Bernard Cornwell · 1982 · overland

Bernard Cornwell's novel of the siege of Badajoz, 1812. Sharpe loses his captaincy to a purchased officer and finds Obadiah Hakeswill, the sergeant who once had him flogged and left for dead in India, arrived in his own regiment. The two of them settle it inside the worst night of the Peninsular War, in the ditch below the breaches.

1. 1
   Ciudad Rodrigo

   Ciudad Rodrigo falls to a winter storming and the army sacks it - and in the aftermath Sharpe learns his commission was never confirmed, and that he is a lieutenant again in a company that is no longer his.

2. 2
   Elvas

   The army marches south to the Portuguese fortress of Elvas and begins digging opposite Badajoz - siege works in the rain, with the engineers short of everything and the walls being repaired faster than the guns can knock them down.

3. 3
   Badajoz

   The breaches are stormed on 6 April and two thousand men die in the ditch on chevaux de frise and mines - and the town is sacked for two days by an army nobody can control, which is where Sharpe finds Hakeswill.