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Sharpe's Sword
''Sharpe's Sword'' is a historical novel in the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell. It is the fourth in the series, being first published in 1983, though the fourteenth chronologically. Set in the summer of 1812 including the Battle of Salamanca on 22 July 1812, the story follows Sharpe and his friend Sergeant Harper involved in espionage while hunting down the sadistic and highly dangerous Colonel Philippe Leroux. Plot summary French Colonel Philippe Leroux and Captain Paul Delmas are fleeing from the King's German Legion toward Sharpe's Light Company. Leroux has extracted the secret identity of El Mirador, Britain's most important spy in Spain, from a priest he tortured. Leroux kills Delmas and assumes his identity and then allows himself to be captured by Sharpe and his men, knowing that the British would never exchange an imperial colonel. Sharpe covets Leroux's sword, a finely crafted, superbly balanced Klingenthal heavy cavalry sword. As Captain Delmas, Leroux ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell (born 23 February 1944) is an English-American author of historical novels and a history of the Waterloo Campaign. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe. He has also written ''The Saxon Stories'', a series of 13 novels about King Alfred and the making of England. He has written historical novels primarily based on English history, in five series, and one series of contemporary thriller novels. A feature of his historical novels is an end note on how they match or differ from history, and what one might see at the modern sites of the events described. He wrote a nonfiction book on the battle of Waterloo, in addition to the fictional story of the famous battle in the Sharpe series. Two of the historical novel series have been adapted for television: the ''Sharpe'' television series by ITV and '' The Last Kingdom'' by BBC. He lives in the US with his wife, alternating between Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Charleston, South ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King's German Legion
The King's German Legion (KGL; german: Des Königs Deutsche Legion, semantically erroneous obsolete German variations are , , ) was a British Army unit of mostly expatriated German personnel during the period 1803–16. The legion achieved the distinction of being the only German force to fight without interruption against the French during the Napoleonic Wars. The legion was formed within months of the dissolution of the Electorate of Hanover in 1803 and constituted as a mixed corps by the end of 1803. Although the legion never fought autonomously and remained a part of the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars (1804–15), it played a vital role in several campaigns, most notably the Walcheren Campaign, the Peninsular War, and the Hundred Days (1815). The legion was disbanded in 1816. Several of the units were incorporated into the army of the Kingdom of Hanover, and became later a part of the Imperial German Army after unification in 1871. The British German Legion, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ITV (TV Network)
ITV is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network. It was launched in 1955 as Independent Television to provide competition to BBC Television (established in 1936). ITV is the oldest commercial network in the UK. Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, it has been legally known as Channel 3 to distinguish it from the other analogue channels at the time, BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4. ITV was for four decades a network of separate companies which provided regional television services and also shared programmes between each other to be shown on the entire network. Each franchise was originally owned by a different company. After several mergers, the fifteen regional franchises are now held by two companies: ITV plc, which runs the ITV1 channel, and STV Group, which runs the STV channel. The ITV network is a separate entity from ITV plc, the company that resulted from the merger of Granada plc and Carlton Communications in 2004. ITV plc holds the Channel 3 bro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sharpe (TV Series)
''Sharpe'' is a British television drama series starring Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe, a fictional British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars, with Irish actor Daragh O'Malley playing his second in command Patrick Harper. Sharpe and Harper are the heroes of the ''Sharpe'' series of novels by Bernard Cornwell; most, though not all, of the episodes are based on the books. Produced by Celtic Films and Picture Palace Films for the ITV network, the series was filmed mainly in Crimea, with recording of other episodes in Turkey, England, Portugal and Spain. The two final episodes were filmed in Jaipur, India. The series originally ran from 1993 to 1997. In 2006, ITV premiered ''Sharpe's Challenge'', a two-part adventure loosely based on his time in India, with Sean Bean continuing his role as Sharpe; part one premiered on 23 April, with part two being shown the following night. With more gore than earlier episodes, the show was broadcast by BBC America in September 2006. Filming ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sharpe's Sword (TV Programme)
''Sharpe's Sword'' is a 1995 British television drama, the eighth of a series screened on the ITV network that follows the career of Richard Sharpe, a fictional British soldier during the Napoleonic Wars. It is based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Bernard Cornwell, though it is set a year later (1813) than the book. Plot On the French-Spanish frontier, a French patrol led by a colonel of Napoleon's Imperial Guard overtakes a carriage containing a priest and three nuns. The priest is the confessor of El Mirador, Wellington's best secret agent; he is tortured into revealing the spy's identity. Then, he and two of the nuns are killed, but the youngest (Emily Mortimer), a novice, gets away. Major Sharpe (Sean Bean) and his riflemen show up and rout the French, taking a captain captive, while the colonel is killed. Sharpe finds a piece of paper on the prisoner filled with cryptic numbers and suspects that his captive is actually the colonel in disguise. However, he is unab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colquhoun Grant (British Intelligence Officer)
