battles. The trap tests Sharpe's resourcefulness --- and his stomach --- while the battles test Cornwell's ability to make what's happening in combat clear and understandable. The author writes with the authority of one who has seen the ground, who has traipsed all over the sites of Wellington's campaigns, and who knows what it was like to serve in a nineteenth-century regiment and take on the legions of the Emperor for low wages, short rations and mortal danger. Cornwell is good enough at transmitting all of this that one wonders what he could accomplish as a straight historian --- though he's far too skilled as a novelist to lose.

There may be more than a ring of familiarity throughout SHARPE'S ESCAPE, but for those who have read the prior installments, it's a welcome sound indeed. And for those who haven't, it's an excellent chance to take up the Baker rifle and the green jacket, marching in the ranks and slogging through the mud of war with Lieutenant Richard Sharpe.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds

You have to give Cornwall credit. He can churn out a pretty good Sharpe story no matter what the circumstances! Now after countless delvings back into the historical sequence of Sharpe's life which was over-looked in the original series he has come up with Massena's 1810 Campaign to re-conquer Portugal. This campaign results in the one sided Anglo-Portugese victory at Busaco.

Cornwall gives us a pretty good narrative of this battle, managing to make what was almost a fruitless French effort into something more dramatic. Sharpe plays his usual important role, although he is a bit more down-played here. Again he has a bothersome snob as his Colonel. Lawford came across better in the earlier novels, but here he seems to have become the usual pampered snob. One would think these were the only people Wellington had commanding his battalions! Still, they were good enough to beat the French!

Sharpe and his companions still manage their detached duty in a line battalion, allowing Cornwall to move him around freely in events. The usual good and bad types are there. The snob Brit aristos, the arrogant and lazy French, some cowardly Portugese traitors. The usual gore and bloodshed is there also. And there is a plunky forelorn heirone which Sharpe gets to bed of course!

Bonapartists will dislike the imcompetent portrayal of Marshal Massena, supposedly one of the best of French Marshal's, but who seems to have dropped the ball on this one! Still, the military detail of units, maneauvers and the complex interplay of tactics of the period make for good reading for those versed on the subject. There are no scenes with Wellington, and even Sharpe's gang like Harper, Perkins, Hangman, etc. seem less evident here. All in all an interesting evocation of the fatal French campaign of 1810. Sharpe fans will get their fill of the Green Rifleman and his Irish side-kick who fight more like heavy Grenadiers than skinny Light Infantry! Still, good fun and surprisingly fresh after all these years.

The twentieth Sharpe book contains everything fans of the series have come to expect from Cornwell. Set in 1810, the story finds the British Army executing a strategic retreat from the overconfident French forces in Spain. Lord Wellington has ordered the land stripped of all food so that the massive French army will overextend itself and face severe logistical problems when it does finally engage the British. Sharpe is by now the Captain of the South Essex's Light Company but finds his leadership being challenged by the new presence of eager-beaver Lt. Slingsby, who has been placed there by the South Essex's commander, Col. Lawford (who happens to be his brother in-law).

Early on, Sharpe is out patrolling, and stumbles across some Portuguese and a cache of foodstuffs at a signaling tower. He destroys the supplies, per his standing orders, but not before getting into a vicious fight with the hulking Portuguese owner of the goods. This bruiser is Ferragus, an ex-pirate, ex-slaver, and all-around successful gangster whose brother happens to be a Major of Intelligence for the Portuguese Army. These two brothers fulfill the roles of Sharpe's arch-enemies for the story, while Slingsby and Col. Lawford form the usual army irritants. Following Sharpe's initial victory, Ferragus vows to get even, and finds his chance in the chaos that results when the British pull out of Coimbra just before the French get there. Sharpe, Sgt. Harper, old pal Jorge Vicente (from Sharpe's Havoc) find themselves trapped in the city, along with a beautiful English governess. The middle portion of the book is taken up with their adventures, as they evade their Portuguese foes and the French army. Lots of derring-do, trickery, and the usual bravery and close-quarters fighting. This leads to the final third of the book, in which Sharpe's little band escapes the city and races to reach the British army lines before both Ferragus and the French.

