Sharpe's Waterloo (novel)

Sharpe's Waterloo

First edition cover
Author	Bernard Cornwell
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Richard Sharpe
Genre	Historical novels
Publisher	Collins
Publication date	1 February 1990
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback) and audio-CD
Pages	416 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	(first edition, hardback)
OCLC	32926187
Dewey Decimal	823/.914 20
LC Class	PR6053.O75 S57 1990a
Preceded by	Sharpe's Revenge
Followed by	Sharpe's Ransom

Sharpe's Waterloo is a historical novel in the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell. Originally published in 1990 under the title Waterloo, it is the eleventh and final novel of the "original" Sharpe series (beginning with Sharpe's Eagle), and the twentieth novel in chronological order.

Napoleon having escaped from Elba, Richard Sharpe leaves his farm in Normandy to rejoin the British Army, and is created a Lieutenant Colonel of a Dutch-Belgian cavalry regiment, a sinecure to give him standing as one of the Prince of Orange's staff officers. Sharpe's lover Lucille has followed him to Belgium with their infant son, Henri-Patrick, as has Sharpe's friend Patrick Harper, now a civilian who has ostensibly come to Belgium to trade in horses, but unofficially to resume his old place at Sharpe's side.

While patrolling the roads connecting the Anglo-Dutch and Prussian forces, Sharpe witnesses the main body of Napoleon's army crossing the border from France, revealing that Napoleon does not intend to maneuver around the flank of the allied armies, via Mons, as the Duke of Wellington expected, but instead to ram his army into the gap between the two allied forces and defeat them in detail. Encountering a cavalry patrol of the King's German Legion, Sharpe sends an urgent message to Wellington, while Sharpe stays behind to continue spying on the invading French. Unfortunately, the cavalry's commander, General Dornberg, decries Sharpe's message as a French deception, and tears it up rather than forward it to Wellington.