Lieutenant-Colonel Colquhoun Grant (1780 – 20 October 1829) was a British Army soldier and intelligence officer during the Napoleonic Wars. Career Of a family from the Scots aristocracy, Grant, the youngest of eight brothers, was commissioned into the 11th Foot in 1795, reaching the rank of major by 1809 when he was posted to the Iberian Peninsula under the command of Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington. In 1810 he was appointed to Wellesley's personal staff as an Exploring Officer in the Peninsula Corps of Guides, a special reconnaissance unit whose members spoke the local languages. Grant never thought of himself as a spy, and always rode in full uniform, often behind enemy lines, to note the positions and strength of the enemy. Grant was captured by French forces on 16 April 1812. As he was in uniform, he was treated as an officer and gentleman by his captors, who offered him parole, which Grant accepted. His servant Leon, a local guide, was not so fortunate, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence. The war started when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807 by transiting through Spain, and it escalated in 1808 after Napoleonic France occupied Spain, which had been its ally. Napoleon Bonaparte forced the abdications of Ferdinand VII and his father Charles IV and then installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne and promulgated the Bayonne Constitution. Most Spaniards rejected French rule and fought a bloody war to oust them. The war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, and is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation. It is also significant for the emergence o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auguste Marmont
Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont (20 July 1774 – 22 March 1852) was a French general and nobleman who rose to the rank of Marshal of the Empire and was awarded the title (french: duc de Raguse). In the Peninsular War Marmont succeeded the disgraced André Masséna in the command of the French army in northern Spain, but lost decisively at the Battle of Salamanca. At the close of the War of the Sixth Coalition, Marmont went over to the Restoration, and remained loyal to the Bourbons through the Hundred Days. This gave Marmont a reputation as a traitor among the remaining Bonapartists, and in French society more broadly. He led the royalist Paris garrison during the July Revolution in 1830, but his efforts proved incapable of quelling the revolution, leading King Charles X to accuse Marmont of betraying the Bourbons as he had betrayed the Bonapartes. Marmont departed France with Charles's entourage and never returned to France. Spending his exile mostly in Vienna and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patrick Curtis (bishop)
Patrick Curtis (1740 – 26 July 1832) was an Irish prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland from 1819 to 1832., ''The Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland and Ireland, volume 1'', p. 231., ''Handbook of British Chronology'', p. 416. Biography Patrick Curtis was born in Stamullen, County Meath in 1746. He studied for the priesthood in Salamanca in Spain. Curtis was the Rector of the Irish College in Salamanca, Spain and professor at the University of Salamanca, where he was known as Don Patricio Cortés. Whilst in Spain he was spymaster of a network that provided military intelligence to Wellesley's Anglo-Portuguese Army during the Peninsular War. His friendship with Wellington assisted in his promotion to Armagh. It is also thought to have paved the way to Catholic Emancipation, to which the Anglo-Irish Wellington was a late but genuine convert. He served as Professor of Philosophy and the first Professor of As ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke Of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of the United Kingdom. He is among the commanders who won and ended the Napoleonic Wars when the coalition defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Wellesley was born in Dublin into the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. He was commissioned as an ensign in the British Army in 1787, serving in Ireland as aide-de-camp to two successive lords lieutenant of Ireland. He was also elected as a member of Parliament in the Irish House of Commons. He was a colonel by 1796 and saw action in the Netherlands and in India, where he fought in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War at the Battle of Seringapatam. He was appointed governor of Seringapatam and Mysore in 1799 and, as a newly appointed major-general, won a decisive victory over the Maratha Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Hogan (fictional Character)
Sharpe is a series of historical fiction stories by Bernard Cornwell centred on the character of Richard Sharpe. Cornwell's series (composed of several novels and short stories) charts Sharpe's progress in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Director Tom Clegg filmed the television series '' Sharpe'' based on the novels by Bernard Cornwell starring Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe. The series originally ran from 1993 to 1997. In 2006, ITV premiered ''Sharpe's Challenge'', a two-part adventure loosely based on his time in India, with Sean Bean continuing his role as Sharpe. In both the novels and television series, Sharpe encountered many characters, some real and some fictional. Below are some of the characters mentioned in the novels by Bernard Cornwell and the television series directed by Tom Clegg. Richard Sharpe Richard Sharpe first appears in Sharpe's Tiger as a private in the 33rd Regiment of Foot. He later earns the rank of Sergeant by the end of the book. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infantry Square
An infantry square, also known as a hollow square, was a historic combat formation in which an infantry unit formed in close order, usually when it was threatened with cavalry attack. As a traditional infantry unit generally formed a line to advance, more nimble cavalry could sweep around the end of the line and attack from the undefended rear or burst through the line, with much the same effect. By arranging the unit so that there was no undefended rear, a commander could organise an effective defense against a cavalry attack. With the development of modern firearms and the demise of cavalry, that formation is now considered obsolete. Early history The formation was described by Plutarch and used by the Ancient Romans; it was developed from an earlier circular formation. In particular, a large infantry square was used by the Roman legions at the Battle of Carrhae against Parthia, whose armies contained a large proportion of cavalry. That is not to be confused with the testudo f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
