Sharpe is a series of historical fiction stories by Bernard Cornwell centred on the character of English soldier Richard Sharpe. The stories formed the basis for an ITV television series featuring Sean Bean in the title role.
Cornwell's series comprises many novels and several short stories, and charts Sharpe's progress in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars, though the novels were published in non-chronological order. He begins in Sharpe's Tiger as a private in the 33rd Regiment of Foot who is continually promoted, finally rising to lieutenant colonel in Sharpe's Waterloo. His military career ends with the final defeat of Napoleon, but he has more adventures as a civilian.
Sharpe is born to a prostitute in the rookeries of London. Orphaned at an early age, he grows up in poverty. He is eventually taken in by prostitute (and later bar owner) Maggie Joyce and becomes a thief. He has to flee the city after killing a man to protect Maggie.
Enlisting in the army, he is promoted to sergeant as a reward for completing a highly dangerous espionage mission in India. He is made an officer, an ensign, when he saves the life of his commanding officer, Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington), during the Battle of Assaye. It is a mixed blessing, as he constantly has to fight class prejudice in an army where an officer's rank is often purchased without regard to qualification. Cornwell sees to it that he is improbably present at many important battles of the British Empire at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, including the Battle of Waterloo.
Sharpe is described as "brilliant but wayward" in Sharpe's Sword, and he is portrayed by the author as a "loose cannon". He becomes a highly skilled and experienced leader of light troops. In contrast to the honourable Horatio Hornblower—the inspiration for the series—Sharpe is a rogue, an unabashed thief and murderer who has no qualms about killing a bitter enemy when the opportunity arises. However, he is protective of women in general and has a number of lovers over the course of his life.
He is six feet tall, with an angular, tanned face, long black hair, and blue eyes. He has a deep scar on his right cheek which pulls at his right eye, giving his face a mocking expression when relaxed; this disappears when he smiles, which is not too frequently. By the end of the series, he has had two wives and three children.
Inspiration Cornwell had enjoyed C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels, which depict a Royal Navy officer's career from midshipman to Admiral of the Fleet and retirement. When he could not find a similar series for the British Army, he decided to write it himself. As a further inducement, he had fallen in love with an American woman who, for various reasons, could not leave the United States, so he relocated. He could not get a green card or work permit, so he wrote the first Sharpe novel to make a living.
Struggling to come up with a name as distinctive as Horatio Hornblower, he used a placeholder based on the rugby union player Richard Sharp; eventually, he kept it, just adding an "e". The author had intended to write 11 novels, the same number as in the Hornblower series, ending with Sharpe's Waterloo, but later changed his mind and continued writing.
Sean Bean Sean Bean played Sharpe in the British television series Sharpe. Cornwell was so impressed with Bean's portrayal that he expanded Sharpe's backstory to have him growing up in Yorkshire to account for Bean's accent. The author also avoided further mention of Sharpe's black hair (Bean's hair being blond). Bean took over the part from British actor Paul McGann, who more closely resembled Cornwell's description, when the latter was injured playing football during filming of the first episode.
Fictional biography Early life Richard Sharpe is born in London on 23 June 1777 (as Bernard Cornwell states in a Q&A on his website) to a prostitute residing in "Cat Lane" and possibly a French smuggler. When Sharpe is three, his mother is killed in the Gordon Riots.
With no known relatives to raise him, Sharpe is deposited in Jem Hocking's foundling home at Brewhouse Lane, Wapping, where he spends his days picking his assigned quota of oakum. He is malnourished and regularly beaten, resulting in his being undersized for his age. Because of this, he is eventually sold to a master chimney sweep to train as an apprentice at the relatively late age of 12. Fearing the high mortality rate among apprentice sweeps (who are forced to climb inside chimneys and remove soot by hand), Sharpe flees to the Rookery, a slum in St Giles, and is taken in by prostitute (and later bar owner) Maggie Joyce. He stays under Maggie's protection for three years, learning various forms of thieving. Maggie is his first lover.
After killing a gang leader during a fight over Maggie, he flees from London to Yorkshire at the age of fifteen. He works in a tavern in Sheffield. Within six months, Sharpe kills a second man, the landlord of the tavern where he is working, in a fight over a local girl.
To avoid arrest, Sharpe takes the "King's shilling", joining the 33rd Foot, as a result of the blandishments of recruiting sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill. The regiment is first sent to Flanders in 1794, where Sharpe fights in his first battle, at Boxtel. The next year, he and his regiment are posted to India, under the command of the British East India Company.
India In 1799 Sergeant Hakeswill goads Sharpe into striking him, and Sharpe is sentenced to 2,000 lashes, effectively a death sentence. However, he is released after 200 by executive order (Sharpe's Tiger) at Lieutenant William Lawford's insistence so that he can accompany Lawford on a vital secret mission. They are sent to contact (rescue if possible) Lawford's uncle, Colonel Hector McCandless, the head of British East India Company intelligence. They join Tipu Sultan's army, posing as British deserters, but are later betrayed by Hakeswill (who has been captured) and imprisoned. Lawford teaches Sharpe to read and write whilst they languish in a dungeon with McCandless. Sharpe picks the lock of their cell and escapes during the siege of Seringapatam. He prematurely detonates a mine meant to devastate the British army when it breaches the city wall. The British take the city. He then kills the fleeing Tipu unobserved during the fighting and takes a fortune in jewels from the corpse. He is promoted to sergeant for his efforts.
