Customer Reviews

Sharpe's Waterloo: Richard Sharpe & the Waterloo Campaign (Series #20)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Bernard Cornwell's "Waterloo, Sharpe's Final Adventure" is fast paced fun and an action packed thriller. Here Cornwell tells the story of Waterloo; the unbelievable hubris of the commanders (both sides), the complete waste of human life and especially the fear of the average soldiers. Cornwell paints a picture of France and anti-French forces coming together to do battle, somewhat like two huge forces on a collision course. The point of view is more from the average soldier and not from the generals, so don't count on a lot of quotes from Napoleon or Wellington.

This time Sharpe is a lieutenant-colonel in the Belgian Light Dragoons under the command of the 23 year old Belgian Prince of Orange. Sharpe's primary function is to provide military advice to the youthful prince and try to keep himself from killing the idiotic monarch. Really he is there to collect soldier pay. Along the way Sharpe encounters a wife's betrayal, monumental military bumbling, senseless slaughter, and of course battle. For it wouldn't really be a Sharpe story without battle.

However, (and I cannot put my finger on it) "Waterloo" is written differently from Sharpe's other stories. Perhaps the characters are more mature or maybe it is the fact that half of the story is about the actual battle. Cornwell's Sharpe's books usually devote a chapter to the battle and not half a book. But lets face it the battle is one of the biggest in history.

What makes Sharpe stories so great is the writing, Cornwell knows how to convey a story and keep it interesting. I recommend this book to military history buffs, arm-chair generals, and any one else who enjoys a story told well.

I was dining a few nights ago with - oddly enough - a German,an Englishman, and a Frenchman.

The topic came around to Waterloo. The Frenchman told the table that Napoleon didn't lose. He made a strategic defeat, and anyway it was the Prussians who won the battle. The German said the Prussians won the battle, and the French were beaten spitless. The Englishman said that Wellington and his army of scum won the battle, that Napoleon ran like a rabbit, and the Prussians arrived too late to do anybody any good. Before sabres were drawn, I poured another port and laid out an excellent Blue Vein cheese from New Zealand's Kapiti Coast.

No matter what Cornwell did with this Sharpe story, he was going to be in trouble. I loved the book. Great battle! It's hardly a Sharpe book at all: Sharpe's merely the device Cornwell uses to draw the battle together for the reader.

But Cornwell was always going to cop it in the neck from the Dutch (What? The Dutch run? Never! ) He was always going to be mocked by the Germans (Loiter on the way to a battle? Nein! ). The French have never believed they lost the battle anyway, so Cornwell's version would have to wrong, wrong, wrong.

The book's an entertainment, so let's not get our knickers in a twist about "the facts". It's Cornwell's view of the battle - accept that. And when you come to accept it as an entertainment, you'll enjoy it. This is battle on a huge scale - the largest number of men ever committed to battle at the time. And it's described expertly, with a feel for the blood, terror, glory, and unthinking heroism of the day.

Deeply satisfying, dramatic, gory - with a neat wrap-up for Sharpe's adulterous [...] ex. What more could you want for a Sunday afternoon?

This book was great fun and also educational. I do not give five stars simply because it is not in the same literary category as say a Patrick O'Brien novel. Easier to read though.

I am bewildered by some of the criticism. Obviously Sharpe is a fictional character and only a very confused reader would be led astray by his over achievement on the battlefield. Sharpe is simply the readers tour guide. You don't get the same criticism from readers in the other books which indicate that national pride is causing this shallow concern.

For French historians to attempt to lessen the scope of Napolean's defeat is easily shown up by the fact that the French were subsequently routed and then surrendered. End of Napolean exiled (again) and end of story.

As for the Germans. Did they arrive very late or not? The answers to these basic questions lie in the simple facts. If they were there at the start , and if they shared the leadership responsibilities then they could claim equal credit. But they weren't- so they can't.

Also Look at the casualties - 40,000 French 15,000 British, Belgium, Dutch and 7,000 Germans. Look at the dispatches by Wellington and Napolean immediately after the battle. Wellington's dispatch is modest, brief, understated and credible. Napoleans has a somewhat more colourful, exagerated, self righteous and perhaps understandably self serving tone.

