Sharpe's Company (Richard Sharpe's Adventure Series #13)

* Do you like adventure? * Do you like romance? * Do you like action? * Do you like history?

If you answered yes to the above then you will enjoy Sharpe's Company. I started reading these books and I find myself having a hard time putting them down.

Sharpe's Company by Bernard Cornwell is an exciting rip-roaring adventure addition to the Sharpe series. You can see Bernard Cornwell's extensive research come to life page after page. The setting is 1812 and the British forces are re-grouping in Spain to repulse the dreaded French juggernaut led by Napoleon. Sharpe's challenge is to defeat the French forces at Badajoz, retain his rank and marry the girl of his desires. All of Sharpe's soldiers are in attendance and ready for battle.

Sharpe lost his rank due to a clerical error in England and is now a mere lieutenant. He answers to a commanding officer that has never led a battle command. The captain who replaced him is a well meaning light-weight who lets his sergeant give the orders.

Additionally, the evil Sergeant Hakeswell is back in Sharpe's life again and up to his old tricks. I don't think I can imagine of a better villain than Hakeswell. He is ugly, twisted and thoroughly evil. There are no redeeming values to his character. He wants to kill Sharpe and ruin his career. Even Sharpe's friends are in danger from this psychopath.

Where Cornwell shines is the description of the battle. He paints a picture of the siege at Badajoz so realistic that you visualize the battle and all of its horrors. His details are fascinating. For example, the advantages and disadvantages of a rifle and a musket, the uses of cannon to reduce castle walls to rubble and the siege warfare techniques of 1800s.

I wholeheartedly endorse this book.


Authentic setting, gripping action, panto characters   July 17, 2004
Trevor Kettlewell (Nowra, NSW Australia)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

Cornwall is obviously a military history buff, relishing the dates, companies, weapons, troop movements, locations, battles etc. of the period. If you're into that sort of thing, go hard. Moreover we're drenched in action - this is centred on major battles. And the action carries you along; the page-turning managed to keep me up to knock the book over in a few nights. In his following `historical note' Cornwall owns up to where he's bent things a little for the sake of his story:
"Purists will also be offended that Sharpe attacked Ciudad Rodrigo with the Third Division, and Badajoz with the Fourth, but it is the fate of fictional soldiers to be always where the fight is thickest even when that means a cavalier disregard for the make-up of divisions."
This reminds me of Patrick O'Brian, who I believe said that all the things that happen to his 18th Century RN hero did actually happen - but never to the same man. Books like these can be a far more enjoyable way of learning a bit of history, and both writers are prepared to paint some of the less admirable sides of `their' heroes and `their' army (who both go berserk in Sharpe's Company, butchering surrendering French soldiers once they've breached the wall at Badajoz).

Comparing the two military historical writers any further, however, can only put Cornwall in the shade. While Cornwall could contend that he's giving an accurate soldier's eye view - grim, ruthless - I found his characters one dimensional, something you couldn't say of O'Brian's Marturin or Aubrey. Indeed, Sharpe's right hand man Harper is barely even a cardboard invention: little John has simply changed his uniform, accent and century. O'Brian's characters often surprised me: it felt like the author had some insight into the journals and accounts he'd read from another age. Once I'd had their opening description Cornwall's characters never did - I felt more like I was reading someone who'd seen a lot of mid-day black and white movies (witness, for example, his massively stereotyped image of the coarse working class army wives). His heroine and his villain could have stepped out of pantomime.

For a purportedly historical novel this book is awash with melodramatic fictional conventions - and that bugs me more than if it were, say, thrown into an SF context based on the same historical events. I'd feel far less compelled to judge his W.E. Johns attitude to the largely faceless enemy or the glory of battle. Of course every book is contrived, but this feels so contrived (as opposed to crafted) - Sharpe will suffer several losses (no fault of his own) early in the book so that his eventual inevitable victory will taste all the sweeter. OK, OK, likewise Jack Aubrey, but there's so much else happening along the way. The devotion of Sharpe's men to their dashing leader feels so much more Hollywood than history, as, of course, his charmed ability to stand in a spray of bullets that can only ever touch the minor characters standing around him.

Maybe you could put aside the pretentions of authenticity (of character, not dates, events and places) and just enjoy the well researched settings and brutal victories. However even with some pretty generous suspension of disbelief parameters Cornwall's fairly central plot around the villainous Hawkeswill is internally stupid. A deranged (yet cunning) serial rapist-murderer, Sharpe's nemesis, who in previous books has given Sharpe overwhelming personal motivations to kill. Early in the book he gives us one more - he corners Sharpe's lover and attempts to rape and kill her. Sharpe and little John step in mid-attack and overpower him. Hawkeswill sternly vows his intention to rape and kill her at the earliest opportunity. Sharpe's assassin girlfriend offers to kill him. Harper begs for the task. Sharpe - who's bread and butter is killing - says he wants to kill him. Yet ... like those who oppose Batman and James Bond, for some reason these seasoned executioners inexplicably can't bring themselves to simply fire a round or insert a knife. Sharpe's reasoning, "I want to do it publicly," out of some sort of supposedly noble desire to thereby purge the evil Hawkeswill has visited on so many - is nothing short of ridiculous. The result is that Hawkeswill is simply turned free - by the hero - to torture, rape and kill more innocents and provide suspense. In order to set up the climax of Sharpe having to win the race past the walls of Badajoz to rescue his defacto wife and child from the lurking killer/rapist, Cornwall expects his readers to have his supposedly super-resourceful hero blithely let him walk around untouched - without even bothering to attempt to kill him. It's far worse than the insufferably procrastinating Hamlet, as Sharpe is supposed to be an unusually able plotter and killer. This absurd contradiction bugged me (did you pick that?), and got more and more stupid as the book went on - to the supreme stupidity of Hawkeswill getting away yet again (from three armed experienced killers in the one room) to lurk about in the next novel! Hawkeswill, in contrast, actually had the intelligence to know who his enemies were, to carefully observe them and take rational and devious measures to bring them down (such as the not uncommon fragging. That being said, it is also stupid that Hawkeswill's never been fragged).

