Bernard Cornwell · 1986 · overland

Bernard Cornwell's novel of 1813. The South Essex is being bled white and no replacements arrive, so Sharpe and Harper go absent without leave and cross to England to find out why. What they uncover is a racket selling recruits to other regiments, protected in Whitehall - and the only way to prove it is to enlist in their own regiment under false names.

1. 1
   The Pyrenees

   With the army on the French frontier and the battalion down to a shadow, Sharpe finds that its second battalion at home has simply stopped sending men - and takes the extraordinary step of going to England to ask.

2. 2
   London

   In London he discovers that a regiment can be quietly wound up and its recruits sold on to others, with the profit going into the pockets of men with rooms in Whitehall - and that nobody official wishes to be told.

3. 3
   Foulness

   On the Essex marshes at Foulness the racket is run out of a depot where recruits are held, drilled and traded - and Sharpe and Harper enlist under false names to get inside it, which puts them at the mercy of the men running it.

4. 4
   The Nivelle

   They come back to the army in time for the crossing of the Nivelle and the invasion of France itself - with a battalion of their own men behind them, brought out of Essex by a piece of fraud committed against the frauds.