Sharpe's Rifles

Sharpe's Rifles is Bernard Cornwell's 1988 historical-fiction novel, the chronological entry point to the Richard Sharpe Napoleonic-Wars series (Cornwell wrote it ninth, after starting the series with Sharpe's Eagle, but in series chronology this is the beginning). Sharpe, a hard-drinking officer commissioned from the ranks (an unusual class background for a British officer in 1809), leads a retreat of green-jacketed riflemen across the snow-covered mountains of Galicia after the British army's catastrophic withdrawal to La Coruna. Sharpe's small detachment is cut off, behind French lines, ordered to deliver a Spanish gold treasure to the besieged garrison at Santiago de Compostela.

Cornwell's procedural texture is the structural genius of the entire Sharpe series and reaches its first peak here. The 95th Rifles material (the Baker rifle's range advantage over Napoleon's Charleville muskets, the green-jacketed skirmisher doctrine, the specific class politics of an other-ranks officer commanding a rifle company) is sourced from the Bernard Cornwell research that runs across the series. The snow-and-Galicia setting is rendered with the kind of attention to small operational details (the firearms maintenance in the cold, the rations problem, the gold's logistical weight) that lifts the novel above its commercial-historical-fiction shelf.

Recommended as required Napoleonic-wars historical fiction reading, as the right Sharpe entry point for new readers (start here chronologically; you can skip Sharpe's Eagle until later), and for fans of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series and C. S. Forester's Hornblower. The Sean Bean ITV adaptations (1993-2008) are uneven but worth attention. Read Sharpe's Eagle next. Five stars without reservation.