OK, sure, if Cornwall was wanting to write cartoon farce ("Next time, Gadget, next time"; "Ah, Von-Stalhein - we meet again"), this is acceptable, nay, expected. But hard-bitten, carefully researched historical fiction? Only as hard bitten as Georgette Heyer. He doesn't have to write something as bleak as All Quiet on the Western Front, but he should at least be informed by it. Alternatively he could write `historical fiction' like Alexandre Dumas, where the characters are deliberately far larger than life and we can relish the greater emphasis on the `fiction' without the troubling demands of trying to be essentially `historical' within precisely documented specific events.


A Thrilling Adventure For Richard Sharpe   January 31, 2000
Cody Carlson (Salt Lake City, UT United States)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

I'm a little more than halfway through Bernard Cornwell's 'Sharpe' series and so far 'Sharpe's Company' is my favorite. This novel has Richard Sharpe fighting for his command and his family while waging war against the French held fortress of Badajoz. And as though this task wasn't daunting enough, Sharpe's nemisis Obidiah Hakeswill returns to settle an old score. Consistently entertaining, Cornwall's attention to detail is nothing less than awe-inspiring. I would highly recommend 'Sharpe's Comapany' to anyone interested in military fiction or to lovers of great action and suspence novels.


Siege + Hakeswill = Another Solid Entry   June 28, 2001
A. Ross (Washington, DC)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

This 1813-set entry in the Napoleonic War series finds Sharpe once again battling two of his most formidable foes: bureaucracy and the thoroughly evil Sgt. Hakeswill, the man responsible for his flogging in India a decade previously. The first of these battles is a foregone conclusion, as the Horse Guards finally reject Sharpe's battlefield commission to Captain, and he is reassigned away from his company as a Lieutenant. The depression this brings about is further exacerbated by the installation of Sgt. Hakeswill in Sharpe's old company. Early on, Sharpe has a chance to kill his legendarily unkillable enemy, but chooses not to and lets him go, saying that he prefers to do so in the sight of 1,000 men, so that everyone knows the deed is done. It's one of the unlikelier plot justifications of the series, made all the more annoying by the long-term implications of that decision. The story continues with Sharpe trying to figure out how to regain a Captaincy, while dealing with the schemes of Hakeswill. This is all set against the backdrop of the siege at the fortress of Badajoz. Cornwell excels at imparting the technical and murderous side of siege warfare at the time, while remaining entertaining. His descriptions of trench-digging, shelling, and futile charges against overwhelming firepower all eerily foreshadow the horrors of France and Belgium 100 years later. For Sharpe, the storming of the fortress is a test of his courage and pride, a point which Cornwell hammers home almost to the point of parody. To top it all off, Sharpe's lover, the guerilla leader Terressa, is holed up in Badajoz, and Sharpe must race to get to her before raping and looting soldiers do. The post-siege descriptions of wholesale rape are based on historical fact, and are not for the faint of heart (or young), so be warned. Another strong entry in the series.


Bloody Napoleonic Sieges Galore   August 19, 2002
DH
4 out of 6 found this review helpful

Let me preface my review by confessing to be a fan of the Sharpe series of books. Sharpe's Company tells the tale of the British Army led by Wellington and the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. As usual Sharpe is in the thick of things. I didn't enjoy this book as much as some of the others, mainly because all the action revolves around the sieges. Personally, I favour action in open country, with battalions of soldiers manoeuvring for tactical advantage and cavalry pitted against infantry. Nonetheless, Cornwell still provides the reader with an articulate depiction of siege warfare, that is grotesque yet mesmerizing. The detestable Sergeant Hakeswill makes a reappearance and the plot centres around his hatred for Sharpe. Frankly, I have had a guts-full of Hakeswill and I wish Sharpe would just finish him off and ...... (but I will let you read the story to find that out). A couple of the fateful encounters Sharpe has with Hakeswill in this episode of the series, just don't seem to gel, and I'm left with the feeling Cornwell has placed too much emphasis on this aspect of the story. This is a well researched book. The historical notes at the end are very interesting, and some readers might consider reading this part at the beginning or during the book. Again this book leaves me in no doubt that Bernard Cornwell has had a previous life as an infantryman during the Napoleonic wars. Recommended for military enthusiasts, but may be too gory for the squeamish at heart.