There are colourful criticisms of the Dutch and Belgiums - but there were also numerous insightful observations on the imperfections of the British Army. The landed gentry officer class are endlessly mocked.

Wellington was an extraordinarily successful military leader. He was also somewhat more concerned about casualties than Napolean.

Of course Wellington deserves the credit for the victory at Waterloo. Victory may not have happened with out the late arrival of the Germans - but Wellington made a wise choice for the battleground and then held his position against the constant withering attacks by a normally brilliant and perhaps desparate Emperor. Without heroism and bravery Napolean's tactics would once again have achieved an easy victory with Napolean getting the glory (piles or no piles) This was the meat of the battle. It was Wellingtons battle. As the author says - to suggest otherwise is mad. Also it was not all luck since Wellington had a long track record of beating the odds. If you are intelligent and brave enough then you will make your own luck.

Sharpe was not there, therefore we can all figure out that the Prince was not assailed as described- but who can't figure that out? But it was a nice liteary detour.

Great book, and if it encourages one to learn more then so much the better.

For lovers of the Sharpe series Waterloo will provide you with both a triumphant and riveting ending, and a sad farewell. For lovers of Napoleonic history, Waterloo will take you beyond the tactics and strategy and let you feel the thunder of the cannons, smell the clouds of powder smoke, and hear the cries of the dying and wounded. Cornwell places you on the ridge overlooking the valley and lets you watch the battle unfold. The book is really the next best thing to a time machine.

"Waterloo" isn't the last book in the Sharpe series, either chronologically, or to be written, but it's the one you're waiting for, the culmination of it all. Sharpe and Wellington have been fighting through Spain and France for years, we've read 19 previous books about Sharpe, and now it's that earth-shattering historical battle.

Cornwell does not disappoint. The subject matter's importance is signified deliberately in Cornwell's signoff - he does not conclude with "Sharpe's Waterloo" - and unwittingly in the American edition's dropping of Sharpe's name from the title. Cornwell suggests elsewhere that this was not his choice, but it's just as well. It would have been a stretch to make this "Sharpe's Waterloo". Cornwell does well to find a couple of key places to throw Sharpe into the action, helping hold a key redoubt, a walled farm, early in the day, and rallying one of three battered British units - another led by Wellington himself - to stand and hold against a superior French advance late in the day.

As he writes elsewhere, he tried to work in the small story - in this case, Sharpe's estranged wife Jane, who in the previous installment has taken up with a Nancy-boy aristocrat, stolen Sharpe's fortune and now needs him dead so that she may remarry and shake off the scandal attaching to her. The lover seeks some military experience for the glory it will bring him, and the three meet in Belgium.

But there is less here than meets the eye. Cornwell says he just couldn't get going in the small story, what with Waterloo looming in the background.

Sharpe, now living with Lucille Castineau in Normandy, signs up with the Dutch force led by William, Duke of Orange, mostly for the pay but really because he can't stay away. Neither can Harper, now a civilian tavern owner and horse trader in Dublin. Their loose affiliation allows Cornwell to let them roam at the battle, giving the reader an opportunity to see more theaters of action.

His description of the battle, as well as the Franco-British battle leading to it, at Quatre Bras, is just breathtaking. This is the climactic meeting of Napoleon and Wellington, who have never faced each other in battle - the tyrannical French battlefield genius, who inspired an empire and an army while bringing death to millions; and the underrated, understated, but undefeated general for a nation which takes its sailors more seriously, and who amazingly retook Spain and Portugal back from much larger French armies.

In so doing Wellington learned to trump Napoleon's signature tactic: the use of huge columns of soldiers marching shoulder to shoulder to a terrifying drumbeat, those in front sure to die but protecting those behind them, who ultimately overwhelm the enemy with their numbers and relentless advance. This worked until French troops met disciplined, fast-firing British musket lines. Still, Napoleon at Waterloo has a huge force at his disposal, far more artillery and cavalry than Wellington does, and brings the latter to bear in all its medieval pageantry. And the fate of Europe, and the course of history, is in the balance; we know it now and they knew it then.

