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SHARPE’S
HAVOC
Richard Sharpe and the campaign in northern Portugal, Spring 1809
BERNARD CORNWELL
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2003
Map © Ken Lewis
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Ebook Edition © July 2009 ISBN: 9780007338689
Version: 2017-05-06
This novel is a work of fiction.
The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
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Sharpe’s Havoc is for William T. Oughtred who knows why
‘This book has the same combination of thorough research and narrative drive that distinguished its predecessors. A gripping read’
Independent
Table of Contents
The SHARPE Series (in chronological order)
The SHARPE Series (in order of publication)
CHAPTER ONE
Miss Savage was missing.
And the French were coming.
The approach of the French was the more urgent crisis. The splintering noise of sustained musket fire was sounding just outside the city and in the last ten minutes five or six cannonballs had battered through the roofs of the houses high on the river’s northern bank. The Savage house was a few yards down the slope and for the moment was protected from errant French cannon fire, but already the warm spring air hummed with spent musket balls that sometimes struck the thick roof tiles with a loud crack or else ripped through the dark glossy pines to shower needles over the garden. It was a large house, built of white-painted stone and with dark-green shutters closed over the windows. The front porch was crowned with a wooden board on which were gilded letters spelling out the name House Beautiful in English. It seemed an odd name for a building high on the steep hillside where the city of Oporto overlooked the River Douro in northern Portugal, especially as the big square house was not beautiful at all, but quite stark and ugly and angular, even if its harsh lines were softened by dark cedars which would offer welcome shade in summer. A bird was making a nest in one of the cedars and whenever a musket ball tore through the branches it would squawk in alarm and fly a small loop before returning to its work. Scores of fugitives were fleeing past the House Beautiful, running down the hill towards the ferries and the pontoon bridge that would take them
