Bernard Cornwell · 1990 · overland

Bernard Cornwell's novel of the Waterloo campaign, four days in June 1815. Napoleon crosses the frontier while the allied army is at a ball in Brussels, and the whole thing is decided in seventy-two hours across twenty miles of Belgian farmland. Sharpe, back in uniform on a Dutch prince's staff, spends most of it trying to stop his own commander killing his men.

1. 1
   Brussels

   Napoleon is across the frontier before Brussels believes it, and officers leave the Duchess of Richmond's ball still in evening dress - the army scrambling to concentrate on a crossroads it has not yet reached.

2. 2
   Quatre Bras

   At the Quatre Bras crossroads a scratch force holds off Ney's corps through an afternoon of standing squares in the rye - and twenty miles east the Prussians are being beaten at Ligny, which decides where everything happens next.

3. 3
   Waterloo

   On the ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean the army stands all day against cavalry, artillery and the Guard, with La Haye Sainte the hinge of the line - and holds until the Prussians come out of the woods on the French right.