Sharpe’s Rifles. Winter 1809, the British
army retreats towards Corunna with Napoleon’s armies in pursuit. Lieutenant Richard Sharpe and a detachment of Riflemen are cut off from the retreating British army and surrounded by enemy troops.
The British army were able to deploy and repel a French attack on the port, during which their commander, Sir John Moore, was killed. Fortunately, this victory gained enough time for the army to be saved and embark on ships for home.
The French had driven the British army from the entire Iberian Peninsula except for a small British army
garrison in Lisbon. In February 1809, after Moore’s defeat, Britain was about to withdraw this garrison. Spring 1809, Sir Arthur Wellesley took command of the Lisbon garrison which gradually became the army that won a series of victories in Portugal and Spain culminating in the invasion of France. Sharpe prevailed during the brutal French occupation of wild and mountainous Galicia by joining forces with Spanish Cavalry (Cazadores) and Galician
partisans to briefly occupy the mystical Santiago de Compostella in order to celebrate St James inspiring Spanish national resistance against the French invaders. This never happened, it is pure fiction, however it provides a smorgasbord of history in which Sharpe struggles and ultimately prevails.
The French Marechal Soult, harried by partisans, with burgeoning supply problems could only reach the Douro river near Oporto, northern Portugal. Wellesley cleared Marechal Soult’s French army from Portuguese territory in May 1809. Wellesley then turned due east to secure the first of his many Spanish victories at Talavera. More French soldiers
died at the hands of Spanish partisans who fought the guerrilla, or ‘little war’ than died in formal battles with the British army. Sharpe and Harper have a lot of campaigning ahead of them.
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