Meanwhile, Cornwell provides small glimpses into the activities of the British Army, which entrenches itself in a 40km-long chain of forts. Called the "Lines of Torres Vedras", they were built at great expense, and yet the French are completely unaware of them. Col. Lawford rather inadvisably orders Slingsby to place the Light Company as a picket on a farm below the forts, and ultimately all forces converge there: Sharpe and company, his Portuguese nemeses, and the lead elements of Marshall Massena's army. What follows is vintage Cornwell, as he simultaneously describes the large-scale fight of the Battle of Busaco, as well as the small-scale defense of the farm by the vastly outnumbered Light Company. It's great stuff, and the only regret is that after such rousing set pieces, and the meting out of just desserts, the book ends all too quickly.

I'm sort of glad I waited to begin this series until it was virtually complete, since they're written out of order by their internal chronology. It's mid-1810 now, and Wellington has finally gotten a grip on the French attempts to sew up Portugal and thereby deny access to the entire coastline of Europe. He's backing slowly down the coast and destroying crops, food stores, grazing animals, windmills, and anything else that might be of use to the enemy. When he gets to the big ridge at Bussaco, he forms up his Anglo-Portuguese army (still considerably small than the French force) and waits. Marshal Massena was far too confident and didn't realize that British training of the previously unimpressive Portuguese forces had made them a serious threat. Cornwell's at-length account of the resulting battle, the most famous in Portugal's history, is quite accurate and almost physically exhausting to read in its descriptions of individual unit actions and grand strategy. Later, the British withdrawal leads the French to their appalled discovery of the Lines of Torres Vedras, a massive series of fortifications crossing the peninsula on which Lisbon is locating, the construction of which was (amazingly) kept secret. (It was financed by the Spanish coin recovered in _Sharpe's Gold,_ by the way.) The confrontation at the end between the French skirmishers and the South Essex's Light Company before the defensive fortifications is also very well done. Meanwhile, Capt. Richard Sharpe has been temporarily pushed out of his command by his colonel's attempts to give a leg up to a drunken brother-in-law. Then Sharpe runs up against a Portuguese intelligence officer trying to play both sides of the street, just in case the French win. And he has a thuggish brother, a huge man, who enjoys killing his enemies by beating them to death with his bare hands. Sharpe and Sgt. Harper don't fight fair, though. Oh, and there's a fair maiden to be rescued as well -- an English governess unlike any of Sharpe's women in the earlier volumes. This is an exciting and, as usual, historically accurate story, both in its broad events and in its details.

Captain Sharpe is a tough "rough" officer in his majesty's forces. Having risen through the ranks, unlike some of the refined officers. Resourceful, a bit crude, and a heck of a commander, he has the respect and loyalty of his men and seems always to get into, and out of a scrape.

The story is set in 1810 Poutugal, with the French advancing on Lisbon to drive the English from the peninsula. In between dealing with the drunkard Lieutenant Slingsby taking over his battalion, he also manages to get into a scrape with the Portuguese Major Ferreira and his brother Ferragus, as they attempt to circumvent the British scorched earth strategy by hoarding food to sell the French.

What I found especially interesting Cornwell's work is the detail he puts in to describing the ins and outs of the various battle scenes throughout the book. Very detailed and puts you right in the heat of the battle.

Also, even though this is one of a number of books in the Sharpe series, it is certainly possible to read this without reading the others first.

I've always enjoyed Bernard Cornwell's style of writing because he has the great skill of not just telling a story but allowing you, the reader, to reside within that story. His ability to build the characters, develop the scenes, marry the dialogue and the storyline in such a manner as to build this virtual historical reality in the minds of his readers is second to none. Sharpe's Escape continues this tradition in fine Richard Sharpe form and I would rate this as one of Bernard Cornwell's better Sharpe books.

The setting is Northern Portugal ,1810. On Richard Sharpe's timeline , this follows "Sharpe's Havoc" and "Sharpe's Gold".

