Sharpe's Rifles - Bernard Cornwell

I was originally going to hand the box of Cornwell books back to my father unread the next time I saw him. But I got bored, they were sitting right there, and the books he reads are usually at least a little interesting.

Sharpe's Rifles is set in the Napoleonic Wars, in Spain. At this point, the British are getting their butts evicted from Spain by France, and Richard Sharpe is a miserable. he's an enlisted man promoted to Lieutenant, which means his commanding officer looks down upon him for being a peasant, essentially (better to have bought your commission than earned it, I suppose). The enlisted men hate him, because they actually believe officers are supposed to be a better class, and if Sharpe was once an enlisted man like them, he certainly doesn't qualify. And Sharpe hates it because the made him a Quartermaster, and he wants to fight.

And he gets his chance, once his group is battered by French cavalry and separated from the main retreating body. Unfortunately, he winds up as the highest ranking officer left. Things are looking rather grim until he meets Major Blas Vivar. The Major is the head of Spanish Cazadores, transporting a mysterious and important strongbox. The French very badly want that box, or at least don't want it reaching its destination. Sharpe is in a country he doesn't know, with men who hate him, and no idea of where to go, so he reluctantly throws in with Blas. Besides, his men love Blas, since they see him as a true officer.

It's an adventure story. There's a bit of a romantic subplot thrown in, but I think it's mostly there to a) serve as something to break up fight scenes, and b) give an extra layer of tension between Blas and Sharpe.  There's quite a lot of that, since the two men are very different. They come from different cultures, opposite ends of the economic spectrum, have completely different perspectives on religion. Sharpe resents how easily Blas commands respect and loyalty, Blas gets frustrated with Sharpe's pessimism. But Sharpe is a soldier, fighting is what he's good at, and Blas is certainly giving him the chance for that.

Those are the only two characters that receive any significant fleshing out, but perhaps Cornwell plans to flesh out some of Sharpe's men in the subsequent books. Or he figured at least one of those two is in every scene in the book, so they were the relevant ones. He does a good job of conveying how Sharpe's doubts about himself hamstring him as a commanding officer, as they make him into precisely the kind of officer he always hated serving under.

Something Blas brings up a few times is how difficult the people of Spain are going to make it for the French. Even if the government has fallen and the army is commanded by fools, the people consider the French the enemy, and that's very bad for the French. What this reminded me of was two books I read on the Spanish Civil War two years ago. Both of them - The Spanish Labyrinth and The Spanish Cockpit - talked a lot about how important the peasants were to Spain. How one of the Republic's major failures during the Spanish Civil War was undertaking programs that would enthusiastically put those people on their side. Blas Vivar, however, is not going to make such a mistake. He understands how much the people hate the French, and his whole plan is a way to inspire them to arms. Make the French have a miserable time until they leave.