Sharpe's Escape

It is 1811 and the French are making yet another attempt to invade Portugal and push the British back into the sea by sending their largest army yet across the Spanish frontier. Facing them is a wasted land, stripped of food by Wellington's orders, and Captain Richard Sharpe.

But Sharpe is in trouble. His job as Captain of the Light Company is under threat from a better connected officer and he has made a new enemy, a Portugese criminal known as Ferragus, who has devised a simple way of ingratiating hismelf with the French invaders. But Ferragus has not reckoned on Sharpe who, discarded by his regiment, wages a private war against Ferragus. Sharpe's enemies are numerous but by his side he has Sergeant Harper, the Portugese officer Jorge Vicente, and a prickly English governess whose first aim is to clean up Sharpe's language.

The rivalry will take Sharpe and Ferragus south towards Lisbon, towards the trap that Wellington has set, to the place where the French must be stopped; the massive lines of Torres Vedras. There, beneath the British guns, Sharpe will meet all his enemies in a swirling, bitter skirmish: there the French threat to Lisbon ends.