Bernard Cornwell On:
I. The Origin of Richard Sharpe (Memo to the Sharpe Appreciation Society, http://www.southessex.co.uk)
Richard Sharpe was born on a winter’s night in 1980. It was in London, in a basement flat in Courtnell Street, not far from Westbourne Grove. I had decided to marry an American and, for a myriad of reasons, it was going to be easier if I lived in America, but I could not get a work permit and so, airily, I decided to earn a living as a writer. Love makes us into idiots.
But at least I knew what I wanted to write. It was going to be a land-based version of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books. I wasted hours trying to find my hero’s name. I wanted a name as dramatic as Horatio Hornblower, but I couldn’t think of one (Trumpetwhistler? Cornetpuffer?), so eventually I decided to give him a temporary name and, once I had found his real name, I would simply go back and change it. So I named him after Richard Sharp, the great rugby player, and of course the name stuck. I added an “e” – that was all.
The book was finished in New Jersey. Now, eighteen years, innumerable battles and well over a million words later, he’s still going strong, and there are yet more books to write. I thought I had finished with Sharpe after Waterloo, but so many people wrote wanting more stories that he had to put on his green jacket and march again. Being a hero, of course, he has more lives than a basketful of cats, but maybe Sharpe’s greatest stroke of good fortune was meeting Sean Bean.
He has also been outrageously lucky in his other friends who, collectively, are the Sharpe Appreciation Society. He would not think there was that much to appreciate (“Bloody daft, really”), but on his behalf, I can thank you for being his friends and assure you that, so long as I have anything to do with him, he will not let you down.
And, finally, time for confession: Years and years ago I was a journalist in Belfast and I remember a night just before Christmas when a group of us were sitting in a city-centre pub getting drunk and maudlin, and discussing, as journalists are wont to do, how much easier life would be if only we were novelists. No more hard work, just storytelling, and somehow we invented the name of an author and a bet was laid. The bet was a bottle of Jameson Whiskey from everyone about the table to be given to whichever one of us first wrote the book with the author’s name. Years later I collected the winnings (long drunk) which is why, in second-hand shops, you might find the following: A CROWNING MERCY; THE FALLEN ANGELS; COAT OF ARMS – all by Bernard Cornwell, writing as Susannah Kells.
II. Sharpe’s Adventures
I thought, when I began writing Sharpe, that there could not possibly be more than ten novels in him, but there are now eighteen and more are on the way.
So who and what is he?
Richard Sharpe is a soldier, one of the thousands of Britons who fought against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France between 1793 and 1815. He shadows the career of Sir Arthur Wellesley, who becomes the first Duke of Wellington, and in so doing he takes part in some of the most extraordinary exploits of the era – from the storming of Seringapatam in 1799 to the bloodbath at Waterloo in 1815.
By 1814, when Napoleon is first defeated and sent into exile, the Duke of Wellington leads what is arguably the finest army that Britain ever raised. About one in twenty of its officers had come up from the ranks, and Richard Sharpe is one of them. Is he real? No, there was no Rifle officer called Sharpe, though there was a cavalryman whose rise from trooper to Lieutenant Colonel took the same amount of time that it takes Sharpe to be promoted from private to Lieutenant Colonel. Sharpe is also a Rifleman, a new breed of soldier in the British army who fought, not with a smoothbore musket, but with the much more accurate rifle. Above everything, though, Sharpe has adventures. That is the point of the poor man’s existence.
III. Sharpe’s Trafalgar (The book that directly precedes SHARPE’S PREY – SHARPE’S TRAFALGAR is also available as a HarperCollins e-book)
Sharpe’s Trafalgar is a bit of a cheat, for a soldier really does not have any business being at Trafalgar, which was, of course, the great triumph of Horatio Nelson and the Royal Navy. But Sharpe has spent four or five years in India, has to go home, and both the timing and the geography were such that he might well (with a bit of bad luck) have been off Cape Trafalgar on October 21st, 1805.