Cornwell takes 120 pages to describe the climactic day itself, and at the end, the reader feels wrung out. The sweep of the battle - the many changes of momentum, the numerous cavalry charges, the threats of the big columns - is awe-inspiring, and Cornwell succeeds in letting the drama emerge naturally.

Wellington is outmanned by Napoleon and salvation lies only with the arrival of his Prussian allies, for whom he waits ... and waits ... and waits. The Allies almost lost this battle, with egregious tactical errors that Cornwell places largely in William's lap, although Cornwell notes that historians don't all agree with that, or indeed about much of what happened. One wonders how Napoleon, on the attack most of the day, managed to lose, but then that's what makes for the drama - the moments that the tide is about to break, and some heroic countermeasure stops it. You realize that battles like these are not all about gunfire and numbers, but about the hearts of the men who fight them - what sinks their spirits to the breaking point, and what lifts them to victory.

(Having Sharpe in their midst, of course.)

Bernard Cornwell's twenty-plus (and growing!) volume Richard Sharpe series has built and built and built to the titanic battle of Waterloo. Sharpe has fought in Flanders, India, Portugal, Spain, and France, and everything in his storied career has led him to this little valley with the odd name. And it led Napoleon and Wellington there, too.

Nobody denies that the world changed in the single day of battle where Wellington narrowly avoided disaster and sent Napoleon down to defeat. Trafalgar and the defeat of the Spanish Armada definitely have their roles in British military history, but it's debatable whether those two battles were more important to the future of Europe than Waterloo. Had Napoleon won, the French juggernaut could have rolled Europe up like a carpet.

But Richard Sharpe and his boon companion, Patrick Harper, have little sense of history. They are pure soldiers, even if Harper has left the army and follows Sharpe to the battlefield only to "watch." Through their eyes, Cornwell paints a magnificent, horrifying you-are-there portrait of the day's carnage, complete with the dizzying stupidity of the Prince of Orange. This peacock nearly cost the British everything by stupidly ordering infantry to form in line rather than square (thereby making them easy pickings for French cavalry) not once, not twice, but three times! For Sharpe and Harper, this is too much, and they take matters into their own hands.

Further complicating matters, Lord John Rossendale has stolen Sharpe's money and taken his wife, Jane. Sharpe does not lament the latter, but he rues the loss of his fortune, and he demands satisfaction. Rossendale, urged on by Jane, plots Sharpe's death on the battlefield, where there is a long tradition of soldiers settling private scores with bullets and bayonets in the back.

"Waterloo" is a bit unusual for Cornwell's books in that the battle is so well-known and so vast. This is not one of those battles where Cornwell has a free canvas to let Sharpe and Harper save the day together. While they surely get a lot to do, there are many other heroes, British and French alike, who get their day in the sun. Sharpe and Harper are by no means quiet, and Sharpe gets his own version of a triumph, but this is a day for real heroes as well.

Cornwell's research is impeccable, as always, and his battlefield prose sings with British pride. This is an excellent book to end the Sharpe series, and one wonders why Cornwell wrote another book after "Waterloo" (Sharpe's Devil). Where is there to go from here?

The most straight forward of the Sharpe's series, and by far the longest and most intense battle narrative I have ever read. I can't speak to it's historical accuracy (it being almost 30 years since my last Military History course), but the action is so well described and so vivid that I absolutely could not put the book down once the final days battle began. Of course it is far fetched to expect one soldier to have been present at so many of the battle's key points, but as a literary device to describe a major battle it is a definite triumph.

This book was great fun and also educational. I do not give five stars simply because it is not in the same literary category as say a Patrick O'Brien novel. Easier to read though.

I am bewildered by some of the criticism. Obviously Sharpe is a fictional character and only a very confused reader would be led astray by his over achievement on the battlefield. Sharpe is simply the readers tour guide. You don't get the same critism from readers in the other books which indicate that national pride is causing this shallow criticism.

For French Historians to attempt to lessen the scope of Napoleans defeat is easily shown up by the fact that the French were subsequently routed and then surrendered. End of Napolean exiled (again) and end of story.

