Bernard Cornwell · 1985 · overland

Bernard Cornwell's novel of the Vitoria campaign, 1813. French intelligence needs Wellington's army distracted, so Sharpe is framed for a murder he could not have committed and left to hang for it. Officially dead, he goes into Spain under another name - and comes back in time for the day the French lose the Peninsula and abandon a whole treasury on the road.

1. 1
   Frenada

   At the army's winter quarters on the Portuguese border, Sharpe is accused of murdering a Spanish marquis in a duel he never fought - a charge constructed by French intelligence precisely because it will be believed.

2. 2
   Burgos

   Presumed hanged, Sharpe crosses into Spain to find the woman whose testimony can clear him, moving through country full of partisans, French garrisons and a church with its own reasons for wanting him quiet.

3. 3
   Vitoria

   At Vitoria the French are caught with the accumulated plunder of five years in Spain in their wagons, and the army stops fighting to loot it - and Joseph Bonaparte leaves his kingdom behind in a coach.