The story begins with a very unhappy Richard Sharpe--angry at his recall from a well earned leave with Josefina Lacosta , and by Colonel Lawford's replacement of Lt. Knowles with one of his relatives. Lieutenant Cornelius Slingsby (where does he get these names?) has become Sharpe's second in command of the South Essex light company by virtue of being Col. William Lawford's sister-in-law's husband. Apparently he survived a posting in the West Indies to become the husband of a "lady in trouble" , and the kind-hearted Lawford feels compelled to help his relative advance and become a bit more respectable to the family. Ah , complications!

Early in the tale , Sharpe manages to make enemies of two Portuguese brothers, one of whom is a Major on the Portuguese army , and his brutish brother , Ferragus. We are introduced to Ferragus through the burning of some stored food that was being clandesinely transferred to the French army pursuing Wellington into Portugal. Ferragus , an enormous man who was formerly a sailor , a slave trader , and a criminal , has managed to accumulate an enormous supply of food hidden in warehouses. Lord Wellington , however,is in the process of leaving scorched earth for the armies of Marshal Massena and Marshall Ney , by stripping the land of food as he retreats behind the Torres Vedras line.

Of course there is a lovely lady involved ; a British governess to the children of the Portuguese Major , by the name of Sarah Fry. Also present in the cast of characters are Major Hogan , Sergeant Harper , Hagman , and Harris. As a carryover from "Sharpe's Havoc" Jorge Vicente returns as a Captain in the Portuguese army leading a group of riflemen a la Sharpe.

Ferragus , with the help of his brother , plan to eliminate Sharpe and his group by setting an elaborate trap , but as usual , our hero prevails. Not only must Sharpe escape to save himself and Harper ,but rescue the light company from the idiotic Slingsby.

As in most of Cornwell's Sharpe novels , you can almost smell the gunpowder and hear the screams of the wounded and dying through his battle scenes. Fans of this series will not be disappointed this time! At the end , Sharpe and Harper continue to march on. Enjoyable and recommended.

Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe series - the original books - are fantastic. Brilliantly written, fast-paced, with superb character development. We meet Richard, the "soldier's soldier" whom the ladies can't help but notice; Patrick Harper, his trusty, entertaining, and formidable sergeant; Wellesley/Wellington, who although somewhat disdainful always has an interesting word with Sharpe. Then there are a host of other characters, from Majors Hogan and Nairn, the sharpshooters (the Greenjackets), and the beautiful women, all of whom are fascinating - and who fascinate Sharpe. Even the villains are beautifully drawn - such as the schemer, spymaster Pierre Ducos.

But Sharpe's Escape features cardboard-cutout characters, absolutely lifeless and uninteresting. Frankly, I didn't care about anyone in the book. Not even Major Hogan, as written here, could liven it up. But Sharpe - Sharpe was the worst of the bunch. He was surly and bad-tempered throughout. The book offered no reason for men to want to follow him. The plots involving Sharpe were idiotic. The battle scenes weren't even as good. Slingsby was like a very poorly drawn Simmerson (Sharpe's Eagle). I also found it hard to believe that Colonel Lawson would put the Light Company at risk the way he did near the end. And the scene with Wellington was absurd. If you're not going to do it right, why include it?

It's as though once Cornwell saw the Sean Bean series, he figured we could all picture the action in our minds, so why bother with setting a scene? So beautiful scenes, as with Teresa in the church (Sharpe's Rifles or Gold, don't remember) or with the glorious but treacherous Helene, or anywhere else that we're told what's going on in Sharpe's mind, don't appear anywhere in "Escape." Not worth your money or your time. Everything seems out of step. The characters weren't true to the originals.

For good Cornwell/Sharpe entertainment, read the original series: Rifles, Eagle, Company, Gold, Enemy, Sword, Honor, Waterloo. I'm sure I left a couple out, and those I've listed probably aren't in order. But they are superb reading. The first chapter of Sharpe's Honor is not to be missed - brilliant strategy, and a wonderful way to see how Sharpe's mind works. If you're a Napoleonic buff, you won't want to miss them.