As for the Germans. Did they arrive very late or not. The answers to these basic questions lie in the simple facts. If they were there at the start , and if they shared the leadership responsibilities then they could claim equal credit. But they weren't- so they can't.

Also Look at the casualties - 40,000 French 15,000 British, Belgium and Dutch and 7000 Germans. Look at the dispatches by Wellington and Napolean immediately after the battle. Wellington's dispatch is modest, brief, understated and credible. Napoleans has a somewhat more colourful, exagerated, self righteous and perhaps understandably self serving tone.

There are colourful criticisms of the Dutch and Belgiums - but there were also numerous insightful observations on the imperfections of the British Army. The landed gentry officer class are endlessly mocked.

Wellington was an extraordinarily successful military leader. He was also somewhat more concerned about casualties than Napolean. Napolean was the problem.

Of course Wellington deserves the credit for the victory at Waterloo. Victory may not have happened with out the Late arrival of the Germans - but Wellington made a wise choice for the Battleground and then held his position against the constant withering attacks by a brilliant and perhaps desparate Emperor. Without heroism and bravery Napoleans tactics would once again have achieved an easy victory with Napolean getting the Glory (piles or no piles) This was the meat of the battle. It was Wellingtons Battle. As the author says - to suggest otherwise is mad. Also it was not all luck since Wellington had a long track record of beating the odds. If you are intelligent and brave enough then you will make your own luck.

Sharpe was not there, therefore we can all figure out that the Prince was not assailed as described- but who can't figure that out. But it was a nice liteary detour.

Great book, and if it encourages one to learn more then so much the better.

Waterloo was the punctuation mark at the end of a generation-long struggle between Britain and France, and this well-written novel is likewise the full stop at the end of the adventurous career of Richard Sharpe, once a private soldier in a red coat, then a sergeant, then a low-ranking officer, and now -- finally -- a light colonel, called out of his brief retirement in Normandy to serve as a sort of figurehead on the staff of the young, thoroughly incompetent Prince of Orange. Sharpe commands no battalion, which gives Cornwell the freedom to move him around the relatively tiny battlefield wherever things are happening. As Wellington noted the next day, the battle was a very near run thing. The French came vey, very close to winning and Wellington had already sent all the regimental colours back to safety to avoid their being taken by the enemy. The key action, in retrospect was the defeat of the two Imperial Guard columns -- the very first defeat that elite corps had ever suffered -- by exhausted but still rapid-firing British infantry. Waterloo has been more heavily studied, interpreted, and written about than any single battle except Gettysburg. But experts still disagree how the second, slightly smaller Guard column was turned back down from the crest of the ridge, so that's where Cornwell places Sharpe, who takes full, official command of his old outfit, the South Essex, and helps to save the day. Nitpickers will find fault, I'm sure, with the few small changes the author makes in the flow of events, but the story is very well told, one day at a time, and the reader will not be disappointed.

PS -- I'm puzzled that so many critics of this series (many of them, apparently, on the Continent) complain because Sharpe, the sometimes larger-than-life hero of the series, is . . . well, *too* heroic. They complain because Sharpe, a quintessential Englishman (though he might disagree), sees the war through English eyes. His opinion of England's allies and enemies are those of the typical short-sighted Englishman. What do they expect? Sharpe doesn't live in the European Union, he's the product of nearly twenty years of warfare between his country and France. History is history, and no amount of caviling is going to turn the Belgian-Dutch into heroes, or make the Portuguese love the Spanish, or make the British love Napoleon, or make the Prussians less Prussian.

For anyone interested in Napoleonic history Bernard Cornwell's 'Richard Sharpe' series will amaze and delight. 'Waterloo' is a wonderful tribute to the those who fought the famous battle and a thrilling adventure for Richard Sharpe. In 'Waterloo,' Sharpe fights not only the forces of Napoleon, but the young and inexperienced commander of the Dutch troops as well as his wife's cowardly lover. From the tense moments as French troops cross the border, to thrashing of the British at Quatre Bras, to the slaughter of Ney's cavalry on the British squares, to Wellington's near-run triumph, this is a magnificent blending of historical fact and captivating fiction. 'Waterloo' may be Cornwell's best.