The battle was arguably the most decisive of the nineteenth century, even more so than Waterloo. After 1805 there is only one navy that counts: the British. The rest have been sunk or captured. Before that there were three navies in Europe that could have challenged the British: the French, Spanish, and Danish. The Danes have the second largest navy after Britain, but they are neutral so don’t fight (which doesn’t prevent them losing their whole navy to Britain in 1807). The French and The Spanish have the next two largest fleets and, in 1805, they combine their navies to protect the invasion of Britain by Napoleon’s Grand Army. That invasion, of course, never happened, mainly because the combined fleets could never reach the Channel – but they remain a threat until Admiral Nelson intercepts them off Cape Trafalgar.
What results is as spectacular as it is horrific. The largest fleet battle of the age of sail, when thirty-three French and Spanish ships carrying 30,000 sailors and 2,568 heavy cannon take on Nelson’s twenty-seven ships manned by 17,000 men with 2,148 heavy guns. It is a battle fought at incredibly close quarters, for the tactics of the age demand that you lay your ship close to an enemy and then try to rip the heart out of her with gunnery. It is butchery on a massive scale and at its end, when Nelson is dead and an Atlantic storm is brewing out of the west, the French and Spanish navies have been finished off. They will never again challenge Britain. The nineteenth century belongs to the winners, and Sharpe, slightly more than a spectator, is there to see it.
— BERNARD CORNWELL
(Material culled from http://www.bernardcornwellbooks.com and from The Sharpe Appreciation Society website, http://www.southessex.co.uk.)
Sharpe’s Fortress
Bernard Cornwell
Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803
Dedication
Sharpe’s Fortress is for
Christine Clarke,
with many thanks
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Maps
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
Historical Note
Map
CHAPTER 1
Richard Sharpe wanted to be a good officer. He truly did. He wanted it above all other things, but somehow it was just too difficult, like trying to light a tinderbox in a rain-filled wind. Either the men disliked him, or they ignored him, or they were overfamiliar and he was unsure how to cope with any of the three attitudes, while the battalion’s other officers plain disapproved of him. You can put a racing saddle on a carthorse, Captain Urquhart had said one night in the ragged tent which passed for the officers’ mess, but that don’t make the beast quick. He had not been talking about Sharpe, not directly, but all the other officers glanced at him.
The battalion had stopped in the middle of nowhere. It was hot as hell and no wind alleviated the sodden heat. They were surrounded by tall crops that hid everything except the sky. A cannon fired somewhere to the north, but Sharpe had no way of knowing whether it was a British gun or an enemy cannon.
A dry ditch ran through the tall crops and the men of the company sat on the ditch lip as they waited for orders. One or two lay back and slept with their mouths wide open while Sergeant Colquhoun leafed through his tattered Bible. The Sergeant was short-sighted, so had to hold the book very close to his nose from which drops of sweat fell onto the pages. Usually the Sergeant read quietly, mouthing the words and sometimes frowning when he came across a difficult name, but today he was just slowly turning t
he pages with a wetted finger.
“Looking for inspiration, Sergeant?” Sharpe asked.
“I am not, sir,” Colquhoun answered respectfully, but somehow managed to convey that the question was still impertinent. He dabbed a finger on his tongue and carefully turned another page.
So much for that bloody conversation, Sharpe thought. Somewhere ahead, beyond the tall plants that grew higher than a man, another cannon fired. The discharge was muffled by the thick stems. A horse neighed, but Sharpe could not see the beast. He could see nothing through the high crops.
“Are you going to read us a story, Sergeant?” Corporal McCallum asked. He spoke in English instead of Gaelic, which meant that he wanted Sharpe to hear.
“I am not, John. I am not.”
“Go on, Sergeant,” McCallum said. “Read us one of those dirty tales about tits.”
