Title:

Sharpe's Havoc

Author:

Bernard Cornwell

Category:

Literature

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

September 27, 2025

harpe's Havoc features Lieutenant Sharpe leading his band of riflemen against the French in Portugal. The book opens with the French army advancing relentlessly against the city of Oporto. It is time to retreat across the Duoro River, but Sharpe is instructed instead to look for a young wealthy English woman - Kate Savage has inexplicably gone missing just as the French arrive. Captain Hogan gives Sharpe orders to find this important, beautiful woman (her father controls the export market for valuable Portuguese port wine) - it is expected that she might be at another manor along the Duoro River.

However, another British officer, Colonel Christopher, tells Sharpe not to bother with Ms. Savage. Christopher is an unusual sort - although he holds a high rank and can give Sharpe orders, Christopher commands no soldiers himself. A single Portuguese servant rides with him - so what is he doing in Portugal?

The conflicting orders have generated too much delay. As Sharpe and his men march to the last remaining bridge across the Duoro River, they find it jammed with desperate refugees and it disintegrates under their weight mid-river with a tremendous loss of life. The small company of British soldiers are trapped on the wrong side of the river. Fighting against the oncoming French, Sharpe and his men flee upriver. Trapped, they prepare to charge French troops and then surrender, but they receive an unexpected reprieve when a contingent of Portuguese soldiers assaults the French from the rear. Sharpe and his men join up with Lieutenant Vicente and his Portuguese soldiers - which proves fortunate, because Vicente knows the countryside and how to maneuver off the main roads.

Naturally, Sharpe encounters Colonel Christopher again, and he discovers what happened to the alluring Miss Savage (Cornwell loves adding beautiful maidens to his tales, even though the focus of his books is on bloody battle scenes). More desperate fighting ensues. Sharpe and his men employ the Baker rifle, which is far more accurate at a much greater distance than the muskets used by most of the armies at this time. This edge gives them a crucial advantage when French have numerical superiority.

Cornwell does a lot of research when writing these novels, for example, he can describe the how rifles are loaded and fired, or different the uniforms worn or what the men were eating. So I wonder if his descriptions of the French atrocities are drawn from actual events, or did he invent the burning down of the church with people locked inside, and the numerous rapes and looting that they inflicted upon the Portuguese? There certainly weren't any Geneva convention norms about how warfare should be conducted back in that era.

Will the French push the retreating British out of Portugal entirely? What is that mysterious Colonel Christopher up to? Can Sharpe somehow get his men to safety, even though the French have destroyed every boat capable of crossing the Duoro, and the French troops have seized every bridge? Cornwell writes great dramatic scenes of battle and desperate chances taken by Sharpe.