index index index index Great read, engrossing and thrilling. You will always be wanting to pick up the next one.I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The action was great and it just was a book that was difficult to put down. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys military history.With Napoleon facing no other opposition in Europe and having put 300,000 French troops in Iberia, the Brits and the Portuguese are beleaguered and falling back. Marshal Massena pushes forward, planning to take Lisbon soon. He needs to: Wellington has scorched the Portuguese earth and the invaders are hungry.

Massena meets unexpectedly stiff resistance at the ridge of Bussaco before his soldiers plunder Coimbra and his army turns south.

There, in an amazing feat of both engineering and secrecy, Wellington has managed to construct a 50-mile long fortification from the River Tagus to the Atlantic. He has altered rivers, flooded lowlands, moved entire hillsides to create unscalable cliffs, built hundreds of forts and filled valleys with thornbushes, creating a major killing field.

Sharpe fears for his career when Colonel Lawford "temporarily" places his pompous brother-in-law in charge of Sharpe's rifle company at Bussaco. And Sharpe runs afoul of Ferreira, Portuguese intelligence officer, and the latter's rogue brother Ferragus, whom Sharpe realizes secretly conspire to feed the French and secure a place under their regime.

Captured while searching for the food caches, Sharpe and Harper, along with loyal Portuguese officer Vincente and Ferreira's English governess Sarah Fry, must make a harrowing escape, first from their cellar prison and then across the French-controlled countryside. Sharpe, needless to say, still wants to catch the brothers and get even. An enjoyable installment in the series. The battle detail, particularly at Bussaco, is very good.
Another classic Sharpe. Like other Sharpe books, this one is a very easy-reading and entertaining book.I read all of the original Sharpe series in the eighties and thought that the series had come to it's natural conclusion with Sharpes Waterloo in 1990. I was very suprised to see Sharpes Devil a couple of years later and to my mind this was a book too far in the series. Cornwell was always writing other books including the excellent Redcoat as well as his nautical thrillers. When he started the Starbuck chronicles I was delighted and followed Nates adventures in the same manner as I had Sharpe's. Then, after the Sharpe series had been shown on tv Cornwell abandoned "The Starbuck Chronicles" mid-series (after four books)and resurrected Sharpe. Not to sound too cynical but the only reason for this betrayal of fans who had bought the new books and were following Starbuck could only have been money...Cornwell betrayed and sacrificed the Starbuck fans for a newer and more lucrutive market...the new Sharpe fans worldwide who came to the books after the tv series. In order to continue to cash in along came all the new books each one inserted in a different period of Sharpe's career. If you have read the original series you won't recognise Sharpe's description in the new books..because it's Sean Bean!...Thanks Bernard, how's the yacht?

It is 1810, and in Napoleon's determination to conquer Portugal -- and push the British back to the sea -- he sends his largest army yet across the Spanish frontier. But between the Portuguese border and Napoleon's seemingly certain victory are twoobstacles -- a wasted land, stripped of food by Wellington's orders, and Captain Richard Sharpe.

But Sharpe is in trouble. The captain of the Light Company is threatened from inside and out: First by an incompetent British officer, who by virtue of family connections is temporarily given Sharpe's command. An even greater danger is posed by two corrupt Portuguese brothers -- Major Ferreira, a high-ranking officer in the army of Portugal, and his brother, nicknamed "Ferragus" (after a legen-dary Portuguese giant), who makes no claims to respectability, preferring instead to rule by crude physical strength and pure intimidation. Together the brothers have developed a devious plot to ingratiate themselves with the French invaders who are threatening to become Portugal's new rulers.

Sharpe's interference in the first stage of their plan earns the undying enmity of the brothers. Ferragus vows revenge and plots a merciless trap that seems certain to kill Sharpe and his intimates -- battle-tested ally Sergeant Harper, the Portuguese officer Jorge Vicente, and a prickly but lovely English governess. As the city of Coimbra is burned and pillaged, Sharpe and his companions plot a daring escape, ensuring that Ferragus will follow on toward Lisbon, into the jaws of a snare laid by Wellington -- the massive lines of Torres Vedras, a daring and ingenious last stand against the invaders. There, beneath the British guns, Sharpe is reunited with his shattered but grateful company, and meets his enemies in a thrilling and decisive fight.

Sharpe's Escape emphatically reaffirms Bernard Cornwell's status as "perhaps the greatest writer of historical adventure novels today" (Washington Post); its climactic battle scenes and evocative re-creation of history sweep the reader off the page and into the action and drama of nineteenth-century warfare.

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