The men laughed, glancing at Sharpe to see if he was offended. One of the sleeping men jerked awake and looked about him, startled, then muttered a curse, slapped at a fly and lay back. The other soldiers of the company dangled their boots toward the ditch’s crazed mud bed that was decorated with a filigree of dried green scum. A dead lizard lay in one of the dry fissures. Sharpe wondered how the carrion birds had missed it.
“The laughter of fools, John McCallum,” Sergeant Colquhoun said, “is like the crackling of thorns under the pot.”
“Away with you, Sergeant!” McCallum said. “I heard it in the kirk once, when I was a wee kid, all about a woman whose tits were like bunches of grapes.” McCallum twisted to look at Sharpe. “Have you ever seen tits like grapes, Mr. Sharpe?”
“I never met your mother, Corporal,” Sharpe said.
The men laughed again. McCallum scowled. Sergeant Colquhoun lowered his Bible and peered at the Corporal. “The Song of Solomon, John McCallum,” Colquhoun said, “likens a woman’s bosom to clusters of grapes, and I have no doubt it refers to the garments that modest women wore in the Holy Land. Perhaps their bodices possessed balls of knotted wool as decoration? I cannot see it is a matter for your merriment.” Another cannon fired, and this time a round shot whipped through the tall plants close to the ditch. The stems twitched violently, discharging a cloud of dust and small birds into the cloudless sky. The birds flew about in panic for a few seconds, then returned to the swaying seedheads.
“I knew a woman who had lumpy tits,” Private Hollister said. He was a dark-jawed, violent man who spoke rarely. “Lumpy like a coal sack, they were.” He frowned at the memory, then shook his head. “She died.”
“This conversation is not seemly,” Colquhoun said quietly, and the men shrugged and fell silent.
Sharpe wanted to ask the Sergeant about the clusters of grapes, but he knew such an inquiry would only cause ribaldry among the men and, as an officer, Sharpe could not risk being made to look a fool. All the same, it sounded odd to him. Why would anyone say a woman had tits like a bunch of grapes? Grapes made him think of grapeshot and he wondered if the bastards up ahead were equipped with canister. Well, of course they were, but there was no point in wasting canister on a field of bulrushes. Were they bulrushes? It seemed a strange thing for a farmer to grow, but India was full of oddities. There were naked sods who claimed to be holy men, snake-charmers who whistled up hooded horrors, dancing bears draped in tinkling bells, and contortionists draped in bugger all, a right bloody circus. And the clowns ahead would have canister. They would wait till they saw the redcoats, then load up the tin cans that burst like duckshot from the gun barrels. For what we are about to receive among the bulrushes, Sharpe thought, may the Lord make us truly thankful.
“I’ve found it,” Colquhoun said gravely.
“Found what?” Sharpe asked.
“I was fairly sure in my mind, sir, that the good book mentioned millet. And so it does. Ezekiel, the fourth chapter and the ninth verse.” The Sergeant held the book close to his eyes, squinting at the text. He had a round face, afflicted with wens, like a suet pudding studded with currants. “‘Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley,’” he read laboriously, “‘and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof.’” Colquhoun carefully closed his Bible, wrapped it in a scrap of tarred canvas and stowed it in his pouch. “It pleases me, sir,” he explained, “if I can find everyday things in the scriptures. I like to see things, sir, and imagine my Lord and Savior seeing the selfsame things.”
“But why millet?” Sharpe asked.
“These crops, sir,” Colquhoun said, pointing to the tall stems that surrounded them, “are millet. The natives call it jowari, but our name is millet.” He cuffed the sweat from his face with his sleeve. The red dye of his coat had faded to a dull purple. “This, of course,” he went on, “is pearl millet, but I doubt the scriptures mention pearl millet. Not specifically.”
“Millet, eh?” Sharpe said. So the tall plants were not bulrushes, after all. They looked like bulrushes, except they were taller. Nine or ten feet high. “Must be a bastard to harvest,” he said, but got no response. Sergeant Colquhoun always tried to ignore swear words.