Sharpe serves four uneventful years as a sergeant. In 1803 he is the sole survivor of a massacre of the garrison of a small fort carried out by a turncoat East India Company officer, William Dodd (Sharpe's Triumph). Because he can identify Dodd, Sharpe is taken along by McCandless on a mission to capture and punish the renegade, to discourage others from deserting. Their search takes them first to battles at Ahmednuggur and then Assaye.
At Assaye, the greatly outnumbered British force is commanded by Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington). When Wellesley's orderly is killed, by chance Sharpe is the only one available to take his place, and so is at hand when Wellesley is unhorsed alone and amongst the enemy. Sharpe single-handedly saves the general's life, killing about half a dozen soldiers and holding the rest at bay until help arrives. Wellesley rewards him with a battlefield commission as an ensign, though Wellesley is certain it will not turn out well. Sharpe joins the 74th Regiment.
Sharpe receives a cold welcome from many of his fellow officers, who dislike him due to his low birth, and the common soldiers, who resent being commanded by someone from their own ranks, and he has great difficulty adjusting to his new status and role. In the end, the commander of the 74th pressures him to transfer to the newly formed 95th Rifles Regiment. Before leaving India, he takes part in the assault on Gawilghur, leading troops in action for the first time. Sharpe finds a way into the nearly impregnable fortress, ignoring the orders of his cowardly commanding officer. Once inside, he confronts and kills Dodd, at the cost of a scar on his right cheek (Sharpe's Fortress). (Cornwell apologised for sometimes forgetting which side of Sharpe's face is scarred; in Sharpe's Revenge, for example, it is on the left.)
Campaigns in Europe While sailing in 1805 from India to England to take up his post in the 95th Rifles, he meets and falls in love with fellow passenger Lady Grace Hale, the wife of an ambitious and powerful politician, the much older Lord William Hale (Sharpe's Trafalgar). They have an affair. Then Sharpe is caught up in the Battle of Trafalgar, his first direct encounter with Napoleonic France as an infantry officer. During the sea battle, Lord Hale confronts his wife, having discovered her infidelity. She kills him in self-defence. Sharpe has the body taken on deck so that it will appear as if Lord Hale died in the fighting.
Grace sets up home with Sharpe at Shorncliffe, but dies giving birth to their child, who survives her by only a few hours. Sharpe's fortune (from selling Tipu Sultan's jewels) is seized by lawyers who believe it to be part of Grace's estate.
He falls into a deep depression, worsened by his bad relationship with his commanding officer, who relegates him to the role of quartermaster. He is left behind when the regiment is posted to the Baltic in 1807. Sharpe, unable to sell his commission (due to it not having been purchased), considers deserting.
He returns to Wapping and robs and kills Jem Hocking, the abusive master of the foundling home where Sharpe was raised. He fortuitously encounters General David Baird, a former colleague from India. Baird recruits him to protect John Lavisser, a Foreign Office agent being sent to secretly negotiate with the Danish Crown Prince to keep the Danish fleet out of French hands. Lavisser, acting in his own interests, tries but fails to have Sharpe killed. Sharpe goes into hiding in Copenhagen. He witnesses the British bombardment of the city and provides valuable assistance in the capture of the Danish fleet (Sharpe's Prey). Sharpe considers settling down there, having fallen in love with Astrid, the daughter of Ole Skovgaard, the chief spy for the British in Denmark. However, Skovgaard turns against the British because of their attack, and Astrid obeys his order to break up with Sharpe.
By early 1809 Sharpe is in Spain with the 95th Rifles, his men serving as the rearguard of the retreat to Corunna. When Captain Murray is mortally wounded, he leaves his heavy cavalry sword to Sharpe, giving him his signature weapon, used in all the subsequent books. Cut off from the main body of the army, he takes command of a handful of mutinous riflemen (including future best friend Patrick Harper), while protecting a small party of English missionaries. He encounters Spanish Major Blas Vivar and his partisans and reluctantly helps them temporarily seize control of the city of Santiago de Compostela so that Vivar can raise a sacred gonfalon to bolster the Spanish people's flagging morale (Sharpe's Rifles). Sharpe's surviving riflemen who begin the retreat to Corunna are:
: dead Rfn Daniel Hagman (Sharpe's Rifles - Sharpe's Waterloo) Rfn Hobbes (Sharpe's Revenge) Rfn Harris (Sharpe's Prey - Sharpe's Christmas) Rfn Ben Perkins (Sharpe's Rifles - Sharpe's Christmas) Rfn Francis Cooper (Sharpe's Prey - Sharpe's Christmas) Rfn Parry Jenkins (Sharpe's Rifles - Sharpe's Sword) Rfn Green (Sharpe's Battle - Sharpe's Company) Rfn McDonald (Sharpe's Battle - Sharpe's Company) Rfn Smith (Sharpe's Battle - Sharpe's Company) Rfn Christopher Cresacre (Sharpe's Havoc - Sharpe's Company) Rfn Jebediah Horrell (Sharpe's Eagle - Sharpe's Battle) Rfn Nicholas Hine (Sharpe's Havoc) - (Sharpe's Battle) Rfn Thompson (Sharpe's Battle) Rfn Finn (Sharpe's Battle) Rfn Cameron (Sharpe's Rifles - Sharpe's Battle)