“What are fitches?” McCallum asked.
“A crop grown in the Holy Land,” Colquhoun answered. He plainly did not know.
“Sounds like a disease, Sergeant,” McCallum said. “A bad dose of the fitches. Leads to a course of mercury.” One or two men sniggered at the reference to syphilis, but Colquhoun ignored the levity.
“Do you grow millet in Scotland?” Sharpe asked the Sergeant.
“Not that I am aware of, sir,” Colquhoun said ponderously, after reflecting on the question for a few seconds, “though I daresay it might be found in the Lowlands. They grow strange things there. English things.” He turned pointedly away.
And sod you too, Sharpe thought. And where the hell was Captain Urquhart? Where the hell was anybody for that matter? The battalion had marched long before dawn, and at midday they had expected to make camp, but then came a rumor that the enemy was waiting ahead and so General Sir Arthur Wellesley had ordered the baggage to be piled and the advance to continue. The King’s 74th had plunged into the millet, then ten minutes later the battalion was ordered to halt beside the dry ditch while Captain Urquhart rode ahead to speak with the battalion commander, and Sharpe had been left to sweat and wait with the company.
Where he had damn all to do except sweat. Damn all. It was a good company, and it did not need Sharpe. Urquhart ran it well, Colquhoun was a magnificent sergeant, the men were as content as soldiers ever were, and the last thing the company needed was a brand new officer, an Englishman at that, who, just two months before, had been a sergeant.
The men were talking in Gaelic and Sharpe, as ever, wondered if they were discussing him. Probably not. Most likely they were talking about the dancing girls in Ferdapoor, where there had been no mere clusters of grapes, but bloody great naked melons. It had been some sort of festival and the battalion had marched one way and the half-naked girls had writhed in the opposite direction and Sergeant Colquhoun had blushed as scarlet as an unfaded coat and shouted at the men to keep their eyes front. Which had been a pointless order, when a score of undressed bibbis were bobbling down the highway with silver bells tied to their wrists and even the officers were staring at them like starving men seeing a plate of roast beef. And if the men were not discussing women, they were probably grumbling about all the marching they had done in the last weeks, crisscrossing the Mahratta countryside under a blazing sun without a sight or smell of the enemy. But whatever they were talking about they were making damn sure that Ensign Richard Sharpe was left out.
Which was fair enough, Sharpe reckoned. He had marched in the ranks long enough to know that you did not talk to officers, not unless you were spoken to or unless you were a slick-bellied crawling bastard looking for favors. Officers were different, except Sharpe did not feel different. He just felt excluded. I should have stayed a sergeant, he thought. He had increasingly thought that in the last few weeks, wishing
he was back in the Seringapatam armory with Major Stokes. That had been the life! And Simone Joubert, the Frenchwoman who had clung to Sharpe after the battle at Assaye, had gone back to Seringapatam to wait for him. Better to be there as a sergeant, he reckoned, than here as an unwanted officer.
No guns had fired for a while. Perhaps the enemy had packed up and gone? Perhaps they had hitched their painted cannon to their ox teams, stowed the canister in its limbers and buggered off northward? In which case it would be a quick about-turn, back to the village where the baggage was stored, then another awkward evening in the officers’ mess. Lieutenant Cahill would watch Sharpe like a hawk, adding tuppence to Sharpe’s mess bill for every glass of wine, and Sharpe, as the junior officer, would have to propose the loyal toast and pretend not to see when half the bastards wafted their mugs over their canteens. King over the water. Toasting a dead Stuart pretender to the throne who had died in Roman exile. Jacobites who pretended George III was not the proper King. Not that any of them were truly disloyal, and the secret gesture of passing the wine over the water was not even a real secret, but rather was intended to goad Sharpe into English indignation. Except Sharpe did not give a fig. Old King Cole could have been King of Britain for all Sharpe cared.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe's Triumph, Sharpe's Fortress Page 74